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More "Precipitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... children of the precipitous earthy banks, show the same thrifty spirit as the other members of the mining corporation. Three species, A. parietina, A. personata and A. pilipes, dig long corridors leading to the cells, which are scattered here and there and ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... house. If the enemy has been in a state of constant vigilance, this undertaking is one of extreme difficulty. The house is on the top of a lofty hill and frequently access can not be had to it except by passing through a series of swamps. In addition one must climb up precipitous ascents, and break through a network of felled trees and such other obstacles as the reader can readily imagine for himself. There is, moreover, the danger from spring traps set both for man and animal, and from sharp bamboo slivers placed all around the house and on the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... he, "that the place may easily be taken, since what is in command of it is weak." And in a little time he so terrified Sisimithres, that he took it without any difficulty. At an attack which he made upon such another precipitous place with some of his Macedonian soldiers, he called to one whose name was Alexander, and told him, he at any rate must fight bravely, if it were but for his name's sake. The youth fought gallantly and was killed in the action, at which he was sensibly afflicted. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... that kind never do happen opportunely," Lord Dawne rejoined. Just as he spoke, however, a brilliant flash of lightning lit up vividly the precipitous side of the hill and the whole valley beneath them for ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... found a refuge. In January, 1825, a patriot general at the town of La Paz undertook on his own responsibility to declare the entire province independent, alike of Spain, Peru, and the United Provinces of La Plata. This action was too precipitous, not to say presumptuous, to suit Bolivar and Sucre. The better to control the situation, the former went up to La Paz and the latter to Chuquisaca, the capital, where a Congress was to assemble for the purpose of imparting a more orderly ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... in South Dorsetshire lying between the river Frome, Poole Harbour, and the English Channel; formerly a royal deer-forest; has a precipitous coast, and inland consists of chalk downs; nearly 100 quarries ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... a veritable canon, a hundred or more feet deep in places, and with ragged, precipitous walls and banks, which they had to descend on one side and ascend on the other. Here the skill and local knowledge of their three new-found friends stood them in good stead. There was yet enough water in the bottom of the great gully ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... we arrive at Allen Garden, situated between the end of Camac Street and Wood Street, which for many years was known as the three-cornered taut, the banks of which were both high and precipitous, and a constant source of danger to children playing in the surrounding garden. The Corporation very wisely decided to fill it up, and so converted it into the present garden, in which are to be seen every evening crowds of happy ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... successful con-clusion unless I was free, so I sint th' ar-rmy home an' attackted San Juon hill. Ar-rmed on'y with a small thirty-two which I used in th' West to shoot th' fleet prairie dog, I climbed that precipitous ascent in th' face iv th' most gallin' fire I iver knew or heerd iv. But I had a few r-rounds iv gall mesilf an' what cared I? I dashed madly on cheerin' as I wint. Th' Spanish throops was dhrawn up in a long line in th' formation known among military men as a long line. I fired at th' man nearest ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... I wish to dwell upon the natural obstacles I had to encounter and which no foresight could have overcome or obviated. The rocky and precipitous coast afforded no sheltered landing places, the roads were mere bridle-paths, the effect of the tropical sun and rains upon the unacclimated troops was deadly, and a dread of strange and unknown diseases had ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... seventeen miles wide. England holds the keys to every one of these gates. Count them,—Gibraltar, Malta, and at the mouth of the Red Sea, not one, but many keys. There, midway in the narrow strait, is the black, bare rock of Perim, sterile, precipitous, a perfect counterpart of Gibraltar; and on either side, between it and the main-land, are the ship-channels which connect the Red Sea with the great Indian Ocean. This England seized in 1857. A little farther out is the peninsula of Aden, another Gibraltar, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... quiet save the incessant shriek and scream of the rock birds, the kittiwakes, black-headed gulls, and guillemots that live on the sides of these high sheer craigs. Here the mother guillemot lays her single egg, and here, on these narrow shelves of precipitous rock, she holds it in place with her foot until the warmth of her leg and overhanging body hatches it into life, when she takes it on her back and flies down to the sea. Motherhood under difficulties, it would ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... tortuous and rugged descent, the Mochuelo commanded a halt. The place where this occurred was in a narrow gorge between two lines of hills, or it should rather be said of mountains; for although their altitude was only here and there very considerable, their cragged and precipitous conformation and rocky material entitled them to the latter denomination. The passage between them continued narrow only for a few hundred yards, after which, at either of its extremities, the mountains receded, and the valley opened into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... onion-sellers from over the sea. The historic connexion between Cornwall and Brittany is very ancient, and is a romance in itself. The English and French coasts, as they face each other there, are very much alike—broken, precipitous, and grand. The peoples live pretty much the same kind of lives on either side of the Channel. And when the onion-sellers come from France they are greeted with enthusiasm by the Cornish people, and although they speak their own tongue, they are perfectly ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... disconcerted, but rallied at once and began firing in the direction from whence came the volleys. They could not advance, and dared not retreat, having been caught in a sunken place in the road, with a barbed-wire fence on one side and a precipitous hill on the other. They held their ground, but could do no more. The Spanish poured volley after volley into their ranks. At the moment when it looked as if the whole regiment would be swept down by the steel-jacketed bullets from the Mausers, four ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... besides, be of doubtful result. At the point where Early's troops were in position, between the Massanutten range and Little North Mountain, the valley is only about three and a half miles wide. All along the precipitous bluff which overhangs Tumbling Run on the south side, a heavy line of earthworks had been constructed when Early retreated to this point in August, and these were now being strengthened so as to make them almost impregnable; in fact, so secure did Early consider himself ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... day we pushed ahead at full speed. Soon we could make out the precipitous sandstone cliffs of Balhalla, the island which screens the entrance to Sandakan harbor. But long before we came abreast of the town signs of human habitation became increasingly apparent: little clusters of nipa-thatched huts built on stilts over the water; others hidden away in ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... at the top projected down to the German front line while the stem ran back connecting with the road through the dip which goes from Beaumont-Hamel on the north to the Ancre. At the forked or western end, projecting down to the front, there is a chasm more than thirty feet deep, with walls so precipitous that in some parts they overhang. The Germans had burrowed into the sides of the earth and established lairs far below the thirty feet level of the ravine, where they were practically out of reach of shell fire coming from whatever direction. In some instances they had hollowed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... and that will amuse me,'" ruminated Francois on his high seat next to the coachman, repeating the marquis' words, as they drove home after the nobleman's precipitous retreat from the theater. "Well, he didn't look as though he had been particularly amused. But no wonder he was startled! It even"—reviewing the impression first made upon him at sight of the actress—"sent a shiver through me!" Here the carriage drew up sharply before the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... fugitives it was as if the whole world had suddenly been riven asunder. For one flashing moment it seemed to Buck that he had been struck with fearful force from somewhere behind him, and as the blow fell he was hurled headlong down the precipitous path. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... up at 3 a.m. on the 16th. The weather was fine and calm. I started at 4.20 with Joyce to the south at the greatest possible speed. We reached Glacier Tongue about one and a half miles from the seaward end. Wherever there were not precipitous cliffs there was an even snow- slope to the top. From the top we searched with glasses; there was nothing to be seen but blue ice, crevassed, showing no protuberances. We came down and, half running, half walking, worked about three miles towards the root of the glacier; ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... his mental turmoil in the least alleviated when, having turned south and being on the point of coasting down a precipitous hill he felt a touch on his shoulder and heard the elder of his two pretty passengers command him in worse French than his own poor English to go slow when he turned into Fifth avenue again and be prepared ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... Suvla Bay the coastline was precipitous; high cliffs and no sort of creeks or beaches—impracticable. Suvla Bay itself seems a fine harbour but too far North were the aim to combine a landing there together with an attack on the Southern end of the Peninsula. Were we, on the other ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... him fainting on his weary way to drink one draught before he dies: this is the camel's grave. Situated half way between Korosko and Abou Hammed, the well of Moorahd is in an extinct crater, surrounded upon all sides but one by precipitous cliffs about 300 feet high. The bottom is a dead flat, and forms a valley of sand about 250 yards wide. In this bosom of a crater, salt and bitter water is found at a depth of only six feet from the surface. ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... precipitous in places. There were little gullies, which expanded as we climbed up them. It seemed as if we would never reach the top, but at last we were there. I was aware that the drug had ceased its action. The yellow, rocky ground ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... had been well chosen. It lay in a valley facing the open sea, while in the rear rose a semicircle of precipitous hills. Through these roadways were cut, which might easily be defended against enemies, while offering free access to friends. The power of the Minamoto had suddenly grown again, and the Taira saw fronting them an active and vigorous foe where a year before all had ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... shack, stopped and wondered, though it was dim and far away by then. Koppy and his immediate friends lifted guilty heads and questioned each other. Werner, nerves jangling, thoughtlessly pleaded the superior advantages of next Tuesday; and then bethought himself and advised more precipitous action. Nothing within a day's hard ride could stop Koppy now—one hundred rifles ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... well-constructed, if somewhat precipitous, staircase for what must be fully a hundred feet, we find ourselves in a cave from which a very spacious archway leads into a huge vaulted chamber. The first impression is one of acute astonishment, by no means lessened, even after one becomes accustomed to the dim light ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... feature of striking interest, and the ascent is a gradual one, leading chiefly through cultivated ground; but the aspect of the south-eastern or Stretton side is wild in the extreme, the whole face of the mountain being broken up into deep ravines, with precipitous sides, where purple rocks project boldly through the turf, and in many places even the active sheep and mountain ponies can scarcely find a footing. Down each of these ravines runs a small stream of exquisitely pure water, one of which, near the entrance ...
