Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 12, 2025
The heavy showers that fall irregularly after the rainy season, during the winter months, from December to March, are also very hurtful to the cacao-tree. The proprietor of a plantation of fifty thousand trees often loses the value of more than four or five thousand piastres in cacao in one hour.
The road is short, but exceedingly pretty; on the other side from the river is a steep bank on which is growing a plantation of cacao.
There was a large, well- weeded grove of cacao along the banks of the river, comprising about 8000 trees, and further inland considerable plantations of tobacco, mandioca, Indian corn, fields of rice, melons, and watermelons. Near the house was a kitchen garden, in which grew cabbages and onions, introduced from Europe, besides a wonderful variety of tropical vegetables.
The next important event which I find recorded is after the treaty of 27th August 1701, between 'His Most Christian' and 'His Most Catholic Majesty, by which the Royal Company of Guinea, established in France, was allowed to supply the Spanish colonies with 4800 Negroes per annum for ten years; of whom Trinidad took some share, and used them in planting cacao. So much the worse for it.
Yes, there was gold in the river-beds.... Incidentally, to keep his hands "from mauling the natives," he had caused to be planted at different times, several thousand acres of cacao trees, all of which were now bearing.
On again, along the green trace, which rose now to a ridge, with charming glimpses of wooded hills and glens to right and left; past comfortable squatters' cottages, with cacao drying on sheets at the doors or under sheds; with hedges of dwarf Erythrina, dotted with red jumby beads, and here and there that pretty climbing vetch, the Overlook.
"A more speedy way for the making up of the cacao into chocolate is this: They have a mill made in the form of some kind of malt-mills, whose stones are firm and hard, which work by turning, and upon this mill are ground the cacaos grossly, and then between other stones they work that which is ground yet smaller, or else by beating it up in a mortar bring it into the usual form."
The cacao or chocolate tree grows in a number of the West India Islands, but in none of them is it cultivated to such an extent as in Santo Domingo. Cacao is peculiarly fitted to be a "poor man's crop," as little land and labor are required and, while the trees are growing, corn, bananas and other crops can be raised on the same field.
In short, cacao plantations are only suited to large capitalists, or to very small cultivators who grow the trees in their own gardens. Moreover, as we have said, since the abolition of slavery most of the plantations have fallen into decay, for the freed slaves are entirely wanting in industry. When, however, at a later period, it was mixed with sugar, it met with more approbation.
Tea and coffee are now largely cultivated in California, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia. In exchange, the cinchona tree abounds more now in India than in Peru, and the cacao or cocoa tree has been planted by thousands upon the southern slopes of the Himalayas and in Persia. On the other hand, the bison and the prong-buck are almost extinct in the west.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking