226 DE BANANA 



roasted as a vegetable, or, to use the more expressive West 

 Indian negro phrase, as a bread-kind. Millions of human 

 beings in Asia, Africa, America, and the islands of the 

 Pacific Ocean live almost entirely on the mild and succulent 

 but tasteless plantain. Some people like the fruit ; to me 

 personally it is more suggestive of a very flavourless over-ripe 

 pear than of anything else in heaven or earth or the waters 

 that are under the earth the latter being the most probable 

 place to look for it, as its taste and substance are decidedly 

 watery. Baked dry in the green state ' it resembles roasted 

 chestnuts,' or rather baked parsnip; pulped and boiled 

 with water it makes ' a very agreeable sweet soup,' almost 

 as nice as peasoup with brown sugar in it ; and cut into 

 slices, sweetened, and fried, it forms ' an excellent substi- 

 tute for fruit pudding,' having a flavour much like that of 

 potatoes d la maitre d'hotel served up in treacle. 



Altogether a fruit to be sedulously avoided, the plantain, 

 though millions of our spiritually destitute African brethren 

 haven't yet for a moment discovered that it isn't every bit 

 as good as wheaten bread and fresh butter. Missionary 

 enterprise will no doubt before long enlighten them on 

 this subject, and create a good market in time for Ameri- 

 can flour and Manchester piece-goods. 



Though by origin a Malayan plant, there can be little 

 doubt that the banana had already reached the mainland 

 of America and the West India Islands long before the 

 voyage of Columbus. When Pizarro disembarked upon 

 the coast of Peru on his desolating expedition, the mild- 

 eyed, melancholy, doomed Peruvians flocked down to the 

 shore and offered him bananas in a lordly dish. Beds 

 composed of banana leaves have been discovered in the 

 tombs of the Incas, of date anterior, of course, to the 

 Spanish conquest. How did they get there ? Well, it is 

 clearly an absurd mistake to suppose that Columbus dis- 



