The Food of the Gods Part 5

Nothing is more eloquent of the growing favour in which cocoa is held in this country, as its real value becomes more generally appreciated, than the remarkable progressive increase of the quant.i.ties imported during recent years, as will be seen from the table appended. These quant.i.ties doubled between 1880 and 1890, and have since more than doubled again.

TABLE SHOWING THE QUANt.i.tIES OF CACAO CLEARED FOR HOME CONSUMPTION SINCE 1880.

lbs.

1880 10,556,159 1881 10,897,795 1882 11,996,853 1883 12,868,170 1884 13,976,891 1885 14,595,168 1886 15,165,714 1887 15,873,698 1888 18,227,017 1889 18,464,164 1890 20,224,175 1891 21,599,860 1892 20,797,283 1893 20,874,995 1894 22,441,048 1895 24,484,502 1896 24,523,428 1897 27,852,152 1898 32,087,084 1899 34,013,812 1900 37,829,326 1901 42,353,724 1902 45,643,784

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Not an "Emperor," as reported by his conquerors.

[19] See Appendix III.

[Ill.u.s.tration--Colour Plate: CHART SHOWING THE POSITIONS OF THE PRINc.i.p.aL COCOA PLANTATIONS OF THE WORLD.]

V. ITS SOURCES AND VARIETIES.

[Ill.u.s.tration--Drawing: SACKS OF CACAO BEANS.]

Guayaquil, in the republic of Ecuador, on the west coast of South America, produces the largest output in the world. This cacao has a bold bean and a fine flavour, and is rich in theobromine; it is much valued on the market, and its strength and character render it indispensable to the manufacturer.

The neighbouring countries of Columbia and Venezuela, facing the Caribbean Sea, have for centuries grown cacao of excellent quality.

The _criollo_ (creole) bean is generally used as seed, and for it high prices are obtained. Owing, however, to the unsettled state of the republics and their unstable governments, its cultivation has gone back rather than forward during the past decade. With better administration and settled peace, great developments might easily be achieved. The British Royal Mail Steam Packet Company provides a good fortnightly service to England.

In early times the Jesuit missionaries encouraged the natives to form small plantations on the borders of the river Orinoco, and Father Gumilla, in his "History of the Orinoco," says: "I have seen in these plains forests of wild cacao-trees, laden with bunches of pods, supplying food to an infinite mult.i.tude of monkeys, squirrels, parrots, and other animals."

The name of "Soconosco" cocoa is still a guarantee of excellent quality. This district in Guatemala was in bygone days so noted for its cacao that the whole crop was monopolized for the use of the Spanish Court. In Central America, as in other countries, the Spaniards gathered more solid riches from the cacao than from the gold mines they hoped to discover.

[Ill.u.s.tration--Black and White Plate: A Scene in the Maracas Valley, Trinidad.]

British and Dutch Guiana produced but little cacao as long as sugar realized high prices, but in comparatively recent years it has been more extensively planted, and the crops from the lowlands at the mouths of the great South American rivers have been very heavy.

In French Guiana cacao was scarcely cultivated until about 1734, when a forest of it was discovered on a branch of the Yari, which flows into the Amazon. From this forest seeds were gathered, and plantations were laid out in Cayenne.

The cacao of Para in Brazil differs from all other growths; the bean is much smaller and rounder, and is elongated, but when well cured it is mild, and has a very pleasant flavour, highly valued by manufacturers. Bahia produces large quant.i.ties of cacao, formerly of an inferior quality, owing to careless cultivation and indiscriminate mixing of all that was brought from the interior, some of it wild and uncured. But now this state of things is being improved, and the good quality of "fermented" Bahian cacao is fully recognised.

A little cacao is grown in the low-lying parts of Rio Janeiro, but it is not to be met with further south than this. The part of Florida which borders the Gulf of Mexico and the southern part of Louisiana mark the northerly limit of its natural growth.[20] A traveller in Louisiana in 1796 speaks of the cacao-tree among others as "covering with delightful shade the sh.o.r.es of the Mississippi," and on the banks of the Alatamaha in Georgia, but it is not cultivated so far north.

At the present day the West India Islands rival the South American Continent in providing cocoa from the New World. Trinidad has for more than a century deservedly claimed to be the first of these cocoa-producing islands. As far back as the sixteenth century the Spaniards who first colonized the island were interested in the cultivation of cacao. In the year 1780 a French gentleman residing in the neighbouring island of Grenada visited Trinidad, and gave such a glowing account of its fertility that agriculturists from France and elsewhere flocked to the colony, and ever since this date it has maintained a high standard of agricultural advance. The names of the cacao estates at the present day are nearly all Spanish or French, and throughout the British occupation of more than a hundred years the old families have in many cases held the same lands.[21]

[Ill.u.s.tration--Colour Plate: MAP OF TRINIDAD.]

