"that in the time of the Incas the maize, quinoa, potatoes, and in the warm and temperate regions, bananas constituted the basis of the nourishment of the natives. He describes the musa of the vallies of the Antis, and he even distinguishes the most rare species with small sugary and aromatic fruit, the dominico, from the common or arton banana. Father Acosta also affirms*. though not so positively, that the musa was cultivated by the Americans before the arrival of the Spaniards. "The banana," says he, "is a fruit to be found in all the Indies, though there are people who pretend that it is a native of Ethiopia, and that it came from thence into America." On the banks of the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, or the Beni, among the mountains de l'Esmeralda and the sources of the river Carony, in the midst of the thickest forests, wherever we discover Indian tribes who have had no connexions with European establishments, we find plantations of manioc and bananas. me most savoury in the province of Jaen de Bracamorros on the banks of the Amazon and the Chamaya, seems to be the same with the musa maculata of Jacquin (hortus Schoenbrunnensis, tab. 446), and with the musa regia of Rumphius. The latter species is itself, perhaps, but a variety of the musa mensaria. There exists, and the fact is very curious, in the forests of Amboine, a wild banana, of which the fruit is without grains, the pisang jacki (Rumph. V. p. 138.) * Historia natural de Indias, 1608, p. 250. Father Thomas de Berlangas could not transport from the Canary Islands to St. Domingo any other species but the one which is there cultivated, the camburi (caule nigrescente striato fructu minore ovato-elongato), and not the platano arton or zapalote of the Mexicans (caule albovirescente laevi, fructu longiore apicem versus subarcuato acute trigono). The first of these species only grows in temperate climates, in the Canary Islands, at Tunis, Algiers, and the coast of Malaga. In the valley of Caraccas also, placed under the 10° 30′ of latitude, but at 900 metres* of absolute elevation, we find only the camburi and the dominico (caule albo-virescente, fructu minimo obsolete trigono), and not the platano arton, of which the fruit only ripens under the influence of a very high temperature. From these numerous proofs we cannot doubt that the banana which several travellers pretend to have found wild at Amboina, at Gilolo, and the Mariana Islands, was cultivated in America long before the arrival of the Spaniards, who merely augmented the number of the indigenous species. However, we are not to be astonished that there was no musa seen in the island of St. Domingo before 1516. Like the animals around them, savages generally draw their nourishment from one species of plant. The forests of Guayana afford numerous examples of tribes whose plantations (conu *2952 feet. Trans. cos) contain manihot, arum or dioscorea, and not a single banana. Notwithstanding the great extent of the Mexican table-land, and the height of the mountains in the neighbourhood of the coast, the space of which the temperature is favourable for the cultivation of the musa is more than 50,000 square leagues, and inhabited by nearly a million and a half of inhabitants. In the warm and humid vallies of the intendancy of Vera Cruz, at the foot of the Cordillera of Orizaba, the fruit of the platano arton sometimes exceeds three decimetres, and often from twenty to twenty-two centimetres (from 7 to 8 inches) in length. In these fertile regions, especially in the environs of Acapulco, San Blas, and the Rio Guasacualco, a cluster (regime) of bananas contains from 160 to 180 fruits, and weighs from 30 to 40 kilogrammes 1. I doubt whether there is another plant on the globe which on so small a space of ground can produce so considerable a mass of nutritive substance. Eight or nine months after the sucker has been planted, the banana commences to develop its clusters; and the fruit may be collected in the tenth or eleventh month. When the stalk is cut, we find constantly among the numerous shoots which have put forth roots a sprout (pim * 11.8 inches. Trans. + 7.87 to 8 66 inches. Trans. From 66 to 88lb. avoird. Trans. pollo) which having two thirds of the height of the mother-plant, bears fruit three months later. In this manner a plantation of musa, called in the Spanish colonies platanar, is perpetuated without any other care being bestowed by man than to cut the stalks of which the fruit has ripened, and to give the earth once or twice a year a slight dressing by digging round the roots. A spot of ground of a hundred square metres of surface may contain at least from thirty to forty banana plants. In the space of a year, this same ground, reckoning only the weight of a cluster at from 15 to 20 kilogrammes†, yields more than two thousand kilogrammes, or four thousand pounds of nutritive substance. What a difference between this produce and that of the cereal gramina in the most fertile parts of Europe! Wheat, supposing it sown and not planted in the Chinese manner, and calculating on the basis of a decuple harvest, does not produce on a hundred square metres more than 15 kilogrammes §, or 50 pounds of grain. In France, for example, the demi-hectare, or legal arpent, of 13441 square toises || of good land is sown (à la volée) with 160lb. of grain, and if the land is not so good or absolutely bad with 1076 square feet. Trans. From 33 to 44lb. avoird. Trans. 4414lb. avoird. Trans. 54,995 square feet. Trans. § 33lb. avoird. Trans. 200 or 220 pounds. The produce varies from 1000 to 2500 pounds per acre. The potatoe, according to M. Tessie, yields in Europe on a hundred square acres of well cultivated and well manured ground a produce of 45 kilogrammes*, or 90 pounds of roots. We reckon from 4 to 6000 pounds to the legal arpent. The produce of bananas is consequently to that of wheat as 133: 1, and to that of potatoes as 44: 1. Those who in Europe have tasted bananas ripened in hot-houses have a difficulty in conceiving that a fruit which from its great mildness has some resemblance to a dried fig can be the principal nourishment of many millions of men in both Indies. We seem to forget that in the act of vegetation the same elements form very different chemical mixtures according as they combine or separate. How should we even discover in the lacteous mucilage which the grains of gramina contain before the ripening of the ear the farinaceous perisperma of the cerealia, which nourishes the majority of the nations of the temperate zone? In the musa, the formation of the amylaceous matter precedes the epoqua of maturity. We must distinguish between the banana fruit collected when green, and what is allowed to grow yellow on the plant. In the second the sugar is quite formed; it is mixed with the pulp, and in 99lb. avoird. Trans. |