<P> Christopher Columbus encountered the cacao bean on his fourth mission to the Americas on August 15, 1502, when he and his crew seized a large native canoe that proved to contain among other goods for trade, cacao beans . His son Ferdinand commented that the natives greatly valued the beans, which he termed almonds, "for when they were brought on board ship together with their goods, I observed that when any of these almonds fell, they all stooped to pick it up, as if an eye had fallen ." But while Columbus took cacao beans with him back to Spain, it made no impact until Spanish friars introduced chocolate to the Spanish court . </P> <P> Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés may have been the first European to encounter chocolate when he observed it in the court of Montezuma in 1519 . In 1568, Bernal Diaz, who accompanied Cortés in the conquest of Mexico, wrote of this encounter which he witnessed: </P> <P> From time to time they served him (Montezuma) in cups of pure gold a certain drink made from cacao . It was said that it gave one power over women, but this I never saw . I did see them bring in more than fifty large pitchers of cacao with froth in it, and he drank some of it, the women serving with great reverence . </P> <P> Jose de Acosta, a Spanish Jesuit missionary who lived in Peru and then Mexico in the later 16th century, described its use more generally: </P>

Were the aztecs the first to make a chocolate drink