vii FERMENTATION AND DRYING 227 



called "dancing." The purpose is the same: namely, 

 to protect the beans against mould, though this is not 

 so necessary as in Venezuela, since fermentation lasts 

 longer in Trinidad, and the greater part of the pulp 

 is therefore removed during fermentation. Indeed, 

 many planters no longer use the method of claying and 

 dancing, and it appears that the prices they obtain for 

 their cocoa are just as high as those paid for clayed 

 cocoa. Sometimes merchants have even complained 

 that the claying was exaggerated by some planters ; and 

 it is at any rate certain that the merchant and manu- 

 facturers prefer no claying, or very little, to too much. 



The dancing method is usually performed as follows. 1 

 The beans are exposed to the sun for the first day after 

 fermentation. The second day they are heaped up 

 longitudinally along the centre of the drying-floor, and 

 the next morning the dry powdered earth is sifted over 

 and along the heap with a fine sieve. In the meantime 

 the cocoa is gently stirred about by means of the ordinary 

 cocoa-shovel, in order that the earth may be absorbed 

 as uniformly as possible by all the beans. The cocoa 

 is then cleaned by a woman or boy, who keeps walking 

 through the heap of beans, picking off and removing 

 all the pulpy threads and foreign substances. When 

 this has been done, the beans are brought into heaps 

 and sprinkled with fresh water, till the cocoa becomes 

 slippery. It is then trampled by men with naked feet ; 

 and while this is going on the beans which are scattered 

 about are continually brought back to the top of the 

 heap. This "dancing" lasts about an hour, and after- 

 wards the beans are dried. 



Loss in weight during fermentation and drying. 

 Very few reliable statistics in regard to this loss are 

 available. In Surinam the present author obtained the 

 following figures : 30 fruits, yielding 3*8 kilograms of 

 fresh seeds, produced 1*2 kilogram of marketable cocoa; 

 the loss was therefore 68 per cent. Fauchere gives the 



1 The more elaborate description given by Olivieri will be found in Chapter 

 X. under "Trinidad." 



