United States or Singapore ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Finding that nothing could be accomplished at this place, Grijalva embarked his men, taking the Jamaica woman along with him, as she begged him not to leave her behind. In this island of Cozumel the Spaniards found many hives of excellent honey; they found likewise considerable quantities of batatas, and swine having navels on their backs , by which articles of food they were much refreshed.
Things had been handsomely done for the deceased chief; the amount of provisions denoted their esteem for the departed. There was food enough to sustain ten persons for fifteen days, or the dead man forever. The vegetable aliments consisted of edible ferns, sweet potatoes, the "convolvulus batatas," which was indigenous, and the potato which had been imported long before by the Europeans.
I was glad enough to accept the ladle full of fried batatas, and to make the best of things, which is generally done by letting men have their own way. Therefore I managed to dine with them, although it was so early. For according to all that I can find, in a long life and a varied one, twelve o'clock is the real time for a man to have his dinner.
They are generally of a dark copper colour, while some are of a lighter hue; and though building huts, most of them go almost naked. They exist on plantains, yucca, batatas, and the sugar-cane which they rudely cultivate; and the fish, as well as the manatees and alligators, which swarm in their waters.
There is besides the goodly timber before declared, great store of diuers sortes of fruites, as Peares, Apples, Plummes, wild Dates, Peaches of diuers sortes, Mellons, Batatas, Orenges, Lemmons, Pomgranates, Citrons, Figges, and all maner of garden herbes.
They are ten in number, St Jago, St Lucia, St Vincent, St Antonio, St Nicolas, Ilha Blanca, Ilha de Sal, Ilha de Maio, Ilha de Fogo, and Bonavista. They now afford plenty of rice, flour, Tartarian wheat, oranges, lemons, citrons, bananas, ananas or pine-apples, ignames, batatas, melons, cucumbers, pompions, garden and wild figs, and several other sorts of fruits.
The accustomed presents are exchanged with civil ceremoniousness; until our men, wearied and hungry, call out, "English do not buy slaves, they buy food," and then the people bring meal, maize, fowls, batatas, yams, beans, beer, for sale. The Manganja are an industrious race; and in addition to working in iron, cotton, and basket-making, they cultivate the soil extensively.
Up to 1640 it was called in England the potato of Virginia, to distinguish it from the sweet potato, which is another evidence that it derived the name potato from batatas. The latter root was extensively cultivated for food in parts of America, but it never got into anything like general cultivation here, perhaps because our climate was too cold for it.
Every man received one coconut daily, and two batatas, which they baked in the ashes of the coco shells; and they caught some fish on the way, and collected a little rain-water. During the day they directed their course by the sun, and at night by the stars. A storm destroyed the boats.
The produce of the bread-fruit tree can no more be considered as bread than plantains before the state of maturity, or the tuberous and amylaceous roots of the cassava, the dioscorea, the Convolvulus batatas, and the potato. The milk of the cow-tree contains, on the contrary, a caseous matter, like the milk of mammiferous animals.
Word Of The Day