Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena

by J. A. Zahm

While here, Columbus held frequent converse with the Indians, whom he found intelligent and well disposed. They brought him gifts of cotton, cloth and gold and evidently were inclined to enter into friendly relations with their strange visitors. In his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, referring to this land, he writes: “There I saw a tomb in the mountain side as large as a house, and sculptured.[3] This is remarkable as being the only passage in all the Admiral’s writings which could warrant us in concluding that he ever set foot on the mainland of the New World.

Until the middle of the last century Port Limon was but a small rancheria—it did not deserve the name of village—of poor fishermen. Now it is the chief port of the republic and a flourishing town of 6,000 inhabitants. Its present importance and prosperity are due to the completion of the railroad from this point to the capital, San José, and to the fact that it is the principal centre of the rapidly-increasing banana industry controlled by the United Fruit Company.

The place is quite modern in appearance, and were it not for its exuberant tropical vegetation, might easily pass for one of our enterprising Gulf Coast towns. It boasts of all modern improvements, has good sanitation, broad streets, comfortable homes and a delightful park that, for wealth and variety of tree and shrub and flower, looks like a well-kept botanic garden. While the white race is well represented, the majority of the population is made up of West Indian negroes.

During our travels among the Antilles and on the Spanish Main, we frequently had occasion to note the importance of the banana and the platano as articles of food, but it was not until our arrival in Limon that we had an opportunity of observing the extent to which the cultivation and shipment of these fruits have been carried. Here are two long iron piers at which one will occasionally find as many as six or eight large steamers being freighted at the same time with the golden fruit of Costa Rica, preparatory to distribution among the leading ports along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.

The culture of the banana in Costa Rica on an extensive scale is of recent date. In 1880 but three hundred and sixty bunches were sent to the United States. Now the amount shipped from Limon alone averages more than a million bunches a month. During the year 1908 the number of bunches that left Port Limon aggregated more than thirteen million, and the amount shipped is rapidly increasing. In addition to the daily shipments made to the United States weekly cargoes are forwarded to France and England.

But great as are the proportions which the banana trade has already assumed, it is safe to say that it is as yet but in its infancy. What in most parts of our country and Europe has hitherto been practically unknown, or been regarded as a luxury beyond the reach of the poor, is now rapidly finding its way among all classes and at such prices that even those of the most limited means can have it on their tables.

That which first impresses the visitor from the North is the large number of species of the Musa and the extraordinary number of uses made of them. Already fully forty species have been described and nearly a hundred varieties. Most of these bear fruit which is as agreeable as it is nutritious, and which is often of a flavor of the utmost delicacy.

Reference has already been made in a previous chapter to the extensive and varied use made of bananas and platanos by the peoples of tropical climes, but even they have still much to learn regarding the food value of their great staple. Recent investigations have revealed the fact that the fruit of the Musa is henceforth to be regarded not only as one of the most wholesome and nutritious of foods, but also as one of the most important means of subsistence for the world’s rapidly increasing population. Even now it is felt that the supply of flesh meat and cereals is rapidly becoming less than the demand, and too expensive for the poor, and thoughtful men have already set to work to devise ways and means to meet the emergency. And one of the means suggested is a more extensive cultivation of platanos and bananas, as well as a more general use of their manifold products.

Humboldt long ago pointed out the great economic value of the banana and the platano as sources of food supply.[4] But he did not have the data we now possess for arriving at just conclusions. As the result of numerous experiments it is now known that bananas afford per acre one and a third times as much food as maize produces, two and a third times as much as oats, three times as much as buckwheat, potatoes and wheat; and four times as much as rye. Then the labor involved in the cultivation of the banana is far less than that demanded for our northern crops. No skill is required, and unlike many of our northern fruit-bearing trees, the banana and the platano are entirely exempt from insect pests and diseases.

Chemical analysis discloses the curious fact that bananas and potatoes are practically identical in composition. As compared with the principal vegetables and fruits consumed in the United States and Europe, the food value of the banana and the platano stands in the ratio of five to four in favor of the latter. Comparing banana flour, a new product of this remarkable fruit, with the flour made from sago, wheat and maize, it is found that the nutritive value of all four is about equal—the banana product being slightly in the lead.