latitudes
11 deg. and 12 deg. N.

The cultivation of cacao is an extremely risky and delicate business,
as, often when the planter's hopes are about to be realized, a slight
storm will throw down the almost-ripened fruit in a day. A disease
sometimes attacks the roots and spreads through a plantation. It
would be imprudent, therefore, to devote one's time exclusively to
the cultivation of this product at the risk of almost instantaneous
ruin. Usually, the Philippine agriculturist rightly regards cacao
only as a useful adjunct to his other crops. In the aspect of a cacao
plantation there is nothing specially attractive. The tree itself
is not pretty. The natives who grow the fruit usually make their own
chocolate at home by roasting the beans over a slow fire, and after
separating them from their husks (like almond-skins), they pound
them with wet sugar, etc., into a paste, using a kind of rolling-pin
on a concave block of wood. The roasted beans should be made into
chocolate at once, as by exposure to the air they lose flavour. Small
quantities of cacao are sent to Spain, but the consumption in the
Colony, when made into chocolate [142] by adding sugar, vanilla,
cinnamon, etc., to counteract the natural bitterness of the bean,
is considerable. In making the paste, a large quantity of sugar is
added, varying from one-third of its weight to equal parts, whilst
one pod of vanilla is sufficient for 1 1/2 lbs. of cacao. Chocolate
is often adulterated with roasted rice and _Pili_ nuts. The roasted
_Pili_ nut alone has a very agreeable almond taste. As a beverage,
chocolate is in great favour with the Spaniards and half-castes and
the better class of natives. In every household of any pretensions
the afternoon caller is invited to "merendar con chocolate," which
corresponds to the English "5 o'clock tea."

The cacao-beans or kernels lie in a fruit something like a gherkin,
about 5 inches long and 3 inches in diameter, and of a dark reddish
colour when ripe. The tree bears its fruit on the main branches, or
on the trunk itself, but never on twigs or thin branches. The fruit
contains from 15 to 25 beans, in regular rows, with pulpy divisions
between them like a water-melon. The kernels are about the size,
shape, and colour of almonds, obtuse at one end, and contain a fatty
or oily matter to the extent of one-half their weight. In order to make
"soluble cocoa" as sold in Europe this fatty substance is extracted.

The beans ar