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instead of a Pep ning, hiph they call a buff-jacket ; and this is 
a very good way for a change, This fruit makes also very good 
tarts; and the green Paane sliced thin, and dried in the sun and 
, will make a sort of flour which is very good to make puddings. 
A ripe plantain, sliced and dried in the sun, may be preserved a great 
while, and then eats like figs, very sweet and pleasant. The Darien 
Indians preserve them a long time, by dr ing them gently over the 
fire, mashing them first, and moulding them into lumps. The Moskito 
Indians will take a ripe plantain and roast it; then take a ow = 
water in a calabash, and squeeze the plantain in piec 
with their hand, mixing it with the water; then they drink it 
all off together; this they call mishiaw, and it is p 
sweet and. nourishing, somewhat like lambs-wool (as it is ealled) 
made with apples and ale ; and of this fruit alone many thousands of 
Indian families in the West Indies have their whole subsistence.” 
Coming to later times Lunan in Hortus Jamaicensis, p. 74, quoting 
Labat, says: ** When the natives of the West Indies undertake a voyage 
they make provision of a paste of mtu which, in case of need, 
serves them for nourishment and drin for this purpose they take 
ripe bananas ; and, aving oie thik through a fine sieye, form 
ashes, after being previously wra pped up in the leaves of Indian 
flowering reed. When they would make use of this paste they 
dissolve it in water, w which is very easily done, and the liquor, thereby 
rendered thick, has an agreeable acid taste imparted to it, which makes 
it both refreshing and nourishing." 
n the green state and cooked in various ways plantains supply the 
staple food of millions of people in tropical America. In fact “ they are 
so extensively consumed as to almost take the place of cereal grains as a 
common article of diet. About 6} pounds of the fruit or 2 pounds 
X the dry meal with a quarter of a pound of salt meat or fish form in 
the West Indies the daily allowance for a labourer.” Iu Jamaica the 
working negroes prefer plantains to bread ; the former they boil or roast 
inashes and eat when quite warm. The ripe fruit when it is yellow and 
has acquired a sweetish flavour is sliced and fried or baked. It has 
then a pleasant sweet flavour, slightly acid, and very much resembling 
pples. 
ntral America, accordi ing to Seemann, the plantain furnishes the 
inhabitants with the chief portion of their food. Similarly we have the 
testimony of Belt that * Next to maize, plantains a bananas form the 
principal sustenance of the natives in Nicaragua. re a great 
many varieties of them, and they are cooked in m many ways, bo oiled, 
baked, made into pastry, or eaten as a fruit. The varieties differ, not 
only in their fruits, but in the colour of their leaves and stem 
Usually the bunches of fruit, both in the plantain and the banana, are 
cut before they are quite ripe, or when the first fruits are beginning to 
turn yellow. They are then hung up to ripen gradually under cover. 
There are, however, other methods adopted. The plantains especially, 
are sometimes taken from the bunch and packed loosely in a hole in 
the ground and well covered over. In this way they become softer and 
have a bette r appearance than if dried in the sun. When a hole is not 
available they are placed in a barrel instraw and also covered over. 
Monteiro, who travelled in loo. refers to the domestie uses of the 
fruit as under :— 
