"N.B.—The curious may be supplied with this superfine chocolate, that exceeds the finest sold by other makers, plain at 6s., with vanillos at 7s. To be sold for ready money only at Mr. Churchman's Chocolate Warehouse, at Mr. John Young's, in St. Paul's Churchyard, London, A.D. 1732."

The opportunities of increasing the revenue from the growing favourite were not lost sight of, and till 1820 its spread was checked by a duty of 1s. 6d. a pound, collected by the sale of stamped wrappers for each pound, half-pound, or quarter-pound, "neither more nor less," just as in the case of patent medicines at present.

In the reign of George III. the duty on colonial cocoa was raised to 1s. 10d. a pound, that on such as the East India Company imported to 2s., and that on all other sources of supply to 3s. In the early years of the last century the cocoa imported from any country not a British possession was charged no less than 5s. 10d. a pound as excise, with an extra Custom's duty of from 2 1/2d. to 4 3/4d. on entry for home consumption. This restrictive tariff was by degrees relaxed, but it is only since 1853 that the duty has been reduced to 2d. a pound on the manufactured article, or 1d. a pound on the raw material.

While the heavy duties were in force, all houses in which the manufacture or sale of cocoa was carried on were compelled to have the fact stated over their doors, under penalty of L200 from the dealer having more than six pounds in his possession (who had to be licensed), and L100 from the customer encouraging the illicit trade. No less than L500 as fine and twelve months in the county gaol were inflicted for counterfeiting the stamp or selling chocolate without a stamp. To prevent evasion by selling the drink ready made, it was enacted under George I., whose physicians were extolling its medicinal virtues, that

"Notice shall be given by those who make chocolate for private families, and not for sale, three days before it is begun to be made, specifying the quantity, etc., and within three days after it is finished the person for whom it is made shall enter the whole quantity on oath, and have it duly stamped."

Nothing is more eloquent of the growing favour in which cocoa is held in this country, as its real value becomes more generally appreciated, than the remarkable progressive increase of the quantities imported during recent years, as will be seen from the table appended. These quantities doubled between 1880 and 1890, and have since more than doubled again.

TABLE SHOWING THE QUANTITIES OF CACAO CLEARED FOR HOME CONSUMPTION SINCE 1880.

lbs. 1880 10,556,159 1881 10,897,795 1882 11,996,853 1883 12,868,170 1884 13,976,891 1885 14,595,168 1886 15,165,714 1887 15,873,698 1888 18,227,017 1889 18,464,164 1890 20,224,175 1891 21,599,860 1892 20,797,283 1893 20,874,995 1894 22,441,048 1895 24,484,502 1896 24,523,428 1897 27,852,152 1898 32,087,084 1899 34,013,812 1900 37,829,326 1901 42,353,724 1902 45,643,784

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Not an "Emperor," as reported by his conquerors.

[19] See Appendix III.



V. ITS SOURCES AND VARIETIES.



Guayaquil, in the republic of Ecuador, on the west coast of South America, produces the largest output in the world. This cacao has a bold bean and a fine flavour, and is rich in theobromine; it is much valued on the market, and its strength and character render it indispensable to the manufacturer.

The neighbouring countries of Columbia and Venezuela, facing the Caribbean Sea, have for centuries grown cacao of excellent quality. The criollo (creole) bean is generally used as seed, and for it high prices are obtained. Owing, however, to the unsettled state of the republics and their unstable governments, its cultivation has gone back rather than forward during the past decade. With better administration and settled peace, great developments might easily be achieved. The British Royal Mail Steam Packet Company provides a good fortnightly service to England.

In early times the Jesuit missionaries encouraged the natives to form small plantations on the borders of the river Orinoco, and Father Gumilla, in his "History of the Orinoco," says: "I have seen in these plains forests of wild cacao-trees, laden with bunches of pods, supplying food to an infinite multitude of monkeys, squirrels, parrots, and other animals."

