"Plantain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... At any astounding yarn, By darning their dear eyes roundly ('T was all they had to darn). They "hoisted their slacks," adjusting Garments of plantain-leaves With nautical twitches (as if they wore breeches, Instead of a ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... is peculiarly adapted for the growth of every European and of many tropical productions. The orange, the fig, the citron, the pomegranate, the peach, the apple, the guava, the nectarine, the pear, and the loquette, grow side by side together. The plantain throws its broad leaves over the water, the vine encircles the cottages, and the market of Sydney is abundantly supplied with ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... Around the coral reefs the waves lashed themselves into fury, and the white surf flew upward; but one little opening admitted the water gently into a quiet bay, where the deep blue rivalled that of the sky, and the water-birds swam in peace. The cocoa-nut, the plantain, and the banana spread their broad leaves to the sun, and flowers of brilliant hues and exquisite fragrance enlivened the landscape. Behind, there uprose tall cliffs covered with the richest foliage, and cascades, like silver ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... substantial. They felt no particular anxiety upon this score, as George knew that wild fruits of several kinds were tolerably plentiful on the island, and about half an hour after they had started they were fortunate enough to fall in with a wild plantain, the fruit of which was just in the right condition for eating. No time was lost in securing a goodly bunch of this very nutritious fruit, upon which they feasted, as they went along, until their appetites ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... hearthstone, shaded with the bistre stain A century's showery torrents wash in vain; Its starving orchard, where the thistle blows And mossy trunks still mark the broken rows; Its chimney-loving poplar, oftenest seen Next an old roof, or where a roof has been; Its knot-grass, plantain,—all the social weeds, Man's mute companions, following where he leads; Its dwarfed, pale flowers, that show their straggling heads, Sown by the wind from grass-choked garden-beds; Its woodbine, creeping where it used to climb; Its roses, breathing of the olden time; All the poor shows ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... nature-noting and plant-knowing red man. It was called by the Indian "the Englishman's foot," says Josselyn, and by Kalm also, a later traveller in 1740; "for they say where an Englishman trod, there grew a plantain in each footstep." Not less closely did such old garden weeds as motherwort, groundsel, chickweed, and wild mustard cling to the white man. They are old colonists, brought over by the first settlers, and still thrive and triumph in every kitchen garden and back yard in the land. ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... the river tumbling vertically down the perpendicular face of the cliff into a wide basin, the lofty sides of which were draped with the graceful fronds of giant ferns, the broad leaves of the wild plantain, crimson-leaved acacias, enormous bunches of maidenhair, and several varieties of plant and bush, the names of which were unknown to the trio of gazers, and which were brilliant with blossoms of the most lovely hues. ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... though at a distance from the coast, here flourishes in great perfection, adding to the splendour of the vegetation, with its glorious crown of monster leaves; while the plantain and banana are widely cultivated, a few plants of which are sufficient to supply a family with bread, vegetables, fruit, and preserves of various kinds. Humboldt observes that an area planted with plantains ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... behind the town, those fierce adventurers will climb hand over hand, through rain and fog, while men lie down, and beg their officers to kill them, for no farther can they go. Yet farther they will go, hewing a path with their swords through woods of wild plantain, and rhododendron thickets, over (so it seems, however incredible) the very saddle of the Silla,* down upon the astonished "Mantuanos" of St. Jago, driving all before them; and having burnt the city in default of ransom, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... luxuriantly, that we frequently experienced the greatest difficulty in making our way through. The tarro, which is planted, is from two to three feet high, and has fine large leaves and tubercles, similar to the potato, but which do not taste very good when roasted. The plantain, or banana, is a pretty little tree, from fifteen to twenty feet high, with leaves like those of the palm, and a stem which is often eight inches in diameter, but is not of wood, but cane, and very easily broken. It belongs properly to the herbiferous species, and grows with uncommon rapidity. ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... tightly applying bandages above the wound and scarifying or sucking the parts. Nitrate of silver may then be used and the ligatures removed. Alcohol, in any form, is an antidote to snake poison. For the stings of insects, apply aqua ammonia, fresh earth, raw onion, plantain, or spirits ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... men prepared one of the chickens in a trice. They stripped off the feathers, cut up the fowl, and broiled the pieces over the fire on little skewers of hard wood. In a short time an excellent breakfast of broiled chicken, rice, and plantain was set before him, and Jack devoured it with the utmost relish. Then he set himself to work by means of signs to make them understand that he wished them to lead him to the village from which the Panthay had ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... As soon as the grass begins to grow with some vigor, cut it often, for this tends to thicken it and produce the velvety effect that is so beautiful. From the very first the lawn will need weeding. The ground contains seeds of strong growing plants, such as dock, plantain, etc., which should be taken out as fast as they appear. To some the dandelion is a weed; but not to me, unless it takes more than its share of space, for I always miss these little earth stars when they are absent. They intensify the sunshine shimmering on the lawn, making ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... train was literally besieged by men, women, and children, offering bouquets for sale—two or three of which were thrust in at every carriage window—and baskets of strawberries, cherimoyas, nisperos, melons, oranges, sugar-cane, plantain, bananas, asparagus, green peas, French beans, eggs, chickens, and even fish—nice little pejereyes, fresh from the stream close by. It must evidently be the custom of the Chilenos to visit by rail these fertile districts, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... its means, in addition to plenty of fish, no less than five kinds of star-fishes and twelve of crustacea, several of which are quite new, were brought ashore. Among the plants of the island the most important is a wild species of plantain or banana, afterwards found to range along the north-east coast and its islands, as far as Cape York. Here I saw for the first time a species of Sciadophyllum (BRASSAIA ACTINOPHYLLA, the umbrella-tree) one of the most singular trees of the eastern ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... in my gardens and fields. The manner in which they eat the roots of the plantain in my grass-walks is very curious; with their upper mandible, which is much longer than their lower, they bore under the plant, and so eat the root off upwards, leaving the tuft of leaves untouched. In this respect they are serviceable, as they destroy ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... little dove, of milky hue, Before me from a plantain flew, And, light along the water's brim, I steered my gentle bark by him; For fancy told me, Love had sent This gentle bird with kind intent To lead my steps, where I should meet— I knew not what, but ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... transparent blue. The hills, purple and arid, stood out heavily on the sky: their summits seemed to fade into a coloured tremble as of ascending vapour; their steep sides were streaked with the green of narrow ravines; at their foot lay rice-fields, plantain-patches, yellow sands. A torrent wound about like a dropped thread. Clumps of fruit-trees marked the villages; slim palms put their nodding heads together above the low houses; dried palm-leaf roofs shone afar, like roofs of gold, behind the dark colonnades of tree-trunks; figures passed vivid ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... as food has been much discussed; but it seems to rank next to the plantain, and a long way behind either rice or wheat. The author of the Chemistry of Common Life has pointed to the remarkable physiological likeness of tribes of people who live chiefly on rice, plantain, and potato. The Hindu, the negro, and the Irishman are ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... here, and let us see. Nine kinds of grasses, and a rush. Six kinds of clovers and vetches; and besides, dandelion, and rattle, and oxeye, and sorrel, and plantain, and buttercup, and a little stitchwort, and pignut, and mouse-ear hawkweed, ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... at our disposal. The ladies had completed their purchases, and with them we now traversed extended portions of the town, and visited a negro colony, where thatched roofs peeped out from among tattered plantain leaves, and rustic cottages hid in the shade of tamarind and orange, lime and cocoanut. The lazy folks lounged about, chewing sugar-cane and munching bananas, according to their pleasant custom. The men chattered, and the women prattled and played with their yellow and ebony babies. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... equator is a wide area of heavy rainfall and dense forest. The rapidity and rankness of vegetable growth renders the region unsuited to agriculture. But the plentiful streams abound in fish and the forests in animals and fruits. The banana and plantain grow there in superabundance, and form the chief diet of the inhabitants. This may be called, for convenience, the banana zone. To the north and south of this zone are broad areas of less rainfall and forest, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... home-bred medicines are both more easy for the Parson's purse, and more familiar for all men's bodies. So where the Apothecary useth either for loosing, Rhubarb, or for binding, Bole Armena; the Parson useth Damask, or White Roses for the one, and Plantain, Shepherd's Purse, or Knotgrass for the other: and that with better success. As for Spices, he doth not only prefer home-bred things before them, but condemns them for vanities, and so shuts them out of his family, esteeming that there is no ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... Brazilian Amazon to Peru. Coarse cotton cloth is worn by nine-tenths of the inhabitants who are civilized enough to wear clothes at all. The demand for this cloth is large and will grow from year to year, and of all coarse cotton cloth in the market the American is preferred. The plantain is the native substitute for bread, but wheat flour is used by the mercantile and official classes; there is a steady demand for Baltimore and Richmond flour, which brands are supposed, probably with reason, to stand the climate better than flour manufactured elsewhere. Bacon hams sell for ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle
... Rega sent a present of twelve elephants' tusks, forty-one loads of tullaboon, twelve pots of sour plantain cider, and thirty-four cows. At the same time, he complained that some of Abou Saood's people were taking slaves in the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... Wild horses fled from us, and we heard the grunt of boar in the fern thickets. The fan-palms, dwarfs, but graceful, intermingled with magnificent tree-ferns, while above them curved the huetu, the immense mountain plantain, called fei in Tahiti, where they are the bread of the people; they have ribbed, emerald leaves, as big as a man. Feeders of dark people in many lands for thousands of years, theirs is the same golden fruit I had eaten at breakfast ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... a great number of new or rare species, and among those remarkable either for size or beauty, are the golden vulture, the great American eagle, the Impey peacock, the Ju[] pheasant or argus, the plantain-eater, &c. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... every point, the Huang Hua Lou. But what's essential is a faultless imitation. Now were we to begin to criticise minutely the couplet just cited, we would indeed find it to be, as compared with the line 'A book when it is made of plantain leaves,' still more elegant and of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... which claimed attention was the relief of the native Dyaks. A shrewd Dyak once defined the Malay government as "a plantain in the mouth and a thorn in the back." A plantain giving to their poor subjects a little to keep life in them; a thorn stripping them to the skin and piercing them to the bone. The description is pithy, and it is true. The exactions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... collection made by the other scouts were many orchids,—fringed-purple, ragged-fringed, yellow-fringed, and others. Also the Indian pink, the rattlesnake plantain, the pink snake-mouth, monkshood, bloodroot, pitcher plant, and numerous others that formed a wonderful exhibit which it would take a long time ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... head, turned in a different direction, was fixed in wonder upon the laird, who was more frequently heard of than seen by his tenants and dependants. The bread and honey, however, deposited on a plantain leaf, was offered and accepted in all due courtesy. The Lord Keeper, still retaining the place which he had occupied on the decayed trunk of a fallen tree, looked as if he wished to prolong the interview, but was at a loss how to introduce a ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... their oversoul, mahamahatma. The faithful hermetists await the light, ripe for chelaship, ringroundabout him. Louis H. Victory. T. Caulfield Irwin. Lotus ladies tend them i'the eyes, their pineal glands aglow. Filled with his god, he thrones, Buddh under plantain. Gulfer of souls, engulfer. Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls. Engulfed with wailing ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... hard-beaten ground, and peeping among the paintings on the shrivelled and smoke-blackened walls, Presently they came to the principal court, formerly gravelled, but now a field, in which were mingled wild grasses, plantain, pimpernel, groundsel, and myriads of tiny stems and heads. In the middle, fenced off with boards, was a bed of artichokes, strawberries, and pumpkins, looking like the garden of some squatter at the edge of a virgin forest; and, to complete ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... mouse-coloured Brahmini bull of the ward was shouldering his way through the many-coloured crowd, a stolen plantain hanging out of his mouth. He headed straight for the shop, well knowing his privileges as a sacred beast, lowered his head, and puffed heavily along the line of baskets ere making his choice. Up flew Kim's hard little heel and caught him on his moist blue nose. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... finished. Periwinkle is very much grown, and is expected to shut up her baby house and throw away her doll in a month or two more. Sweet Fern has learned to read and write, and has put on a jacket and pair of pantaloons—all of which improvements I am sorry for. Squash Blossom, Blue Eye, Plantain, and Buttercup have had the scarlet fever, but came easily through it. Huckleberry, Milkweed, and Dandelion were attacked with the whooping cough, but bore it bravely, and kept out of doors whenever the sun shone. Cowslip, ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... huts, and a small plantain walk, but little taken care of; from which we could only collect three small bunches of plantains. After passing this place, we came to a deep gully that led towards a mountain, near a volcano; and, as I conceived that in the rainy season very great torrents of water must pass ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh
... princely pine-apple—is far from being the exalted personage you would have expected him to be. Like a bachelor cabbage, he grovels in solitary state under our feet! We play at marbles with pomegranates, and practise tilting at the ring with citrons. Throw into the scene a few parasite and plantain trees with slender trunks and colossal leaves; fill in the foreground with gigantic ferns, aloes, and palmettoes, and the background with spotless blue; select for yourself from the nearest hot-house where specimens of exotic plants are nursed, and you are with us, ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... Collenwood inquired closely into her ailments, ending with the suggestion, which she desired might be conveyed to her father, that Christie should rub her limbs with oil of swallows, and take a medicine compounded of plantain water ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... account may be read in the "History of the Miracles of the Patron Saint of Alca" by the Abbe Plantain: ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... T'ae-Sze's Freedom from Jealousy The Fruitfulness of the Locust Lamenting the Absence of a Cherished Friend Celebrating the Goodness of the Descendants of King Wan The Virtuous Manners of the Young Women Praise of a Rabbit-Catcher The Song of the Plantain-Gatherers The Affection of the ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... than they were then. They have more meaning. Now are they part of some great order. They are not separate. Without moving my feet, I lay my hands on apples, Virginia creeper, asparagus, marigold, sweet sultan, oxalis, plantain, crab-grass, white clover, all growing securely in one place, and everyone like unto itself alone. Here is the everlasting miracle before my eyes, and all miracles are mysteries. Once I thought I should understand such ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... distance of the road to Spanish Town. We should then have to cross the road in the open, but having crossed it, we should come in less than a furlong to another clump of woodland, and passing through this, avoiding the plantain groves which filled that portion of the estate, we should reach the rough track leading to Dry Harbor, at a point about three miles from the big house. 