— A Night in the Snow - or, A Struggle for Life • Rev. E. Donald Carr
... paths for thee to walk on, when thou rannest to the race.[197] Thou proceedest on a precipitous ridge of the earth, when thou art lord in the van of ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... is on a hill sloping off all round, with steep and, in places, precipitous sides. It lies between two small rivers, the Ose and the Oserain, both of which fall into the Brenne, and thence into the Seine. Into this peninsula, with the rivers on each side of him, Vercingetorix had thrown himself with ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... we must go back to mythological relations. In the old legendary lore of ancient Scandinavia or of Germany, the loves and hatreds of their semi-mythological heroes and heroines space over many romantic incidents before reaching a culmination. The swiftly flowing Rhine, with its precipitous banks, eddies, and rapids; the broad and more majestic Danube or Elb; the broad meadows and Druidical groves on its hilly slopes and stretches of dark and gloomy forest,—all conspired to people the fancy with elfs, gnomes, fairies, and goblins, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... and terrible climb. A weaker man would have fainted or given it up long before Dalrymple set his foot firmly upon the narrow beaten path which ran along between the garden wall at the back of the convent, and the precipitous descent on his left. The sweat ran down over his hard, pale face in the dark, as he shook off his cloak and laid down his ghastly burden under the deep shadow of the low postern. He shook his big shoulders and wiped his brow, and stretched ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into frenzied convulsion—heaving, boiling, hissing—gyrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes, except in precipitous descents. ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... falling and the rainbow drawn On Lammermuir. Hearkening I heard again In my precipitous city beaten bells Winnow the keen sea wind. And here afar, Intent on my own race and place, I wrote. Take thou the writing: thine it is. For who Burnished the sword, blew on the drowsy coal, Held still ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... watched, through sounds like these, for a minute gun! Nay, he had once actually called up poor Arnaud in the middle of the night for an imaginary signal. Redclyffe Bay was a very dangerous one; a fine place for a wreck, with its precipitous crags, its single safe landing-place, and the great Shag Stone, on the eastern side, with a whole progeny of nearly sunken rocks, dreaded in rough weather by the fishermen themselves; but it was out of the ordinary track of vessels, and there were only a few traditions of ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... human affection. At first Uncle Fred, or Aunt Lilian, or, a little later, one of the two cowboys rode with her on her expeditions, but her prairie sense of direction quickly adapted itself to her new surroundings, and she soon learned to keep a keen eye for the precipitous cut-banks that drop sheer from a level plain and lie as unsuspected in the saffron sunlight as a coyote among the ripened willows. There were quicksands, too—spots where the water sprang from the hillside in a crystal stream ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... the New World drama. Skies of profoundest blue—the tropical sun flaming through massive clouds of vapor—a sea of exuberant color, foaming white over coral beaches—waving cocoa palms against a background of exotic verdure marking a tortuous shore line, which now rises sheer and precipitous from the water's edge to dizzy, snowcapped, cloud-hung heights, now stretches away into vast reaches of oozy mangrove bog and dank cinchona grove—here flecked with stagnant lagoons that teem with slimy, crawling life—there flattened into interminable, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... that was glorious to him beyond measure, he caught sight of a precipitous hill which he remembered passing on the outward march. Looking back at the first favorable point, he could see nothing that betokened the presence of Hadendowas, or any other human beings, in all that far-flung solitude. Were it not for the presence of the Italian rifle and cartridge-belt, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... desolate hills rose on all sides. A few tumbled-down cottages of grey stone lay scattered upon the lower slopes among patches of shabby and forlorn cultivation. Here and there an outcrop of rock ran skywards into somber and precipitous ridges. The October wind passed to and fro over it all, mournfully singing, and driving loose clouds that seemed to drop ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... muddy soil within the last few months, and will require still a year or two to make them verdant) we had a beautiful view of the Potomac, a truly majestic river, and the surrounding country. The fortifications, so numerous in all this region, and now so unsightly with their bare, precipitous sides, will remain as historic monuments, grass-grown and picturesque memorials of an epoch of terror and suffering: they will serve to make our country dearer and more interesting to us, and afford fit soil for poetry to root itself in: for this is a plant which thrives ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the ridge at last, to find it bigger and more precipitous than I had expected. It ran out evidently for hundreds of yards, its course being marked by foam and fretting waves, and I was just thinking what a fatal spot it would be for a vessel to touch the shore, when I reached the top and uttered a startled cry, which ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... As specimens of art they are admirable, and some of the subjects are among the most interesting to be found in the whole realm of Nature. Thus, the great tree, the "Grizzly Giant," of Mariposa, is shown in two admirable views; the mighty precipice of El Capitan, more than three thousand feet in precipitous height,—the three conical hill-tops of Yo Semite, taken, not as they soar into the atmosphere, but as they are reflected in the calm waters below,—these and others are shown, clear, yet soft, vigorous in the foreground, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... diminutive appearance I calculated the great height of the promontory. About eight miles off, on the right, I could see the falls of Montmorency, descending in a sheet of milk-white foam over a lofty precipitous bank into the stream, which, winding through a plain interspersed with villages and studded with vegetation, finds its way into the Saint Lawrence. Quebec is divided into two ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... hand-to-hand fighting, the night attacks, the charges up precipitous hills, the retreats made carrying the wounded under constant fire, which he witnessed and in which he bore his part, he never again can see with the same fresh and enthusiastic eyes. Then it was absolutely new, ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... in composition. Strange as the distant vision seems to the traveler fresh from the rude and time-stained chalets of the mountains, still more surprising is the scene which greets his arrival by the precipitous road, past the double towered gateway, within the city walls. Expressly set it seems for a theatrical decor in its smiling gayety, its faultlessly pictorial effect. Every window in the blazoned houses is blossoming with brightest flowers, as for a perpetual fete. The voices of the ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... Gorizia is one of the most important in the European conflict. The battle of the Isonzo is not to be regarded as a mere episode, but a prolonged siege over a front of more than a hundred miles of a natural fortress, consisting of a chain of precipitous mountains. Perhaps never before in a European war has the value of individual qualities been shown so conclusively as by the Italian troops in this war. The very steep cliffs, which are almost perpendicular, along the course of the river are almost ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... Basseterre, the capital of the island. It was a clean handsome-looking place, and a number of ships lay before it; while behind it, rising from the wide valley, richly cultivated and beautiful in the extreme, rose the lofty and precipitous crags of Mount Misery, 3700 feet high. It may well be so-called, for it would be pain and misery to have to climb up it, and still greater not to be able ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... Kublai-Khan had sent an ambassador who had brought him back some pretended relics of Adam, and among other things two of his molar teeth; for, if we can believe the Saracen traditions, the tomb of our first father must have been on the summit of one of the precipitous mountains, which forms the highest ground in the island. After losing sight of Ceylon, Marco Polo went to Cail, a port that we do not find marked on any of the modern maps, but a place where all the vessels touched coming ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... plains, in the manner explained in the last chapter, and that men might be furnished with a material for their works of architecture and sculpture, at once soft enough to be subdued, and hard enough to be preserved; the second, that some sense of danger might always be connected with the most precipitous forms, and thus increase their sublimity; and the third, that a subject of perpetual interest might be opened to the human mind in observing the changes of form brought about by time on these ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Nisqually, and from this adventurous explorers reach North and South Mowich and Puyallup glaciers. No one has yet climbed the Mountain over those glaciers, or from the north side. A view from any of the trails will explain why. The great rock spines are more precipitous than elsewhere, the glaciers more broken; and the summit is fronted on either side by a huge parapet of rock which hurls defiance at anything short of an airship. Doubtless, we shall some day travel to Crater Peak by aeroplanes, but until these vehicles are equipped with {p.054} runners for landing ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... left that island," there pierced a certain gusto of appreciation; and some of the rest were master-talkers. From their long tales, their traits of character and unpremeditated landscape, there began to piece itself together in my head some image of the islands and the island life; precipitous shores, spired mountain-tops, the deep shade of hanging forests, the unresting surf upon the reef, and the unending peace of the lagoon; sun, moon, and stars of an imperial brightness; man moving in these scenes scarce fallen, and woman lovelier than Eve; the primal curse ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wood, and about a hundred yards from it, there was a pleasant hiding-place beside a pollard ash. The bank was hollow with rabbit-buries: the summer heat had hardened the clay of the mound and caused it to crack and crumble wherever their excavations left a precipitous edge. Some way up the trunk of the tree an immense flat fungus projected, roughly resembling the protruding lip of a savage enlarged by the insertion of a piece of wood. If formed a black ledge standing out seven or eight inches, two or three inches thick, and extending for a foot or ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... glanced now at the yellow glare, and now cast his eye aloft at the shortened sail. While Staniford stood questioning whether she meant to say anything more, or whether, having discharged her conscience of an imagined offense, she had now reached one of her final, precipitous silences, Captain Jenness suddenly approached them, and said to him, "I guess you'd better ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... went. The trail wound in and out around the mountain-side, and their sure-footed horses followed it, never daunted by fallen trees or by rocky and precipitous places. More than once every Vigilante save one held her breath as she was carried up a dangerous, almost obliterated path to heights beyond. But Virginia's Pedro, who was far-famed as a trailer, led the way, and his rider called back reassuring ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... the water gushing out at every step among the huge granite boulders, and dashing with a merry noise across our path. After somewhat more than an hour's walk we turned back, and began to descend a long and precipitous path, or rather street, for there were houses on either side, in search of our boat. By the time we had embarked the tints of the sunset had vanished, a moon nearly full rode undisputed mistress in the cloudless sky, and we cut our way to our ship through ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... "Pie-Island," from its (to his hungry imagination) fancied resemblance to a pumpkin pie, and the name, like all bad names, sticks. McKay's Mountain on the main-land, a perpendicular rock more than a thousand feet high, up-heaved by the throes of some vast volcano, and numerous other bold and precipitous head lands, and rock-built islands, around which roll the sapphire-blue waters of the fathomless bay, present some of the most magnificent views to be found on ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... myself out upon a strip of short turf sprinkled with the flowers of the white rock-rose and bordered with candy-tuft, and try to drive out of mind the only disagreeable thought I have at this moment—that of getting down to the path, where I was safe. The worst part of climbing precipitous places is not the going up, but the coming down. Not a human being or dwelling is in sight, so that I can contemplate the wildness of the scene to my mind's content. But a very hoarse voice not far above tells me that I am not alone. A raven perched upon a jutting piece of rock, that curiously ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... striven for. And a glint of satisfaction came into his eyes; it is something to have followed such a trail aright upon such a night. Down yonder, a crooked black line in a white field, was the stream which many miles further on flowed into the American. Rising abrupt beyond it were the broken, precipitous cliffs of granite such as beetle above the mountain tributaries of the American. The rocks, like the river, were black, and looked far colder than the white world which ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... African mainland. A warm, lazy sea, the sea of the doldrums, sapphire or turquoise, or, in deep shaded pools, a radiant green, joyfully foams itself away against these fairy lands of tossing palm, dense vegetation, rushing cascades, and purple, precipitous peaks. A soil of volcanic origin is covered with a rich humus of decaying vegetation, and this, with a soft humid atmosphere, makes ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... to a more gradual and less precipitous descent, he fixes his eye on some distant point in the earth beneath him, and thither bends his course. He is still almost meteoric in his speed and boldness. You see his path down the heavens, straight as a line; if near, you hear the rush of his wings; his shadow ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... specially looking for such a thing, I had my eyes open for it; I had not forgotten our perilous situation of yesterday, and I wished to assure myself. I looked up several gorges that ran out of the valley, but the sides of all seemed to be precipitous. The chase, it is true, kept me from examining them very closely; but it is now time to do so. If there be no pass out of this valley, then are we indeed in trouble. These cliffs are five hundred feet in height—they are perfectly ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... inhabited islands and one uninhabited island, and a few uninhabited islets; strategically located along important sea lanes in northeastern Atlantic; precipitous terrain limits ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... stolen. The passage through the mountains or over the Divide caused the greatest suffering of the expedition. The men had to cut their way in many places through the brush, clamber over jagged stones and climb such precipitous walls that several of their horses were crippled. Then snow began falling and the nights became very cold. Game seemed to have deserted the country, and the sufferers had to eat all their supply of flour and parched corn. Beginning ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... There are nowhere twenty steps without a projection and a turn, nor in any ten together is the chasm of the same width or figure. Hence the ascent in its windings is easy and imperceptible quite to the termination, where the rocks are somewhat high and precipitous; at the entrance they lose themselves in privet and elder, and you must make your way between them through the canes. Do not you remember where I carried you both across the ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... of the wind, and he seemed to hesitate about going on, but we could not very well stay there, and he once more put his horses in motion, while we held fast and prayed silently to the great Deliverer. After stopping again and feeling for the bank, lest we should go over the precipitous hillside, which he knew was there, he proceeded until, with a great plunge, we were in the angry waters, which arose to the wagon-bed, and roared and surged all around us. The horses tried to go on, when something ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... commenced the ascent of the trail which soon became rough and precipitous, while behind them, under cover of the brush, sneaked ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... by walls and dominated by a great fortress called Sacsahuaman, which stood upon a steep and rocky hill overlooking the capital. On the side toward the city the fortress was practically impregnable on account of the precipitous slopes of the cliffs. The other side was defended by three stone walls laid out in zigzag shape, with salient and reentrant angles (demi-lunes), like an old-fashioned rail fence, with many doors, each closed by stone portcullis, in each wall. Within ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Osborn when the submarine cable was removed from Bolinao and carried on to Manila. Admiral Patricio Montojo went with four ships to await the arrival of the enemy off Subig (Zambales) on the west coast of Luzon. Subig is a fine natural harbour, but with precipitous shores just as Nature has made it. For years the "project" had existed to carry a State railway there from Manila, and make Subig the principal Government Naval Station and Arsenal instead of Cavite. But personal interests and the sloth of the Government combined to frustrate the plan. