Manaos—the Hidden City

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 23 January 1926, Page 9

Manaos —the Hidden City

A Romance of Rubber

DEEP ill tho equatorial forest of Brazil is i the surprising city of Manaos. It is one of the most remarkable cities in the world. In every way it is a modern town, with broad avenues, public parks, beautiful white marble palaces, stately public buildings, and an opera house built at a cost of £400,000. It has a population of 75,000 people. Because of its distance from the seaboard — over a thousand miles up the Amazon, and ■thence along the Rio Negro—Manaos is known as “The Hidden City.” What brought about the building of this audacious city in a tropical wilderness? It was a boom in the demand for rubber. In the wild years round about 1909-1911, writes Charles W. Domville-Fife (late correspondent of the London Times in South America), in “The World To-day,” Manaos resembled a gold city in the throes of a rush. It was the Klondylte of the Amazon, and rubber was king. Wealth, lavish display, unutterable poverty, famine prices, and sudden death were the order of the day, and the talk of its cosmopolitan thousands was of rubber, distant mysterious forests, weird happenings, hostile Indians, slavery in hideous form, tragedy, disease and wealth. The price of rubber in the world’s markets rose from a few pence a pound until it touched eleven shillings. And there were thousands of tons of rubber awaiting collection from the millions of wild trees in the forest around! Fortunes were made in a few weeks, vice flourished amazingly, and every street had its night orgies, but still around lay the leagues of silent, sombre jungle. All this happened 16 years ago, and between then and now yawns the valley of depression, which can be sufficiently described for the imaginative by stating that the price of Manaos’ one great product dropped from eleven shillings to ninepeiice a pound. This queer city did not melt away into the forest around. It was shocked and sobered until it became just a white city in an emerald green frame. Half eastern in appearance when seen from the sunlit river, its white towers, red roofs, green palms and brown earthen roads are all dominated by the great golden dome of its magnificent but almost unusual opera house —a relic of the hectic days of sylvan gold. During recent months this far-distant city has felt the heart-flutters of returning life. Labour is already deserting agriculture and the more sober occupations for the collection of the precious latex from the wild Heveas, which are the finest rubber trees in the whole world. But tragedy dims the bright future, for the centres of production have changed. Tropical Brazil is no longer the leading producer of rubber. Control of the world’s markets has passed from the wild forests of the Far West lo the plantations of the East, and in the story of this change lies the romance of rubber. To the Marquess of Salisbury, when Secre!ary of State for India, belongs the credit of initiating the cultivation of rubber in the East. At first the suggestion that the rubber tree should be cultivated for profit was ridiculed, but undeterred by criticism this famous British statesman communicated with Sir Joseph Hooker, Director of the Botanic Gardens at Kew. An expedition to the Amazon to procure seeds and plants for cultivation in India was despatched in 1873 under the leadership of Mr James Collins, afterwards director of the Botanic Gardens at Singapore. Several hundred seeds were obtained, but only a dozen plants were successfully raised at Kew, and of these six were sent to India, but they died, the climate not being suitable for them. An English planter in Central America was the next to go in search of the Para rubber seeds. Undeterred by failure the authorities

a I Kew commissioned Mr H. A. Wickham to obtain a consignment of seeds and bring them to England. The difficulties in the way of successful accomplishment of this task were not only great, but emanated from diverse sources. All these were surmounted. Sir Henry Wickham, as he afterwards became, not only secured the seeds, but succeeded in landing them at Liverpool in sound condition. _ A series of fortunate circumstances helped him. While at Para, he learned of the arrival on the great river of an ocean liner —the Amazonas. This vessel —the first large sea-going ship to navigate the famous Narrows or region of the Thousand Islands —was the forerunner to the Booth fleet, which now conveys up this mysterious and beautiful river for over 1000 miles to the Ultima Thule of civilisation. Realising that this was an opportunity not to be lost through timidity, Mr Wickham chartered the Amazonas on behalf of the Government of India. He arranged with the commander to take the vessel over 300 miles up river, to where the yellow Amazon is joined by the bottle-green waters of the Tapajos, one of its principal tributaries. Then, with as many Tapuyo Indians as could be obtained on short notice, the little expedition plunged into the unexplored forests which lie between the Tapajos and Madeira Rivers. Here, it should be explained, the Amazonas had arrived in the river just at the right season of the year for obtaining rubber seeds. The forest around a thousand waterways was searched for the precious seeds, and some 70,000 were obtained. With great care these were taken down river to the chartered liner. On arrival at Para it was feared that the Brazilian authorities would discover the object for which the seeds had been obtained and would consequently prohibit their export. However, all went well, thanks to the energetic action of the British Consul. The great ship with its small, but valuable, cargo of 70,000 seeds was allowed to proceed. In order that the seeds might be preserved in the best condition, it was necessary to keep open the hatchways of the hold in which they were stored. Again luck was with the expedition; fine weather and calm seas were experienced throughout the voyage. On arrival at Liverpool on June 14, 1896, every precaution was taken to keep the seeds in first-class preservation. They were dispatched from Liverpool to Kew by a special night train. The gardeners at Kew succeeded in'raising 2800 plants, which were subsequently sent to Ceylon, Singapore and the Malay Peninsula. Nothing was done in the East to develop the rubber industry until 1898. The Amazon Valley remained the dominant factor in Ihe rubber situation of the world until 1912, in which year, for the first time in history, the supplv from the East exceeded that from the West.' Although the enormous output from the Malay States and the East is now the controlling factor in regard to the price of rubber, the Amazonian product finds a ready sale in bolli Liverpool and New York. The reason for I his is that the. output of no other part of the world has so far excelled the “Fine Hard Para ” from Amazonia. There is no likelihood that the demand for rubber will decrease; and it is only a question of time before the scheme for the restriction of output will be swept away. America is setting out to break the British monopoly. One American firm has already signed an agreement with the Government, of Liberia for the lease of one million acres of land for 99 years, and two thousand acres of fully matured rubber plantations. It will take £20,000,000 to develop the Liberian plantations alone. Meanwhile Britain controls the rubber market.