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Cataract   Listen
noun
Cataract  n.  
1.
A great fall of water over a precipice; a large waterfall.
2.
(Surg.) An opacity of the crystalline lens, or of its capsule, which prevents the passage of the rays of light and impairs or destroys the sight.
3.
(Mach.) A kind of hydraulic brake for regulating the action of pumping engines and other machines; sometimes called dashpot.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cataract" Quotes from Famous Books



... soul and body of Ra, he was the beneficent Spirit of all spirits, he was himself the celestial food on which the Doubles in the Other World lived. He was the greatest of the gods in On (Heliopolis), Memphis, Herakleopolis, Hermopolis, Abydos, and the region of the First Cataract, and so. He embodied in his own person the might of Ra-Tem, Apis and Ptah, the Horus-gods, Thoth and Khnemu, and his rule over Busiris and Abydos continued to be supreme, as it had been for many, many hundreds of years. He was the source of the Nile, the north wind sprang ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge

... upon the plain, in foaming torrents; and, increased by the tribute received from the last, the whole came tumbling over the cliffs in various places in rich water-falls. There was about a mile of rock that was one continuous cataract, the sheet being nearly unbroken for the whole distance. The effect of this deluge from the plain above was as startling as it was grand. All the snow along the rocky shore soon disappeared; and the fragments of ice began rapidly to diminish in size, and to crumble. ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... the upper end of the valley were a sight to behold. They were literally covered with beautiful blossoms—malvas, cleomes, asclepiae, and helianthi. We frequently visited this part, making pic-nic excursions to all the places of note in our little dominion. The cataract where the stream dashed over the cliff, the salt spring, and such-like places, formed points of interest; and we rarely failed in any of these excursions to draw some useful lesson from the school of Nature. Indeed, ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... the submersion of the roads would forbid it. Since morning the clouds had gathered again, and by noon they were so heavy that there was every prospect of a torrent. It appeared absurd to choose such a time as this to visit a fountain—a fountain which would be indistinguishable in the general cataract. Nevertheless I took a vow, that if at noon the rain should not have begun to descend upon Avignon I would repair to the head-spring of the Sorgues. When the critical moment arrived the clouds were hanging over Avignon like distended ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... Adair was the second son of the Earl of Maynooth, at that time Governor of one of the Australian Colonies. Adair's mother had returned from Australia to undergo the operation for cataract, and she, her son Ronald, and her daughter Hilda were living together at 427, Park Lane. The youth moved in the best society, had, so far as was known, no enemies, and no particular vices. He had been engaged to Miss Edith Woodley, of Carstairs, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and counterfeit peace in which so many are content to live, and content to die! The world's peace is all well, so long as prosperity lasts—so long as the stream runs smooth, and the sky is clear; but when the cataract is at hand, or the storm is gathering, where is it? It is gone! There is no calculating on its permanency. Often when the cup is fullest, there is the trembling apprehension that in one brief moment it may be dashed to the ground. ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... a full consciousness of where she had drifted. The current had carried her along so far, and she had not been to blame, because she had not comprehended her danger; but now it was different. She was awakening, but she was at the edge of the cataract, and its ominous sounds had ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett

... a scene, where the very mist that rises from the valley seems indolent and lazy, and unwilling to impart the rich perfume of verdure with which it is loaded. Every land has its own peculiar character of beauty. The glaciered mountain, the Alpine peak, the dashing cataract of Switzerland and the Tyrol, are not finer in their way than the long flat moorlands of a Flemish landscape, with its clump of stunted willows cloistering over some limpid brook, in which the oxen are standing ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... had borne To Typho in a craggy cavern's gloom Close on the borders of Eternal Night, A hideous monster, warder of the Gate Of Hades, Home of Wailing, jailer-hound Of dead folk in the shadowy Gulf of Doom. But lightly Zeus' son with his crashing blows Tamed him, and haled him from the cataract flood Of Styx, with heavy-drooping head, and dragged The Dog sore loth to the strange upper air All dauntlessly. And there, at the world's end, Were Caucasus' long glens, where Hercules, Rending Prometheus' chains, and hurling them This ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus

