At this time the natural rubber market was controlled almost exclusively by Brazil. Queen Victoria, worried about the precariousness of Brazilian supplies and in pursuit for profits, gave to the botanist Henry Wickham the assignment to go recover the rubber tree seeds in Amazonia and bring them back to England. After an adventurous journey along the Amazon River, Wickham managed to bring back home over 70,000 seeds. First planted in the Queen's gardens, they were then brought to Ceylon. The plantation trees turned out to be much more productive than the wild trees of the Amazon to such an extent that within a few years Asia invaded the market, and Brazil saw its market share go from 95% of the last decade of the nineteenth century to only 2-3% in 1913.