100 



COCOA AND CHOCOLATE 



remains the lighterage to the ocean liner, which lies 

 anchored some two miles from the shore, rising and 

 falling to the great rollers from the broad Atlantic. A 

 long boat is used, manned by some twenty swarthy 

 natives, who glory vocally in their passage through 

 the dangerous surf which 

 roars along the sloping 

 beach. The cacao is piled 

 high on wood racks and 

 covered with tarpaulins 

 and seldom shares the 

 fate of passengers and 

 crew, who are often 

 drenched in the surf 

 before they swing by a 

 crane in the primitive 

 mammy chair, high but 

 not dry, on board the 

 hospitable Elder Demp- 

 ster liner. 



San Thome 

 (and Principe). 



We now turn from the 

 Gold Coast and the suc- 

 cess of native ownership 

 to another part of West 

 Africa, a scene of singular beautv, where the Portuguese 

 planters have triumphed over savage nature. 



Two lovely islands, San Thome and its little 

 sister isle of Principe, lie right on the Equator in 

 the Gulf of Guinea, about two hundred miles from 

 the African mainland. A warm, lazy sea, the sea 

 of the doldrums, sapphire or turquoise, or, in deep 

 shaded pools, a radiant green, joyfully foams itself 

 away against these fairv lands of tossing palm, 

 dense vegetation, rushing cascades, and purple, 

 precipitous peaks. A soil of volcanic origin is 

 covered with a rich humus of decaying vegetation, 



Rolling Cacao, Gold 

 Coast. 



