Now, ball games are the oldest
sport known. From the beginning of his history man, like the
kitten and the puppy, has delighted to play with the round thing
that rolls. The men who came with Columbus to conquer the Indies
had brought their Castilian wind-balls to play with in idle
hours. But at once they found that the balls of Hayti were
incomparably superior toys; they bounced better. These high
bouncing balls were made, so they learned, from a milky fluid of
the consistency of honey which the natives procured by tapping
certain trees and then cured over the smoke of palm nuts. A
discovery which improved the delights of ball games was
noteworthy.
The old Spanish historian, Herrera, gravely transcribed in his
pages all that the governors of Hayti reported about the bouncing
balls. Some fifty years later another Spanish historian related
that the natives of the Amazon valley made shoes of this gum; and
that Spanish soldiers spread their cloaks with it to keep out the
rain. Many years later still, in 1736, a French astronomer, who
was sent by his government to Peru to measure an arc of the
meridian, brought home samples of the gum and reported that the
natives make lights of it, "which burn without a wick and are
very bright," and "shoes of it which are waterproof, and when
smoked they have the appearance of leather.
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