Let it not for a moment be supposed, however, that I wish to treat the
useful and ornamental banana with intentional disrespect. On the
contrary, I cherish for it--at a distance--feelings of the highest
esteem and admiration. We are so parochial in our views, taking us as a
species, that I dare say very few English people really know how
immensely useful a plant is the common banana. To most of us it
envisages itself merely as a curious tropical fruit, largely imported at
Covent Garden, and a capital thing to stick on one of the tall
dessert-dishes when you give a dinner-party, because it looks
delightfully foreign, and just serves to balance the pine-apple at the
opposite end of the hospitable mahogany. Perhaps such innocent readers
will be surprised to learn that bananas and plantains supply the
principal food-stuff of a far larger fraction of the human race than
that which is supported by wheaten bread. They form the veritable staff
of life to the inhabitants of both eastern and western tropics. What the
potato is to the degenerate descendant of Celtic kings; what the oat is
to the kilted Highlandman; what rice is to the Bengalee, and Indian corn
to the American negro, that is the muse of sages (I translate literally
from the immortal Swede) to African savages and Brazilian slaves.
Humboldt calculated that an acre of bananas would supply a greater
quantity of solid food to hungry humanity than could possibly be
extracted from the same extent of cultivated ground by any other known
plant.
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