tract from a contribution to the Harleian Miscellany in 1690:
"Cocoa is now a commodity to be regarded in our colonies, though at first it was the principal invitation to the peopling of Jamaica, for those walks the Spaniards left behind them there, when we conquered it, produced such prodigious profit with so little trouble that Sir Thomas Modiford and several others set up their rests to grow wealthy therein, and fell to planting much of it, which the Spanish slaves had always foretold would never thrive, and so it happened: for, though it promised fair and throve finely for five or six years, yet still at that age, when so long hopes and cares had been wasted upon it, withered and died away by some unaccountable cause, though they imputed it to a black worm or grub, which they found clinging to its roots. . . . And did it not almost constantly die before, it would come into perfection in fifteen years' growth and last till thirty, thereby becoming the most profitable tree in the world, there having been £200 sterling made in one year of an acre of it. But the old trees, being gone by age and few new thriving, as the Spanish negroes foretold, little or none now is produced worthy the care and pains in planting and expecting it. Those slaves gave a superstitious reason for its not
