"What dark, strange-looking trees!" exclaimed the children while looking at an illustration of caoutchouc trees in Brazil.

The instrumentalists, men or women, made sharp rattles whizz, noisy drums sound or shudder under small sticks terminated by a caoutchouc ball, "marimehas," kinds of dulcimers formed of two rows of gourds of various dimensionsthe whole very deafening for any one who does not possess a pair of African ears.

The caoutchouc jumping-jacks, the humming-birds, all those seemed constantly to recede.