ave been at a discount just then, if
the silver value of the beans was no greater than when Thomas Candish
wrote in 1586: "These cacaos serve amongst them both for meat and
money ... 150 of them being as good as a Real of Plate"--about 6d. "A
bag," of unknown size, "was worth ten crowns." One of the storehouses
of Montezuma, the last of the old independent Mexican Chieftains,[18]
was found by the Spaniards to contain as much as 40,000 loads of this
precious commodity, in wicker baskets which six men could not grasp.

John Ogilby, writing in 1671 of the produce of America, says:

"But much more beneficial is the cacao, with which Fruit New
Spain drives a great Trade; nay, serves for Coin'd Money. When
they deliver a Parcel of Cacao, they tell them by five, thirty,
and a hundred. Their Charity to the Poor never exceeds above
one Cacao-nut. The chief Reason for which this Fruit is so
highly esteem'd, is for the Chocolate, which is made of the
same, without which the Inhabitants (being so us'd to it) are
not able to live. Before the Spaniards made themselves Masters
of Mexico, no other Drink was esteem'd but that of the Cacao;
none caring for Wine, notwithstanding the Soil produces Vines
everywhere in great Abundance of itself."

From contemporary travellers' records are to be gleaned many such
strange facts and stranger fancies regarding the precious bean and its
products, some of them extremely quaint and curious. Bancroft, for
instance, writing of the Maya races of the Pacific, tells us that
"before planting the seed they held a festival in honour of their
gods, Ekchuah, Chac, and Hobnil, who were their patron deities. To
solemnize it, they all went to the plantation of one of their number,
where they sacrificed a dog having a spot on its skin the colour of
cacao. They burned incense to their idols, after which they gave to
each of the officials a branch of the cacao plant." Palacio also tells
us that "the Pipiles, before beginning to plant, gathered all seeds in
small bowls, after performing certain rites with them before the idol,
among which was the drawing of blood from different parts of the body
with which to anoint the idol;" and, as Ximinez states, "the blood of
slain fowls was sprinkled over the land to be sown."

[Illustration--Drawing: [_From Bontekoe._]
A CACAO PLANTATION.
(_One of the earliest illustrations of this subject known, showing the
shade t