316 



TRINIDAD I THEN AND NOW. 



know it. Who has not heard of and indulged in Cad- 

 bury's, Epps' and Fry's cocoa and chocolate, all of 

 whom are large buyers of Trinidad cocoa and one at 

 least, Messrs. Cadbury, has large interests in Trini- 

 dad (see page 9). 



Bryan Edwards states that a Colonel James, the 

 first white man born in Jamaica after the conquest of 

 that island by the English, lived to the great age of 

 one hundred and four years, and for the last thirty 

 years of his life used scarcely any other food than 

 chocolate. 



Cocoa has, like other industries, its bad and 

 good years, and the present year (1912) has not been 

 by any means a good one. Bryan Edwards says " it 

 shrinks from the first appearance of drought ; and 

 again, 6 1 the appearance of a comet was always con- 

 sidered fatal to cocoa plantations," and Abbe 

 Raynal makes a similar statement. Don't accuse me 

 of being superstitious ; I merely relate facts, and 

 coincidences are undoubtedly strange things. What- 

 ever doubt there may be as to the effect of the comet 

 in May 1910 on our crop, there cannot be the sligh- 

 test doubt of the effects of the drought of 1911-12 

 which has been the most unprecedented since 1869. 

 1912 has been held by many people to have been 

 much more severe than even that year. 



There are a few estates whose managers I not 

 only personally know but have also been their guest 

 for longer or shorter periods, and I personally know 

 that they have suffered during the crop season of 

 1911-12 to an unprecedented extent from the drought 



