The Thief at the End of the World

by Joe Jackson

  181. of the same design as those found along the Amazon today Interview, Elisio Eden Cohen, Boim, Oct. 21, 2005. Also, see the photo of the basket woven by Herica Maria Cohen, fourteen, daughter of Elisio Eden Cohen. It is the same design as those used by Wickham and by Indians and caboclos for centuries. The only difference in Wickham’s baskets is that they would have been larger.

  181. “I got the Tapuyo village maids” Henry Wickham, On the Plantation, Cultivation and Curing of Pará Indian Rubber, p. 51.

  183. “first of the new line of Inman line steamships” Henry Wickham, On the Plantation, Cultivation and Curing of Pará Indian Rubber, pp. 47-48; and John Loadman, Tears of the Tree: The Story of Rubber—A Modern Marvel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 89-91. Loadman’s detective work on the Amazonas is the best yet, uncovering sailing records and crew manifests that were previously unknown. Built in 1874 by A. Simey and Co. for the Liverpool & Amazon Royal Mail Steamship Company and registered in 1875, everything about the Amazonas was new. She sailed almost immediately under the E. E. Inman flag. Henry said this was its inaugural voyage, but in this he seems mistaken: She’d originally sailed from Liverpool on December 24, 1875, arrived in Pará on January 19, 1876, continued on to Manaus, and was home in Liverpool on March 14.

  183. Crew records suggest a complement of thirty-two men Loadman, Tears of the Tree, p. 90.

  183. “The thing was well-done” Henry Wickham, On the Plantation, Cultivation and Curing of Pará Indian Rubber, p. 48.

  184. “occurred one of those chances, such as a man has to take at top-tide” Ibid., pp. 48-49.

  185. “This suggests that the rapid charter [of theAmazonas] was to beat” P. R. Wycherley, “Introduction of Hevea to the Orient,” The Planter, Magazine of the Incorporated Society of Planters (March 1968), p. 130. According to Wycherley, Wilkens wrote in the September 1940 issue of the RRI Planters’ Bulletin that Brazilian authorities told Henry he “would not” be able to export the seeds; in the December 1967 issue of the Planter, he said they told him he “might not” be able to. By then, Wilkens himself was getting up in years; thus, the truth may be clouded by the fuzzy memories of both Wickham and Wilkens.

  186. there is no mention of rubber seeds in the cargo manifest Loadman, Tears of the Tree, p. 90.

  186. “When [Henry] had collected and packed” Violet Wickham, “Lady Wickham’s Diary,” p. 5.

  187. “What seems most likely . . . is that Wickham managed to persuade” Dean, Brazil and the Struggle for Rubber, p. 19.

  187. John Joseph Wickham, his wife Christine, and son Harry Interview with Anthony Campbell via e-mail, April 3, 2006, from his own genealogical research.

  187. widower of Henry’s sister Harriette Jane Anthony Campbell, “Descendants of Benjamin Wickham, a Genealogy” (self-published, Jan. 30, 2005).

  187. “slung up fore and aft in their crates” Henry Wickham, On the Plantation, Cultivation and Curing of Pará Indian Rubber, p. 53.

  188. “crabbed and sore . . . so as not much to heed Murray’s grumpiness” Ibid.

  188. “It was perfectly certain in my mind” Ibid.

  188. “a straight offer to do it; pay to follow result” Ibid., p. 47.

  188. “a number of Brazilians had been much amused” Austin Coates, The Commerce in Rubber: The First 250 Years (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 67.

  188. “an obstacle of appalling magnitude” Anthony Smith, Explorers of the Amazon, p. 281.

  188. “a friend in court” Henry Wickham, On the Plantation, Cultivation and Curing of Pará Indian Rubber, p. 53.

  189. “quite [entered] into the spirit of the thing” Ibid., pp. 53-54.

  189. a commoner named Ulrich Dean, Brazil and the Struggle for Rubber, p. 19.

  190. The evening was pleasant and cordial Coates, The Commerce in Rubber, p. 67.

  190. “I could breathe easy” Henry Wickham, On the Plantation, Cultivation and Curing of Pará Indian Rubber, p. 54.

  190. “Products destined for Cabinets of Natural History” The Brazilian customs regulations are quoted in Dean, Brazil and the Struggle for Rubber, p. 19.

  191. “hardly defensible in international law” Loadman, Tears of the Tree, p. 92.

  192. Madagascar never made a dime “Living Rainforest: Cancer Cured by the Rosy Periwinkle,” www.livingrainforest.org/about/economic/rosyperiwinkle.

  192. O. Labroz and V. Cayla of Brazil claimed that authorities Ibid.

  193. “to appropriate the goods of others” Ibid., p. 21.

