They Sow And Reap Here In Every Season, The
Ground Is Always Producing, And The Fruits Ripen Throughout The
Year; So Great, So Charming Is The Variety, That The Whole Region
Seems A Garden Laid Out And Cultivated Only To Please.
I doubt
whether even the imagination of a painter has yet conceived a
landscape as beautiful as I have seen.
The forests have nothing
uncouth or savage, and seem only planted for shade and coolness.
Among a prodigious number of trees which fill them, there is one
kind which I have seen in no other place, and to which we have none
that bears any resemblance. This tree, which the natives call
ensete, is wonderfully useful; its leaves, which are so large as to
cover a man, make hangings for rooms, and serve the inhabitants
instead of linen for their tables and carpets. They grind the
branches and the thick parts of the leaves, and when they are
mingled with milk, find them a delicious food. The trunk and the
roots are even more nourishing than the leaves or branches, and the
meaner people, when they go a journey, make no provision of any
other victuals. The word ensete signifies the tree against hunger,
or the poor's tree, though the most wealthy often eat of it. If it
be cut down within half a foot of the ground and several incisions
made in the stump, each will put out a new sprout, which, if
transplanted, will take root and grow to a tree.
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