CHAPTER I 



COCOA AND CHOCOLATE A SKETCH OF 

 THEIR HISTORY 



Did time and space allow, there is much to be told on 

 the romantic side of chocolate, of its divine origin, of the 

 bloody wars and brave exploits of the Spaniards who con- 

 quered Mexico and were the first to introduce cacao into 

 Europe, tales almost too thrilling to be believed, of the 

 intrigues of the Spanish Court, and of celebrities who met 

 and sipped their chocolate in the parlours of the coffee and 

 chocolate houses so fashionable in the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries. 



Cocoa and Chocolate (Whymper). 



ON opening a cacao pod, it is seen to be full of 

 beans surrounded by a fruity pulp, and whilst 

 the pulp is very pleasant to taste, the beans 

 themselves are uninviting, so that doubtless the beans 

 were always thrown away until .... someone tried 

 roasting them. One pictures this " someone," a pre- 

 historic Aztec with swart skin, sniffing the aromatic 

 fume coming from the roasting beans, and thinking 

 that beans which smelled so appetising must be good 

 to consume. The name of the man who discovered the 

 use of cacao must be written in some early chapter of 

 the history of man, but it is blurred and unreadable : 

 all we know is that he was an inhabitant of the New 

 World and probably of Central America. 



Original Home of Cacao. 



The corner of the earth where the cacao tree origin- 

 ally grew, and still grows wild to-day, is the country 



