TRINIDAD : THEN AND NOW. 



805 



' ' It is obnoxious to blights, and shrinks from the 

 first appearance of drought. It has happened that 

 the greatest part of a whole plantation of cacao trees 

 have perished in a single night, without any visible 

 cause. Circumstances of this nature in early times, 

 gave rise to many superstitious notions concerning 

 this tree, and, among others, the appearance of a 

 comet was always considered as fatal to the cocoa 

 plantations. ' 9 



Abbe Raynal makes the same or a similar state- 

 ment. 



(i Blome, who published a short account of 

 Jamaica in 1672, speaks of cocoa as being at that 

 time one of the chief articles of export. " There are/' 

 he says, " in this island, at this time about fifty cocoa 

 plantations and many more now planting. ' 9 At pre- 

 sent I believe there is not a single cacao plantation 

 from one end of Jamaica to the other. A few scat- 

 tered trees, here and there, are all that remain of 

 those flourishing and beautiful groves which were 

 once the pride and boast of the country. 



6 ' At present the only cacao plantations of any 

 account, in our colonies, are Grenada and Dominica $ 

 the quantity annually exported from both those 

 cannot, I believe, be estimated on an average at more 

 than four thousand bags of one hundred weight (112 

 lbs.) each, which may be worth, at London market, 

 between ten and eleven thousand pounds sterling.' ' 



This extract as will be observed does not say any- 

 thing about Trinidad because, as I have said, Trini- 

 dad was not at the time a British possession ; but 



T 



