WHERE BANANAS GROW. 



491 



the plantlets, now perhaps two feet long, are called " sets," and it 

 is these which, taken from a vigorous plantation, are used for 

 establishing a new one. 



Although they will do fairly well in the climate of Jamaica in 

 a great variety of soils, the best land for bananas is the deep, 

 rich, and moist alluvium of the river valleys. Here plants and 

 fruit reach their perfection, and the largest returns reward the 

 least labor. In short, the very lands which were the basis of 

 Jamaica's wealth in the old days of sugar and rum and slavery, 

 and which, during the years of her decadence, have lain waste 



Fig. 2. Native Hillside Homes surrounded by Bananas. 



and " in ruinate," are destined again to give her a substantial 

 prosperity in the new days of the banana and the cocoanut and 

 freedom. And we may hope that this prosperity will be more 

 real and more permanent than the former, because founded on 

 principles of personal liberty and righteous dealing, and without 

 the accompaniment of the semi-barbarous luxury and the wholly 

 barbarous license that cursed the former time. 



It is but a few years since the crumbling evidences of the ma- 

 terial prosperity of the rule of sugar and rum were to be seen on 

 every hand. Magnificent estates, teeming with a tropical luxuri- 



