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More "Expanse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mentioned in the usual textbooks of German history, yet which is one of the most noteworthy phenomena in the development of modern Europe. At the beginning of the fourth century German tribes (German in the widest sense of the term) occupied the broad expanse from the Rhine to the Dwina and the head-waters of the Dnieper. A century later they had receded as far as the Vistula. Still another century later, about 500, the German linguistic domain was bounded on the east by the Ens, the Bohemian Hills, the upper Main, the Saal and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... boast the solid unity of the republic as the strongest existing fact in the political world. The very great aggrandizement of the nation has been an affair of the last sixty years; but already it has recorded itself throughout the vast expanse of the continent in monuments of architecture and engineering worthy of the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... {4} approach. The servants of the king of Spain had penetrated its central part and reaped, in the spoils of Mexico, the reward of their savage bravery. From the central isthmus Balboa had first seen the broad expanse of the Pacific. On this ocean the Spaniard Pizarro had been borne to the conquest of Peru. Even before that conquest Magellan had passed the strait that bears his name, and had sailed westward from America over the vast space that led to the island archipelago of Eastern ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... the field, but it was able to retire to its own territory, the sea. The army under Wellington, handled with splendid judgment, had to wait long for its opportunity, which came when Napoleon with the Grand Army had plunged into the vast expanse of Russia. Wellington, marching from victory to victory, was then able to produce upon the general course of the war an effect out of all proportion to the strength of the force which he commanded or of that which ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... lease, and there Dr. Roebuck and his family took up their abode. Kinneil House was formerly a country seat of the Dukes of Hamilton, and is to this day a stately old mansion, reminding one of a French chateau. Its situation is of remarkable beauty, its windows overlooking the broad expanse of the Firth of Forth, and commanding an extensive view of the country along its northern shores. The place has become in a measure classical, Kinneil House having been inhabited, since Dr. Roebuck's time, by Dugald Stewart, who there wrote his Philosophical Essays.[3] When ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... equal gusto at the top and at the bottom. At the foot of the hill stretches a breezy common, wide enough to make one think "long, long thoughts"; and if the traveller looks backward when he has crossed this common, he will see Sedgehill Church, crowning and commanding the vast expanse, and pointing heavenward with its slender spire to remind him, and all other wayfaring men, that the beauty and glory of this present world is only an earnest and a foretaste of ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... was irresistible. Jane dwelt smilingly upon it as she set the rain-god on the mantel, with a crockery bowl of yellow daisies to maintain his state. Afterward, a dark, adder-like compunction glided through the flowery expanse of her joy in Tesuque, as she wondered if there was not something heathenish in his lordly enshrinement upon ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... in truth, the idea, shaping concretely, filled his very legs with terror; but the young men's insistence, added to his own surging ideas, conquered, and he found himself on the platform facing a boundless expanse of three-cornered hats. Beneath were the men who represented the flower as well as the weeds of the city, all dominated by the master passion of the civilized world. There was little shade in the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... the pasture lot for sale, waved his hand enthusiastically, pointed toward the rich expanse ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... and turned to the window, which commanded a perfect view of the distant peaks of the Rockies, towering high above the broad, level expanse of the great muskeg. With her back still turned to him she fired an ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... people lived with their backs turned on the village, contemplating the blue expanse upon which were erected the wooden houses that represented all their fortune. In the summer-time the sight of the smooth and brilliant Mediterranean made them recall the dangers of the winter. They spoke with religious terror of the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... day brought us through woods rich in the moccasin flower and lupine, and plains whose soft expanse was continually touched with expression by the ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... one crushed. Sad and harassed as her life had been, it yet seemed to her that she had never known such indescribably bitter pain. The outside world looked bright and sunshiny; she could see the waves breaking on the shore, while beyond, sailing out into the wide expanse was a brown-sailed fishing boat. Every now and then her vision was interrupted by a tall, dark figure pacing to and fro; every now and then the sunlight glinted on snow-white hair, and then a fresh stab of pain awoke ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... clearing away at about sunset, opened a noble prospect from the porch of the colonel's house, which stands upon a high hill. The sun streamed from the breaking clouds upon the swift and angry Missouri, and on the immense expanse of luxuriant forest that stretched from its banks ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... mystic book truly is to invoke the powers. If they do not rise up plumed and radiant, the apparitions of spiritual things, then is our labor barren. We only encumber the mind with useless symbols. They knew better ways long ago. "Master of the Green-waving Planisphere,... Lord of the Azure Expanse,... it is thus we invoke," cried the magicians ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... glorious master," he commenced, "be thou indulgent as I speak to thee and unto these my comrades who lie in anxious posture over this vast expanse of Hell. I am here to state an issue of which we have heard murmurings for many an age. To prepare for this hour I have taxed my ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... seawards. His hands quivered, and he was mumbling to himself under the influence of ungovernable excitement. His stakes were very large, and all depended on the flicker of those lanthorns out towards the men on the luggers that were hidden in the black expanse of the sea. Then he waited, and against the light of the window I could see him mopping his forehead with the sleeve of his coat; my heart began to beat softly and ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... creeps over the mind for the moment at the sight of a deep woodland at sunset, when the forest is veiled in the softest of blue mist; or at the sound of some creeping sea, beating softly all night on a level sand; or at the prospect of a winter sun going down into smoky orange vapours over a wide expanse of pastoral country; or at the soft close of some solemn music—when peace seems not only desirable beyond ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and hurriedly dressing. When presently he emerged under the break of the poop, he found himself staring up into a mountain of canvas. Every foot of sail that she could carry had been crowded to the Arabella's yards, to catch the morning breeze. Ahead and on either side stretched the limitless expanse of ocean, sparkling golden in the sun, as yet no more than a half-disc of flame upon the ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... prove their skill. The storm had given place to a soft breezy morning, the cool freshness of which appearing peculiarly grateful from the oppressiveness of the night; light downy clouds sailed over the blue expanse of heaven, tempering without clouding the brilliant rays of the sun. Every face was clothed with smiles, and the loud shouts which hailed the youthful candidates for knighthood, as they severally entered, told well the ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... two and struggling moon. In front, a distant hillside, with points of camp-fire twinkling, where the Boers, indifferent to our little party, were carousing and drinking their dop. Now and then a yawn or groan as a man stretches his cramped limbs. Down below under us an expanse of dark plain, like a murky sea, reaching to our feet, which we peer across, but can make out nothing. Peep-of-day time is the Boer's favourite hour for a call, and we were all very much on the qui vive when the white ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... divided from the rest by an arched and fretted screen of red lacquer, and within this open cage stood Mrs. John, surveying winsomely the expanse of little tables, little chairs, big chairs, huge chairs, sofas, rugs, flower-vases, and knick-knacks. She had an advantage over most blondes nearing the forties in that she had not stoutened. She was in ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... current. But nothing had been seen from there of the missing craft, and though he traversed the entire distance by way of the cliffs, he saw nothing throughout his walk but flecks of foam here and there over the tumbling expanse of water. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Gilfil knew that Caterina's thoughts were not with him, and she had been long used to make him endure the weight of those moods which she carefully hid from others. They reached the flower-garden, and turned mechanically in at the gate that opened, through a high thick hedge, on an expanse of brilliant colour, which, after the green shades they had passed through, startled the eye like flames. The effect was assisted by an undulation of the ground, which gradually descended from the entrance-gate, and then rose ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... garnet brooch, on her finger a ring set with rubies—an engagement ring. Her eyes are bent to the Weald. She frowns a little—not in anger, but as a brave child frowns when he is trying not to cry. In all that expanse no human eye is looking at her, and she may frown unrebuked and measure the spaces that yet survive between ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... radiance, till the sun rose at once above the waves, and illuminating them with a flood of splendour, diffused gaiety and gladness around. The bold concave of the heavens, uniting with the vast expanse of the ocean, formed, a coup d'oeil, striking and sublime magnificence of the scenery inspired Julia with delight; and her heart dilating with high enthusiasm, she forgot the sorrows which had ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... his superior. He was old and withered. One hand seemed to be shrunken, and his head was permanently crooked to one side. The face was mean and sinister; two fangs alone remained in his mouth; his nose was hooked; the eyes were small, sharp, penetrating and restless; but the expanse of brow above them was grand and noble. It was one of those heads that look as if they had been packed full, and not an inch of space wasted. His person was unclean, however, and the hands and the long ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... intact as yet," remarked the engineer, gesturing at the bread expanse. "Only, falling stones have made holes here and there. See how they yawn down into the rooms below! Well, come on, follow me. I'll tap with the ax, and if the roof holds me you'll ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... moment Pierre paused under the porticus of the Madeleine, on the summit of the great flight of steps which, rising above the railings, dominates the Place. Before him was the Rue Royale dipping down to the expanse of the Place de la Concorde, where rose the obelisk and the pair of plashing fountains. And, farther yet, the paling colonnade of the Chamber of Deputies bounded the horizon. It was a vista of sovereign grandeur under that pale ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Eve's daughters,—her back seems broad enough to bear the blame of all the peccadilloes that have been committed since Adam. She girdeth her waist—or what she is pleased to esteem as such—nearly up to her shoulders, from beneath which that huge dorsal expanse, in mountainous declivity, emergeth. Respect for her alone preventeth the idle boys, who follow her about in shoals, whenever she cometh abroad, from getting up and riding. But her presence infallibly commands a reverence. She is, indeed, as the Americans would express it, something awful. Her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... inhabitants. Its walls, six miles in circumference, were already two hundred years old. Unlike most Netherland cities, lying usually upon extensive plains, it was built along the sides of an abrupt promontory. A wide expanse of living verdure, cultivated gardens, shady groves, fertile cornfields, flowed round it like a sea. The foot of the town was washed by the little river Senne, while the irregular but picturesque streets rose up the steep ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... route from Egypt to Syria, we then entered the rolling desert, and soon began to enjoy that feeling of freedom which a boundless plain always inspires. Only life on the sea, with all its wonderful charms, is to be compared to a journey through the desert. In the midst of its vast and solitary expanse the traveller feels himself overwhelmed, and his imagination conjures up strange forms on the far horizon. The desert is to the Arab what the sea is to the sailor; for both, their proper element has a permanent and irresistible ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... heaven and earth the wind whirls on its storms of hail and lightning, wafts its warm mists or breathes in gentle breezes. It caresses my face. When mounted on the back of this armchair, with my arm around the bars of the window to sustain myself, I fancy I am swimming in the wide expanse before me." The countenance of Aramis darkened as the young man continued: "Light I have! what is better than light! I have the sun, a friend who comes to visit me every day without the permission of the governor ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... recollections of that embarrassing visit of hers, but it could never dim her remembrance of the drive home that night over that wide expanse of moorland which stretched away black and mysterious under a sky which glowed like a furnace, until both were illuminated by lightning so vivid that one could but bow the head and close the eyes before it. A gusty wind, which had sprung up suddenly, chased the carriage all the way, while the ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... apparently boundless prairie. Far as the eye could reach it was a level plain, without landmarks, trackless as the sea, covered with a living carpet of emerald green. At another time I could have spent hours in gazing upon its vast expanse, and fancying its changed appearance when its surface should be furrowed by the plow and its fruitful soil reward the farmer's labor; but the presentiment of evil which I found it impossible to shake off, oppressed my spirits rendering me anxious ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... are found scattered throughout the broad expanse of forest that covers eastern Mindano, but they are not of man's sowing nor does the Manbo ever lay claim to them. He takes the fruit, frequently branch and all, eats it, throws the seed away and goes his ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... field, the west field, the south field, the middle field and the east field, besides the young orchard, the old orchard, the Aunt Hannah lot and the Aunt Hannah meadow, which was left till the last, sixty-five acres or more, altogether. What an expanse it looked to me! It was my first experience, but Addison and Halse had forewarned me that we would have it hot in haying. I had already grown a little inured to the sun during June, however; and in point of ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... something almost mysterious, a little impressive, about the broad expanse of river into which they presently turned. Opposite were woods and then a sloping lawn. From a house hidden in the distance they heard the sound of a woman singing. They even caught the murmurs of applause as she concluded. Then there was silence, only the soft gurgling of the water cloven by ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stood there a star swept like a glorious meteor across the wide expanse of the night sky, filling his soul with awe, for it seemed to him as though he had thus been given a sign from heaven that his course met with approval there among ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... which run parallel to the river, and by paths formed sometimes by steps, and sometimes by zigzags, which ascend and descend from the crest of the hills above to the line of the shore. The only buildings to be seen among all this vast expanse of walls and terraces are the little watchtowers that are erected here and there at commanding points to enable the vinegrowers to watch the fruit, when it comes to the time of ripening. The laborers who till the fields, and dress the vines, and gather ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... him and searched the grass-covered expanse of drained land carefully with his glasses. Then he stood up and stepped out ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... where we tied up was not far from the point where the Jhelum expands into the Wular Lake—a broad expanse of water, some seven or eight miles wide in places, which holds the proud record of being the ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... stepped down from the end of the piazza and floated up the garden-path and into the woods that skirted the lake-shore and stretched far back and away. Thus abandoned, the others turned their attention to the expanse before and below them; and one or two made their way down to the brink, unhooked a boat, ventured in, and, lifting the single pair of oars, were soon laboring gayly out and creating havoc ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... of Ferry Farm, 1748. A wide expanse of green. Trees right, left, and background. The trees in background supposedly screen the Colonial house from view. At the left the estate supposedly stretches to the highway. At the right, behind the trees, it is given over to flower ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... black breeches, and black stockings. His feet were loosely thrust into carpet slippers. I judged his age at fifty, or thereabouts; but his face rested in the shadow, and I could only note a pair of eyes, very small and alert, twinkling above a large expanse of cheek. ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... another trip to the vessel, and brought back quite an expanse of sailcloth. All hands, with the exception of Mr. Clinton, went to work at once, and by sunset a considerable space was roofed over, which the little company ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... he sent the boats to sound the water at the Serpent's Mouth, and to his great joy several fathoms were found; the currents and tides setting both ways, either to enter or return. A favourable breeze springing up, he entered the tranquil expanse between Trinidad and the mainland of Paria, and, to his great surprise, he ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... expanse of plains, the Campi Catalaunici of the ancients, spreads far and wide around the city of Chalons, in the north- east of France. The long rows of poplars, through which the river Marne winds its way, and a few thinly-scattered ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... conversing, the two canoes had rounded a rocky point and swept out upon a lake-like expanse in the river, which was perfectly smooth and apparently currentless. Several islets studded its calm breast and were reflected in the clear water. These were wooded to the water's edge, and from among the sedges near their margin ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... French written below one of Holbein's pictures is profoundly sad in its simplicity. The engraving represents a ploughman driving his plough through a field. A vast expanse of country stretches away in the distance, with some poor cabins here and there; the sun is setting behind the hill. It is the close of a hard day's work. The peasant is a short, thick-set man, old, and clothed in rags. The four horses that he urges forward are thin ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... broken away late in the afternoon, and for the first time they could see across the wide expanse of forest lands which stretched unbroken to the northward and westward, the low white line of the great backbone of the continent—the Rockies, land of mystery and adventure for bold souls since history began in this part of our ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... the stars Shine on me with their myriad eyes. So long I've peered 'twixt iron bars, I'm awed by this expanse of skies. The world is wider than I thought, And yet 'tis not so wide, I know, But into its remotest spot My tale ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the poet, 'He whom the randy motts entrap * Shall never see deliverance! Though build he forts a thousand-fold, * Whose mighty strength lead-plates enhance,[FN227] Their force shall be of no avail; * These fortresses have not a chance! Women aye deal in treachery * To far and near o'er earth's expanse With fingers dipt in Henna-blood * And locks in braids that mad the glance; And eyelids painted o'er with Kohl * They gar ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Motor-boat" we might have dubbed the trip. We had soon crossed the unbroken expanse of the lake and were moving through a submerged forest. Splendid royal palms stood up to their necks in the water, corpulent, century-old giants of the jungle stood on tip-toe with their jagged noses just above the surface, gasping ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... all religions built up on a belief in a God were collapsing, Europe had long inclined towards the religion of Progress as the last tenable. Now I perceived as I raised my eyes to the starry expanse and rejoiced in my favourite stars, Sirius in the Great Dog, and Vega in the Lyre or Altair in the Eagle, that it, too, was tottering, this last ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... earth by the hands of angels of the Holy Grail, the vessel in which Joseph of Arimathea caught the last drops of Christ's blood upon the cross. With the opening chords we seem to see the clear blue expanse of heaven spread before us in spotless radiance. As the Grail motive sounds for the first time pianissimo in the topmost register of the violins, a tiny white cloud, scarcely perceptible at first, but increasing every moment, forms in the ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... and talk, but night is for the most part their time for work; although many of the bawleys go out on the day-tide also, for at Leigh the tide is all-important. For five hours in the day it washes the foot of the wharves, for seven a wide expanse of mud stretches away to Canvey Island in front, and Southend Pier ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... horrible and dreary, exhibiting the very "palpable obscure," than our course of to-day. As far as the eye can stretch on every side is one vast, solitary, lifeless, treeless expanse of desert ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... looking up. Barely a leaf in the big maple was astir, not a single sensate thing. Had they been the only two people alive on a desert expanse they could not have been more isolated, more completely alone. Yet he pursued the lead no further, neither by word nor suggestion. Creeping through a tiny gap a ray of sunlight glared in his eyes, and he shifted enough to avoid it. That ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... single file was over my waist, as I soon found whenever I left the path in order to reach more quickly the head of the column. On arriving there, I found the track had suddenly ended, and before us was the level expanse of snow-covered valley. Attempts were being made to get the gun mules of the battery through this, but at every step they sank up to their girths, even then not finding firm foothold. Trials were then made of the ground at the sides of the valley, but the snow was found equally ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... Providence, safe and well, and in the finest country you ever saw. At this moment I have before me the sublime expanse of Squampash Flatts—the majestic Mudiboo winding through the midst—with the magnificent range of the Squab mountains in the distance. But the prospect is impossible to describe in a letter! I might as well attempt a panorama in a pill-box! We have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... of a bushy foot-hill the old nag stopped, lifted her head, and threw her ears forward as though to gaze, like any traveller to a strange land, upon the rolling expanse beneath, and the lad on her back voiced her surprise and his own with a long, low whistle of amazement. He folded his hands on the pommel of his saddle and the two searched the plains below long and hard, for ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... Great expanse of level country provided an ideal maneuvering ground. The site of the camp itself was high enough for good drainage and the Jacques Cartier River provided an abundance ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... torn and soiled in battle, but with every star and stripe kept whole and radiant in its fair expanse, shall be brought back to the Capitol; and it may well be that he, the illustrious civic leader, who first flung it to the breeze in the nation's necessity, should be the man whose hands shall be privileged ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... become familiar with the face of the little town itself, the more you are impressed by the strange swarthy tone it preserves in all this splendid expanse of radiant tinting. There are only two points of visible color in it,—the church and hospital, built of stone, which have been painted yellow: as a mass in the landscape, lying between the dead-gold of the cane-clad hills and the delicious azure of the sea, it remains almost black under ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... different from the known usage of the English tongue, for which Webster is undeniable authority. His definition of firmament is, "The region of the air; the sky, or heavens. In Scripture, the word denotes an expanse—a wide extent; for such is the signification of the Hebrew word, coinciding with regio, region, and reach. The original, therefore, does not convey the sense of solidity, but of stretching—extension. The great arch or expanse over our heads, in which ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... wood. The open space before the chateau, once a smooth expanse of tennis-lawn, is now a dusty picketing-ground for transport mules, destitute of a single blade of grass. The ornamental lake is full of broken bottles and empty jam-tins. The pagoda-like summer-house, so inevitable to French ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... her by the dog, though even at that distance, as she moved almost imperceptibly over the short turf of the treeless expanse along by the sea, he would have been sure that it was ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... sorts. A conical Tyrol hat garnished with a cock's plume and faded violets was crushed between his back and that of the chair. As his large nervous feet reached for the chairlegs below, one could see an expanse of moss-green stockings, only half concealed at the extremities by resplendent yellow sandals. Bearded and moustached after the military fashion, nothing betrayed the professor except the myopic droop of the head. As for Frauelein Linda ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... to Tjandjoer, the starting point for Sindanglaya, traverses one of the exquisite plains characteristic of Java. Mountain walls, with palm-fringed base and violet crest, bound a fertile expanse, where myriad brooks foam through fairy arches of feathery bamboo and long vistas of spreading palm fronds. Rice in every stage of growth, from flaming green to softest yellow, covers countless terraces, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... hushed, and the feet of the dancers were still. With one accord, they all stood in the open air, and gazed with straining glances at the pageant in the heavens; and marked it with awe and wonder. A broad streak of light spread itself gradually over the sky, till the whole wide expanse was in one brilliant blaze of splendor. The clouds, decked in the richest and most gorgeous colors, presented a spectacle of grandeur and glory, as they continued to shape themselves into various forms of ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... a domestic fire within my heart, and took up her dwelling there, even in that chill and lonesome cavern hung round with glittering icicles of fancy. She gave me warmth of feeling, while the influence of my mind made her contemplative. I taught her to love the moonlight hour, when the expanse of the encircled bay was smooth as a great mirror and slept in a transparent shadow; while beyond Nahant, the wind rippled the dim ocean into a dreamy brightness, which grew faint afar off, without becoming gloomier. I held her hand and pointed to the long surf wave, as it rolled calmly on ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... legend avers, but once in some fifteen years or so) on all the basking hillsides of the Mauritanian Atlas. But for the origin, and therefore for the evolutionary history, of either plant, we must look away from the shore of the inland sea to the arid expanse of the Mexican desert. It was there, among the sweltering rocks of the Tierras Calientes, that these ungainly cactuses first learned to clothe themselves in prickly mail, to store in their loose tissues an abundant supply of ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Texas.—While the farmers of the North found the broad acres of the Western prairies stretching on before them apparently in endless expanse, it was far different with the Southern planters. Ever active in their search for new fields as they exhausted the virgin soil of the older states, the restless subjects of King Cotton quickly reached the frontier of Louisiana. There they paused; but only for a moment. The fertile ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... amazement. The river seemed to end at its edge, but as he drew closer the reason for the anxiety of the outlaws to prevent his entering it was plain. No horse could travel through that dark, gloomy expanse. It was a floating forest. Great cypress and giant bays reared their mighty stems from the surface of black scummy water. Amongst their boughs bloomed brilliant orchids and from limb to limb stretched tangled masses ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... by lowering the flanks of the building to flat-roofed wings, a barn like effect was avoided. In the triple gables, also, the three central aisles which distinguish the interior show in the outer structure. Under the gables the huge clerestory windows above the entrances relieve the great expanse of the end walls. Similar windows open up the walls above the flat-topped wings. In the main entrance, the gables are deepened to form a huge triple vestibule where the row of columns is repeated. The long side walls are ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... seas, and continued stormy weather, rendered of little avail all efforts to make much headway toward any port. Our main hope was that of meeting with some vessel. But this hope mocked us day after day. No ship showed her white sails upon the broad expanse of waters that stretched, far as the eye could reach, in all directions. Thus ten days passed, and our provisions and water were nearly exhausted. Three of the passengers had become already very ill, and all of us were more or ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... the glowing night which succeeded was like sapphire, every building, every tower, every hill, was mirrored in the waters, and the spires of every church threw their delicate lines along the still expanse. The gigantic castle looked down from its height as if protecting all; and the few white motionless sails at a distance, pausing near the willowy islands, where not a leaf moved, made the whole like ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... spreads above; it is, of course, the same mist, but looking upwards it apparently recedes and becomes indefinite. The glance finds no point to rest on—as on the edges of clouds—it is a mere opaque expanse. But the air is dry, the moisture does not deposit itself, it remains suspended, and waits but the wind to rise and depart. The stillness is utter: not a bird calls or insect buzzes by. In passing beneath the oaks the very leaves have forgotten ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... horizon my eyes met the dark, massive heights of Chuhuichupa, followed towards the south by ridge upon ridge of true sierras with sharp, serrated crests, running mainly from northwest to southeast. And between them and me was an expanse of gloomy, pine-hidden cordons, one succeeding close upon another, and running generally in the same direction as the sierras. Primeval stillness and solitude reigned all over the woodland landscape. I like the society of man, but how welcome and refreshing ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... owner of the house had been in "foreign parts." A distinctly nautical atmosphere was lent to the broad, deck-like verandah by a ship's barometer, a chart of Cape Cod, and a highly polished brass telescope mounted on a tripod so as to command the entire expanse of the bay. Here Cap'n Bryant, a retired New Bedford whaling captain, was wont to spend the sunny days in his big cane-seated rocking-chair, puffing meditatively at his pipe and for my boyish edification spinning yarns of adventure in far-distant seas and on ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... under the ground. We had three beds and a table, and so were comfortable. When one stood on the earth which covered our roof, it was impossible to see any suggestion of a home underneath. Nothing was in sight but the wide expanse of rolling country cut up on all sides by trenches and shell holes, and wearing a sort of khaki uniform of light brown mud. To the east of us, lay the road bordered with leafless and battered trees, past which went an interminable line of lorries, guns and limbers. We were very comfortable, and at ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... speaks of rocks except in terms of contempt, however extraordinary their forms may be, must be the reason why Montpellier-le-Vieux has only been known of late years to persons interested in such curiosities of nature. To the geologist it is fascinating ground, as, indeed, is the whole expanse of these causses of Guyenne and Upper Languedoc, so fissured and honeycombed—a region of gorges and caverns, of subterranean lakes and rivers, of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the sea, and of the land; possessing powers of flight capable of outstripping even the tempests themselves; unawed by any thing but man; and, from the ethereal heights to which he soars, looking abroad, at one glance, on an immeasurable expanse of forests, fields, lakes, and ocean, deep below him, he appears indifferent to the little localities of change of seasons; as, in a few minutes, he can pass from summer to winter, from the lower to the higher regions of the atmosphere, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... were driven away,—Crasweller and I,—I had not a word to say to him. And he seemed to collect himself in his fierceness, and to remain obdurately silent in his anger. In this way we drove on, till, coming to a turn of the road, the expanse of the sea appeared before us. Here again I observed a small cloud of smoke which had grown out of the spot I had before seen, and I was aware that some large ship was making its way into the harbour of Gladstonopolis. ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... and a feeling of despair began to creep over the seaman's heart as he gazed round the wide expanse of water, on which nothing was to be seen except the white foam ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... sad heart, she was walking the colt slowly through the carriage-gates, when an extravagantly stout lady, in green muslin illustrated with huge red flowers, came out upon the porch and waved a fat arm to the girl. The visitor wore a dark-green turban and a Cashmere shawl, while the expanse of her skirts was nothing short of magnificent: some cathedral-dome seemed to have been misplaced and the lady dropped into it. Her outstretched hand terrified Betty: how was she to approach near ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... morning of the second day out and the three girls were leaning against the rail, gazing dreamily out over the boundless expanse of ocean. They wore natty white middy suits and, with floppy little sailor hats shading flushed cheeks and laughing eyes, they made an alluringly picturesque little group that had attracted much ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... the morning without the least cold. They would spend the hours between breakfast and dinner ascending the bank of a hill-stream, dammed by the snow, swollen by the thaw, and now rushing with a roar to the valley; or fighting their way through wind and sleet to the top of some wild expanse of hill-moorland, houseless for miles and miles—waste bog, and dry stony soil, as far as eye could reach, with here and there a solitary stock or bush, bending low to the ground in the steady bitter wind—a hopeless region, save that it made the hope in their hearts glow the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... roadside stream fascinated her. Now, she was longing with a passionate desire for the peace of the country. Upon this July evening, the corn must now be all but ripe for the sickle, making the fields a glory of gold. She pictured herself wandering alone in a vast expanse of these; gold, gold, everywhere; a lark singing overhead. Then, in imagination, she found her way to a nook by the Avon at Melkbridge, a spot endeared to her heart by memories that she would never forget. As a child, she loved ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... them to a long winding road, with clumps of trees here and there on the borders of it. The road was apparently not much used, for it was more than sprinkled with grass all over. A ploughed field was on one side, and a wild heathy expanse, dotted with fir-trees, on the other. Suddenly on the side of the field, gradually on that of the heath, the ground changed to the green sward ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... with their tusks. All the points of the compass then became shrouded with weapons and the very sun became invisible. Indeed, Karna and Partha, with their arrowy downpours, made the welkin one vast expanse of arrows without any space between. All the Kauravas and the Somakas then beheld a wide-spread arrowy net. In that dense darkness caused by arrows, they were unable to see anything else. Those two foremost of men, both accomplished in weapons, as they incessantly aimed and shot innumerable ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... and atmosphere, is in the highest degree difficult; but here it is successfully done, and again reminds us of the Paul Veronese treatment. Though a quiet picture, it is full of brilliancy. It represents a broad and partly shaded expanse, full, also, of light and sweet sunshine, through which the eye travels till it rests on the distant mountain, rising majestically in grand volcanic forms from the horizon plains. The sky is filled with cloudy veils, floating, prismatic; some quiet water, crossed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... upon this episode, a man might have been spied praying on the sand by the lagoon beach. A point of palm-trees isolated him from the settlement; and from the place where he knelt, the only work of man's hand that interrupted the expanse was the schooner Farallone, her berth quite changed, and rocking at anchor some two miles to windward in the midst of the lagoon. The noise of the Trade ran very boisterous in all parts of the island; the nearer palm-trees crashed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... away, I saw a great valley and mighty woods, and beyond these a broad expanse of water. In the nearer foreground I discerned a small, dark blob of color upon the shimmering ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with rice. Many small irrigation tanks for rice have been built by the people themselves, and large tank and canal works are now being undertaken by Government to protect the tract from the uncertainty of the rainfall. South of the plain lies another expanse of hill and plateau comprised in the zarmindari estates of Chanda and the Chhattisgarh Division and the Bastar and Kanker Feudatory States. This vast area, covering about 24,000 square miles, the greater part of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... of the ordinary leopard: its large and prominent eyes embrace a wide field of view; the length of neck and legs, combined with the erect attitude of the head, denotes the character of the animal, as it includes a vast distance in its gaze, showing that it seeks its game upon a wide expanse of plain, instead of surprising the prey by an unexpected and treacherous attack. This is the only species that is a useful companion to man when engaged in field sports; and the native princes of India have from time immemorial ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... girls cast grave glances at the drooping birch, and their bright tears glistened in the fire-glow. Once more Joe's eyes glinted with that steely flash, and as he gazed out over the wide, darkening expanse of water his face ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... however, the dogs in their trains were impatiently barking, and longing to get back home for their suppers. So, after farewell greetings to Kinnesasis and his wife, one cariole after another was loaded, and away the happy ones sped over the icy expanse of the ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... life's inheritance. Lo! as the sun shoots straight from out his tomb, God-floated, casting round a lordly glance Into the corners of his endless room, So, through the rent which thou, O Christ, hast riven, I enter liberty's divine expanse. ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... had freight for her that evening. When the tide came in, and her eyes were lifted, gazing afar, scanning the broad expanse of water with such searching, anxious vision, as, it seemed, nothing could escape, Luke Merlyn's cap was dashed to her very feet, tossed from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... morning taken her by a short cut to the vicinity of the upper meadow. She knew the way. But what was likely to happen? Town-bred girl that she was, she had no idea. A recollection of the smooth, upstanding expanse of the upper meadow gave her a clue. If the cows got into that even erectness— She began to run, Prince bounding beside her, his brown ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... but the room beyond was a blaze of light, with the curtains drawn, and apparently every lamp the house contained trimmed and burning. He himself stood in the shadow, and his entrance had been unnoticed, though almost the entire expanse of the room before him was visible through the ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... man, turning his back upon the setting sun, looked along the empty and broad expanse of the sea-reach. For the last three miles of its course the wandering, hesitating river, as if enticed irresistibly by the freedom of an open horizon, flows straight into the sea, flows straight to the east—to the east that harbours ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... clear and beautiful. Over head, one unbroken expanse of blue; under foot, a mantle of soft, white ermine. All the trees were transformed into fairy-like, silver-robed, pearl-studded, plume-adorned wonders. Diamonds floated in the air, and sunbeams ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... political conditions. Her population was not hemmed in by natural or artificial frontiers strong enough to restrain their expansive tendencies. To the north, the east, and the southeast there was a boundless expanse of fertile, uncultivated land, offering a tempting field for emigration; and the peasantry have ever shown themselves ready to take advantage of their opportunities. Instead of improving their primitive system of agriculture, which requires an enormous area and rapidly exhausts the soil, they have ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... things have been accomplished, then, and not till then, can the mystery of the Nile be explained. The two countries through which the marvellous lacustrine river, the Lualaba, flows, with its manifold lakes and broad expanse of water, are Rua (the Uruwwa of Speke) and Manyuema. For the first time Europe is made aware that between the Tanganika and the known sources of the Congo there exist teeming millions of the negro race, who never saw, or heard of the white people who make such a noisy and busy ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... The district then called Louisiana included the present State of that name and the States of Missouri and Arkansas—included also the right to possess, if not the absolute possession of all that enormous expanse of country running from thence back to the Pacific: a huge amount of territory, of which the most fertile portion is watered by the Mississippi and its vast tributaries. That river and those tributaries are navigable through ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... this street there are no fair neighbors to flirt with. In front is the Odeon, long since closed, presenting a wall that is beginning to go black, its tiny gallery windows and its vast expanse of slate roof. I was not rich enough to have a good room; I was not even rich enough to have a room to myself. Juste and I shared a double-bedded room ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... stand in the center of Hiroshima and get a view of the most of the city; the hills prevented a similar overall view in Nagasaki. Hiroshima impressed itself on one's mind as a vast expanse of desolation; but nothing as vivid was left in ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... beautiful lake!" sighed Marie, casting backward a sorrowful glance at the glittering expanse of water, at the paradise of her dreams, which the rising wind was ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... sound broke the silence that brooded forever—in spite of the wind—over the lake-like, flattened expanse of the estuary save the deep "how-how!" of the buzzard's superb pinions as she climbed slowly into the sublime vault of the heavens; never a sound from bird or from beast. The beast hung on, dumbly dogged, with fangs that met in the flesh beneath the ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... range extends Galilee, abounding in refreshing streams and fertile fields; while to the south, the country falls naturally into three parallel zones—the littoral, composed alternately of dunes and marshes—an expanse of plain, a "Shephelah," dotted about with woods and watered by intermittent rivers,—and finally the mountains. The region of dunes is not necessarily barren, and the towns situated in it—Gaza, Jaffa, Ashdod, and Ascalon—are surrounded by flourishing orchards ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... for his father. As he entered the stable-yard, which was a wide expanse of flagged ground at the back of the house, round which were many outbuildings, he came upon a group of snickering servants, all enjoying the story of the ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... that matter is not self-existent; that by its nature it is in an impossibility to move itself; consequently incompetent to the production of those striking phenomena which arrest our wondering eyes in the wide expanse of the universe; it will be obvious, to all who seriously attend to what has preceded, is the origin of the proofs upon which theology rests the existence of immateriality. After these suppositions, as gratuitous as they are ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... to her, and saluted her with respect. The lady asked: 'May I, for once, visit the Land of Enlightenment?' 