In seringal life a married man and his family generally occupy a private hut. The unmarried men, and their married comrades who have not brought wife and children into the forest, live together in batches, several of them sharing one house on the “chummery” system. CHAPTER V WE GO WITH A SERINGUEIRO ON HIS ROUND A rubber-gatherer in the Amazon region is called a “seringueiro.” On his daily round he has to follow a narrow path, called an “estrada,” that has been cut through the forest as a means of communication from one scattered rubber-tree to another. As I should like you to understand exactly how these estradas are planned, I want you to imagine, for the moment, that you are standing somewhere near the river in a tract of unexplored forest. From this spot as starting-point you set out in any direction you like to hunt for rubber-trees. However excited you may be, you cannot possibly hurry, as the only path at your service is the one you are making for yourself. You cut a narrow strip, the length of your arm’s reach, out of the dense undergrowth, walk on a few paces, and are again brought to a standstill; not another step can you move forward until you have continued the path by cutting away another strip out of the tangle ahead. You know you are in a district where Hevea rubber-trees flourish, but you have to take your chance of finding them among the many kinds of trees that are crowded together in the forest. When once you have settled the general direction in which you will explore, you go straight ahead, for you are just as likely to find what you want in a direct line as you would be if you let the fancy of every few minutes lead you into clearing a more irregular, and therefore longer, path. Of course, if you spot a rubber-tree a little way to the right or to the left, you bend your path round to meet it. When you have linked up about fifty Heveas, you curve your path so as to turn your face to the starting-point, and make your way back there, locating rubber-trees as you go along in the same way as on the outward journey; so by the time you get back to the spot you set out from, you have cut an estrada that is roughly elliptical in shape, and you have linked up from 100 to 120 Heveas. They are fine, sturdy old trees, too, for the most part. Some are 60, 70, or even 80 feet high, and their circumference is anything from 3 to 12 feet in the lower regions. When you have made one estrada, you can set out in a different direction from the same starting-point and clear another. Again and again you can repeat the same method of exploration, and you can loop up side estradas with the main ones. To complete your preparations for obtaining rubber, you must build a hut near the spot where all the main paths start and meet again, and arrange for labourers to come and take up their abode in it and work for you.