Visit to a Rubber Plantation in Samoa

Visit to a Rubber Plantation in Samoa

BY M. V. COOMBS

It was while I was visiting the Upolu conference, of the Samoan Mission, together with my school from Tutuila, that President D. C. McBride, Conference President W. E. Tangreen, Brother and Sister D. E. Wilcox, and their daughters Lavera and Myrtle, and myself, decided to pay a visit to the German Rubber Plantation. This large tract of land, consisting of two thousand acres, is just across the river from our village and plantation of

v "Plantations situated in the crater of an extinct volcano"

Sauniatu, and about three miles inland from the coast. Both plantations are situated in the crater of an extinct volcano, with a river flowing through the center which separates the two.

About seven years ago a German firm leased the land, known now as the German Firm rubber plantation, and immediately set out to clear it of the large trees and underbrush which grow so very luxuriantly in Samoa. As soon as the land was cleared and the large trees sufficiently decayed, the planting of the trees com- menced which took considerable time and work; now, to show

A RUBBER PLANTATION IN SAMOA

1177

for it, they have five hundred thousand thriving rubber trees and forty thousand cocoa trees.

There are several varieties of rubber trees under cultivation, but the two principal species are : one, a native of Brazil, and the other, of Africa. The former is the best suited for Samoa. It grows quite high and has a leaf almost like that of a cottonwood. The latter is a more spreading tree with very thick and large leaves of a dark green color, and is not old enough for tapping until ten years of age, while the first is quite ready when only five years old. Although the tree is tapped every four days, dur- ing its life, it retains vitality until nearly fifty years of age, when it becomes no longer useful as a rubber producer.

At present the tapping is done by Chinese coolies at the enormous salary of three dol- lars a month, according to the amount of milk they bring in each night.

Let us follow one of these boys as he works. Each one has under his care about three hun- dred trees, and taps one hundred trees each day. If the visitor is an early riser, he will hear the gong ringing at five o'clock in the morning. At the sound of the gong the Chinamen are all up, eat a hasty breakfast and take a lunch prepared the night previ- ous and go to their work. Each boy carries a tapping knife, made especially for this purpose, three bottles of water, and a large white-enameled bucket which is full of small zinc cups.

Great care must be taken not to cut too deeply, because ;f the cut is made entirely through the bark, the tree will be injured, and will never from then on yield so large a supply of sap. First, the bark is carefully scraped and washed, then a cut is made down the tree lengthwise, commencing about two and one-half feet above the ground. At the lower end of this cut, a cup is firmly fixed. Seven inches above the cut another cut is made, reaching not quite half way around the tree, and at an angle of sixty degrees in relation to the first cut. This appears to be a dugway leading down a cut-bank from the level to the stream

RUBBER TREE

1178 IMPROVEMENT ERA

below, — the perpendicular cut being the river. Then seven inches higher, another cut is made, in the same manner, and seven inches higher still another is made, making three tributary rivers of milk running into the main river, and all on the same side.

This done, the boy takes some of the water that he carries along, and moistens the cut, which starts the sap to running quite freely. The boy treats one hundred trees this way every morn- ing, as the flow of sap is much greater in the morning than at any other time of the day. The only way I have of accounting for this is that the night, being very cool, and the days being very hot, the sap descends to the roots, and in the morning when the sun rises, it draws the sap to the leaves. Acting somewhat as our American trees do in regard to winter and summer.

When our boy has finished tapping, he returns to the first tree tapped, which by this time has ceased flowing, and what little rubber is left in the wound, is cleaned out and mixed with the sap, while the cut is washed with water. The contents of the cup are emptied into his bucket, and the cup left at the foot of the tree, which will be tapped again in four more days. Each tree is treated in this manner. When he has collected all the milk, the boy's bucket is a little more than half full of the milky liquid which looks good enough to drink. Upon tasting it, I found it to possess a sickly, sweet taste. The dogs are very fond of it. As the overseer makes his rounds accompanied by his dogs, the Chinamen have to be very careful lest the dogs drink a goodly portion of the sap.

