Another method is that adopted by the native tribes in the Kasai River of the Congo, and the Lunda province of Portuguese Angola. Whole families or tribes will make a temporary home in the forest, pitching their little huts on a piece of high ground near a stream. Every day the men will scatter in all directions cutting down and gathering the vines into bundles which they will convey to these little encampments. The bark of the vines is then stripped off and laid out on blocks of wood, old canoes, boards, or trunks of trees, preparatory to beating it with heavy wooden mallets, which process gradually reduces the bark to a stringy mass not unlike shredded tobacco. It is then threshed with smaller mallets which in time gradually pulverize the wood element into fine powder, leaving “pancakes” of red rubber, about the size of a breakfast plate. These are then cut into thin strips, starting from the outer edge, and wound into balls, just as the manufacturers wind balls of knitting wool. This method though equally wasteful in collection, conserves the whole of the rubber latex. Travellers in the Kasai territories of the Congo are generally first aware of their approach to human habitation by hearing the distant thud, thud, of the rubber mallets which is a feature of almost every village of that region. [Illustration: CARRYING RUBBER VINES TO VILLAGE.] [Illustration: EXTRACTING RUBBER, KASAI RIVER, UPPER CONGO.] Hand in hand with the rubber work of the Congo is that of cane basket making, which the busy women weave in all sizes for packing the rubber, thus avoiding the heavy cost of importing “shooks” or barrels from Europe. Every year some hundreds of thousands of these light but very strong hampers are made for conveying the rubber to the buying stations and thence to the European markets. [Sidenote: THE FUTURE] The West African rubber problems of to-day which overshadow all others are those of exhaustion and replenishment. Are the forests denuded of rubber, and if so, is there any probability or possibility, of rubber cultivation to replace the exhausted supply? Both these phases of the question are difficult of complete and categorical answer. For thirty years now exploitation has been running wild through the forests, and within the last fifteen years the rate and methods of exploitation have from every point of view been ruinous. The Funtumia trees have been ruthlessly cut down and even where tapping has taken place, it has been done at any and every season of the year, and in general practice tapped whenever and wherever the tree would yield an ounce of rubber.