6 COCOA CHAP. 



tree growing wild in the forests of the north-eastern 

 district of Martinique (the part called " Capesterre "), 

 and it is probable that the original Forastero, grown at 

 Martinique and Guadeloupe, the "Guadeloupe Creoule," 

 is descended from these wild-growing trees. On the 

 other hand, it is said that seeds from Venezuela 

 were imported into Martinique in 1664 by a Jew 

 named Benjamin Dacosta ; probably these were Criollo 

 seeds. 



Of the West Indian Islands, which in the seven- 

 teenth century became important as cocoa-growing 

 countries, mention must be made of Jamaica and 

 Haiti. In Haiti, however, the prolonged wars, which 

 ended in 1664 by the occupation of a part of the 

 island by the French, naturally caused a decline in the 

 cultivation. When the English took possession of 

 Jamaica in 1655, cocoa had already been grown fairly 

 extensively by the Spaniards, and, according to Long 

 (History of Jamaica), "there were (in 1671) as many 

 as sixty -five walks in bearing/' 



The year 1727, however, was very disastrous for 

 cocoa all over the West Indies. In Jamaica, as well as 

 in Trinidad and Martinique, and probably in all the 

 other cocoa-growing Antilles, the plantations were 

 wholly destroyed by a " blast." It seems very probable 

 that Morris is right in taking this " blast " to have been 

 a hurricane ; but there are writers who give another 

 explanation to the word, and assume that this "blast" 

 was a blight, a disease which destroyed the trees. 1 It 

 is, however, hardly conceivable that such a disease 

 would appear so suddenly, and in the same year, on 

 islands so far away from each other as Jamaica, Trinidad, 

 and Martinique, and also be equally destructive in all. 

 On some of the islands the cultivation was re-established 

 comparatively soon, but on others the process of restora- 

 tion was slower. About thirty years after the hurricane 

 cocoa was reintroduced into Trinidad by some Aragonese 

 Capuchin Fathers ; they imported from Venezuela 



1 Hart, Cacao (1911), p. 8. 



