Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena

by J. A. Zahm

As a consequence of recent researches the commercial products obtained from the banana and platano have been greatly increased, while some of them are vastly different from anything that people who have been living on them for thousands of years have ever dreamed. Among these are meal in the starchy state for making superior kinds of bread and porridge, flakes and meal in a dextrinous condition for the preparation of nourishing soups and puddings, sauces and fritters.[5] In dried slices it is used in the manufacture of beer and alcohol. Bananas are also employed in making marmalades, for the manufacture of glucose and syrups for confectionery, and, dried entire without the peel, they are put up in boxes like figs. Dried and roasted they afford a nutritious beverage that is said to be a valuable substitute for coffee and chocolate. Even the stems and leaves of the banana are put to use, for from them are manufactured paper and cordage.

These facts open up a splendid vista as to the future food possibilities of the tropics. They demonstrate also the wisdom of giving more thought to this neglected part of the world, for it is to tropical America that the teeming millions of coming generations will be obliged to look for much of their sustenance. Our northern climes will be unable to meet the demands that will eventually be made on them.

Before we boarded the train at Limon for San José, the capital of the little republic, a young German, who had visited the lowlands through which the railway passes, said that we would there see the most remarkable exhibition of vegetable growth in the world. “It is,” he declared, “the Urwelt”—the primeval forest—“in all its luxuriance and glory.”

As he had never seen any tropical scenery outside of Costa Rica, and very little of that, we, who had just come from the exuberant forest regions of the Magdalena and the Orinoco, were disposed to give little heed to his statement. Compared with Germany, the floral display of Costa Rica was doubtless something really marvelous in the estimation of our untraveled Teutonic friend, but it could not compare, we said to ourselves, with the wonders of plant life on which we had been feasting our eyes during our journey among the Antilles and through the Northern part of South America.

Our conclusion, however, as we very soon discovered, was quite unwarranted. The vegetation of the lowlands and of the foothills of the Costa Rican Cordillera, as we noted on our way to San José, was really something wonderful. It was the Urwelt in very truth, and exhibited a wealth of plant and tree, foliage and bloom such as must have characterized the foreworld during its richest period. For miles upon miles along this picturesque railway, we reveled in the glories of the virgin forest at its best—a dense, complicated mass of verdure, a tousled, world-old jungle, surmounted by giants of the forest, loaded down with festoons of countless creepers and bound together by innumerable cable-like lianas, each of the richest hues. At one time we were passing through valleys of enchantment, valleys pervaded by a languorous haze of lilac and indigo, like the smoke of incense, valleys rendered musical by scores of hidden streams and tumultuous torrents bridged over by an entanglement of green fathoms in depth. At another we were winding around rugged crags and inaccessible peaks, not bald and barren, as in our temperate climes, but covered to their very summits with a tapestry of leaf and flower of the most vivid tropical tints, that at times resembled a cascade of palpitating color, of emerald foliage and glowing bloom. Here it was the crimson bouganvilla, there lovely aroides with spathes of delicate purple or immaculate white, while hard by, fanned into motion by the trickery of the shifting breeze, were the slender tufts of the bamboo or the tenuous fronds of the ever-graceful fern tree. On all sides was a parade of foliage and blossom, a bravery of color to be found only in the tropics and then only in its most favored regions.

The astonishing variety and richness of the flora of Costa Rica is due to the fact that it is the connecting link between the floras of the two great continents of the North and the South. Besides exhibiting species peculiar to itself, it presents an infinitude of others found in North and South America. Those, however, of South America predominate, the reason being that Costa Rica was connected with the southern continent long before it was united with that to the north.

It is a hundred and three miles from Limon to San José by rail. The road, a narrow-gauge one, was constructed by an American, Mr. Minor C. Keith, and compares favorably with our narrow-gauge roads in the Rocky Mountains. Many difficulties were encountered in laying the track, some of which, especially those caused by landslides and the overflowing rivers, seemed at times insuperable. The most serious impediments, however, were due to the steaming, sweltering, putrid, fever-laden swamps between the coast and the foothills of the Cordillera. So great was the mortality among the workmen on account of pernicious fevers that it is stated that this section of the line cost a human life for every tie that was laid. Like the valley of the lower Magdalena, this part of Costa Rica is habitable only by negroes. The white men who are called there by business make their sojourn as brief as possible.

It is along this route that are found the best and most extensive platanales—banana plantations—of the country and, as a consequence, there are many settlements and villages all along the railroad. And what banana plants are seen here! In height they resemble trees rather than plants. We saw some that were thirty-five feet high, bending under golden clusters of fruit weighing at times nearly a hundred pounds. While sailing along the Orinoco and the Meta we thought that the platanales we saw on their banks were unrivaled for magnitude of plants and wealth of fruitage, but they were fully equaled if not surpassed by those of Costa Rica.

Most of the labor connected with the cultivation and shipment of bananas is performed by negroes from Jamaica and other West Indian islands. One sees their little frame houses, or shacks, scattered all along the road in the banana region, and their occupants have the same jovial, happy-go-lucky disposition that characterizes the negro the world over. Crowds of them, old and young, are always assembled at the station on the arrival of every train—attracted thither by apparently the same reason that causes their brethren of the North in the cotton belt to flock to the depot when they hear the whistle of the locomotive—childlike curiosity and a desire to get the latest news at the earliest possible moment.

Quite a number of the female portion had sliced piñas—pineapples—for sale, but they asked as much for a single slice as a whole piña would cost in our markets, while for an entire pineapple they expected four or five times the price of this fruit in New York, and that in the land of the piña. They demanded extravagant prices because, I suppose, they took it for granted that those who were able to travel in a Pullman car, as our party did, would not, if the fruit was really wanted, begrudge paying the amount asked, however exorbitant. But high as the price was, the fruit was worth it and far more. It was the most luscious and fragrant fruit we had ever tasted, and incomparably excelled the best that ever reaches our markets. It was so soft and juicy that it could be eaten with a spoon, and contained all the fabled virtues of nectar and ambrosia combined.