[Illustration--Drawing: [_From Bontekoe._]
A CACAO PLANTATION.
(_One of the earliest illustrations of this subject known, showing the
shade trees, and beans drying._)]

The idea that secret rites were necessary at the planting of cacao to
counteract their ignorance of its requirements was long current also
among the superstitious Spaniards, who similarly accounted for the
early failures of the English, as witness the following amusing
extract from a contribution to the _Harleian Miscellany_ in 1690:

"Cocoa is now a commodity to be regarded in our colonies,
though at first it was the principal invitation to the peopling
of Jamaica, for those walks the Spaniards left behind them
there, when we conquered it, produced such prodigious profit
with so little trouble that Sir Thomas Modiford and several
others set up their rests to grow wealthy therein, and fell to
planting much of it, which the Spanish slaves had always
foretold would never thrive, and so it happened: for, though it
promised fair and throve finely for five or six years, yet
still at that age, when so long hopes and cares had been wasted
upon it, withered and died away by some unaccountable cause,
though they imputed it to a black worm or grub, which they
found clinging to its roots.... And did it not almost
constantly die before, it would come into perfection in fifteen
years' growth and last till thirty, thereby becoming the most
profitable tree in the world, there having been £200 sterling
made in one year of an acre of it. But the old trees, being
gone by age and few new thriving, as the Spanish negroes
foretold, little or none now is produced worthy the care and