Note 11 — Chapter XIV · THE RICH COAST

The banana and plantain are just the kinds of plants that specially appeal to the natives of the equatorial regions, for they give at all seasons a never-failing abundance of nutritious food, and that, too, without any more labor and care than are entailed by clearing the ground and placing them in the ever-productive soil.11 Sir Charles Dilke, however, regards these food producers in quite a different light. In his estimation, the banana is the curse of the tropics. Their very abundance, and the little care they require, constitute, according to him, a bar to progress and to civilization of the highest kind in the tropics, for the reason that all true civilization necessarily presupposes labor and effort. It is for this reason that the highest faculties of man are most conspicuous in the temperate zone, where there is a constant struggle for existence.