The name of "Soconosco" cocoa is still a guarantee of excellent quality. This district in Guatemala was in bygone days so noted for its cacao that the whole crop was monopolized for the use of the Spanish Court. In Central America, as in other countries, the Spaniards gathered more solid riches from the cacao than from the gold mines they hoped to discover.



British and Dutch Guiana produced but little cacao as long as sugar realized high prices, but in comparatively recent years it has been more extensively planted, and the crops from the lowlands at the mouths of the great South American rivers have been very heavy.

In French Guiana cacao was scarcely cultivated until about 1734, when a forest of it was discovered on a branch of the Yari, which flows into the Amazon. From this forest seeds were gathered, and plantations were laid out in Cayenne.

The cacao of Para in Brazil differs from all other growths; the bean is much smaller and rounder, and is elongated, but when well cured it is mild, and has a very pleasant flavour, highly valued by manufacturers. Bahia produces large quantities of cacao, formerly of an inferior quality, owing to careless cultivation and indiscriminate mixing of all that was brought from the interior, some of it wild and uncured. But now this state of things is being improved, and the good quality of "fermented" Bahian cacao is fully recognised.

A little cacao is grown in the low-lying parts of Rio Janeiro, but it is not to be met with further south than this. The part of Florida which borders the Gulf of Mexico and the southern part of Louisiana mark the northerly limit of its natural growth.[20] A traveller in Louisiana in 1796 speaks of the cacao-tree among others as "covering with delightful shade the shores of the Mississippi," and on the banks of the Alatamaha in Georgia, but it is not cultivated so far north.

At the present day the West India Islands rival the South American Continent in providing cocoa from the New World. Trinidad has for more than a century deservedly claimed to be the first of these cocoa-producing islands. As far back as the sixteenth century the Spaniards who first colonized the island were interested in the cultivation of cacao. In the year 1780 a French gentleman residing in the neighbouring island of Grenada visited Trinidad, and gave such a glowing account of its fertility that agriculturists from France and elsewhere flocked to the colony, and ever since this date it has maintained a high standard of agricultural advance. The names of the cacao estates at the present day are nearly all Spanish or French, and throughout the British occupation of more than a hundred years the old families have in many cases held the same lands.[21]



The oldest estates in the island lie in the northern valleys of Santz Cruz, Maracas, and Arima; but cultivation has been considerably extended in the Montserrat and Naparima districts, and more recently in almost every part of the island reached by the extension of the railway and the coasting steamboat. The Trinidad bean is the largest and finest flavoured, and commands a higher price on the market than any other from the West Indies.



Next in importance to Trinidad is the little island of Grenada; here cacao is the staple industry, the sugar estates that once lined the shores having entirely disappeared. Grenada cacao is smaller than that of Trinidad, possibly on account of the different method of planting described in a previous chapter, but the flavour of the bean is exceedingly good and regular, and the crop is bought up eagerly on the British and American markets. The other West Indian islands producing cocoa are Jamaica and Dominica, where its cultivation is reviving; also St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Tobago, and Montserrat, each of which have a few plantations; those in St. Vincent suffered severely by the recent hurricane. The French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique supply exclusively to the port of Havre; the cocoa from San Domingo is of a somewhat inferior quality. Cuba will probably considerably extend its output under American rule.



In the Eastern Hemisphere by far the largest supplies come from the small islands of St. Thome and Principe, in the Gulf of Guinea, belonging to the Portuguese. These have in recent years proved especially adapted for the growth of the cacao, and the exports, especially from the island of St. Thome, are very large; most of the crop finds its way to European markets, transhipping at Lisbon. There is little cacao grown in the mainland African colonies, though the German Government offers special inducements in the Kameruns; no British African colony grows it to any extent. Fernando Po sends supplies to Spain, and occasionally on the London market strange packages made of rough cowhide stitched with leather thongs are seen, containing beans from Madagascar.



Further east are the plantations of Ceylon. In the hill districts, of which Matale is the centre, are many estates, some in joint cultivation of tea and cocoa. The output from this colony is at the present time nearly stationary. The Dutch East Indian produce is almost exclusively shipped to Amsterdam.



