or "drink." The Cacao tree was called Cacaoquahuitl or Cacahuatl.
The beans were used as small currency in old Mexico. The unit was a score, 20 beans; 20 x 20 or 400 made a Tzontle; twenty (20) Tzontles or 8000 cacaos one Xiquipilli, and 3 Xiquipillis a load. Weights formerly did not exist there and large quantities were measured in baskets or bags assumed to hold a specified number, just as farmers today by preference estimate their produce by counting and measuring in bushels and pecks, rather than by weighing. On the Mosquito Coast the habit of using cacao beans as money is said to be prevalent among the Indians even at the present time, as is the use of coca leaves for the same purpose in Peru, and tobacco in many places. It was of this use of the beans that Peter Martyr[1] exclaimed, "O felicem monetam", etc., "blessed money, which exempts its possessor from avarice, since it cannot be long hoarded nor hidden under ground." However, there was a complaint in Mexico that the Indians would remove the kernels and fill the empty shells with clay.
Cacao was introduced into Europe early in the 16th century, at first into Spain, There it was for a time the monopoly of the Conquistadores, but interest in the new beverage must have been considerable, for "it was also prepared secretly, and was taken with wine and hot beer."[2] Outside of Spain it remained completely unknown, so long that a ship-load of cacao beans, seized by the English in 1579, was burned as worthless. A Florentine, long resident in the West Indies, made known its manner of preparation in Italy and its use gradually spread on the continent, though not
[ 30 ]