'Twas a round in all of some twenty-five miles, and, as Uncle Moses assured me, if we were reasonably cautious ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... and diameter of a goose-egg; one carried a cheek as large and protuberant as the jowl of a porker's head; and one had ears that stuck out like a puffed bladder. They were helpless. We disarmed them and brought them in, doing all we could for their comfort with blue clay and bruised plantain. It was hard on them, I have often thought, but it saved an ugly fight among ladies, and, no doubt, many lives. I know, if they had taken us, D'ri and I ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... see you," repeated the negro. "Me chief of dis village. Make you berry comfortable, sar. Great honor for dis village dat you come here. Plenty eberyting for you, fowl, and eggs, and plantain, and sometime ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... great trouble by accidentally giving the names of real persons to the characters in their books. For this reason, I mean to call them Primrose, Periwinkle, Sweet Fern, Dandelion, Blue Eye, Clover, Huckleberry, Cowslip, Squash-blossom, Milkweed, Plantain, and Buttercup; although, to be sure, such titles might better suit a group of fairies than a company ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... railroad passes is flat and rather monotonous; nevertheless, the quantity of wild flowers, which appeared for the most part of the convolvulus species, as we glanced past them—the orange-trees, the clumps of palm and cocoa, the plantain with its gigantic leaves, the fresh green coffee-plant, the fields of sugar-cane of a still brighter green, the half-naked negroes, the low wooden huts, and, still more, the scorching sun in the month of November,—all was ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... these two doubtless would starve in the midst of plenty, should they by some miracle escape the other forces of destruction which constantly threatened them. That morning Tarzan had brought them fruit, nuts, and plantain, and now he was bringing them the flesh of his kill, while the best that they might do was to fetch water from the river. Even now, as they walked across the clearing toward the boma, they were in utter ignorance of the presence of Tarzan near them. They did not know that his ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... suitable floor. In Trinidad and the majority of other cacao-producing areas, where the forastero variety predominates, from five to nine days are required. The cacao is put into the "sweat" boxes and covered with banana or plantain leaves to keep in the heat. The boxes may measure four feet each way and be made of sweet-smelling cedar wood. As is usual with fermentation, the temperature begins to rise, and if you thrust your hands into the fermenting beans you find they are as hot and ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... was sent to her husband's home. His motives in marrying her were wholly evil, but the child knew something of right and wrong, and she resisted him. Then he dragged her into an inner room, and he held her down, and smothered her shrieks, and pressed a plantain into her mouth. It was poisoned. She knew it, and did not swallow it all. But what she was forced to take made her ill, and she lay for days so dizzy and sick that when her husband kicked her as she lay she did not care. ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... length, and rotten in base and capital. The white and yellow paint was faded and blistered. Below the broad flight of crazy front-steps the grass grew rank in the gravel walk, and died out in brown, withered patches on the lawn, where only plantain and sorrel throve. It was a sad and shabby old house enough, but even the patches of newspaper here and there on its broken window-panes could not take away a certain simple, old-fashioned dignity from its ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... the wind and looked out, as if imploring help from Nature, the great mother of us all. A summer moon rode high in a cloudless heaven, and far as eye could reach stretched the green wilderness of a Cuban cafetal. No forest, but a tropical orchard, rich in lime, banana, plantain, palm, and orange trees, under whose protective shade grew the evergreen coffee plant, whose dark-red berries are the fortune of their possessor, and the luxury of one-half the world. Wide avenues diverging from the mansion, ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... place an ambush, if they had none ready prepared. It was as sweet a place for a trap as greaser's heart could wish. On our right was the impenetrable cactus-hedge, with an open space beyond, terminated at the distance of a few yards by a wood or plantain-patch. On the left was another wood, matted with tangled underbrush and vines which no horseman could penetrate. On either side half a dozen men might couch in ambush and shoot us down in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... farms. There are wealthy proprietors, rajahs, baboos, and so on, who hold vast tracts of land, either by grant, or purchase, or hereditary succession; but the tenants are literally the children of the soil. Wherever a village nestles among its plantain or mango groves, the land is parcelled out among the villagers. A large proprietor does not reckon up his farms as a landlord at home would do, but he counts his villages. In a village with a thousand ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... plants cultivated by man, the sugar-cane, the plantain (musa), the mammee-apple (mammea), and alligator-pear-tree (laurus persea) alone have the property of the cocoa-nut-tree, that of being watered alike with fresh and salt water. This circumstance is favorable to their migrations; and if the ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... more than an animal lair, was an earthly paradise. The air was spicily and sweetly heavy with the scents of wild aromatic plants and gorgeous tropic blooms. Overhead three breadfruit trees interlaced their noble branches. Banana and plantain trees were burdened with great bunches of ripening fruit. And huge, golden melons of the papaia, ready for the eating, globuled directly from the slender-trunked trees not one-tenth the girth of the fruits they bore. And, for Jerry, most delightful of all, there was the gurgle and plash of a brooklet ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... of plants which have not at some time been used for paper and books. In Ceylon, for instance, the leaves of the talipot; in India, the leaves of the palm (with which they commonly covered their houses,) were used for books. In the East Indies, the leaves of the plantain tree, dried in the sun, were used for the same purpose. In China, paper is made of the inner bark of the mulberry, the bamboo, the elm, the cotton, and ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... boy, do you think you are equal to a vigil? You must stay here with Jones. If he wakes and wants water, press the moisture of these leaves to his lips, it's sassafras; and, stay—here is a sort of plantain, filled with little globules of dew; pour these into his mouth, and at a pinch give him a handful from the pool. In case of great danger fire two shots, but if any one should come toward you or discover you it will be better to surrender. In that event, you can make up a story to ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... remarkable intelligence. On rowing ashore with three armed boats and a party of marines, the instant Cook landed, the natives fell flat on their faces, until by expressive signs he prevailed upon them to rise. They had brought a number of small pigs, which they presented on plantain-leaves, one of the party making a long speech. The people willingly assisted the sailors in rolling the casks to and from the watering-place, and made no ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... glance one knows this flower to be akin to Robin's plantain (q.v.) the the asters and daisy. A smaller, more delicate species, with mostly entire leaves and appressed hairs (E. ramosus; E. strigosum of Gray) has a similar range and season of bloom. Both soon grow hoary-headed after they have been fertilized by countless insects crawling over them (Erigeron ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... blue