"Yam" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bishop's apron, and a fruit for all the world in size and shape like a blackamoor's head; while for underwood you had the green, fresh, dew—spangled plantain, round which in the hottest day there is always a halo of coolness,—the coco root, the yam and granadillo, with their long vines twining up the neighbouring trees and shrubs like hop tendrils,—and peas and beans, in all their endless variety of blossom and of odour, from the Lima bean, with a stalk as thick as my arm, to the mouse pea, three inches high,—the pineapple, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... culinary point of view, and I was determined to make the jungle subscribe something toward the dinner. To my delight, I discovered some plants which, from the appearance of their leaves, I knew were a species of wild yam; they grew in a ravine on the swampy soil of a sluggish spring, and the ground being loose, I soon grubbed them up and found a most satisfactory quantity of yams about the size of large potatoes—not bad things for dinner. Accordingly, they were soon ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... customs. I had little scope for this at Tsavo, however, as the district around us was practically uninhabited. Still there was of course a good number of Swahili among my workmen, together with a few Wa Kamba, Wa N'yam Wezi, and others, so I soon became more or less acquainted with the habits of these tribes. The Swahili live principally along the coast of British East Africa and at Zanzibar. They are a mixed race, being the descendants of Arab fathers and negro ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... natural and familiar things. As it chanced, too, we were rewarded by sundry useful discoveries. Thus we found a place where the bread-tree and other fruits, most of them now ripe, grew in abundance, as did the yam. Also, we came to an inlet that we noticed was crowded with large and beautiful fish from the lake, which seemed to find it a favourite spot. Perhaps this was because a little stream of excellent water ran in here, overflowing ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... them. Who had made the beautiful footprints beside him, when he had slept at last after his arrival here? Why had so many of the queer, fuzzy topped shrubs with immense yam-shaped roots, which grew here been taken away during that first sleep, and during all his other periods of sleep? Who had taken them? Early in his stay, he had learned that the tuberlike roots were good to eat and would sustain life, and he supposed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... see the natives in their Madras handkerchiefs. I see upon the road some planter in his ketureen—a sort of sedan chair; I see a negro funeral, with its strange ceremony and its gumbies of African drums. I see yam-fed planters, on their horses, making for the burning, sandy streets of the capital. I see the Scots grass growing five and six feet high, food unsurpassed for horses—all the foliage too —beautiful tropical trees and shrubs, and here ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in a species of Dioscorea, a sort of yam like the sweet potato. It is known by the same name both on the east and west side ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... she eat dugong and turtle. At the end of a fortnight the girl and her attendants bathe in salt water while the tide is running out. Afterwards they are clean, may again speak to men without ceremony, and move freely about the village. In Yam and Tutu a girl at puberty retires for a month to the forest, where no man nor even her own mother may look upon her. She is waited on by women who stand to her in a certain relationship (mowai), apparently ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... He planted wild yam under her windows that its queer rattles might amuse her, and hop trees where their castanets would play gay music with every passing wind of fall. He started a thicket along the opposite bank of Singing Water where it bubbled past her window, and in it he placed in graduated ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... about preparing supper; and, truly, a good display of viands we made when all was laid out on a flat rock in the light of the blazing fire. There was, first of all, the little pig; then there were the taro-root, and the yam, and the potato, and six plums; and lastly, the wood-pigeon. To these Peterkin added a bit of sugar-cane, which he had cut from a little patch of that plant which he had found not long after separating from us; "and," said he, "the patch was somewhat ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... been made. All the grass was of one kind, a new species of Panicum related to P. effusum R. Br.* and not a spike of it was left in the soil over the whole of the ground. A cucurbitaceous plant had also been pulled up and accumulated in smaller heaps; and from some of the roots the little yam had been taken, but on others it remained. The surface, naturally soft, thus appeared as bare as a fallow field. I found a pole about 20 feet long, with a forked end, set upright by having one end planted in the ground and fixed by many sticks and pieces of old stumps from the ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... very weary. But before I could compose myself to rest two other women entered, one of whom bore, upon a thick biscuit-like cake the size of an ordinary dinner-plate, two roast ribs of goat and a generous portion of boiled yam, while the other carried a calabash full of what I took to be some kind of native beer. Evidently, whatever was to be my fate, they did not intend to starve me; and, gratefully accepting the viands, which gave forth a most appetising odour, ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... is fertile, and consists of a layer of fine white sand over loam, clay, and earth; the sand is so deep as to render walking difficult. The inhabitants depend for subsistence on fishing, and the cultivation of the yam and Indian corn. They fish with nets and spears, and also with a peculiarly formed earthen pot, which they bait with the palm nut. The more wealthy possess bullocks, sheep, goats, and poultry. The houses, which are neatly constructed of bamboo, and ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... to live with such people; therefore we will pass on to my Friendly Islands. They are low and encircled by dangerous coral reefs; the soil is almost throughout exceedingly rich, producing with very little care, the banana, bread-fruit, and yam. The population may amount to about 90,000; but the natives, though favorably mentioned by Captain Cook, appear to be as treacherous, savage, and superstitious as any in the worst parts of Polynesia. The Wesleyan Missionaries established themselves ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... mother surrounded by twenty Samoans, all with baskets. Mrs. Stevenson, hearing the sound of talking, had come down, to find these men coming heavily laden from the direction of the Vailima taro, yam, cocoanut, and banana plantation. "I politely asked them," says Mrs. Strong, "to show my mother the contents of their baskets. They agreed readily enough, and one after another they opened their baskets at her feet, disclosing nothing but edible wild roots, until we began to feel ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... The rest of my gear consisted of twenty or thirty cartridges, a box of assorted hooks, a heavy 27-cord line with a 5-in. hook (in case I saw any big rock cod about), a few bottles of lager, some ship biscuits or cold yam, and a tin of beef or sardines, and some salt. This was a day's supply of food, and if I wanted more, there were plenty of young coconuts to be had by climbing for them, and I could cook my own fish, native fashion; lastly there was myself, ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke |
