How We are Fed Part 10

No, it is not a waste to cut down the stalks, for they die after bearing their fruit, and the smaller stalks about them will soon yield. Some of these stalks, you see, have but one bunch and some have two or three.

How odd the bunches look with the "fingers" all pointing upward!

The banana leaves which the men are wrapping about the bunches are to protect the fruit. It bruises very easily and great quant.i.ties are lost on this account. They are not always wrapped, however.

When the fruit reaches the vessel, it is carefully inspected; and if not in just the right condition, it is refused. The bunches which are accepted, are taken into the hold of the ship and packed closely together. The planter receives for these from ten to thirty-five cents a bunch. Just think of buying eight or nine dozen of bananas for ten cents!

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 52.--Loading a Small Boat with Bananas to be taken to the "Fruiter" in the Harbor.]

The men will not stop work until the ship is loaded. It may take twenty-four hours, and it may take twice that long, for a "fruiter" will carry from fifteen to twenty thousand bunches of fruit.

In some parts of Central America, where there are no harbors, the planters float the fruit down the streams in canoes. The vessels anchor at some distance from the sh.o.r.e, and the bananas are taken out in boats called _dories_. They are hoisted up to the deck of the ship by means of pulleys, and then packed in the hold. The thousands of bunches which are bruised in handling are thrown into the sea.

While the northern ports get most of their supply of bananas from the West Indies, the Pacific coast states are supplied from Central America.

The "fruiters" unload at New Orleans into trains, which carry the fruit to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other places. Banana trains also run from New Orleans to St. Louis, Chicago, and other parts of the country.

The fruit ships have great pipes or ventilators, which carry the cool, fresh air from the sea down into the hold. Sometimes when they reach port it is so cold that the bananas cannot be taken out for a few days.

Wagons are loaded with the fruit at the wharves, and it is taken to warehouses where it gradually turns yellow. I am sure you have seen loads of the green fruit on the streets.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 53.--A "Fruiter" taking a Cargo of Bananas.]

When the wholesale merchant sells the fruit, he often incloses each bunch in the rough material of which gunny sacks are made, and then puts a light, circular frame, made of strips of wood, over it. This, you see, protects the bananas. The grocer or fruit man takes hold of the frame without danger of mashing the fruit, lifts the bunch, and hangs it upon a hook. The frame and sacking are then removed.

Bananas grow in the tropical parts of Asia and Africa and on many of the islands of the Pacific Ocean. They are also raised in Florida, and they ripen in sheltered places in Southern California.

You have seen both yellow and red bananas. The red ones usually bring the higher price, but they do not keep well and are not so extensively raised as the yellow ones.

The banana is an important article of food. It is much more nourishing than potatoes or even good, white bread. A flour or meal can be made from the fruit by drying it and then grinding.

HOW DATES GROW

Three thousand years before the shepherds followed the star to the manger at Bethlehem, the beautiful date palm was cultivated beside the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile rivers. The date was the bread of the people who lived in these fertile valleys, and it is an important article of food in northern Africa, Arabia, and Persia to-day.

Look at a map of northern Africa, and you will see that the great Sahara covers a large part of it. Here and there across the drifting sands wind caravan routes, traveled by camels ridden by strangely dressed men.

These routes lead to beautiful garden spots called _oases_. Here are wells and springs, with little streams flowing in the shade of fig, date palm, and other trees. The people who dwell within these groves beside the cooling waters look out upon the desert as the inhabitants of an island might look upon the boundless sea. Find some of these oases and learn why they are fertile. The people who live in these oases depend upon dates for their living. The dreary journey from the coast to the interior is made to procure quant.i.ties of this fruit, which are wanted by the outside world.

If you were to make a journey in a desert country, you would find that you could not carry such articles of food as you would have if you remained at home. The sunshine beats down fiercely, the springs and wells are far apart, and the patient animals must not be overloaded. The chief article of food carried is the date. A ma.s.s is packed together until it is so hard that pieces are chopped off with a hatchet when they are wanted.

Like the cocoanut palm, the date palm rises to a great height, sometimes fifty or sixty feet, without branches. It ends in a crown of beautiful feathery leaves which droop downward. These leaves may be ten or fifteen feet long. Many of them stand edgewise. Unlike most trees, the trunk does not steadily increase in size, and you can tell nothing as to the age of the tree by its diameter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 54.--Date Palms loaded with Ripe Fruit, Biskra, Algeria. (Year Book U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1900.)]

