cao into Europe,
tales almost too thrilling to be believed, of the intrigues
of the Spanish Court, and of celebrities who met and sipped
their chocolate in the parlours of the coffee and chocolate
houses so fashionable in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.

_Cocoa and Chocolate_ (Whymper).

On opening a cacao pod, it is seen to be full of beans surrounded by a
fruity pulp, and whilst the pulp is very pleasant to taste, the beans
themselves are uninviting, so that doubtless the beans were always
thrown away until ... someone tried roasting them. One pictures this
"someone," a pre-historic Aztec with swart skin, sniffing the aromatic
fume coming from the roasting beans, and thinking that beans which
smelled so appetising must be good to consume. The name of the man who
discovered the use of cacao must be written in some early chapter of the
history of man, but it is blurred and unreadable: all we know is that he
was an inhabitant of the New World and probably of Central America.

_Original Home of Cacao._

The corner of the earth where the cacao tree originally grew, and still
grows wild to-day, is the country watered by the mighty Amazon and the
Orinoco. This is the very region in which Orellano, the Spanish
adventurer, said that he had truly seen El Dorado, which he described as
a City of Gold, roofed with gold, and standing by a lake with golden
sands. In reality, El Dorado was nothing but a vision, a vision that for
a hundred years fascinated all manner of dreamers and adventurers from
Sir Walter Raleigh downwards, so that many braved great hardships in
search of it, groped through the forests where the cacao tree grew, and
returned to Europe feeling they had failed. To our eyes they were not
entirely unsuccessful, for whilst they failed to find a city of gold,
they discovered the home of the golden pod.

[Illustration: OLD DRAWING OF AN AMERICAN INDIAN; AT HIS FEET A
CHOCOLATE-CUP, CHOCOLATE-POT, AND CHOCOLATE WHISK OR "MOLINET."
(From _Traitez Nouveaux et Curieux du Cafe, du The, et du Chocolate_.
Dufour, 1693).]

_Montezuma--the First Great Patron of Chocolate._

When Columbus discovered the New World he brought back with him to
Europe many new and curious things, one of which was cacao. Some years
later, in 1519, the Spanish conquistador, Cortes, landed in Mexico,
marched into the interior and discovered to his surprise, not the huts
of savages, but a beautiful cit