'Yea,' answered the Blessed Soul, 'thou hast but to follow thy handmaiden.' The lady followed her (in her dream), and soon perceived a lake of immeasurable expanse, overspread with innumerable red and white lotus flowers, of various sizes, some blooming, some fading. She asked what those flowers might signify? The maiden replied: 'These are all human beings on the earth whose thoughts are turned to the Land of Enlightenment. The very first ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... wherein to hide till daybreak. One by one at first, then in gradually increasing numbers, at every shelter that was seen, whole troops left the waning squadrons, and rushed to hide themselves from the ferocity of the tempest. To right and left nought could be descried but the broad expanse of the moor, and the figures of their fellow-rebels seen dimly through the murky night, plodding onwards through the sinking moss. Those who kept together—a miserable few—often halted to rest themselves, and to allow their lagging comrades to overtake them. Then ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in truth, more sand than water at most times round Scarthey. For miles northward the wet strand stretches its silent expanse, tawny at first, then merging into silver grey as in the dim distance it meets the shallow advance of briny ripple. Wet sand, brown and dull, with here and there a brighter trail as of some undecided river seeking an aimless way, spreads westward, deep inland, until stopped in ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... that their descendants still form in part the labouring classes of the two counties. Here, too, the English settlers probably clustered thickest along the coast, like the Danes in later days; and the great swampy expanse of the Fens, then a mere waste of marshland tenanted by beavers and wild fowl, formed the inland boundary or mark of their almost ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... green. Stade upon stade, and farsang upon farsang, the ploughed furrows stretched away to the west and south; the corn standing already green and high, and the fig-trees putting out their broad green leaves. Here and there in the level expanse of country the rays of the declining sun were reflected from the whitewashed walls of a farmhouse; or in the farther distance lingered upon the burnt-brick buildings of an outlying village. Beyond the river, in the broad ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... the river's dim expanse Like some bold seer in a trance, Seeing all his own mischance— With a glassy countenance Did she look to Camelot. And at the closing of the day She loosed the chain, and down she lay; The broad stream bore her far ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... centuries it has performed the annual miracle of its flood. Every year when the rains fall and the mountain snows of Central Africa begin to melt, the head-streams become torrents and the great lakes are filled to the brim. A vast expanse of low, swampy lands, crossed by secondary channels and flooded for many miles, regulates the flow, and by a sponge-like action prevents the excess of one year from causing the deficiency of the next. Far away in Egypt, prince, priest, and peasant look southwards ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... was an almost uninterrupted expanse of country till the distance was broken by the spire of St. Bede's rising from a background of hills. He never imagined that it would be possible to see St. Bede's from Garside. He had thought the distance too great, but now ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... of a costly supper. This kind of compromise with fashionable gaiety was wisely deemed by Lu the best method of introducing Daniel to the beau monde—a push given the timid eaglet by the maternal bird, with a soft tree-top between him and the vast expanse of society. How simple was the entertainment may be inferred from the fact that Lu felt somewhat discomposed when she got a note from one of her guests asking leave to bring along her niece, who was making her a few weeks' visit. As a matter ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... their morning prayer, implored God to guide them. The decision could no longer be delayed. A party of twenty were sent on shore to mark out the spot where they should rear their store-house and their dwellings. On the side of a high hill, facing the rising sun and the beautiful bay, they found an expanse, gently declining, where there were large fields which, two or three years before, had been cultivated with Indian corn. The summit of this hill commanded a wide view of the ocean and of the land. Springs of sweet water gushed from the hill-sides, and a beautiful brook, overshadowed by the ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... question whether it would compare favourably with Southend under similar atmospheric circumstances. There was some shrubbery creeping up the white hill-side that may have been considered artistic, and possibly the great expanse of ocean (when completely free from mist) had to a certain extent a sort of charm. As I looked towards the coast of France I had an excellent view of a steamer, crammed with (presumably) noisy excursionists, coming from Margate. But when I have said this I have nothing more to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... Division, however, followed the stage-road some distance farther. How far we advanced up the Quaker road I am unable to say; but we finally turned to the left, and formed line of battle, facing the west. In our front was quite an expanse of open ground sloping down toward woods beyond. About a hundred yards to our left was a battery, ready for action. The Two Hundred and Tenth was again sent forward to skirmish. They advanced with due form and ceremony until they neared the woods, ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... Clarence MacFadden. Clarence MacFadden, it seems, was 'wishful to dance, but his feet wasn't gaited that way. So he sought a professor and asked him his price, and said he was willing to pay. The professor' (the legend goes on) 'looked down with alarm at his feet and marked their enormous expanse; and he tacked on a five to his regular price for teaching MacFadden ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... plain on the edge of which Boult-aux-Bois is situated: forests rise to the west and north, and there is a hill crowned by the hamlet of Belleville, while, over to the east, Buzancy way, there is a broad, level expanse, stretching far as the eye can see, with an occasional shallow depression concealing a small cluster of cottages. Was it from that direction that they were to expect the enemy? As he was returning from the stream with his bucket filled with ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... to a long winding road, with clumps of trees here and there on the borders of it. The road was apparently not much used, for it was more than sprinkled with grass all over. A ploughed field was on one side, and a wild heathy expanse, dotted with fir-trees, on the other. Suddenly on the side of the field, gradually on that of the heath, the ground changed to the green ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... deficient in still another essential feature. Every other European country possesses a mountain system which gives form and solidity to its structure. She alone has no such system. No skeleton or backbone gives promise of stability to the dull expanse of plains through which flow her great lazy rivers, with scarce energy enough to carry their burdens to the sea. Mountains she has, but she shares them with her neighbors; and the Carpathians, Caucasus, and Ural are simply a continuous girdle for ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... that has no well, Darkly bright in forest-dell; As a world without the gleam Of the downward-going stream; As a world without the glance Of the ocean's fair expanse; As a world where never rain Glittered on the sunny plain; Such, my heart, thy world would be, If no love ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... that afternoon on the green slope of Malvern Hill. The guns of the entire army were massed on the crest, and thirty thousand of our infantry lay, musket in hand, in front. For eight hundred yards the hill sank in easy declension to the wood, and across this smooth expanse the Rebs must charge to reach our lines. It was nothing short of downright insanity to order men to charge that hill; and so his generals told Lee, but he would not listen to reason that day, and so ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... ago, in the room of the great mahogany table, with its clean blotting pad, its writing tablet, and its superb rose rising from a green vase in the midst of the shining unlittered expanse, there was a plain, heavy mahogany wainscoting reaching chin-high to the average man. A few soft-toned pictures adorned the dull gray walls above the wainscoting, and directly over a massive desk that never was seen open ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... mankind from its first formation by the Almighty . . . . till after the flood. On one of the sides of the chapel are pictures by Perugino, and other old masters, of subsequent events in sacred history; and the entire wall behind the altar, a vast expanse from the ceiling to the floor, is taken up with Michael Angelo's summing up of the world's history and destinies ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... highness has never yet made a pilgrimage, you can have no conception of the country which we had to pass through: it was one vast region of sand, where the tracks of those who pass over it are obliterated by the wind,—a vast sea without water,—an expanse of desolation. We plunged into the desert; and as the enormous collection of animals, extending as far as the eye could reach, held their noiseless way, it seemed as if it were the passing by ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... imagine a human being a hundred feet high? That is how you looked to me as I stepped upon that huge expanse of black silk and shouted my ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... divided from one another by the terrace walls, which run parallel to the river, and by paths formed sometimes by steps, and sometimes by zigzags, which ascend and descend from the crest of the hills above to the line of the shore. The only buildings to be seen among all this vast expanse of walls and terraces are the little watchtowers that are erected here and there at commanding points to enable the vinegrowers to watch the fruit, when it comes to the time of ripening. The laborers who till the fields, and dress the vines, and gather the grapes ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... breakfast had long since passed, but still no signs of a resting-place appeared. On the contrary, the sand became finer and deeper, and the dreary expanse before us seemed to lengthen out to the horizon. As the sun also rose higher in the sky, his unobstructed rays darted down with greater force upon our heads. There had been a slight breeze in the morning, blowing fresh from over the snowy summits ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... which we are sitting, let us think of summer days elsewhere. Let us think of them listlessly, that we may the more enjoy the quiet here: as a child on a frosty winter night, snug in his little bed, puts out a foot for a moment into the chilly expanse of sheet that stretches away from the warm nest in which he lies, and then pulls it swiftly back again, enjoying the cozy warmth the more for this little reminder of the bitter chill. Here, where the air is cool, pure, and soft, let us think of a hoarding round some old house which the labourers ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... as these that Johnny had ample opportunity to study the country through which they passed. Lighted as it was by a glorious moon, it presented a grand and fascinating panorama. To the right lay the frozen ocean, its white expanse cut here and there by a pool of salt water pitchy black by contrast with the ice. To the left lay the mountains extending as far as the eye could see, with their dark purple shadows and triangles of light and seeming but ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... drought, the earth assumes the appearance of a desert. The turf is then reduced to powder, the earth gapes in huge cracks; the crocodiles and great serpents lie in a dormant state in the dried mud, till the return of rains, and the rise of the waters in the great rivers, which flood the vast expanse of level surface, awaken them from their long slumber. These appearances are often exhibited over an arid surface of fifty or sixty leagues square—every where, in short, where the savannah is not traversed by any of the great rivers. On the borders, on the other hand, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... miles long. Four rivers flow through these downs to the sea. In olden times their lower courses must have been deep inlets of the sea, thus dividing those hills into five groups, each separated from the other by a wide extent of water and marsh land. To the north of these hills was a vast expanse of densely wooded country. It is not strange, then, to find traces of numerous settlements among these hills. As the surface soil is very thin, old embankments can still be traced. The cut given is a representation of Cissbury, one of the largest of ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... Hatteras: immense gray combers, five to the mile, charging shoreward, occasionally breaking, again lifting their heads too high in the effort, truncated as by a knife, and the liquid apex shattered to spray; an expanse of leaden sky showing between the rain-squalls, across which heavy background rushed the darker scud and storm-clouds; a passenger-steamer rolling helplessly in the trough, and a square-rigged vessel, hove to on the port tack, two ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... had died down to a dull red glow; only one tiny flame remained, which, flickering to and fro, showed a wide expanse of floor, and two easy-chairs drawn up before the fender, on which reclined vague, feminine figures. The voice which had asked the question was slow and languid, and breathed a wearied indifference to the world in general, ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... knock on the door, Mr. Trentman entered a room at the end of the shanty, and there he found Lapelle reclining on a cot. Two narrow slits in a puffed expanse of purple grading off to a greenish yellow indicated the position of Barry's eyes. The once resplendent dandy ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... the ship seems literally to fly along; the masts and yards bend forwards, as if they would drop over the bows, while the studding-sail booms crack and twist, and, unless great care be taken, sometimes break across; but still, so long as the surface of the sea is plane it is astonishing what a vast expanse of canvas may be spread to the rising gale. By-and-bye, however, it becomes prudent to take in the royals, flying-jib, and top-gallant studding-sails. The boatswain takes a look at the gripes and other fastenings ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... Some lost their heads, and began to rush about wildly. A few screamed. Nearly every one became visibly paler. Syd and I started from our seats, and gazed bewilderedly at an expanse of yellow sand softly revealed beneath the mist, and stretching ahead and on either hand into the white moisture by which we were encompassed. John walked ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... covered with turf, on which grow bilberry bushes and stunted trees. Mists are almost always hovering over this region, which, seventy years ago, was overrun with wolves. It may well be called the Wild Moor; and one can easily imagine, with such a wild expanse of marsh and lake, how lonely and dreary it must have been a thousand years ago. Many things may be noticed now that existed then. The reeds grow to the same height, and bear the same kind of long, purple-brown leaves, with their feathery tips. There still ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... shores. Fiery beams now marked the clouds, and the east glowed with increasing radiance, till the sun rose at once above the waves, and illuminating them with a flood of splendour, diffused gaiety and gladness around. The bold concave of the heavens, uniting with the vast expanse of the ocean, formed, a coup d'oeil, striking and sublime magnificence of the scenery inspired Julia with delight; and her heart dilating with high enthusiasm, she forgot the sorrows ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... In the distance, Malone could see the blot on the desert that indicated the broad expanse of Yucca Flats Labs. Just the fact that it could be seen, he knew, didn't mean an awful lot. Malone had been able to see it for the past fifteen minutes, and it didn't look as if they'd gained an inch on ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... you something of Orange Park, the town, the school established there, and the trouble connected with it. The village is situated on the west bank of the St. John's River, which at that point is a beautiful expanse of water three miles wide. Nature has been very prodigal in that section. The trees and plants are of a luxurious growth. Flowers are numerous. Every kind of fruit is plentiful. Because of these natural advantages, general climate and apparent fitness ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... in the reign of Queen Anne; the stillness was too perfect to be modern, the nearness counted so as distance, and there was something so fresh and sound in the originality of the large smooth house, the expanse of beautiful brickwork that showed for pink rather than red and that had been kept clear of messy creepers by the law under which a woman with a rare complexion disdains a veil. When Paul Overt became ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... trip to the vessel, and brought back quite an expanse of sailcloth. All hands, with the exception of Mr. Clinton, went to work at once, and by sunset a considerable space was roofed over, which the little company ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... the explorers ventured, and had nearly reached the mouth of the Arkansas River, floating on a wide expanse of water between lofty woods, when they heard wild yelling on the west shore, and saw a crowd of savages pushing out huge wooden canoes to surround them. Some swam to seize the Frenchmen, and a war club was thrown over their ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of the sea birds and have an enormous expanse of wing, the Wandering Albatross, the largest of the family, sometimes attaining an expanse of fourteen feet. Their nostrils consist of two slightly projecting tubes, one on each side near the base of the bill. They are unsurpassed in powers ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... kindly feelings were nourished on both sides. If I understand anything of human nature now, it comes partly of having known and respected the poor of my father's parish. She passed in at the gate and went as usual to the kitchen door, while I stood drowsily contemplating the green expanse of growing crops in the valley before me. The day had grown as sleepy as myself. There were no noises except the hum of the unseen insects, and the distant rush of the water over the dams at our bathing-place. In a few minutes the old woman approached me again. She was an honest and worthy ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... mood. Nor are they placed at random, but are more or less in harmony with their surroundings. Remember, too, their great number and their large size—a man 214 feet long, a beast 160 feet long, with a tail measuring 320 feet, a hawk 240 feet in expanse of wing. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... shamiana or canopy, under which we could see a host of attendants spreading carpets, placing chairs, and otherwise making ready for us. The banks of the stream were very steep, but the guide at length brought us to what seemed a safe and fordable passage. On the further side was a flat expanse of seemingly firm and dry sand, but no sooner had our elephants begun to cross it, than the whole sandbank for yards began to rock and tremble; the water welled up over the footmarks of the elephants, and S. called out to us, Fussun, Fussun! quicksand, quicksand! We scattered ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... middle of all this forest verdure, there lay a patch of white, like driven snow. This was an expanse of blossoming fruit-trees, and out of them, up on the high lake shore, rose the manor-house, shining white, with tiles of red. A stork flew up from the chimney, and circled ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... antique towers That crown the wat'ry glade, Where grateful Science still adores Her Henry's holy shade; And ye, that from the stately brow Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey, Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among Wanders the hoary Thames ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... bed pondering over these fancies, and my sleep was full of happy dreams. I saw myself dwelling in a retired spot amidst peace and plenty. I thought I was surrounded on all sides by a fair expanse of country which belonged to me, where I enjoyed that freedom the world cannot give. My dreams had all the force of reality, till a sudden awakening at day-break came to give them the lie. But the imaginary ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... view and made it impossible to manage the ships. The soldiers, too, unaccustomed to the perils of the sea, in their alarm embarrassed the mariners, or, helping them awkwardly, rendered unavailing the services of the skilful. After this, the whole expanse of air and sea was swept by a southwest wind, which, deriving strength from the mountainous regions of Germany, its deep rivers, and boundless tract of clouded atmosphere, and rendered still harsher by the rigor of the neighboring north, tore away the ships, scattered and drove ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... wide, turf-covered expanse, we should remember that its smoothness, on which so much of its beauty depends, is mainly due to all the inequalities having been slowly levelled by worms. It is a marvellous reflection that the whole of the superficial mould over any such expanse has passed, and will again pass, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... not regret, although Beaucaire rather interested me, but, as the gambler seldom permitted the Judge out of his sight, our intimacy grew very slowly. Thockmorton, being his own pilot, seldom left the wheelhouse, and consequently I passed many hours on the bench beside him, gazing out on the wide expanse of river, and listening to his reminiscences of early steam-boating days. He was an intelligent man, with a fund of anecdote, acquainted with every landmark, every whispered tale of the great stream from New Orleans to Prairie du Chien. At one time or another ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... administered by Newfoundland, which still remains outside the Dominion of Canada. On the Atlantic the chief indentations which break its shores are the Bay of Fundy (remarkable for its tides), the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and Hudson Bay (a huge expanse of water with an area of about 350,000 square miles); and the Pacific coast, which is small relatively, is remarkably broken up by fjord-like indentations. Off the coast are many islands, some of them of considerable magnitude,—Prince Edward Is., ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... is the breeze, cloudless the sky, brilliant, beaming, magnificent, the sunshine, but not a leaf stirs in answering rustle to the wind. Far and near no patch of shade delights or tempts the eye. Look where you will,—look for miles and miles over boundless expanse of rolling upland, of ridge and ravine, of dip and "divide," of butte and swale, no speck of foliage, no vision is there of even isolated tree. The solid earth beneath our feet is carpeted with dense little bunches of buffalo-grass, juicy, life-giving, yet bleaching already of the faint hues ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... his vowels, that he was guilty of elisions and interpolations which were equally unexpected, and that his discourse was pervaded by something sultry and vast, something almost African in its rich, basking tone, something that suggested the teeming expanse of the cotton-field. Mrs. Luna looked up at all this, but saw only a part of it; otherwise she would not have replied in a bantering manner, in answer to his inquiry: "Are you ever different from this?" Mrs. Luna was ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... heart. Look upon me! a virgin, like thyself; I to the Christ, the Lord divine, gave birth, And am myself divine!" Mine eyelids then She touched, and when I upward turned my amaze, Heaven's wide expanse was filled with angel-boys, Who bore white lilies in their hands, while tones Of sweetest music floated through the air. And thus on three successive nights appeared The Holy One, and cried,—"Arise, Johanna! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... noticed this change. Students in the School of Fine Arts pointed him out from the gallery of the Opera-house or stopped on the sidewalk when they saw him at night, with a shining silk hat on his carefully trimmed hair and the expanse of shirt-front showing in his unbuttoned overcoat. The boys in their simple admiration imagined the great master thundering before his easel, as savage, fierce and intractable as Michael Angelo in his studio. And so when they saw him looking so differently, their ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... were lengthening the party from The Willows set forth again, and reached the foot of the mountain a little before sunset, making the ascent in time to see the day-god's last radiance streaming over the fair, broad expanse of country beneath them. There was a small cabin on the summit which was to be devoted to the ladies, and round the camp-fire which was soon sparkling brightly the gentlemen proposed to spend the night on the blankets with which they were all plentifully provided. Meanwhile, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... would have understood. Men do these things in time of stress, and I was in great stress. I loved a woman for the first time in my life—and I was a man nearly forty. I wanted her with every quivering nerve in me. And she was gone. Lost in the vast expanse of Europe with a parcel of performing cats. Gone out of my life loving me as I loved her, all on account of this Hell-invented principle. Ye gods! If the fierce, pure, deep, abiding love of a man for a woman ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... inland broad expanse of salt water, usually shallow, and connected with the sea by one or more channels, or ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of either the mountains or the Pacific coast. In the far north, to be sure, the rigorous climate caused all the Indians to live practically alike, whether in the Rockies, the plains, or the Laurentian highland. South of them, in that great central expanse stretching from the latitude of Lake Winnipeg to the Rio Grande River, the Indians of the plains possessed a relatively uniform type of life peculiar to themselves. This individuality was due partly to the luxuriant ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... prospect in summer. Then all is laughing, and it is a joy in every nerve to ride out over the Long Bridge at high tide, and, looking southward, to see the wide crinkle and glitter of that beautiful expanse of water, which laps on one hand the granite quays of the city, and on the other washes among the reeds and wild grasses of the salt-meadows. A ship coming slowly up the channel, or a dingy tug violently ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... the planet seemed a good deal smaller than the moon, and yet so dense as to have a greater gravitational attraction. The atmosphere was cloudless, and the surface a forbidding expanse of sand. The globe whirled at a rate that must give it a day of approximately five hours. We angled down, picking a spot just within the ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson
... his horse, slipped the bridle over his arm, and let him pick away at the short grass and tufts of heath, as he himself first stood, and then sat, and looked out over the scene which she had so often looked over. She might have sat on the very spot he was sitting on; she must have taken in the same expanse of wood and meadow, village and park, and dreamy, distant hill. Her presence seemed to fill the air round him. A rush of new thoughts and feelings swam through his brain and carried him, a willing ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the girls. A pool, so called, was supposed to contain but a small amount of water, and how could the devil, being so large, get into it? Then came the origin of the word pool—from "palus," a marsh, as we were told, some dictionary attesting to the fact, and such a marsh might cover a large expanse. The "Palus Maeotis" was then quoted. And so we went on till Satan's ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... a coping of worn brick on which she had set her feet, but she did not see it now. She saw migratory birds traveling steadily through a vast expanse of gray sky; birds that were going, at the appointed time, to some far-distant place, in search of a golden climate, in search of the sun. Inevitably they would come into the golden climate, inevitably they would find the sun which they needed. Like them she was traveling through a vast gray ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... waves. And they saw that it was deep and abounding with fierce whales and makaras. And it resounded constantly with the terrible sounds of aquatic creatures. And they saw that it was vast, and wide as the expanse of space, unfathomable, and limitless, and the grand ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... himself rewarded with one of the finest prospects in the world. Immediately beneath him, stretches the entire extent of the Teneriffe, with all its lovely scenery; round it the other nineteen Canary Islands; the eye then glances over an immense expanse of waters, beyond which may be descried in the distance the dark forests of the African coast, and even the yellow stripe which marks the verge of the great Desert. With thoughts full of the enjoyments which awaited us, we approached ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... The equestrian statue of Louis XIV. in the court-yard, his bed and crown, his clock and chair in the long suite of rooms kept sacred to his memory, typify the age when genius and beauty mingled their charms in the corrupt atmosphere of intrigue and profligacy. The noble expanse of wood, water, and meadow; the paths lined with stately myrtles and ancient box, spread as invitingly to the eye from this embayed window, as when the grand monarque stood there to watch the graceful walk of La Valliere, or the staid carriage of Maintenon. The abandonment and quietude of ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... developed to a degree that afforded the utmost fluidity of movement of all articles of trade. Furthermore, the range of movement of internal trade was greatly widened by the settlement of the vast expanse of new country west ...
— Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States - 1789-1900 • T.W. van Mettre
... fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam. Here and there grayish-whitish specks showed up, clustered inside the white surf, with a flag flying above them perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger than pin-heads on the untouched expanse of their background. We pounded along, stopped, landed soldiers; went on, landed custom-house clerks to levy toll in what looked like a God-forsaken wilderness, with a tin shed and a flag-pole lost in it; landed more ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... some fields upon the easier acclivities and woodlands higher up. There was one field of a hundred acres upon Captain Webster's mountain farm so level that a lamb could be seen on any part of it from the windows of the house. Every tourist knows that region now,—that wide, billowy expanse of dark mountains and vivid green fields, dotted with white farm-houses, and streaked with silvery streams. It was rougher, seventy years ago, secluded, hardly accessible, the streams unbridged, the roads of primitive formation; but the worst of the rough work had been done there, and the production ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... scenery. The heart reposes on them with a feeling that few things else can give, because almost all other objects are abrupt and clearly defined; but a meadow stretches out like a small infinity, yet with a secure homeliness which we do not find either in an expanse of water or of air. The hills which border these meadows are wide swells of land, or long and gradual ridges, some of them densely covered with wood. The white village, at a distance on the left, appears to be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... finest poems, compared Bacon to Moses standing on Mount Pisgah. It is to Bacon, we think, as he appears in the first book of the Novum Organum, that the comparison applies with peculiar felicity. There we see the great Lawgiver looking round from his lonely elevation on an infinite expanse; behind him a wilderness of dreary sands and bitter waters in which successive generations have sojourned, always moving, yet never advancing, reaping no harvest, and building no abiding city; before him a goodly land, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... one dotted with the same line of logs and stones strewn along the water's edge, which turned out as he approached them to be basking crocodiles and sleeping pelicans. His eye, wearied with the continual confinement and want of distance, longed for the boundless expanse of the desert, for the jagged outlines of those far-off hills, which he had watched from boyhood rising mysteriously at morn out of the eastern sky, and melting mysteriously into it again at even, beyond which dwelt a whole world of wonders, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... purple shades of all beyond. Then, flashes of the broad ocean, like quick transitory bursts of light, started at intervals, washing the feet of a tall emerald cliff, or, like a lake, buried between the hills. Shorter and shorter become the intermissions, larger and larger grows the watery expanse, until, at length, the mighty element rolls unobstructed on, and earth, decked in her verdant leaves, her flowers and gems, is on the shore to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... time into scraps of song, the surroundings of his walk changed, for he passed over a rough stone wall, provided with projections to act as a stile, and left the moorland behind, to enter upon a lovely park-like expanse, dotted with grand oaks and firs, among which he had not journeyed long before, surrounded on three sides by trees, he came in full sight of the fine-looking, ruddy stone hall, glimpses of which he had before seen, while ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... this exclamation and understood it, but no one turned around to see where it came from. The grey mass of people suddenly stirred, gave a sigh, surged like the sea whipped by a gale, and, sinking at each step into the mud, the entire regiment rolled forward, over the expanse of the shoreless fields which now suddenly looked strange and dreadful. The soldiers, their faces haggard and queer, were crossing themselves as they ran. They marched in disorder, and when they were stopped on the hill-crest, ...
— The Shield • Various
... since the curtain rose upon this episode, a man might have been spied, praying on the sand by the lagoon beach. A point of palm trees isolated him from the settlement; and from the place where he knelt, the only work of man's hand that interrupted the expanse, was the schooner Farallone, her berth quite changed, and rocking at anchor some two miles to windward in the midst of the lagoon. The noise of the Trade ran very boisterous in all parts of the island; the nearer palm trees crashed and whistled ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... bent his bared arm as the resistant cord cut the flesh; for a second it strained, seeming to have withstood the full expanse of his muscle. Then he closed his arm a little more, and the four ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... husband, quick as a flash burst into a beautiful crystal light. The heavens looked like shining silver, all around the horizon was a wide cloud of clear light blue, with a border of gold. Beneath was a broad expanse of green, with large groves of trees at regular intervals dressed in a deeper shade. Through these were meandering streams or rivers as of clear glass. Clear cut avenues ran through at regular spaces from stream to stream, on the borders of which (avenues and rivers) were thousands ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... star or two and struggling moon. In front, a distant hillside, with points of camp-fire twinkling, where the Boers, indifferent to our little party, were carousing and drinking their dop. Now and then a yawn or groan as a man stretches his cramped limbs. Down below under us an expanse of dark plain, like a murky sea, reaching to our feet, which we peer across, but can make out nothing. Peep-of-day time is the Boer's favourite hour for a call, and we were all very much on the qui vive ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... "Ah! the noble Frederic is no more!" The chief reluctant yields his latest breath; His eye-lids settle in the shades of death; Dark sable shades present before each eye, And the deep vast abyss, Eternity! Through perpetuity's expanse he springs; And o'er the vast profound he shoots on wings; The soul to distant regions steers her flight, And sails incumbent on inferior night: With vast celerity she shoots away, 60 And meets the regions of eternal day, To shine for ever in the heavenly birth, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... remained in our sleighs. The surrounding scene had impressed us all very forcibly, and there was a general disinclination to get out. The expanse of snow, in its half-melted condition, was enough to deter any reasonable being. To get out was to plunge into an ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... this paralyzed enterprise in Africa until white men learned that the climate was not so deadly, after all, if they adhered to the manner of life, the hygienic rules, that should be observed in that tropical expanse. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... minutes," said Randolph, as they resumed their march. On the one hand the ragged line of dunes with their draping, dense or slight, of pines, lindens and oaks; on the other the unruffled expanse of blue, spreading toward a horizon ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... to be completely deserted, the people having removed weeks before; for lying, as they did, between the rival cities, they were likely to suffer at the hands of both. The party soon turned off and made across the country. Here and there a few animals could be seen over the flat expanse. Presently they came upon a mill; the water of the canal that turned its wheel was running to waste, and the place ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... had condensed into a sudden shout. Now I saw the ball rolling solitary in the middle of the field, and a single red doll racing towards it; at one end was a confused group of red and white, and at the other two white dolls, rather lonely in the expanse. The single red doll overtook the ball and scudded along with it at his twinkling toes. A great voice behind me bellowed with ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... some broad road and footed it hour after hour, through the night, through the next day, through the next night, and so till the end overtook him, striking him down in his tracks. He would get as far away as possible, keeping out under the broad expanse of the sky above. He could find rest only by taking a course straight on over the hills, turning aside for nothing, tearing a path ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... he had said nothing in the train of those stern things which he had resolved to say. Of course he was not saying them when Roger Carbury came upon him; but was indulging in some poetical nonsense, some probably very trite raptures as to the expanse of the ocean, and the endless ripples which connected shore with shore. Mrs Hurtle, too, as she leaned with friendly weight upon his arm, indulged also in moonshine and romance. Though at the back of the heart of each of them there ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... couple hundred yards extending out into cleared land, where the 42d Illinois was posted, refused as to the 65th and facing south to cover that flank. To the front, right and rear of the 42d was a broad expanse of rolling fields extending on the right to the pike, about 1,000 yards away, where two guns were posted to sweep the fields in front of the 42d with their fire. To the left of the 42d an extension of the woods ran out into the fields and concealed the 42d from Cleburne ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... one has connected with it in his childhood from reading Robinson Crusoe. To this I may add the height and romantic outline of its mountains, the beauty and freshness of its verdure and the extreme fertility of its soil, and its solitary position in the midst of the wide expanse of the South Pacific, as all concurring to ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... undetermined cause which had produced this change ceased, and the party rowed homeward with their last load, just in time as the pack closed in, and the channel through which they had rowed, in the morning, over a glassy expanse of nearly a mile in width, narrowed, until, with a shock which was wholly unexpected, so gradual and gentle seemed the motion, the opposing borders were again united, and the waves of the sea were no ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... forlorn street in Paris at the present moment than the Rue de la Paix, the headquarters for dressmakers and milliners. Upwards of seventy-five per cent. of the shops are closed, and on both sides the street presents a long, gray expanse—broken only ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... the houses looked stunted like gravestones, with a line of black trees above their roofs that loomed shadowy and cloud-like. Only in the furthest corner of the expanse was the light of a solitary street lamp bearing a resemblance to the disk of a stationary, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... face of this expanse of waters, and perfectly secure from fowlers, lie all day long, in the winter season, vast flocks of ducks, teals, and widgeons, of various denominations; where they preen and solace, and rest themselves, till towards sunset, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... the horizon, and nothing on earth could be fairer than that soft sleep of the golden sunshine on the green and flowery meadowland, while overhead only a few silvery cloudlets variegated with their fleecy lustre the expanse of blue, rippling down to the horizon like curves of white foam at the edges ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... on the bottom step and pushed the hair back from her forehead. Suddenly she looked very small and faintly forlorn with all that expanse of age-blackened wood ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... deliberation, or when suspicious blotches appeared on the ceiling in rainy weather, there was always the bay-window to turn to for comfort. And the view was a fine one. Alcatraz, Lime Point, Fort Point, and Saucelito were plainly visible over a restless expanse of water that changed continually, glittering in the sunlight, darkening in rocky shadow, or sweeping in mimic waves on ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... was sinking slow, And twilight spread a rosy glow Around its single star, His eye the western sea's expanse Would search, creating by its glance Some ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... illimitable expanse of sky and sand swam slowly into view, each insignificant landmark in the desert magnified almost incredibly by the powerful glasses; and at last the blue-robed native appeared suddenly as though only a stone's throw away from the ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... of repairing our drenched and bedraggled condition. The storm, clearing away at about sunset, opened a noble prospect from the porch of the colonel's house, which stands upon a high hill. The sun streamed from the breaking clouds upon the swift and angry Missouri, and on the immense expanse of luxuriant forest that stretched from its banks back ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... and study were to be weighed one against the other, in order to discover which must contribute most to a good work, the question would become more curious, and, perhaps, very difficult of solution. Indeed, though nature must have a great part of the expanse of poetry, yet no poetry lasts long that is not very correct: the balance, therefore, seems to incline in favour of correction. For is it not known that Virgil, with less genius than Ovid, is yet valued more by men of exquisite ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... something to do and I guess we are going to have plenty of time on our hands before we get away from here." As he finished speaking he turned to scan the horizon, but nothing was in sight save the endless expanse of ocean. As far as appearances went they might have been alone in the world. The occasional note of a bird and the soft murmur of the waves as they caressed the beach below were the ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... confined in the narrow limits of his cell, his spirits sank. He pined with the hunger of a wild thing for liberty—to move without the clanking fetters; to drink of the fresh water of the Jordan, to breathe the morning air; to look on the expanse of nature. Is it hard to understand how his deprivations reacted on his mental and spiritual organization, or that his nervous system lost its elasticity of tone, or that the depression of his physical life cast a ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... thorny and succulent shrubs of fantastic aspect, which alone could live on the sandy and waterless soil. This is a strange land, that can boast three separate climates within its borders, and is able to show all the glories of the tropics side by side with deserts of measureless expanse. ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... Spaniards maintained their feeble hold in the Southwest, no white men inhabited the great prairies which swept westward to the foothills of the Rockies. Only nomadic Indian tribes and occasional traders followed the buffalo trails across this wide expanse. Between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific was the region which Lewis and Clark had penetrated. Along the valley of the northern branch of the Columbia River, the Hudson's Bay Company had planted their trading posts. Farther to the south lay Spanish ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... the wide plains of earth, swaying slowly and going nowhere; and on the other side all those artists who were passing through the mob in all directions, loudly proclaiming something, singing with inspired voices, pointing to the expanse of heaven, calling attention to the stars, trying to bring about some order in this disorderly, teeming multitude, opening paths among it, imploring it in deep tones. But the multitude either laughed or merely nodded its assent, but did not budge from its place. ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... of the great fortresses of Europe. The town lay in the plain, and had no strength except what was derived from art. But art and nature had combined to fortify that renowned citadel which, from the summit of a lofty rock, looks down on a boundless expanse of cornfields, woods and meadows, watered by two fine rivers. The people of the city and of the surrounding region were proud of their impregnable castle. Their boast was that never, in all the wars which had devastated the Netherlands, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... morning I went out into the veranda, and took a survey of the ocean—the broad infinite expanse of waters into which I was about to plunge ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... mild light athwart the crowded and affluent landscape, we involuntarily exclaimed, "that this even equalled the Neapolitan coast in the twilight." The manner in which the obscurity settled on this picture, slowly swallowing up tower after tower, hamlet, cottage, and field, until the blue expanse of the lake alone reflected the light from the clouds, was indescribably beautiful, and was one of those fine effects that can only be produced amid a nature as grand as ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... followed in laying out the streets of this village, and even the sinuous main avenue, lined on either side by a row of full grown maples, adds to its charm. Beyond the town to the westward the view of rolling plain and delightful wooded expanse greets the eye, and in the distance the smoky Sugar Loaf looms up to beckon one to mountain scenes. In an afternoon drive from the village to the south or west the lover of nature may find ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... The sea, however, continued as calm as before; around the ship not a ripple could be seen on its surface. The crew, hurrying from below, went to their stations, all eyes being turned in the direction of the approaching clouds. Presently cats'-paws began to play over the mirror-like expanse, and then to disappear; the sails slowly bulged out, and speedily again hung down as listlessly as before against the masts. The dark line grew brighter and brighter; presently the loftier sails swelled out, and the ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... saw that the lane proceeded downwards to a river crossed by a wooden bridge, with an expanse of meadows beyond. To her left was a stable-yard, and below it a white gate and white railings enclosing a graveyard, with a very beautiful church standing behind a mushroom yew-tree. The upper boundary of the churchyard was the clipped yew hedge of the ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... anchors, and heavy boxes of freight, which made it difficult for him to find his way to a good place for a view. He finally reached a place where, by standing upon an anchor, he could look over the bulwarks, and get a view of the expanse of water before him. It was smooth, and its glassy surface was bright with the reflection of the ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... come; the expanse of water lay before her motionless, in hue a dull, leaden gray, and only the dimly illumined air and a glimmering radiance along the edges of the waves that washed the island showed that the moon ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... where the Hull boats first touch, is mostly between islands, and in continuous shelter. Sometimes the narrows are not wider than the Thames at Oxford; then you steam out into what seems to be a land-locked expanse of water, with precipitous mountain rocks ahead. By and by you swerve to right or left, and a totally different picture is presented. And so it is, hour after hour, and day after day. For many a league north of Bergen ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... throughout the entire winter in St. Lawrence County, had piled up their accumulated snows over the space of ground that separated the school-house from Willard Glazier's home. Over this single expanse of deep snow many feet had trodden a hard path, which alternate melting and freezing had formed into a solid, slippery, back-bone looking ridge, altogether unsafe for fast travel. Over this ridge young ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... farewell! I quit thy shore; My native country charms no more; No guide to mark the toilsome road; No destin'd clime; no fix'd abode: Alone and sad, ordain'd to trace The vast expanse of endless space; To view, upon the mountain's height, Through varied shades of glimm'ring light, The distant landscape fade away In the last gleam of parting day: Or, on the quiv'ring lucid stream, To watch ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... was a crash, and a champagne glass struck squarely in the high official's soup and spattered it all over his white expanse of shirt front. We all looked up at the punkah. At the same instant a big, soft mango smashed in the high official's face and changed its ruddy red color to a ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... the next morning. If the weather had been doubtful—if there had been any pretence for supposing that the day might not be fine, she would have remained at home. But she looked in vain all round the sky for a cloud: and the wide expanse of fields and meadows in the Levels, with their waving corn and fresh green grass, seemed to bask in the sunshine, as if they felt its luxury. It was a glowing August day;—just such a day as would ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... billows closed around him; a singular lassitude passed into his limbs as he swam; he felt himself slowly sinking, as if drawn downward by an invisible hand. He opened his eyes. The waves lapped musically above his head; a tawny glory was all about him, a luminous expanse in which he saw strangely formed creatures moving, darting, rising, falling, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... watched him sliding his white hands into the white kid, and as he did so his feelings took a singular turn. M. de Bellegarde's good wishes seemed to descend out of the white expanse of his sublime serenity with the soft, scattered movement of a shower of snow-flakes. Yet Newman was not irritated; he did not feel that he was being patronized; he was conscious of no especial impulse to introduce a discord ...
— The American • Henry James
... the shelves were empty, it called for our united efforts to move the heavy piece of furniture; but we accomplished the task ultimately, making visible a considerable expanse of panelling. Nearly forty years had elapsed since that case had been removed, and the carvings which it concealed were coated with all the dust which had accumulated there since the night of ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... glorious weather, dry and clear, and so still that very little of the cold penetrated his fur-lined garments. Snow covered everything, fine and firm and dazzling. The smooth white expanse suggested a wish that he had brought the skees he was learning to use; then the sight of the line of boulders he would have had to steer around made him rejoice that he had not. Far ahead of him rose the glittering wall ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... was the most extensive that had ever obeyed a single chief. The dominions of Alexander and of Trajan were small when compared with the immense area of the Scythian desert. But in the estimation of statesmen that boundless expanse of larch forest and morass, where the snow lay deep during eight months of every year, and where a wretched peasantry could with difficulty defend their hovels against troops of famished wolves, was of less account than the two or three square miles into which were crowded ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the Muscovite hosts. Its appearance from the sea is very attractive, for its port is surrounded with mountains, the highest of which still retains a memorial of the old Genoese dominion, while in part of its blue expanse lies the pretty Greek town, with its balconied houses and masses of foliage rising in terraces one above the other. Above it towers a ruined castle, whence the Genoese, in their days of supremacy, scanned with vulture-gaze ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... similar manner in the crust of the earth, though in a lesser degree, resulting in a heaving up and down amounting to one foot; but we are only concerned with the action of the sea at present. Now, although this pull is felt in all seas, it is only in the Southern Ocean that a sufficient expanse of water exists for the tidal action to be fully developed. This ocean has an average width of 1,500 miles, and completely encircles the earth on a circumferential line 13,500 miles long; in it the attraction of the sun and moon raises the water nearest to the centre of attraction ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... watched the houses slipping behind us as we swept along. Then we came to the tree-lined expanse of road immediately leading to the cottage. As the car stopped, I leaped out quickly, Gatton close upon my heels, and ran up the path to ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... averse to the idle labor of walking. His legs were very short, but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain: so that, when erect, he had not a little the appearance of a beer barrel on skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament; and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... long journey she had said very little, shyness enveloping her as in a mantle; but when the train began to run along the sea shore, so that the whole expanse of ocean lay spread before the window, Toni's face changed, her eyes sparkled, and she turned to Owen with a ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... should arrive. The total nominal strength of the United States army, officers and men, was only 17,113, of whom not two thirds could be counted upon the Union side, and even these were scattered over a vast expanse of country, playing police for Indians, and garrisoning distant posts. Rumors of Southern schemes to attack Washington caused widespread alarm; the government had no more definite information than the people, and all alike feared that there ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... sufficient points of "discrepancy with agreement," here is material for talk and argument enough; and an expanse of free discussion open, which requires rather to be speedily restricted for convenience' sake, than allowed to widen itself into the boundless, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... dark, but the room beyond was a blaze of light, with the curtains drawn, and apparently every lamp the house contained trimmed and burning. He himself stood in the shadow, and his entrance had been unnoticed, though almost the entire expanse of the room before him was visible through ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... my camel till I was out of the thicket, when I remounted; but at a loss which way to go, and unknowing where Providence might direct me, I reached the desert, and cast my eyes over the expanse; when, lo! at length a smoke appeared in the midst of it. I whipped my camel, and at length reached a fire, and near it observed a handsome tent, before which was a standard planted, surrounded by spears, horses picketted, and camels grazing. I said to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... morning an arch-like appearance in the clouds over the furthest ranges was pointed out to me as the sure forerunner of a violent gale from the north-west, and the prognostic was fulfilled. It was formed of clouds of the deepest and richest colours; within its curve lay a bare expanse of a wonderful green tint, crossed by the snowy silhouette of the Southern Alps. A few hours afterwards the mountains were quite hidden by mist, and a furious gale of hot wind was shaking the house as if it must carry it off into the sky; ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... of a hill which slopes toward the river; it commands an extended view of the Hudson. But even this did not meet his requirements. The formality and routine of conventional life palled upon him; the expanse of the Hudson, the noise of railway and steamboat wearied him; he craved something more retired, more primitive, more homely. "You cannot have the same kind of attachment and sympathy for a great river; it does not flow through your affections like a lesser stream," he says, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... questioned a man loafing upon a pile of lumber. It appeared that a strike of stevedores was the cause of this outward sign of inactivity. Boats were being loaded quietly, but the process was furtive and sullen. Occasionally, out of the wide expanse of brooding indolence a knot of men would gather flockwise, and melt as quickly. There was an ominous quality in the swiftness with which these cloudlike groups congealed and disintegrated. The sinister blight of repression was over everything—repressed ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... lived, as she had told me, sous les toits—and sous les toits, up seven flights of very steep and dirty stairs, I found her. It was a large attic with a sloping roof, overlooking a bristling expanse of chimney-pots, and commanding the twin towers of Notre Dame. There were some colored prints of battles and shipwrecks wafered to the walls; a couple of flower-pots in the narrow space between the window-ledge and the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... I only acted—as oftentimes I since have longed to act—on the desire we all feel to have "the wings of a dove, and fly away and be at rest,"—floating afar from the dross and dust of earth into the blue expanse of the heavenly ether:—a thing yet to be accomplished!—or I will confess to be no prophet: in these days of electricity, concentrated and accumulative after the fashion of M. Faure, aided perhaps by some lighter gas, some condensed form of tamed dynamite,—these ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... be hung upon a ceiling. These spheres were conceived to be one above the other; the planets were on the lower of them, and the fixed stars on the higher, the several crystal roofs revolving about the earth. So long as the earth was supposed to be a flat and limitless expanse, forming the centre of the universe, it was impossible for the students of the heavens to attain any more rational view as ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... Phipps sailed into the basin of Quebec, one of the grandest scenes on the western continent opened upon his sight. The wide expanse of waters, the lofty promontory beyond, and the opposing Heights of Levi, the cataract of Montmorenci, the distant range of the Laurentian Mountains, the warlike rock with its diadem of walls and towers, the roofs of the Lower Town clustering on the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... with a loud voice, that filled the whole expanse, and thrilled with various emotions the dumb assembly. "To Boabdil el Chico, King of Granada, Ferdinand of Arragon and Isabel of Castile send royal greeting. They command me to express their hope that the war is at length concluded; and they offer to the King of Granada ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... as if some shadow, or momentary darkening of the brilliant atmosphere; some film across the mirror-like expanse of the open windows, or misty dimming of their wholesome light, had arisen to their elevation. Mainwaring felt that he was looking forward with unreasoning indignation and uneasiness to this impending interruption of their idyllic life; Mrs. Bradley and Louise, who had become a little ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... stood on the western range of the Great North mountains towering above the picturesque Shenandoah Valley, and from the summit of one of the loftiest peaks, where, until then, the foot of a white man had never trod, they viewed the vast expanse of plain and forest with glistening eyes. Returning to Williamsburg they told of the wonderful richness of the newly discovered country and thus opened the way for the venturesome pioneer who was destined to overcome all ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... There seemed scarce any mark of human habitation. The life of the people, where there were people, must have been back from the banks. The river itself was empty. Nowhere was there wreath of smoke or shimmer of sail. Just the wild beauty of the shores, the noble expanse of the stream, the cloudless blue of the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... fire, we had ample time e'er it was consumed to contemplate the singular beauty and romantic wildness of the scenery and objects around us. Via Reggio, the only seaport of the Duchy of Lucca, built and encompassed by an almost boundless expanse of deep, dark sand, is situated in the centre of a broad belt of firs, cedars, pines, and evergreen oaks, which covers a considerable extent of country, extending along the shore from Pisa to Massa. ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... be the worse for each offering a reflection, according to its turn to the light, without marring the unity of the general expanse." ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... side of this tree-bound square ran avenues east, west, and south into the wide expanse of cornland and coomb to the distance of a mile or so. It was by one of these avenues that the pedestrians were about to enter. Before they had risen to proceed two men passed outside the hedge, engaged ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... neighboring coffee plantation was visited, and its floral and vegetable beauties thoroughly enjoyed. It was in the very height of fragrance and promise, the broad expanse of the plantation, as far as the eye could extend, being in full bloom. Some hours were agreeably passed in examining the estate, the slaves' quarters, and the domestic arrangements, and also in partaking of the hospitalities of the generous owner, after which we ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... the nation from ruin. At the end of thirty years from the time when the soil of Missouri was devoted to slavery the "Kansas-Nebraska Bill" was proposed, which should open for the extension of slavery the vast expanse of national territory which, by the stipulation of the "Missouri Compromise," had been forever consecrated to freedom. The issue of the extension of slavery was presented to the people in its simplicity. