Note 2 — Maize—Cacao—Coprah, Etc.

The cultivation of cacao is an extremely risky and delicate business, as, often when the planterʼs 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 oneʼs 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 chocolate2 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 1½ 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 oʼclock tea.”