34 The Andes and the Amazon. 



Andes, and flowing through a low, level tract, covered with 

 varied forms of vegetable life. Forests of the broad-leaved 

 plantain and banana line the banks. The fruit is the most 

 common article of food in equatorial America, and is eaten 

 raw, roasted, baked, boiled, and fried. It grows on a suc- 

 culent stem formed of sheath-hke leaf-stalks rolled over 

 one another, and terminating in enormous light green, 

 glossy blades nearly ten feet long by two feet wide, so del- 

 icate that the shghtest wind will tear them transversely. 

 Each tree (vulgarly called " the tree of paradise") produces 

 fruit but once, and then dies. A single bunch often weighs 

 60 or YO pounds ; and Humboldt calculated that 33 pounds 

 of wheat and 99 pounds of potatoes require the same space 

 of ground as will produce 4000 pounds of bananas. They 

 really save more labor than steam, giving the greatest 

 amount of food from a given piece of ground with the 

 least labor. They are always found where the palm is ; 

 but their original home is the foot of the Himalayas. The 

 banana (by some botanists considered a different species 

 from the plantain) is about four inches long, and cylindric- 

 al, and is eaten raw. The plantain is twice as large and 

 prismatic, and uncooked is unhealthy. There is another 

 vavietj, platanos de Otaheite, which resembles the banana 

 in size and quality, but is prismatic. 



A belt of jungle and impenetrable brushwood intervenes, 

 and then cacao and coffee plantations, vast in extent, ar- 

 rest the eye. Passing these, the steamer brings you along- 

 side of broad fields covered with the low, prickly pine-apple 

 plant ; the air is fragrant vsdth a rich perfume wafted from 

 a neighboring grove of oranges and lemons; the mango 

 spreads its dense, splendid foHage, and bears a golden fruit, 

 which, though praised by many, tastes to us like a mixture 

 of tow and turpentine ; the exotic bread-tree waves its fig- 

 like leaves and pendent fruit ; while high over all the beau- 



