Cocoa And Chocolate
The Tree, The Bean The Beverage

84 THE COCOA AND CHOCOLATE INDUSTRY Transport to the Shore. The conveying of cacao to the point of embarkation is a subject on which it is difficult to generalise, as will be seen by a brief con-sideration of the methods of the five principal producing countries, the Gold Coast, Brazil, Ecuador, Trinidad and San Thomé. In the more remote parts of the Gold Coast the primitive method of head loads is still used to convey the cacao to road or rail. The usual head load is 60 Ibs., but the native easily carries a 140-lb. bag of cacao for many miles. The noisy and picturesque use of the palm-oil barrel for the transport of larger quantities, once so common, is now rapidly becoming a curiosity ; occasionally, however, one may still see half a ton of cacao in a huge barrel being trundled by two or three men down the ways to the coast. In the last few years head-porterage and barrel-rolling have been largely displaced on the Gold Coast by the use of motor vehicles, which in 1922 numbered 2,000 in Coomassie and 4,000 in Accra. In Brazil the problem of transport is complicated by the liability of the vast region round the Amazon to inundation when this mighty river is in flood, and much of the cacao is brought down the water-ways in canoes. In Ecuador, barges, motor launches and rafts are used for the same purpose. “ One may see 60 rafts fastened together, three abreast, with a family hut built upon the central point and a couple of men poling down-stream, while a few others attend to the cacao beans drying on waterproof sheets in the sun.”1 In Trinidad one sees the more commonplace use of mules and vehicles for conveying the cacao to the nearest railway station. San Thomé is advanced in the matter of transport, light railways running right into the plantations. There are few countries which would not profit by the 1 The Confectioners' Union, p. 2803 (1920).