To speak to a Turk of the women of his household is to commit the grossest possible breach of etiquette and politeness. It is forbidden to make the slightest allusion, even indirectly, to this delicate subject; and, of course, all such phrases as "How is your wife to-day?" (commonplace as they are to us) are quite banished from conversation. The most ferociously bearded and turbaned Turk would blush like a school-girl if he heard an inquiry so outrageously improper.

The embassadress of France, wishing to make a present to Redschid Pasha of some superb Lyons silks for the ladies of his harem, sent them to him with this brief note: "Pray accept some silks, which you will know better than any one how to use." To have expressed more plainly the object of the gift would have been bad taste, even in the eyes of Redschid Pasha, despite his familiarity with French manners; and the exquisite tact of the marchioness caused her to adopt a form of expression so gracefully vague as could not wound even the sensitive susceptibility of an Oriental.

It is, therefore, easy to understand that it would be singularly unbecoming to ask from a Turk any details as to the habits or customs of the harem, or the character and manners of the women. Even though he may have known you familiarly at Paris, have taken two hundred cups of coffee and smoked an equal number of pipes on the divan with you, he will, nevertheless, if you question him on this subject, stammer and hesitate, and evade your inquiries in every possible manner. Civilization, in this particular, has not advanced a single step. The only method to employ, in order really to obtain any authentic information, is to request some European lady, who is well introduced and has access to the harems, to recount to you faithfully that which she has seen. For a man, he may as well abandon at once the idea of knowing any thing more of the Turkish beauties than he is able to gather from the glimpses which he may snatch by surprise from beneath the awning of an araba, through the window of a talika, or beneath the shade of the cypresses of the cemetery, at some moment when heat or solitude has caused a momentary and partial withdrawing of the

veil.

Bosporus, assured by my assumed air of drowsiness and abstraction.

The Turks, however, see no more of them than the Giaours do. They never pass beyond the selamlick, even in the houses of their most intimate friends; and they are acquainted with no women but those of their own harems. When the inmates of one harem visit those of another the well-known custom of placing the slippers of the visitors upon the threshold of the harem which they are visiting at once announces the presence of strangers, and interdicts the entrance of the odalick, even to its own master, who thus finds him self, at any moment, shut out from a part of his own house. An immense female population, anonymous and unknown, circulates through this mysterious city, which is thus transformed into a sort of vast masquerade, with the peculiarity that the dominoes are never permitted to unmask. The father and the brother are the only males who are allowed to behold the faces of the daughters and sisters, who rigidly veil themselves for any relative of remoter degree; and thus a Turk may, in his whole life, have seen but half a dozen faces of Moslem women!

The possession of large and numerous harems is restricted to viziers, pashas, beys, and other persons of either great wealth or high rank, for their maintenance is enormously expensive, especially as each female who becomes a mother is entitled to her separate apartments and her own suite of slaves. The Turks of middle rank have rarely more than one wife (although legally entitled to espouse four), together with perhaps three or four purchased female slaves; and for them the rest of the sex remains in the condition of a myth or chimera. It is true that they can compensate themselves by looking at the women of other races-the Greeks, Jewesses, and Armenians, together with the few European ladies who extend their travels so far; but of the females of their own people they know absolutely nothing beyond the walls of their own harems.

The sentiment of love and the delicacies of courtship are, necessarily, almost unknown to the Moslemah. A Turk who wishes to marry has recourse to some woman of mature Still if one approaches too boldly, even age, who exercises the profession of a matriunder such circumstances-and especially if monial negotiator. This woman frequents the there chance to be any Turk within hearing-baths, and gives him a minute description of he draws upon himself a shower of such compliments as the following: "Dog of a Christian! miscreant! Giaour! May the birds of the air soil your beard! May the plague dwell in your house! May your wife be childless!" the last being a Biblical and Mohammedan malediction of the utmost severity. It may, however, be suspected that this fury is more affected than real, and is, in great part, a piece of acting" for the gallery;" for a woman, even though a Turk, is seldom displeased at being admired; and among the Moslem women the secret of their beauty, no doubt, weighs somewhat upon their minds (as any other secret would do upon any female mind), and they are not sorry to have an occasional confidant of that sex which is best able to appreciate the value of the disclosure.

