idle, lazy
fellows lay half drunk, or wholly so, sleeping on the benches under a
vertical sun. Some were quite unconscious, even lying upon the damp
ground. Apropos of our remark that these people were inviting the
fever, an intelligent resident, who was our companion, calmly
answered: "Yellow Jack does not choose that class for its victims.
They seem to enjoy complete immunity from the pestilence." Seeing was
believing, but it was also confounding to one's sense of the eternal
fitness of things.

Generally, the scenes and experiences are not quite pleasant as
presented to the stranger who visits Black Town, Colombo, for the
first time. As he becomes more familiar with the surroundings,
however, a picturesque aspect, a depth of rich brown shadows and bits
of vivid color, unite to form a pleasing and attractive whole.

Adjoining each of these humble homes which line the thoroughfares, or
perhaps just in the rear of them, one is sure to find clusters of
bread-fruit, banana, and mango trees, often dominated by a tall,
gracefully bending cocoanut palm of columnar proportions. The product
of these several fruit-bearers goes far towards feeding the inmates of
the cabin, about which they also cast delightful and much-needed
shade. Nothing is more ornamental under such circumstances than the
large, drooping, pale green leaves of the generously yielding banana,
contrasting with the golden yellow bunches of the ripe fruit. The
nutritious properties of the banana are far in excess of any other
known vegetable food. African explorers have told the author that in
an emergency, when threatened with famine, they have sustained life
and strength for themselves and their followers upon two bananas a
day for six consecutive days, all the time engaged in the hardest sort
of foot-travel through the pathless forest. The banana-tree renews
itself annually, growing to a height of ten or twelve feet, and
bearing heavy clusters of from sixty to a hundred individual fruits,
green at first, but golden in hue when ripe. After bearing its fruit,
the tree wilts and decays like a cornstalk, but in due time again
springs up from the roots to bear another annual luxuriant crop. One
clever writer tells us that the banana is "the devil's agent," because
the abundant food supply which it affords, demanding so little of man
in return, is a promoter of idleness. It is asserted that one acre of
these trees will yield as much nutritious matter as sixty acr