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.

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.