separate after a while, and the quality of the rubber so
become inferior. An earthen jar, without bottom and with a narrow neck,
is set by way of chimney over a fire of dry urucury, or uauassu
palm-nuts, whose smoke alone, strange to say, has the effect of
instantly coagulating the caoutchouc sap, which, in this state, greatly
resembles rich cow's milk. The workman, sitting beside this "chimney,"
through which roll dense clouds of a smothering white smoke, from a
small calabash pours a little of the milk on a sort of light wooden
shovel, always careful, by proper management of the latter, to
distribute it evenly over the surface. Thrusting the shovel into the
thick smoke over the opening of the jar, he turns it several times to
and fro with great rapidity, when the milk is seen to consolidate and to
take a grayish-yellow tinge.

Thus he puts layer upon layer, until at last the caoutchouc on both
sides of the wood has reached about an inch in thickness, when he thinks
the "plancha" ready. Cutting it on one side, he takes it off the shovel
and suspends it in the sun to dry, as there is always some water between
the several layers, which should, if possible, evaporate. A good workman
is thus able to prepare five or six pounds of solid seringa in an hour.
The plancha, from its initial color of a clear silver-gray, turns
shortly into a yellow, and finally becomes the well-known dark brown of
the rubber, such as it is exported.

The more uniform, the denser and freer of bubbles, the whole mass is
found to be, the better is its quality and the higher the price it
fetches. Almost double the value is obtained for the first-rate article
over that of the most inferior quality, the so-called sernamby or cabeca
de negro (negro's head); which is nothing but the drops collected at the
foot of the trees, with the remains of the milk scraped out of the
bottoms of the calabashes. The rubber of India is said to be much like
this sernamby, and, like it, to be mixed with sand and small pieces of
bark. By way of testing the quality, every plancha is cut through again
at Para; by which means discovery is made, not only of the bubbles, but
also of any adulteration that might be effected with the milk of the
mangaba, that fine plant with dark glossy leaves, now found so often in
European saloons under the erroneous name of rubber-plant....

The wild cacao, with its large lancet-shaped hanging leaves, and its
cucumber-like fruit springing dire