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... and to-day's breakfast. The strangest thing of all is that these Protean creatures, which seem fitted only for an aquatic existence, should be so much at home on land, so ably using their queer wings as substitutes for legs that they can run up or down high and precipitous slopes with the swiftness of ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... shore they bent their steps as soon as the little basket had been well filled with strawberries, and descending the precipitous bank, fringed with young saplings, birch, ash, and poplars, they quickly found themselves beside the bright waters of the lake. A flint was soon found among the water-worn stones that lay thickly strewn ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... lead me to the four peaks that crown the summit. The climbing up such rough rocks was very fatiguing; the sides were so indented, that what was gained in one five minutes was often lost in the next. At last, when I reached the ridge, my disappointment was extreme in finding a precipitous valley as deep as the plain, which cut the chain transversely in two, and separated me from the four points. This valley is very narrow, but flat-bottomed, and it forms a fine horse- pass for the Indians, as it connects the plains on the northern and southern sides ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... that made wading in his condition difficult. But he felt so much better he was able to attempt this, and, keeping near to one side of the current, he began to follow it slowly up-stream. The ascent was at times precipitous, which pleased him, though it depleted his new strength. It was easy in this way to hide his trail, and the higher and faster the stream took him into the mountains the safer he would be from any Calabasas pursuers. When he had regained a little strength ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... relief I heard her alight within a few feet, and followed immediately. Now I was at her side, and now we were scrambling and slipping down the precipitous and rocky slope as swiftly as the dense wet fog would let us. I believe that our escape was quite unnoticed. The guard was watching the murder of the merchant, or, if he saw us, he did not venture to leave the carriage door, and the priest who had accepted ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... SUDDEN—MOON. "Do we not," writes Brimley, "seem to burst from the narrow steep path down the ravine, whose tall precipitous sides hide the sky and the broad landscape from sight, and come out in a ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... which they should concentrate. They are irritating the passengers by changing the cabins, confiscating luggage, insisting on higher fares, cutting down the rations, and instructing the sailors in the goose-step; but the ship has no way on her, and the sound of breakers grows louder from a sombre, precipitous, and ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... not a long one, however, for presently the men heard an oath and a crash, and their master vanished; nor could they find him till the dawn came to give them light. Then they discovered that they had halted upon the edge of a small but precipitous cliff, and at the bottom of the donga beneath lay Mavoom—not dead, indeed, but senseless, and with three ribs and his right ankle broken. For some days they nursed him there, till at length he decided upon being carried forward in a litter. So notwithstanding his sufferings, which were intense, ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... they had indeed recovered the long lost trail. They moved silently, sometimes creeping on hands and knees through the long grass where the bank was barren of bushes, sometimes gliding swiftly through a friendly covert of alder or sumach. The hills closed in upon them, and became more precipitous. The stream made another bend, and they were in a ravine where the water flowed over a rocky bed between banks too steep to afford them secure foothold. The Susquehannock swung himself down into the shallow water, and motioned to his ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... wrath it seemed to him that he was equal to the task of wiping out the entire population of that terrible city. It was nearly noon when he reached the great bowlder at the top of which terminated the secret passage to the pits beneath the city. Like a cat he scaled the precipitous sides of the frowning granite KOPJE. A moment later he was running through the darkness of the long, straight tunnel that led to the treasure vault. Through this he passed, then on and on until at last he came to the well-like shaft upon the opposite side of which lay ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the edge of the ledge on which he stood was not more than seven or eight feet. It was possible, he perceived, for one to continue along and down this natural path to the bottom of the hill, coming out among the trees in the low ground. The descent, however, was a great deal more precipitous than the ascent ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... are generally diversified by canyons and buttes, whose precipitous sides break down into long ranges of rocky talus and sandy foothills. The arid character of this district is especially pronounced about the margin of the plateau. In the immediate vicinity of the villages ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... in a moment, breathlessly scanning the onrushing spider-webs. For a moment he was minded to run, and then thought of the ravine, and turned back. He ran aside once to dodge one drifting terror, and then he was swiftly clambering down the precipitous sides, and out of the touch of ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... face of the crags behind him. They hunted where the starlight made deep pits of gloom in the twisting edge of the mountains. They went from rock to rock and from tree to tree until at last they rested upon a giant spruce which hung out over the precipitous wall of the ridge, its thick top beckoning and sighing to the black rocks that shot up out of the snow ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... Bay is a primeval place, a deep-cut, narrow notch in the tip of Carnrick, and is walled by cliffs so high and so precipitous that they exclude a view of anything except the ocean. The bay opens due west; and its white barriers were now developing a violet tinge, for this was on a sullen afternoon, and the sea was ruffled by spiteful gusts. Wycherley could ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... The precipitous bank upon which the city lies piled, reflected in the still deep waters at its base, greatly enhances the romantic beauty of the situation. The mellow and serene glow of the autumnal day harmonised ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... best, as little honest as he could, And, like white witches[81], mischievously good. To his first bias longingly he leans; And rather would be great by wicked means. Thus framed for ill, he loosed our triple hold[82]; Advice unsafe, precipitous, and bold. From hence those tears! that Ilium of our woe! Who helps a powerful friend, forearms a foe. What wonder if the waves prevail so far, When he cut down the banks that made the bar? 70 Seas follow but their nature to invade; But he by art our native strength betray'd. So Samson to his ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... a deep ditch and glacis beyond; but there was no covered way, and both the scarp and counterscarp were simple earthen embankments; so that, had the ditch been filled up with fascines, there was no wall to face the attacking force after crossing it,—nothing but a green mound, precipitous enough, certainly, and crowned with a low parapet of masonry, and bristling with batteries about half way down, so that the muzzles of the guns were flush with the neighbouring country beyond the ditch. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... is like the shade of some precipitous bank with crumbling sides, which, falling, ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... enclosure), from which there is a wooden passage, having many contrivances useful for marking, branding, and dehorning cattle, all of which are used in their due season; but for dipping purposes this passage terminates in a precipitous slope, and the animals are gently forced along it from the corral to plunge suddenly into a prepared bath of a strong solution, which kills every tick; so it follows, that if the animal has been totally submerged, it is absolutely free from the parasite. The ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... of the most precipitous torrents he traces with the same rigid fidelity, swooping down the inclines of cascades, dropping sheer over dizzy falls amid the spray, and ascending with the same fearlessness and ease, seldom seeking to lessen the steepness of the acclivity by beginning to ascend ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... in the hills, seeming to make the houses and trees and the very earth to tremble with the glorious storm of sound. Walking past the church, I followed the streamlet that runs through the town and out by a cleft between the hills to a narrow marshy valley, on the other side of which are precipitous hills, clothed from base to summit in oak woods. As I walked through the cleft the musical roar of the bells followed, and was like a mighty current flowing through and over me; but as I came out the sound from behind ceased suddenly and was now in front, coming back from the ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... where the current runs deep. Rocky hills now began to show themselves to the east of us; we passed the sheet of water known by the name of Lake George, and came to a little river which appeared to have its source at the foot of a precipitous ridge on the British side. It is called Garden River, and a little beyond it, on the same side, lies Garden Village, inhabited by the Indians. It was now deserted, the Indians having gone to attend a great assemblage of their race, held on one of the Manitoulin ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... ladders, and ropes. The road lay amidst brushwood and underwood, over rolling stones, always upwards higher and higher in the dark night. Waters roared beneath them, or fell in cascades from above. Humid clouds were driving through the air as the hunters reached the precipitous ledge of the rock. It was even darker here, for the sides of the rocks almost met, and the light penetrated only through a small opening at the top. At a little distance from the edge could be heard the sound of the roaring, foaming waters in the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... prisoners; and as the power of the eastern tempest had gradually diminished, a light current from the south, that blew directly along the land, prevailed; and, though the ocean still rolled in fearful billows, their surfaces were smooth, and they were becoming, at each moment, less precipitous and more regular. The eyes of the horsemen were cast in vain over the immense expanse of water that was glistening brightly under the rays of the sun, which had just risen from its bosom, in quest ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... scenic interest little inferior to that of the Pictured Rocks. The explorer passes abruptly from a coast of consolidated sand to one of loose materials; and although in the one case the cliffs are less precipitous, yet in the other they attain a higher altitude. He sees before him a long reach of coast, resembling a vast sand-bank, more than three hundred and fifty feet in height, without a trace of vegetation. Ascending to the top, rounded hillocks of blown sand are observed, with occasional clumps of trees ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... through his holy word), until the people came with their possessions to the place where the town is called Bethlem: the glad-hearted chieftain and his brother's 1800 son, pious men, went forward over the storied land from the east, with their possessions, over the precipitous mountain-sides, and chose a dwelling-place for them- selves where the fields seemed bright ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... Nottinghamshire (burnt down in 1761), there was a large concealed chamber provided with a fireplace and a bed, which could only be entered by removing the sheets of lead forming the roofing. Beneath was a trap-door opening to a precipitous flight of narrow steps in the thickness of a wall. This led to a secret chamber, that had an inner hiding-place at the back of a sliding panel. A witness in a trial succeeding "the '45" declared to having seen a large quantity of arms there in ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... desolate part of the road, which passed through a valley shut in on all sides by mountains, some of them snowy, all wild and precipitous, and looking strangely desolate in the falling light. Erica could not help contrasting it with the view from the amphitheatre at Fiesole, of that wider amphitheatre of green hills all glowing with light and love. But presently came ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... put her foot on a sunny slope clad with innocent-looking flowers; but more and more precipitous at every step, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... flit along the shore, or in the most friendly manner board your steamer to feed on the crumbs from your tea-table, while large numbers of gay-plumaged king-fishers dart in and out from their nests tunnelled far into the precipitous face of ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... piled, it was also the last sheaf to be lifted. It travelled to the stack on the summit of the last load, and, by a happy chance, formed one of the outside layer. By scratching and gnawing continuously for an hour, he worked his way to the butt of it, paused for a moment on the precipitous steep, and then scrambled lightly down to earth. A perpendicular descent ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... obstacle was a deep canon with precipitous walls. This, however, was not a serious impediment, for the life feathers, as before, helped them to cross it in one bound. By nightfall the boys had arrived at a broad, beautiful meadow where lived the Wosakidi, or ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... descending cautiously to his side, taking my turn in pioneering downward, receiving the freight of knapsacks as before. In this manner we consumed more that half the afternoon in descending a thousand feet of broken, precipitous slope; and it was almost sunset when we found ourselves upon fields of level snow which lay white and thick over the whole interior slope of the amphitheatre. The gorge below us seemed utterly impassable. At our backs the Mount Brewer wall either rose in sheer cliffs or in broken, rugged ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... nothing fresh occurred, I yielded to the pleasant swaying motion of the litter, and went to sleep again. I was dreadfully tired. When I woke I found that we were passing through a rocky defile of a lava formation with precipitous sides, in which grew many ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... nearer. He had almost reached it when a dim shape broke out from a thicket at the bottom of the slope. There were still some cartridges in his rifle cylinder, but he was slipping and sliding down an almost precipitous declivity at such a rate that it was impossible to stop and shoot. Indeed, in another moment he fell violently into a brake and had some difficulty in smashing through it, but when he struggled free he saw shingle and boulders in front of him and Lisle ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... rank. For here your first duty is this: to fight in rank and file; and your second: to annihilate all those who refuse to form part of the rank and file. On the other path you will have but few fellow-travellers: it is more arduous, winding and precipitous; and those who take the first path will mock you, for your progress is more wearisome, and they will try to lure you over into their own ranks. When the two paths happen to cross, however, you will be roughly handled and thrust aside, or ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... enwrapped them in clouds. The untempered sun had beat down a palpitating heat upon dry sand wastes. The hill cattle he was driving were as wild as deer. A dozen times some lean steer had bolted and gone racing down a precipitous hillside like a rabbit. As often Four Bits had wheeled in its tracks and pounded through clutching cholla and down breakneck inclines after the escaping three-year-old. Fierce cactus thorns had torn at the leather chaps as horse and rider had ripped through them, zigzagging across ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... The green and precipitous elevations that stood ranged around the head of the vale where Marheyo's habitation was situated effectually precluded all hope of escape in that quarter, even if I could have stolen away from the thousand ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... island in 1849, and landed on it under unfavorable circumstances, describes it as an inaccessible rock. The sides are, indeed, in general, extremely sheer and precipitous all around, though skilled mountaineers would find many gullies and slopes by which they might reach the summit. I first pushed on to the head of the glacier valley, and thence along the back bone of the island to the highest point, which I found to be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... calamitous of the landslips occurred on the sea-coast of the Straits of Messina, near the celebrated rock of Scilla, where huge masses fell from the tall cliffs, overwhelming many villas and gardens. At Gian Greco a continuous line of precipitous rocks, nearly a mile in length, tumbled down. The aged Prince of Scilla, after the first great shock on the 5th of February, persuaded many of his vassals to quit the dangerous shore, and take refuge in the fishing boats—he himself showing the example. That ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... from his shoulder, tied one end to the brass stump, threw the coil down the precipitous side. It fell away into darkness, hung swaying. It was impossible to tell whether the end reached any solid footing below. He couldn't waste any more time looking for help. He would have to ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... stones at the criminal, but there was a solemn and appointed method of execution which is preserved for us in detail in the Rabbinical books. And from it we gather that the modus operandi was this. The blasphemer was taken to a certain precipitous rock, the height of which was prescribed as being equal to that of two men. The witnesses by whose testimony he had been condemned had to cast him over, and if he survived the fall it was their ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... twenty acres in extent. They confided that task to me, and I marked out two equal portions of land. One included the higher part of this enclosure, from the cloudy pinnacle of that rock, whence springs the river of Fan-Palms, to that precipitous cleft which you see on the summit of the mountain, and which, from its resemblance in form to the battlement of a fortress, is called the Embrasure. It is difficult to find a path along this wild portion of the enclosure, the soil of which is encumbered with fragments of rock, or ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... reached the limits of the world, marched resolutely back to Perth. The only road that then led through this Valley of the Shadow of Death was a rugged path, so narrow that not more than three men could walk abreast, winding along the edge of a precipitous cliff at the foot of which thundered the black waters of the Garry. Balfour's regiment led the van of this perilous march: the baggage was in the centre, guarded by Mackay's own battalion: Annandale's horse and Hastings' foot brought up ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... becoming precipitous cliffs, the drag made dismal groans; Aubrey, after a great slip forward, looking injured, anchored himself, with his feet against the seat, by Ethel; and Dr. Spencer was effectually wakened by an involuntary ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fortalice had perched his eyrie. The pale moon, which had hitherto been contending with flitting clouds, now shone out, and gave them a view of the solitary and naked tower, situated on a projecting cliff that beetled on the German Ocean. On three sides the rock was precipitous; on the fourth, which was that towards the land, it had been originally fenced by an artificial ditch and drawbridge, but the latter was broken down and ruinous, and the former had been in part filled up, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... except, perhaps, some single arch or gateway, which stands among a mass of shapeless mounds, the last remaining relic of the edifice it once adorned, and itself tottering, perhaps, on the brink of its precipitous foundation, as if just ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... Bellerophon had a pretty distinct view of the mountainous part of Lycia, and could look into all its shadowy vales at once. At first there appeared to be nothing remarkable. It was a wild, savage, and rocky tract of high and precipitous hills. In the more level part of the country, there were the ruins of houses that had been burnt, and, here and there, the carcasses of dead cattle, strewn about the pastures where ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... scrambled to the top of the precipitous ascent and found themselves upon the broken edge of the forest amid a black chaos of piled up rock and underbrush. Evidently, the land here was giving way, little by little, for here and there they could see a tree canting tipsily over the edge, its network of half-exposed roots making a last gallant ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... bank, and could travel along it to the west. Just there, I perceived the junction of a river (perhaps the main channel) from the N. N. W. It seemed full of water, whereas that which I was obliged to follow, being the most westerly, was nearly dry, although its banks were boldly broken, and precipitous. Its course came round even from S. W., and deep ravines and water-courses coming into it, obliged me to travel to the southward of that bearing in order to avoid them. We thus, at length, came into a fine open ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... group of lads. It was safe to describe places and people, and he so described them that The Squad squirmed in its delight at feeling itself marching in a procession attending the Emperor in Vienna; standing in line before palaces; climbing, with knapsacks strapped tight, up precipitous mountain roads; defending mountain-fortresses; and storming ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... village, with the castle behind it, was out of sight. At the bottom of the valley, sheets of water were seen spreading out right and left, with wooded hills rising immediately from their opposite margin, and, at the end of the upper water, a wall of sharp, precipitous rocks directly overhanging it, their huge forms reflected in its level surface. In the hollow of the ravine, where a considerable brook ran into the lake, lay a mill, half hidden among the trees, a sweetly retired spot, most beautifully ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... observed by me many times on many fields during several successive years. After such gales, the castings present a gently inclined and smooth, or sometimes furrowed, surface to windward, while they are steeply inclined or precipitous to leeward, so that they resemble on a miniature scale glacier-ground hillocks of rock. They are often cavernous on the leeward side, from the upper part having curled over the lower part. During one unusually heavy south-west gale with ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... defensive positions. As soon as we passed the point above designated (about three miles from the top of the mountains), we dismounted and formed a line of battle on a ridge circling to the rear. Our right rested on a precipitous ravine and the left was protected by a marshy run that was easily held against the enemy. The mules were sent into a ravine to the rear of our right, where they were protected from the enemy's bullets. I also deployed a line of skirmishers, resting on our right ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... observing that the stay had not been thoroughly fixed in the hurry of their departure, he looked about for a suitable landing-place, where the finishing touches might be given. The coast was rocky and precipitous, and the tops of the cliffs were strewn for a considerable distance inland with innumerable boulders, large and small, which would render landing dangerous, and starting perhaps more dangerous still. At length, however, just as he was thinking ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... party strayed along the crest in search of the first wild pansies. Rezanov and Concha looked under the sloping roof of brittle leaves into dim falling vistas, arches, arbors, caverns, a forest in miniature with natural terraces breaking the precipitous wall ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... called the Back of the Island,) being washed by the impetuous tides of the ocean, presents a very different aspect, showing the resistless progress of the waves:—and hence perpendicular cliffs of great altitude, precipitous slopes constantly detaching large masses of earth and rocks, and all the picturesque confusion produced by successive landslips: here therefore the scenery is variously characterized by dreary devastation, romantic ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... friend, now no more) a canary bird from its cage. The wild geranium was already showing its pink stem and scarlet-edged leaves, themselves almost gorgeous enough to pass for flowers; the periwinkle, with its wreaths of shining foliage, was hanging in garlands over the precipitous descent; and the lily of the valley, the fragrant woodroof, and the silvery wild garlick, were just peeping from the earth in the most sheltered nooks. Charmed to find myself surrounded by so much beauty, I had scrambled, with much ado, to the top of the woody cliff, (no other word can convey an ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... paddled to the southwestern point, which Goork said he believed to be the least frequented portion of the island, as he had never seen boats put off from there. I found a shallow reef running far out into the sea and rather precipitous cliffs running almost to the surf. It was a nasty place to land, and I realized now why it was not used by the natives; but at last I managed, after a good wetting, to beach my canoe and scale ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... formidable abatis across the narrowest part of it. Just in front of the abatis there was open ground for perhaps two hundred yards. South of the open was a deep ravine. The road ran on the east side of the cleared place, and the banks of the river were high and precipitous. The center of the open space rose into a swell, sloping gently away both to the north and south. On the crest of the swell Moore had thrown up a slight earthwork, which was manned when we approached. An officer was promptly ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... strong, they are coming to kill you and all of us. We must away into the karitya!" And with this he leaped from the brink. He had selected a spot where the rim was precipitous for a short distance. Over he went! A cry of anguish and of helpless despair was heard; then followed a series of thuds, as though a heavy body were falling from step to step. From the depths below a faint moaning ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... Colombian valleys, the narrow and rugged passages, the wild beasts,—sink into nothingness as compared with the almost unconquerable obstacles which he was to face on his way to the South. In no other part of the continent do the Andes present such an appalling combination of ravines, torrents, precipitous paths and gigantic peaks. Furthermore, nowhere on the continent was the population so hostile to freedom as were the pastusos (inhabitants of the Pastos). Men, women and children cordially hated the cause of the Republic, and stopped ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... collar of his coat. We thanked him for his kindness, and persevered on our journey. Our road lay nearly all on the descent, and while it was good, and the daylight lasted, we hurried forward with all speed. At length it became very rocky and precipitous; and, as the light soon failed entirely, it became necessary to mount the portmanteau, as it was not possible for any biped to sustain it longer on their head, and to maintain their equilibrium as well. From very bad, things got to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... interesting than in the neighborhood of Knockhouse, the residence of Mr. Elder, which I found pleasingly situated at the bottom of a little open bay, skirted with picturesque knolls partially wooded, that present to the surf precipitous fronts of rock. One insulated eminence, a gun-shot from the dwelling-house, that presents to the sea two mural fronts of precipice, and sinks in steep grassy slopes on two sides more, bears atop a fine old ruin. There is a blind-fronted massy keep, wrapped up in a mantle ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... of Switzerland, and then as I gazed, more and more enraptured by the delirious orgy of multi-colored hues, and looked at the precipitous ascent we had made; at the heights we had yet to climb, and at the undulating peaks that stood like an army of sentinels guarding us on every side, I forgot I was in the land of Nevada. I had drifted into an Arabian Night reverie, ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... henceforth to be their home. Cold, indeed, was the welcome which they received from their adopted country; and cheerless was the view that met their gaze, as they landed on a massy rock of granite, at the foot of a precipitous cliff, and looked along the barren, inhospitable shore, and over the dark waters which they had so ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... A precipitous flight of steps, where all was steeped in darkness, descended from the narrow entry. It was with infinite precaution that Pierre ventured into the gloom, which ever grew denser and denser. He lowered his feet gently so as to make no noise, and ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... raising their stately forms and pointing their long dark fingers sternly at the intruders on their solitude; graceful birches; and here and there a whispering larch or a nodding pine. The other wall of the valley, or glen, is less precipitous, and its sides are densely wooded, and fringed with barberry bushes ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... boarded a six AM train for Parahyba do Sul, which we reached about ten o'clock. It is a charming town situated on the river by the same name. This river reminds one of the French Broad, though the mountains are not so high and precipitous as the North Carolina mountains. The mountains, too, in this section are not covered with trees, but with a tall grass, which, being in bloom, gave a beautiful purple color to the landscape. The railroad climbs up the mountain sides from ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... reached the fountain, "Ain el Gaml," or "Sebeel Iskandrooni," and from there to "Ain el Medfooni;" the road was again very rocky and in some parts precipitous. Lady Montefiore being an excellent rider, galloped along rather heedlessly, and her horse rushed right into the sea. Apprehending danger, I galloped after and succeeded in overtaking her, and in seizing the bridle of her horse. In doing so my own horse stumbled and threw me ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... Broadstairs has good sands, precipitous chalk cliffs, and a very fine sea-view. The railway station is about a mile from the pier, and the town is approached by a well-kept road ("the main street of our watering-place. . . . You may know it by its being always stopped up with donkey chaises. Whenever you ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... city of Chungking—which would have barred the advance of the Northern troops permanently as the river defiles even when lightly defended are impassable here to the strongest force. It was largely due to the hardships of forced marches conducted over these rugged mountains, which raise their precipitous peaks to the heavens, that Tsao-ao subsequently lost his life, his health being undermined by exposure, tuberculosis finally claiming him. But one thing at least did his resolute action secure. With Yunnan in open revolt and several other provinces about to follow ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... be, the first attack on Castiglione was certainly left to this determined fighter; and the mingling of boldness and guile which he showed on the following day regained for the French not only the village, but also the castle, perched on a precipitous rock. Yet the report of Colonel Graham, who was then at Marshal Wuermser's headquarters, somewhat dulls the lustre of Augereau's exploit; for the British officer asserts that the Austrian position had been taken up quite by haphazard, and that fewer than 15,000 white-coats ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... These mountains are of limestone formation, terraced, where possible, for cultivation, and often wooded with olive trees or tilled as corn patches or vineyards. The scenery is rugged and pretty, the hill-sides generally steep, sometimes precipitous. This is the Palestine of the picture books. Deep gorges have been cut out by water action; but, as no rain falls throughout the summer months, these are, for the most part, but dry watercourses. There are a few good springs to be ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... perpendicular face of rock, surmounted by the Citadel. It is old, and the houses are principally of wood, and ultra-French in appearance. The streets are narrow and not over clean. To reach the upper town you drive up a very precipitous road, or walk up a long flight of timber steps, which shorten the steepest portion of the way. The upper town is built on the acclivity and on the slopes of the hill- side, which slide down to the river St. Charles, to the north. The fire of 1845 improved the town, ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... often puts his pursuers at fault—by passing over rocky shingle, along ledges of cliffs, or up precipitous slopes, where neither men nor dogs can safely follow him. This was just what they now had to fear; for the guide well knew that the forest they were in was surrounded on almost every side by rocky cliffs; and if the bear should get up these, ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... the lonely and precipitous island, forty miles west of Lewis, which Boswell at one time thought of buying, has now, like so many other islands of the West, a well-furnished library from Paisley. I hope the minister of the place encourages the reading of the books, and does everything in his power to broaden the religious views ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... fabled might; Wang Liyang's {22} bridle will no more delight; Nor how his chariot Siyan Ou did guide; Nor how, incas'd in hauberk's steely pride, His hundred myriads, at the cymbals' sound, The falcon launch'd, or slipp'd the eager hound; Or giving rein to every fiery steed No more precipitous Tai Shan would heed, Than stair which leadeth to some upper bower; Or swarming down tumultuous to the shore, Chain'd the sea-waters with the nets they cast— For such wild miracles the ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... limits of the ancient land. Cataracts are also formed by lakes: of this description are the celebrated Falls of the Niagara; but the most picturesque falls are those of rapid rivers, bordered by trees and precipitous rocks. Sometimes we see a body of water, which, before it arrives at the bottom, is broken and dissipated into showers, like the Staubbach, (see Mirror, vol. xiv. p. 385.); sometimes it forms a watery arch, projected from a rampart of rock, under which the traveller may pass ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... warm, and the bees are very busy there in that neglected corner of the field, rich in asters, fleabane, and goldenrod. The corn has been cut, and upon a stout but a few rods from the woods, which here drop quickly down from the precipitous heights, we set up our bee-box, touched again with the pungent oil. In a few moments a bee has found it; she comes up to leeward, following the scent. On leaving the box, she goes straight toward the woods. More bees quickly come, and it is not long before the line is well established. Now ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... now the evening, near night-fall. A splendid scene burst upon our view, on rounding a precipitous rock, from the crevices of which some magnificent trees shot up—their gnarled trunks and twisted branches overhanging the canal where we were pulling, and anticipating the fast falling darkness that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... rock, uneven and precipitous, completely shut off all view toward the broader valley of the Vila, as well as of the town of San Juan, scarcely three miles distant. Beyond its stern guardianship Echo Canyon stretched grim and desolate, running far back into the very heart of the gold-ribbed mountains. ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... she was to have the matter cleared up, did not care to have it done so instantaneously, for hardly had she taken one step in the house before she, in the most precipitous manner, backed two or three ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... champion to wrestle with him on foot; and, winding himself about him with hideous strength, he leaped backwards with him into the torrent, where he left him, and so mounted the opposite bank, and again rushed over the country. A more terrible bridge than this was in his way—even a precipitous pass of frightful height over a valley; but still he scoured onwards, throwing over it the agonised passengers that dared, in their ignorance of his strength, to oppose him; and so always rushing and raging, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... rose precipitous, the one on the left swelling unbroken to a bald and rounded summit, forest covered save for its tonsured head high in air, while that on the right was steeper and lower, with a line of cliffs at the top. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... destination; in the expansive valley below, yonder, lay the town of Brunecken, surmounted by Castle Bruneck and other ancient and decaying feudal castles; and behind it, on the way down toward Brixen, in the narrower gorge, bordered on both sides by precipitous mountains, through which the Rienz hurls its foaming waters, they beheld already the small town of St. Lawrence. After reaching St. Lawrence they had only an hour's march to the Muhlbach pass, which, in accordance with Andreas ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... dust subdued for the time being; while, straight away to the front, mist-wreathed at their base from the sleeping waters of the winding canal, cloud-capped at their lofty summit from the bank of vapor that hovers along the entire range, rock-ribbed, precipitous, magnificent in silent, stubborn strength, the towering heights of Maryland span the scene from east to west, and stand superb, the background to the picture. All as yet is sombre in tone, black, dark green, and brown ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... driving up a sandy road such as we had seen winding over the hills. To our left there was a precipitous descent to the vale of the river. To our right, flowers, and ferns, and heather climbed the steep hill, broken at every few yards by tiny torrents of mountain streams. The sun was setting over the distant Deadmanstone moors; ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... breeze swept over the gorze bushes of the moorland and blew into yellow and red streamers the sheet of flame that rose from a huge bonfire which was built in a direct line inland from the Haunted House. The sea, below the precipitous cliffs, moaned and sighed, and, far off, in the distance, could be heard the murmur of the deep seas. Shouts of laughter and merry voices, scraps of folk song and impromptu dancing, came from the throng of people scattered over the ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... precipice in the pathway of the terrified animal, but not in season to stop the maddened creature or turn it aside, though he did make a frantic effort to do so. As if bent upon its own destruction, the pony made a suicidal leap down the precipitous descent. ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... had been prospecting with his partner, and had found a gulch with precipitous cliffs all around it where there was very rich placer digging. Directly in front was a high mound covered with big cacti, and they made their camp on the top of this. There was a little water in the canyon held in rock basins, and with this they washed out the gold ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... down on the long valleys, and precipitous heights of the assents and desents, in which my pardner wuz so soon to be assentin' and desentin' and I trembled, and wuz jest about to urge him to forego his diversion, for the sake of his pardner's happiness, but as I turned to expostulate with him, I see ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... literary remains were published by J.H.B. Latrobe in the Maryland Historical Society, and in the Maryland Colonization Journal in 1845. The Memoir of Banneker was somewhat marred by a too precipitous and zealous attempt to ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... "attention, sir, and obey the word of command." Then he calmly explained that the escape would consist of two distinct operations; the first in gaining the narrow platform at the base of the tower; the second, in descending to the foot of the precipitous rock. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... found a ford, by which they crossed the river. It ran south for some distance, then circled round in front of the hills, and then again struck off south and east. They galloped forward, eager to ascertain the character of the hills, for much depended on their being precipitous or not. Paul surveyed the country ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... you ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad! Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jaggd rocks, Forever shattered, and the same forever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam? And who commanded,—and the silence came,— "Here let the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... land-break, peculiar to the Isle of Thanet; and presently we ran the head of the boat upon the shingle, just where a small rivulet that, descending from the higher grounds, waters the thickly wooded ravine, and discharges itself into the sea. The entrance of this dell is formed by a lofty precipitous rock, with a few stunted overhanging trees on one side, while the other is more open and softened in its aspect, and though steep and narrow at the mouth, gently slopes away into a brushwood-covered bank, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... was strewn with shattered rock and debris which made walking arduous. Then they reached a scarp of rock ground smooth by the slipping down of melting snow, and when they had crossed that their difficulties began. The scarp broke off on the verge of an almost precipitous rift, and a torrent that seemed drawn out into silk-like threads roared in the depths of it. A few pines were sprinkled about the slopes of the gully, and one or two of them which had fallen lay ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... accentuated by the fact that save at one point only the Massanuttons are practically impassable. From New Market, in the western valley, a good road climbs the heights, and crossing the lofty plateau, sinks sharply down to Luray, the principal village on the South Fork. Elsewhere precipitous gullies and sheer rock faces forbid all access to the mountain, and a few hunters' paths alone wind tediously through the woods up the steep hillside. Nor are signal stations to be found on the wide area of unbroken forest which clothes the summit. Except from the peaks at either end, or ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... from below. The battlements had indeed crumbled away, and there were cracks and fissures in the upper parts of the walls, but below the walls were still solid and unbroken, and as the rock was almost precipitous, save at the point at which a narrow path wound up to the entrance, it was still capable of making a stout defence ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... tract has a breadth of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles; but although it often shoots up into precipitous peaks, it is believed that they rarely exceed two thousand feet in height; no accurate measurements of their elevation have, however, been made, and little is known of the course and mutual relations of the chains. The timber found here is pitch-pine, shrub oaks, cedar, etcetera, indicative ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... children in knowledge of her mighty activities and forces. On the sea this sense of remoteness and strangeness comes oftener than in the presence of any other natural form; even the mountains make sheltered places for our thought at their feet, or along their precipitous ledges; but the sea makes no concessions to our human weakness, and leaves the message which it intones with the voice of tempest and the roar of surge without an interpreter. Men have come to ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... itself in a wonder world, that beggared romance. The great peak, which they named St. Elias, hung above a snowy row of lesser ridges in a dome of alabaster. Icebergs, like floating palaces, came washing down from the long line of precipitous shore. As they neared anchorage at an island now known as Kyak, they could see billows of ferns, grasses, lady's slippers, rhododendrons, bluebells, forget-me-nots, rippling in the wind. Perhaps they saw those palisades of ice, that stretch like a rampart northward ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... confidence in his own movements to defying another person's doubt in them. The defiance was more exciting than the confidence, but it was less sure. He continued to bet on his own play, but began often to fail. Still he went on, for his mind was as utterly narrowed into that precipitous crevice of play as if he had been the most ignorant lounger there. Fred observed that Lydgate was losing fast, and found himself in the new situation of puzzling his brains to think of some device by which, without being offensive, he could withdraw Lydgate's attention, and perhaps suggest ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... wavelet of land upon the surface of the Boer States, a hundred great billows stand up in Natal. Kopje succeeds kopje, all steep, and many precipitous, yet not the bare, stony cairns of the transmontane regions, but moist green masses of verdure, seldom parched even in the dry season, and in the wet, glistening with a thousand cascades; not severely ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... I was too unwell to move yesterday, but, feeling a little better this morning, I rode down the creek. For three miles it takes a south-east course, then east-south-east through table land, with rocky and precipitous hills on each side. I then went on a south-east course for nine miles, through a splendidly-grassed country, with numerous small creeks running into the Stevenson. During my ride I found plenty of water, and splendid ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... individual and a prisoner. With a large escort we were taken along the Gakkon, by barren cliffs and on a rocky road. We passed hundreds of Chokdens large and small, mostly painted red, and mani walls. Then, having descended by a precipitous track on whitish clay-soil, we reached a thickly inhabited district, where stone houses were scattered all over the landscape. We saw on our left the large monastery of Delaling and, a little way off, the Gomba ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the stem ran back connecting with the road through the dip which goes from Beaumont-Hamel on the north to the Ancre. At the forked or western end, projecting down to the front, there is a chasm more than thirty feet deep, with walls so precipitous that in some parts they overhang. The Germans had burrowed into the sides of the earth and established lairs far below the thirty feet level of the ravine, where they were practically out of reach of shell fire coming from whatever direction. In some instances ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the proposal, and they accordingly proceeded to the cloisters of Saint George's Chapel, and threading some tortuous passages contrived among the canons' houses, passed through a small porch, guarded by a sentinel, and opening upon a precipitous and somewhat dangerous flight of steps, hewn out of the rock and leading to ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... furnished with a material for their works of architecture and sculpture, at once soft enough to be subdued, and hard enough to be preserved; the second, that some sense of danger might always be connected with the most precipitous forms, and thus increase their sublimity; and the third, that a subject of perpetual interest might be opened to the human mind in observing the changes of form brought about by time on these ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... the steel, and the smiths, and thus was Dapplegrim shod strongly and well, and when the youth went out of the King's palace a cloud of dust rose up behind him. But when he came to the mountain into which the Princess had been carried, the difficulty was to ascend the precipitous wall of rock by which he was to get on to the mountain beyond, for the rock stood right up on end, as steep as a house side and as smooth as a sheet of glass. The first time the youth rode at it he ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... strength. The road at this point becomes a narrow defile, the valley on its right being rendered quite impracticable for artillery by a system of deep and impassable gullies, while on the left a succession of rugged ridges and precipitous ravines extends far back toward the mountain which bounds the valley. The features of the ground were such as nearly to paralyze the artillery and cavalry of the enemy, while his infantry could not derive all the advantages of its ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... us, for we were now come to the busy part of the sands; and, for the next eight or ten minutes, between carts and horses, and asses, and men, there was little room for social intercourse, till we had turned our backs upon the sea, and begun to ascend the precipitous road leading into the town. Here my companion offered me his arm, which I accepted, though not with the intention of ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... Meechim drinked wine every time it wuz passed, and she got real tonguey before we went home, and her eyes looked real kinder glassy—glassier than a perfessor's eyes ort to look. Then we had bird's-nest soup, which is one of the most costly luxuries to be had in Canton. They are found on precipitous rocks overhanging the sea, and one must risk his life to get them. It didn't taste any better to me than a chip. It seemed to be cut in little square yeller pieces, kind of clear lookin', some like preserved citron only it wuz lighter colored, and ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... Prudential view in utterly inconspicuous unimpressive-ness. Till one has seen it from this point one has not truly seen it. The vast stone shows like a half from which the other half has been sharply cleft and removed, that the sense of its precipitous magnitude may unrelievedly strike the eye; and it seems to have in that moment the whole world to tower up in from the level at its feet. No dictionary, however unabridged, has language adequate to convey the notion ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... among the ruins of these temples, blocks of hewn stone thirty-six feet long, nine feet wide, and six feet in thickness. Their great highways, spanning the gulfs, clinging to the precipitous cliffs and climbing the mountains, were wonderful works ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... eastern side of the valley (Loudoun) gneiss is frequently met with on the surface, and where the larger streams have worn deep valleys, it is sometimes exposed in high and precipitous cliffs. This is more particularly the case along Goose Creek and Beaver Dam. Associated with it, however, is clay slate, not so much in rock as in soil, for it being more readily decomposed is seldom found on the surface, except as soil. These two varieties are often met with side by ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... was not easy to determine whether she was less concerned about her money or her reputation,' since she was reckless in regard to both. Respecting the imperfect subjunctive, see Zumpt, S 528, note 2. [140] Praeceps is used of steep and precipitous places, and of persons who fall or throw themselves headlong down from or into anything. Hence Sempronia praeceps abierat is, 'she had thrown herself headlong into ruin,' which might also be expressed by ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... had early retired from the scene as from a vanity with which he was too familiar for enjoyment, and I found him, when the Tarantella was done, leaning on the curb of the precipitous rock immediately behind the inn, over which the Capriotes say Tiberius used to cast the victims of his pleasures after he was sated with them. These have taken their place in the insular imagination as Christian martyrs, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... archer and the marmot play shoot and dodge until one after the other all the arrows are exhausted or a hit is registered. The ground-hog never quits. I can recall one strenuous noon hour in an outcropping of rock where, between shattered arrows, precipitous chasing of transfixed old warriors, defiant whistlers on all sides, we piled ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... facilities for shipping and rail-transportation to and from the Danubian provinces of the Dual Empire were Trieste and Fiume. The other Dalmatian ports were small and without possibilities of extensive development, while the precipitous mountain barrier between the coast and the interior which rose almost from the water-line rendered railway construction from an engineering standpoint impracticable if not impossible. It was apparent that, if Italy could obtain both the port of Trieste and the ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... the Canadians land, in order, in Bradford's behalf, to have the first chance; while the Judge and I, who pretend to no skill with the gun, remain awhile behind. The island had the shape described in our first paper: a gentle slope and rock-beach on one side,—a steep, broken, half-precipitous descent on the other. Landing presently, I went slowly along the slope,—slowly, for one's feet sank deep at every step in the elastic moss, so that it was like walking on a feather-bed. Some patches of shrubbery, two and a half or three feet high,—the first approach ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... the lane into the field opposite. Between the lane and the field there was a fence which was not "rideable!" As is the custom with lanes, the roadway had been so cut down that there was a bank altogether precipitous about three feet high, and on that a hedge of trees and stakes and roots which had also been cut almost into the consistency of a wall. The gate was the only place,—into which these enemies had thrust themselves, and in the possession of which they did ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... work to get the wagons, machinery and provisions from the mountain camp up to our location. In many places, at first glance, the roads looked impassable. They went up hills and rocky ledges so steep that six yoke of oxen could pull only a part of a load; then down a mountain side so precipitous that the four wheels of each wagon would have to be dead-locked with chains to keep them from overrunning the oxen; then they would go along mountain streams full of rocks and bowlders, and upsetting a wagon was quite a common occurrence. I saw one of our provision ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton
... revealed an island richly clothed with verdure, which, rising out of a calm blue sea, sloped gradually upwards, until its western ridge met the bright sky. Evidently that terminating ridge was the place whence descended the precipitous cliffs, along which they had sailed immediately after leaving the cave of ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... is one sight of the country, at about this time of the year—the first of March—that few have seen, or else they have passed it by as if it were not worthy of record. I mean the drapery of rocks in gorges, or along precipitous sides of hills or mountains. The seams of rocks are the outlets of springs. The water, trickling through, is seized by the frost, and held fast in white enchantment. Every day adds to the length of the ice drapery; and, as the surface is overlaid by new issuings, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... generally be translated by 'sloping' or 'aslant;' sometimes by 'awry' or 'tortuous.' Pemadene, which Rale gives as the Abnaki word for 'mountain,' denotes a sloping mountain-side (pemi-adene), in distinction from one that is steep or precipitous. 'Pemetiq,' the Indian name of Mount Desert Island, as written by Father Biard in 1611, is the Abnaki peme'teki, 'sloping land.' Pemaquid appears to be another form of the word which Rale wrote 'Pemaa[n]kke,' meaning (with the locative suffix) 'at the place ...
