Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/62

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56
PRODUCTIONS OF THE COUNTRY.

on the money invested, but as he has no guard upon the Indian servants he cannot tell how much they receive, and is probably cheated out of four-fifths of the actual proceeds of the sales.

Señor Canedo, who has traveled in the United States, and has some excellent practical ideas, coupled with a degree of patriotism which led him to fight valiantly against the French, coming out of the war with numerous honorable wounds, accompanied us, and gave us much valuable information in regard to the country and its products. He told us that the coffee we saw was of the finest variety grown in Colima. This coffee readily finds sale at home, and except as a curiosity, is seldom sent abroad. The choicest berries picked out by hand, sell at the fancy price of one dollar and twenty-five cents in coin, and the ordinary berries, really quite as good for family use, at twenty-five cents. If he could be sure of getting even twenty cents per pound net, in San Francisco, he would undertake to furnish any amount in a few years. The berry is round and white, and the flavor equal if not actually superior to that of Mocha. Only about 40,000 or 50,000 pounds are produced in Colima annually, but the amount could be increased indefinitely. Cocoa-nut oil, produced from the small round cocoa-nut, called "Cochita" about the size of a hickory-nut, not the ordinary cocoa-nut, is also produced in considerable quantity. At Manzanillo it is worth about seventeen dollars, coin, per barrel.

Of tropical fruit, Colima—the State at large—is able to raise unlimited amounts, and with good roads to Manzanillo, and a foreign market, an immense trade might soon be built up. Cacao—pronounced ka-kow, not cocoa—or the chocolate bean is produced all over