This is the best kind, though not the most productive; it is largely
planted in Venezuela, Columbia and Ceylon, and produces a bean light
in colour and delicate in flavour. The _forastero_ ("foreign") pod is
long and regular in shape, deeply furrowed, and generally of a rough
surface. The _calabacilla_ ("little calabash") is smooth and round,
like the fruit after which it is named. All varieties are seen in
bearing with red, yellow, purple, and sometimes green pods, the colour
not being necessarily an indication of ripeness.

[Illustration--Black and White Plate: Varieties of the Cacao.]

On breaking open the pod, the beans are seen clinging in a cluster
round a central fibre, the whole embedded in a white sticky pulp,
through which the red skin of the cacao-bean shows a delicate pink.
The pulp has the taste of acetic acid, refreshing in a hot climate,
but soon dries if exposed to the sun and air. The pod or husk is of a
porous, woody nature, from a quarter to half an inch thick, which,
when thrown aside on warm moist soil, rots in a day or two.

Much has been written of life on a cocoa estate; and all who have
enjoyed the proverbial hospitality of a West Indian or Ceylon planter,
highly praise the conditions of their life. The description of an
estate in the northern hills of Trinidad will serve as an example. The
other industry of this island is sugar, in cultivating which the
coloured labourers work in the broiling sun, as near to the steaming
lagoon as they may in safety venture. Later on in the season the long
rows between the stifling canes have to be hoed; then, when the time
of "crop" arrives, the huge mills in the _usine_ are set in motion,
and for the longest possible hours of daylight the workers are in the
field, loading mule-cart or light railway with massive canes. In the
yard around the crushing-mills the shouting drivers bring their
mule-teams to the mouth of the hopper, and the canes are bundled into
the crushing rollers with lightning speed. The mills run on into the
night, and the hours of sleep are only those demanded by stern
necessity, until the crop is safely reaped and the last load of canes
reduced to shredded _megass_ and dripping syrup.

But upon the cocoa estate there is lasting peace. From the railway on
the plain we climb the long valley, our strong-boned mule or lithe
Spanish horse taking the long slopes at a pleasant amble, standing to
cool in the ford of the river we cross and re-cro