— The Composition of Indian Geographical Names - Illustrated from the Algonkin Languages • J. Hammond Trumbull
... dressed black-lead into casks holding about one hundred-weight each, in which state it leaves the mine. The casks are conveyed down the side of the mountain in a curious manner. Each cask is fixed upon a light sledge with two wheels, and a man, who is well used to the precipitous path, walks down in front of the sledge, taking care that it does not acquire momentum enough to overpower him. When the cask has been thus guided safely to the bottom, the man carries the sledge up hill upon his shoulders, and prepares ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... and precipitous and the track often difficult for mules. They crossed passes over 8,000 feet high. Enemy forces were likely to be encountered at any moment, as these hills are infested with warlike tribes, whose attitude at the best might be ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... it was on this island that St. Cuthbert died, the monks who had gone to look after him signalling the news of his death to his brethren at Lindisfarne by means of torches. The island is rocky and precipitous, with deep chasms between the high cliffs; and when a north wind blows, the columns of foam and spray, from the waters dashing into the chasms and over the tops of the cliffs, may be seen from the mainland rising high ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... the precipitous bed of a stream; I clanked down it—thousands of feet—warily; I reached the valley, and at last, very gladly, came to a drain, and thus knew that I approached a town or village. ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... descent, which seemed to put the carriage on an inclined plane of forty-five degrees. We were compelled to have four horses, on making the opposite ascent; and were even preceded by boys, with links and torches, over a small bridge, under which runs a precipitous and roaring stream. Hall is a large, lively, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... failed, and was repulsed with considerable loss. He then cast about him if it were possible to attack the town from the Heights of Abraham on the southern side. It seemed on the face of it an impossibility. How was it possible for the attacking force to make its way unseen by the French up the precipitous cliffs to the Heights of Abraham? Luckily, there was a young man in Wolfe's army, a Lieutenant McCulloch, who had been held prisoner in Quebec in 1756. With a view to future possibilities, he employed his time in surveying the cliffs, and he thought that he had discovered a particular spot ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... was long left behind, and the way grew more and more faintly traced, until it terminated in a wood, through whose tangled boughs the sunlight broke playfully. At length, the wood opened into a wide glade, from which rose a precipitous ascent, crowned with the ruins of an old castle. The traveller dismounted, led his horse up the ascent, and, gaining the ruins, left his steed within one of the roofless chambers, overgrown with the longest grass and a profusion of wild shrubs; thence ascending, with ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... soon forget. The place of meeting was a green hill-side, near the opening of a deep, long withdrawing strath, with a river running through the midst. We stood on the slope where the last of a line of bold eminences, that form the southern side of the valley, sinks towards the sea. A tall precipitous mountain, reverend and hoary, and well fitted to tranquillize the mind, from the sober solemnity that rests on its massy features, rose fronting us on the north; a quiet burial-ground lay at its feet; while, on the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... The sandy strip along the coast, where rain never falls, is fed only by a few scanty streams, that furnish a remarkable contrast to the vast volumes of water which roll down the eastern sides of the Cordilleras into the Atlantic. The precipitous steeps of the sierra, with its splintered sides of porphyry and granite, and its higher regions wrapped in snows that never melt under the fierce sun of the equator, unless it be from the desolating action of its own volcanic ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... certainly forbidding—forbidding enough to be the hunting ground of legions of ferocious animals. But the supernatural! Bah! I flouted such an idea. All day we journeyed along a lofty ridge, from which, shortly before dusk, it became necessary to descend by a narrow and precipitous declivity, full of danger and difficulty. At the bottom we halted three or four hours, to wait for the moon, in a position sufficiently romantic and uncomfortable. A north-east wind, cold and biting, came whistling over the hills, and seemed to be sucked down into the hollow where we ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... two ways of action, so much celebrated, in this—that the one, arduous and difficult in the beginning, leads out at last into the open country; while the other, seeming at first sight easy and free from obstruction, leads to pathless and precipitous places. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... herself alone, and this steep, secluded, shady descent was to her a veritable delight —like a path in the depths of a forest. At the bottom she would raise her eyes, and the sight of the narrow, precipitous alley she had just descended ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... at the diggings bear a strong external resemblance one to another. This one differed from others only in being much longer and wider; the sides, as is usually the case in the richest gullies, were not precipitous, but very gradual; a few mountains closed the background. The digging was in many places very shallow, and the soil was sometimes of a clayey description, sometimes very gravelly with slate bottom, sometimes gravelly with pipeclay bottom, ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... of chalk and sand, whose form, it is said, bears some resemblance to piles of arms, waving standards, or the tents of a camp pitched on the border of a plain. The Arabian side, on the contrary, presents nothing but black precipitous rocks, which throw their lengthened shadow over waters of the Dead Sea. The smallest bird of heaven would not find among these crags a single blade of grass for its sustenance; every thing announces the country of a reprobate people, and well fitted to perpetuate the punishment ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... she descended the precipitous side of the amphitheatre with rapid steps, vaulting from tier to tier, and bounding with wonderful agility from one mass of ruin to another. At length she reached the level; and then, foaming and panting, she rushed ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... by what had passed. She had forgotten where she was. And I beheld her walk straight into the borders of the quicksand where it is most abrupt and dangerous. Two or three steps farther and her life would have been in serious jeopardy, when I slid down the face of the sand-hill, which is there precipitous, and, running half-way forward, called to her ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... through the dark streets, and startled at the glare of artillery suddenly blazing around them,—entirely lost all presence of mind, and fled in every direction; killing and wounding friends and foes in their precipitous retreat. Horses, waggons, and dead bodies impeded their flight, and Le Mans was one scene of carnage and terror. Their leaders stood their ground, and kept the great square of Le Mans for more than ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... the top of Dundurn, where the original well is supposed to have been, find themselves expatiating upon other features of interest surrounding them. The hill itself, it will be remarked, is covered all round, with the exception of the precipitous front facing the east, with piles of loose water-worn stones. At first view they appear only an irregular mass, and seem to be there only to make the ascent more slippery and difficult. Mr Skene, in his Celtic Scotland; points out that here we have the remains ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... a fine morning, and the train was toiling up a precipitous grade to the spine of the mountain, where the down-slope would begin and air-brakes rule. Pobloff looked about him. He scratched his long nose, a characteristic gesture, and began wondering when coffee would be ready. He pressed the bell. The guard entered, a miserable bandit who ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... coastal plain belt in north; mountains precipitous to sea on west coast; sandy beaches along ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... looking southward, they saw spread out before them a desolate expanse of rocky ground, sloping gradually from a ridge on the east to the ice-bound shore, which on the west made in and formed a cove. Back of the level space was a range of hills rising up eight hundred feet with a precipitous face, broken in two by a gorge, through which the wind was blowing furiously. On a little elevation directly in front was the tent. Hurrying on across the intervening hollow, Colwell came up with Lowe and Norman just as they were greeting a soldierly-looking man who ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... to pass a deep dell or narrow valley between two mountains, as often happens in that country, the descent to which was about a league from the top to a stream of water in the bottom, yet the hills were so precipitous and close together that their tops hardly exceeded a musquet shot. As Carvajal was well acquainted with this pass, he was confident of catching his enemy at this place as in a trap; believing that while Centeno was descending to the bottom, he should be able to gain the top of the hill, whence ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... fifty miles distant, was the fine range of lofty mountains that stretched in a long line towards Latooka. On the west, on the left bank of the White Nile, which now flowed almost beneath our feet, was the precipitous mountain Neri, known by the Arab traders as Gebel huku. This fine mass of rock descends in a series of rugged terraces from a height of between three and four thousand feet to the Nile, at a point where the river boils through a narrow gorge between the mountains. It ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... seriously considering the advisability of withdrawing, if only for a time, from my course of medical study, when I received the following dream, which determined me to persevere:— I found myself on the same narrow, rugged, and precipitous path described in my last dream, and confronted by a lion. Afraid to pass him I turned and fled. On this the beast gave chase, when, finding escape by flight hopeless, I turned and boldly faced him. Whereupon the lion at once ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... in which we found the Crisis, at sunrise on the morning of the second of these adventurous days, was of several leagues in width; and bounded, especially on the north, by high, precipitous mountains, many of which were covered with snow. The channel was unobstructed; and not an island, islet, or rock, was visible. No impediment to our proceeding offered, and we were still more encouraged to push on. The course we ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... ... precipitous ... With a shock, Lyveden realized that the giant must be almost above him, that he had only to drop.... With a frightful effort he swerved. A tangle of matted thorn bushes opposed him. Frantically he smashed his way ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... some adventurous climbing; it would have distressed Daisy if she had not been so intent upon his object; but as it was she strained her little head back to look at him, where he picked his way along at a precipitous height above her, sometimes holding to a bramble or sapling, and sometimes depending on his own good footing and muscular agility. In this way of progress, while making good his passage from one place to ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... mighty gorge, with great mountains closing them in from every direction except the one from which they had come. They returned to camp, and one more day was gone. The next morning they started early to the south, and toiled until eleven o'clock, to find themselves once more ambuscaded by the precipitous hills. Again they made their way back to camp, without comfort, except that they had passed through a great forest of beech and yellow wood sufficient for fuel and ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... the ridge by which we were mounting would become too precipitous higher up, I turned off to the left, and crossed a long, narrow snow-slope that descended between this ridge and another line of rocks more to the west. It was firm, and just steep enough to make steps cut in the snow comfortable, though not necessary; so the ice-axe was brought into use. The ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... on the other side and almost surrounding it, is a cleft in the cliff like an immense corridor which serves as a harbor, and along it the little Italian and Sardinian fishing boats come by a circuitous route between precipitous cliffs as far as the first houses, and every two weeks the old, wheezy steamer which makes the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... would be able to walk. That the writer might not only have been the first to cross, but the last, as well, was not evident from the text. Nor was it there apparent that the path which was spoken of as difficult and described as "hanging to the precipitous side of the cliff," might have become tired of hanging thus for the sake of travelers who never came, and have given itself over at last ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... deepest part of a gulf, surrounded by lofty and precipitous mountains, which were externally covered with very thick vegetation. They, on all sides, presented a barrier, through which it was impossible to pass. The shadows which they cast over the water, at the extreme point of the lake, ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... banks I had traveled on foot, and gleaned several facts in its mineralogy and geology which made it an initial point in my future observations. The metalliferous formation is first noticed at the little chain of rocks. From the Grand Tower, the western shores become precipitous, showing sections and piled-up pinnacles of the series of horizontal sandstones and limestones which characterize the imposing coast. Had I passed it in a steamer, downward bound, as at this day, in forty-eight hours, I should have ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... to his companion to halt, crawled forward like a snake. A few paces on he stopped and beckoned to Wargrave, and, when the latter reached him, pointed down into the gully below. They were almost on the edge of a descent precipitous enough to be called a cliff. Immediately underneath by a small stream was a massive black bull-bison, eighteen hands—six feet—high, with short, square, head, broad ears and horizontal rounded horns. The only touches of colour were on the ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... Anglo-Saxon cleof]. A precipitous termination of the land, whatever be the soil. