"We were bound to call in at the city of Para as the port of entry, in order to obtain clearance papers for the ship before we could go to sea. Any delay would have rendered my precious freight quite valueless and useless. But again fortune favored. I had a 'friend at court' in the person of Consul Green, who went himself with me to call on the proper official, and supported me as I presented to His Excellency 'my difficulty and anxiety, being in charge of, and having on board a ship anchored out in the stream, exceedingly delicate botanical specimens, especially designated for delivery to Her Britannic Majesty's own Royal Garden of Kew. Even while doing myself the honor of thus calling on His Excellency, I had given orders to the captain of the ship to keep up steam, having ventured to trust His Excellency would see his way clear to furnishing me with immediate dispatch. An interview most polite, full of mutual compliments in the best Portuguese manner, enabled us to get under way as soon as the captain had got the dinghy hauled aboard." Can you imagine Wickham's sigh of relief as his vessel, with its freight of perishable treasure, steamed out of port, and began the long journey to England? CHAPTER 5 PLANTATION DEVELOPMENT The transporting of the rubber seeds from the Brazilian forests to England was only the first step in Wickham's project. The real test was still to come. The seeds were planted in the famous Botanical Gardens of Kew, and on August 12, 1876, the several thousand seedlings which had been raised from them were packed in special cases and shipped to Ceylon on the other side of the globe for the final and most important stage of the experiment. How long the next five years must have seemed to the anxious Wickham, for it was that long before the first rubber tree flowered in the gardens at Heneratgoda, sixteen miles from Colombo, where the trees had finally been planted. In this year, 1881, experiments in tapping began, and it was plain that Wickham's dream was to be realized. From these few trees, so carefully tended in their youth, has sprung the whole rubber industry of Ceylon and the Far East. Wickham must indeed have been proud to see the plantations spreading from Ceylon to Malaya, where rubber was eagerly taken up by planters who were despairing of ever making a living out of coffee, and later to Sumatra and Java and Borneo. To-day rubber plantations cover an area of over 3,000,000 acres, with a yearly output of almost 360,000 tons, or about ten times the average yearly output of "wild rubber."