Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Father Gili Has Very Clearly Shown, From Two Passages In Torquemada
(Monarquia Indiana, Lib.
14) that the Mexicans prepared the infusion
cold, and that the Spaniards introduced the custom of preparing
chocolate by
Boiling water with the paste of cacao.) "He who has drunk
one cup," says the page of Fernando Cortez, "can travel a whole day
without any other food, especially in very hot climates; for chocolate
is by its nature cold and refreshing." We shall not subscribe to the
latter part of this assertion; but we shall soon have occasion, in our
voyage on the Orinoco, and our excursions towards the summit of the
Cordilleras, to celebrate the salutary properties of chocolate. It is
easily conveyed and readily employed: as an aliment it contains a
large quantity of nutritive and stimulating particles in a small
compass. It has been said with truth, that in the East, rice, gum, and
ghee (clarified butter), assist man in crossing the deserts; and so,
in the New World, chocolate and the flour of maize, have rendered
accessible to the traveller the table-lands of the Andes, and vast
uninhabited forests.
The cacao harvest is extremely variable. The tree vegetates with such
vigour that flowers spring out even from the roots, wherever the earth
leaves them uncovered. It suffers from the north-east winds, even when
they lower the temperature only a few degrees. The heavy showers that
fall irregularly after the rainy season, during the winter months,
from December to March, are also very hurtful to the cacao-tree. The
proprietor of a plantation of fifty thousand trees often loses the
value of more than four or five thousand piastres in cacao in one
hour. Great humidity is favourable to the tree only when it augments
progressively, and is for a long time uninterrupted. If, in the season
of drought, the leaves and the young fruit be wetted by a violent
shower, the fruit falls from the stem; for it appears that the vessels
which absorb water break from being rendered turgid. Besides, the
cacao-harvest is one of the most uncertain, on account of the fatal
effects of inclement seasons, and the great number of worms, insects,
birds, and quadrupeds,* (* Parrots, monkeys, agoutis, squirrels, and
stags.) which devour the pod of the cacao-tree; and this branch of
agriculture has the disadvantage of obliging the new planter to wait
eight or ten years for the fruit of his labours, and of yielding after
all an article of very difficult preservation.
The finest plantations of cacao are found in the province of Caracas,
along the coast, between Caravalleda and the mouth of the Rio Tocuyo,
in the valleys of Caucagua, Capaya, Curiepe, and Guapo; and in those
of Cupira, between cape Conare and cape Unare, near Aroa,
Barquesimeto, Guigue, and Uritucu. The cacao that grows on the banks
of the Uritucu, at the entrance of the llanos, in the jurisdiction of
San Sebastian de las Reyes, is considered to be of the finest quality.
Next to the cacao of Uritucu comes that of Guigue, of Caucagua, of
Capaya, and of Cupira. The merchants of Cadiz assign the first rank to
the cacao of Caracas, immediately after that of Socomusco; and its
price is generally from thirty to forty per cent higher than that of
Guayaquil.
It is only since the middle of the seventeenth century, when the
Dutch, tranquil possessors of the island of Curacoa, awakened, by
their smuggling, the agricultural industry of the inhabitants of the
neighbouring coasts, that cacao has become an object of exportation in
the province of Caracas. We are ignorant of everything that passed in
those countries before the establishment of the Biscay Company of
Guipuzcoa, in 1728. No precise statistical data have reached us: we
only know that the exportation of cacao from Caracas scarcely
amounted, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, to thirty
thousand fanegas a-year. From 1730 to 1748, the company sent to Spain
eight hundred and fifty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight
fanegas, which make, on an average, forty-seven thousand seven hundred
fanegas a-year; the price of the fanega fell, in 1732, to forty-five
piastres, when it had before kept at eighty piastres. In 1763 the
cultivation had so much augmented, that the exportation rose to eighty
thousand six hundred and fifty-nine fanegas.
In an official document, taken from the papers of the minister of
finance, the annual produce (la cosecha) of the province of Caracas is
estimated at a hundred and thirty-five thousand fanegas of cacao;
thirty-three thousand of which are for home consumption, ten thousand
for other Spanish colonies, seventy-seven thousand for the
mother-country, fifteen thousand for the illicit commerce with the
French, English, Dutch, and Danish colonies. From 1789 to 1793, the
importation of cacao from Caracas into Spain was, on an average,
seventy-seven thousand seven hundred and nineteen fanegas a-year, of
which sixty-five thousand seven hundred and sixty-six were consumed in
the country, and eleven thousand nine hundred and fifty-three exported
to France, Italy, and Germany.
The late wars have had much more fatal effects on the cacao trade of
Caracas than on that of Guayaquil. On account of the increase of
price, less cacao of the first quality has been consumed in Europe.
Instead of mixing, as was done formerly for common chocolate, one
quarter of the cacao of Caracas, with three-quarters of that of
Guayaquil, the latter has been employed pure in Spain. We must here
remark, that a great deal of cacao of an inferior quality, such as
that of Maranon, the Rio Negro, Honduras, and the island of St. Lucia,
bears the name, in commerce, of Guayaquil cacao. The exportation from
that port amounts only to sixty thousand fanegas; consequently it is
two-thirds less than that of the ports of the Capitania-General of
Caracas.
Though the plantations of cacao have augmented in the provinces of
Cumana, Barcelona, and Maracaybo, in proportion as they have
diminished in the province of Caracas, it is still believed that, in
general, this ancient branch of agricultural industry gradually
declines.
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