They were the Cacao-pods, full of what are called at home coco-nibs.

And there lay a heap of them, looking like a heap of gay flowers; and by them sat their brown owner, picking them to pieces and laying the seeds to dry on a cloth.

I went up and told him that I came from England, and never saw Cacao before, though I had been eating and drinking it all my life; at which news he grinned amusement till his white teeth and eyeballs made a light in that dark place, and offered me a fresh broken pod, that I might taste the pink sour- sweet pulp in which the rows of nibs lie packed, a pulp which I found very pleasant and refreshing.
He dries his Cacao-nibs in the sun, and, if he be a well-to-do and careful man, on a stage with wheels, which can be run into a little shed on the slightest shower of rain; picks them over and over, separating the better quality from the worse; and at last sends them down on mule-back to the sea, to be sold in London as Trinidad cocoa, or perhaps sold in Paris to the chocolate makers, who convert them into chocolate, Menier or other, by mixing them with sugar and vanilla, both, possibly, from this very island.

This latter fact once inspired an adventurous German with the thought that he could make chocolate in Trinidad just as well as in Paris.

And (so goes the story) he succeeded.