... the hotel. See that the porters send off our luggage by express to the Cataract House, Niagara Falls. They have their orders from me, but do you see that these orders are ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... care to propitiate the evil intelligences which sit upon her horns, plotting mischief to mortals, by liberal gifts of petun, or collars of beads, or ears of maize, or skins of animals. When their feet stood upon the edge of the mighty cataract, then was the most valued dog precipitated, then was the most valued drink poured into the overwhelming torrent, to appease the angry spirit of the abyss. And thus, performing their duties to the Great Master and their fellow-creatures, lived ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... not tamely and drizzingly, but in real earnest, dancing and rebounding from the pools, and raising a mist by the very "crash of water-drops." Now and then the school became silent, just to listen to the wide noise made by the busy cataract of the heavens, each drop a messenger of good, a sweet returning of earth's aspirations, in the form of Heaven's Amen! But the boys thought only of the fun of dabbling in the torrents as they went home; or the delights of net-fishing in the swollen and muddy rivers, when the fish no longer ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... But beyond this moment every second of delay only served to gather the forces that were straining to break the obstruction. He knew that in a very few minutes the rising weight of the flood must either sweep all before it, or flow roaring over the top of the jam in a new cataract that would sweep the island bare. He sprang to his feet, grasped his stick, and scanned the tumbled, precarious surface, choosing his path. Then he turned and looked at the bear, wondering if that animal's woodcraft were subtler ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... general Wolfe in the siege of Quebec: that brigadier-general Prideaux, with a third body, reinforced with a considerable number of friendly Indians, assembled by the influence and under the command of sir William Johnston, should invest the French fort erected at the fall or cataract of Niagara, which was certainly the most important post of all French America, as it in a manner commanded all the interior parts of that vast continent. It overawed the whole country of the Six Nations, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... then to see the famous cataract of Niagara, and I had taken my way through the Indian tribes who inhabit the deserts to the west of the American plantations. My guides were—the sun, a pocket-compass, and the Dutchman of whom I have spoken: the latter understood perfectly five dialects of the Huron ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... the dining-room when this cataract of speech was turned on them by their mother, with every appearance of excitement and gratification. All her usual melancholy apathy was thrown aside; her face was alight with pleasure, her eyes bright with excitement. ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... At the Cataract Club there were three fashion-haunting young men drinking hot Scotches: Dumont, his empurpled skin distended with whiskey and late suppers, and all his former brilliancy and wit cankered and rotten with it, and his slim figure and clean-cut face fattened ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... restored To the gay feast and intellectual board, Shall I once more enjoy with thee and thine Those whims that teach, those follies that refine? Even now, as, wandering upon Erie's shore, I hear Niagara's distant cataract roar, I sigh for home,—alas! these weary feet Have many a mile ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... her hair. She saw the white cascade, the stars wavering in the shaken pool, foam flitting, and high overhead the tall pines on either hand serenely drinking starshine; and in the sudden quiet of her spirit she heard with joy the firm plunge of the cataract in the pool. She scrambled forth dripping. In the face of her proved weakness, to adventure again upon the horror of blackness in the groves were a suicide of life or reason. But here, in the alley of the brook, with the kind stars above her, and the moon presently swimming into sight, she could ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Niagara immediately at the foot of the falls, where the water is quite still, the fallen mass curving under it. We are in precisely the same position with regard to our atmospheric cataract here. If you run back from the cliff fifty yards, you will be in a brisk wind. Now I daresay over the bank is ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... boyhood—of the whole locality, he could never have kept the path. Then the moonlight began to stream up in the east, and between the trees and thickets lay the long, yellow bars of brightness, while all else was still in gloom. Drusus pushed on with confidence, and soon the gurgle of the tiny cataract told him that he was near the old cypress. A few steps more, and a figure rose from out the fern thicket. It was Cornelia. Her hair was tumbling loosely over her shoulders; she wore a soft, light-blue dress that covered her arms and her feet. In the moonlight ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... had acquired a grand, free-handed way of manipulating treasure. Instead of lifting the magnificent jewels carefully from the casket, he tumbled them out like a gorgeous cataract of light and colour, by the simple process of turning ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... matter: I'm only too glad to be rid of it. The shopman told me it was in the best taste; but when my poor old nurse Martha got cataract, Bunny said it was a merciful provision of Nature to prevent her seeing ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw

