BANANAS. 271 



as we have tried them) is to be compared with an average 

 strawberry, plum, or pear. 



But how beautiful they are all and each, after their kinds ! 

 What a joy for a man to stand at his door and simply look 

 at them growing, leafing, blossoming, fruiting, without pause, 

 through the perpetual summer, in his little garden of the 

 Hesperides, where, as in those of the Phcenicians of old, 

 " pear grows ripe on pear, and fig on fig," for ever and 

 for ever ! 



Now look at the vegetables. At the Bananas and Plantains 

 first of all. A stranger's eye would not distinguish them. 

 The practical difference between them is, that the Plantain^ 

 bears large fruits which rer|uire cooking; the Banana^ smaller 

 and sweeter fruits, which are eaten raw\ As for the plant 

 on which they grow^, no mere words can picture the simple 

 grandeur and grace of a form which startles me whenever I 

 look steadily at it. Por however common it is none com- 

 moner here it is so unlike aught else, so perfect in itself, 

 that, like a palm, it might well have become, in early ages, 

 an object of worship. 



And who knows that it has not ? Who knows that there 

 have not been races who looked on it as the Bed Indians 

 looked on Mondaniin, the maize-plant ; as a gift of a god 

 perhaps the incarnation of a god ? Who knows ? Whence 



1 Musn panidisiaor. 2 ^f sapieutum. 



