Petty robberies.Small robberies occur very frequently, but they are committed—as an acquaintance, a man who had spent some time in the country, informed me one evening when I was telling him my troubles—only upon the property of new arrivals; old residents, he said, enjoyed a prescriptive freedom from such little inconveniences. I fancy some waggish native must have overheard our conversation, for early the next morning my friend, the old resident, sent to borrow chocolate, biscuits, and eggs of me, as his larder and his hen-house had been rifled during the night.
Daraga market.Monday and Friday evenings were the Daraga market nights, and in fine weather always afforded a pretty sight. The women, neatly and cleanly clad, sat in long rows and offered their provisions for sale by the light of hundreds of torches; and, when the business was over, the slopes of the mountains were studded all over with flickering little points of brightness proceeding from the torches carried by the homeward-bound market women. Besides eatables, many had silks and stuffs woven from the fibers of the pine-apple and the banana for sale. These goods they carried on their heads; and I noticed that all the younger women were accompanied by their sweethearts, who relieved them of their burdens.
[1] From 36,000,000 to 40,000,000 lbs. of cacao are consumed in Europe annually; of which quantity nearly a third goes to France, whose consumption of it between 1853 and 1866 has more than doubled. In the former year it amounted to 6,215,000 lbs., in the latter to 12,973,534 lbs. Venezuela sends the finest cacaos to the European market, those of Porto Cabello and Caracas. That of Caracas is the dearest and the best, and is of four kinds: Chuao, Ghoroni, O’Cumar, and Rio Chico. England consumes the cacao grown in its own colonies, although the duty (1d per lb.) is the same for all descriptions. Spain, the principal consumer, imports its supplies from Cuba, Porto Rico, Ecuador, Mexico, and Trinidad. Several large and important plantations have recently been established by Frenchmen in Nicaragua. The cacao beans of Soconusco (Central America) and Esmeralda (Ecuador) are more highly esteemed than the finest of the Venezuela sorts; but they are scarcely ever used in the Philippines, and cannot be said to form part of their commerce. Germany contents itself with the inferior kinds. Guayaquil cacao, which is only half the price of Caracas, is more popular amongst the Germans than all the other varieties together.
[2] C. Scherzer, in his work on Central America, gives the cacao-tree an existence of twenty years, and says that each tree annually produces from 15 to 20 ounces of cacao. 1,000 plants will produce 1,250 lbs. of cacao, worth $250; so that the annual produce of a single tree is worth a quarter of a dollar. Mitscherlich says that from 4 to 6 lbs. of raw beans is an average produce. A liter of dried cacao beans weighs 630 grains; of picked and roasted, 610 grains.
[3] In 1727 a hurricane destroyed at a single blast the important cacao plantation of Martinique, which had been created by long years of extraordinary care. The same thing happened at Trinidad.—Mitscherlich.
[4] F. Engel mentions a disease (mancha) which attacks the tree in America, beginning by destroying its roots. The tree soon dies, and the disease spreads so rapidly that whole groves of cacao-trees utterly perish and are turned into pastures for cattle. Even in the most favored localities, after a long season of prosperity, thousands of trees are destroyed in a single night by this disease, just as the harvest is about to take place. An almost equally dangerous foe to cultivation is a moth whose larva entirely destroys the ripe cacao beans; and which only cold and wind will kill. Humboldt mentions that cacao beans which have been transported over the chilly passes of the Cordilleras are never attacked by this pest.
[5] G. Bornoulli quotes altogether eighteen kinds; of which he mentions only one as generally in use in the Philippines.
[6] Pili is very common in South Luzon, Samar, and Leyte; it is to be found in almost every village. Its fruit, which is almost of the size of an ordinary plum but not so round, contains a hard stone, the raw kernel of which is steeped in syrup and candied in the same manner as the kernel of the sweet pine, which it resembles in flavor. The large trees with fruit on them, “about the size of almonds and looking like sweet-pine kernels,” which Pigafetta saw at Jomonjol were doubtless pili-trees. An oil is expressed from the kernels much resembling sweet almond oil. If incisions are made in the stems of the trees, an abundant pleasant-smelling white resin flows from them, which is largely used in the Philippines to calk ships with. It also has a great reputation as an anti-rheumatic plaster. It is twenty years since it was first exported to Europe; and the first consignees made large profits, as the resin, which was worth scarcely anything in the Philippines, became very popular and was much sought in Europe.
[7] The general name for the beverage was Cacahoa-atl (cacao water). Chocolatl was the term given to a particular kind. F. Hernandez found four kinds of cacao in use among the Axtecs, and he describes four varieties of drinks that were prepared from them. The third was called chocolatl, and apparently was prepared as follows:—Equal quantities of the kernels of the pochotl (Bombaz ceiba) and cacahoatl (cacao) trees were finely ground, and heated in an earthen vessel, and all the grease removed as it rose to the surface. Maize, crushed and soaked, was added to it, and a beverage prepared from the mixture; to which the oily parts that had been skimmed off the top were restored, and the whole was drunk hot.