In their tombs, chocolate flavoured with vanilla was placed, in order to provide the ghost with sufficient sustenance for his or her aerial flight to the Land of the Sun. Columbus brought home some cocoa on his return from his first voyage. The Jesuit fathers in Mexico greatly helped in developing the plantation of cocoa in the days of the Spaniards. At present the largest amount comes from Ecuador, which produces about 50,000,000 pounds weight. It is a small tree, twenty to thirty feet high, growing in the warm, moist, and sheltered forests of Central and South America. It has a large fruit, within which are the numerous cocoa beans, "nibs," or seeds. The tree does not bear until it is five years old. The fermentation and drying of the beans require some care. [Illustration: _Stereo Copyright, Underwood & Underwood_ _London & New York_ A TOBACCO PLANTATION IN CUBA] Chocolate is made from the powdered cocoa mixed with sugar and other materials. Chocolate, like tea and coffee, depends for its effect on an extremely powerful drug, _theine_ or _caffeine_, of which it contains minute proportions. There are very few other plants known which possess this powerful substance. Amongst these is the Kola nut, which is everywhere regularly employed in West Africa. On the way up to the barracks at Freetown, Sierra Leone, natives were always to be seen seated by the roadside; they sold kola nuts to the soldiers, who were thereby enabled to walk steadily and uprightly past the sentry, and to return his challenge in a clearly articulate voice, although they might previously have been somewhat injudiciously convivial in the town. This kola is one of the very strongest nerve tonics; under its influence men can endure severe physical and mental strain. Like the others, however, a depressing reaction inevitably follows, accompanied by insomnia, headache, and other evil effects. When one comes to ask, Why do those few plants out of all the vast multitude of the vegetable world possess such extraordinary virtues? it is difficult to find an answer. Possibly some obscure insect or fungus enemy finds _caffeine_ poisonous. Nor can one find any reason for the curious properties developed in the Tobacco leaf by fermentation, except a possible protection to the leaf from the attacks of insects. No doubt the leaf, even in its natural state, would be too strong for them. Tobacco is a native of Central America. The name _Nicotiana tabacum_ is derived (the first) from a certain Jean Nicot, Ambassador to the King of Portugal, and the second from the Haytian name for a pipe. On Columbus's voyage in 1492 the use of tobacco was noted. The story of Sir Walter Raleigh's servant, who threw a bucket of water over his master when the latter was smoking a pipe, is not supported by much evidence, but it seems to be probable that Sir Walter did smoke his pipe on the way to the scaffold.