200 CACAO AND VANILLA 



known cacao of commerce — enveloped in a white pithy 

 substance. 



The trees are raised from seed, generally in places screened 

 from the wind. As they are incapable of bearing the scorching 

 rays of the sun, particularly when young, bananas, maize, 

 manioc, and other broad-leaved plants are sown between their 

 rows, under whose shade they enjoy the damp and sultry heat 

 which is indispensable to their growth, for the Theobroma Cacao 

 is essentially tropical, and requires a warmer climate than the 

 coffee-tree or the sugar-cane. 



Two years after having been sown, the plant attains a height 

 of three feet, and sends forth many branches, of which, how- 

 ever, but four or five are allowed to remain. The first fruits 

 appear in the third year, but the tree does not come into full 

 bearing before it is six or seven years old, and from that 

 time forward it continues to yield abundant crops of beans 

 during more than twenty years. At first the tender plants 

 must be carefully protected from weeds and insects, but in after 

 years they demand but little attention and labour, so that one 

 negro sufiices for keeping a thousand trees in order and collecting 

 their produce. 



According to Herndon (" Valley of the Amazons "), the annual 

 produce of a thousand full-grown trees, in the plantations along 

 the lower banks of the monarch of streams, amounts to fifty 

 arrobes, that sell in Peru from two and a half to three milrees 

 the arrobe ; and Wagner informs us that in Costa Rica a thousand 

 trees yield about 1,250 pounds, worth twenty dollars the 

 hundredweight. 



The beans when first collected from the tree are possessed of 

 an acrimony, which requires a slight fermentation to change 

 into the aromatic principle, to which they are indebted for their 

 agreeable flavour. For this purpose they are thrown into pits, 

 where they remain three or four days covered with a light 

 layer of sand, care being taken to stir them from time to time. 

 They are then taken out, cleaned, and laid out upon mats to 

 dry in the sun. The management of the beans requires some 

 caution, for if the fermentation is allowed to continue too long, 

 they acquire a mouldy taste and smell, which they only lose 

 on being roasted. When thoroughly dried (which is known by 

 their hollow sound when shaken, and by the husk easily separat- 





