Bana

“ She saw the sun-dappled trail; saw Tharn rise from the body of Bana, only to go down under the cruel impact of a heavy club; saw the horde of oddly dressed men spring from concealment and rush toward her. She had turned to run, but a grinning warrior had intercepted her. And when she had raked her nails across his cheek, his good-humored expression had darkened—she remembered no more.
"But—but Tharn?" she cried. "Where is he? Did you—Is he—"
The man shrugged. "If you mean the man who was with you ... well, we intended only to stun him. There is need in Sephar for strong slaves. ”

“ An hour from now it would be sunset. Soon the forest denizens would be coming here to drink. Soon, too, would come the meat-eaters, to lurk beside the pathway, awaiting Bana and Neela, whose succulent flesh they loved.
The cave-girl bent and washed the dust from her hands and face, drying the skin with grass. Then she rose and retraced her steps to the base of a tall tree. Favoring her ankle as best she could, Dylara climbed well above the ground, sought and found a properly placed limb on which she could spend the night, and fell promptly into dreamless sleep. ”

“ All around the garden the long, banner-like leaf of the banana is waving above great clusters of fruit. The air is heavy with odors of orangeblossoms, shining like waxen stars through glossy green leaves, by the side of glowing golden fruit. Immense pineapples are ripening within whorls of spear-like foliage, with a rich musky fragrance. The peasant huts, with conical thatched roofs reaching nearly to the ground, are half hidden in luxurious masses of unknown but beautiful bushes ”

“ One can scarcely imagine anything prettier or more perfect than these young descendants, the banana children; they are the perfect image in miniature of the mother-tree, but the wind has no power upon their young leaves ”

“ There are few comely faces visible,—in the streets all are black who pass. But through open shop-doors one occasionally catches glimpses of a pretty quadroon face,—with immense black eyes,—a face yellow like a ripe banana. ”

“ Afterwards she said, “You must build a house.”
Then the King having built a house in the flower garden, having taken Koṭā the woman placed him in the house. In the evening having placed [him there] , and lit the lamp, and placed the book, she came to her house.
Well then, when Koṭā is saying Bana, five Nāga Maidens13 having come to pluck the flowers hear the Bana. Until the very time when light falls they heard the Bana. When the light was falling the five Nāga Maidens said, “We [are] to go; we must give him powers (waram) .” ”

“ Trakor said, and there was the beginning of anger in his tone. "His name is Tharn. In all the world there is no greater fighter."
Nothing changed in Gerdak's expression. "He is not one of us. Tell him to go at once or I will kill him!"
Trakor stiffened. Suddenly his anger flamed into the open—flamed with such intensity that he completely forgot the object of his wrath was his own chief.
"YOU will kill him! Ha! There are not fifty among you who could kill him! With only a knife he slew Sadu—leaping upon him as though Sadu were no more than Bana, the deer. ”

“ Vast quantities are imported by Britain and the United States. Manila hemp is the product of a species of banana.
Bana ́na, an African port, in Belgian Congo, at the mouth of the Congo.
Banana-bird, a pretty insessorial bird (Ictĕrus leucoptĕryx) , a native of the West Indies and the warmer parts of America. It is a lively bird, easily domesticated, tawny and black in colour, with white bars upon the wings.
Banat. See Ban.
Ban ́bridge, a town of Ireland, County Down, 22 miles S.W. of Belfast, on the Bann. The manufacture of linen is carried on to a great extent in town and neighbourhood. Pop. ”

“ So he neither followed Betty nor went home; but, in dreadful doubt and great fear, he hung between the two courses in the banana grove, and shivered at the tree-trunks and the rustling leaves and the stray patches of moonlight. ”

“ The oft-receding vision of a successful future inspires the dauntless heart less than a sense of present duty, and these exiles from the social ties of nation and kindred possess special claims on sympathy and remembrance. Lovely lanes of palm and banana, brightened by trees of crimson poinsettia, wind upward to the hills, and a cluster of green islets gems the blue waters; the scarlet-stemmed Banka palm offering a glowing contrast to the sweeping emerald of the feathery fronds. ”

