568 



THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



insects, but in after years they demand but little attention and labor, so that one negro 

 suffices for keeping a thousand trees in order and collecting their produce. According 

 to Herndon,* the annual produce of a thousand full-grown trees, in the plantations 

 along the lower banks of the monarch of streams, amounts to fifty arrobes, that sell in 

 Peru from two and a half to three milrees the arrobe ; and Wagner informs us that in 

 Costa Rica a thousand trees yield about 1,250 pounds, worth twenty dollars the 

 hundred weight. 



The beans when first collected from the tree are possessed of an acrimony, which 

 requires a slight fermentation to change into the aromatic principle, to which they are 

 indebted for their agreeable flavor. For this purpose they are thrown into pits, where 

 they remain three or four days covered with a light layer of sand, care being taken to 

 stir them from time to time. They are then taken out, cleaned, and laid out upon 

 mats to dry in the sun. The management of the beans requires some caution, for if 

 the fermentation is allowed to continue too long, they acquire a mouldy taste and smell, 

 which they only lose on being roasted. When thoroughly dried (which is known by 

 their hollow sound when shaken, and by the husk easily separating from the seed when 

 pressed) , they are packed in sacks or cases, and sent as soon as possible to the market, 

 a rapid sale being extremely desirable, as it is very difficult to preserve them from 

 insects, more particularly from the cockroaches. Cacao is chiefly used under the form 

 of chocolate. The beans are roasted, finely ground, so as to convert them into a per- 

 fectly smooth paste, and improved in flavor by the addition of spices, such as the sweet- 

 scented vanilla, a short notice of which will not be out of place. 



Like our parasitical ivy, the Vanilla aromatica, a native of torrid America, climbs 

 the summits of the highest forest-trees, or creeps along the moist rock crevices on the 

 banks of rivulets. The stalk, which is about as thick as a finger, bears at each joint 

 a lanceolate and ribbed leaf, twelve inches long and three inches broad. The large 

 flowers, which fill the forest with their delicious odors, are white intermixed with stripes 

 of red and yellow, and are succeeded by long and slender pods containing many seeds 

 imbedded in a thick oily and balsamic pulp. These pods seldom ripen in the wild 

 state, for the dainty monkey knows no greater delicacy, and his agility in climbing 

 almost always enables him to anticipate man. At present the vanilla is cultivated not 

 only in Mexico, where the villages Papantla and Misantla annually produce about 

 19,000 pounds or two millions of pods (worth at Yera Cruz a shilling the pod), but 

 in Java, where the industrious Dutch have acclimatized it since 1819. It is planted 

 under shady trees on a damp ground, and grows luxuriantly ; but as a thousand blos- 

 soms on an average produce but one pod, it must always remain a rare and costly spice. 

 Had the ancients known vanilla they would, no doubt, have deemed it more worthy to 

 be the food of the Olympic gods than their fabled ambrosia. 



Although but little known beyond the confines of its native country, Coca (to be 

 carefully distinguished from Cocoa and Cacao) , is beyond all doubt one of the most 

 remarkable productions of the tropical zone, and deserves the more to be noticed as the 

 time is, perhaps, not far distant, when it will assume a conspicuous rank in the markets 

 of the world. 



* Valley of the Amazons. 



