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But we must hurry on, or we will lose them. By and by they reach the rubber plantation, the place where the rubber-trees abound. The Brazilian and Peruvian forests are full of rubber, and for six months in the year (the other six months the land is under water) these trees are “bled”—as it is called—by the Indians for their taskmasters. The rubber trees grow in groups of 100 to 150, each tree yielding on an average eleven pounds of the grey, sticky juice.

Here the Indians, under pain of terrible torture and death, were made to extract the rubber. The method of doing so is by making a V-shaped gash in the trunk, under which is hung a little clay cup to catch the juice. To each tree is this done in turn, and when the cups are full they are emptied into a large cauldron hanging on a tripod over a fire of pine-cones.

After going through a certain process, the juice becomes a hard, congealed mass. This raw rubber is carried on the backs of Indians, through the forest and over the mountains, to the city of Iquitos, in Northern Peru; and every year sufficient rubber is exported to provide tyres for 300,000 motor-cars.