To procure this principal article of their food costs the fortunate South Sea Islanders no more trouble than plucking and preparing it in the manner above described; for, though the tree which produces it does not grow spontaneously, yet, if a man plants but ten of them in his lifetime, which he may do in about an hour, he will, as Cook remarks, ‘as completely fulfil his duty to his own and future generations, as the native of our less genial climate by ploughing in the cold of winter and reaping in the summer’s heat as often as the seasons return.’
Dampier (1688) is the first English writer that mentions the bread-fruit tree, which he found growing in the Ladrones, and a few years later Lord Anson enjoyed its fruits at Tinian, where they contributed to save the lives of his emaciated and scurvy-stricken followers. It continued, however, to remain unnoticed in Europe, until the voyages of Wallis and Cook attracted the attention of the whole civilized world to the fortunate islands, whose inhabitants, instead of gaining their bread by the sweat of their brow, plucked it ready formed from the teeming branches of their groves.
But the wonderful luxuriance of tropical vegetation is perhaps nowhere more conspicuous and surprising than in the magnificent Musaceæ, the banana (Musa sapientum), and the plantain (Musa paradisiaca), whose fruits most probably nourished mankind long before the gifts of Ceres became known. A succulent shaft or stem, rising to the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and frequently two feet in diameter, is formed of the sheath-like leaf-stalks rolled one over the other, and terminating in enormous light-green and glossy blades, ten feet long and two feet broad, of so delicate a tissue that the slightest wind suffices to tear them transversely as far as the middle rib. A stout foot-stalk arising from the centre of the leaves, and reclining over one side of the trunk, supports numerous clusters of flowers, and subsequently a great weight of several hundred fruits about the size and shape of full-grown cucumbers. On seeing the stately plant, one might suppose that many years had been required for its growth; and yet only eight or ten months were necessary for its full development.
Each shaft produces its fruit but once, when it withers and dies; but new shoots spring forth from the root, and, before the year has elapsed, unfold themselves with the same luxuriance. Thus, without any other labour than now and then weeding the field, fruit follows upon fruit, and harvest upon harvest. A single bunch of bananas often weighs from sixty to seventy pounds, and Humboldt has calculated that thirty-three pounds of wheat and ninety-nine pounds of potatoes, require the same space of ground to grow upon as will produce 4,000 pounds of bananas.
This prodigality of Nature, seemingly so favourable to the human race, is however attended with great disadvantages; for where the life of man is rendered too easy, his best powers remain dormant, and he almost sinks to the level of the plant which affords him subsistence without labour. Exertion awakens our faculties as it increases our enjoyments, and well may we rejoice that wheat and not the banana ripens in our fields.
As the seeds of the cultivated plantain and banana never or very rarely come to maturity, they can only be propagated by suckers. ‘In both hemispheres,’ says Humboldt, ‘as far as tradition or history reaches, we find plantains cultivated in the tropical zone. It is as certain that African slaves have introduced, in the course of centuries, varieties of the banana into America, as that before the discovery of Columbus the plantain was cultivated by the aboriginal Indians.
‘These plants are the ornaments of humid countries. Like the farinaceous cereals of the north, they accompany man from the first infancy of his civilisation. Semitical traditions place their original home on the banks of the Euphrates; others, with greater probability, at the foot of the Himalayas. According to the Greek mythology, the plains of Enna were the fortunate birthplace of the cereals; but while the monotonous fields of the latter add but little to the beauty of the northern regions, the tropical husbandman multiplies in the banana one of the noblest forms of vegetable life.’
The Musaceæ are not only useful to man by their mealy, wholesome, and agreeable fruits, but also by the fibres of their long leaf-stalks. Some species furnish filaments for the finest muslin, and the coarse fibres of the Musa textilis, known in trade under the name of Manilla hemp, serve for the preparation of very durable cordage.
To the same family of plants belongs also the traveller-tree of Madagascar (Ravenala speciosa), one of those wonderful sources of refreshment which Nature has provided for the thirsty wanderer in the wilderness. The foot-stalks of the elliptical, alternate leaves embrace the trunk with broad sheathes, in which the dew trickling from their surface is collected. Thus the ravenala, the hollow baobab, the pitcher-plant, and the juicy cactuses, all answer a similar purpose, and it is impossible to say which of them is most to be admired.
Life and death are strangely blended in the Cassava or Mandioca root (Jatropha Manihot); the juice a rapidly destructive poison, the meal a nutritious and agreeable food, which, in tropical America, and chiefly in Brazil, forms a great part of the people’s sustenance. The height to which the cassava attains varies from four to six feet: it rises by a slender, woody, knotted stalk, furnished with alternate palmated leaves, and springs from a woody root, the slender collateral fibres of which swell into those farinaceous parsnip-like masses, for which alone the plant is cultivated. It requires a dry soil, and is not found at a greater elevation than 2,000 feet above the level of the sea. It is propagated by cuttings, which very quickly take root, and in about eight months from the time of their being planted, the tubers will generally be in a fit state to be collected; they may, however, be left in the ground for many months without sustaining any injury. The usual mode of preparing the cassava is to grind the roots after peeling off the dark-coloured rind, to draw out the poisonous juice, and finally to bake the meal into thin cakes on a hot iron hearth. Fortunately the deleterious principle is so volatile as to be entirely dissipated by exposure to heat; for when the root has been cut into small pieces, and exposed during some hours to the direct rays of the sun, cattle may be fed on it with perfect safety. If the recently extracted juice be drunk by cattle or poultry, the animals soon die in convulsions; but if this same liquid is boiled with meat and seasoned, it forms a wholesome and nutritious soup. The Jatropha Janipha, or Sweet Cassava, though very similar to the Manihot or bitter variety, and wholly innocuous, is far less extensively cultivated.