Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1898-08-27
'COCOANUT MILK IN CUBA
THE DELIcAcY- WILL MAKE ONE
WISH FOR A CIRAFFe'S NECK.

WISH FOR A CRATES NECK.
New Possessions Abound in Cocoanuts
Which Before the War Were u ReMun-
erativs PrOtiuct-Delight OF the Milk
Trickle In Its Native wild.
Next to bananas, the most impor-
tnnt product Of eastern Cuba is cocoa
nuts. The trees grow rapidly, with
out cultivation, and every mans field
is fringed with them. Fruiters buys
the nuts at the rate of IS the thousand; /;
and they are hulled on the island,
ground in primitive mills, and pressed
for oil. Or, correctly speaking, we
should put it in the past tense, and
say this was done up to few weeks
ago. Now every industry, however
simple, isparalyzed. Spanish soldiers,
almost as hungry as the starving peo-
pie, occupy every village and hamlet
and prey like locusts on the devastated
land.
The Cuban process of extracting oil
from the cocoanut resembles that by
which Texans make oil from cotton
seed. The "cake" OF solid residue is
fed to the pigs-about the only "live
stock" ever successfully raised in east
ern Cuba-and the shells are used for
fuel in the sugar factories. So far the
oil has been locally employed only as
lubricator for sugar making machin-
ery-a wicked waste of valuable mate
rial, it seems to those who are familiar
with the splendid possibilities of the
product. Here is an unequalled open
ing for the manufacturer of palm oil
soap, cocoa fibre mats, hats, etc., to
say nothing OF the hundred other uses
to which parts of the tree, its fruit,
and fibres, may be put. The saying
goes that cocoa tree bears q nut for
every day in the year. In time Of
peace one might buy dozen nuts for
twenty-cent coin anywhere in the
rural districts OF Cuba; and he who
has never tasted the "milk" from one
freshly gathered can have no idea what
is meant by "a draught fit for the
gods" In their proper state, how
ever, the nuts are not brown and hard,
as you see them in Northern markets; {;
they look like enormous pale green
apples, slightly elongated--for each
still wears its Robin Hood jacket,
which is removed before shipment.
Being still "alive," as they say on the
island, its shell is soft and easily cut
with the machete or long-bladed knife
which every countryman carries; or
your own pocket knife may answer the
purpose. Make hole in one end of
the nut about the size of half dollar
and out gushes the "milk" like liv.
ing spring; not by any means such
sour stuff as you have seen come out
of coconuts at home, white as chalk
and thick as buttermilk.
Give one of those imported things
to monkey, pining in captivity for
its native food, and he will refuse it
with scorn and indignation.
The trouble is that the cocoanuts of
commerce are gathered before they
are ripe and entirely spoiled in tran
sit. The fluid shut up within it should
have no suggestion of milk, but be
colorless as water, with slight
sparkle like that from some clear
mountain spring, except for slightly
sweet and most delicious flavor; and
if fairly picked in the early morning,
after the nut has been swinging all
night in the cool breezes, the liquid
is almost ice cold. Where cocoanuts
grow you never see inside of their
shells any of that hard, white layer
which Northerners CRATE and "desic-
cate lone might as we'll say desecrate),
for in its best estate the nut has no
such substance; only creamy white
film inside of it. hardly thicker than
your thumb nail. which is scraped off
with a spoon when eaten. Before
drinking the Juice the "tenderfoot"
generally pours it out into another
vessel than that which nature in
tended; but the sophisticated epicure
tilts the cocoanut at just the right
angle to let the "milk" trickle gently
down his throat, and he wishes his
throat were q mile long. There is
nothing in the wide world more nour-
ishing or fattening, more health-re-
storing and youth-preserving. Emaci-
ated invalids are recommended to be-
gin on the juice of halt q dozen nuts a
day, the dose to be increased accord
ing to the patients inclination. And
the invalid is yet to be discovered
who does not develop taste for it SO
rapidly that in weeks time half a
dozen nuts at a single sitting will
hardly satisfy him. Each full-grown
nut contains nearly pint Of this true
fountain of youth" the same, per-
haps, which the old Conquistadores
sought vainly for and wide, expecting
to find it gushing out of the earth in
some sequestered spot, instead of
hanging, green and beautiful, every
where overhead. The big nuts grow
in bunches, five or six on q stem,
away up near the top of the tall tree,
just under its crown of plume-like
leaves. A native, young or old, thinks
nothing Of shining up a smooth,
branchless trunk, which looks like q
telegraph pole, towering straight and
slender from fifty to 100 feet, whack.
ing of the nuts with his machete
Carried up in his teeth), and tossing
them down with the ease and agility
of his ancestors, the monkeys. Nc
cocoauut ever falls from the parent
stem until it is too old and withered tt
be good for anything. The poorest
denizen of the tropics would disdair
to eat such windfalls, and so they are
shipped to the North, to be eaten by
those who know no better!
A Peculiar Boycott.
Sulz. q Swiss town in the canton o.