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... greatly interested, for the blank expanse of the moaning sea round the corner of a tall tenement filled him with ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... after long and careful study of their position, rendered possible by occasional glimpses of the Orange Hills and high points further up the course of the Hudson, that Cosmo Versal and Captain Arms were able to reach that conclusion. Where New York had stood nothing was visible but an expanse of ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... large head covered with hair which shot in all directions in scholarly abandon. His neck seemed much too thin to carry such a weight, but that, I think, was the effect of a collar much too large, and a white tie so long that its ends trailed down over an expanse of crumpled shirt. The doctor's black clothes looked dusty; the doctor himself looked dusty, yet the smile with which he greeted me was as warm as the sunshine breaking through ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... singing. How delightful it was! How unlike it was to that Petersburg night when the wet snow was falling and beating so rudely on our faces. If one looks straight across the canal, one sees the sea, and on the wide expanse towards the horizon the sun glittered on the water so dazzlingly that it hurt one's eyes to look at it. My soul yearned towards that lovely sea, which was so akin to me and to which I had given up my youth. I longed ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Farm, 1748. A wide expanse of green. Trees right, left, and background. The trees in background supposedly screen the Colonial house from view. At the left the estate supposedly stretches to the highway. At the right, behind the trees, it is given over to ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... contain a more remarkable sentinel than this pyramid on which our hero had now taken his station. There it stood, actually the Ultima Thule of this vast continent, or, what was much the same, so closely united to it as to seem a part of our own moiety of the globe, looking out on the broad expanse of waters. The eye saw, to the right, the Pacific; in front was the Southern, or Antarctic Ocean; and to the left was the great Atlantic. For several minutes, both Roswell and Stephen sat mute, gazing on this grand spectacle. By turning their faces north, they beheld the high lands of Terra del ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... on the after-deck and drove the punt down the creek with a pole. He could see across the bank, and the wet marsh, glistening faintly in the moonlight, ran back into thin mist. In front, the creek got wider until it melted into the expanse of sands. Here and there a belt of smooth mud caught a silvery reflection, but for the most part the sands were dark. The night was calm and the advancing surf rumbled in the distance like a heavy train. It was a good night for shooting and Jim wondered ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... in which he spoke was Greek; and here, in the Bay of Naples, he was in the midst of a Greek colony, where Roman influence had not been able to efface the deep impression which Greece had made upon the place. The original name of the splendid expanse of water before him was the Bay of Cumae; and Cumae was absolutely the first Greek settlement in the western seas. Neapolis or Parthenope was the beautiful Greek name of the city of Naples, testifying to its Hellenic origin; and Dicaearchia ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... were also associated fossil bones of the Semnopithecus, showing that here, as in the south of France, the quadrumana were characteristic of this period. The whole fauna attests the former extension of a vast expanse of grassy plains where we have now the broken and mountainous country of Greece; plains, which were probably united with Asia Minor, spreading over the area where the deep Aegean Sea and its numerous islands are now ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... though no caravan had ever braved this desert expanse, or it would have left visible traces of its encampments, or the whitened bones of men and animals. But nothing of the kind was to be seen, and the aeronauts felt that, ere long, an immensity of sand would cover the whole of this ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... their son Thomas was born. There is little to redeem the place from insignificance; the houses are mostly mean, the position of the village is tame and commonplace. But if a visitor will mount the hills that lie to the north, turn southward and look over the wide expanse of land and water to the Cumbrian mountains, then, should he be fortunate enough to see the landscape in stormy and unsettled weather, he may realize why the land was so dear to its most famous son that he could return ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... snow began to fall in those close, compact flakes which forebode a heavy storm. We were glad to think that Luis must have reached his destination before it began; but when the next morning dawned on a wide expanse of snow, and the air was still thick with fast-falling flakes, it was feared that the state of the roads would preclude all hope of the arrival of ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the canaries in their cage rustled and bickered; unwashed plates were crowded on the table; the big unmade bed added a flavor of its own to the atmosphere. Madame eased herself, panting, into the chair before the desk, revealing the great rounded expanse of her back with its row of straining buttons and lozenge-shaped revelations of underwear. With the businesslike deliberation of a person who transacts a serious affair with due seriousness, she spread the bill before her, smoothing it out with a ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... in dense scrubs, and I may say that very few if any explorers have ever before had such a region to traverse. I had managed to penetrate this country up to the present point, and it was not to be wondered at if we all ardently longed for a change. Even a bare, boundless expanse of desert sand would be welcomed as an alternative to the dark and dreary scrubs that surrounded us. However, it appeared evident to me, as I had traversed nothing but scrubs for hundreds of miles from the east, and had found no water of any size whatever in all the distance ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... later starred with mariposas. The meadow was transversely crossed by a curving line of alders that indicated a rare water-course, of which in the dry season only a single pool remained to flash back the unvarying sky. There had been no attempt at cultivation of this broad expanse; wild oats, mustard, and rank grasses left it a tossing sea of turbulent and variegated color whose waves rode high enough to engulf horse and rider in their choking depths. Even the traces of human struggle, the uprooted stakes, scattered fence-rails, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... ceremony of a knock on the door, Mr. Trentman entered a room at the end of the shanty, and there he found Lapelle reclining on a cot. Two narrow slits in a puffed expanse of purple grading off to a greenish yellow indicated the position of Barry's eyes. The once resplendent dandy ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... lay straight across the mesa. Here and there, in the yellow expanse of sand, were patches of green mesquit, where some underground flow came near enough to the surface to slake their thirsty roots. Elsewhere the sand shifted noiselessly across the plain, under the touch of the wind, which fashioned innumerable oddly shaped ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... sinking when I reached the summit of the hill, and the long slopes beneath me were all golden-green on one side and gray shadow on the other. A haze lay low upon the farthest sky-line, out of which jutted the fantastic shapes of Belliver and Vixen Tor. Over the wide expanse there was no sound and no movement. One great gray bird, a gull or curlew, soared aloft in the blue heaven. He and I seemed to be the only living things between the huge arch of the sky and the desert beneath it. The barren scene, the sense ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... was aware of nothing till she woke up with her head on Veronica's shoulder, against which she had fallen, and on which she had been patiently supported for hours. "Ecco Venezia!" cried the old woman, pointing to a swarm of lights that seemed to float upon an expanse of sea. Lydia did not understand; she thought she was again on board the Aroostook, and that the lights she saw were the lights of the shipping in Boston harbor. The illusion passed, and left her heart sore. She issued from the glare of the station upon the quay before it, bewildered ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... liked better than being on night picket duty. Other men shirked it, but to him there was something delightful to stand there almost alone, rifle in hand, watching the expanse of snow for a moving figure. There was a charm in the dead silence. He liked to think quietly of the past and, somehow, he could do so far better, while engaged on this duty, than when lying awake in his little tent. The expanse and stillness calmed him, and agreed far more ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... longer in his favour. His wings lay closely folded to his body, and he moved only by the aid of his webbed feet and the current, which last happened to be sluggish, as the river at this part spread over a wide expanse of level land. The canoe was evidently catching up, and each stroke was bringing the pursuers nearer to ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... emphasising their communion, accept and in a manner exploit the anomaly, treat it perhaps as romantic or possibly even as comic?—show at least that they needn't mind even though the vast table, draped in brown holland, thrust itself between them as an expanse of desert sand. She couldn't cross the desert, but she could, and did, beautifully get round it; so that for him to convert it into an obstacle he would have had to cause himself, as in some childish game or unbecoming romp, to be pursued, to be genially ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... no humour for visitors and, if she had had a chance, would have drawn back behind one of the great trees. But she saw she had been seen and that nothing was left her but to advance. As the lawn at Gardencourt was a vast expanse this took some time; during which she observed that, as he walked beside his hostess, Lord Warburton kept his hands rather stiffly behind him and his eyes upon the ground. Both persons apparently were silent; but Mrs. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... mysterious union with the sea. But the mind must be rightly prepared. Everything depends upon the point of view. One man, as he says in an elaborate figure, looking upon a series of ridges in spring from their northern side, sees a waste of snow, and from the south a continuous expanse of green. That view, we must take it, is the right one which is illuminated by the 'ray divine.' But we must train our eyes to recognise its splendour; and the final answer to the Solitary is therefore embodied in a series ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... shelter of some large palms at the side of the stage she gave the chairman Mrs. Blythe's message, and sat down to wait. The orchestra sounded as if it were miles away. She had often used the expression, a sea of faces. As she looked across the expanse of those upturned before her now, they seemed indeed a sea, and took on a wave-like motion that made her dizzy. Then she happened to glance down at the little signet ring she always wore. "By the bloodstone on her finger" ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... shirt stuffed with spare clothing—was wet also, but the rain was no longer beating down on the canvas. The air inside the tent was pervaded by a foul, acrid stench. I threw the flap aside and looked out. The vast expanse of steely blue was dotted with glittering stars and on the eastern horizon it merged into a faint pallor. The air was deliciously fresh. We got up one by one, yawning, groaning and grumbling, and dressed and went out ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... hills of the Asian mainland, which are red in the early morning, redder in the glow of noon, and pass away in the glorious sunsets through ruby and vermilion into an amethyst haze, deepening into the purple of a tropic night, when the vast expanse of sky which is seen from this high elevation is literally one blaze of stars. Though they are by no means to be seen in perfection, there are here many things that I love,—bananas, poinsettias, papayas, tree-ferns, dendrobiums, dracenas, the scarlet passion-flower, the ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... finds it hiding from the plow amid the strawberries, or under the currant-bushes and grapevines, is the dandelion; yet who would banish it from the meadows or the lawns, where it copies in gold upon the green expanse the stars of the midnight sky? After its first blooming comes its second and finer and more spiritual inflorescence, when its stalk, dropping its more earthly and carnal flower, shoots upward, and is presently crowned by a globe of the most delicate and aerial texture. It is like the poet's dream, ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... Newfoundland, which still remains outside the Dominion of Canada. On the Atlantic the chief indentations which break its shores are the Bay of Fundy (remarkable for its tides), the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and Hudson Bay (a huge expanse of water with an area of about 350,000 square miles); and the Pacific coast, which is small relatively, is remarkably broken up by fjord-like indentations. Off the coast are many islands, some of them of considerable magnitude,—Prince Edward Is., Cape Breton Is., and ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... extent at the superior part of the thighs; the fulness behind their upper part, and on each side of the lower part of the spine, commencing as high as the waist, and terminating in the still greater swell of the distinctly-separated hips; the flat expanse between these, and immediately over the fissure of the hips, relieved by a considerable dimple on each side, and caused by the elevation of all the surrounding parts; the fine swell of the broad abdomen which, soon reaching ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... the tower the sea lay along the sandy beach like a strip of glistening white glass, beyond which was a broader band of greenish blue that did not glitter; and beyond that, the oily water stretched out to westward in an unending expanse of neutral tints, arabesqued with current streaks and struck right across by the dazzling dirty-white blaze of the ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... rolled from his feet westward. Beyond—what? The shining {144} expanse of the fabled South Sea! The Pacific silver in the morning light! A New World of Waters, where the sun's track seemed to pave a new path, a path of gold, to the mystic Orient! Never before had English eyes seen these waters! Never yet English prow cut these ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... him out of the gutter and given him once more a decent place in the world; he felt too that her merited wrath was in some way connected with this present encompassing peril, which seemed to shake the air all about him, to send round and round in a glancing, vanishing vision the expanse of sky overhead, the alarmed faces of the seconds and doctors, and the remoter figures of two stable boys wildly beating off with their caps the gambolling horses that wanted to come and look on. Suddenly came exclamations, sharp and peremptory: 'Enough! ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... started: a human figure, a woman's dress, disturbing here in the desert expanse, had moved in front of him. Sommers hit the horse with his crop and was about to gallop on, when something in the way the woman held herself caught his attention. She was leaning against the wind, her skirt streaming behind her, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... have dropped the Scythian name, and they called the whole northern expanse of Europe and Asia, Sarmatia, and the barbarous inhabitants Sarmatians. About the time of our Saviour, some of these fierce tribes from the banks of the Theiss and the Danube, commenced their assaults upon the frontiers of the Roman empire. This was the signal for that war of centuries, which terminated ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... that behind the laziness was concealed a huge force, an unconquerable force, as yet unconscious of itself, not having, as yet, created for itself clear desires and aims. And the absence of consciousness in this half-somnolent existence cast upon its whole beautiful expanse a shade of melancholy. Submissive patience, the silent expectation of something new and more active was audible even in the call of the cuckoo, as it flew with the wind from the shore, over ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... repairing our drenched and bedraggled condition. The storm, clearing away at about sunset, opened a noble prospect from the porch of the colonel's house, which stands upon a high hill. The sun streamed from the breaking clouds upon the swift and angry Missouri, and on the immense expanse of luxuriant forest that stretched from its banks ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... warm afternoons of the early summer, it is my pleasure to stroll about Washington Square and along the Fifth Avenue, at the hour when the diners-out are hurrying to the tables of the wealthy and refined. I gaze with placid delight upon the cheerful expanse of white waistcoat that illumes those streets at that hour, and mark the variety of emotions that swell beneath all that purity. A man going out to dine has a singular cheerfulness of aspect. Except for his gloves, which fit so well, and which he has carefully ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... with but a few yards between them. They were not half an hour in the saddle when they discovered the spire of the church they were both in search of, rising gracefully above the trees. As they emerged from the forest, they could see stretching before them a broad expanse of hill and dale, wood and field. Scattered here and there were the humble dwellings of the forester and husbandman, and, from their midst, towering above them, like Jupiter among the demigods, stately ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... preferably a grass plot of an oblong form; but an ordinary lawn or expanse of even turf will answer the purpose, so long as it is of sufficient extent for the operations ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... a wide, turf-covered expanse, we should remember that its smoothness, on which so much of its beauty depends, is mainly due to all the inequalities having been slowly levelled by worms. It is a marvellous reflection that the whole of the superficial mould over any such expanse has passed, and will again pass, every few years ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... bordering the north of the Uxbridge Road is a wide expanse of waste land with one or two farms. This part of the Manor of Fulham was leased in 1549 by Bishop Bonner to Edward, Duke of Somerset, under the name of the Manor of Wormholt Barns. Through the attainder of the Duke the Crown eventually obtained possession of it. It passed through ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... desire to form no figure, that the two are taken as one, and set off against the blackness on the other side. It seems as if this were not taken as empty space, but acquired a meaning of its own. The association with pictures in which the empty space is occupied by a deep vista or an expanse of sky is almost irresistible. The case of Exp. VII. seems a little different. S, at least, separates the two fields as usual, but for him also the black space is living, 'corresponds in distance and depth.' It is at least certain ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... flooded his room. Outside the diamond-spangled earth lay still and frost bound. Craig-Ellachie stood out white, silver-crowned, against the blue of the forest. Gavin raised himself on his elbow and looked out at the silent beauty of the night. The great white expanse seemed calling to him to come away and do as his fellow heroes were doing. He ought to be lying in a freezing trench, grasping a rifle instead of skulking in a feather bed wrapped in warm blankets. But indeed the bed had become a very rack to poor Gavin, the blankets smothered him. He tossed ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... from the fires. These were carried across each other so as to keep the fire in, and eight or ten of these brands being laid together in the heart of the brushwood and fanned vigorously a bright flame soon shot up. The men's spirits had sunk as they passed through the wild expanse of swamp and water, but they rose now as the fire burned up. Meat was speedily frying in the flames, and this was eaten as soon as it was cooked, nothing being done with the grain, which they had no means of pounding. They had also brought with them several jars of beer from the village, and these ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... it, Walter had watched the forest with growing amazement. The river seemed to end at its edge, but as he drew closer the reason for the anxiety of the outlaws to prevent his entering it was plain. No horse could travel through that dark, gloomy expanse. It was a floating forest. Great cypress and giant bays reared their mighty stems from the surface of black scummy water. Amongst their boughs bloomed brilliant orchids and from limb to limb stretched tangled masses ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... acting it was very skilfully done. As she led her guests about the house, and then established them on the lawn, beneath the great elms which furnished a grateful shade at this afternoon hour over nearly the whole expanse, she seemed the embodiment of health ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... more remarkable sentinel than this pyramid on which our hero had now taken his station. There it stood, actually the Ultima Thule of this vast continent, or, what was much the same, so closely united to it as to seem a part of our own moiety of the globe, looking out on the broad expanse of waters. The eye saw, to the right, the Pacific; in front was the Southern, or Antarctic Ocean; and to the left was the great Atlantic. For several minutes, both Roswell and Stephen sat mute, gazing on this grand spectacle. ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... twelve it reached the northwest border of the Great Salt Lake. Thence the passengers could observe the vast extent of this interior sea, which is also called the Dead Sea, and into which flows an American Jordan. It is a picturesque expanse, framed in lofty crags in large strata, encrusted with white salt—a superb sheet of water, which was formerly of larger extent than now, its shores having encroached with the lapse of time, and thus at once reduced its breadth ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... moments watched him sliding his white hands into the white kid, and as he did so his feelings took a singular turn. M. de Bellegarde's good wishes seemed to descend out of the white expanse of his sublime serenity with the soft, scattered movement of a shower of snow-flakes. Yet Newman was not irritated; he did not feel that he was being patronized; he was conscious of no especial impulse to introduce a discord into so noble ...
