34 The Fermentation of 'Cacao 
“The coolie dexterously strips all the beans 
off the centre stalk (placenta), The empty 
pods are then thrown round the trees and act 
as manure, while the beans are removed to the 
fermenting cistern. It takes from five to nine 
days to properly ferment the cacao and it is 
then ready for working. It is trampled first, 
as in coffee, with the feet, and then oe 
in baskets and carefully hand-washed’, | 
have no doubt that before long some means 
less expensive will be found for washing . . . 
The prices obtained for it will depend, to a 
more considerable degree, on the careful atten- 
‘tion to the curing than in the case of coffee.” 
Safford, writing on cacao in Guam,” says :— 
“Cacao beans are sometimes kept in jars 
and allowed to ‘sweat’ or undergo a sort of 
‘fermentation which improves their flavour, but 
this custom is not universal. Many families, 
after having dried the beans in the sun, keep 
them until “required for use, when they roast 
them as we do coffee, grind them and make 
them into chocolate, Chocolate made from 
the newly ground bean is especially rich and 
aromatic.” 
.Hinchley Hart* writes : 
“The prime object of sweating or fermenta- 
1 Such methods are followed in Ceylon and the East, 
but not in America, as a rule.-—H. H. S, 
2 « Useful Plants of Guam.” U.S. Nat. Mus., Contrib. 
Nat. Herbarium, 9 (1905), p. 387. 
8 “Cacao.” Trinidad, 19c0, 2nd ed., p. 38. 
