"Thousands and thousands of cocoanuts, for one thing," said the Senhor. "It is a fortune for a family to have a cocoa plantation, for the trees produce from fifty to eighty years, and need little attention after the first year or two. They are very easy to raise. After planting, the weeds are kept away from the trees, and during the first year, banana plants are grown between the rows to shade the young trees. The fourth year the first crop is gathered and the trees produce two hundred clusters of fruit with thirty or forty nuts each. People net about sixty thousand dollars a year from a plantation of fifty thousand trees."
"It must pay to raise cocoanuts at that rate," said Affonzo. "Does manaioca pay as well?"
"Not quite, but it is about as easy to raise. Everyone has to have manaioca. The rich use if for puddings and desserts in the form of tapioca, while the poor people use the fariulia de manaioca[10] as their chief food. It also makes good starch, for the roots ground up in water deposit their starch as a fine white powder.
"A farm of twelve acres belonging to a friend of mine and planted with forty thousand plants produces eighty thousand pounds of tapioca, which at the lowest price brings two thousand four hundred and twenty-five dollars."
"The children are growing to be regular little encyclopedias," said the Senhora. "They must go to bed now, or I am afraid their brains will burst with so much knowledge."
"Not much danger of that," laughed the Senhor. "Most of it goes in at one ear and comes out the other," but Lola and Affonzo exclaimed indignantly, "Oh, no, papa, indeed it does not."
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Flag bearers.
[10] Tapioca meal.