  193. “some higher vision of property” Ibid., p. 22.

  Chapter 10: The Edge of the World

  197. Hooker was an insomniac Richard Collier, The River That God Forgot: The Story of the Amazon Rubber Boom (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968), pp. 35-36.

  198. he’d leave Liverpool on June 19 Robert Cross listed the dates of his departure from Liverpool and arrival in Pará in his report on the Investigation and Collecting of Plants and Seeds of the India Rubber Trees of Pará and Ceara and Balsam of Copaiba, completed in Edinburgh on March 29, 1877. Excerpts from his report are included in William Cross, “Robert McKenzie Cross: Botanical Explorer, Kew Gardens: Chronology: The Years Robert Cross Spent at Home and Abroad,” http://www.scottishdisasters.tripod.com/robertmckenziecrossbotanicalexplorerkewgardens.

  198. “Not even the wildest imagination could have contemplated” Coates, The Commerce in Rubber, p. 68.

  198. a vast greenhouse called the “seed-pit” Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Part IV—Kew” (Dec. 26, 1953), p. 8.

  198. placed in the care of R. Irwin Lynch “R. Irwin Lynch,” Journal of the Kew Guild, vol. 4, no. 32 (1925), p. 341. Lynch, foreman of the tropical department, was an “Old Kewite,” trained by his grandfather, “himself an Old Kewite,” and joined the staff as a student gardener in 1867 at the age of seventeen.

  199. “We knew it was touch and go” Sir William Thiselton-Dyer quoted in Coates, The Commerce in Rubber, p. 68.

  199. “70,000 seeds ofHevea brasiliensiswere received from Mr. H. A. Wickham” Royal Botanic Gardens-Kew, Miscellaneous Reports: India Office: Caoutchouc I, Unsigned note, July 7, 1876, file folder 20.

  199. “Many hundreds are now 15 inches long and all are in vigorous health” Royal Botanic Gardens-Kew, Miscellaneous Reports: India Office: Caoutchouc I, Ibid.

  200. “made some experiments in planting” Dean, Brazil and the Struggle for Rubber, p. 24.

  200. “as if to underscore his ignorance of botany” Ibid.

  200. On August 20, 1876, TheEvening Heraldran a short story Royal Botanic Gardens-Kew, Miscellaneous Reports: India Office: Caoutchouc I, “Evening Herald, Aug. 20, 1876, describing growth of seeds at Kew,” file folder 43.

  200. “Mr. Wickham seems to have taken very great pains with the seeds” Dean, Brazil and the Struggle for Rubber, p. 24.

  200. “I have had a long conversation with Mr. Wickham” Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Part IV—Kew,” p. 6.

  201. “we have no knowledge of his horticultural competence” Ibid.

  201-2. “I did not mean to suggest my taking entire charge of the plants” Ibid.

  202. “dishonourable” Donovan Williams, “Clements Robert Markham and the Geographical Department of the India Office, 1867-1877,” Geographical Journal, vol. 134 (Sept. 1968), p. 350.

  202. “comply with official rules, or go” Ibid, p. 351.

  202. “the Malay Peninsula is most likely to combine the climactic conditions required” Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Part IV—Kew,” p. 7.

  202. “I have known trees, grown in the open” Henry Wickham, On the Plantation, Cultivation and Curing of Pará Indian Rubber, p. 58.

  203. “What is more . . . its coffin bore the wrong name” Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Part IV—Kew,” p. 7.

  203. though £740 according to a memo by Hooker Dean, Brazil and the Struggle for Rubber, p. 24. This letter, dated June 24, 1876 and addresse
d to Clements Markham, introduced Wickham “who has been collecting seeds for you. He has brought 74,000 which have all been planted,” thus implying that, according to the agreement, he would be paid £740.

  203. “though Kew authorities advocated it” Violet Wickham, “Lady Wickham’s Diary,” p. 5.

  204. The P&O Company had caused a revolution in sea transport Coates, The Commerce in Rubber, p. 69.

  204. an enraged Clements Markham expedited the payment back in London The affair of the Duke of Devonshire is a good example of British bureaucracy at its worst and of Clements Markham’s frustrations with the India Office’s new regime. When H. K. Thwaites, Director of the Peredeniya Gardens, telegraphed for help, Markham was called in. He spent the next week carrying the freight documents from desk to desk, all the way to the detested Louis Mallet himself, provoking some comments about the “new bureaucracy” that probably hastened his departure the following year. Thistelton-Dyer was drawn in, and on September 18, 1876, Markham raged to him in a letter about all the “fatuous processes” needed to gain approval for even the smallest expenses. “Bad as the senseless routine was before,” he lamented, “it has become much worse since Sir Louis Mallet and Lord Salisbury have been here.” His frustration and disgust were obvious, and he did little to hide them. More instructive, however, was Markham’s detailed list of a penny-pinching requisition process that discouraged new initiatives and effectively stifled change. The payment of a simple freight bill, which at best should require an invoice and payment, took ten steps drawn out over thirty days. Markham called it nothing more than “the ordinary circumlocution:Aug. 18—I sent down request for sanction to pay freight.