By the Sweet Waters of Asia - by leaning immovably against a tree or the fountain, in the attitude of one who is lost in profound reverie-I have been able to catch a glimpse of more than one lovely face but imperfectly concealed by a thin veil of gauze half withdrawn, and more than one snowy throat gleaming between the folds of a half-open feredge, while the eunuch was walking at a little distance, or gazing upon the steamboats on the

the personal charms of a certain number of Asmés, Rouchens, Nourmahals, Leilas, and other beauties of marriageable age, taking proper care, of course, to adorn with the greatest profusion of metaphors the portrait of the young girl whom she herself favors, or whom it is her interest to select. The effendi becomes a lover on the strength of her description; sprinkles with bouquets of hyacinths the path by which his veiled idol must pass; and, after the interchange of a few glances (his share of which is limited to such glimpses of a pair of eyes as he can snatch through the close-drawn veil), demands the maiden of her father, offering her a dowry proportioned to his passion and his fortune; and at length sees removed, for the first time, in the nuptialchamber itself, the yachmack which has hitherto concealed the fair one's features from his longing gaze.

These marriages by procuration do not appear to give room for much more of mistake or deception than those which take place among us.

THE entertaining writer in Fraser upon "German Home-Life" devotes her last ar

ticle to "Language." Her comments upon the difficulties of titles are amusing:

66

At the language of official life, at the ridiculous titles official people claim, we have already glanced. The exactions in this direction are almost sufficient to frighten a simpleminded person out of society. Have you given the right man the right title? Is he a Geheimerath, or a wirklicher Geheimerath? Was that prince who affably condescended to address you a Royal, or a Transparent, or a Serene Highness? You have just addressed a lady (who has no right to the title) as Excellenz, and made her your implacable enemy for life. You have occasion to write to a Roman Catholic clergyman, and you forever offend him by addressing him as Ew. Hochehrwürden, which is a Protestant title, instead of Ew. Hochwurden, the correct Catholic style. How are you to know that privy councilors and presidents exact the predicate Hochwohlgeboren, which belongs of right to the nobility (second class), and how can you guess that a count must be addressed as High-born" (Hochgeboren), or even, under some circumstances, as Erlaucht, a baron as "High-well-born" (Hochwohlgeboren), and that the common herd exact Wohlgeboren, as well as their own patronymic, on the letters you address to them? It once occurred to the writer of these pages to have occasion to send to a little Jew shopkeeper for a reel of silk or a skein of wool. The nearest townlet was ten miles distant, and, being unwilling to trust her commission to the rustic messenger, she wrote a note, dictated by a kind relative, to the shopkeeper in question. Left to herself, she addressed it to Herr Meyer, linen-draper, adding the name of the town, and deposited the letter on the hall-table. "What will you then insult the people?" cried a critical and choleric cousin, snatching up the poor little missive; "you blame yourself" (Du blamirst Dich), " my best one, by such ignorance of the forms!" and, stripping off the offensive cover, he reinclosed it, writing in a fine, flourishing hand, "To the Wellborn Mr. Jacob Meyer, Merchant" (Kaufmann). I felt quite ashamed to inclose the twopencehalfpenny that was to cover my debt in the face of such a grandiloquent address as this; the very poetry of commerce could do no more than build up such a structure on the foundation of the little Hebrew huckster's obscure shop.

Altogether the address upon a German letter is a serious affair, and cannot be attempted in any light spirit of enterprise. You have to consider your declensions, and to call to mind all the social and official prerogatives of the person you are addressing. No such slipshod, easy familiarity as General Smith or Colonel Jones can be tolerated. You must begin in one corner of the envelope, and, if you wish to be decent, end in the other, as: Seiner Hochgeboren

dem Grafen

Adalbert von Kanonen-Donner,
General-Major, Inspekteur
der K. K. Artillerie, etc., etc.,
Hieselbst,

or wherever else he may be; and, if your friend hold a civil appointment, a far more elaborate address will probably adorn the superscription.

