Gathering cacao pods - one of Costa Rica's most valuable products - near Port Limon.
Underwood & Underwood
Category
Photographs
Date
1890 - 1910
Materials
Card
Measurements
Card size 88 x 178 mm
Order this imageCollection
Fox Talbot Museum, Wiltshire
NT 1520668.15
Summary
An albumen print stereograph depicting gathering cacao pods - one of Costa Rica's most valuable products - near Port Limon. The print is mounted on stiff, curved, grey card with rounded corners. The images have arched tops and square bottoms. Recto: Printed in black in on the right lower margin: 6448 Gathering cacao pods - one of Costa Rica's most valuable products - near Port Limon. Copyright 1904 by Underwood & Underwood. In the left and margin, printed in italic print in black ink: "Underwood and Underwood Publishers New York, London, Toronto - Canada, Ottawa - Kansas. In the right hand margin: "Works and Studios Arlington, N.J., Westwood, N.J Verso: 6448 The immense demand for chocolate, cocoa and the oil ("cocoa butter") extracted from cacao beans makes a typical grove like this one on the Isthimus a very valuable piece of property. The trees grow from fifteen to twenty-five feet tall and are carefully cultivated; intelligent farming has increased their natural yield. The blossoms appear, not at the end of the branches, but here and there on the boughs and the main trunk, pushing out through the bark. The "pods" which we see now were the seed vessels of such blossoms: they reach their full growth in four or five months after blossomtime. We can see on this nearest tree-trunk several scars where pods have formed and been cut off in previous years. The size of the pods can be estimated by comparison with the workman's hands. Each one contains from twenty to forty oily seeds (cocoa beans) embedded in soft pulp. The beans will be taken out, thoroughly dried, sorted as to quality, and then shipped to America and European chocolate factories: there about three quarters of their oil will be extracted and the remaining substance will be ground to cocoa. Chocolate contains both cocoa and sugar, some kinds include more of the oil that other kinds. About one pound of the beans will give material for eight punds of chocolate bonbons. (For the drying of the beans see 6447) From notes of travel No 40, copyright 1907, by Underwood & Underwood. In English French German Swedish Spanish and Russian.
Provenance
Part of The Fenton Collection. A gift from British Film Institute in 2017. From 1986-1999, part of BFI collection for the Museum of the Moving Image. BFI purchased collection in 1986 from James Fenton's Museum of Photography, Port Erin, Isle of Man 1976-1986.
Makers and roles
Underwood & Underwood, photographer and publisher