  22—Sir L. Mallet sends to Lord Salisbury.

  29—Lord Salisbury sends it to a c’tee of Council.

  Sept. 7—The c’tee sent it back to Sir L. Mallet.

  9—Sir L. Mallet sent it to the Council.

  10—The Finance C’tee sent it back.

  11—Sir L. Mallet sent it to the Council.

  14—The Council sanctioned the payment.

  15—It was sent back to me.

  16—It was paid.

  Markham ended the tale by remarking that this letter was “not official, or you would not get it for a month.” The released seeds were planted in Colombo, and by 1880, about three hundred of them were still alive. Royal Botanic Gardens-Kew, Miscellaneous Reports: India Office: Caoutchouc I, “Letter from Markham to Thiselton-Dyer, Sept. 18, 1876,” file folder 59.

  204. while Kew admitted that twelve hevea plants from Cross’s mission had managed to survive As sickly as Cross’s hevea specimens were, they became the center of a controversy that still rages among historians. On June 11, 1877, Kew sent twenty-two hevea to Singapore that may or may not have come from Cross’s trees. Taken together, the number of trees sent to India and the Far East totaled several hundred more than the sum of Wickham’s and Cross’s collections combined. The only explanation, reasoned historian Warren Dean, was that “there had been some propagation through cuttings,” the phenomenon whereby detached plant parts can regenerate missing roots, stems, and leaves to form complete new plants. This is good news for centers of economic botany like Kew, for one isn’t shackled to seed production, and growing stock can increase geometrically. Yet when Kew sent out shipments, they never kept records of these cuttings. No one knows which came from Wickham’s seeds and which came from Cross’s young trees. This is important, if only to illustrate the spite growing around Wickham, as well as the fate of those who serve. By the 1920s, when Great Britain controlled the world rubber market, Wickham was honored, Cross forgotten, and experts took sides. People asked, Who really started the plantation rubber industry? Was it Wickham, with his more robust seeds from the highlands behind Boim and his greater number of seedlings? Or Cross, whose sickly seedlings from the swamps around Pará may or may not have constituted the June 1877 batch of trees to Singapore, said to form the backbone of the vast Malayan rubber plantations?

  The intricacies of the Cross vs. Wickham debate are so arcane that it’s tempting to ignore it altogether, yet to do so ignores Cross’s contributions and sidesteps one reason historians tend to dislike Wickham. It also ignores the pedigree of the anti-Wickham chorus hailing from Kew, whose records in this respect are so contradictory as to be self-canceling. Some documents state that the Singapore batch came from Wickham’s trees, others from Cross’s, and the confusion over cuttings just muddies the water. In time, the debate turned into a culture war. While businessmen and planters favored Wickham, Kew’s botanists echoed Joseph Hooker’s prejudice and bet on Cross, a member of the club. Although the bulk of seeds shipped around the world came from Henry’s stock, the debate turned on an unsubstantiated statement by Henry N. Ridley, Hooker’s protégée and director of the Singapore Botanical Gardens, that the 1877 Singapore shipment came from Cross’s trees. Thiselton-Dyer—also in the Hooker camp—supported Ridley. However, when one checks the numbers, one must admit that by this point the Cross and Wickham stocks were so intermingled by cuttings and loose record keeping as to be inseparable. An observation by early rubber planters that they noticed “an extraordinary variety in their trees” supports such mixing.

  The pedigree of Cross’s seeds was much different from Wickham’s. He did not penetrate the interior, as had Wickham, but stayed close to Pará. He left Liverpool on June 19, 1876, the same day that the first of Henry’s seeds began to sprout in Kew’s seed pit, and arrived at Pará on July 15. He set to work, replanting, tending, and packing his 1,080 specimens. He collected most of his rubber from the swamps and flood plains surrounding the city, which put his opinions on hevea’s natural habitat in direct opposition to Henry’s. Consul Green helped him as he had Henry, rendering him “every assistance possible.” He embarked on the Paraense of the Liverpool Red Cross Line, collected his sixty specimens of Ceará rubber when the ship stopped at the Brazilian port of Fortaleza, and returned to England on November 22, 1876.