flowers aflame, one after another, sparingly, as the lights are kindled in the candelabra of decaying palaces where the heirs of dethroned monarchs are dying out; the red and white clovers, the broad, flat leaves of the plantain,—"the white man's foot," as the Indians called it,—the wiry, jointed stems of that iron creeping plant which we call "knot-grass," and which loves its life so dearly that it is next to impossible to murder it with a hoe, as it clings to the ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... that it is the most fearful place for storms in the whole world—the most awful hurricanes that come smashing down everything and killing people? You can't escape if you're in the way of the hurricane. It whirls the roofs off the houses and twists out the plantain trees just like straws. The rivers wash away whole acres of canes and swamp the farms. Sometimes the sea rages so that boats are carried right up into the streets of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... in size and puts up new stems. As these roots increase in size the central part I suppose changes like the internal wood of a tree and does not possess any vegetable life, and therefore gives out no fibres or rootlets, and hence appears bitten off, as in valerian, plantain, and devil's-bit. And this decay of the central part of the root I suppose has given occasion to the belief of the root-fibres drawing down the bulb so much insisted on by Mr. Milne in his ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... the ferns wave twenty feet overhead, the bamboo drapes a feathery fringe by every stream, the cocoa trees grow right up to the road or railroad which sweeps along as on an avenue between them, while at every crossing the white roadway is lined by the majestic sentinels of plantain, coco-nut palm ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... temple is very fine, below the saddle in a hollow facing the south, surrounded by jungles of plantain and banyan. It is small, and contains little worthy of notice but the sculptured feet of Paras-nath, and some marble Boodh idols; cross-legged figures with crisp hair and the Brahminical cord. These, a leper covered with ashes in ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... potatoes were done, the little old woman raked them out of the ashes with a stick, broke them open, sprinkled a bit of salt on them from the wonderful basket, and then handed one to each of the children, wrapped in a plantain leaf, so they should not burn their fingers. A piece of the eel was served to them in the same way, and Granny beamed with satisfaction as she watched ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... know, sir. It's a soft piece of plantain stalk notched at the edge in a peculiar way. ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... and shaded by a protecting roof of the same palm leaves; and, above all, several well-fenced enclosures around it, one of them containing a number of tame cattle, others under tillage—with maize, manioc, the plantain, and similar tropical products—all these insignia evinced the care and cultivating hand of some ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... name, and he has a daughter called Chandravati. You will marry her; she is very learned, and, what is better far, very fait. She is of yellow colour, with a nose like the flower of the sesamum; her legs are taper, like the plantain-tree; her eyes are large, like the principal leaf of the lotus; her eye-brows stretch towards her ears; her lips are red, like the young leaves of the mango-tree; her face is like the full moon; her voice is like the ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... tube, just as an insect might let down its proboscis, and sucked the contents. Sir S. Baker says of the people of Unyoro, "During a journey, a pretty, bottle-shaped, long-necked gourd is carried with a store of plantain-cider; the mouth of the bottle is stopped with a bundle of the white rush shreds, through which a reed is inserted that reaches to the bottom: thus the drink can be sucked up during the march, without the ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... varieties having the habit of travelling all over a garden by means of their root suckers. Here and there were groups of tiger and lemon lilies growing out of the ragged turf, bunches of scarlet bee balm, or Oswego tea, as it is locally called, while plantain lilies, with deeply ribbed heart-shaped leaves, catnip, southernwood, and mats of grass pinks. Single hollyhocks of a few colours followed the fence line; tall phlox of two colours, white and a dreary dull purple, rambled ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... variety in their food as much as we do. In summer there are many weeds which are a great treat to them. Dandelion, plantain, clover, grass and hay, with an occasional sprig of parsley, will give them much pleasure. In winter they may have carrots, turnips, and parsnips with barley meal and some oats. Too much green food is likely to make them ill, and too much grain is equally harmful. If we ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... reverence an opportunity of arranging his clothes, the good woman proceeded to the garden and filled her basket with plantain for his breakfast. Much as the general stood in need of shoes, he sat himself down for a most fortunate gentleman in being able to procure even such raiment; for, said he, what a figure I would cut entering Jolliffee on a mule, and in the hat and gown of a priest. When, therefore, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... interior court of a dwelling, yard, garden. patron (naut.), cockswain of a boat. peon, day-laborer. peso, dollar. peso oro, a dollar in gold. peso y medio, a dollar and a half. petate, straw mat on which the poor people sleep. plaga, plague, pestilence. platano, plantain tree, or its fruit. playa, shore, beach, strand. policia, police. por, for, by. por dios, by God! por el amor del cielo, for the love of heaven! por supuesto, of course. posada, inn, hotel, restaurant. pozo, well, pond, puddle. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... grass and the tall, dripping weeds, listening for the faint, foolish peeping of the wanderers. Some we found under piled fence rails, some under burdock leaves, some under nothing more protective than a plantain leaf. By ones and twos we collected them, half drowned yet shrilly remonstrant, and dropped them into the dry shed where they belonged. Then we returned to the house, very wet, feeling the kind of discouragement that usually besets those who are ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... pause by walking up the broken cement path, which was hard beset by plantain-weed and the long grass of the ill-kept lawn. Ascending the steps, he was assailed by an odour as of vehement bananas, a diffusion from some painful little chairs standing in the long, high, dim, rather ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... for the four hundred and forty-two monkeys, for the plantain-eaters, the fruit-pigeons of the Spice Islands that feed on nutmegs, for the toucans and the flocks of parrots, parroquets, cockatoos, and other fruit-eating birds. As they did not know how to can fruit in those days, and dried fruit would ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... names of the twelve stocks of West African kindreds, or at least all of them which Mr. Bowditch could get the native interpreters to translate, are derived from animals, plants and other natural objects, just as in Australia.(1) Thus Quonna is a buffalo, Abrootoo is a cornstalk, Abbradi a plantain. Other names are, in English, the parrot, the wild cat, red earth, panther and dog. Thus all the natives of this part of Africa are parrots, dogs, buffaloes, panthers, and so forth, just as the Australians are emus, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... throngs who pay their vows In courts that hands have made, And hears the worshipper who bows Beneath the plantain shade. ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... article of food, however, the plantain does not appear to be so nutritive or strength-supporting as rice; at least, those persons who are principally dependent on it for food appear less robust looking than the rice-fed population. This, however, may not be entirely owing to that cause, but may be attributable in some degree to their ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... and of vast diameter, and bearing as great a variety of delicious fruit as the apple-tree does with us; the cocoa-nut, whose fruit we are acquainted with, and whose husk is formed into excellent cordage; the plantain, that invaluable blessing to the natives of the torrid zone, as it supplies them bread without much labor; a circumstance of importance in countries where hard labor is oppressive by reason of heat; the splendid tamarind, with wide-spreading limbs, and a dense foliage of vivid green, ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... inhabitants of which all treated him kindly. He travelled through the beautiful plain of Cuttup, which contains five hundred little villages, situated near to each other, and surrounded by groves of trees, among which towered the plantain, the palm, and the cocoa-nut. The sun shone brightly upon the numerous hamlets; the oxen, cows, and sheep, presented a picture of comfort and peace; and the air was filled with the song of birds. Thence he proceeded to Dunrora, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... until they arrived nearly at the end of the hedge which, separating the upper from the lower garden, hid from those immediately behind it all view of the estuary. Here, still sheltered by the hedge, he stopped and Audrey stopped, and Aguilar absently plucked up a young plantain from the turf and dropped it ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... this way, gentlemen; come, M. Villefort, for a declaration to be available, should be made before the competent authorities." He then took Villefort's arm, and, at the same time, holding that of Madame Danglars under his own, he dragged the procureur to the plantain-tree, where the shade was thickest. All the other guests followed. "Stay," said Monte Cristo, "here, in this very spot" (and he stamped upon the ground), "I had the earth dug up and fresh mould put in, to refresh these old ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... could get a shot at them; and I returned over the hills, which my guide assured me was the shortest way. Tired with my walk, I was not sorry to arrive at a sheltered valley, where the palmetto and the plantain offer a friendly shade from the burning sun. The guide, with wonderful agility, mounted the cocoa-nut tree, and threw down half a dozen nuts. They were green, and their milk I thought the most refreshing and delicious draught I had ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... will be found a fine soft draught for those who are weakly, or have a cold.—Another remedy. Take a handful of horehound, a handful of rue, a handful of hyssop, and the same quantity of ground ivy and of tormentil, with a small quantity of long plantain, pennyroyal, and five finger. Boil them in four quarts of water till reduced to two quarts. Strain it off, then add two pounds of loaf sugar; simmer it a little, add a quart of brandy and bottle it for use. A wine glassful of this to ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... plate, which they gave us in exchange for calicut cloth. They find these ryals by diving for them in the sea, having been there lost in two Portuguese ships not long before, that were cast away when bound for China. In their language the cocoa-nut is called calambo; the plantain, pison; a hen, jam; a fish, iccan; and a hog, babee. Departing from the Nicobar Islands on the 21st November, we made sail for the island of Ceylon, where we arrived about the 3d December, 1592, and anchored on its south side, in six fathoms water, but lost our ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... very clear, to the quantity of half a pint or thereabouts; which water and white rind before spoken of are both of a very cool fresh taste, and as pleasing as anything may be. I have heard some hold opinion that it is very restorative. The plantain groweth in cods, somewhat like to beans, but is bigger and longer, and much more thick together on the stalk; and when it waxeth ripe, the meat which filleth the rind of the cod becometh yellow, and ...
— Drake's Great Armada • Walter Biggs
... Augustine, or Walche Caep, and is near what is called in the charts C. de la Colta de St. Bonaventura. In every part of the coast, the land is covered with a vast luxuriance of wood and herbage. The cocoa-nut, the bread-fruit, and the plantain-tree, flourish here in the highest perfection; besides which, the country abounds with most of the trees, shrubs, and plants, that are common to the South Sea islands, New Zealand, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... child, I had a notion of its being the most exquisite of treats to eat plantains and yams, and to drink palm-wine. How I envied my father for having enjoyed these luxuries! I have now enjoyed them all, and I have found like much greater men on much more important occasions, that all is vanity. A plantain is very like a rotten pear,—so like that I would lay twenty to one that a person blindfolded would not discover the difference. A yam is better. It is like an indifferent potato. I tried palm-wine at a pretty village near Madras, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... any other country with which I am acquainted. In addition to these three prime fruits of Java, I may mention the pine-apple, soursop, rambutan, rose-apple, guava, dookoo, and sixty different kinds of plantain and banana. These, and many others, thrive and abound on this favoured island. With poultry, butchers' meat, fish, and vegetables, Batavia and Java generally are abundantly supplied; while the ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... only on the face, but on the neck, shoulders, and breast. The men wear nothing but a belt, and the wrapping leaf as at Mallicollo. The women have a kind of petticoat made of the filaments of the plantain-tree, flags, or some such thing, which reaches below the knee. Both sexes wear ornaments, such as bracelets, ear-rings, necklaces, and amulets. The bracelets are chiefly worn by the men; some made of sea-shells, and others of those of the cocoa-nut. The men also wear amulets; ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... his holy of holies. When he eats, the company keep silence; and when he is full, they return fervent thanks to the gods who have conducted him safely through a complexity of dangers;—a grain of rice, falling from his lips, might have poisoned his dinner; a stain on his plantain-leaf might have turned his cake to stone. His left hand, condemned to vulgar and impolite offices, is not admitted to the honor of assisting at his repasts; to the right alone, consecrated by exemption from indecorous duties, belongs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... house-leek, boiled in cream, and strained before it is put away to cool, makes a very cooling, soothing ointment. Plantain leaves laid upon a wound ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... broad path led to it through bushes covered with red thick-scented flowers. It was King Julius's palace. The front of it was all one piazza, maybe two-hundred feet long and forty deep, with slim bamboo pillars; and men seemed to be still shingling one end of it with layers of plantain leaves. But the king was out in a sort of square to one side, and had about fifty warriors with feathers in their hair, practising spears at a mark. Then he saw us, and then he said something sharp, and the fifty fell into line behind, with spears and shields in disciplined order. They marched ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... called. This is a large building, with a cellar which forms the molasses reservoir. Over this reservoir is an open framework of joists, upon which stands a number of empty potting casks. Each of these has eight or ten holes bored through the bottom, and in each hole is placed the stalk of a plantain leaf. The soft, concrete mass of sugar is removed from the cooling pans in which it has been brought from the boilers and placed in the casks. The molasses then gradually drains from the crystallized ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... whether I could cure his disease. I fear he will never be cured. His arm and one side of his body was one mass of sores. Before it could be seen four layers of Chinese paper had to be removed, one huge plantain leaf, and a thick layer of black stuff resembling tar. I was busy for some thirty minutes dressing it with new bandages. I then gave him ointment for subsequent dressings, whereupon he put on his coat and walked out of the room (leaving the door open as he went) ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... 10s. to 15s. In one greenhouse we saw 2,500 plants potted and bedded; the total numbers more than double that figure. The proprietor has a steam-saw, makes his own boxes, and packs his pines with dry leaves of maize and plantain. He is also cultivating a dwarf banana, too short to be wind-wrung. His ground will grow anything: the wild asparagus, which in Istria rises knee-high, here becomes a ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... attention to the banana, or plantain. The banana is seedless. It is found throughout tropical Asia and Africa. Professor Kuntze asks, "In what way was this plant, which cannot stand a voyage through the temperate zone, carried to America?" ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... energetic creatures, though chiefly frugivorous, are to some extent insectivorous also, as attested by their teeth[1], as well as by their habits. They feed, amongst other things, on the guava, the plantain, the rose-apple, and the fruit of the various fig-trees. Flying foxes are abundant in all the maritime districts, especially at the season when the pulum-imbul[2], one of the silk-cotton trees, is putting forth its flower-buds, of which they are singularly fond. