86 ^ CRUSOE'S ISLAND. 



the rest all flew away. But tlie next evening they 

 were back again and had rearranged themselves in the 

 same form, making an inverted triangle, with the 

 omission of the bat that had formed the point. 



But it was not of birds or bats that I wished to 

 speak in this chapter ; rather of my attempts to make 

 a garden and subdue the savagery of some of the 

 native plants. The first month after my arrival at 

 this desolate spot had been spent chiefly in the woods, 

 though not wholly in hunting, for I had kept my eyes 

 open for such things as might be useful in a garden 

 and plantation. 



I had found see4s of the cacao in the pouch 

 of a wood rat, shot on my first excursion, and that 

 led me to look for the tree. This 1 found on the 

 skirt of the forest, and not one tree only but a 

 grove of the true " cacao," the chocolate-yielding 

 bean. The name of this tree is derived from the 

 Aztec cacahuatl^ and it is the Theohroma cacao of 

 the botanists. 



The trees were some twenty feet in height, and 

 were bearing well at the time I discovered them. 

 Not only on the branches were the great pods grow- 

 ing, but climbing up the trunks, looking like big- 

 bellied rats, red and purple in hue. The fruit — the 

 seed, from which the chocolate is made — is contained 

 in a pod from six to nine inches long and three or 

 four in diameter, filled with a sweetish pulp, and 

 there are sometimes three dozen seeds in a pod. Two 

 crops a year are expected from the cultivated cacao, 

 and my trees then had the remains of the Christmas 



