of Rio Janeiro, but it is not to be met with farther south than this. The part of Florida which borders the Gulf of Mexico and the southern part of Louisiana mark the northerly limit of its natural growth.[1] A traveller in Louisiana in 1796 speaks of the cacao-tree among others as "covering with delightful shade the shores of the Mississippi," and on the banks of the Alatamaha in Georgia, but it is not cultivated so far north.
At the present day the West India Islands rival the South American Continent in providing cocoa from the New World. Trinidad has for more than a century deservedly claimed to be the first of these cocoa-producing islands. As far back as the sixteenth century the Spaniards who first colonized the island were interested in the cultivation of cacao. In the year 1780 a French gentleman residing in the neighbouring island of Grenada visited Trinidad, and gave such a glowing account of its fertility