In society a married lady is always addressed with the prefix of gnädige, or gnädigste Frau (gracious, or most gracious lady). If she have a title, it is not customary to use the family names in speaking to her; Frau Grüfin or Frau Baronin being deemed sufficient. Many persons use meine Gnädigste ("my

most gracious"), without further designation. Among female friends the formula is somewhat less ceremonious, liebe Gräfin, or Generalin, or Geheimeräthin, being sufficient. Young ladies are not addressed as "Miss" Soand-so, but by gentlemen invariably as mein gnädiges Fräulein. In Vienna the title Comtesse, in contradistinction to Gräfin, is only employed toward unmarried ladies. It is not customary to say "Colonel Rag" or "Major Famish;" Herr Oberst and Herr Major are the correct forms; Herr Hauptmann and Herr Lieutenant. In speaking of these gentlemen you may, of course, mention the family names of both the Rags and the Famishes. I may give an illustration of my meaning in the following experiences: I was equally well acquainted with a Baron Wolff and a Baron Behr, both members of well-known Courland families, but I never could remember which was which. It was of no great consequence, as safety was afforded in the convenient Herr Baron; but on more than one occasion it so happened that I had to speak of these gentlemen when others of the same rank were present. I was obliged to particularize, and I made a shot at the Wolff. The next time I took desperate aim, and it was at the Behr. I fancied Fate had favored me, until a cloud on the countenance of the latter gentleman informed me I had blundered. Meeting him a few days later in a shady avenue, he accosted me with a stiffness that was barely tempered by its cold civility. "I have perceived, my most gracious," he said, "that you are in the dark as to my insignificant personality (meine unbedeutende Persönlichkeit). You have on several occasions spoken of me in my presence as Baron Wolff: now, allow me to tell you that the Wolves are not to be compared with the Bears!" Crushed as I was by his morgue and magnificence, I could not but smile (as I muttered out my confused apologies) at the serious tone of his reproof.

Fatiguing alike, however, to alien ears and sense is the vicious abuse of the adverbial and adjectival form in the language of every-day life. An adjective and a note of admiration will serve, for instance, to express the feelings of a family all round. The emotions of a group surveying the beauties of Saxon Switzerland or the Rhine will be rendered as follows:

MAMMA. "Reizend!"
SOPHIE. "Himmlisch!"
ADELHEID. "Wunderschön!"
HELGA. "Bezaubernd!"
CHARLOTTE. "Entzückend!"

And so on da capo, ad infinitum. At first, especially if the group be one of pretty girls, each shrieking out her little note of spasmodic admiration in a higher key than the last, you will think this pretty animation very naïve and charming, but by degrees it will pall upon you; you will wish that they could be persuaded to utter a few consecutive sentences; or you will regret that they should have begun with the climax. It is a common mistake to suppose that German travelers are morose; they are the most talkative of companions; they talk pro bono, and, like Tennyson's brook, though men may come, and men may go, they seem able to go on forever!

FROM a very charming paper in Fraser on "Peasant-Life in North Italy," we quote a well-drawn picture of the parish priest:

Italians love a goodly portion of gossip and loitering; and if foreign sayings about Italian impetuosity, and easily moved Italian feelings,

have been often exaggerated, these Apennine country-people are, on the other hand, no taciturn race. They are cunning to mould to their use the lithe tongue of their land, to adorn it with expletives, and to point it with gesticulation; and it is even this habit of noisy vociferation which has perhaps won them abroad their character-so little truly deserved-for curbless passions and vindictively cruel propensities. They are a kindly people enough in their mutual relations, and formed, indeed, by their very nature for warm, social life. They have need of a certain amount of free, neighborly intercourse, such as a quiet and colder temperament can scarcely understand; and hence it is that the life of an Italian community is to be learned in its open thoroughfares rather than its individual homes-as in the comparatively secretive life of northern lauds. We must seek on cottage door-steps, in market-places, and piazzas, where men and women mix freely together, the true color of this Apennine people.

