Down in Brazil, several hundred miles up the Amazon River, there stood a great forest of trees and in this forest - the same as in forests of today - were birds and animals and bugs and beetles, etc. All trees are protected by nature; some are protected from bugs eating their leaves, by other bugs eating up these bugs; other trees are protected by having a thorny or bristly bark.

Indians Playing With a Rubber Ball When Columbus Came in Sight.

Courtesy of the United States Rubber Co.

In these forests in which the rubber tree grows there was a wood-boring beetle, and this beetle would attack these rubber trees, boring into them; but the tree, in order to protect itself, had a poisonous juice, and as soon as the beetle bored into the tree, this juice killed him. Then the juice would fill up the hole the beetle had made, and the tree would go on growing as before.

In those days the natives around these forests (who were half Indian and half Negro) happened to find some of this juice sticking on the tree. They cut it off, rolled it together and made a ball, with which they would play games. The first mention of it was made by Herrera in his account of the second voyage of Columbus, wherein he speaks of a ball used by Indians, made from the gum of a tree which was lighter and bounced better than the far-famed balls of Castile.

In the Jungle.

Llama, Domestic Animal of the Andes, Used to Carry Rubber over Mountains

Railroad Around the Rapids of the Madeira Terminal

Crude Rubber "Biscuits" on the Banks of the Amazon

Courtesy of the United States Rubber Co.

The way they gather this rubber is very interesting. When it comes from the tree it is nothing but a milky juice. The natives of South America soon discovered that the white man was willing to pay them beads and other trinkets for chunks of this rubber, so they became active in gathering it.