374 



The Supplement to the Tropical Agriculturist 



S. Thom€ are now well-paved, and clean-swept 

 daily, and an excellent pipe-water main has 

 superseded the poisonous surface wells of former 

 days; but though there is a fairly large European 

 population, and many substantial houses of the 

 Lisbon type, the tin shanty style of architecture 

 still prevails — neat and regular everywhere, but 

 quite inadequate to the needs of the white resi- 

 dent in the tropics. The reason for it is to be 

 found in the excessive 



DEAENE88 OP LIVING AND THE DIFFICULTY OF 

 GETTING LABOUR 



for work such as the European cannot himself do. 



As one goes inland, one finds the climate 

 improve, and the higher elevations are quite 

 healthy — they would be positively bracing were 

 it not for the atmospheric saturation due to 

 forest growth plus the oceanic influences of wind 

 and tide. At Trinidade, a small hillside town 

 only 7 kilometres from the coast, I found a Eu- 

 ropean priest, fresh and ruddy as if he had never 

 left Portugal, who had been resident there for 

 30 years without a change, and meant to end 

 his days on the little property he had acquired, 

 close by. The upper peaks of the inland Cordil- 

 lera are seldom visible from below, their cap of 

 dense mist rarely lifting. Cultivation goes far 

 up them, but cacao being the staple product of 

 the islands, the rogas for the most part occupy 

 the lower (and, therefore, sicklier) levels, the 

 regions above 1,800 feet ceasing to yield the bean 

 in paying quantities. Here coffee takes its place, 

 and a remarkably fine type of coffee it is, too. 

 Portugal and its African colonies practically con- 

 sume the whole output. Hevea and Castilloa, 

 also Ficus Elastica (the latter with marvel-, 

 lous vigour) grow throughout this zone. Higher 

 up, coffee gives way to cinchona, and cinchona 

 in its turn to ob6 or primeval forest, a labyrinth 

 of timber trees, laden with epiphytes and densely 

 interwoven with creepers, the most notable of 

 which are a stem-clasping Ficus known as l&mba- 

 lemba and a Landolphia — the L. Dawei, yielding 

 caoutchouc. Vestiges of this forest are to be 

 found throughout the plantations below, the 

 giant oca (Eriodendron anfractuosum) and the 

 equally colossal amoreira (chlorophora excelsa) 

 being conspicuous in the cultivated area, 

 the former by its huge buttressed trunk, 

 naked and grey, with triple or quadruple 

 crown formed by horizontal tier upon tier 

 of branches, the latter by its brownish cylin- 

 drical column, towering some 80 or 90 feet in 

 the air before throwing out a single branch. 

 Beneath these, the 



CACAO, MANGO, AND BANANA 



plantations appear dwarfed to the proportions 

 of an insignificant scrub jungle. The virgin 

 forest runs up to the very tops of the mountains, 

 except where these culminate, as they often do, 

 in conical peaks or cliffs of basalt affording a 

 foothold to patches of herbaceous vegetation 

 alone. These basaltic monoliths are indeed a 

 feature of the islands, down to the coast, one of 

 them, known as ( no Grande (" Big Dog ") rising 

 sheer up to a height of 1,000 feet from its base ; 

 a single stone obelisk, higher than the Eiffel 

 Tower ! Its pedestal alone stands nearly 1,000 feet 

 from sea level. Thus the islands are rich both 

 in quarrying stone and in timber, some of their 

 woods being extremely valuable, while there is 

 uo lack of fuelj thanks in part to Nature, and 



also to the management of the upper forests by 

 the proprietors, so far conserving unchanged, 

 despite the olaims of cultivation, the charact- 

 eristics of the island soil and climate. 



Cacao-growing in these islands, complicated 

 as the question is with that of labour (the ooffee 

 plantations, being mostly older, have their per- 

 manent labour establishments of negroes born 

 and bred on the estate, and being replenished 

 by the children of these, they are independent 

 of importations from the African Continent), 

 would require a volume to itself, aDd I hope 

 ere long to be in possession of sufficient data to 

 do this aspect of it tho justice it demands. For 

 the present suffice it to say that the campaign 

 against the Portuguese product, initiated or 

 rather resuscitated by the sect of whose im- 

 practicable doctrines Messrs Nevinson and 

 Burt are the leading exponents, is reported to 

 have had at least one unexpected and amusing 

 effect. A prejudice against 



" SLAVE COCOA " 



— a question-begging term extended later on to 

 the chocolate confectionery of Messrs Cadbury as 

 known buyers of S. Thome cacao — having been 

 created, or alleged to exist, in the British 

 public mind, that firm, for their own good name 

 quite as much as for the protection of their 

 industry, found themselves compelled to pass 

 on to the planters of S. Thome and Principe 

 the pressure with which they wore menaced. 

 The Great Britinh public, to quote George 

 Eliot from memory, reserves to itself the 

 utmost right of private haziness ; and in all 

 probability few of the good folk who caught up 

 the cry of " a slave cocoa" could say where S. 

 Thome was, to whom it belonged, or what were 

 the provisions of law said to sanction this 

 " modern slavery." But, slavery or no slavery, 

 a healthy appetite can generally be trusted to 

 hold its own against a sickly sentiment. The 

 Great British palate had acquired a liking for 

 the grateful and comforting beverage and the 

 dainty sweet, into the composition of which the 

 Portuguese bean so largely entered. No new 

 cacao could quite give the accustomed flavour. 

 So, Britain's need being, as it ever was, Ger- 

 many's opportunity, our Teutonic cousins set to 

 work to buy up the stock, and now the good 

 old " slave cocoa " goes to Hamburg, whence, 

 labelled "madeiti Germany,'' it is unloaded on 

 the British market for the consumption of the 

 conscientious objector. 



Be this as it may (I have it from a Hamburg 

 merchant now in S. Thome who presumably 

 knows what he is talking about), the story is a 

 digression from what 1 was about to tell you of 

 cacao cultivation. To resume: 



THE VARIETY 



most commonly grown in the islands is that 

 known locally as erioullo dc S. Thome — not to be 

 confounded with the criollo of Trinidad and 

 Venezuela, which has also been introduced, along 

 with the purple and yellow forms of thcforasleru 

 group. According to M Aug. Chevalier, an- 

 erainent French botanist whose monograph on 

 West African cacao is a standard work, the 

 erioullo cacao of S. Thome exhibits capsules of 

 both colours. The S. Thome planters, how- 

 ever, say he is wrong on this point ; the original 

 erioullo type of these islands, a fixed type, being 