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... Usumbara produces what is considered at Zanzibar a superior article; it is kneaded into little circular cakes four inches in diameter by half an inch deep: rolls of these cakes are neatly packed in plantain-leaves for exportation. The next in order of excellence is that grown in Uhiao: it is exported in leaf or in the form called kambari, roll-tobacco, a circle of coils each about an inch in diameter. The people of Khutu and Usagara ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... old names for the Plantain were Waybroad (corrupted to Weybread, Wayborn, and Wayforn) and Ribwort. It was also called Lamb's-tongue and Kemps, while the flower spike with the stalk was called Cocks and Cockfighters (still so called ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... in the meadows broke with clash and clangour a glad sound of Christmas bells. Out it swept over layer, pitle and fallow, over river, plantain, grove and wood. It floated down the valley of the Ell, it beat against Dead Man's Mount (henceforth to the vulgar mind more haunted than ever), it echoed up the Castle's Norman towers and down the oak-clad vestibule. Away over the common went the glad message of Earth's Saviour, ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... Now you have him. "How does the grasshopper make that peculiar sound?" asked May. If you will get near one of these insects while he is making the noise you will see how he does it. There, one stands on that plantain stem. Do you see how briskly he rubs his legs against the wing-covers? Now he is quiet, and his legs are still; so it is evident that the friction or rubbing of the legs against the wings causes the sound. I rub the thigh of this specimen ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... moch," he repeated sadly. But there were bits of pig-skin stewed in oil; bean-cakes; steaming buns of wheat-flour, stuffed with dice of fat pork and lumps of sugar; three-cornered rice puddings, no-me boiled in plantain-leaf wrappers; with the last of the whiskey, in green cups. While the two men ate, the shriveled outcast beamed timidly, ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... and locked her hands beneath The Squaw's chin. This left his arms free to part a path through the thickets of burweed and plantain that choked the defile, and, for fully a half-hour, he kept a good jog. But, well worn and hampered as he was, ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... tree, or golden fruit hangs among its clusters of glossy leaves. The starry rind and pale-green crown of the pineapple tempt you to enjoy the luscious fruit. High in air the cocoanut tree lifts its palmy diadem. The long broad leaves of the plantain protect its branches of green or yellow fruit, and throw a grateful shade upon the way, open here and there. Here is, indeed "a wilderness of sweets," and the air is full of blended fragrances. While the eye ranges, seeing trees, fruits, and flowers innumerable, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... in the village, Skag inquired about the white man. The native was serving him a curry with drift-white rice on plantain leaves. After that there was a sweetmeat made of curds of cream and honey, with the flavour and perfume of some altogether delectable flower. In good time the native replied that the white man's name was Cadman: that he was an American traveller and writer and artist, said to be almost illustrious; ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... was stretched on some fresh plantain leaves, in a low smoky hut, with my faithful dog lying beside me, whining and licking my hands and face. On the rude joists that bound the rafters of the roof together, rested a light canoe with its paddles, and over against ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... waterproof sheet on the ground where it would be bordered with daintily traced partridge berry, and white-lined plantain leaves, and sitting on it ate their lunch. Leslie did what she could to interest Mrs. Minturn and cheer her, but at last that lady said: "Thank you dear, you are very good to me; but you can't entertain me to-day. Some other time we'll come back and bring the scores ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... chucks. Perhaps it was because he always ate twice as much as any of his brothers and sisters. His mother found him harder to manage, too; and she had to push him along through the doorway, because he wanted to stop and snatch a bite from a juicy plantain. ...
— The Tale of Billy Woodchuck • Arthur Scott Bailey
... inland. They found a small village of four streets, and an open space at the most elevated part. All round there were many farms, surrounded by palings. Two spies were posted, who warned the natives, and they all fled. The Spaniards found in their houses several kinds of fish, roasted and wrapped in plantain leaves, and a quantity of raw mussel in baskets, as well as fruits and flowers hung on poles. Near, there was a burial place. They also found a flute and certain small things worked out of pieces of marble and ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... kinds, such as the Cavendish variety, are planted at from 12 to 16 feet apart each way, but large-growing bananas, such as the Sugar and Lady's Finger, require from 20 to 25 feet apart each way, as do the stronger-growing varieties of plantain. Plantains are not grown to any extent in Queensland, and our principal varieties are those already mentioned, the Cavendish variety greatly predominating. In the North, the cultivation of this latter variety is carried ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... thing he saw there, except the richness and variety of the wares. On the contrary, he complains of the want of fragrance in the flowers in the conservatory, particularly the roses, as compared with those of his native land—"there was one plantain-tree which seemed to be regarded as a sort of wonder, though thousands grow in our gardens without any sort of culture." The presence of the female attendants at the stalls, a sight completely at variance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... hundred thousand peasants, we are told, were yearly driven, like so many cattle, to Petersburgh, in the first attempts to replenish that settlement, and yearly perished for want of subsistence. [Footnote: Strachlenberg.] The Indian only attempts to settle in the neighbourhood of the plantain, [Footnote: Dampier.] and while his family increases, he adds ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... which, as I have observed before, is often tied in a bunch upon the top of their heads: Sometimes they wear a kind of whimsical garland, made of flowers of various kinds, stuck into a piece of the rind of a plantain; or of scarlet peas, stuck with gum upon a piece of wood: And sometimes they wear a kind of wig, made of the hair of men or dogs, or perhaps of cocoa-nut strings, woven upon one thread, which is tied under their hair, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... prudence. "Prudence," says Mr. Edwards, "is a term that has no place in the negro vocabulary; instead of trusting to what are called the ground provisions, which are safe from the hurricanes, the negroes, in the cultivation of their own lands, trust more to plantain-groves, corn, and other vegetables that are liable to be destroyed by storms. When they earn a little money, they immediately gratify their palate with salted meats and other provisions, which are to them delicacies. The idea of accumulating, and of ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... slugs, frogs, eggs, young birds in the nest, mice, fallen fruits, and the roots of vegetables, especially the plantain, boring into the ground to get at these substances. They will clear a house of black beetles in a few weeks, as I can attest from my own experience. My kitchen was much infested, not only by them, but by a sort of degenerated ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... ballrooms of plantain and mango They scamper, they slither and slide In the throes of a tropical tango, In the grip of a Gibbony glide; 'Tis thus in these desolate spaces, Away from humanity's ken, They mimic the civilised races ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... village of Ingenio, a brisk south wind blew the dust in our faces and retarded our speed. All round the trees bent before the squall, and the large plantain leaves flew about, torn into ribbons. We now turned to the right, and crossed a prairie. L'Encuerado required breath, for his load weighed at least eighty pounds, although, like AEsop's burden, it would surely get lighter at every meal. An enormous rock, which had tumbled ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... with their luxuriant foliage. In dry spots he cultivated the sweet potatoe; the cotton-tree flourished upon the heights, and the sugar-cane grew in the clayey soil. He reared some plants of coffee on the