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Page 25
[Illustration--Black and White Plate: Samoa: A New Clearing for Cacao.]
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 �10 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."
[Illustration--Drawing: A MEXICAN METATE, OR GRINDING STONE.]
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."
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