The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

Chapter IV. Woman's Part in Primitive Agriculture. 153districts, where the yams which the aborigines use as food growabundantly, the ground may sometimes be seen riddled withholes made by the women in their search for these edible roots.Thus to quote Sir George Grey: “We now crossed the dry bedof a stream, and from that emerged upon a tract of light fertilesoil, quite overrun with warran [yam] plants, the root of whichis a favourite article of food with the natives. This was the firsttime we had yet seen this plant on our journey, and now forthree and a half consecutive miles we traversed a fertile piece ofland, literally perforated with the holes the natives had made todig this root; indeed we could with difficulty walk across it onthat account, whilst this tract extended east and west as far as wecould see.” 406 Again, in the valley of the Lower Murray Rivera kind of yam (Microseris Forsteri) grew plentifully and waseasily found in the spring and early summer, when the roots weredug up out of the earth by the women and children. The root issmall and of a sweetish taste and grows throughout the greaterpart of Australia outside the tropics; on the alpine pastures of thehigh Australian mountains it attains to a much larger size andfurnishes a not unpalatable food. 407 But the women gather edibleherbs and seeds as well as roots; and at evening they may be seentrooping in to the camp, each with a great bundle of sow-thistles,dandelions, or trefoil on her head, 408 or carrying wooden vesselsfilled with seeds, which they afterwards grind up between stonesand knead into a paste with water or bake into cakes. 409 Amongthe aborigines of central Victoria, while the men hunted, thenuts from the palms in the month of March (id. ii. 296).406 (Sir) George Grey, op. cit. ii. 12. The yam referred to is a species ofDiascorea, like the sweet potato.407 R. Brough Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria (Melbourne, 1878), i. 209.408 P. Beveridge, “Of the Aborigines inhabiting the Great Lacustrine andRiverine Depression of the Lower Murray, Lower Murrumbidgee, LowerLachlan, and Lower Darling,” Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Societyof New South Wales for 1883, vol. xvii. (Sydney, 1884) p. 36.409 R. Brough Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria, i. 214.