In its wild state many shoots spring from the base of the tree. These may grow as high as the parent stalk, so that in time a jungle or thicket is formed.

The flowers, which are clear white, grow in cl.u.s.ters. There are from six to twenty of these cl.u.s.ters on a tree, each of which produces a bunch of dates. The female tree bears the fruit. The blossoms are pollinated both by the wind and by man.

There are from ten to fifteen pounds of dates in a bunch. A tree will average from one hundred to two hundred pounds each year, although trees have been known to yield six hundred pounds. The trees yield when from four to eight years old, and continue to bear for a century.

The dates, green at first, later in the year a yellowish brown, are, when ripe, amber or black in color.

The trees require a very dry, hot climate, but moist soil. Long, long ago, this saying was common among the Arabs, "The date palm, the queen of trees, must have her feet in running water and her head in the burning sky."

Although there are lovely date palm trees on the grounds of many California homes, few of them bear fruit. The temperature must average from eighty to ninety degrees for a considerable time in the summer, in order to mature it. What is the average summer temperature in your locality?

If an ordinary tree is frost-bitten, it recovers and soon puts out a new growth; but if the crown of the date palm be frozen, the tree dies.

When the Moors went to Spain, in the eleventh century, they introduced this valuable tree which the mission fathers several hundred years later brought to Mexico and to Southern California.

How would you like to try to climb a date palm tree? Although they look so smooth and are without branches, the natives of the desert climb them without any help whatever. The trunk is always somewhat rough, and this makes it possible to ascend them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 55.--Date Palm Trees.]

Not all of the dates in a bunch ripen at once, so they are usually picked by hand and only the ripe ones selected. Sometimes, however, the bunches are cut off. Some dates contain so much sap that the bunches must be hung up to allow it to drain off before they can be shipped.

This sap is called _date honey_, and is saved. They are sent to the coast towns in bags or boxes called _frails_. Where dates are to be sold in small quant.i.ties, they are repacked in the small boxes such as you have seen.

You know that dates are very sweet, and it is no wonder that they are, for they contain from fifty-five to sixty per cent of sugar.

The trees are often tapped, and the sap which flows out is made into sugar. Vinegar and a liquor called _arrack_ are also made from it. The leaves of the tree are made into bags and mats; from the stones a drink is made which takes the place of coffee. From the leafstalks baskets are made, while the trunk furnishes material for houses and for fences.

If the dates could speak, they could tell us many wonderful stories of the far East, of the river boats on the Nile, of the drifting sands which come so close to the river's banks, of the caravans creeping over the desert toward the green oases and then fading out of sight, bearing loads of this food to the countries where it is not produced.

THE ORANGE GROVES OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, Jan. 4, 1902.

DEAR FRIEND WILL: I was very glad to receive your letter, and much surprised to know that you are living on a farm. I am glad that you described the raising of cranberries, for I did not know much about it before. When I told my teacher about getting the letter, she asked me to read it in the geography cla.s.s and to show the pictures. I asked our grocery-man where he gets his cranberries, and found that some of them came from Wareham.

You are having cold weather now, I know. Is the skating good? I have not seen ice as thick as window gla.s.s since we came to California, except that delivered by the iceman. Just now there is a beautiful covering of snow on the mountains a few miles north and east of town. Just think of picking roses and callas with snow in plain sight! The snow never remains more than a day or two on these mountains.

Soon after we came to Pasadena, father bought an orange grove of twenty-five acres. We are picking the fruit now. People began to pick oranges several weeks ago, and the work will continue all winter.

Orange trees are planted about twenty feet apart, but the groves do not look as apple orchards do in the East, for no gra.s.s is allowed to grow in them.

The best orange section is east of here, near Redlands and Riverside, but some good fruit is raised near Pasadena also.

Father keeps our trees pruned down rather low, so that it is easier to pick the oranges than it would be if they were allowed to grow very tall.

Orange raising is like cranberry growing in one way--the land must be irrigated in each case. Here the water is piped from the mountain streams and from tunnels. We form basins about ten feet square around each tree and fill them with water. Most of our irrigating is done during the summer, as the winter is our rainy season. _You_ would not call it a very rainy time. Our average is about twenty inches for the whole year.

The trees in our grove have been set out about six years, and they are bearing nicely now. Orange trees begin to bear when they are four years old; so, you see, we have to wait a little longer for a crop than you do for a crop of cranberries. It costs a good deal to start an orange grove. Trees cost from one dollar to one and one-half dollars each at the nurseries. A few years ago they sold for twenty cents each.