Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1890-07-12
FRUITS FROM STRANGE LANDS.
Brought to Washington From Many
Parts OF the World.

LINES AND LEMONS FROa THE SUNNY Tropics
ALSO ORANGES AND PUNCHES OF BANANAS,
WITH TARAxTULAs THROWN IS-How COCOA
NUTS ARE PREPARED FOR MARKET.
n IT'S very funny thing" said fruit
jE dealer a day or two ago to a STAR re-
Exporter. that people in Washington and
& Fall over the north have no liking for lines
- Three barrels Of lines will stock the mar
Ike. in this city with that kind of fruit at any
time. And yet there is no question of the fact
that the lime, employed for the same purposes
precisely. is fruit infinitely superior to the
lemon. Unfortunately, it is a cultivated taste,
and hardly any one in this latitude has taken
the trouble to acquire it. Where both lines
and lemons are grown il is not considered that
the latter are at all 10 be compared with the
former. Try limeade for once in place of a
lemonade and you viii be convinced But you
must take care to buy your
LINES YELLOW AND RIPE,
and not in the green condition, as they are
Usually seen here. Use about two TO a glass of
water, with ice and the requisite amount of
sugar, and you have drink for the gods.
Such lines reach Washington come mostly
from Jamaica. though few are brought from
Florida. You can judge how little priced they
are by northerners when 1 tell you that have
often seen them sold, ready picked, Tor 10
cents per barrel. Most of them that come to
this country from the West Indies are bought
up by manufacturers for rendering into
bottled lime juice, which tastes no more
like the fresh article than chalk does
like cheese. In old times school girls used TO be
very much addicted to the usually surrepti-
tious consumption of picked lines, which they
bought for penny apiece at the little shops;
but my impression Is that this fashion has gone
out to a great extent. A lime. though SO much
smaller, has about as much juice In II as good
lemon; il is so excellent fruit that Washing
ton people really ought TO educate their pal
stes to an appreciation of ii, particularly in
.his hot summer time. when it makes so deli
eloIs tilvoring for drinks Of many sorts.
WHERE FRUITS COME FROM.
'Where do you get your lemons from?"
''From Italy mostly, though comparatively
small number come from Florida. The big
lemons. with thick skins anu no juice worth
mentioning. used TO fetch the biggest prices
but people have been learning better. and now
the little ones with the smooth skins
chiefly IN demand. Oranges also are imported
from Italy when Florida and the West Indies
are not producing. Jamaica and other islands
IN Its neighborhood supply the market
from September till November of each year.
Florida Is drawn upon from November to May
and for the rest of the twelvemonth Italy sends
Us the golden fruit Bananas come from the
West Indies and from Port Limon. in Costa
Rlca- The great dealers in them have ware
houses IN New York city and have lines of their
own vessels running from the producing points
to the metropolis. One steamship company
makes 1t an important part of its business to
carry bananas for sale on Its own account 1t
owns great plantations, do also most of the
big dealers / spoke Of.
BANANA PLANTATIONS
''During the last few years many enterprising
persons have been going to Costa Rica aid the
West Indies and buying plantations for ba-
nsnas with great profit to themselves. You
see the banana Is vegetable that yields enor-
mously in proportion to the labor expended
and the acreage employed. 1t has been esti-
mated that one acre planted with bananas will
actually produce twenty-five times as much
food per annum as the same space de-
voted to corn. You may remember that
a distinguished political economist once de-
clared the banana to be the lnsurmountable
obstacle to the prospective civilization of the
native Of tropical Africa so long, he said
as the untutored black Of that region is able
to produce by one days exertion enough bana-
mas to feed him for a year he will decline to
toll We get our bananas here in Washington
by rail on commission from the New York
dealers."
HOW BANANAS RIPEN.
I'm green state, of course?''
always. We ripen them artificially in win
ter. In summer, when it is very hot, we put
ice about them, lest they rot; in winter we
nam sHeh III 'He Same OOAes WHICH are USED
Tor fefrlgerators during the heated term and
keep the boxes warm with steam pipes Aspin-
wall, on the Isthmus of Panama. used to be the
great place of export for bananas. but the bust
ness of growing them in that part of the world
has almost died out in recent years.
largely because the digging of the great
canal took away all the available laborers
From Aspinwall are brought the long, thin
bananas, which have SO delicate flavor: some
people consider them better than any others
The red bananas come from Baracoa on the
island Of Cuba; they are not as good as the
white ones, though il is somewhat the fashion
to consider them very superior and often they
bring higher prices. Here is a bunch of plan
tains-the banana is variety of pIantain. Won
know-which are so much priced in the tropics
You will observe that they are two or three
times as big as banana and the .jackass plan
tain sometimes grows to a huge size In tropi-
cal climes fried plantain is a favorite dish