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Many banana-trees, uncared for patches of corn, and Congo-bean bushes attested former cultivation. The population had all been swept away; ruined villages, broken utensils, and human skeletons, met with at every turn, told a sad tale. So numerous were the slain, that it was thought the inhabitants had been slaughtered in consequence of having made raids on the Zulus for cattle.
They abound with magnificent trees, amongst which the "Barringtonia" may be recognized, with its voluminous trunk always leaning towards the sea, allowing the tips of the branches to touch the water; the "scoevola lobelia," fig-trees, mangroves, the casuarinæ, with their straight and slender stems shooting up to the height of forty feet, the rima, the takanahaka, with its trunk more than twenty feet in circumference; the cynometer, belonging to the family of leguminous plants, bright from its topmost to its lowest branches with pale red flowers and golden fruits; and besides these rarer trees, palms, nutmeg-trees, roseapple-trees, banana-trees, flourish in the low and moist ground.
Then they are flattened down, by means of long green poles, and the trunks of a few banana-trees are stripped up and strewn over them to cause steam. The oven is then covered over with large leaves and soil, and left so for about three days, when the ti and the ape are taken out well cooked, and of a rich, light-brown colour. The ape prevents the ti from getting too dry in the oven.
There have been many such periods for the island peoples. "That two years it did not rain. The breadfruit would not yield. The grass and plants died. There were no nuts on the palms. The pigs had no food, and fell in the forest. The banana-trees withered. The people ate the popoi from the deepest pits, and day and night they fished.
The Annexe was bounded by the Broom Road and the rue de Bougainville, and across that street was the restaurant of Mme. Fanny. It was built over a tiny stream, which emptied fifty feet away into the lagoon. A clump of banana-trees hid the patrons, but did not obscure their view from Fanny's balcony.
The most remarkable objects are two banana-trees. These trees belong to the fig-tree species, and sometimes attain a height of forty feet. The fruit is very small, round, and of a dark-red; it yields oil when burnt.
It grows, in beautiful bottles, in the dark places among the banana-trees. Si, Senor. Only at midnight can they be picked by sailor-men who bring them, before daylight comes, to your back door. Good aguardiente is a verree difficult fruit to handle, Senor Goodwin." Smuggling, in Coralio, was much nearer than competition to being the life of trade.
A copious rivulet flows down the valley, the water of which is dispersed among the date-trees, and irrigates some cultivated fields in the wider parts of the windings of this valley. Wheat, dhourra, barley, and dokhen are sown here; of vegetables the Badendjan, or egg-plant, Meloukhye onions and radishes are cultivated; and vines, lemon, and banana-trees abound.
In the dry season the banana-trees all died and the cocoanut-trees bore no fruit, so a troop of monkeys came to Ca Boo-Ug and asked him if he would give them something to eat. "Yes, I have some nice meat in a jar which I will give you, but if I do, you must promise to eat it with your eyes shut." They were very hungry, so they gave the required promise, and Ca Boo-Ug gave them the meat.
The night, however, set in with a most fearful thunder-storm, accompanied by the most vivid flashes of lightning I ever witnessed. The rain continued to fall in torrents; it cleared up at daylight, when we proceeded. As yet the banks of the river had been a continued garden, with sugarcane plantations and banana-trees in abundance.
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