THE CHOCOLATE-PLANT. 



i. 



OUTLINE OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE 

 CHOCOLATE-PLANT. 



A T the discovery of America, the natives of the narrower portion 

 ■**■ of the continent bordering on the Caribbean Sea, were found 

 in possession of two luxuries which have been everywhere recog- 

 nized as worthy of extensive cultivation ; namely, tobacco and choco- 

 late. The former of these has made its way into climates totally 

 unlike that of its early home ; the other of these plants, since it 

 cannot bear the low temperature occasionally experienced in our 

 subtropics, is more restricted in its range. The chocolate-plant is 

 confined to the warmer regions of the globe, where it finds the 

 congenial climatic conditions which it enjoyed and still enjoys in 

 its earliest home in America. 



The first references to the chocolate-plant and its products are 

 found in the accounts of the explorers and conquerors who followed 

 Columbus. These first descriptions of this singular tree, of its 

 fruits and seeds, of its uses and the methods of cultivation, are 

 remarkably accurate in all essential particulars. 



One of the earliest, if not indeed the very earliest, delineations 

 of the chocolate-tree is in a rare volume by Bontekoe. The en- 

 graving, which is here reproduced with fidelity, represents the 

 chocolate-tree with its comparatively large fruits or pods borne on 