  The distribution of Wickham’s and Cross’s plants was pieced together and cross-referenced from six primary sources, each of which leave out some detail but all of which seem to agree chronologically: John Loadman, Tears of the Tree: The Story of Rubber—A Modern Marvel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Warren Dean, Brazil and the Struggle for Rubber: A Study in Environmental History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Austin Coates, The Commerce in Rubber: The First 250 Years (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1987); William Chauncey Geer, The Reign of Rubber (New York: Century, 1922); Edward Valentine Lane, “The Life and Work of Sir Henry Wickham: Part IV—Kew,” India Rubber Journal, vol. 125 (Dec. 26, 1953), pp. 5-8; and Lane, “Sir Henry Wickham: British Pioneer; a Brief Summary of the Life Story of the British Pioneer,” Rubber Age, vol. 73 (Aug. 1953), pp. 649-656.

  The Cross vs. Wickham debate will probably never be solved. As stated in the text, Ridley and Thiselton-Dyer made statements that would suggest Cross’s trees as the source of the British rubber monopoly, but both are suspect: Thiselton-Dyer because he would do little to contradict Hooker, and Ridley because he actively disliked Wickham and made several disparaging statements throughout his life to try to diminish Henry’s importance. There also seemed some jealousy at play—Henry would be knighted, but Ridley was not. In 1914, David Prain, who became Kew’s director after Thiselton-Dyer’s retirement in 1905, questioned “whether a single plant brought back by Cross ever became fit to send” anywhere in Asia. He could not find “any entry in our archives that could be so interpreted.” (Dean, 28) Prain’s statement is also interesting because he was the first director not related by blood or marriage to the Hooker and William Thiselton-Dyer family circle. Warren Dean seemed to concur with Prain, stating that “evidently, the Wickham selection provided the overwhelming genetic stock for the spread of cultivation in the British colonies” (Dean, 27), but even he was intrigued by the mystery and indulged in speculation. John Loadman, the most recent of the long line of rubber historians, clearly s
ides with Cross after some meticulous detective work, calling Cross, not Wickham, the “father of the rubber plantation industry”—yet even he admits that “in spite of all the detailed records kept by Kew, one piece of information is missing, and that is the source of those . . . seedlings” (Loadman, 94).

  205. “The flat, low lying, moist tracts, subject to inundation” Royal Botanic Gardens- Kew, Miscellaneous Reports: India Office: Caoutchouc I, Robert Cross, “Report on the Investigation and Collecting of Plants and Seeds of the India-rubber Trees of Para and Ceara and Basalm of Copaiba (March 29, 1877),” file folders 78-93. p. 7.

  205. Robert Cross’s opinions Cross fared little better than his trees. His treatment at the hands of the British government was as bad that of the original hevea prophet, James Collins. By 1881, Cross was forty-seven, stricken like Spruce with debilitating bouts of malaria, and had applied repeatedly for a medical pension. In 1882, he dared to publicize in the South of India Observer that the Indian cinchona plantations had lost the empire £2 million when compared to the Dutch plantations, and he revealed for the first time the debacle of Charles Ledger’s rejected Bolivian yellow-bark trees. The revelations were not appreciated in the higher levels of government. Joseph Hooker launched an investigation, which revealed nothing about Ledger’s offer but discredited the work in India on hybrid varieties of cinchona—the work that Cross supervised. In a letter to Markham dated July 21, 1882, Cross lamented the fact that his revelations had created so much ill will against him. Some people even blamed him for the depreciation of the Indian cinchona plantations and called for his hide. Although he was eventually exonerated of Hooker’s allegations, his career was ruined. Soon afterward, according to the Nilgiri Express, he was working at Nilamur overseeing the growth of some new rubber trees when “in reply to some overtures made in his behalf to the Secretary of State, a telegram was received. What the purport of this telegram was we know not, but its contents so disgusted [Cross], that he shook the dust off his feet and departed to seek fresh fields and pastures new.” By 1884, Cross had left the service entirely and retired on a £40 annuity. At night, he sweated through malarial dreams in his cottage in Edinburgh, and slept with a gun beneath his pillow that he’d used in Ecuador to fend off snakes and thieves. William Cross, “Robert McKenzie Cross: Botanical Explorer, Kew Gardens: Chronology: The Years Robert Cross Spent at Home and Abroad,” p. 6 of 7; Royal Botanic Gardens-Kew, Miscellaneous Reports 5: Madras-Chinchona, 1860-97, “Letter from Robert Cross to Clements Markham, July 21, 1882,” file folder 131 and 132. The article in the Nilgiri Express and an account of Cross’s last years in his cottage are carried in William Cross, “Robert McKenzie Cross: Botanical Explorer, Kew Gardens—Last Years at West Cottage Torrance of Campsie,” p. 2, www.scottishdisasters.tripod.com/robertmckenziecrossbotanicalexplorerkewgardens.