Cuap, IV. A CACAO PLANTATION. 79 
I found at Cametad an American, named Bean, who had been so 
long in the country that he had almost forgotten his mother tongue. 
He knew the neighbourhood well, and willingly accompanied me as 
a guide in many long excursions. I was astonished in my walks with 
him at the universal friendliness of the people. We were obliged, when 
rambling along the intricate pathways through the woods, occasionally 
to pass the houses of settlers. The good people, most of whom knew 
Bean, always invited us to stop. The master of the house would step 
out first and insist on our walking in to take some refreshment ; at the 
same moment I generally espied the female members of the family 
hurrying to the fireplace to prepare the inevitable cup of coffee. After 
conversing a little with the good folks we would take our leave, and 
then came the parting present—a bunch of bananas, a few eggs, or 
fruits of one kind or other. It would have been cruel to refuse these 
presents, but they were sometimes so inconvenient to us that we used 
to pitch them into the thickets as soon as we were out of sight of the 
donors. 
One day we embarked in a montaria to visit a widow lady, named 
Dona Paulina, to whom Bean was going to be married, and who lived 
on one of the islands in mid-river, about ten milesabove Cameta. ‘The 
little boat had a mast and sail, the latter of which was of very curious 
construction. It was of the shape which sailors call shoulder-of-mutton 
sail, and was formed of laths of pith split from the leaf stalks of the 
Jupati palm (Raphia teedigera). ‘The laths were strung together so as 
to form a mat, and the sail was hoisted or lowered by means of a rope 
attached to the top. The same material serves for many purposes ; 
partitions, and even the external walls of houses of the poorer classes, 
are often made of it. It fell to my charge to manage the sail during 
our voyage, whilst Bean steered, but when in the middle of the broad 
river the halyard broke, and in endeavouring to mend it we nearly 
upset the boat, for the wind blew strongly and the waves ran high. We 
fortunately met, soon afterwards, a negro who was descending in a 
similar boat to ours, and who, seeing our distress, steered towards us 
and kindly supplied us with a new rope. We stayed a day and night 
on the island. ‘The house was of a similar description to those I have 
already described as common on the low islands of the Tocantins. The 
cacaoal which surrounded it consisted of about 10,000 trees, which I 
was astonished to hear produced altogether only 100 arrobas, or 3200 
pounds of the chocolate nut per annum. I had seen trees on the main 
land which, having been properly attended to, produced yearly thirty-two 
pounds each, or 100 times as much as those of Dona Paulina’s cacaoal ; 
the average yield in plantations on the Amazons near Santarem is 
700 arrobas to 10,000 trees. Agriculture was evidently in a very low 
condition hereabout ; the value of a cacao estate was very trifling, each 
tree being worth only forty reis or one penny, this including the land on 
which the plantation stands. A square league of country planted with 
cacao could thus be bought for 40/. or 50/. sterling. The selling price 
of cacao is very fluctuating ; 3,500 reis, or about eight shillings the 
arroba of 32 lbs., may be taken as the average. The management of a 
plantation requires very few hands ; the tree yields three crops a year, 
