204 BANANA ISLANDS BAXCA Mexican tribes. The amount of nourishment is very great, and Humboldt states that the same land which produces 1,000 Ibs. of pota- toes will yield 44,000 Ibs. of bananas ; a surface bearing wheat enough to feed one man will, when planted with bananas, feed 25. The young shoots are cooked as greens, but the old leaves (from 6 to 10 ft. long and 12 to 14 in. wide) and stem are full of a watery, acrid juice, which stains white cloth an indelible black or dark brown. The fibres of the leaves make a textile fabric of great beauty, known as a fine kind of grass cloth. The plants are set closely in cultivation, and the bunches are gathered before they are quite ripe and hung up in a cold place, or better still, buried in the earth. A plantation will yield all the year round by tim- ing the planting, but the crop is much more abundant at one season. The bunches may weigh 80 or even 100 Ibs. when ripe. BANANA ISLANDS, three small islands on the coast of Africa, 30 m. S. W. of Sierra Leone, near Cape Shilling, named after the largest, 4 m. long and 1 m. broad ; lat. 8 8' N., Ion. 13 12' W. They are high, fertile, inhabited, and visited from Sierra Leone on account of the sa- lubrity of the climate. The Rev. John New- ton, the friend of Cowper, spent some time here in the service of a slave-dealer. BAXANAL, an island in the river Araguay, province of Goyaz, Brazil, also known as Santa Anna. It is 200 m. long by 35 broad, covered with a dense forest, and said to have in its centre a navigable lake, 90 m. long by 30 wide. It is very fertile, and derives its name from the increase of the banana plants intro- duced by its discoverer in 1773. There are several Brazilian villages of the same name. BANAT (Hun. Bdnsdg, a district governed by a ban), a part of S. Hungary, comprising the counties of Torontal, Temes, and Krass6, and, in a wider sense, the divisions of the Military Frontier adjoining these counties, thus bounded W. by the Theiss, S. by the Danube, N. by the Maros, and E. by the mountain ranges which separate Hungary from Wallachia and Tran- sylvania ; area, in the wider sense, about 12,000 sq. m. ; pop. about 1,300,000, includ- ing Magyars, Germans, Wallachs, Eascians or Serbs, Jews, Bulgarians, and gypsies. About one third of the Banat is very hilly, the rest level, and in parts swampy. The interior is well watered by the Temes, Karas, and Bega. The Bega canal, nearly 90 m. long, is within the district. The Banat, though not unfre- quently visited by both droughts and inunda- tions, is one of the most fertile regions of Eu- rope, especially in wheat, maize, millet, tobac- co, sumach, and fruit. Excellent wine is pro- duced in moderate quantities ; game and fish are plentiful. The minerals include iron, cop- per, and also some gold, silver, and zinc ; coal, however, is the principal mineral production. The Romans formed several settlements in the Banat, on account of the mild climate. Devas- tated by the Turks, it was wrested from them in 1716 by the Austrians, who governed it for some time as a military district, Temesvar be- ing its capital. The Banat proper was sepa- rated from Hungary in 1849 to form with the county of Bacs a new Austrian crownland un- der the name of Voivodina or Serb waywode- ship of Banat of Temes ; but it was reunited to the kingdom in 1860. In the summer of 1872 the Banat was desolated by inundations of uncommon magnitude. BANBl'RY, a market and borough town in Oxfordshire, England, on the river Cherwell, 65 m. N. W. of London; pop. in 1871, 4,106. It has a considerable trade. The manufacture of agricultural implements has become impor- tant, and the town has much improved within 20 years. The large church is an imitation of St. Paul's cathedral. Banbury tarts and Ban- bury cheese are famous all over England. BAM'A, an island of the Malay archipelago, between lat. 1 30' and 3 8' S., and Ion. 105 9' and 106 51' E., bounded N. and E. by the China sea, 8. by the Java sea, and on the W. separated from Sumatra by the strait of Banca, 135 m. long, one of the chief highways of European commerce in the eastern seas ; area, about 5,000 sq. m. ; pop. in 1869, 59,000, in- cluding about 22,000 Chinese and 150 Euro- peans. Banca is chiefly known by its inex- haustible tin mines, the annual product of which was estimated in 1872 at about 9,000,000 pounds, chiefly exported from Batavia. The digging, washing, and smelting of the alluvial tin ore are entirely in the hands of the Chinese population, who receive advances from the Dutch government, which exercises a monop- oly of the produce. Of the indigenous popu- lation, about one third are the orang gununy, mountain men, savages whom the Dutch have not been able to civilize to any extent. They are scattered about in separate families, and subsist chiefly upon the spontaneous products of the forest and the meat of wild hogs. On the coast are the Sikas tribes, similar to the Bajans or sea gypsies in habits, though differing from them in language. They dwell in boats and live by fishing and piracy. The Chinese are sub- jected to severe restrictions by the government, and none are allowed to remain beyond a certain period. The Chinese fleet arrives with the N. W. monsoon, with sometimes 2,000 and 3,000 coolies. They are directly governed by their kapallaa, or captains, as in other parts of the archipelago, who are appointed by the govern- ment. " The island is crossed by a chain of mountains, the highest peak of which is about 2,800 ft. high. This chain has the same di- rection as that of the Malay peninsula, and of the plutonic part of Sumatra, running from N. W. to S. E., and the same geological formation. The main component of the moun- tains is granite, containing tin, gold, and iron. Next to the granite, and in situations of less elevation, there occurs an extensive forma- tion of red ironstone, the laterite of geologists, and in the lowest lands an alluvial formation,
