Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/136

112 and quite separate from it, stand in a row the kitchen, godowns, (storehouses, school-bungalow, and stable. Although the soil is sandy, (for it is but a little distance from the sea,) yet, when well watered and cultivated, it yields flowers and fruits abundantly. All the year round the rose, the crape-myrtle, the pomegranate, the oleander, and other shrubs fragrant or beautiful, made our compound attractive and homelike. A few fruit-trees, the custard-apple, the papaw, and the banana, furnished additions to our table. The banana or plantain, which is well known in our Atlantic cities, being brought from the West Indies, is the fruit of a plant which, in about two years, attains a height of ten or twelve feet, when from amid its large, glossy, and delicate leaves, it throws out a long spike of flowers; these are succeeded by comb-like clusters of yellow fruit. Then, having fulfilled its mission, as each stalk bears but once, it is cut down, to be succeeded by suckers from its root. The fruit is cheap, wholesome, and pleasant, and forms a staple article of food. The small yellow species is, in the East Indies, called the plantain, while the term banana is applied to the large red fruit of the same species. Though the house