their Hevea trees against total destruction, but of protecting them against the injuries caused by unskilled operations. Many experiments are being made with a view to producing a less clumsy tool than the machadinha, and the very hard task has been taken in hand of trying to persuade a large but widely scattered army of rough men to work more carefully. [Illustration: A BALATA BLEEDERS’ CAMP. _Page 47_ _From a photograph in the British Guiana Section of the Imperial Institute, by permission_] In tapping a rubber-tree, the cut must only go deep enough to open the cells which harbour the sap--which, by the way, in simple English is called “milk,” and in technical language “latex.” These cells are in the bark, extending from just beneath its surface to the cambium, or true outer skin of the wood. If the tapping tool pierces the wood, the tree gets maimed for life. Henceforth its supply of milk will be more difficult to get at, for when the wounds are sufficiently healed for the tree again to be tapped in the same region, the trunk will be knotted and furrowed in the way you have already seen. Consequently the milk-cells will be situated at different levels, instead of being evenly distributed beneath a covering of smooth-faced bark, and ceasing on the same level. Moreover, bad tapping makes the milk-supply poorer in both quantity and quality. And when a tree is very badly wounded in the wood it will very probably cease to give any milk at all. While we have been talking about tapping in general, we have been following our Brazilian friend along his estrada, watching him deal with one tree after another in the same way as he treated the first one on his round. After a long walk, we get back to that first tree. The seringueiro now makes for his hut, puts away his axe, and picks up an old tin can. Once more he starts off on the same round, and now, as he goes from tree to tree, he unhooks the cups and pours their contents into the larger collecting vessel. The milk has stopped running, but the trees have yielded well this morning, and by the time the “milkman” is nearing home again he has to carry the can very steadily so as not to spill any of the morning’s supply. It is nearly ten o’clock when we follow our leader into his hut once more, and as we have had nothing to eat since we started out at five, no wonder we do full justice to the meal he invites us to share with him, and tell ourselves that dried beef and beans make very good fare. We might think differently if we had breakfasted on this, or very similar fare, every day for months past, and were not likely to get anything very different at any meal for months to come. CHAPTER VI MAKING PARA RUBBER IN THE FOREST After breakfast, the seringueiro sets about transforming the morning’s “milk” into solid rubber--in technical language, he submits the liquid to a treatment whereby it is coagulated.