The Food of the Gods | Page 9

all work on the estate, serving not only for
reaping the lower pods, but for pruning and weeding, or "cutlassing," as
the process of clearing away the weed and brush is called.
[Illustration--Drawing: GOULET AND WOODEN SPOON.]
[Illustration--Drawing: CUTLASSES.]
Gathering the pods is heavy work, always undertaken by men. The
pods are collected from beneath the trees and taken to a convenient
heap, if possible near to a running stream, where the workers can refill
their drinking-cups for the mid-day meal. Here women sit, with trays
formed of the broad banana leaves, on which the beans are placed as
they extract them from the pod with wooden spoons. The result of the
day's work, placed in panniers on donkey-back, is "crooked" down to
the cocoa-house, and that night remains in box-like bins, with
perforated sides and bottom, covered in with banana leaves. Every
twenty-four hours these bins are emptied into others, so that the
contents are thoroughly mixed, the process being continued for four
days or more, according to circumstances.
This is known as "sweating." Day by day the pulp becomes darker, as
fermentation sets in, and the temperature is raised to about 140° F.
During fermentation a dark sour liquid runs away from the sweat-boxes,
which is, in fact, a very dilute acetic acid, but of no commercial value.
During the process of "sweating" the cotyledons of the cocoa-bean,
which are at first a purple colour and very compact in the skin, lose
their brightness for a duller brown, and expand the skin, giving the
bean a fuller shape. When dry, a properly cured bean should crush
between the finger and thumb.
[Illustration--Black and White Plate: Cacao Drying in the Sun, Maracas,
Trinidad.]
Finally the beans are turned on to a tray to dry in the sun. They are still
sticky, but of a brown, mahogany colour. Among them are pieces of
fibre and other "trash," as well as small, undersized beans, or

"balloons," as the nearly empty shell of an unformed bean is called.
While a man shovels the beans into a heap, a group of women, with
skirts kilted high, tread round the sides of the heap, separating the
beans that still hold together. Then the beans are passed on to be spread
in layers on trays in the full heat of the tropical sun, the temperature
being upwards of 140° F.[11] When thus spread, the women can
readily pick out the foreign matter and undersized beans. Two or three
days will suffice to dry them, after which they are put in bags for the
markets of the world, and will keep with but very slight loss of weight
or aroma for a year or more.
Between crops the labourers are employed in "cutlassing," pruning, and
cleaning the land and trees. Nearly all the work is in pleasant shade,
and none of it harder than the duties of a market gardener in our own
country; indeed, the work is less exacting, for daylight lasts at most but
thirteen hours, limiting the time that a man can see in the forest: ten
hours per day, with rests for meals, is the average time spent on the
estate. Wages are paid once a month, and a whole holiday follows
pay-day, when the stores in town are visited for needful supplies. Other
holidays are not infrequent, and between crops the slacker days give
ample time for the cultivation of private gardens.
Labourers from India are largely imported by the Government under
contract with the planters, and the strictest regulations are observed in
the matter of housing, medical aid, etc. At the expiration of the term of
contract (about six years) a free pass is granted to return to India, if
desired. Many, however, prefer to remain in their adopted home, and
become planters themselves, or continue to labour on the smaller
estates, which are generally worked by free labour, as the preparations
for contracted labour are expensive, and can only be undertaken on a
large scale.
[Illustration--Black and White Plate: Labourer's Cottage, Cacao Estate,
Trinidad. (Bread Fruit and Bananas.)]
The natives of India work on very friendly terms with the coloured
people of the islands, the descendants of the old African slaves, and the
cocoa estate provides a healthy life for all, with a home amid
surroundings of the most congenial kind.[12]
[Illustration--Drawing: BASKETS OF CACAO ON PLANTAIN
LEAVES.]

In other cocoa-growing countries processes vary somewhat. On the
larger estates artificial drying is slowly superseding the natural method,
for though the sun at its best is all that is needed, a showery day will
seriously interfere with the process, even though the sliding roof is
promptly pulled across to keep the rain from the trays.
In Venezuela an old Spanish custom still prevails of sprinkling a fine
red earth over the beans