hills, where the grain, although small, is excellent. His plantain-trees, which spread their grateful shade on the banks of the river, and encircled the cottages, yielded fruit throughout the year. And lastly, Domingo, to soothe his cares, cultivated a few plants of ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... for nails and beads; the former we refused as yet, having already as many on board as we could manage. Several we were, however, obliged to take, as many of the principal people brought off little pigs, pepper, or eavoa-root, and young plantain trees, and handed them into the ship, or put them into the boats along-side, whether we would or no; for if we refused to take them on board, they would throw them into the boats. In this manner, did these good people ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... parting bough's light shadows play, Scarce in the shade, nor in the scorching day, Stretch'd on the turf he lies, a peopled bed, Where swarming insects creep around his head. The small dust-colour'd beetle climbs with pain O'er the smooth plantain-leaf, a spacious plain! Thence higher still, by countless steps convey'd, He gains the summit of a shiv'ring blade, And flirts his filmy wings, and looks around, Exulting in his distance from the ground. The tender speckled moth here dancing seen, ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... read how one mediaeval saint stood erect in his cell for a week without sleep or food, merely chewing a plantain-leaf out of humility, so as not to be too perfect; how another remained all night up to his neck in a pond that was freezing over; and how others still performed for the glory of God feats no less tasking to their energies, we are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... the weaker sex and usually those advanced in years. Before the ugly machine and between it and the road which ran past the pond to the village was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, plantain and such unsightly vegetation, which seemed to find something congenial in the soil that bore an instrument for the torture of the gentler sex; but on one side of the post and leaning against it was a wild ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... course we would give them some. To their honour be it said, they never stole one, and were invariably refused, for we had not any more than we wanted. The Dyaks hung their plates in loops of rattan very ingeniously against the walls of their houses; but a plantain-leaf folded up is more often used by them in lieu of plates, and they could not have a better substitute. I never enjoyed a meal so much as some cold rice and sardines eaten off a plantain-leaf in the jungle at Lundu, after ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... light, a bowl of flaming naphtha mounted on a bamboo pole, and the light fell over the golden fruit—mangoe, plantain, and banana piled high upon it, and also all round the vender's feet as he stood by his stall in town costume of one ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... blossoms. A bashful cucumber which basked unobtrusively in the wetness of the ice-box outlet under the shed at Artie Van Arlen's home was growing apace. But not a sign was there of Tom's beans or peas or beets—nothing in his little allotted patch but a lonely plantain which he had carefully nursed until Pee-wee had told him the bitter truth—that this child of his heart was nothing but ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... to the extent, not of eating with the dear brother and companion of her youth, but so far as to bring him the remnant of their meal, not in one of the home vessels from which he had eaten so often as a Hindu in the past, but on a plantain ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... the plantain-root is a cure for headache and for ulcers; that mistletoe grown on an oak opens all locks; that celandine laid on a sick man's head sings if he will die; that the juice of the house-leek will enable you to hold a hot iron without being burnt; ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... find fruit trees of some sort. Indeed, I detected certain palms that I was morally certain were coconut palms, while, unless my eyes deceived me, I believed I could also descry foliage that strongly suggested the idea of plantain or banana trees. About a hundred yards from the southern extremity of the island, and quite detached from it, there towered out of the sea a great vertical column of black rock, like a rugged pillar with a rounded top, which looked ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... A few fronds each of the Buck Fern and Cystoptiris or Bladder Fern, with at least three kinds of moss complete the list of "Flowerless Plants." Three little clumps of Violets are sending out new leaves. There are a few leaves of Partridge-berry vine, a yellow Oxalis, an Orchid called Rattlesnake-Plantain, having lovely velvety leaves veined with white, a few sprigs of Mouse-ear Chickweed, and, last of all, a leaf of a Jack-in-the-Pulpit plant, the corm of which was doubtless hidden among the roots of the Ferns. So, while the cold winds are blowing, ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first? It has been so written for the most part, that the times it describes are with remarkable propriety called dark ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the dark about them. The sun rarely shines in ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... What a lovely day! I have spent all the morning lying in the grass in front of my house, under the enormous plantain tree which covers it, and shades and shelters the whole of it. I like this part of the country and I am fond of living here because I am attached to it by deep roots, profound and delicate roots which attach a man to the soil on which his ancestors were born and died, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... let me stay, to catch My baby's sobbing breath; His little glassy eye to watch, And smooth his limbs in death, And cover him with grass and leaf, Beneath the plantain tree! It is not sullenness, but grief— ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... appearance. Thus prepared, it may be kept for a long time, and is very serviceable for use on long journeys. The variety of the banana thus used is, however, a much larger kind than any of those ordinarily found in our Northern markets, and is known as the plantain. The dried plantain, powdered, furnishes a meal of fragrant odor and bland taste, not unlike common wheat flour. It is said to be easy of digestion, and two pounds of the dry meal or six pounds of the fruit is the daily allowance for a laborer ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... place upon a hand-barrow. Some called him Olla, or Orra, which is the name of the god of Bolabola, but his own proper name was Etary. From Omai's account of this person, I expected to have seen some religious adoration paid to him. But, excepting some young plantain trees that lay before him, and upon the awning under which he sat, I could observe nothing by which he might be distinguished from their other chiefs. Omai presented to him a tuft of red feathers, tied to the end of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... poured from a ram's horn cool soothing cocoanut oil upon the burns, and then she wrapped about the hand a bandage of shimmering muslin, bound in a wide strip of silk-like plantain leaf, saying: "This will keep the oil cool to your wound, Chief; it will not let it dry out ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... in time by the natives themselves. Primitive agriculture has never battled successfully against the phalanx of the trees. Forests balked the expansion of the Inca civilization on the rainy slope of the Andes, and in Central Africa the negro invaded only their edges for his yam fields and plantain groves. The earliest settlements in ancient Britain were confined to the natural clearings of the chalk downs and oolitic uplands; and here population was chiefly concentrated even at the close of the Roman occupation. Only gradually, as the valley woodlands were cleared, did the richer soil ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Lewisham, High Street, your only reply would be jeers. We sat down on a heap of stones, and decided that we would ask for a lift from the next cart, whichever way it was going. It was while we were waiting that Oswald found out about plantain seeds being good ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... on the banks, half brown, Half green with shoots that struggle to the birth, Nibbling where early plantain-buds hang down, Scenting the sweet, sweet smell of forest earth, The deer will trace thy misty ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... lump fish, holocenter, torpedo. No. 6, then gives the class to No. 7; and as variety is the life and soul of the plan, his post may be supplied with a botanic plate, containing representations of the following flowers:—daffodil, fox-glove, hyacinth, bilberry, wild tulip, red poppy, plantain, winter