Mark them now as they stand about the parish church. Mass is just over-for it is one of the smaller festas-and the peasants are split into divers knots, where the interests peculiar to various ages and callings are ardently being discussed. Some of the people live on the far confines of the parish, and it is not often these meet with neighbors out of other hamlets-hence is there much to ask and to be said. The old priest comes forth now from the sacristy, and threads his way among the crowd. He has put off the most conspicuous part of his canonical apparel, and wears only a long black coat, with knee-breeches, black stockings, and buckles to his shoes; in his hand the three-cornered, ecclesiastical hat, which is in strict etiquette on a feast-day. To one side of the quadrangle a group of youths and maidens are gathered, and hither first the pastor turns his attention. They make way for him, and do not shrink or turn aside shamestricken at his coming, as boys and girls would surely do in England when caught at their play by the minister. The maidens turn to

him instead, eagerly demanding his opinion, perhaps on some free and foolish raillery, or laughing with him at the discomfiture of some too forward suitor, while the men are prompt and outspoken with their lightsome jokes and taunts. He laughs, too, and retaliates, being no way prudish in his talk. Of what use would it be, were the good man inclined ever so much to seek for the flaws and the specks upon the gray and homespun garments of his parishioners? Though his person be held in ever so great respect throughout the parish, though his voice be listened to in meekness and in awe within the holy precincts, and his counsels highly valued, and his upbraidings regarded at the confessional, without his office the priest's power is a mere name, and well he knows it. It is fortunate perhaps for him that, in most country parishes at least, he has learned to adapt himself to his standing. His own upbringing has probably not been such as to render him peculiarly sensitive to the mere outward grossness of speech, which is generally the worst feature about this frank and merry people. Who that is Italian, by birth and by nature, could have grown to be thus susceptible? A country parish priest, at all events, is not, and, as a rule, he gets on well, descending, when out of his religious duties, to the work and the interests of the peasants about him, happy enough, doubtless, in his own way, and careless of any great show of respect. Now he joins another party, and this time the group is one of old or seasoned men, whose interests are wrapped up in the crops and the coming fair. Hear him, as with avidity he discusses the country's prospects, or reconnoitres cautiously that he may know the better how to buy and to sell with advantage on Monday next. Here is no moonstruck priest, but a man of the world-poor, parsimonious, and prudent; poor, but not always stingy, not always grasping because he, too-though pinched and care-worn far more than the greater number of his people who have their own lands and crops-he, too, has the proverbial buon cuore of the Italians.

city. Salesrooms, No. 1 Bond Street, near Broadway.

(Established May, 1872.) Conducted

Thus the collector travels from trunk to trunk, each laborer having a certain number of trees assigned him by the proprietor of the camp. The process in many respects is like that seen in the sugar-camps of the maple-woods of the North. Let the reader release his recollections of the maple-sugar frolics of his boyhood from the association with frosty mornings, bare landscapes, and meadows as yet partly brown with the touch of winter, and transfer his thought to the splendid river-valleys of Brazil, glowing with intense heat, painted with a rich depth of greenery, and made picturesque with the manifold sights and sounds of tropical life.

The caoutchouc-gatherer travels his appointed round, and pours the contents of the bamboo-canes into a large calabash provided with straps of liana, that useful parasitic vine which fulfills a thousand useful functions for the South American. This vessel is emptied at home into one of the large turtle-shells, so necessary to tropical housekeeping, serving as they do for basins, troughs, vats, etc.

Now a new operation must commence without delay, for caoutchouc is a peculiar substance, and must be warily handled. The seringueiro instantly sets about the smoking process, lest the quality of the product should become inferior by the separation of the resinous elements of the sap.

An earthen jar without bottom and with a narrow neck to serve as a chimney is set over a fire of dry urucury or uauassú palmnuts. These furnish the only fuel which can be used, for the smoke has a peculiar chemical quality shared by no other woods. The vapor has the strange effect of instantly coagulating the caoutchouc-sap, which in this state resembles rich, yellow cream.

The workman sits beside the little earthen chimney through which rise dense clouds of a smothering but aromatic white smoke. The operation is mostly performed in the open air, to give free egress to the dense vapor, which would otherwise choke the work

man.

Travelers describe the sight as highly picturesque when seen at night, which is generally the time of the smoking process.

The sombre depths of the tropical forest in the background, lighted up by the glow of the flame, the tawny Indian bending over the thick smoke, which rises up like a pillar, his copper skin glistening with the heat, and brought out in clear relief by the light of the fire, while he anxiously watches the process of coagulation-the picture is as if one were viewing the mystical rites of some sorcerer of old myth or fairy tale brewing a magic potion, or completing a spell to call up dark spirits from below.

