Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/94

Rh no access to any botanical work)—resembles an apple tree in its growth, has its branches overgrown with thick-set leaves, and bears fruit round as a ball, without any stem. This fruit, which will grow as large as a man's head, and which has a very hard rind, furnishes the poorer people with their most useful domestic utensils, and becomes, when cut in two, their bowl, dish, plate, drinking vessel, water cask, dipper, ladle, their all in all. The calabash, or gourd, is especially the negro's house furniture, and it is the calabash also which adorns his fists, and which occasions pleasure and noise at their dances. I might mention other trees, and many there are, of which as yet I do not know the names; but I must tell you how my beloved Banana tree blossoms and sets its fruit—for it is a peculiar story, which for a long time has puzzled me when I saw it from a distance, and now I have studied it near.

You see the Banana tree—you shall see it in my album—a tree of low growth, with a palm-like crown not much above your head in height. The stem shoots up straight, surrounded by leaves, which fall off as the stem increases in height, and which leave it somewhat rugged, and with rather a withered appearance. When the tree has attained the height of four or five ells it ceases to grow, but unfolds and expands a crown of broad light-green leaves, as soft as velvet, and from two to four ells long, and which bend and are swayed gracefully by the wind. The wind, however, is not quite gracious to them, but slits the leaves on each side of the strong leaf-fibre into many parts, so that it often looks tattered, but still preserves, even amid its tatters, its soft grace and its beautiful movement. From amid the crown of leaves shoots forth a bud upon a stalk, and resembling a large green flower-bud. This shoots up rapidly, and becomes as rapidly too heavy for its stalk, which bends under its weight. The bud now bends down to the stem and grows