green, flower de luce, common daisy, crab-tree blossom, cowslip, primrose, lords and ladies, pellitory of the wall, mallow, lily of the valley, bramble, strawberry, flowering rush, wood spurge, wild germander, dandelion, arrow-head. No. 8 monitor has on his post a set of geometrical figures, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... she must submit, with a (cypress) her lover in her arms for the last time, and (pine) away. But happily her parent did not constitute (ebony) skeleton at their feast. He was guilty of no tyranny to reduce their hopes to (ashes). They found him in his garden busily (plantain). He was chewing (gum). "Well," he said thoughtfully, in answer to the question: "Since (yew) love her I must (cedar) to (yew). You make a fine young (pear). Don't cut any (capers) after you're married, young man! Don't (pine) and complain if he is sometimes cross, young ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... day! I have spent all the morning lying on the grass in front of my house, under the enormous plantain tree which covers and shades and shelters the whole of it. I like this part of the country; I am fond of living here because I am attached to it by deep roots, the profound and delicate roots which attach a man to the soil on which his ancestors ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... many of their customs from the Mahomedans, celebrate the Beara. But it is not observed by the Hindus of Bengal, who have a festival of their own, similar to the Beara. It takes place on the evening of the Saraswati Poojah, when a small piece of the bark of the Plantain Tree is fitted out with all the necessary accompaniments of a boat, and is launched in a private tank with a lamp. The custom is confined to the women who follow it in their own house or in the same neighbourhood. It is called the Sooa ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... have their Garments made of long Cloth; but the ordinary sort wear Cloth made of Plantain-tree, which they call Saggen; [3] by which name they call the Plantain. They have neither Stocking or Shooe, and the Women ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... with the ground they germinate, and a colony of young plants establishes itself. Because the Burdock and Thistle attempt to develop an up-reaching top it is an easy matter to keep them down by mowing, but the Dandelion and Plantain hug the soil so closely that the mower slips over them without coming in contact with their crowns, and so they live on, and on, and spread by a multiplication of their roots until they often gain entire possession of the soil, in spots. ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... by Draupadi). Say, whether thou regardest Krishna as unwon.' And having spoken thus unto the son of Kunti, Duryodhana desirous of encouraging the son of Radha and insulting Bhima, quickly uncovered his left thigh that was like unto the stem of a plantain tree or the trunk of an elephant and which was graced with every auspicious sign and endued with the strength of thunder, and showed it to Draupadi in her very sight. And beholding this, Bhimasena expanding his red eyes, said unto Duryodhana in the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... another species of cacao, the nut of which is small and white. It is called cacao-butter, and is used by the natives for burns and sores and cutaneous diseases. A large quantity of cacao for the manufacture of chocolate is exported to Spain. Among the trees were numbers of the broad-leaved plantain and banana, which had been planted to protect the young cacao trees from the heat of the sun. The fruit of the banana, one of the most useful productions of the Tropics, is eaten raw, roasted, boiled, and fried. ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... "copied, in every point, the Huang Hua Lou. But what's essential is a faultless imitation. Now were we to begin to criticise minutely the couplet just cited, we would indeed find it to be, as compared with the line 'A book when it is made of plantain leaves,' still more elegant ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... we four sat round a bit of fire outside the sleeping-shed, eating broiled fish off plantain leaves, with roast yams for bread—the usual thing. The governor and I were on one side, and these two beauties cross-legged on the other, grunting a word or two to each other, now and then, hardly human ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... her interest by having served at her own table the favourite olio the slaves made of plantains, bananas, yams, calalue, eddoes, cassavi, and sweet potatoes boiled with salt fish and flavoured with cayenne pepper. This, with the unripe roasted plantain as bread, was a native relish ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... captivity with wonderful dignity and composure. Some even seemed to listen with pleasure to the notes of the Kandyan flute which the natives played near them; and though at first they would not eat, at length when some juicy stems of the plantain were offered them, they could not resist the temptation of the luscious morsels. The young ones, however, though they ate everything given them, screamed and bellowed louder than any of the rest, attacking every one who came near them, and never ceasing their struggles to get free. Indeed, ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... above the snow, the corymbose heads of the yarrow, the spikes of the self-heal, the crosiers of the golden-rod, the panicles of the asters, the racemes of the Indian tobacco, the knotted threads of the blue vervain and the plantain, the miniature mandarin temples of the peppergrass—all these have shed, or are shedding, myriads of seeds to be silently sepulchred under the snow until earth's easter April mornings. The withered berries ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... it were, reflected in the giant foliage of the trees, and on the dewy herbage of the mountainsides, gemmed with the scintillations of innumerable fire-flies; while the gentle night-wind, rustling through the lofty plantain and feathery cocoa-nut, bears upon its breath a world of rich and balmy odours. Perhaps the scene is still more lovely when the pale moon flings down her rays on the chalice of the Datura arborea, brimming with nectareous dew—her own most favoured ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... still higher, your Commissioners learn that the district between Hobaboe Creek and 'Stricken Heuvel' contained, in 1829, eight sugar and five coffee and plantain estates, and now there remain but three in sugar and four partially cultivated with plantains by petty settlers: while the roads, with one or two exceptions, are in a state of utter abandonment. Here, as on the opposite bank of the river, hordes of squatters have ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... is at a loss. He trembles as a plantain tree tossed up by tempest. He touches the feet of the sage and most piteously ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... abundance of bud and blossom. The highest philosophy of human life she used in her management of this little plant world; for, burying the weeds at the roots of the flowers, the evil was made to minister to the good; and the nettle, the plantain and all their kind were transmuted by nature's fine chemistry ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... strong, was flabbergasted as he gaily marched in front of the column on our being received by a hail of bullets and buckshot, which decimated our ranks as we suddenly debouched from a rough, tangled undergrowth of scrub and dwarf plantain trees. ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... seven or eight feet high. It had one window, or rather a small frame in which a window might, perhaps, once have been, but which was now empty. The door was exceedingly low, and formed of rough boards, and the roof was covered with broad cocoa-nut and plantain leaves. But every part of it was in a state of the utmost decay. Moss and green matter grew in spots all over it. The woodwork was quite perforated with holes; the roof had nearly fallen in, and appeared to be prevented from doing so altogether by the thick matting ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... all gone," mumbled the Monkey, and pelted him with the plantain-peel and balls of paper made out of the packets where the sugar had been. "Why did you stay so long? I got hungry, and could not wait ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... coming, that I talked of riding down to the shore when the storm should abate, as I had never seen so fierce a sea. In about a quarter of an hour the House-Negroes came in, to close the outside shutters of the windows. They knew that the plantain-trees about the Negro houses had been blown down in the night; and had told the maid-servant Tyrrell, but I had heard nothing of it. A very few minutes after the closing of the windows, I found that the shutters of Tyrrell's room, at the south and ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle |
