24 COCOA AND CHOCOLATE 
legal tender. The value of the beans may be judged from the fact 
that a ‘‘ tolerably good slave’? could be purchased for 100 of them. 
In the ‘‘ True History of the Conquest of Mexico,’’ by Bernal Diaz, 
an officer under Cortez, it is related that ‘‘ from time to time a liquor 
prepared from cocoa and of a stimulating 
or corroborative quality, as we are told, 
was presented to Montezuma in a golden 
cup. We could not at the time see if he 
drank it or not, but I observed a num- 
ber of jars—above fifty — brought in 
and filled with foaming chocolate.”’ 
Thomas Gage, in his ‘‘ New Survey of 
the West Indies,”’ first published in 1648, 
gives the following interesting account of the Spanish and Indian 
‘“METATE”’ 
ways of making and drinking chocolate some two hundred and fifty 
years ago :— 
‘‘Now, for the making or compounding of this drink, I shallset down 
here the method. The cacao and the other ingredients must be beaten 
in a mortar of stone, or (as the Indians use) ground upon a broad 
stone, which they called Metate, and is 
only made for that use. But first the in- 
gredients are all to be dried, except the 
Achiotte (annotto), with care that they 
be beaten to powder, keeping them still 
in stirring that they be not burnt, or 
become black ; for if they be overdried 
they will be bitter and lose their virtue. g 
The cinnamon and the long red pepper cHocorarE-GRINDING IN THE 
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 
are to be first beaten with the anniseed, ; 
vom an early engraving 
and then the cacao, which must be soil 
beaten by little and little till it be all powdered, and in the beating it 
must be turned round that it may mix the better. Every one of these 