From his calabash, the seringueiro pours a little of the caoutchouc-milk on a sort of light wooden shovel, always careful by a deft management to distribute the fluid evenly over the surface to insure a uniform action of the smoke. Thrusting the shovel into the thick white vapor over the neck of the jar, he turns it to and fro with great rapidity, till the milk is seen to consolidate and assume

*Two species of the attalea palm, the latter with gigantic bifurcated leaves.

the whitish-yellow tinge which defines the close of the process.

Thus he puts layer upon layer, until at last the caoutchouc on both sides of the shovel has reached several inches in thickness, when he thinks the plancha has reached a sufficient amount. It is cut from off both sides of the shovel and suspended on a tree. When it feels the effects of the sun, the water evaporates through the as yet unsolidified pores. About five or six pounds of good, solid product is thus prepared in an hour. The plancha, from its initial color of silvergray, turns shortly into a deep yellow, and thence into the well-known dark brown of the rubber as it is exported. There is a wide variation in the quality of the seringa. The best is perfectly uniform in texture, dense, and quite free from bubbles. This grade obtains a double price over the most inferior quality, the so-called sernamby, or cabeca de negro (negro's head), which latter is made of the drops collected at the foot of trees with the remains of the milk scraped out from the bottom of the calabashes. The rubber of the East Indies is very similar in color and texture to this sernamby, and has about the same market value-like it, being often found mixed with sand and small pieces of bark.

The plancha is often rolled and condensed by a sort of kneading into a solid ball, which is one of the most common forms of commercial rubber. Another shape, by no means common in the Pará market, is that of the bottle. The caoutchouc-sap in this case is prepared over an earthen mould with an open neck, which is afterward broken and removed piece by piece. These rubber bottles oftentimes come ornamented in the most curious fashion, frequently quite artistic. While the rubber is yet soft, the Indian artisan, with wooden tools, will engrave on its surface fig. ures of birds, beasts, plants, even of rude landscapes, with an eye to natural effect and proportion highly creditable to his power of imitation. Since the demand for caoutchouc has become so great, these rubber bottleswhose preparation, of course, demands much time and labor-have become more scarce. A quarter of a century since, before the Amazon and its tributaries were ploughed by steamboats and barges, the whole of the seringa product was borne hundreds of miles on the backs of mules and porters. The latter were used mostly to carry the rubber bottles, each one hanging by itself from a pole borne by the carrier lest two should come in contact, and the figures be blotted or erased on the yet soft and sticky rubber. For their own use the Indian workmen mould the caoutchouc into various shapes with not a little ingenuity. The squirt or syringe, which is indispensable to a familiar social custom in Brazil at least among the half-civilized riverines-gave, indeed, the ordinary native name to the product of the caoutchouc-tree. It is common for the Indians after a feast to blow water into each other's faces through long rubber-pipes, in obedience to some savage superstition connected with aboriginal religious rites, a habit yet in vogue even among those who have been converted to the worship of the Virgin Mary by the good Jesuit fathers. Hence seringa, from the Por

tuguese seringat (syringe). One of the earliest forms in which India-rubber came to America was as manufactured over-shoes, then known as Pará shoes. Of course, at that time the attention of civilized countries had not yet been called to the enormous importance of caoutchouc and its almost endless capacity for transformation into different shapes. Consequently there was no attempt at manufacture except in the native home of the gum, where the crude process, hundreds of years old, was known and practised. The rubber shoes, which then formed an article of export, were made, like the bottles, over rude clay moulds. A Boston merchant, in 1826, conceived the ingenious idea of sending out improved lasts, of assorted sizes, made of clay, to the Indian collectors in the seringa districts. He thus built up a great trade in this special article, and is said to have acquired large wealth. But at last his rivals discovered this neat commercial artifice and followed the example, which destroyed the monopoly.

When the balls and planchas of rubber are received at Pará, each one is cut through by way of testing the quality. By this means any bubbles are discovered, or such adulteration as is often effected with the milk of the mangaba, that fine shrub with rich, dark, glossy leaves so often made to do service in civilized conservatories and saloons under the name of the India-rubber tree. The spurious caoutchouc made of the milk of the mangaba has little of the toughness and elasticity of the genuine article, but for certain purposes that of making hardened caoutchouc, for example-the milk of the inferior tree has a certain value. As the price is much less than that of the seringa, the manufacture of the mangaba resin has its inducements, and under proper treatment it might be made to have a standard commercial value.

