CEYLON COCOA ESTATE 19 



v 

 tree produces two crops in the year, one the 

 so-called spring crop, ripening from May to 

 July, the other the autumn crop from 

 November to February. 



The picking is a pretty sight, many women 

 are employed, and their gay clothes and glitter- 

 ing jewellery, and the heaped up red pods give 

 a rich note of colour to the shaded groves in 

 which they work. When the daily portion of 

 pods has been collected, they are opened with 

 a tap from a sharp curved knife, and the beans 

 extracted with a turn of the finger, they are 

 then placed in open baskets, and carried to the 

 store for curing, and the empty pods are at once 

 buried in holes already dug, any which by 

 accident or carelessness remain unburied, at 

 the end of a few weeks emit a most offensive 

 odour. On arrival at the store the beans are 

 weighed, and then piled up and covered for 

 the purpose of fermentation. Each proprietor 

 has his own method of curing, which partakes 

 of the nature of a trade secret ; so I do not 

 feel at liberty to divulge the plan carried 

 out on this Estate ; but a very usual way is 

 to ferment for two days, then wash and dry 

 in the sun until the cuticle of the bean be- 

 comes a reddish orange colour and quite 

 brittle, and the inside a rich brown. In wet 

 or cloudy weather the drying process is carried 

 on inside the store, in the heated clarehue 



