NATURAL PRODUCTIONS 
71 
tlie sun for a few liours before being placed in heaps, 
and this seems to accelerate fermentation ; it is after- 
wards spread in shallow boxes, or on a drying-floor 
preparecl for the purpose. This latter plan is preferred 
on the main, and probably with reason, but in no place 
is the cacao buried as a preparative to drying, as reported 
in some works on the subject. Cacao which has fer- 
mented is of a dark coloui*, light in weight, contains 
less of the oily substance, and has no astringency.” * 
From the above remarks it will be seen that the cacao- 
planter is more of an agriculturist, and less of a manu- 
facturer, than the sugar-planter. It is true that there is 
the drying process, but that is all. The article is shipped, 
if not exactly as gathered, yet after a simple process of 
shelling and drying. The cacao-beans are put in bags, 
and shipped, making a very clean cargo when compared 
with the sugar in hogsheads. A bag or fanega is 
110 pounds weight, sells for about eight or ten dollars, 
in past years having risen to fourteen and sixteen 
dollars, and one year it fell so low as to be worth only 
three dollars per fanega, which price would not cover the 
expense of picking and drying, so that the fruit was 
ullowed to remain on the trees ungathered. 
The largest quantity and the best of the Trinidad cacao 
is shipped to Spain and France. A considerable quan- 
tity is manufactured into chocolate by steam-mills, and 
consumed in the island. It is not necessary to say that 
thus prepared it is wholesome and nutritious. 
The cacao-planter is in a better position in some re- 
spects than the sugar-planter, for if the crop of the former 
does not fetch so high a price as that of the latter, it 
must be remembered that the outlay of the former is 
very small compared with that of the latter. A cacao- 
planter does not need forty mules, a score of oxen, a 
steam-engine, and a boiling-house. A few mules to 
crook the cacao, to the drying-shed, with a few hands, 
* L. A. A. de Verteuil, M.D., Trinidad, &c. 