Not unfrequently the seringueiro settlements attain considerable size where the rubber-forests are unusually rich and extensive, the Mojo workmen occupying hovels, while the proprietor rules with a lordly sway, and lolls at ease through the long summer days in his hammock, with naught to do but count the rich gains which his humble laborers roll up for him. For the most part, however, these enterprises are carried on by employers who do not fare much better than the Mojos, the hope of future wealth counterbalancing the inconveniences of the present. Many of the seringueiros are from Bolivia and Peru, while occasionally there may be found those of European race. The latter are mostly nomadic and restless sailors, deserters from ships at Pará, or natural-born wanderers who have drifted by some strange chance up into the seringa forests, where the temptation of making money without much labor easily induces a permanent settlement. A recent German explorer through the regions of the Upper Madeira gives a curious illustration of this in the case of a fellow-countryman. The latter had come over from Holstein twenty years ago, enrolled himself as a soldier, and fought against Rosas in the La Plata states. Thenceforward he led a sort of Robinson Crusoe life in the valley of the Ma

deira. He was reported to be a very fast gatherer, collecting, with the aid of his Indian wife, during the three or four dry months more than a hundred arrobas of seringa (one arroba is equivalent to thirty-two pounds), while the average produce of a large family is not more than fifty arrobas.

The traveler writes of the strange meeting as follows: "It was pleasant to see the joyous surprise and brightened face of the man when he unexpectedly heard our loud salutation, in German, of Good - morning, countryman,' from out a canoe full of Indians. We had easily recognized him by his fair hair and beard, the more so as we had heard of him before, and had been looking for him for several days. He stood near the water's edge, watching our canoes come slowly up. Near him was his female companion, a stout, strongly built Tapuya,* and behind them some of their offspring, whose yellow hair contrasted strangely with their dark skins."

These accidental accessions to the ranks of the caoutchouc-gatherers, the alliance of stronger, more energetic, more industrious races, who would bring skilled labor, as well as more enduring muscle, to the important work of collecting the raw material of rubber, suggest an important element in a commercial question which is yearly becoming of more pressing value to the great manufacturers in Europe and America, and through them to the world at large.

In order to measure the greatness of the rubber interest, let us turn aside one brief moment to the statistics of manufacture.

In the year 1870 there were in America alone employed in the rubber-factories 6,000 hands, on a basis of $8,000,000 of capital, and the value of the products of all descriptions reached $14,500,000. The imports of caoutchouc into the United States in 1872 swelled to 12,000,000 pounds, of which considerable more than half came from the port of Pará, in Brazil, which is the great depot of caoutchouc exportation. The imports of raw rubber to Great Britain for the same year reached 13,000,000 pounds, valued at more than $6,000,000, of which two-thirds was from Brazil, in spite of the attempts made to force the East-Indian caoutchouc on the market. The opinions of the best judges point to an increase of the rubber-manufacture by 1880 of at least fifty per cent. In order to meet this extra demand, improved processes as well as an organized system of labor are needed in the seringa districts of Brazil.

The trade at present is mostly in the hands of a few rich landholders and other rich Brazilians, who have an iron hold on the poorer seringueiros, such as are not able to establish any direct correspondence with the rubber-factors at Pará. Many of these monopolists, who fatten like vampires on the hard labor of the wretched, ague-shaken caoutchouc-collectors, are officers of the govern ment, or at least enjoy some powerful offi

In the Tupi language, "Tapuya " means foreigner and enemy; but nowadays the appellation is given not only to all Indian settlers of the Amazon Valley, of whatever tribe they may be, but promiscuously to all mestizos. Very likely, a hundred years hence, every one who has a brown skin and catches fish there will be so designated.

cial connection, which enables them to dictate the methods of transacting business.

So the poorer class of collectors are compelled to sell the fruits of their industry at half-price, to be content with fourteen millreis per arroba (about twenty-eight shillings for thirty-two pounds), while the purchaser finds quick sale at Pará for thirty-six millreis. Even this wretched price is rarely paid in money, but in goods and provisions charged at thrice their value, and poor in quality at that.

