The process is very simple. Every morning each person, man or
woman, to whom is allotted a certain number of trees, goes the
round of the whole and collects in a large vessel the milky sap
which trickles from gashes made in the bark on the preceding
evening, and which is received in little clay cups, or in
ampullaria shells stuck beneath the wounds. The sap, which at
first is of the consistence of cream, soon thickens; the
collectors are provided with a great number of wooden moulds of
the shape in which the rubber is wanted, and when they return to
the camp, they dip them into the liquid, laying on, in the course
of several days, one coat after another. When this is done, the
substance is white and hard; the proper colour and consistency
are given by passing it repeatedly through a thick black smoke
obtained by burning the nuts of certain palm trees, after which
process the article is ready for sale.

India-rubber is known throughout the province only by the name of
seringa, the Portuguese word for syringe; it owes this
appellation to the circumstance that it was only in this form
that the first Portuguese settlers noticed it to be employed by
the aborigines. It is said that the Indians were first taught to
make syringes of rubber by seeing natural tubes formed by it when
the spontaneously-flowing sap gathered round projecting twigs.
Brazilians of all classes still use it extensively in the form of
syringes, for injections form a great feature in the popular
system of cures; the rubber for this purpose is made into a pear-
shaped bottle, and a quill fixed in the long neck.

September 24th.--Opposite Cameta, the islands are all planted