Beds composed of banana leaves have been
discovered in the tombs of the Incas, of date anterior, of course, to
the Spanish conquest. How did they get there? Well, it is clearly an
absurd mistake to suppose that Columbus discovered America; as Artemus
Ward pertinently remarked, the noble Red Indian had obviously discovered
it long before him. There had been intercourse of old, too, between Asia
and the Western Continent; the elephant-headed god of Mexico, the
debased traces of Buddhism in the Aztec religion, the singular
coincidences between India and Peru, all seem to show that a stream of
communication, however faint, once existed between the Asiatic and
American worlds. Garcilaso himself, the half-Indian historian of Peru,
says that the banana was well known in his native country before the
conquest, and that the Indians say 'its origin is Ethiopia.' In some
strange way or other, then, long before Columbus set foot upon the low
sandbank of Cat's Island, the banana had been transported from Africa or
India to the Western hemisphere.
If it were a plant propagated by seed, one would suppose that it was
carried across by wind or waves, wafted on the feet of birds, or
accidentally introduced in the crannies of drift timber. So the coco-nut
made the tour of the world ages before either of the famous Cooks--the
Captain or the excursion agent--had rendered the same feat easy and
practicable; and so, too, a number of American plants have fixed their
home in the tarns of the Hebrides or among the lonely bogs of Western
Galway.
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