Japan, India, or Ceylon can furnish nothing more fascinating or stranger in their vegetable kingdom than this favoured land. The fruits are simply wonderful in variety and perfection. The glowing sun and ardent breath of the tropics ask little aid from the hand of man in perfecting their products. One eats eggs, custard and butter off the trees.
The mango is nearly as abundant and prolific as the banana in some places. It grows on a very handsome tree, the leaves being long, lanceolate, polished, and hanging in dense masses of dark-green foliage. In size it is like a full-grown apple tree. The fruit is about the size of an egg plum, and when ripe is yellow in colour and very juicy. They grow in long, pendent branches, and the rich, juicy, golden-meated fruit is not only attractive to the eye, but delightful to the palate.
That great broad-leaved, useful plant so characteristic of the tropics, the banana, grows in great profusion in Guatemala, where there are fully two hundred varieties. Many of them are too delicate for transportation so they will never become a factor in commerce. All through the lowlands of Guatemala and even up to an elevation of two thousand and more feet, the banana is more common than the apple tree in New England; and few indeed are the native shacks in those sections that do not have their banana grove near. The uses of the banana in its natural habitat are so many, and its growth is so exuberant, that it might be classed, with equal propriety, as a weed, a vegetable, or a fruit.
Along the line of the Guatemala Northern Railway and the borders of Lake Izabal, with its connecting streams, are thousands of acres just as well suited to the cultivation of this delicious fruit as the neighbouring republic of Honduras, or more distant Costa Rica. Much of the land belongs to the public domain and can be secured for a small sum, although the first cost probably represents not more than one-third of the investment that will be found necessary. The land must be cleared, although this is a simple matter, for the trees and underbrush are simply left where they fall, as decay is very rapid in this climate; and the banana shoots, called _hijos_, are planted in the midst of the rubbish from twelve to fifteen feet apart. After about nine months the stalk will bear and the bunch of bananas is cut while still green. The parent stalk is cut down and one or more shoots will spring up from the roots which will bear fruit in the same time. Thus a marketable crop is produced each week, bringing in a steady and unceasing revenue.