They saw us, and all of them, even the shy ones, waved us adieux. [Illustration: CARTING CACAO TO RAILWAY STATION, CEYLON.] [Illustration: THE CARENAGE, GRENADA.] CHAPTER V THE MANUFACTURE OF COCOA AND CHOCOLATE The Indians, from whom we borrow it, are not very nice in doing it; they roast the kernels in earthen pots, then free them from their skins, and afterwards crush and grind them between two stones, and so form cakes of it with their hands. _Natural History of Chocolate_, R. Brookes, 1730. _Early Methods in the Tropics._ As the cacao bean is grown in tropical countries, it is there that we must look for the first attempts at manufacturing from it a drink or a foodstuff. The primitive method of preparation was very simple, consisting in roasting the beans in a pot or on a shovel to develop their flavour, winnowing in the wind, and then rubbing the broken shelled beans between stones until quite fine. The curious thing is that on grinding the cacao bean in the heat of a tropical day we do not produce a powder but a paste. This is because half the cacao bean consists of a fat which is liquid at 90 deg. F., a temperature which is reached in the shade in tropical countries. This paste was then made into small rolls and put in a cool place to set. Thus was produced the primitive unsweetened drinking chocolate. This is the method, which Elizabethans, who ventured into the tangled forests of equatorial America, found in use; and this is the method they brought home to Europe. In the tropics these simple processes are followed to this day, but in Europe they have undergone many elaborations and refinements. If the reader will look at the illustration entitled "Women grinding chocolate," he will see how the brittle roasted bean is reduced to a paste in primitive manufacture. A stone, shaped like a rolling-pin, is being pushed to and fro over a concave slab, on which the smashed beans have already been reduced to a paste of a doughy consistency. [Illustration: EARLY FACTORY METHODS. Fig. 1 is a workman roasting the cacao in an iron kettle over a furnace. He has to stir the beans to keep them from burning. Fig. 2 is a person sifting and freeing the roasted kernels (which when broken into fragments are called "_nibs_") from their husks or shell. Fig. 3 shows a workman pounding the shell-free nibs in an iron mortar. Fig. 4 represents a workman grinding the nibs on a hard smooth stone with an iron roller. The grinding is performed over a chafing-dish of burning charcoal, as it is necessary, for ease of grinding, to keep the paste in a liquid condition.] _Early European Manufacture._ The conversion of these small scale operations into the early factory process is well shown in the plate which I reproduce above from _Arts and Sciences_, published in 1768. [Illustration: WOMEN GRINDING CHOCOLATE. From Squier "Nicaragua"]