A SURPRISE PACKET 3 



up, watch the scenes connected with harvesting the 

 crop and preparing it for market, get into touch with 

 the manners and customs of the people who yearly 

 produce hundreds of thousands of tons of cocoa beans 

 Then, if we travel home with a cargo of cocoa beans 

 and accompany them to a factory to see them trans- 

 formed into cocoa essence, plain chocolate, and a 

 variety of other popular provisions such as are now 

 awaiting your pleasure on the table, I hope you will 

 find even greater enjoyment than ever you have done 

 before in a cup of cocoa, a bar of chocolate, a chocolate 

 pudding, or any of their many good, wholesome, and 

 nice relations." 



A week or so later, on a grey November day, we are 

 in Liverpool, where we have just come aboard a mail 

 steamer that is leaving this afternoon for the West 

 Coast of Africa. We are off to the Gold Coast, to 

 start our tour of cocoaland in a British colony which 

 has recently risen to fame as the biggest cocoa producer 

 in the world. The rapid development of the cocoa 

 industry in the Gold Coast is one of the romances of 

 commercial history, comparable only with the pheno- 

 menal growth of the plantation rubber industry in the 

 parts of our Empire known as Ceylon and Malaya. 



CHAPTER II 



OFF TO THE GOLD COAST 



IT is nearly a four-thousand mile journey from Liver- 

 pool to Accra, the capital and chief cocoa port of the 

 Gold Coast. 

 Four days after crawling through a fog in the River 



