Edward Wilkin Perry

“ Every day the ardent sun helps the constant wind to shrivel leaf and twig until, one day, the windward edge of that snarl is touched by the torch, and in a moment a blazing hades is where a cool and shady grove will soon rustle in the breeze. ”

“ When the warm rains fall, the tender leaves unroll and spread to their widest, and the sun dries and the wind whips them until soon they are split into narrow ribbons; and a few weeks after that planting a sea of giant leaves waves and whispers in the breeze—a roof of bright and tender green covering the moist, black ground. ”

“ It may be possible that if one will allow two or three stalks to rise from each stand of bananas, and together mature their fruit, he many get 444 to 780 bunches from an acre each of a few years, and that in such a case he might get $185 to $278 for the crop; but it will be clear to all that he who expects to make only 270 bunches per annum from an acre, and get only $78 profit therefrom, will be safer than he who invests his money with the expectation of making greater gains. ”

“ In the year 1902 the average yield of wheat in the United States equalled 12.79 bushels, or 767.4 pounds. This had a food value equal to nearly one-third that of the average output of bananas from an acre. It is often said that one pound of bananas has as much nutrition as has a pound of beef. The truth is that one pound of beef is worth three and one-third pounds of bananas. Bananas are far enough ahead of the harvests the farmer of the North gets, without making exaggerated claims for the fruit of the tropics. ”

“ There is, perhaps, no industry in Central America that is more attractive to men of small capital than banana growing, from the fact that the clearing of the land is effected cheaply, and from the small cost of after-cultivation, which is limited only to such clearing of weeds and undergrowth as may be sufficient to allow access to the trees, and the short time necessary to produce a paying crop. ”

“ So the planter of bananas has each year four and a half times as much palatable food from an acre as the farmer gets from his potatoes: and there is the [12] further difference that the one has bananas at no other cost than that of keeping down bush and grass and vine, that would quickly cover every spot to which the sunshine could penetrate, along the edges of the plantation. For bananas yield year after year without replanting. Each new stalk springs from the foot of its parent, grows to a height of fifteen to thirty-five feet, bears its burden of luscious fruit, and dies ”

“ He who would grow bananas for market must plant on the border of navigable waters giving access to some harbor or anchorage where ships may safely lie while receiving the fruit. For it is easily bruised, and wetting by salt water blackens the skins, thus injuring or preventing the sale. Plantations are usually on the banks of rivers or of estuaries, but some are beside railroads, to which the fruit is carried by carts thickly carpeted with banana leaves. A cruder way is to hang a few bunches over the back of a burro or of a mule, which plods along to the shipping place. ”

“ Plantain meal is prepared by stripping off the husk and reducing it to powder, and finely sifting. It is calculated that the fresh core will yield 40 per cent. of this meal, and that an acre of average quality will yield over a ton.
Plantain meal is of a slightly brownish color, and has an agreeable odor, which becomes more perceptible when warm water is poured upon it, and has a considerable resemblance to that of orris root. When mixed with cold water it forms a feebly tenacious dough, more adhesive than that of oatmeal, but much less so than that of wheaten flour. ”

“ When the last flame has flickered out and coals lie dead beneath their gray shroud, women paddle to that place with canoes laden with banana sprouts. With machetes they dig little pits amid charred stumps and trunks and branches, and in each hole they set a sprout. ”

“ The name “maiden” plátano also is given to the “little honey,” most fittingly, for it has just enough of piquant tartness to give unfailing relish, yet is tender, plump and mighty comforting withal, upon occasion.
If he is so lucky as to live near a port where steamships stop, the planter may sell his plátanos for a cent or even two cents for each finger or fruit; and as the plants may be set only eight or ten feet apart, and each will mature a bunch of thirty to fifty fingers every nine months, it is clear that he who has an acre of plátanos may have a tidy income of food or of cash. ”

“ When he has set out an acre or two of bananas, the planter need have no fears for the future. He has ample insurance against such privations as come from illness, accident or old age: and they who by a little labor pay for such insurance share each day its material benefits. No need for them to die that others may enjoy the blessings of such wise provision; nor need the planter toil with hoe or spade, cultivator or plow. It may be he will slash away with machete such vine or sapling, grass or weed as happens to obstruct his path ”

“ Not before the plant has grown to a height of ten to twenty, and in some places to thirty feet, does the flower-stem begin pushing its way up from the base through the middle of the stalk. In a short time it sends out at the top one or more leaves, smaller than their older fellows, as a signal that flower and fruit will quickly follow. ”

“ Every one who has tasted the bananas is of the opinion that they are superior to figs in every way, and there is likely to be a large home consumption as soon as the factory can supply the market.
Housewives who wish for novelties to lend new charm to their tables, to tickle the palate of the epicure, or to coax the reluctant appetite of the invalid, will find them in novel dainties made from bananas. Excellent and nutritious bread may be made of the flour. ”

“ Statements made by other analysts seem to warrant the deduction that the nutritive value of a ton of potatoes, at one cent per pound, is 19 cents more than that of a ton of bananas at the same price. There is a difference, too, in the cost of production of a ton of potatoes and the cost of raising a ton of bananas. The field for potatoes must be plowed and harrowed in the spring, the seed dropped in furrows, which are then to be covered, after which comes cultivating again and again until the time has come for digging and picking, carting, sacking and hauling, often to a distant market. ”

