Cultivation is the rule throughout Kameroon, with the exception of Doula, and the produce of the separate plantations, such as Victoria, Bibundi, and Moliwe, Bimbia, Debundscha and so forth, all of which belong to large Berlin and Hamburg companies, is influenced and differentiated by variations in the technique of preparation. There are smooth beans with blackish-brown shells, and others of a red-brown hue and shrivelled, some with traces of fruit pulp, and others again quite light-coloured, with occasional black specks resulting from a too thorough drying.
The chief gathering begins in September and ends in January. Exportation began in the year 1899 with 5 cwts. The produce in 1898 figured at 200 tons and it had in the year 1910 grown to 3,500 tons. Germany is of course the principal consumer, although England has since 1909 bought very much Kameroon cacao as St. Thomas.
Kongo is a bean resembling the finer St. Thomas, but smaller and often smoky. It comes on the market via Antwerp. Up to the present French Congo has only produced a few thousand hundredweights yearly, but the Belgian Congo Free State has managed to achieve an annual output of 900 tons towards the close of the last decade; and when this country takes the Gold Coast as model, perhaps Congo cacao will one day play an important rôle in the world of commerce.
St. Thomas, the small Portuguese island lying in the Gulf of Guinea, and almost on the Equator, produces a sort which enjoys immense popularity, and especially in Germany, which traces a fourth part of its consumption back to this island. The export figures are
| 1889 | 2,000 tons. |
| 1894 | 6,000 tons. |
| 1899 | 11,500 tons. |
| 1904 | 18,000 tons. |
| 1910 | 38,000 tons. |
These are estimates which make the Portuguese planter worthy of all respect. It is true that “Black ivory” has been utilised on a large scale, the exploiting of black labour having resulted in a boycotting of these St. Thomas sorts on the part of some English manufacturers, but less on account of harsh treatment on the plantations themselves as the manner of recruiting in Angola.
Fine Thomas is the description of those sorts which have been used in an unmixed condition owing to their indigestibility, but properly gathered and fermented. The inferior and slightly damaged cacaos picked out from these are called by the Portuguese planter “Escolas”, or assorted. Yet they do not come into commerce under this designation, being mostly used for making up sample collections which illustrate the difference between these and Fine Thomas. The latter is traded through Lisbon “On Approval of Sample
All the St. Thomas cacao trade passes through Lisbon; for the tariff regulations of the Portuguese government make direct connection between the island and the consuming land practically impossible. France indeed chooses the route via Madeira, unloading and reloading, to avoid the additional duties. The cacao is at Lisbon stored in the two great Custom-houses there, and prepared for despatch to the respective lands. Fine St. Thomas is reshipped in the original sacks.
The samples are offered under various marks, either the initials of the planter or the name of a plantation. We mention a few of the best known; U. B., D. V., R. O., “M. Valle Flor”, “Boa Entrada”, “Monte Café”, “Santa Catarina”, “Pinheira”, “Agua Izé”, “Colonia Acoriana”, “Queluz”, “Gue Gue”, “Rosema”, “Pedroma”, “Monte Macaco
The beans vary, as far as shell and kernel are concerned, according to the mode of preparation on the plantations and the structure of the soil from which they spring. Many which were formerly universally esteemed are now no longer preferred because the soil in the meantime has been worked out; and many are now described under different marks. Yet particular characteristics still continue; there are mild and strong sorts, smooth and shrivelled varieties which look as though they have been washed, and others black like the Cameroon bean. All are offered as Fine Thomas, and enjoy an immense popularity.