better paid than any other manual labour of the Amazon; it is he who enters the wild forest, locates the rubber trees within a given area, and makes paths from each _seringueira_ (rubber tree) to the next in the central part of each estrada, always ending by cutting an encircling road which runs all about the _estrada_. On this outer road the rubber collector usually builds his little hut—“more of an oven than a home,” says Eloy de Souza—of palm thatch, and the tiny smoking room (_defumador_) where each day’s supply of latex is coagulated. The work of the _matteiro_ is paid according to the number of rubber trees found and prepared for tapping; he gets about the equivalent of one dollar for each tree; Woodroffe reckons that in the cases when the patrão of an estate has advanced money for the steamship fares of his imported labourers, advanced food and equipment, and paid for preparation of the _seringal_, each man represents an outlay of “quite £100 by the time he stands up under the trees to tap them.” It must not be supposed, therefore, that because rubber is wild upon the Amazon that it costs nothing to collect it; on the contrary in spite of the lavish hand of Nature expenses in the wild regions of South America are far higher than they are in the East, where land has been cleared and each sapling patiently planted and tended. [Illustration: _Rubber on the Amazon._ Hevea brasiliensis tree, scarred by tapping. Smoking the day’s collection of latex. Hut of the Seringueiro. ]