“ Each tore a couple of bananas from the bunch and then they ran down the incline to the beach. Knowing every turn in the coast and every difficult place, they were able to scorn the waves that occasionally swept over their feet, as if longing to draw them into their moist embraces. ”

“ The Boy enters from the street. He is wearing pajamas. In his right hand, wrapped in paper, he carries a bone. In the circle of his left arm he has a banana, which he holds against him; in his left hand are an apple and a carrot. ”

“ One wag has somehow managed to rescue the fateful banana skin and, holding it up between his fingers, ascends the platform and begins to address the students surging round him.
“Gentlemen, the class struggle is a banana skin. Useless, you can’t eat it, it contains no nourishment, it’s good for nothing. But, gentlemen, this one thing, this skin, this class struggle has shown its great potentiality: it can trip up fakirs!” ”

“ In the early days of Uganda, there was a small village situate on the other side of the Katonga, in Buddu, and its people had planted bananas and plantains which in time grew to be quite a large grove, and produced abundant and very fine fruit. From a grove of bananas when its fruit is ripe there comes a very pleasant odour, and when a puff of wind blows over it, and bears the fragrance towards you, I know of nothing so well calculated to excite the appetite, unless it be the smell of roasted meat. ”

“ We are so parochial in our views, taking us as a species, that I dare say very few English people really know how immensely useful a plant is the common banana. To most of us it envisages itself merely as a curious tropical fruit, largely imported at Covent Garden, and a capital thing to stick on one of the tall dessert-dishes when you give a dinner-party, because it looks delightfully foreign, and just serves to balance the pine-apple at the opposite end of the hospitable mahogany. ”

“ No one need starve or pine for lack of wholesome appetising and nutritious food while the banana grows as it does in North Queensland, and common as it is, the banana is one of the curiosities of the vegetable world. ”

“ Stripping off the leaves, you come to a shoot twenty inches or two feet in length, the interior of which consists of a white substance resembling an office ruler in thickness, and which tastes something like a chestnut, but is much more milky and sweet. The fruit of the wild banana has a most delicious flavour, but is so full of small seeds that it is impossible to swallow it. ”

“ The banana flourished and grew into a grove, and each sprout marked the passage of a season, and the sugar-cane likewise throve prodigiously as year after year passed and the infant grew into girlhood. When the princess had bloomed into a beautiful maiden, the grandmother had become so old that the events of long ago appeared to her to be like so many dreams, but she still worshipped her child’s child, cooked for her, waited upon her, wove new grass mats for her bed, and fine grass-cloths for her dress, and every night before she retired she washed her dainty feet. ”

“ The sand burns the feet of the little children, who leave their palm leaf balls and their pin-wheels of frangipani blossoms to wither in the sun, as they creep into the shade of the houses. The 17women who must go abroad carry great banana leaves as sun-shades or wind wet cloths about their heads. ”

“ The love of their gardens seems also to be dying out, and as I once heard some one impatiently exclaim, “They have no soul above bananas,” and it is true that the culture of bananas is at the moment of all-absorbing interest. ”

“ The people of Banana are said to change themselves by magical means, composed of human embryos and other ingredients, but in their leopard form they may do no hurt to mankind under pain of retaining for ever the beast shape. ”

“ These large-leafed, upright little trees are the Madagascar coffee, and the smaller and more graceful ones, the Java coffee—how they take us back to those happy days and months among the coffee plantations, long ago!—and near by is the friendly banana, so common an object that we pass its torn, drooping leaves with scarcely a thought, but it is worth more than a passing glance, for there is no plant in all the tropics more useful than the banana. ”

“ PERHAPS you do not know it, but the monkeys think that all the bananas belong to them. When Brazilian children eat bananas they say, "I am a monkey." I once knew a little boy in Brazil who was very, very fond of bananas. He always said, "I am very much of a monkey." If you are fond of bananas the Brazilian children would tell you that you are a monkey, too. ”

