Dampier's description of the plantain-tree is often quoted as a fine specimen of descriptive writing. "It is," he says, "the king of all fruit, not excepting the cocoanut. The tree is three feet round and twelve feet high: it is not raised from seed, but from the roots of old trees. As soon as the fruit is ripe the tree decays; but suckers at once spring up and bear in a twelvemonth. It comes up with two leaves, within which, by the time it is a foot high, two more spring up, and in a short time two more, and so on. When full grown, the leaves are seven or eight feet long and a foot and a half broad. The stem of the leaf is as big as a man's arm. The fruit-stem shoots out at the top of the full-grown tree,--first blossoming, and then bearing. The Spaniards give it the pre-eminence over all other fruit, as most conducive to life. It grows in a cod about seven inches long and three inches thick. The shell or rind is soft, and, when ripe, yellow. The fruit within is of the consistency of butter in winter. It has a very delicate flavor, and melts in the mouth like marmalade. It is pure pulp, without kernel, seed, or stone. A large plantation of these trees will yield fruit throughout the year, and will furnish the exclusive food of a family. The markets of Havana, Carthagena, Portobello, &c. are full of the fruit; and they are sold at the price of threepence a dozen. When used as bread, it is roasted or boiled before it is quite ripe; and sometimes a roasted plantain is, as it were, buttered with a ripe raw plantain. An English bag-pudding may be made with half a dozen ripe fruit; and, again, plantains sliced and dried in the sun taste like figs, and may be preserved in any climate. Green plantains dried and grated furnish an excellent flour for bread or puddings. The Mosquito Indians squeeze a plantain into a calabash of water and drink it: they call it mishlaw, and it resembles lambs'-wool made of apples and ale. It drinks brisk and cool, and is very pleasant." Such was the plantain two centuries ago. The Sultan of Mindanao received the strangers with favor, and would gladly have induced them to settle upon the island and form the nucleus of an English trading station. Dampier would have remained, but the majority were against him. After a time, a mutiny broke out,--the principal cause being the want of active employment; and, as Captain Swan manifested no energy or address in quelling it, he and thirty-six men were left at Mindanao, the rest escaping with the ship. Dampier here remarks that they had buried sixteen men upon the island, who had died by poison,--the natives revenging the slightest dalliance with their women with a deadly, though lingering, dose or potion. Some of the mutineers that ran off with the vessel died of poison administered at Mindanao four months afterwards. [Illustration: SURF BATHING BY NATIVES.]