Each time the tree is tapped from now on, the boy only peals the scab off the wound. As this goes on continually, the scar gets larger, until the line above blurs into the one below it, thus making one large scar on one side of the tree, about two and one-half feet long, and reaching nearly half way around the tree. It takes about one-half year to do this tapping of the tree every four days. When this is finished, the other side of the tree is treated the same way, but the lines are three inches higher, the one perpendicular cut serving for both the first and second half of the year. When both sides are finished, the perpendicular cut is lengthened two and one-half feet, and this is treated in the same manner as the first. This is continued, year after year, get- ting just two and one-half feet higher each year, until the boy is tapping way up in the middle branches.

We must hurry now and catch our boy, as he is quite a dis- tance ahead of us. As we hasten along the road, we pass many of these little men, each carrying a white pail half full of the milky sap. As we enter the factory, we notice that the shelves are all filled with wooden vats about thirty inches long, ten inches wide, and two inches deep. All are washed scrupulously clean,

A RUBBER PLANTATION IN SAMOA

1179

ready to receive the milk which by this time is being brought in, in large quantities by our Mongolian cousins.

As each boy brings in his milk, it is measured and strained into one of these vats, and the strainer, measure and bucket are washed in a large cauldron of water put in the center of the floor

A COCOA TREE

for this purpose. As each vat is filled, a few drops of a certain acid is put into the milk and thoroughly stirred. This causes the milk to curdle and within five minutes one is able to take hold of

1180

IMPROVEMENT ERA

the rubber and lift it clear of the pan. When the buckets are all washed, a few drops of the acid are put in the wash-water which cause the waste sap to accumulate in hard lumps, so that none whatever is wasted.

You might liken the rubber factory to a dairy. The milk is brought in and strained, then measured. Instead of putting the milk through a separator to separate the cream from the whey, a little acid is added which immediately separates the rubber globules from the whey, which has the color of a glass of water with a drop of milk.

The rubber now is pure white, not altogether unlike stiff flour paste. The pans are allowed to stand for four or five hours.

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DRYING THE COCOA

Then the rubber of one pan is put on top of that of another and the two pressed together. This causes the two to stick together as if they were glued. In this condition the rubber is thoroughly washed and run two or three times through heavy rollers, and then hung up to dry.

The sap placed in the vats is made into what is called first quality rubber, while the waste-sap makes second class rubber. The first quality is thin, strong and clear, and brings a price of

A RUBBER PLANTATION IN SAMOA

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$1 50 or $1.75 per pound, while the second quality is thick, lumpy and black, and brings a price of from fifty to seventy-five cents

Per After drying for four days, the rubber is placed between thin sheets of paper in a tight chest and shipped to Hamburg, Germany.

TUTUILA, SAMOA

(A number of highly interesting descriptive articles will appear in the Improvement Era, Vol. 17, beginning Nov. 1, 1913.)

Mrs. Cyril Duffin, secretary of the New Castle Conference, Sun- derland, England, May 31: "After a long siege of persecutions ex- perienced last summer the Newcastle Conference is now enjoying a reign of peace and prosperity. Of late a few of the leading anti- 'Mormons' who took such an active part in the crusade of last year have had their true characters revealed, and are under servitude for the same crimes that they wrongfully accused the Mormons of, Back of each dark cloud is a silver lining. The officials are now giving us .ab- solute protection, and with the help of the Lord we are able to hold

Street meetings and go about unmoleste<l. p^^^

rghi'Ab^ c'Gibby'P ovo?Ben7 O. Clegg, Bench, Idaho; Francis Canada, J- c-,uJDvJir5o • W H Breeze, Taylorsville; second row:

sait bdKc, v. ^. vj > yr rravme Manassa, Colorado, JJ. A.

J. Steed, Syracuse Utah, L. M. wayme\ ' Auburn> Wyo.; H. W. Robison, Morgan; third row: R L. Hamso u_ Auburn, J Roberts, Ogden; Amos Belnap ,^0" Id f^etr™£ Duffin, P'rovo,

Magrath, Canada; L. C. Clements, Salt Lake.