Many years have passed since this new kind of gum was discovered; but we are still living in the days of Once Upon a Time when we pay our second visit to the country where flourishes the tree of supply. In the interval since our first visit, the aborigines have had no communication with the civilized world. Yet they have contrived to make their new material serve more purposes than the original one of providing them with playthings. They have found out that it is waterproof, so they now smear it over pouches for holding treasures which they want to protect against a tropical downpour. And see the mere savage discovering a new use for this product which is destined to put the whole civilized world under a debt of gratitude to him. He rubs a thick coating of the sap over his feet--and lo and behold! when it has dried and he wriggles his feet free, he is the proud possessor of the first pair of galoshes ever made. CHAPTER III THE HISTORY OF RUBBER Of course, you have already guessed that the material used by the “poor savages” I have been talking about was rubber. But I should not be at all surprised if you are thinking that I have made up the whole story I have told you about the discovery of the product. For the moment, I will neither confess nor deny that I have spun you a fairy story. Instead, I will ask you to give your attention to a few well-known facts about the history of rubber. On the authority of an old and honoured historian, Herrera by name, Columbus saw the natives of the Island of Haiti, in the West Indies, playing with balls which were said to be made of gum from a tree. This was during his second voyage of discovery, in 1493 to 1496. A sixteenth-century document refers to elastic balls which the aborigines of the New World used in their games. And early in the seventeenth century a report was issued dealing with a tree growing in Mexico, from which the natives extracted a milky liquid that came to be used by the Spaniards for the purpose of making their garments water-tight. In each case, the historical reference is generally admitted to concern the material we now call rubber. Therefore, by the way, so far as history enlightens us, Columbus was the first European to become acquainted with this forest product. According to history, then, the aborigines in different parts of Southern America discovered rubber, and made use of it, without any help from the civilized world. By the way, they called the material “_cahucu_.” When an English scientist, by name Priestley, discovered in the latter part of the eighteenth century that cahucu would rub out pencil marks, this wonderful product was named _india-rubber_, in plain English. In nearly every other country it is now spoken of as _caoutchouc_.