“ If I had a nickel, I’d buy some bananas from that banana-man’s fruit-stand. I certainly am hungry.”
“Want banan’s?” inquired the man as she stood looking at his wares.
Tiny nodded. “I haven’t any money,” she said, trying to keep from crying.
“Never mind,” smiled the man, “I had little girl once. She gone. She die. I give banan’s you.” He handed her a half-dozen bananas no bigger than pencil points.
“Oh, thank you,” said Tiny. “I’ll never forget how kind you are.” ”

“ The banana tree shoots up its succulent stem, and unfolds its immense entire leaves with great rapidity; and a group of them waving their silky leaves in the sun, or shining ghostly white in the moonlight, forms one of those beautiful sights that can only be seen to perfection in the tropics. ”

“ So, in the tropics, the broad-leaved banána, beautiful in itself, becomes doubly so, when looked upon as producing a greater quantity of food in a given time, and on a limited space, than any other plant. ”

“ In the altos, the banana is displaced by hardier fruits sheltered under the lofty cedar, and here we find a thrifty and less humble people who pay some attention to manufactures. Salvador presents less abrupt variation in its features. ”

“ Some foolish person, a benighted Democrat like as not, might timidly suggest that bananas were a greater public blessing when they came from Jamaica and were three for a nickel, but what patriotic citizen would listen for a moment to the criticisms of a person without any conception of the beauty and glory of the great American banana industry, without realization of the proud significance of the fact that Old Glory floats over the biggest banana hothouses in the world! ”

“ From the Center of these Leaves grows a second Trunk, more firm than the rest of the Plant: upon this grows a Cluster of about forty or fifty Bananes, sometimes more, sometimes less. A Banane is a Fruit as thick as one’s Arm, about a Foot long, and a little crooked. They gather this Cluster green, and hang it up in the Ceiling; and as the Bananes grow yellow, or mellow, they gather them. ”

“ The Banana which grows in all the hot parts of America, and furnishes the Indians with the chief part of their daily food, producing more nutritious substance, in less space, and with less trouble than any other known plant. ”

“ The Java pisang, or banana, however, is but a coarse plantain with a pinkish-yellow, dry pulp, of a pumpkiny flavor that sadly disappoints the palate. Yet it [83] is nature’s greatest and most generously bestowed gift in the tropics, and it was pleasant to eat it picked ripe in its native home, instead of receiving it steam-ripened from Northern fruiterers’ warehouses. Every tiny village and almost every little native hut in Java has its banana-patch or its banana-tree, which requires nothing of labor in cultivation, save the weeding away of the old stalks. ”

“ Her most pronounced and exasperating stupidities were shown in her refusal to eat, or to taste, strange food, even when very hungry. Any ape that does not know enough to eat a fine, ripe banana, and will only mince away at the inner lining of the banana skin, is an unmitigated numskull, and hardly fit to live. ”

“ Girls up to a marriageable age travel about publicly in complete nudity, while boys over ten years old are rarely seen without a kid-skin, aping the adult: on occasions of rejoicing each woman bears in her girdle at the back a bunch of green leaves, corn or sugar-cane leaves, or a piece of banana frond. ”

“ The BANANA is a valuable plant (Musa sapientum) which grows in the West Indies and other tropical countries, and has leaves about six feet in length, and a foot broad in the middle; and fruit four or five inches long, and about the shape of a cucumber. When ripe, the banana is an agreeable fruit, with a soft and luscious pulp; and is frequently introduced in desserts in the West Indies. ”

“ I believe there are some fifteen thousand people here, and some of their buildings are rather fine, but the gardens and the sky interested me more. A palm is seen here and there poising its royal crown in the rich light, and the banana, with its magnificent ribbon leaves, producing a marked tropical effect—not semi-tropical, as they are so fond of saying here, while speaking of their fruits. ”