Such a drink well deserved the treatment it received at the hands of the Mexicans to whom we are indebted for it.  At the royal banquets frothing chocolate was served in golden goblets with finely wrought golden or tortoise-shell spoons.  The froth in this case was of the consistency of honey, so that when eaten cold it would gradually dissolve in the mouth.  Here is a luscious suggestion for twentieth century housewives, handed to them from five hundred years ago!

[Illustration—­Drawing:  Ancient Mexican drinking cups. (British Museum.)]

In health or sickness, infancy or age, at home or on our travels, nothing is so generally useful, so sustaining and invigorating.  Far better than the majority of vaunted substitutes for human milk as an infant’s food, to supplement what other milk may be available; incomparable as a family drink for breakfast or supper, when both tea and coffee are really out of place unless the latter is nearly all milk; prepared as chocolate to eat on journeys, and in many other ways, cocoa is a constant stand-by.  Travelling in Eastern deserts on mule-back, the present writer has never been without a tin of cocoa essence if he could help it, as, whatever straits he might be put to for provisions, so long as he had this and water, refreshment was possible, and whenever milk was available he had command in his lonely tent of a luxury unsurpassed in Paris or London.  For the sustenance of invalids he has found nothing better in the home-land than a nightly cup of cocoa essence boiled with milk.

[Illustration—­Drawing:  MOLINILLO (little mill) or chocolate whisk.]

Add to these experiences a love for the flavour which dates from childhood, and his admiration for this “food of the gods” will be appreciated, even if not sympathized in, by the few who have escaped its spell.  Its value in the eyes of practical as well as scientific men is sufficiently demonstrated by its increasing use in naval and military commissariats, in hospitals, and in public institutions of all classes.  In the British Navy, which down to 1830 consumed more cocoa than the rest of the nation together, it is served out daily, and in the army twice or thrice a week.  Brillat Savarin, the author of the “Physiologie du Gout,” remarks:  “The persons who habitually take chocolate are those who enjoy the most equable and constant health, and are least liable to a multitude of illnesses which spoil the enjoyment of life.”

[Illustration—­Black and White Plate:  A Cacao Harvest, Trinidad.]