ROLLING CACAO, GOLD COAST.
Reproduced by permission of the Editor of "West Africa."
Dotted over the islands, here nestling on a mountain side, there overlooking some blue inlet of the sea, are more than two hundred plantations, or rocas, whose buildings look like islands in a green sea of cacao shrubs, above which rise the grey stems of such forest trees as have been left to afford shade.
CARRYING CACAO TO THE RAILWAY STATION, NSAWAM, GOLD COAST.
Here, not only have the cultivation, fermentation and drying of cacao been brought to the highest state of perfection, but the details of organisation—planters' homes, hospitals, cottages, drying sheds and the Decauville railways—are often models of their kind.
Intelligent and courteous, the planters make delightful hosts. At their homes, five thousand miles away from Europe, the visitor, who knows what it means to struggle with steaming, virgin forests, rank encroaching vegetation, deadly fevers, and the physical and mental inertia engendered by the tropics, will marvel at the courage and energy that have triumphed over such obstacles. Calculating from various estimates, each labourer in the islands appears to produce about 1,640 pounds of cacao yearly, and the average yield per cultivated acre is 480 pounds, or about 30 pounds more than that of Trinidad in 1898.
WAGON LOADS OF CACAO BEING TAKEN FROM MESSRS. CADBURY'S DEPOT TO THE BEACH, ACCRA.