DE BANANA 231 



which a new eilition of • Miin^^'naH's Questions ' would liave 

 to bo filled ; and as to answeiinijf them — why, even the 

 pupil-teaehei'H in a London Board School (who represent, 

 I suppose, the higliest attainable level of human know- 

 ledge) would often find themselves completi'ly nonplussed. 

 The fact is, tropical trade has opened out so rapidly and so 

 wonderfully that nobody knows much about the chief 

 articles of tropical growth ; we go on using them in an un- 

 inquiring spirit of childlike faith, much as tlie Jamaica 

 negroes go on using articles of European manufacture 

 about whose origin they are so ridiculously ignorant that 

 one young woman once asked me whether it was really true 

 that cotton handkerchiefs were dug up out of the ground 

 over in England. Some dim confusion between coal or 

 iron and Manchester piece-goods seemed to have taken firm 

 possession of her infantile imagination. 



Tluit is why I have thought that a treatise De Banana 

 might not, perhaps, be wholly without its usefulness to the 

 modern English reading world. After all, a food-stuff 

 which supports hundreds of millions among our beloved 

 tropical fellow-creatures oug]it to be very dear to the heart 

 of a nation which governs (and annually kills) more black 

 people, taken in the mass, than all the other European 

 powers put together. We have introduced the blessings of 

 British rule — the good and well-paid missionary, the Rem- 

 ington rifle, the red-cotton pocket-handkerchief, and the 

 use of * the liquor called rum ' — into so many remote 

 corners of the tropical world that it is high time we should 

 begin in return to learn somewhat about fetiches and fustic, 

 Jamaica and jaggery, bananas and Buddhism. We know 

 too little still about our colonies and dependencies. ' Cape 

 Breton an island ! ' cried King George's Minister, the Duke 

 of Newcastle, in the well-known story, ' Cape Breton an 

 island ! Why, so it is ! God bless my soul ! I must go and 