The oldest estates in the island lie in the northern valleys of Santz Cruz, Maracas, and Arima; but cultivation has been considerably extended in the Montserrat and Naparima districts, and more recently in almost every part of the island reached by the extension of the railway and the coasting steamboat. The Trinidad bean is the largest and finest flavoured, and commands a higher price on the market than any other from the West Indies.

[Ill.u.s.tration--Drawing: MAP OF GRENADA, BRITISH WEST INDIES.]

Next in importance to Trinidad is the little island of Grenada; here cacao is the staple industry, the sugar estates that once lined the sh.o.r.es having entirely disappeared. Grenada cacao is smaller than that of Trinidad, possibly on account of the different method of planting described in a previous chapter, but the flavour of the bean is exceedingly good and regular, and the crop is bought up eagerly on the British and American markets. The other West Indian islands producing cocoa are Jamaica and Dominica, where its cultivation is reviving; also St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Tobago, and Montserrat, each of which have a few plantations; those in St. Vincent suffered severely by the recent hurricane. The French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique supply exclusively to the port of Havre; the cocoa from San Domingo is of a somewhat inferior quality. Cuba will probably considerably extend its output under American rule.

[Ill.u.s.tration--Black and White Plate: A Hill Cacao Estate, Grenada, B.W.I.]

[Ill.u.s.tration--Drawing: MAP OF PRINCIPE.]

In the Eastern Hemisphere by far the largest supplies come from the small islands of St. Thome and Principe, in the Gulf of Guinea, belonging to the Portuguese. These have in recent years proved especially adapted for the growth of the cacao, and the exports, especially from the island of St. Thome, are very large; most of the crop finds its way to European markets, transhipping at Lisbon. There is little cacao grown in the mainland African colonies, though the German Government offers special inducements in the Kameruns; no British African colony grows it to any extent. Fernando Po sends supplies to Spain, and occasionally on the London market strange packages made of rough cowhide st.i.tched with leather thongs are seen, containing beans from Madagascar.

[Ill.u.s.tration--Drawing: MAP OF S. THOMe.]

[Ill.u.s.tration--Black and White Plate: Ceylon: Carting Cacao to Rail.]

[Ill.u.s.tration--Drawing: MAP OF CEYLON.]

Further east are the plantations of Ceylon. In the hill districts, of which Matale is the centre, are many estates, some in joint cultivation of tea and cocoa. The output from this colony is at the present time nearly stationary. The Dutch East Indian produce is almost exclusively shipped to Amsterdam.

[Ill.u.s.tration--Drawing: MAP OF SAMOA.]

In the preceding pages extracts have frequently been culled from writers of the past: in the literature of the present day Charles Kingsley's graphic account of Trinidad and its cacao and sugar plantations in "At Last" should be read _in extenso_. Another very interesting episode of modern date is the introduction of the cacao into the Samoan Islands in the Pacific by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Writing to Sidney Colvin, on December 7, 1891, in one of his "Vailima Letters," he says:

"When I was filling baskets all Sat.u.r.day, in my dull, mulish way, perhaps the slowest worker there, surely the most particular, and the only one that never looked up or knocked off, I could not but think I should have been sent on exhibition as an example to young literary men. 'Here is how to learn to write' might be the motto. You should have seen us; the veranda was like an Irish bog, our hands and faces were bedaubed with soil, and Faauma was supposed to have struck the right note when she remarked (_a propos_ of nothing), 'Too much _eleele_ (soil) for me.' The cacao, you must understand, has to be planted at first in baskets of plaited cocoa-leaf.[22] From four to ten natives were plaiting these in the wood-shed. Four boys were digging up soil and bringing it by the boxful to the veranda. Lloyd and I and Belle, and sometimes S. (who came to bear a hand), were filling the baskets, removing stones and lumps of clay; Austin and Faauma carried them when full to f.a.n.n.y, who planted a seed in each, and then set them, packed close, in the corners of the veranda. From 12 on Friday till 5 p.m. on Sat.u.r.day we planted the first 1,500, and more than 700 of a second lot. You cannot dream how filthy we were, and we were all properly tired."[23]

[Ill.u.s.tration--Black and White Plate: Samoa: A New Clearing for Cacao.]

Three years later he records:

"I have been forbidden to work, and have been instead doing my two or three hours in the plantation every morning. I only wish somebody would pay me 10 a day for taking care of cacao, and I could leave literature to others."

Cacao cultivation in this island of Upolu has since that date developed wonderfully, and is attracting much attention, the first produce having been sold in Hamburg at a very high price. The consular report on Samoa published in February, 1903, states that "the mainstay of Samoa is cocoa," and it will be interesting to follow the progress of an industry of which the versatile Scotchman was an early pioneer.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] Florida even boasts a town of the name of Cocoa, but inquiries on the spot have failed to discover that any attempt was ever made to cultivate the plant there.

[21] Two of the coloured plates in this volume are reproductions of pictures by members of one of the oldest French families in the island, painted on their cocoa estate in the beautiful valley of Santa Cruz.

[22] Leaf of the coco-nut palm.

[23] See plates facing pp. 27 and 29.

APPENDIX I.