CACAO PRODUCTION AND SALE 109 



stamped on the bags, and this is recognised by the 

 buyers in Europe, and gives a clue to the quality of 

 the contents. There is not as yet a uniform weight for 

 a bag of cacao, although they all vary between one and 

 two cwt., thus the bags from Africa contain 1^ cwts., 

 whilst those from Guayaquil contain if cwts. In these 

 bags the cacao is taken to the port on the backs of mules, 

 in horse or ox carts, in canoes down a stream, or more 

 rarelv, by rail. It is then conveyed by lighters or surf 

 boats to the great ocean liners which lie anchored off 

 the shore. In the hold of the liner it is rocked thousands 

 of miles over the azure seas of the tropics to the grey- 

 green seas of the temperate zone. In pre-war days a 

 million bags used to go to Hamburg, three-quarters 

 of a million to New York, half a million to Havre, and 

 only a trifling quarter of a million to London. Now 

 London is the leading cacao market of the world. 

 During the war the supplies were cut off from Ham- 

 burg, whilst Liverpool, becoming a chief port for 

 African cacao, in 1916 imported a million bags. Then 

 New York began to gorge cacao, and in 1917 created 

 a record, importing some two and a half million bags, 

 or about 150,000 tons. Whilst everything is in so fluid 

 a condition it is unwise to prophesy ; it may, however, 

 be said that there are many who think, now that the 

 consumption of cocoa and chocolate in America has 

 reached such a prodigious figure, that New York may 

 yet oust London and become the central dominating 

 market of the world. 



Difficulties of Buying. 



Every country produces a different kind of cacao, 

 and the cacao from any two plantations in the same 

 country often shows wide variation. It may be said that 

 there are as many kinds of cacao as there are of apples, 

 cacao showing as marked differences as exhibited by 

 crabs and Blenheims, not to mention James Grieves, 

 Russets, Worcester Pearmains, Newton Wonders, Lord 

 Derbys, Belle de Boskoops, and so forth. Further, 



