They also make
pear-shaped bottles on the necks of which they fasten wooden
tubes. Pressure on the bottle sends the liquid squirting out of
the tube, so they resemble syringes." Their name for the fluid,
he added, was "cachuchu"--caoutchouc, we now write it. Evidently
the samples filled no important need at the time, for we hear no
more of the gum until thirty-four years afterward. Then, so an
English writer tells us, a use was found for the gum--and a name.
A stationer accidentally discovered that it would erase pencil
marks, And, as it came from the Indies and rubbed, of course it
was "India rubber."
About the year 1820 American merchantmen, plying between Brazil
and New England, sometimes carried rubber as ballast on the home
voyage and dumped it on the wharves at Boston. One of the
shipmasters exhibited to his friends a pair of native shoes
fancifully gilded. Another, with more foresight, brought home
five hundred pairs, ungilded, and offered them for sale. They
were thick, clumsily shaped, and heavy, but they sold. There was
a demand for more. In a few years half a million pairs were being
imported annually. New England manufacturers bid against one
another along the wharves for the gum which had been used as
ballast and began to make rubber shoes.
European vessels had also carried rubber home; and experiments
were being made with it in France and Britain.
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