DE BANANA 227 



covered America ; as Artemus Ward pertinently remarked, 

 the noble Red Indian had obviously discovered it long 

 before him. There had been intercotu'se of old, too, between 

 Asia and the Western Continent ; the elephant-headed god 

 of Mexico, the debased traces of Buddhism in the Aztec reli- 

 gion, the singular coincidences between India and Peru, all 

 seem to show that a stream of communication, however 

 faint, once existed between the Asiatic and American 

 worlds. Garcilaso himself, the half-Indian historian of 

 Peru, says that the banana was well known in his native 

 country before the conquest, and that the Indians say ' its 

 origin is Ethiopia.' In some strange way or other, then, 

 long before Columbus set foot upon the low sandbank of 

 Cat's Island, the banana had been transported from Africa 

 or India to the Western hemisphere. 



If it were a plant propagated by seed, one would sup- 

 pose that it was carried across by wind or waves, wafted on 

 the lect of birds, or accidentally introduced in the crannies 

 of drift timber. So the coco-nut made the tour of the 

 world ages before either of the famous Cooks — the Captain 

 or the excursion agent — had rendered the same feat easy 

 and practicable; and so, too, a number of American plants 

 have fixed their home in the tarns of the Hebu'ides or 

 among the lonely bogs of Western Galway. But the 

 banana must have been carried by man, because it is un- 

 known in the wild state in the Western Continent ; and, 

 as it is practically seedless, it can only have been trans- 

 ported entire, in the form of a root or sucker. An exactly 

 similar proof of ancient intercourse between the two worlds 

 is ajfforded us by the sweet potato, a plant of undoubted 

 American origin, which was nevertheless naturalised in 

 China as early as the first centuries of the Christian era. 

 Now that we all know how the Scandinavians of the 

 eleventh century went to Massachusetts, which they called 



