286 
“The plantain is roasted green when it becomes quite dry and a good 
substitute for bread ; or boiled, to eat.with meat instead of potatoes ; 
= when ripe roasted whole or hens sim enitn into thin slices and fried 
n butter and eaten with a little sugar and cinnamon or wine forming a 
Hide dish for dessert. A very large tilànéafe, 18 or 20 inches long, 
is exces in the interior, and is brought down to the coast by the 
Speke, in his Nile Journal, p. 648, enumerates the uses of plantains 
in Central Africa: “A chi p from the stem washes the hands, and makes 
the wet flesh-rubber of the —— thread and lashings for loads 
are also taken from the stem; rain is colleeted in the green leaves, 
make screen-fenees and sacks to hold grain or provisions; the fruit 
dried (from Ugigi) is like a Normandy pippin; a variety, when green 
and boiled, is an excellent vegetable, while another vet a wine 
resembling hock in flavour. At 2° N. they cease to be gro 
In Fiji * The fruit of the different Musas is," aecording Et Seemann, 
-* variously prepared by the eee cooks. Split in half, and filled with 
cocoa-nut and su ne, bananas make a favourite pudding 
(vakalolo), which, on mt of its goodness and rich sauce of cocoa- 
nut milk, has found its way even into the kitchen of the white 
settlers. "Wilkes has already mentioned that the natives, instead of 
anging up the fruit until it becomes mellow, bury it ae ae’ S 
should be added) in the ground, which causes it. to appear black o 
the outside, and impairs the flavour. The fresh Musa , 905 are sl 
^ substitutes for plates and dishes in serving food or for makin 
mporary clothing, the dry instead of paper for cigarettes (suluka). 
In place of the finger-glasses handed round at our tables after dinner, 
iom of rank are supplied with portions of the leaf-stalk of the 
plantain 
Seemann continues: * The Fei, or mountain plantain, beaten into a 
ulp and diluted with cocoa-nut milk or water till brought to the 
consisteney of arrowroot as ordinarily prepared in Snglan » Was 
formerly much used in the Society Islands. Large quantities were 
usually prepared for every festival; a kind of cistern was made, 
a framework of se ose a lining of leaves, which, when filled, w 
sufficient load for n to carry. Seven or eight e these end 
subitis filled and Vitel on men's shoulders to one feas 
Moseley in * Notes of a Naturalist," confirms this teens account 
of the Fei. In Tahiti he and his companions made “the first camp in 
the head of Fatua Valley at a height of about 1,600 feet amongst the 
* Fei’ or wild plantains , . : e plant is closely similar in 
appearance to an ordinar banana iree, but the large bunches of 
fruit instead of hanging pit stand LP erect from the summit of the 
stem. They are bright yellow when 
* A fire is lighted and a bunch of Hess wild bananas is = abet into 
it. The outer “skin of the fruit becomes blackened and c harred, but 
when it is peeled 1 off with a pointed stick a yellow foury interior is 
reached, which is most excellent de and like a mealy potato. This 
tion. It could not but be most — that the plant should be 
introduced into many other tropical co E. 
In the West Indies the dried «eri on prepared portions of the stem 
are used as a packing material for the fruit when taken down to the 