In the preceding pages extracts have frequently been culled from writers of the past: in the literature of the present day Charles Kingsley's graphic account of Trinidad and its cacao and sugar plantations in "At Last" should be read in extenso. Another very interesting episode of modern date is the introduction of the cacao into the Samoan Islands in the Pacific by Robert Louis Stevenson. Writing to Sidney Colvin, on December 7, 1891, in one of his "Vailima Letters," he says:

"When I was filling baskets all Saturday, in my dull, mulish way, perhaps the slowest worker there, surely the most particular, and the only one that never looked up or knocked off, I could not but think I should have been sent on exhibition as an example to young literary men. 'Here is how to learn to write' might be the motto. You should have seen us; the veranda was like an Irish bog, our hands and faces were bedaubed with soil, and Faauma was supposed to have struck the right note when she remarked (a propos of nothing), 'Too much eleele (soil) for me.' The cacao, you must understand, has to be planted at first in baskets of plaited cocoa-leaf.[22] From four to ten natives were plaiting these in the wood-shed. Four boys were digging up soil and bringing it by the boxful to the veranda. Lloyd and I and Belle, and sometimes S. (who came to bear a hand), were filling the baskets, removing stones and lumps of clay; Austin and Faauma carried them when full to Fanny, who planted a seed in each, and then set them, packed close, in the corners of the veranda. From 12 on Friday till 5 p.m. on Saturday we planted the first 1,500, and more than 700 of a second lot. You cannot dream how filthy we were, and we were all properly tired."[23]



Three years later he records:

"I have been forbidden to work, and have been instead doing my two or three hours in the plantation every morning. I only wish somebody would pay me L10 a day for taking care of cacao, and I could leave literature to others."

Cacao cultivation in this island of Upolu has since that date developed wonderfully, and is attracting much attention, the first produce having been sold in Hamburg at a very high price. The consular report on Samoa published in February, 1903, states that "the mainstay of Samoa is cocoa," and it will be interesting to follow the progress of an industry of which the versatile Scotchman was an early pioneer.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] Florida even boasts a town of the name of Cocoa, but inquiries on the spot have failed to discover that any attempt was ever made to cultivate the plant there.

[21] Two of the coloured plates in this volume are reproductions of pictures by members of one of the oldest French families in the island, painted on their cocoa estate in the beautiful valley of Santa Cruz.

[22] Leaf of the coco-nut palm.

[23] See plates facing pp. 27 and 29.



APPENDIX I.

ANCIENT MANUFACTURE OF COCOA.

Most of the operations described are only the performance on a large scale by modern machinery of those employed by the Mexicans, and by those who learned from them, of whom we read:

"For this purpose they have a broad, smooth stone, well polished or glazed very hard, and being made fit in all respects for their use, they grind the cacaos thereon very small, and when they have so done, they have another broad stone ready, under which they keep a gentle fire.

"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."

A later writer remarks of this process:

"The Indians, from whom we borrow it, are not very nice in doing it; they roast the kernels in earthen pots, then free them from their skins, and afterwards crush and grind them between two stones, and so form cakes of it with their hands."



And, further on, in speaking of the Spaniards' mode of preparation, he says:

"They put them (the kernels) into a large mortar to reduce them to a gross powder, which they afterwards grind upon a stone. They make choice of a stone which naturally resists the fire, from sixteen to eighteen inches broad, and about twenty-seven or thirty long and three in thickness, and hollowed in the middle about one inch and a half deep. Under this they place a pan of coals to heat the stone, so that the heat makes it easy for the iron roller to make it so fine as to leave neither lump nor the least hardness."

At the present day, when the beans are plentiful on the cacao estates, but no machines for manufacture exist, the planters prepare a palatable drink by roasting the beans on a moving shovel or pan over the open fire, husking them by the time-honoured plan of tossing in the breeze, and grinding out on a flat stone in much the same manner as did the old Spaniards. The writer has even seen a little tobacco-press ingeniously adapted for the purpose of extracting the butter, the invention of Mr. J.H. Hart, of the Trinidad Botanical Gardens, a gentleman who has done much in the direction of investigating the best cacao for seed, and the most favourable methods of cultivation.



APPENDIX II.

BOURNVILLE WORKS SUGGESTION SCHEME.

OBJECTS.

December, 1902.

The objects in view are:

1. To encourage our employes to make all the suggestions they can for the mutual welfare of the business and everyone connected with it. Even the smallest suggestion may be of value.

2. To enable those in our employ to share in the benefit of the suggestions they make, and to receive personal recognition for them.

3. To insure harmonious relations between all sections of the work.

PRIZES.

Prizes of the undermentioned values will be given half-yearly for suggestions meriting reward:

MEN'S DEPARTMENTS.—One of L10; two of L5; two of L2 10s.; ten of L1; fifteen of 10s.; thirty of 5s. GIRLS' DEPARTMENTS.—One of L5; two of L2; eight of L1; fifteen of 10s.; thirty of 5s.

The following list will indicate on what lines suggestions may be made:

1. Comfort, safety, or health of employes.

2. Means by which waste of material may be avoided.

3. Saving of time or expense.

4. Improvements in machinery or in methods of working.

5. Introduction of new goods, or new ideas.

6. Calling attention to any existing defects.

7. Suggestions affecting athletic and other clubs and societies, libraries, magazine, etc.

8. Any suggestion not included in the above list will be welcomed.

REGULATIONS.

Everyone, including foremen and forewomen, is encouraged to make suggestions which, if of value, will be eligible for the prizes mentioned above (excepting those sent in by foremen and forewomen).

Suggestions should be written on or attached to the forms which will be found on each box, the boxes being fixed in the various departments, also in the entrance lodges, dining-rooms, and recreation grounds. Suggestions can be placed in any of these.

It is imperative that all particulars at head of form, which will bear a distinctive number, should be carefully filled in. If this is not complied with no notice will be taken of suggestions. Forms may be taken from the book and filled up at home.

All suggestions will be acknowledged by a notice posted on the boards once a week, giving a list of the printed numbers on the suggestion forms received for consideration.

Should any number not appear in this list a communication should at once be sent to the Secretary.

Those who have left the employ of the firm are entitled to prizes for any suggestions made whilst they were here, unless they should leave through misconduct.

The suggestions are considered weekly by the committees with a member of the firm, and are dealt with in the order in which they are received. They are finally judged by the firm at the end of May and November, and prizes distributed before the summer holidays and at the Christmas gathering.

Every effort is made by the committees to keep the names of the suggestors strictly private.



APPENDIX III.

THE EARLY COCOA HOUSES.

At No. 64, St. James's Street is the "Cocoa Tree Club." In the reign of Queen Anne there was a famous chocolate-house known as the "Cocoa Tree," a favourite sign to mark that new and fashionable beverage. Its frequenters were Tories of the strictest school. De Foe tells us in his "Journey through England," that "a Whig will no more go to the 'Cocoa Tree' ... than a Tory will be seen at the coffee-house of St. James's." In course of time the "Cocoa Tree" developed into a gaming-house and a club.

As a club, the "Cocoa Tree" did not cease to keep up its reputation for high play. Although the present establishment bearing the name dates its existence only from the year 1853, the old chocolate-house was probably converted into a club as far back as the middle of the last century. Lord Byron was a member of this club, and so was Gibbon, the historian.

—From "Old and New London," Cassell & Co.

NOTE.

Reference in detail to the numerous authorities who have been laid under contribution for this brochure would be out of place in so popular a compilation, but the writer desires to express his special indebtedness to "Cocoa: All about It" by "Historicas," not only for facts, but also for some of his illustrations. To Messrs. Cadbury, too, he is indebted for permission to use several of the illustrations, as well as for much valuable information.

THE END