VANILLA. It is proposed to trace here the production of the flavoring substance known as "Vanilla," and to show at what cost the caprice of man in adding a single flavor to the variety of his viands is gratified.
The vanilla plant is found native in Mexico, South America and the Wrest Indies; but it is only in the wild valleys near the eastern coast of the first mentioned country that the vanilla bean is found possessing the characteristics which make it valuable for the use of man. In the other countries it attains no perfection, and is practically worthless. The vanilla is an orchid, and is cultivated rudely by the Mexican Indians, and by them brought into the sea ports and marketed ; very largely in Vera Cruz. In the great valley of Mazatlan—a depression of more than 6000 feet in its immediate surroundings, where every manifestation of nature is on a grand scale, in this valley vanilla flourishes in a wild state, and here the supply of that flavoring for the chocolate of Monte zuma was obtained, and the region round about is the vanilla cen= tre of the world.
The wild bean, wherever found, is gathered for purposes of per fumery, is of no account for flavoring, and brings in its natural state only about 50 or 60 cents per pound.
The Indians cultivate it by tying the plant to a scrub oak, when, being an orchid, it vegetates upon the air. For the first four years of its life it bears no fruit, and after that continues in bear ing until fifteen years old. The blossoms are in clusters, some what resembling lilacs, but white in color and of the most power ful perfume, similar to tube roses. The green fruit, or beans; depend from a stock, clustered like bananas, which they nearly resemble in size, and every way, while the fruit is green. It is gathered when not quite ripe, but before the harvesting the beans have diminished to two or three on a stock. These green beans when gathered weigh from sixty to seventy-five pounds per 1000 (they are handled and sold by the thousand), but dwindle in the process of curing, so that their weight finally is from ten to four teen pounds per 1000, and shrink from an inch, or rarely two inches, in circumference to an attenuated pod not much larger than a pipe stem.
, To cure properly requires about ninety days' time, and the manipulation is almost infinite, each bean being handled critically from three hundred to five hundred times in the process by the Indians. The green beans as gathered are disposed of in layers, first a layer of beans, and then a blanket, and so on, till a pile is formed of alternate layers of beans and of blankets. This is called the sweating process, and during its continuance the piles are turned two or three times a day, until most of the water has been " sweated " out. This process is followed by drying in the sun, and here the natives exercise the utmost care and attention When finished the beans are to be the color of a very dark cigar. The attendant picks up each bean occasionally, examines its length upon both sides, and, if he observes that one end or any part of the pod is coloring more rapidly than another, he twists a bit of leaf around the spot or section until the action of the sun shall have affected all alike. When the process is finished the beans are tied in bundles of 40, and then packed in cans containing 50 bun dles, or 2000 beans each. In this form commerce finds the article. Vanilla is now worth about $18 per pound, or not far from $250 to $275 per 1000 beans.
Twenty years ago the entire crop of beans cultivated and mar keted amounted to from 500,000 to 700,000 yearly, and the prices received ranged from $2.50 to $3.00 per pound. Now the annual production is 5,000,000, and the present price from $15 to S18 per pound. The crop is somewhat uncertain and variable, and cannot be depended upon as unfailing, vanilla, in common with every other vegetable production known, sharing chances of failure. It. is the most perplexing of all products to deal with, being so easily liable to injury. It is kept in vaults prepared for the pur pose, but these must not be below the surface of the ground, other wise the bean will become mouldy and spoiled by moisture ; neither will it answer to store it in upper chambers, for in that case a sort of dry rot will attack it. It must be watched and tended like a baby.