So the poor seringueiro, in spite of the rich field which he works, and the lavish bounty of Nature, is bound hand and foot in a clever bondage, from which he has not the pluck or ingenuity to break loose. These creatures, mostly mestizos and mulattoes, at the best but indolent and disposed to live from hand to mouth, are completely disheartened by their treatment, and sink to a state of mind even more thoughtless and frivolous than Nature made them. Out of the glittering stores of the patrons, who tempt and swindle them, they are sure to select the most useless things for themselves and their dusky ladies, such as gilt watches, silk jackets, silk umbrellas, and the most tawdry gewgaws. It is no uncommon thing in the rubber-districts to see men and women reeking with filth and vermin, yet tricked out with tinseled and shining attire, fit only for some dramatic spectacle.

Under such conditions it may readily be seen that the caoutchouc industry in South America is only at its minimum state of development; that with the application of an enlightened system it could easily be trebled or quadrupled. Some sluggish attempts have been made by the Brazilian Government in this direction, but the intimate connection of the harpies, interested in keeping the trade under their own control, with court and legislature, has paralyzed reform.

The state of things we have mentioned, however, will gradually correct itself with the development of the railway and steamnavigation systems, which are gradually but surely opening the interior of Brazil to commerce and agriculture. European and American firms will ultimately establish their own depots on the Amazon and Madeira Rivers, and get their supply of the valuable gum without recourse to the unprincipled middlemen at Pará, who make the caoutchouc pay heavy toll at both ends.

The immigration of hardy families of European blood to swell the ranks of the caoutchouc industry, which, as we have seen, has already commenced in a small, casual way, will also have great weight. A thousand such families scattered along the rivers would soon completely change the aspect of the country.

This would specially be the

case if an energetic company fully alive to the position, and sure of adequate support from home, would lead the settlers and protect them from the inevitable jealousies of land and trade monopolists. It is the opinion of experienced merchants, long in the Brazil trade, that such a colony would be highly successful, particularly as the improv ing facilities of intercommunication would soon give a heavy blow to the old system of

extortion and robbery. The planting of groves of the Siphonia elastica, a tree which grows rapidly and surely on the extensive river-bottoms at points nearer the market than the present caoutchouc-forests, an enterprise in which the Brazilian Government would ultimately second the initiation given by foreign speculators and capitalists, would have its marked effect and help to revolutionize the trade, in connection with the influx of foreign and more energetic blood. Some of the hundreds of European laborers necessary for the construction of the Brazilian railways now projected, would be sure to remain, in spite of fevers and difficulties. It would only depend on the ability of companies, and the conduct of the imperial government, whether this number were increased or diminished.

The application of skill and science to the preparation of the crude rubber, which would be sure to result, would largely enhance its value. This improvement could be easily effected by the use of alum for its solidification, in place of the fatiguing process of smoking it with palm-nuts, or by the mixture of ammoniac, a still more important discovery, by which the milk may be kept liquid, and rendered transportable in casks. Similar conditions would also affect the value of the trade in cacao, Peruvian bark, and other valuable products of the Brazilian forests, but with these at present we have nothing to do.

Intimately allied with caoutchouc is the resin known as gutta-percha, with which the civilized world, however, has only been acquainted about a quarter of a century. It was first discovered in China, but has since become extirpated in that vast country by sheer ignorance and waste. It is the product from the sap of a tree called Isonandra gutta, which is now mostly found in Surinam, Guiana, and India. The process of preparing the resin from the sap is very similar to that of making caoutchouc, except that the liquid solidifies by exposure without the agency of smoking.

Analysis shows the same ultimate atoms in gutta-percha and caoutchouc, yet, strange to say, the reaction on them of chemical agents is widely different. The former is also a non-conductor of electricity, a trait which renders it invaluable in telegraphic construction and other important scientific processes. Different societies of arts in Europe have stimulated the discovery of new fields of supply by offering large rewards, but so far the search has not been a success

ful one. If the yield of gutta-percha were as large as that of India-rubber, it is probable that it would more than rival it as an important article of commerce. But this is regarded as hopeless by those who have fully investigated the subject, since the tree is not only much more rare, but slow of growth, and demanding peculiarly favorable conditions. A substance nearly identical with gutta-percha is yielded by the bullettree of Guiana. Its fruit resembles a bergamot-pear, and is filled with a milky secretion, at first tasteless and hardly distinguishable from the caoutchouc-fluid. This afterward becomes sugar, and the fruit is transformed