rom the higher branches without
injury to the tree. Men and women all carry cutlasses, the one
instrument needful for all work on the estate, serving not only for
reaping the lower pods, but for pruning and weeding, or "cutlassing,"
as the process of clearing away the weed and brush is called.

[Illustration--Drawing: GOULET AND WOODEN SPOON.]

[Illustration--Drawing: CUTLASSES.]

Gathering the pods is heavy work, always undertaken by men. The pods
are collected from beneath the trees and taken to a convenient heap,
if possible near to a running stream, where the workers can refill
their drinking-cups for the mid-day meal. Here women sit, with trays
formed of the broad banana leaves, on which the beans are placed as
they extract them from the pod with wooden spoons. The result of the
day's work, placed in panniers on donkey-back, is "crooked" down to
the cocoa-house, and that night remains in box-like bins, with
perforated sides and bottom, covered in with banana leaves. Every
twenty-four hours these bins are emptied into others, so that the
contents are thoroughly mixed, the process being continued for four
days or more, according to circumstances.

This is known as "sweating." Day by day the pulp becomes darker, as
fermentation sets in, and the temperature is raised to about 140 deg. F.
During fermentation a dark sour liquid runs away from the sweat-boxes,
which is, in fact, a very dilute acetic acid, but of no commercial
value. During the process of "sweating" the cotyledons of the
cocoa-bean, which are at first a purple colour and very compact in the
skin, lose their brightness for a duller brown, and expand the skin,
giving the bean a fuller shape. When dry, a properly cured bean should
crush between the finger and thumb.

[Illustration--Black and White Plate: Cacao Drying in the Sun, Maracas,
Trinidad.]

Finally the beans are turned on to a tray to dry in the sun. They are
still sticky, but of a brown, mahogany colour. Among them are pieces
of fibre and other "trash," as well as small, undersized beans, or
"balloons," as the nearly empty shell of an unformed bean is called.
While a man shovels the beans into a heap, a group of women, with
skirts kilted high, tread round the sides of the heap, separating the
beans that still hold together. Then the beans are passed on to be
spread in layers on trays in the full heat of the tropical sun, the
temperature being upwards of 140 deg. F.[11] When thus spread, the w