In the lowlands, where the climate is hot and moist, bananas are at their best. In preparing ground to grow them the land is ploughed with eight or ten oxen, and the plants are put in from 10 to 15 feet apart. The height they attain is a matter of soil and cultivation. At the end of the first year a crop is ready to be gathered. Each plant produces one bunch only. The plants send out suckers from their roots, which are allowed to grow. Thus, when the first plant is cut down as worthless, another is ready to bear; others are in different stages of growth. This goes on for about seven years, when it is needful to plough again and replant the ground in some places, but I have been told of the same banana-trees remaining in bearing thirty and forty years. As the price fluctuates, it has not the element of certainty that coffee has.
CHAPTER XVIII
MONEAGUE HOTEL—THE TROUBLES OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
Returning from Montego Bay, I went by rail to Ewarton, which is in the centre of Jamaica. To go there I had to change at Spanish Town, which is 10 miles or so from Kingston. There is only one train every day that runs the whole distance from Montego Bay to Kingston; this starts at eight o’clock in the morning, stopping at every station, and reaches its destination about four in the afternoon. On this occasion I fell in with a number of the island clergy, who entered the train at every stopping-place, several having driven distances of 25 and 30 miles, having risen before daybreak. Since most of the cocks in Jamaica are different from their feathered kindred of other climes, and keep up one unhallowed chorus of crowing all through the night, it is not a great difficulty to tear yourself from your couch.
They were on their way to attend the yearly Synod, which holds its meetings every January, or, as in this case, February. I met my new acquaintance, the rector of Montego Bay, in the train. He told me he had been over twenty years in Jamaica, and he was, I should say, a man of about forty-five years of age.
“But you have been home of course several times in those years?” I questioningly asked him.
“Not a bit of it, Madam,” was his curt rejoinder. Apparently he was in the best of health, and had, to my knowledge, taken four services without assistance the day previous, which was Sunday, that I never imagined for a moment it was possible to keep so much vitality and energy going without occasional recruiting sea-voyages and change from this enervating climate.
“How do you think I look?” asked he, slapping his chest, and drawing himself up to his full height, which was not beyond that of the average male adult.
“Very fit,” was my reply.