— The American • Henry James
... amazed to find I had been there, and that I was fond of dancing! I fear this sent me down a great many more pegs in her estimation. In fact, my evening was a total failure, and I was glad to get to bed—though it was an immense expanse of bed, big enough for a ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... bid them farewell, and pass on my way to Amsheet, where Henriette Renan, the sister of Ernest, is buried. An hour's walk, and the incarcerated wadi and its folk lie concealed behind. I breathe again the open air of the mountain expanse; I behold again the emerald stretch of water on the horizon, where the baggalas and saics, from this distance, seem like doves basking in the morning sun. I cross the last rill, mount the last hilltop on my journey, and lo, at the foot of the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... without finishing his sentence, and Stane resumed his sentry go, stopping from time to time to view the long expanse of the snow-covered lake, and to search the woods along the shore. As the time passed without bringing any change, and as the unbroken surface of the snow mocked him with its emptiness, he grew sick at heart, and a feverish anxiety mounted within him. He felt utterly helpless, and a fear that Chief ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... largest of the sea birds and have an enormous expanse of wing, the Wandering Albatross, the largest of the family, sometimes attaining an expanse of fourteen feet. Their nostrils consist of two slightly projecting tubes, one on each side near the base of the bill. They are unsurpassed ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... window. A dozen Monadnocks or Ascutneys or Holyokes, more or less, make a Mont Blanc, with glaciers and avalanches and brooding eternity of frost. Such greatness, though it impresses me much, is not beyond my comprehension. It can be reckoned by cubic miles. So with the sea: it is only an expanse of water larger than the river that winds through the meadows. It is great, but it is only an aggregate of numerable quantities that my eyes can measure, and my mind comprehend. These are great objects, and they are great ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... He strode along with a mountaineer's long swinging pace, striking the snow, which was as hard as a rock, with his iron-shod stick, and with piercing eyes looking for the little black, moving speck in the distance, on that enormous, white expanse. ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... far north, to be sure, the rigorous climate caused all the Indians to live practically alike, whether in the Rockies, the plains, or the Laurentian highland. South of them, in that great central expanse stretching from the latitude of Lake Winnipeg to the Rio Grande River, the Indians of the plains possessed a relatively uniform type of life peculiar to themselves. This individuality was due partly ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... feet of the shore, completely concealed on the sea side, by a thick forest growth lining the higher ridge, of what appeared a narrow island. The Sea Gull's fires were banked, only a thin vapor arising from the stack which instantly disappeared. In the opposite direction there was a wide expanse of water, quiet as a mill-pond in spite of a fresh breeze, revealing in the distance the faint blue blur of a far-off coast line. Nothing broke the vista except the white sails of two sloops, evidently fishing boats, far off on the horizon. It was ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... the Duke as seen by the telescope sleeps shuttered—an expanse of blank walls. Yet the Duke ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... us. He who, for the first time, lifts his eyes upon this expanse, is amazed and delighted at its magnitude. Vastness is the term by which it is, more than any other, described. Clouds robed in sunshine, hanging in fleecy or nebular masses above—a bright, pure illimitable ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... pool. Yet, truth to tell, his mind was very little on the herb he was seeking. His mind dwelt almost completely on the thought of Tag Mosher, once more at large, and most likely roaming about somewhere in this vast expanse of woods. ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... didn't know how to do things, but he was rapidly losing, through disuse, the power to learn how to do things. The modern city dweller, bred, born, brought up on this island, is about as helpless and useless a man, considered as a four-square, self-reliant individual, as you can find on the broad expanse of the globe. I've got no use for a man who can't take care of himself, who's got to have somebody else to do it for him, whenever something to which he hasn't been accustomed rises up ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... The expanse of open plain that we now beheld stretched away uninterruptedly on the right hand, as far as the distant hills. Towards the left, the view was broken and varied by some rough stone walls, a narrow road, and a dip in the earth beyond. Wherever we looked, far or near, we ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... the wide expanse of open country, did not touch this gloomy room, which looked full north, and only caught a gleam of brightness later in the day for ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... And homes must be in the healthiest places—the—the most beautiful places. Isn't it true, Mr Fejevary, that it means a great deal to people to have a beautiful outlook from their homes? A—well, an expanse. ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... heard anything for nearly five minutes now, Jack!" called Herb, who, it seemed, was paying strict attention to business, and not bothering about whether he got anything to eat or not, or what would happen in case they headed out into the vast expanse of salt water ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... was a collie—beautiful of head, sweepingly graceful of line, powerful and heavy coated. The mud on his expanse of snowy chest frill and the grease on his dark brown back were easy to account for, even to Link ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... Grande looked out upon life's opening sky as thoughtlessly as she would look upon the bright waters of the blue harbor that stretched before her father's mansion, where sky and water blended in a peaceful, azure expanse, little heeding or caring whether storms came, or sunshine rested on the deep. Bertha Levy, the little darked-eyed Jewess who stood by her side under the stone archway, was nothing more or less than ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... passage saying that Charles Lloyd and his wife are in London and that such proximity is not too comfortable. "Would you like to see him?" or "isn't it better to lean over a stile in a sort of careless easy half astronomical position eyeing the blue expanse?" ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... time I prepare for the State of the Union, I approach it with great hope and expectations for our nation. But tonight is special—because we stand on the mountaintop of a new millennium. Behind us we see the great expanse of American achievement; before us, even grander ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the hypnotic spell was broken: only acute anxiety remained. For the lamp of her life had made scant progress; and now she was aware of a disturbance in the water, little ominous whirlpools not caused by wind. Presently there emerged a long shadow, like a black expanse of rock:—unmistakably a mugger. And in that moment she felt exquisitely grateful to the hand that had seized her in the nick of time. The next—she wrung her own together with a ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... so handsome in her merriment that Fred's eyes dwelt on her for a moment, a new notion showing in their pleasant expanse of blue simplicity. But loyalty's the thing—and a pleasant thing too when Lady Richard stood for it. Besides May Gaston was rather serious as a rule and given to asking questions; she might be able to flirt though; she just might—if there had happened to be anybody ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... Noir and Gregory sat in the library, silently turning out an immense amount of work, feeding the hungry and consoling the weak with stroke of pen and click of typewriter. If conversation sometimes trickled across the dry expanse of statistical benevolence, it was never, on Grace's part, for pastime. Beneath her words was always an underflowing current, tugging at the listener to bear him away to her chosen haven. As an expert player ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... anything," he pronounced, as he stood looking over the desolate expanse of country, "is that when one comes face to face with the fellow he presents all the appearance of a nerveless and broken-down coward. Then all of a sudden there spring up these evidences of the most amazing, the most diabolical ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... went out she could see nothing of the boys, only rocks rising through an expanse of mud, and the sea breaking beyond. She would have preferred continuing the cliff road, but Gerald had a turn for the moor, and carried her off through the village of Anscombe, up and up, till they had had a lively canter on the moor, and looked far out at sea. When they ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kicked, and yelled, and shouted, and perspired, and squirmed, and wriggled, and pushed, and threatened, and poured itself all seemingly upon some central object. It was a mob that had an aim, that was determined to accomplish that aim, even though the whole azure expanse of sky fell upon them. It was a mob with set muscles, straining like whip-cords, eyes on that central object and with heads inward and sturdy legs outward, like prairie horses reversed in a battle. The cheerers and hat throwers ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... and instantly it would dissolve and vanish as would a dream. Beneath the isle the seas moved, and there in the darkness the fishes of the deep, with luminous, round eyes, passed to and fro, nibbling the roots of the trees above them. Overhead the heavens stretched, and around about spread the expanse of the sea upon which no living thing might be seen, save only the dolphins as they leapt into the sunshine and sank again amidst ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... perhaps, to get excited over or to change one's scheme of life. Yet we did get excited over it, daily, and it had suddenly become a main factor in our problem of life. The thought of going back to "six rooms and improvements," with clanging bells and crashing wheels, and with an expanse of dingy roofs for scenery, became daily less attractive. True, we would have to spend a good deal more money on the old house to fit it for cold weather, but then there would ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... nearly rivalling him than any of the neighbouring hills. Rising straight from the sea, his whole height and magnificent proportions are before us at once, and the view from the summit has an unrivalled expanse. Still there are stronger charms about the great centre of the Cairngorm range. Surrounded by his peers, he stands apart from the every-day world in mysterious grandeur. The depth and remoteness of the solitude, the huge mural precipices, the deep chasms between the rocks, the waterfalls ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... in his saddle and looked off across the unending expanse of sage. Coldriver—probably so named from the fact that the three wells in the town constituted the only source of water within an hour's ride—lay thirty miles to the south, a cluster of some forty buildings nestling on a wind-swept flat. Seventy miles beyond it, and with but two more such centers ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... legislation looking to the election of a Territorial legislature in that vast district. The lack of permanence of residence of a large part of the present population and the small number of the people who either permanently or temporarily reside in the district as compared with its vast expanse and the variety of the interests that have to be subserved, make it altogether unfitting in my judgment to provide for a popular election of a legislative body. The present system is not adequate and does not furnish the character of local control that ought to be there. The only compromise ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... into the plains of Dauphiny,—those great plains that stretch from the Rhone to the Alps, and which offer to the eye, as seen from the heights that overhang Lyons, a vast and varied expanse of wood and meadow, corn-field and vineyard, city and hamlet, with the snowy pile of Mont Blanc rising afar in the horizon. On the previous evening I had climbed these heights, so stately and beautiful, with convents ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... after writing the above, and proceeded at a brisk trot in the direction of Sowster's residence, passing through a beautiful expanse of country, with red brick buildings on either side, and stopping in the marketplace to observe the spot where Mr. Kwakley's hat was blown off yesterday. It is an uneven piece of paving, but has certainly no appearance which ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... further, midway of a flat stretch of road, on one side of which was an expanse of swampy ground, varied with pools bordered by sedge, reeds and bushes, with areas of tussocks and with clumps of willows and alders, we came on Bambilio's and Vedia's carriages, their gilded decorative carvings, coral-red panel-bars, pearl-shell panel-panes, gilded rosette-bosses, silver-plated ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... watch-caps; the girls in toboggan caps and sweaters. Over in the west the sky was a rich rosy glow, for the sun sinks behind the hills by four-thirty during the short winter afternoons. The Naval Academy band stationed at the edge of the broad expanse of the ice-bound creek was sending its inspiring strains out across the keen, frosty air which seemed to hold and toy with each note as though reluctant to ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... lens in the receiving apparatus shone with a brilliant dark blue color. The current of super-radium had reached Earth and returned in less than a second, and I saw, beautifully pictured before me, an expanse of ocean with waves tumbling and tossing so near me that it seemed as if I were but ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... hotel previously patronized by Quincy, having decided to defer their call upon the young ladies until Sunday morning. It was a bright, beautiful day, not a cloud was to be seen in the broad, blue expanse above them. A cool breeze was blowing steadily from the southwest, and as the young men walked down Centre Street towards the Cliff, Leopold remarked that he did not wonder that the Nantucketers loved their "tight little isle" ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... delighted to meet you, Mr. Barnes," said Mr. Bacon, extending his hand. As he did so, his coat sleeve receded half way to the elbow, revealing the full expanse of a frayed cuff. "So delighted, in fact, that it gives me great pleasure to inform you that you have at last encountered a waiter who does not expect a tip. God forbid that I should ever sink so low as that. I have been a ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... soon warm their capacious interiors, from the large, supply of caloric they are now rapidly absorbing; a stand of bayonets before the Dogana, sparkles as if it were on fire; and when we have arrived at the foot of the wide white Scalinata of the Trinita di Monti, the whole expanse from top to bottom shines with unmitigated and unsupportable splendour. No importunate beggar can stand and rattle his tin box on the summit, and if he could, there is no passenger to heed or hear him; the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... now and racing across the great expanse of the floor, past the central tower, past the control-panel which he had ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a stump on such a height as this, overlooking the pond, and study the dimpling circles which are incessantly inscribed on its otherwise invisible surface amid the reflected skies and trees. Over this great expanse there is no disturbance but it is thus at once gently smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water is jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and all is smooth again. Not a fish can leap or an insect ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... deluged our decks. The night closed down darker than pitch, and the wind increased in violence. I have scarcely ever seen so dismal a night. Except when at intervals a blinding flash of lightning illumined the whole heavens and the broad expanse of raging ocean, we could distinguish nothing at a yard's distance, save the glimmer of the phosphorescent binacle light, and the gleam which flashed from the culmination of the huge seas ahead of us, resembling an extended cloud of dull ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... were thus stealing along, we gradually turned round the shoulder of Ben Cruachan, and descending the course of the foaming and rapid Awe, left behind us the expanse of the majestic lake which gives birth to that impetuous river. The rocks and precipices which stooped down perpendicularly on our path on the right hand exhibited a few remains of the wood which ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... nation from ruin. At the end of thirty years from the time when the soil of Missouri was devoted to slavery the "Kansas-Nebraska Bill" was proposed, which should open for the extension of slavery the vast expanse of national territory which, by the stipulation of the "Missouri Compromise," had been forever consecrated to freedom. The issue of the extension of slavery was presented to the people in its simplicity. The action of the clergy of New England was prompt, spontaneous, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... paces over the ground, his thoughts returned to him; and he more clearly comprehended his situation. Escape was out of the question. He was prisoner to a party of wandering Bedouins,—the worst to be found in all the wide expanse of the Saaeran desert,—the wreckers of the ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... ready a boat, and you and Humphrey row me out to our fleet yonder," said Wolfe, looking out over the wide expanse of blue beyond the harbour. "I will speak of this with the Admiral, and see what ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... thy load of wo, Turn, thou stricken one, thine eyes Upward, and behold that glow Spreading brightly o'er the skies! 'Tis the day-star, beaming fair In the blue expanse above; Look on high, and know that there Dwells ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... middle of it stood M. Gournay-Martin, a big, round, flabby hulk of a man. He was nearly as red in the face as M. Charolais; and he looked a great deal redder owing to the extreme whiteness of the whiskers which stuck out on either side of his vast expanse of cheek. As he came up, it struck the Duke as rather odd that he should have the Charolais eyes, set close together; any one who did not know that they were strangers to one another might have thought it a ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... in a thin drizzle of the soaking variety, descending from a sky of lead stretching from horizon to horizon, which in the north would be accepted as an institution of forty-eight hours at least, and on arriving at the summit of Chanctonbury has been rewarded by a glorious green and gold expanse glittering under a dome ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... at once climbing high, higher, until at an elevation of two to three thousand feet they began to circle, climb and dip in a way that reminded one of two high-flying birds playing at tag far up in the blue expanse of sky above. ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... alligator. It is said, by naturalists, of this monstrous reptile, that he delights, when the returning warmth of spring has brought his fellows from their holes, and placed them basking along the banks of a swampy lagoon, to dart into the centre of the expanse, and challenge the whole field to combat. He roars, he blows the water from his nostrils, he lashes it with his tail, he whirls round and round, churning the water into foam; until, having worked himself into a proper fury, he darts back again to the shore, to seek an antagonist. Had the gallant ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... the waking dreams that come to one upon the sea, when the canoe rests tranquil, the torch blazes, and the fish swim to meet the harpoon. The night was moonless, but the sea was covered with phosphorescence, sometimes a glittering expanse of light, and again black as velvet except where our canoe moved gently through a soft and glamorous surface of sparkling jewels. A night for a lover, a lady, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... beams. Failing in this attempt to stir and heave away the mass, he climbed, and began to use his beams as wedges, driving them down more perpendicularly. Whenever this industrious craftsman made a successful split, the fog gaped, and we could see for a moment, indefinitely, an expanse of water, hedged with gloomy forest, and owning for its dominant height a wild mountain, Aziscohos, or, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... gone out with Marlowe in the car. People had seen him at close quarters. But was it he who returned at ten? That question too seemed absurd enough. But I could not set it aside. It seemed to me as if a faint light was beginning to creep over the whole expanse of my mind, as it does over land at dawn, and that presently the sun would be rising. I set myself to think over, one by one, the points that had just occurred to me, so as to make out, if possible, why any man masquerading as Manderson should have done these things that Manderson ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... plain, broken only by the windows, whose jambs are enriched with empty niches; on the north the small windows are placed very high up, the twisted vaulting shafts only come down a short way to a string course some way below the windows, leaving a great expanse of cliff-like wall. At the bottom are the confessional doors, so small that they add greatly to the scale, and above them tall narrow niches and their canopies. But the nave piers are the most astonishing ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... unmarried girls this strip may be wound under the arms and so cover the breast. Rarely a short camisa is worn, but seldom do the camisa and the saya, or skirt, join. Sometimes, owing to the scarcity of cloth, a narrow strip will be worn over the breast, leaving a broad expanse of dark skin between it and the ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... could well know whether we swam or rode we had passed the stream, and our unconquered little horse was tugging us might and main up the opposite bank. That once obtained, we saw before us a wide expanse of heath, rugged and broken, and no trace ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... been very clear, because I remember that near Itchinstow Hall I looked back and saw the estuary of the Thames, that river that has since played so large a part in my life. But at the time I did not know it was the Thames, I thought this great expanse of mud flats and water was the sea, which I had never yet seen nearly. And out upon it stood ships, sailing ships and a steamer or so, going up to London or down out into the great seas of the world. I stood for a long time watching these and thinking whether after all I should not have ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... the neighbourhood the most important is Tregothnan, the residence of Lord Falmouth. The mansion is beautifully placed upon high ground, the views from which include the numerous wooded creeks of the lovely Fal, and the wide expanse of Falmouth Harbour, studded with the shipping of many nations. The house was designed by Wilkins, the architect of the National Gallery, and is in the Early English ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... reply. He still held my hand, and we looked out together on the shining expanse of the sea where there was no vessel visible and where our schooner alone flew over the watery, moonlit ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... Lawrence, for a day's hunting in the marshes of Lake St. Peter. On one side were the forested hills, purple with the mists of rising vapor and still streaked with white patches of snow where the dense woods shut out the sunlight. On the other lay the silver expanse of the St. Lawrence, more like a lake than a river, with mile on mile southwestward of rush-grown marshes, where plover and curlew and duck and wild geese flocked to their favorite feeding-grounds three hundred years ago just as they do to-day. Northeastward, the ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... clouded heaven. And thou hast been the brightest star That shone along my weary way— Brighter than rainbow visions are, A changeless and enduring ray. Nor will my memory lightly fade From thy pure dreams, high-thoughted girl;— The ocean may forget what made Its blue expanse of waters curl, When the strong winds have passed the sky; Earth in its beauty may forget The recent cloud that floated by; The glories of the last sunset— But not from thy unchanging mind Will fade the dreams of other years, And love ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... head leaning back against the creature's glossy shoulder. The person thus standing was Madame Le Maitre, and she was looking up steadfastly at the cliffs, of which this point in the road displayed a new expanse. ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... the memory of those four months with Amy Kelly remained with the boy, an oasis in the trackless Sahara of his school life. In this dreary expanse now and then a shadow of hope arose, as if to lure him on, as some new teacher came up over his horizon, but in the main these all proved delusions, mirages that glittered at phantom distances, but faded away into empty nothingness ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... breathe life into a nation, and will not tell the future that it has existed; whereas Egyptian art, Mexican art, Grecian art, Roman art, with their masterpieces accused of uselessness, have attested the existence of these peoples in the vast expanse of time, there where huge intermediary nations, destitute of great men, have disappeared without leaving their visiting cards on the globe. All works of genius are the epitome of a civilization, and presuppose an immense utility. Forsooth, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the bronze was concerned. During the process of casting the refinements of a clay model would often be impaired, but this shows no sign of having been made from an original of merit. The man is ugly, it is true; but the broad expanse of his lifeless cheek and the bulbous forehead would in real life have been explained and justified by bone and muscle, which the sculptor would have rendered in his clay study. The ugliness of the man, however, is unrelated to the qualities ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... and the mouth of the Gambia, inland to the Niger; embraces the French colony of Senegal, and various ill-defined native States under the suzerainty of France; the interior part is also called the French Soudan; the vast expanse of the contiguous Sahara in the N., and stretches of territory on the S., extending to the Gulf of Guinea, are also within the French sphere of influence, altogether forming an immense territory (1,000), of which ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Eureka! loudly. Even the cautious and discriminating mind of Professor Huxley was caught by this new and grand generalization of the 'physical basis of life;' It was announced by him to the British Association in 1868. Dr. Will Carpenter took up the chorus. He spoke of 'a living expanse of protoplasmic substance,' penetrating with its living substance the 'whole mass' of the oceanic mud. A fine new Greek name was devised for this mother slime, and it was christened 'Bathybius,'" (from two Greek words meaning "depth" and "life,"), "from the consecrated ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... side. There were none of those cataclysms of mire and sloughs of black mud and over-tall grasses, none of that miasmatic jungle with its noxious emissions; it was just such a scene as one may find before an English mansion—a noble expanse of lawn and sward, with boscage sufficient to agreeably diversify it. After traversing the open plain, the road led through a grove of young ebony trees, where guinea-fowls and a hartebeest were seen; it then ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... was ready to return he found that the elevator which he had used in coming up was out of order, and that he must now walk down the many flights of stairs. Accordingly he started, whistling as he went. When he reached the fifth floor he was much surprised to discover that it was vacant. A great expanse it was, flooded with sunshine. Peter paused to look about. Some unused packing-cases littered one corner of the room and instantly the thought flashed into his mind—what a warm, quiet, secluded spot for him and Nat to eat their lunch! Why, they could even bring ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... was able to retire to its own territory, the sea. The army under Wellington, handled with splendid judgment, had to wait long for its opportunity, which came when Napoleon with the Grand Army had plunged into the vast expanse of Russia. Wellington, marching from victory to victory, was then able to produce upon the general course of the war an effect out of all proportion to the strength of the force which he commanded or of ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... companion's shoulder firmly, riding on for some minutes without relaxing his grasp, the touch conveying more in the way of sympathy than any words would have done, while the discomforts of the novel ride seemed to die away, and the soft dreaminess of the night grew soothing; the vast silvery grey expanse, melting away in its vastness, became lit-up with a faint halo of hope, and with his spirits rising, Frank seemed another man ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... case, as in the other, it immediately resumes its course; the tide which has receded, instantly begins to readvance. It might seem, indeed, that, when a country draws its supply of food from so wide a surface as the whole habitable globe, so little impression can be produced on that great expanse by any increase of mouths in one small corner of it that the inhabitants of the country may double and treble their numbers without feeling the effect in any increased tension of the springs of production, or any enhancement ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... remarks: "Asia is one. The Himalayas divide only to accentuate two mighty civilisations—the Chinese, with its communism of Confucius, and the Indian, with its individualism of the Vedas. But not even the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment that broad expanse of love for the Ultimate and Universal which is the common-thought inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to produce all the great religions of the world, and distinguishing them from those maritime people of the Mediterranean and the Baltic who loved to dwell on the particular, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... the South American Government have split have hitherto been bad faith, and consequent temporary expedients. No man has yet arisen, save yourself, capable of soaring aloft, and with eagle eye embracing the expanse of the political horizon. But if in your flight, like Icarus, you trust to waxen wings, your descent may crush the rising liberties of Peru, and involve all South America in anarchy, civil war, and ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... has the eagle eye to measure this vastness. He loves a wide expanse, a boundless horizon. He does not, gypsy-like, hide with Gainsborough beneath a hedge, but his glance sweeps across a continent, and no detail escapes him. This is what makes the "Andes" a really marvellous picture. In intellectual grasp, clear and vivid apprehension of what he wants and where ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... from London and Dublin; champagne, moselle, sherry, and old port, 'rather bothered by travelling twenty miles a day on a camel back.' Following the chief's example, each regiment had a glorious spread, and throughout the wide expanse of tents sounds of rejoicing were heard, for the soldiers kept Christmas ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... hope than such as convey a cold and grim despair? The withered leaf, the snowflake, the hedging bill that cuts and destroys, why these? Why not rather the dear larks for one? They fly in flocks, and amid the white expanse of snow (in the south) their pleasant twitter or call is heard as they sweep along seeking some grassy spot cleared by the wind. The lark, the bird of the light, is there in the bitter short days. Put the lark ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... far!' and holding up her skirts, she picked her way as daintily as her weighty chaussure would permit, along the narrow green footway that crossed the expanse of dewy turf in which the dogs careered, getting their noses covered with flakes of thick gossamer, cemented together by dew. Fly scraped it off with a delicate forepaw, Vixen rolled over, and doubly entangled it in her rugged ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and down the wooded hills, father and son and the slave travelled briskly toward the west. As the twilight fell, they came up with three white wagons, Staunton bound, and convoyed by mountaineers. That night they camped with these men in an expanse of scrub and sassafras, but left them at dawn and went on toward Albemarle. A day of coloured woods, of infrequent clearings, and of streams to ford, ended in an evening of cool wind and rosy sky. They descended ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... hole that served as a window. There were bushes about it, and, at that point, the cliff seemed to be almost perpendicular. He was safe from observation and he looked over a vast expanse of country. The morning was dazzlingly clear, and he saw sections of the Confederate earthworks with their men and guns, and far beyond them other earthworks and other guns, which he knew were those of his ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... from the sea. Such tragedies as this paralyzed enterprise in Africa until white men learned that the climate was not so deadly, after all, if they adhered to the manner of life, the hygienic rules, that should be observed in that tropical expanse. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... meaning of St. Paul when he says that we now see God by means of a mirror. All creatures, the sun, the moon, and the stars, the vast expanse of the ocean, the earth, trees, flowers, animals, and man especially, are a grand mirror in which the perfections of God are reflected in a dark and imperfect manner. We see, in them all, faint reflections of His divine beauty, wisdom, goodness, ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... of the finger with the eyes—and immediately after placed the hand again eastward, indicating the spot with the same emphatic nod of the finger as though carrying the visible distance to a spot upon the expanse of the bay, which, bearing no object, could not be marked otherwise—two ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... and a few dolphins and Portuguese men-of-war flash or float through the scarcely undulating water. But we look in vain for the "sails of silk and ropes of sendal," which are alone appropriate to this dream-world. The Pacific in this region is an indolent blue expanse, pure and lonely, an almost untraversed sea. We revel in these tropic days of transcendent glory, in the balmy breath which just stirs the dreamy blue, in the brief, fierce crimson sunsets, in the soft splendour of the nights, when the moon and ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... male will measure nearly 4 ft. from the tip of the bill to the end of the tail, and its wings have an expanse of 8 ft. or more,—its weight varying (possibly through age) from 22 to 32 lb. This last was that of one which was recorded by the younger Naumann, the best biographer of the bird (Voegel Deutschlands, vii. p. 12), who, however, stated in 1834 that he was assured of the former existence ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... and Idra's isle The god of gladness sheds his parting smile; O'er his own regions lingering, loves to shine, Though there his altars are no more divine. Descending fast, the mountain shadows kiss Thy glorious gulf, unconquered Salamis! Their azure arches through the long expanse, More deeply purpled meet his mellowing glance, And tenderest tints, along their summits driven, Mark his gay course, and own the hues of heaven; Till, darkly shaded from the land and deep, Behind his Delphian ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... three miles from the Capitol, of the dome of which it commands a pretty glimpse across an expanse of foliage, is one of the old residences remaining from the days of the slave-holders. Like many such places it has been much altered and improved. It seems to have been originally a one and-a-half-story stone dwelling, to which some later proprietor has ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... the strand, Through the mid seas the nimble pinnace sails, Aloof from Crete, before the northern gales: But when remote her chalky cliffs we lost, And far from ken of any other coast, When all was wild expanse of sea and air, Then doom'd high Jove due vengeance to prepare. He hung a night of horrors o'er their head (The shaded ocean blacken'd as it spread): He launch'd the fiery bolt: from pole to pole Broad ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... delayed. A party of twenty were sent on shore to mark out the spot where they should rear their store-house and their dwellings. On the side of a high hill, facing the rising sun and the beautiful bay, they found an expanse, gently declining, where there were large fields which, two or three years before, had been cultivated with Indian corn. The summit of this hill commanded a wide view of the ocean and of the land. Springs of sweet water gushed from the hill-sides, and a beautiful ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... you may see a hundred and fifty to two hundred ploughs issue from both establishments; these spread over the plain and till an immense expanse of land. Carts drawn by bullocks, big mules, or superb horses are ceaselessly exporting the products of the fields, the meadows, or the orchards. Innumerable cows cover the pastures, and legions of women and herds are employed to look after ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the great dunes were left behind, and the bassourahs no longer swayed like towers in a rotary earthquake with the movements of the camels. Far away across a flat expanse of golden sand, silvered by saltpetre, a long, low cloud—blue-green as a peacock's tail—trailed on the horizon. It was the oasis of Djazerta, with its thousands of ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... Globe correspondent, is also worth reproducing: "The Great Salt Plains open out like broad, dreary marsh or arm of the sea, from which the tide has gone out. For about thirty-five miles the trail stretches in a north-westerly course across this dismal expanse, and away to the south-west, as far as the eye can reach, nothing save marsh grass, flags, bullrushes, and occasionally clumps of marsh willows can be seen. North-east of the trail scattering bluffs of stunted grey willows cluster along the horizon, and at one point along the trail, about ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the moors, clambering over the granite slabs of a stile, turned his thoughts to a more perceptible danger. If he could see that man more than half a mile away, his own figure must be apparent over a long distance in that clear brown expanse. Perhaps at that very moment the policeman from the churchtown was prowling about the moors in search of him. His actions at that lonely house were suspicious enough to attract anybody's attention. That was an act of imprudence which ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the grand array, when Aurora Borealis plays her antic freaks, fights her mimic battles, waves her flaming banner along the northern skies. We look out upon the blue expanse above, when the bright and beautiful stars, with their sparkling eyes, are looking from their distant homes upon our little earth like angels commissioned to watch over its slumbering inhabitants, till the clear light of day arouses them to life and consciousness. In view of objects and scenes ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... was one calculated to interest an idle mind, no doubt. First, there was the sea, a wide expanse of blue, dotted by numerous sails; then the beach, enlivened by groups of young people dressed like popinjays in every color; then the village street, and, lastly, a lawn over which there now and then strayed young couples ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... glides away in the face of heaven—the sweet yet strong love which this perpetual contact with Nature gives, and the dreams of these nights passed in the brightness of the stars, under an azure dome of infinite expanse. It was during such a night that Jacob, with his head resting upon a stone, saw in the stars the promise of an innumerable posterity, and the mysterious ladder by which the angels of God came and went from heaven ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... given, and a serious alarm it seemed to be. Bodies of troops, and especially cavalry, were on the march in all directions, and it became a matter of the utmost difficulty to avoid contact with them. Finally, Max, as the day dawned, led his men right away into a wide expanse of farm-land, and took them towards ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... intellectual development of the people; and Lyzhin listened with vexation to these observations and looked out of window at the snow drifts which were piled on the fence. He gazed at the white dust which covered the whole visible expanse, at the trees which bowed their heads despairingly to right and then to left, listened to the howling and the ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... sterility. It had been harsh and cold all day when the boat moved, for it was running full in the face of the northeast; the river had widened almost to a sea, growing more and more desolate, with a few lonely islands breaking its expanse, and the shores sinking lower and lower till, near Tadoussac, they rose a little in flat-topped bluffs thickly overgrown with stunted evergreens. Here, into the vast low-walled breadth of the St. Lawrence, a dark stream, narrowly bordered by rounded heights of rock, steals down ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... charms than Guido's Madonna:—how he envies every rider upon his white horse!—how he burns to bestride the foremost steed, and to mingle in the fair throng, who turn their blue eyes to the scarcely bluer expanse of heaven! Here he recognises Gervase Markham, spurring his courser; and there he fancies himself lifting Dame Juliana from her horse! Happy deception! dear fiction! says Florizel—while he throws his eyes in an opposite ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... steel. Ellen sat a while listening to the soothing chirrup of the cricket and the pleasant crackling of the flames. It was a fine cold winter's day. The two little windows at the far end of the kitchen looked out upon an expanse of snow; and the large lilac bush that grew close by the wall, moved lightly by the wind, drew its icy fingers over the panes of glass. Wintry it was without; but that made the warmth and comfort within seem all the more. Ellen would have enjoyed it very much if she had had ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... yellow stretch of cornland lay a high purple belt of forest which always figured in my eyes as a distant, mysterious region behind which either the world ended or an uninhabited waste began. This expanse of corn-land was dotted with swathes and reapers, while along the lanes where the sickle had passed could be seen the backs of women as they stooped among the tall, thick grain or lifted armfuls of corn and rested them against the shocks. In one corner a ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... the steep red face of the sandy slope that rises abruptly from the Holmwood towards Leith Hill, by the Robin Gate entrance. Near the top, they had seated themselves on a carpet of sheep-sorrel, looking out across the imperturbable expanse of the Weald, and the broad pastures of Sussex. A solemn blue haze brooded soft over the land. The sun was sinking low; oblique afternoon lights flooded the distant South Downs. Their combes came out aslant in saucer-shaped shadows. Alan turned and gazed at Herminia; she was hot with climbing, ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... lucrative was the magical or divining faculty. The Chazdim, or Chaldeans, a priestly caste inhabiting a wide and level country, must have soon applied themselves to the study, so useful to their interests, of their brilliant expanse of heavens. By a prolonged and 'daily observation,' considerable knowledge must have been attained; but in the infancy of the science astronomy necessarily took the form of an empirical art which, under the name of astrology, engaged the serious attention and perplexed the brains of ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... the opposite extremity opened upon a landscape bright and picturesque, dotted with those white residences which give that peculiar character of warmth and comfort for which the northern landscapes are so remarkable. Indeed the eye could scarcely rest upon a richer expanse of country than lay stretched out before it, nor can we omit to notice the singularly unique and beautiful effect produced by the numerous bleach-greens that shone at various degrees of distance, and ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... noble Atbara River at the break of day. The wonder of the desert! Yesterday there was a barren sheet of glaring sand, with a fringe of withered bushes and trees upon its borders, that cut the yellow expanse of desert. For days we had journeyed along the exhausted bed; all Nature, even in Nature's poverty, was most poor: no bush could boast a leaf, no tree could throw a shade, crisp gums crackled upon the stems of the mimosas, the sap dried upon the burst bark, sprung with the withering heat ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... time we had remained in our sleighs. The surrounding scene had impressed us all very forcibly, and there was a general disinclination to get out. The expanse of snow, in its half-melted condition, was enough to deter any reasonable being. To get out was to plunge into ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... with points of camp-fire twinkling, where the Boers, indifferent to our little party, were carousing and drinking their dop. Now and then a yawn or groan as a man stretches his cramped limbs. Down below under us an expanse of dark plain, like a murky sea, reaching to our feet, which we peer across, but can make out nothing. Peep-of-day time is the Boer's favourite hour for a call, and we were all very much on the qui vive when the white line showed along the east. No doubt, however, they all had ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... no means such as are usually seen in conjunction with a complexion of such blended freshness and repose: their outline was stern; her forehead was high but narrow; it expressed capacity and some benevolence, but no expanse; nor did her peaceful yet watchful eye ever know the fire which is kindled in the heart or the softness which flows thence. Her mouth was hard: it could be a little grim; her lips were thin. For sensibility and genius, with all their tenderness and temerity, I ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the hands of One of whom it may be said, in the words of Another, {2,}—resumed my usual functions. But I too soon discovered that peace of mind had fled from a brow which, up to that time, Time had merely took the hair off, leaving an unruffled expanse within. ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... steal through the water. The tide was still draining up, and she had not as yet swung. The wind was light, and, as the skipper had predicted, was nearly due south. As the ketch made its way out from the mouth of the river, and the wide expanse of water opened before them, the boys were filled with delight. They had taken their seats, one on each side of the skipper, who was ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... tampering monks; when the ascetic Buddhism was removed; the cults and mysteries, the dogmas of an ancient naive philosophy discarded; the crude science of a Ptolemy who conceived the earth as a flat terrestrial expanse and hell as a smoking pit beneath proved false; the revelation of a Holy City of jasper and gold and crystal, the hierarchy with its divine franchise to save and rule and conquer,—when all these and more were eliminated from Christianity, what ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... florid Doctor, with his majestically curving expanse of waistcoat and his inscrutable face, whirred through the streets of Fairbridge in his motor car, with that meek bulk of womanhood beside him, many said quite openly how unfortunate it was that Doctor Sturtevant had married, when so young, a woman so ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
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