To most people of northern climes bananas are merely--bananas. For such folk know as little of the many varieties of bananas as they know of the many and varied uses of that fruit. Perchance that is why they fry the common yellow guineo which comes by millions of bunches each year to the United States, and then wonder that folk who have dwelt in the tropics, and who extol fried bananas, show nevertheless that they cannot like the mushy, cloying mess set before them here. He who grows bananas, and she who cooks them for him, select for frying that thick-bodied, hard-fleshed and rather tart fruit which they call plátano, and which is by blundering English-speaking tongues misnamed plantain. And even among the plátanos there is room for choosing, for there are of them several varieties. Best of these is that little one which bears, on the Mosquito Shore whence good bananas come, the Spanish name “miel,” or honey, coupled with the Waika word “silpe,” or little. The name “maiden” plátano also is given to the “little honey,” most fittingly, for it has just enough of piquant tartness to give unfailing relish, yet is tender, plump and mighty comforting withal, upon occasion. If he is so lucky as to live near a port where steamships stop, the planter may sell his plátanos for a cent or even two cents for each finger or fruit; and as the plants may be set only eight or ten feet apart, and each will mature a bunch of thirty to fifty fingers every nine months, it is clear that he who has an acre of plátanos may have a tidy income of food or of cash. Usually the planter prefers to eat this food, for which reason people in the North have few opportunities for learning the superior virtues of the fruit. The planter is quite right, for the plátano is the one banana fit to be cooked; and is by no means bad to eat raw. Sometimes a planter may leave a bunch of bananas to ripen on the standing stalk, but that will rarely be, for the fruit so ripened is strong in flavor, dry and too soft to bear transportation; its skin splits, and ants, bees and other insects gather about the exposed flesh. Therefore the women lug home green bunches and hang them in the house to ripen, where everybody who has the right--and that is every visitor, every member of the family and every passing acquaintance--may pluck and eat as the fruit turns yellow and becomes tender. Meanwhile many of the fruits will have been taken from the bunch, peeled and broken into bits, to be boiled with beef or pork, or flesh of the deer, peccary or other game.