COCOA-GROWING COUNTRIES 347 



scoop out the cacao seeds on an improvised tapis of green banana 

 leaves. Here the seeds or beans are cleaned by removing all 

 coarse pulpy strings and other debris, and then conveyed either in 

 panniers or sacks, to the fermenting house or chamber, where they 

 are measured with a standard flour barrel or its equivalent before 

 being finally put into their respective fermenting compartments. 

 All black and blighted pods, if mature and sound internally, 

 are shelled separately, and their beans, which are also fermented 

 before being put to dry, serve to produce an inferior article known 

 as "black cacao" which is generally sold locally. An ordinary 

 cacao " breaker " is able to cut and open for his day's work a 

 sufficient number of pods to produce from five to seven barrels of 

 cacao beans and to keep during the operation two women busily 

 engaged in scooping out the beans. 



On flat cacao plantations, and where proper roads have been 

 established, the transportation of the cacao-beans is done with 

 donkey or mule carts, but on hilly estates crooking mules or 

 donkeys are used, and often when animal traffic is difficult and 

 impracticable, men and women have to be resorted to. 



A good picker is expected to pick per day sufficient pods 

 to produce two or three barrels of beans, each barrel giving 110 

 Ibs. net of ready cacao. 



What Olivier! says about the method sometimes 

 followed to pay the pickers per weight delivered is 

 also worthy of being mentioned : 



Some plantations establish regular picking gangs, where each 

 gang undertakes the picking and reaping of a certain number of 

 fields throughout the twelve months of the year at the rate of one 

 dollar to one dollar twenty cents (4s. 2d. to 5s.) per barrel of 

 cacao delivered in the fermenting house, without the estate 

 furnishing or providing animals for its transportation. In such 

 cases, however, the pickers demand a strict and constant super- 

 vision, as during meagre pickings they skip many trees and pick 

 only those where ripe pods are plentiful and of easy access. 

 Barring these naturally tricky tendencies, which must not be 

 overlooked, the system can only be considered advantageous and 

 satisfactory in those plantations where great difficulties are 

 experienced in the formation of suitable crooking or bridle roads, 

 and where pasture and grazing grounds often prove inadequate 

 for the economical and proper upkeep of the required number of 

 heads of crooking or pack-stock. 



In fermentation there is in Trinidad not much 



