[Illustration--Black and White Plate: Labourer's Cottage, Cacao Estate,
Trinidad. (Bread Fruit and Bananas.)]

The natives of India work on very friendly terms with the coloured
people of the islands, the descendants of the old African slaves, and
the cocoa estate provides a healthy life for all, with a home amid
surroundings of the most congenial kind.[12]

[Illustration--Drawing: BASKETS OF CACAO ON PLANTAIN LEAVES.]

In other cocoa-growing countries processes vary somewhat. On the
larger estates artificial drying is slowly superseding the natural
method, for though the sun at its best is all that is needed, a
showery day will seriously interfere with the process, even though the
sliding roof is promptly pulled across to keep the rain from the
trays.

In Venezuela an old Spanish custom still prevails of sprinkling a fine
red earth over the beans in the process of drying; this plan has
little to recommend it, unless it be for the purpose of long storage
in warehouses in the tropics, when the "claying" may protect the bean
from mildew and preserve the aroma. In Ceylon it is usual to
thoroughly wash the beans after the process of fermentation, thus
removing all remains of the pulp, and rendering the shell more tender
and brittle. Such beans arrive on the market in a more or less broken
state, and it seems probable that they are more subject to
contamination owing to the thinness of the shell. The best "estate"
cocoa from Ceylon has a very bright, clear appearance, and commands a
high price on the London market; this cocoa is of the pure _criollo_
strain, light brown (pale burnt sienna) in colour.