CACAO AND ITS CULTIVATION 29 



TROPICAL FOREST, TRINIDAD. 

 This has to be cleared before planting begins. 



Coconut plantations and sugar estates make a strong 

 appeal to the imagination, but for peaceful beauty they 

 cannot compare with the cacao plantation. True, coco- 

 nut plantations are very lovely the palms are so grace- 

 ful, the leaves against the sky so like a fine etching 

 but " the slender coco's drooping crown of plumes " 

 is altogether foreign to English eyes. Sugar estates are 

 generally marred by the prosaic factory in the back- 

 ground. They are dead level plains, and the giant grass 



