Volume 3

Notes of a botanist on the Amazon & Andes : being records of travel on the Amazon and its tributaries, the Trombetas, Rio Negro, Uaupés, Casiquiari, Pacimoni, Huallaga and Pastasa; as also to the cataracts of the Orinoco, along the eastern side of the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, and the shores of the Pacific, during the years 1849-1864 / by Richard Spruce ; edited and condensed by Alfred Russel Wallace ; with a biographical introduction, portrait, seventy-one illustrations and seven maps.

Richard Spruce

Date:: 1908

Credit: Notes of a botanist on the Amazon & Andes : being records of travel on the Amazon and its tributaries, the Trombetas, Rio Negro, Uaupés, Casiquiari, Pacimoni, Huallaga and Pastasa; as also to the cataracts of the Orinoco, along the eastern side of the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, and the shores of the Pacific, during the years 1849-1864 / by Richard Spruce ; edited and condensed by Alfred Russel Wallace ; with a biographical introduction, portrait, seventy-one illustrations and seven maps. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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in the Amazon valley, form a fitting close to this portion of Spruce’s Travels :—] Notes on the India-rubber Trees of the Rio Negro [Journal) In the mouth of the Uaupes (on my return voyage) I found a rancho erected and a person employed in extracting india-rubber from the species I had discovered there (Siphonia lutea). All the way down the Rio Negro the smoke was seen ascending lrom recently opened seringales, prin¬ cipally in the islands. The extraordinary price reached by rubber in Para in 1853 at length woke up the people from their lethargy, and when once set in motion, so wide was the impulse extended that throughout the Amazon and its principal tributaries the mass of the population put itself in motion to search out and fabricate rubber. In the province of Para alone (which includes a very small portion of the Amazon) it was computed that 25,000 persons were employed in that branch of industry. Mechanics threw aside their tools, sugar-makers deserted their mills, and Indians their rocas, so that sugar, rum, and even farinha were not produced in sufficient quantity for the consumption of the province, the two former articles having to be imported from Maranhao and Pernambuco, and the latter from the Upper Rio Negro and Uaupes. The species of trees from which rubber is extracted on the Upper Rio Negro and Lower Casiquiari are two, Siphonia lutea and A. brevi- folia, known respectively as the long-leaved and

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