SORTING CACAO FOR SHIPMENT, GUAYAQUIL, ECUADOR.
An interesting experiment was made in 1912, when a protective association known as the Asociacion de Agricultores del Ecuador was legalised. This collects half a golden dollar on every hundred pounds of cacao, and by purchasing and storing cacao on its own account whenever prices fall below a reasonable minimum, attempts in the planter's interest to regulate the selling price of cacao. Unfortunately, as cacao tends to go mouldy when stored in a damp tropical climate, the Asociacion is not an unmixed blessing to the manufacturer and consumer.
BRAZIL.
Parâ and Bahia Cacaos.—Brazil has made marked progress in recent years, and has now overtaken Ecuador in quantity of produce; the cacao, however, is quite different from, and not as fine as, that from Guayaquil. The principal cacao comes from the State of Bahia, where the climate is ideal for its cultivation. Indeed so perfect are the natural conditions that formerly no care was taken in cacao production, and much of that gathered was wild and uncured. During the last decade there has been an improvement, and this would, doubtless, be more noteworthy if the means of transport were better, for at present the roads are bad and the railways inadequate; hence most of the cacao is brought down to the city of Bahia in canoes. Nevertheless, Bahia cacao is better fermented than the peculiar cacao of Pará, another important cacao from Brazil, which is appreciated by manufacturers on account of its mild flavour. Bahia exported in 1919 about 51,000 tons of cacao.
VENEZUELA.
Caracas, Carupano and Maracaibo Cacaos.—Venezuela has been called "the classic home of cacao," and had not the chief occupation of its inhabitants been revolution, it would have retained till now the important position it held a hundred years ago. It is in this enchanted country (it was at La Guayra in Caracas, as readers of Westward Ho! will remember, that Amyas found his long-sought Rose) that the finest cacao in the world is produced: the criollo, the bean with the golden-brown break. The tree which produces this is as delicate as the cacao is fine, and there is some danger that this superb cacao may die out—a tragedy which every connoisseur would wish to avert.
The Gordian estimates that Venezuela sent out from her three principal ports in 1919 some 16,226 tons of cacao.
THE WEST INDIES.
