Notes - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 416

1. Barham and Coomes, Prosperity's Promise ; Evans, Buckland, and Lefer, They Made America ;
Kadir, “Natural Rubber.”
2. Huber, “Observações sobre as arvores de borracha da região Amazônica.”
3. Barham and Coomes, Prosperity's Promise , point out that there was quite a bit of mobility in
many tapping systems, a position also argued by Weinstein, Amazon Rubber Boom . For what it was
like to sit out the rainy season, few authors are more evocative than Lange: In the Amazon Jungle .
4. These numbers are based on customs house export data from Loreto, Mollendo, Manaus, Putu-
mayo, and Belém. There was quite a bit of “leakage” in these systems, so total volume may well be un-
derestimated.
5. For a broader discussion of de la Condamine, see Safier, Measuring the New World .
6. De la Condamine's tropical travels were meant to discover the circumference of the earth but were
famously ill starred. While his own movements were not especially fraught, the rest of his team
suffered innumerable travails. His cartographer was swept down the Amazon and ended up in penury
in the French colony of Amapá until rescued by his loyal and courageous wife. The story was novel-
ized in 2004 in Whitaker, The Mapmaker's Wife . Condamine's botanist, Jussieu, wrote only one mono-
graph on quinine before losing both his collections and his mind. See the travel documents: de la Cond-
amine, Voyage sur l'Amazone ; de la Condamine and Académie des sciences, Journal du voyage .
7. Fresneau described the latex of the “Mapá” tree (hence Amapá), “from which the Portuguese
make all kinds of useful and curious articles.” But his real find was what he called the “Seriengue”
tree, “which the Spanish call Cauchuc.” This seems to have been its first description: the seeds were
used for oil, and the sap, “which was copious,” made waterproof items. Memorandum of François
Fresneau (1747), cited in Schidrowitz and Dawson, History of the Rubber Industry .
8. See Clavijero and Cuevas, Historia antigua de México ; Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés and López,
De la natural historia de las Indias ; López Austin, Textos de medicina náhuatl .
9. De las Casas and Griffin, Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies ; de las Casas, O'Gorman,
and Manrique, Los indios de México y Nueva España .
10. Anglerius, “De orbo novo petri anglerii decades octo.” Also see Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés,
Historia general y natural de las Indias .
11. D'Orbigny, Voyage pittoresque dans les deux Ameriques ; Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Histor-
ia general y natural de las Indias ; Myers, Scott, and Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Fernández de
Oviedo's Chronicle of America .
12. Hosler, Burkett, and Tarkanian, “Prehistoric Polymers.”
13. Tarkanian and Hosler, “America's First Polymer Scientists.”
14. Personnal communication, Michael Heckenberger, July 14, 2006.
15. Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general y natural de las Indias.
16. The ubiquity and antiquity of these games are reviewed in Stern, Rubber Ball Games of the
Americas .
17. Sinkholes in Karst landscapes; most associated with Yucatán history.
18. Tarkanian and Hosler, “America's First Polymer Scientists.”
19. De Landa, Relación de cosas de la Yucatan , 1566.
20. Terraciano, Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca . Other medicinal uses were noted by one of the earliest
observers of native medicinal practices, Fra Bernardo de Sahagún: it was used as a curative incense or
mixed with cacao and taken for dysentery. López Austin, Textos de medicina náhuatl.
21. Stone, “Spirals, Ropes, and Feathers.”
22. Carreón Blaine, El olli en la plástica mexica ; Stone, “Spirals, Ropes, and Feathers.”