“ She is more than ready to do his work: he is willing to let her do it.
He whose acre of bananas has been well planted has on it 225 hills, or 900 stalks. Each stalk will give him a bunch which, on rich, new ground, should weigh 60 pounds, say 54,000 pounds each 12 or 14 months. That is the theory. The fact seems to be that the average yield is really 175 to 300 full bunches to the acre per annum, say a mean of 270 bunches weighing about 16,000 pounds. The average yield reported all along the Caribbean shore and from Jamaica, during a dozen years, equaled 270.95 full bunches an acre per annum. ”

“ As the cost of producing bananas after the first crop from a plantation is confined to cultivating and harvesting, which may be done for $10 per acre yearly, it is scarcely wonderful that Judge O’Hara, late U. S. Consul at Greytown, Nicaragua, a lawyer whose acute mind is trained to sifting evidence, reported to the Department of State at Washington regarding banana-growing on the Atlantic coast of that republic, that:
It seems reasonably certain that bananas on the Bluefields River pay better than many crops in the United States. ”

“ The natives have learned by experience when they cut into the fruit stalk so to gauge the strength of the blow as to cut just deep enough to cause the stalk to bend slowly over until the end of the bunch reaches the ground, when another slash with the machete severs it, and it is loaded carefully into the cart. ”

“ Naturally the intelligent planter concerns himself mainly with the question: What is the cost, the yield and the profit of banana growing? There are evidences that many people in the North feel a lively curiosity about the same points. ”

“ Having in view all these facts, why should not multitudes make homes where scorching heat and biting cold are never felt, and tornado and deadly blizzard are unknown; where no destructive floods nor ruinous droughts ever come, and never ceasing winds bring coolness from the sea; where spring is eternal and harvests never end, and delicious fruits yield profusely all the years ”

“ Green bunches average nearly 60 pounds in weight, two-thirds of which is lost in peeling and drying, leaving about 20 pounds, which, at 15 cents, will give $3 per bunch. If the production of the green bananas and the drying should cost $2 a bunch, the income from an acre of bananas would be $288 yearly. In practice it has been found that the total cost and income of dried bananas give a net return of $2.72 per bunch, which equaled about $783 per acre. ”

“ Before one can give a trustworthy reply to such question he must study the evidence of those who have had opportunity to learn the truth, and he should be able to present the general averages of the results shown by many such witnesses. The planter of medium ability and industry may confidently expect to attain the average results; he who has less intelligence and thrift should not complain if he fails to get as good returns ”

“ Bananas reach their best estate on the low, deep alluvium near the Caribbean coast, where the temperature never sinks below 60° and is seldom below 80° F. Such low lands serve all the better if flooded two or three times in the year, for the banana will drink much water, and such floods bring silt from the hills, and thus keep the ground fertilized without cost to the owner. ”

“ Bluefields, Nicaragua, has been a most profitable field for banana growing, because it has a river into which sea-going ships can safely enter, and up which such ships may go fifty or sixty miles, and receive their cargoes from landings on the plantations which border the Rio Escondido. ”

“ They are now owners of plantations, and have a steady income of $30 to $300 a month. The large amount of money distributed along this coast in exchange for fruit would make any civilized and temperate community prosperous and happy. There would be public and private schools, churches and banks, newspapers and libraries, parks and carriages, and handsome dwellings supplied with every comfort and luxury, surrounded by gardens of flowers, fruits and vegetables natural to this climate of perpetual seedtime and harvest. ”

“ Many native planters seem content with the returns their bananas give, and appear to have no thought of increasing that income.
“Why don’t you plant more bananas? See how [24] well this little patch has paid,” I have said to many of them.
“Why should I do that? Have I not plenty to eat? I have enough money; if I plant more I shall have to do more work to get more money which I don’t need,” is the substance of their replies. ”

“ The flavor of the meal depends a good deal on the rapidity with which the slices are dried. Above all, the plantain must not be allowed to approach too closely to yellowness or ripeness, otherwise it becomes impossible to dry it. The color of the meal is injured when steel knives are used in husking or slicing, but silver or nickel blades do not injure the color. ”

“ It is evident that the entire area which can so be devoted to banana culture must be small, for most Central American and Mexican rivers are obstructed at their mouths by sandbars, over which ships cannot pass. ”

“ Why not, indeed, when cakes and beer, brandy and sugar, pies, puddings and sauce, and many another thing good for man to take for his stomach’s sake, are made from bananas. So, too, are paper and laces, brushes and cloth, and cordage enough to pull up the earth by its roots, if only we had a place to hook the tackle. ”

“ There are those who insist that the higher results shown in the foregoing table may easily be obtained by any one who will give as much thought and labor to growing bananas as are required for the successful raising of corn or of potatoes. ”

“ Under those petals the baby bananas are packed close, like fingers tightly gripping the parent stem. These closed ranks, each separate hand or whorl reaching half way around the stalk, grow so quickly that in six or eight weeks the bunch weighs fifty pounds or more. ”

“ An order is now in hand for 224 pounds for London at 6d. per pound in bulk, the consignee to do the retail packing and advertising. As the fruit is something new it is being sought, and all that can be dried is being profitably disposed of. ”

“ Those stakes are made up of sheathes of leaves tightly rolled one around another, the inner ones narrow, cream-colored and tender; those nearer the outer ones wider and yet wider, until the outer one is reached. ”

“ It is true that the figures on which the averages shown are based were, in many cases, from the experience of native and other planters of little diligence and skill, and that they got smaller results than might easily have been obtained. ”

“ These are firm in flesh, resist decay much longer than do the common guineos, and will, therefore, much better bear transportation. They should become known to the millions of northern lands, for they would afford a vast supply [9] of food much more convenient and palatable than, and equal in value to, potatoes.
Prof. Wynter Blythe, of London, is an analyst who tells us that the relative values of bananas and sago, corn meal and wheat flour are as follows ”