The Humming Bird. 51 



himself had the credit of discovering this vegetable resource 

 of a rather resourceless land. Finally, the l( merissa " beer, 

 which is drunk in prodigious quantities all over the Upper 

 Nile and Lake country in Africa, is the fermented juice of the 

 banana. Even the Mahdi has had to wink at its consumption, 

 while a recent traveller doubts whether he ever saw as many 

 tipsy people as in a certain district in Africa. The banana 

 will even yield medicine, forthe juice ofthestem — the spongy 

 pith of which is also highly nutritious — is a useful astringent. 

 Taken internally, the leaves are said to be valuable against 

 dropsy, and are often used externally in cases of scalds and 

 ulcers. The stems are, in Tonquin, burned, and the ashes 

 employed for purifying sugar, while all parts of the plant 

 abound in a fibre which has never been systematically utilised 

 except in small quantities. In Dacca, the country people 

 make from it the string of the bow with which they tease 

 cotton, and in some of the Indian islands a cloth is woven 

 from the banana thread which is not much inferior to that 

 made from the Abaca — a banana which yields the well- 

 known Manilla hemp. The top of the banana stems, if boiled, 

 is an excellent pot herb, and the large fronds are employed 

 not only for packing and as plates, but in roofing the native 

 huts. In brief, the United States, by teaching the negroes 

 the manifold virtues of a plant known to their countrymen in 

 Africa, are doing them and the country at large a question- 

 able benefit. We doubt, however, whether, even with the 

 protective tariff, the warmest portions of the United States 

 will ever be able to compete with the West Indies in rearing 

 a fruit which flourishes in such perfection all over Jamaica and 

 the Antilles generally. Central Africa, too, is becoming one 

 vast banana plantation. For miles and miles nothing else is 

 seen ; even the Indians of Central and South America have 

 not taken more kindly to it. Captain Lugard describes the 

 fruit as the national meat and drink ; and Emin Pacha tells 

 us that, though the plantations are well kept, the only manure 

 they receive is bunches of grass allowed to rot around the 

 base of each plant. In that part of Africa there are three 

 kinds of bananas — one with insipid fruit, used only for making 

 beer ; a second sweet, with white pulp, which is both eaten 

 and employed in distilling "wines;" and a third, used entirely 

 for eating, though generally cooked with meat, in the green 

 state. In Monbuttu there are ten different varieties, one of 

 them bearing fruit eight to ten inches long, and thick in pro- 

 portion, though generally consumed in a dried condition. 



