As I have already said, the cacao tree is so delicate, and so sensitive to exposure, that great care is required to preserve it during the early periods of its growth. It commences to bear in seven or eight years, and continues productive for from thirty to fifty years. Capital and time are therefore required to start an estate; but once established, it is easily enlarged by annual additions. One man, it is calculated, is able to take care of a thousand trees, and harvest their crop. As a consequence, cacao estates are more valuable than those of sugar, indigo, cotton, or cochineal. A good plantation, with fair attention, will yield an average annual product of twenty ounces of cacao to every tree, which for one thousand trees equals twelve hundred pounds. At the usual market rate of twenty-five dollars the quintal, this would give three hundred dollars per annum to each thousand trees and each laborer. Owing to a variety of causes,—some of the most important are obvious enough from what I have already said,—this yield is seldom obtained in Nicaragua; but may be when order is fully restored, and labor and its wages properly organized. No means exist for obtaining even an approximate estimate of this branch of production in Nicaragua, and I shall not therefore attempt to present any statistics on the subject, but proceed with my narrative. I was delighted with the plantation, and after riding for an hour, until we got bewildered amongst the cross-walks and avenues, we began to thread our course back again. This was no easy matter, and we marched and counter-marched for a long time before we struck the right path. This will not appear so surprising when I say that the plantation contained ninety-five thousand trees, which are valued at one dollar each. Once in the main road, we paced slowly along on our return to the city, with that feeling of satisfaction which is always experienced after visiting an object that more than realizes the anticipation. I began to indulge the pleasing fancy that I might yet come to have a cacao plantation, which would be just the thing for a student or a man who loved his ease. It would require no expensive machinery, no long practice in manipulation of any kind; a boy could go through all the simple processes, and the whole might be left for a year or two without suffering the deterioration of sugar, rice, or cotton plantations. The summers in El Norte, and the winters here amidst the cacao and orange, with only a few days of steaming between,—of course the thing was feasible.