The gathering of the fruits of one's labour is a pleasant task, which occurs generally only at rare intervals. Cacao is gathered the whole year round. There is, however, in most districts one principal harvest period, and a subsidiary harvest.
GATHERING CACAO PODS, TRINIDAD.
With cacao in the tropics, as with corn in England, the gathering of the harvest is a delight to lovers of the beautiful. It is a great charm of the cacao plantation that the trees are so closely planted that nowhere does the sunlight find between the foliage a space larger than a man's hand. After the universal glare outside, it seems dark under the cacao, although the ground is bright with dappled sunshine. You hear a noise of talking, of rustling leaves, and falling pods. You come upon a band of coolies or negroes. One near you carries a long bamboo—as long as a fishing rod—with a knife at the end. With a lithe movement he inserts it between the boughs, and, by giving it a sharp jerk, neatly cuts the stalk of a pod, which falls from the tree to the ground. Only the ripe pods must be picked. To do this, not only must the picker's aim be true, but he must also have a good eye for colour. Whether the pods be red or green, as soon as the colour begins to be tinted with yellow it is ripe for picking. This change occurs first along the furrows in the pod. Fewer unripe pods would be gathered if only one kind of pod were grown on one plantation. The confusion of kinds and colours which is often found makes sound judgment very difficult. That the men generally judge correctly the ripeness of pods high in the trees is something to wonder at. The pickers pass on, strewing the earth with ripe pods. They are followed by the graceful, dark-skinned girls, who gather one by one the fallen pods from the greenery, until their baskets are full. Sometimes a basketful is too heavy and the girl cannot comfortably lift it on to her head, but when one of the men has helped her to place it there, she carries it lightly enough. She trips through the trees, her bracelets jingling, and tumbles the pods on to the heap. Once one has seen a great heap of cacao pods it glows in one's memory: anything more rich, more daring in the way of colour one's eye is unlikely to light on. The artist, seeking only an æsthetic effect would be content with this for the consummation and would wish the pods to remain unbroken.
COLLECTING CACAO PODS INTO A HEAP PRIOR TO BREAKING.
Breaking and Extracting.
There are planters who believe that the product is improved by leaving the gathered pods several days before breaking; and they would follow the practice, but for the risk of losses by theft. Hence the pods are generally broken on the same day as they are gathered. The primitive methods of breaking with a club or by banging on a hard surface are happily little used. Masson of New York made pod-breaking machines, and Sir George Watt has recently invented an ingenious machine for squeezing the beans out of the pod, but at present the extraction is done almost universally by hand, either by men or women. A knife which would cut the husk of the pod and was so constructed that it could not injure the beans within, would be a useful invention. The human extractor has the advantage that he or she can distinguish the diseased, unripe or germinated beans and separate them from the good ones. Picture the men sitting round the heap of pods and, farther out, in a larger circle, twice as many girls with baskets. The man breaks the pod and the girls extract the beans. The man takes the pod in his left hand and gives it a sharp slash with a small cutlass, just cutting through the tough shell of the pod, but not into the beans inside; and then gives the blade, which he has embedded in the shell, a twisting jerk, so that the pod breaks in two with a crisp crack. The girls take the broken pods and scoop out the snow-like beans with a flat wooden spoon or a piece of rib-bone, the beans being pulled off the stringy core (or placenta) which holds them together. The beans are put preferably into baskets or, failing these, on to broad banana leaves, which are used as trays.