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... foot of the hill, and it is this which has given the city its name. There are two roads leading up to the city, the one on the east, and the other on the west. One of these is very narrow and difficult by reason of precipitous rocks, while the other cannot be reached except by way of the bridge which spans the river and provides a passage over it at that point. This bridge was built by Caesar Augustus in early times, and ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... as an insect floating In the sunny summer air, Waved one tiny snow-white blossom, From a hidden crevice growing, Dainty, fragile-leaved, and fair, Where great rocks piled up like mountains, Well-nigh to the shining heavens, Rose precipitous and bare, With a pent-up river rushing, Foaming as at boiling heat Wildly, madly, ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... as we went past in a cloud of dust. On the top of Podgora Hill was a series of O.P.'s, known collectively as Maria O.P., hollowed out of the rock, approached through rock passages, and in front a wide rocky platform commanding a splendid panorama. At our feet was a precipitous descent, clothed with acacias, at the bottom Podgora with its gutted factories, then the broad stream of the Isonzo, and Gorizia on the further side. To the left we could see the Isonzo winding ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... presents to the eye but a smooth sheet of water, on which there is neither wave nor ripple, and unchequered by a single island. As the eye passes along its sluggish surface, it rests at length upon the lofty bluffs which enclose it. One of these, a high projecting point, a precipitous crag resting upon a steep bank, whose base is washed away by the never-ceasing action of the waters, is called The Maiden's Rock. It is known to every Indian in those regions, by a gloomy story of unfortunate ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... around to Culm and climb up to the gulls' nests on Wind Cliff. He had explored every nook of the Rock, and this was a pleasure which he had reserved till the last, and, though not quite confident of being successful in an attempt to scale the precipitous cliff, yet he was eager and anxious enough to make the trial. Trafford was in one of his ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... opening on the left-hand side of the road through which they passed, the priest leading. Next they found themselves in a wild gully or ravine that was both deep and narrow. This they crossed, and arrived at a ledge of precipitous rocks, most of which were overhung to the very ground with long luxuriant heather. The priest went along this until he came to one particular spot, when he stooped, and observed a particular round stone bedded ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... 83,000 men, though Napier asserts that not more than 60,000 took part in the fighting. The French left wing rested on steep hills near Puebla, which tower above the River Zadora, and leave but a narrow defile. Their centre held a less precipitous ridge, which trends away to the north parallel to the middle reaches of that stream. Higher up its course, the Zadora describes a sharp curve that protects the ridge on its northern flank; and if a daring foe drove the defenders away from ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... we at last discover that it is not its great depth nor length, nor yet these wonderful buildings, that most impresses us. It is its immense width, sharply defined by precipitous walls plunging suddenly down from a flat plain, declaring in terms instantly apprehended that the vast gulf is a gash in the once unbroken plateau, made by slow, orderly erosion and removal of huge beds of rocks. Other valleys of erosion ...
— The Grand Canon of the Colorado • John Muir
... more timorous, more coy, and secret love of the Spaniards and Italians pleases me. I know not who of old wished his throat as long as that of a crane, that he might the longer taste what he swallowed; it had been better wished as to this quick and precipitous pleasure, especially in such natures as mine that have the fault of being too prompt. To stay its flight and delay it with preambles: all things —a glance, a bow, a word, a sign, stand for favour and recompense ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... in which the greatest poets only can succeed. Everything is definite, significant, and picturesque. His early writings resembled the gigantic works of those Chinese gardeners who attempt to rival nature herself, to form cataracts of terrific height and sound, to raise precipitous ridges of mountains, and to imitate in artificial plantations the vastness and the gloom of some primeval forest. This manner he abandoned; nor did he ever adopt the Dutch taste which Pope affected, the trim parterres, and the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have been a very ancient custom, which the Ptolomies revived in Egypt. At any rate here is the picture of the Family in its patriarchal form, wholly separated from other connections and set apart by itself, on the brass-bound precipitous island. The Family is abstracted from the rest of the world and given ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... war. A deep, and, to an army, impassable swamp borders it below, and the same is the case above the Bayou Pierre. To land an army at such a place, when its only means of marching upon the country was through this narrow cut, of about one hundred feet in width, with high, precipitous sides, forming a complete defile for half a mile, and where five thousand men could have made its defence good against fifty thousand, is certainly as little evidence of military genius as was the permission of them to pass through it without an ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... we turned to the right and sauntered slowly along the soft dusty road. It was dark. As my eyes grew gradually accustomed to the darkness, I began to distinguish the silhouettes of the old gaunt oaks and lime trees which bordered the road. The jagged, precipitous cliffs, intersected here and there by deep, narrow ravines and creeks, soon showed indistinctly, a black streak on the right. Low bushes nestled by the hollows, looking like sitting figures. It was uncanny. I looked sideways suspiciously at the ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... turned to Paul with a radiant face that made him long to catch her in his arms—"do you know that wonderful country? Those fissured peaks, with their precipitous and inaccessible crests—their rock-cumbered valleys, concealing deep and lovely lakes? And the beautiful pine-woods creeping down to the foot of the mountains? I could spend all my life in that wonderful place, living in some ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... Chinese esteem it highly, and generally pay, according to its scarcity or abundance, eight, nine, and sixteen pesos per cate, which contains twenty-one onzas. They are very difficult to gather, for the birds always build them in craggy locations, in whose tortuous and precipitous caverns they are only obtained by descending a rope. Some are obtained by climbing up bamboos, finding a rest for the feet on the knots, which are left with large projections for that purpose. So dangerous evolutions cost even broken arms and legs, and sometimes ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... he ran until he had covered a goodly number before his strength began to fail. At length he was panting so that each hissing breath was a stab, and his eyesight grew dim. He plunged, almost headlong, down the precipitous side of a ravine and at its bottom, fell, face downward, into the cool waters of a rippling brook. How deliciously refreshing were the two or three great gulps that he swallowed. How the life-giving fluid thrilled his whole frame! If he could only lie there as long as he chose and drink his ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... School with its Fourth Form Room, of which one had heard so much that the actual sight of it made one half inclined to laugh and half to cry with surprise and disappointment. There was the twisting High Street, with its precipitous causeway; there was the faithful presentment of the fashionable "tuck-shop," with two boys standing in the road, and the leg of a third caught by the camera as he hurried past; and, wandering through all these scenes in the album as one had wandered through them in real life, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... the exquisite finish of its workmanship. Happily, it has wit enough to build its pensile nest high above the reach of small boys, usually suspending it from a branch overhanging running water that threatens too precipitous a bath ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... water's edge and the foot of the great cliff whose top was crowned by the citadel. Where the shoulder of the promontory swept around toward the St. Charles, the slope became more gentle, and there the houses and streets began to clamber toward the summit. Streets that found themselves growing too precipitous had a way, then as now, of changing suddenly into flights of stairs. The city walls, grimly bastioned, ran in bold zigzags across the face of the steep in a way to daunt assailants. Down the hillside, past the cathedral and the college, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... here; and Hugh supposed that this road, which seemed the only track into the valley, was of so forbidding a steepness that it had not occurred to any one to settle there. The road became more and more precipitous, and at the very bottom, having descended nearly three hundred feet, Hugh found himself in a very beautiful place. He thought he had never seen anything more sweetly, more characteristically English. On one side was a rough field, encircled by forest on all sides; ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... an almost unbroken ascent to its hight of seven thousand feet. This was the finest single prospect of our journey; but we gladly left it, after a short pause, to push on to the warmth and sunshine of the valley below. The precipitous descent was soon accomplished; we forded the Eurotas, a broad, clear, shallow stream, the only real river we saw in Greece, and stood in Sparta, its site marked by a group of low hills and a few unimportant ruins. The ground is good, and was then green with ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... the sixth day they were passing through a deep and narrow ravine—a mere crack between two precipitous, heavily wooded mountains—when the Indian stopped short in his tracks and uttered a warning "Ugh!" then bent ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... cherished a hope that his victims would find an opportunity to escape while filling our water-barrels, but Wolf Larsen had selected his spot well. The Ghost lay half-a-mile beyond the surf-line of a lonely beach. Here debauched a deep gorge, with precipitous, volcanic walls which no man could scale. And here, under his direct supervision—for he went ashore himself—Leach and Johnson filled the small casks and rolled them down to the beach. They had no chance to make a break for liberty in ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... congratulation, and health-pouring goblets of beer lifted in air. Then they stepped into the moonlight again, and heard only the solemn organ stops of the cataract. Through garden-ground they were led by the little maid, their guide, to a small pavilion that stood on the edge of the precipitous shore, and commanded a perfect view of the falls. As they entered this pavilion, a youth and maiden, clearly lovers, passed out, and they were left alone with that sublime presence. Something of definiteness ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the pass as already shown, were high and precipitous, so that there was no possibility of escape except by going backward or forward. Furthermore, the canyon, as it must have been at some distant day, wound in and out in such a fashion that there were many places where it was impossible to see more than a hundred yards in ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... us still traveling down the fiumara, which here is about one hundred yards broad. The granite hills on both sides were less precipitous, and the borders of the torrent-bed became natural quays of stiff clay, which showed a water-mark of from twelve to fifteen feet in height. In many parts the bed was muddy, and the moist places, as usual, caused accidents. I happened to be ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... thousands were struggling to get over the Pass. Women and children and dogs and Indians constituted the human octopus spread out over the snow at the mouth of the Dyea Canyon, which is the entrance to the Pass. Rearing above them was the white precipitous peak over which every pound of their gear and food had ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... now that the jacket was removed, the mule journeyed on very peaceably, till leaving the plain we began to ascend a precipitous mountain-side, the track each moment growing more and more sterile,—if it were possible—grand, and at the same time dangerous. And now it was that we began to see the qualities of the mules in the cautious way they picked their steps, ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... previously to opening the northern road, it was desirable to clear the summit, at least partly, of trees, a work which was accomplished after considerable labour—the trees having been very large. On removing the lofty forest, I found the view from that summit extended over a wild waste of rocky precipitous ravines, which debarred all access or passage in any direction, until I could patiently trace out the ridges between them, and for this purpose I ascended that hill on ten successive days, the whole of which time I devoted to the examination of the various outlines ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... strong was the opinion that these were either Algerines or Tunisians that, for the last three or four days, none of the fishing craft had ventured to put to sea. They were able to tell but little as to the bays along the coastline, which they described as very rugged and precipitous. Five or six little streams ran, they knew, down from the mountains. They thought the most likely places for corsairs to rendezvous would be in a deep indentation north of Cape Bellavista, or behind Cape Comino. If not at these places, they might meet in the great bay at whose ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... with extensive tracts of pitch-pine, checkered with small patches of the quivering aspen. Lower down were thick forests of firs and red cedars, growing out in many places from the very fissures of the rocks. The mountains were broken and precipitous, with huge bluffs protruding from among the forests. Their rocky recesses and beetling cliffs afforded retreats to innumerable flocks of the bighorn, while their woody summits and ravines abounded with bears and black-tailed ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the slope on the other side; they call it "eternal," but I question whether it will survive the heats of autumn. Beyond a brace of red-legged partridges, I saw no birds whatever. This group of Pollino, descending its seven thousand feet in a precipitous flight of terraces to the plain of Sibari, is an imposing finale to the Apennines that have run hitherward, without a break, from Genoa and Bologna. Westward of this spot there are mountains galore; but no more Apennines; no more limestone precipices. The ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... brigade which Sir Robert commanded entered the pass on the 12th of October. The Ghilzies were posted behind a breastwork near the middle of the pass; and as the assailing body approached, the enemy withdrew from this position, and occupied the steep and precipitous ridges of the mountains on either side, from whence they opened a well-directed fire. General Sale was wounded in the ankle and obliged to leave the field; and Lieutenant-colonel Dennie then took ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... turn of the road and overhanging a precipitous hollow, in the spring carpeted with bloodroot, but now thick with dead leaves, lay a giant oak, long ago struck down by lightning. The branches had been cut away, but the blackened trunk remained, and from it as vantage point one received another great view of the rolling mountains and the valleys ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... has urged him fainting on his weary way to drink one draught before he dies: this is the camel's grave. Situated half way between Korosko and Abou Hammed, the well of Moorahd is in an extinct crater, surrounded upon all sides but one by precipitous cliffs about 300 feet high. The bottom is a dead flat, and forms a valley of sand about 250 yards wide. In this bosom of a crater, salt and bitter water is found at a depth of only six feet from the surface. To this our tired camels frantically ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... master everywhere, but with gradations, according to the persons he was with. He had a kind of familiarity which sprang from liberty, but he was not without a strong dash of that ancient barbarism of his country, which rendered all his actions rapid; nay, precipitous, his will uncertain, and not to be constrained or contradicted in anything. Often his table was but little decent, much less so were the attendants who served, often too with an openness of kingly audacity everywhere. What he proposed to see or ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... long since he had first found the cave, that he could not lead them there in the dark, but would need daylight to enable him to recognize the surroundings. Even when daylight came he was for some time at fault, but he at last pointed to a clump of bushes, growing on a broken and precipitous face of rock, as the place where ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... only strikingly desolate, but connected also with wild and supernatural terrors. From the position of the glen itself, a little within which it stood, it enjoyed only a very limited portion of the sun's cheering beams. As the glen was deep and precipitous, so was the morning light excluded from it by the northeastern hills, as was that of evening by those which rose between it and the west. