THE ISLAND OF PRINCIPE 23 



evil as great as any of them, the Glossina palpalis, 

 the fly that carries sleeping sickness. This evil, 

 now banished through the energy of the Portu- 

 guese Government and the island planters, and 

 the skill of their medical staff, took heavy toll of 

 human life and profit in the cocoa plantations 

 before it was destroyed. 



There are two yearly crops of cocoa in the 

 island. The greater grows from October to 

 January, and the lesser from April to May. The 

 pod when ripe is cut down from the cocoa bushes 

 with a long-handled knife, and is then shelled to 

 extract the cocoa beans inside it. These beans 

 are carried by the numerous little Decauville 

 railways to the factory, where they are dried in 

 large trays and fermented in the same process, 

 to reduce the acid in the bean and improve its 

 quality. Sometimes, as in the Cameroons, there 

 is a special hothouse plant to accelerate this 

 fermentation. When dried the beans are put in 

 sacks for export. The process is very simple and 

 depends mainly on manual labour. 



Besides cocoa, Principe grows sugar, rubber, 

 and quinine, and there are a large number of palms 

 on the island which yield excellent palm oil. The 

 food plantations of mealies, yams, and beans, 

 and the fruit, bananas, mangoes, and bread-fruit, 

 growing everywhere, make the island ideal for the 

 African negro, who can have plenty with little effort. 



The next day we sailed for San Thome, which 

 lies farther from the mainland, immediately north 

 of the Equator. 



The Portuguese cnll Principe and Snn Thome 



