UTILITY OF BANANAS. 527 



towards their support is to establish a Banana walk ; which, from 

 the rapidity with which the plant grows, is soon accomplished ; 

 and this is afterwards extended as occasion may require. Hum- 

 boldt remarks that a European traveller, newly arrived in the 

 torrid zone, is struck with nothing so much as the extreme 

 smallness of the spots under cultivation, round a cabin which 

 contains a numerous family of Indians. Three dozen good-sized 

 fruits are sufficient to support a man entirely for a week. They 

 are not only eaten fresh, but are dried, like figs, in the sun ; and 

 a sort of meal may be extracted from them, by cutting them in 

 slices, drying them in the sun, and then pounding them. It has 

 been well remarked that " the facility with which the Banana 

 can be cultivated, has doubtless contributed to arrest the pro- 

 gress of improvement in tropical regions. Necessity awakens 

 industry, and industry calls forth the intellectual powers of the 

 human race. When these are developed, man does not sit in a 

 cabin, gathering the fruits of his little patch of Bananas, asking 

 no greater luxuries, and proposing no higher ends of life, than to 

 eat and to sleep. He subdues to his use all the treasures of the 

 earth by his labour and his skill ; and he carries his industry 

 forward to its utmost limits, by the consideration that he has 

 active duties to perform. The idleness of the poor Indian keeps 

 him, where he has been for ages, little elevated above the 

 inferior animal ; the industry of the European, under his colder 

 skies, and with a less fertile soil, has surrounded him with all the 

 blessings of society, its comforts, its affections, its virtues, and 

 its intellectual riches." 



704. The supply of food derived from the Plantain and 

 Banana is not the only benefit afforded to Man by the order 

 Musaceae. The gigantic leaves of other species are used for 

 thatching Indian cottages ; they serve also for a natural cloth, 

 from which the traveller may eat his food, and as a material for 

 basket-making ; and one species yields a most valuable flax, 

 from which some of the finest muslins of India are manufactured. 

 The stems of most of them, consisting as they do of the united 

 petioles of the leaves, are remarkable for the very large quantity 