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a spot marked by a character of such utter solitude and gloom. Naturally barren, ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... now in picturesque ruins, on the shore of Lough Erne, in the County Donegal. The narrator of the incident was "a knowledgable woman," who dwelt in an apology for a cabin, a thatched shed placed against the precipitous side of the glen almost beneath the castle. The wretched shelter was nearly concealed from view by the overhanging branches of a large tree and by thick undergrowth, and seemed unfit for a pig-pen, but, though her surroundings were poor beyond description, ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... was that the Greeks were thus specially stimulated beyond their brethren we do not know. It has long been one of the commonplaces of history to declare them the result of their environment. It is pointed out that in Greece they lived amid precipitous mountains, where, as hunters, they became strong and venturesome, independent and self-reliant. A sea of islands lay all around; and while an open ocean might only have awed and intimidated them, this ever-luring prospect of shore beyond shore ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... glare, and now cast his eye aloft at the shortened sail. While Staniford stood questioning whether she meant to say anything more, or whether, having discharged her conscience of an imagined offense, she had now reached one of her final, precipitous silences, Captain Jenness suddenly approached them, and said to him, "I guess you'd better ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... wild torrents fiercely glad! Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth,[166] Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, For ever shattered, and the same for ever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam? And who commanded—and the silence came— Here let the ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... to go with them and bring back the boat. They went, in a wagon, to a place very near the landing, at the pond. The landing was in a small cove, surrounded by forests. The cove opened out into the pond by two points of land, rocky and precipitous, and crowned with evergreen trees. The water was smooth, and the whole scene highly picturesque. When Marco came in sight of it, he was much pleased with the prospect of a voyage on such a ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... half-crazed priest from out beyond the borders of Afghanistan, who sat on a slab of stone by the river-bank and preached a djehad. But above all it was the road—Linforth's road. It came winding down from the passes, over slopes of shale; it was built with wooden galleries along the precipitous sides of cliffs; it snaked treacherously further and further across the rich valley of Chiltistan towards the Hindu Kush, until the people of that valley ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... of the wallabie burrow in the ground like rabbits, and are dug out. The large rock-wallabies are speared by the natives creeping upon them stealthily among the rugged rocks which they frequent, on the summits of precipitous heights which have craggy ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... The fertile slope trending northwards from the Balkans to the Danube is for the most part gradual and broken by hills; the eastern portion known as the Deli Orman, or "Wild Wood," is covered by forest, and thinly inhabited. The abrupt and sometimes precipitous character of the Bulgarian bank of the Danube contrasts with the swampy lowlands and lagoons of the Rumanian side. Northern Bulgaria is watered by the Lom, Ogust, Iskr, Vid, Osem, Yantra and Eastern Lom, all, except the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the Castle Hill, which King Charles pronounced the finest in his dominion, commands a prospect that cannot fail to interest. Below, the river winds like a thing of life; around, are wave- like sweeps of country, red and green, broken by precipitous rocks into a succession of natural terraces, many of which, being higher than the town itself, ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... flight, they reached the bottom of Hartley-nick, a pass very steep and craggy, and where the road, or rather path, which had hitherto passed over more open ground, became pent up and confined betwixt copsewood on the one side, and, on the other, the precipitous bank of a ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... trees, and luxuriant ferns, and great stones, and fragments of ruins down towards the bottom of the chasm. The noise of falling water increased as we went on, and at length, after some scrambling and several sharp turns, we found ourselves with a nearly precipitous wall on each side, clothed with shrubs and ivy, and creeping things of the vegetable world. Up this cleft there was no advance. The head of it was a precipice down which shot the stream from the vale above, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... there the rays of the fierce sun could find their way. The turf beneath, unincumbered with any smaller growth of tree or shrub, was sprinkled with flowers that love the shade. The upper limit of this level space was bounded by precipitous rocks, up which ascent seemed difficult or impossible, and the lower by similar ones, to descend which seemed equally ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... free from rain, and instead of having a chance to run rapids, it seemed as if we had spent an entire week in carrying our loads, or in lining our boats through the canyon. The canyon walls lost much of their precipitous character as we neared ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... a more gradual and less precipitous descent, he fixes his eye on some distant point in the earth beneath him, and thither bends his course. He is still almost meteoric in his speed and boldness. You see his path down the heavens, straight as a line; if near, you hear the rush of his wings; his shadow hurtles across ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... roasted they did not return, so we ate our supper and prepared to take our rest. The moon, by this time, had risen high in the sky, and was shedding her beams on the precipitous side of the valley a little way below us. I was on the point of dropping off to sleep, Mudge having agreed to keep watch, when I was aroused by a ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... movable anvil, and other smith's tools; three guns, with two or three sacks and barrels, were disposed against the wall of rock, under shelter of the superincumbent crag; a dirk and two swords, and a Lochaber axe, lay scattered around the fire, of which the red glare cast a ruddy tinge on the precipitous foam and mist of the cascade. The lad, when he had satisfied his curiosity with staring at Lady Staunton, fetched an earthen jar and a horn-cup, into which he poured some spirits, apparently hot from the still, and ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... this holiday was complete escape from all she had had before, she wanted the rest of complete contrast. Being admired, being dogged, wasn't contrast, it was repetition; and as for originals, to find herself shut up with two on the top of a precipitous hill in a medieval castle built for the express purpose of preventing easy goings out and in, would not, she was afraid, be especially restful. Perhaps she had better be a little less encouraging. ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... 13 deg. 38' S., 76 deg. 28' W. The largest of the group, known as the North Island or Isla del Norte, is only four-fifths of a mile in length, and about a third in breadth. They are of granitic formation, and rise from the sea in precipitous cliffs, worn into countless caves and hollows, which furnish convenient resting-places for the sea-fowl. Their highest points attain an elevation of 113 ft. The islands have yielded a few remains of the Chincha Indian ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... glimmered the domes of the Sacre-Coeur, looking down in symbolic silence upon the restless city; to the left stretched the rue Ronsard, with its deserted market and lonely pavement; to the right, the Escalier de Sainte-Marie, picturesque as its name, wound its precipitous way apparently to the very stars, while at their feet, creeping upward to the threshold of the church, was the plantation of rocks, trees, and holly bushes that in the mysterious darkness seemed aquiver with a thousand ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... was with his own ranks and marshaled them for war. This pass, the Cilician "Gates", [Footnote: Compare Xenophon's Anabasis, I, 4, 4-5.] is so named on account of its narrowness. On the one side rise precipitous mountains, and on the other sheer cliffs descend to the sea. So Niger had here made a camp on a strong hill, and he put in front heavy-armed soldiers, next the javelin slingers and stone throwers, and behind all the ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... Sinigaglia to Rimini, and not till the eighth that the basin of the Po, became incorporated with Italy. The ancient boundary of Italy on the north was not the Alps but the Apennines. This mountain-system nowhere rises abruptly into a precipitous chain, but, spreading broadly over the land and enclosing many valleys and table-lands connected by easy passes, presents conditions which well adapt it to become the settlement of man. Still more suitable in this ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... brake, he began to coast down the hill, which opened gently only to turn without notice into something scandalously precipitous. The bicycle had been hired in Keswick, and had had a hard season's use. The brake gave way at the worst moment of the hill, and Faversham, unable to save himself, rushed to perdition. And by way of doubling his misfortune, ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... excruciating, intense, subtile, violent; biting, sarcastic, acrimonious, acrid, cutting; sagacious, clever, perspicacious, ingenious, bright, discerning, resourceful, astute, shrewd, apt, smart, long-headed, acuminous; fierce, fiery, unquenchable, eager; exacting, close; steep, abrupt, precipitous; pungent, piquant peppery, high-seasoned: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Mackay and those of his men who could handle an oar rowed unceasingly. Again and again he threw out his twenty-fathom line, but in vain. He made out a dim line of precipitous cliffs, yet the water seemed fathomless—the only map in existence was a rough one that Stanley had made. At last the lead touched bottom at fourteen fathoms. In the dim light of dawn they rowed and sailed toward ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... seen the manoeuvre also, and flung his small body of cavalry at them with such force that they drew back, trying to retreat by the winding track through the mountains. Again they were intercepted, this time being forced to the edge of a precipitous cliff. ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... again, you will see that on each side of the Irrawaddy, running north and south, are mountain ranges called "yomas" (or back-bones, as the word means), which divide the country, while other large rivers, such as the Sittang and Salween, flowing in deep, precipitous valleys, render any communication with Siam difficult. On the north-west similar ranges of hills form a barrier between Burma and the frontier provinces of India, and when I tell you that all these mountains are densely covered with forest and jungle, and ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... at the neat little post-house—to reach which without a most tremendous round we had to climb up a really precipitous path, so called, over the stones and rocks in front of the inn—new dismay awaited us. The postmaster was a very old man, but of a very different type from our host. He was sorry to disappoint us, but the mail only stopped here ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales, the Princess of Wales, and all the Royal Family'—the indispensable atom of English in the service—so that he, the expert, had held his breath while they groped and stumbled along the precipitous pass. Now the whilom Gabbai and Town Councillor found himself almost patronized—as a poor provincial—by this mincing, genteel clerical couple. He retorted by animadverting upon ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... Beneath Columbia's skies, are here combin'd. The wide extended landscape glows with more Than common beauty. Hills rise on hills— An amphitheater, whose lofty top, The spreading oak, or stately poplar crowns— Whose ever-varying sides present such scenes Smooth or precipitous—harmonious still— Mild or sublime,—as wake the poet's lay; Nor aught is wanting to delight the sense; The gifts of Ceres, or Diana's shades. The eye enraptur'd roves o'er woods and dells, Or dwells complacent on the numerous signs Of cultivated life. The laborer's decent cot, Marks the clear ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... first chance, on such ground, for active participation. The picture, from the hand of a French painter, M. Lefevre, and of but slightly scanter extent than the work of Mr. Cole, represented in frank rich colours and as a so-called "view in Tuscany" a rural scene of some exuberance, a broken and precipitous place, amid mountains and forests, where two or three bare-legged peasants or woodmen were engaged, with much emphasis of posture, in felling a badly gashed but spreading oak by means of a tense rope attached to an upper limb and at which they pulled together. "Tuscany?—are ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... shore would lay down the hammer to gaze after him as he passed abstractedly before their huts, his hair streaming in the salt breeze, his feet crushing the scattered seaweed, his eyes dreamily fixed upon the purple heights of the precipitous crags." ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... these Protean creatures, which seem fitted only for an aquatic existence, should be so much at home on land, so ably using their queer wings as substitutes for legs that they can run up or down high and precipitous slopes with the swiftness ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
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