OFF TO THE BUSH 35 



experiments. The actual quality of the cocoa beans 

 of commerce depends largely on methods of cultivation 

 and the amount of care exercised in preparing the 

 crop for market. Thus, a good sample of Forastero 

 beans will command a higher price than a poor sample 

 of Criollos. 



The homeland of the cocoa tree is South America, 

 but the extent of country within which it originally 

 grew wild is a matter of dispute. 



Wild cocoa trees are still to be seen in the primeval 

 forests of the basins of the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers 

 up to an altitude of about 400 feet. Many authorities 

 bear witness to this fact, and, possibly, my statement 

 of fact will have more power of appealing to your 

 imagination when I tell you that I myself have had 

 the joyously romantic experience of seeing wild cocoa 

 trees in the Amazon valley. Some authorities are 

 inclined to think that the native land of the cocoa 

 tree extended northward into Central America as 

 far as Guatemala, and eastward through Peru, 

 Venezuela, Ecuador, and Brazil, into the Guianas and 

 Trinidad. 



Certain it is that when Columbus discovered the 

 New World, the Indians as he called the natives, 

 through the mistaken idea that he had found a new 

 route to India were already cultivating the cocoa tree. 

 They may have introduced the tree into Central 

 America and Mexico, or it may have been indigenous to 

 those countries as well as to the land farther south. 

 You see how difficult it is to decide whether the old 

 historians were correct in saying that cocoa trees were 

 indigenous to such and such a part of the New World, 

 since trees which they believed to be wild might very 

 well have been the naturalized descendants of cocoa 



