360
Martinique
Sketches.
are usually served with the migan. There is a particular fondness for the little rosy crab called tourlouroux, in patois touloulou. Migan is also made with bread-fruit. Very large bananas or plantains are boiled with codfish, with daubes, or meat stews, and with eggs. The breadfruit is a fair substitute for vegetables. It must be cooked very thoroughly, and has a dry potato taste. What is called the fleu-fouitt-à-pain, or " bread-fruit flower " — a long pod-shaped solid growth, covered exteriorly with tiny seeds closely set as pin-heads could be, and having an interior pith very elastic and resistant,—is candied into a delicious sweetmeat. VII.
T H E consumption of bananas is enormous : more bananas are eaten than vegetables ; and more banana-trees are yearly being cultivated. The negro seems to recognize instinctively that economical value of the banana to which attention was long since called by Humboldt, who estimated that while an acre planted in wheat would barely support three persons, an acre planted in bananatrees would nourish fifty. Bananas and plantains hold the first place among fruits in popular esteem ;—they are cooked in every way, and served with almost every sort of meat or fish. What we call bananas in the United States, however, are not called bananas in Martinique, but figs (figues). Plantains seem to be called bananes. One is often surprised at popular nomenclature : choux may mean either a sort of root (choux-caraïbe), or the top of the cabbage-palm ; Jacquot may mean a fish ; cabane never means a cabin, but a bed ; crickett means not a cricket, but a frog ; and at least fifty other words have equally deceptive uses. If one desires to speak of real figs—dried figs—he must say figues-Fouance (French figs) : otherwise nobody will un-