... widening waters seemed to weep, All fountains sobbed and gurgled as they sprang, Somewhere a cataract cried out in its leap Sheer down a headlong steep; High over all ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... slender prints made by the captive, lightly pressed. These tracks followed the curving bar, along the water's edge. They reached to the foot of the cliff, close to where was the outer edge of the cataract. ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... green patches became more numerous, until the level was covered with nothing else. In one place, he almost thought he caught a gleam of golden buttercups. The verdure crept up the snow-clad slopes, hundreds and thousands of feet; and here and there, beside some foaming little cataract tumbling down from a glacier-fed stream, a rhododendron glowed like a rosy flame. They passed the last island, covered with a copse of willows as high as a tall man's head, and came into an open stretch of water bordered by rolling pasture lands, filled ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... time far from being easy, his humane and charitable disposition was constantly exerting itself. Mrs. Anna Williams, daughter of a very ingenious Welsh physician, and a woman of more than ordinary talents and literature, having come to London in hopes of being cured of a cataract in both her eyes, which afterwards ended in total blindness, was kindly received as a constant visitor at his house while Mrs. Johnson lived; and after her death, having come under his roof in order to have an operation upon her eyes ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... ship reach Chennu with the prisoners, but, by a secret order to the captain, pass the quarries in the night, and hasten on as fast as possible as far as Ethiopia. From Suan,—[The modern Assuan at the first cataract.]—the prisoners may be conducted through the desert to the gold workings. Four weeks or even eight may pass before it is known here what has happened. If Ameni attacks thee about it, thou wilt be very angry at this oversight, and canst swear by all the Gods of the heavens and of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... came, they cut away my tallest Pines— My dark tall Pines, that plumed the craggy ledge— High o'er the blue gorge, and all between The snowy peak and snow-white cataract Fostered the callow eaglet; from beneath Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn The panther's roar came muffled while I sat Down ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... purchase a ticket for each grown person, at the price of half a franc each. This expenditure admitted us into the sacristy, where we were taken in charge by a guide, who came down upon us with an avalanche or cataract of French, descriptive of a great many treasures reposited in this chapel. I understood hardly more than one word in ten, but gathered doubtfully that a bullet which was shown us was the one that killed the late Archbishop of Paris, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... On the ocean wide and roomy Them no evil shall assail. Thou, who every secret knowest, Foutsa, hear my heart-felt pray'r; Thou, who earth such favour showest, How shall I thy praise declare? Through ten million calaps {18} hoary If with cataract's voice I roar, Yet of Foutsa's force and glory I may not the sum out-pour Whosoe'er the title learning Of the earth's protector high, Shall, whene'er his form discerning, On it gaze with steadfast ...
— Targum • George Borrow

... from their cottage and sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot, where, in contemplation of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared. Alas! they had quitted their security and fled right into the pathway of destruction. Down came the whole side of the mountain in a cataract of ruin. Just before it reached the house the stream broke into two branches, shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed the whole vicinity, blocked up the road and annihilated everything in its dreadful course. Long ere the thunder ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... time for more. Above them broke a new and more terrible storm. A ball of fire shot from the cloud into the sea; it was followed by a crash that seemed to shake the earth. A cataract of rain descended. From the northeast there swooped upon them a wind to which the gale of an hour before seemed a zephyr. It drove the boat before it as if she had been the bird from which she took her name. It piled wave on wave until ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... asked of God was to escape their trampling hoofs, and though he gained he dug the rowel and plied the quirt, unmindful of what he did. On they came; the chorus of their fear swelled like the voice of a mighty cataract, the pound, pound, pound of their hoofs ringing like ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... stroke of genius, no less, and every member of the Clan looked upon Jean with respect bordering upon awe. At the point where the lake emptied into the burn there were loose rocks, about which the water rushed in a swift cataract, but, below, the current flowed more gently toward the fall. It was deep only in spots where the trout loved to hide, but it was not a stream anywhere in its course upon which one would launch a boat for pleasure. The rocks were so near the surface that the weight of ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... presents them to view!— The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild-wood, And every loved spot which my infancy knew! The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that stood by it; The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell; The cot of my father, the dairy-house nigh it; And e'en the rude bucket that hung in the well,— The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... undirected in their course by human industry, preserved in them a constant moisture. It was rare to meet with flowers, wild fruits, or birds, beneath their shades. The fall of a tree overthrown by age, the rushing torrent of a cataract, the lowing of the buffalo, and the howling of the wind, were the only sounds which broke ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... constant succession of rapids and small cascades, at every one of which the bluffs grew lower, or the bed of the river became more on a level with the plains. At the distance of two and one-half miles he arrived at another cataract, of twenty-six feet. The river is here six hundred yards wide, but the descent is not immediately perpendicular, though the river falls generally with a regular and smooth sheet; for about one-third of the descent ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... the guide. "A cataract in an underground water course. These courses have cut channels all through the limestone ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin

... lead Of mean desires and everyday's Poor thoughts and customary ways. Sometimes in lands where mountains throw Their silent spell on all below, Drawing a magic circle wide About their feet on every side, Robbed of all speech and thought and act, I have seen God in the cataract. In falling water and in flame, Never at rest, yet still the same, God shows himself. And I have known The swift fire frozen into stone, And water frozen changelessly Into the death of gems. And I Long sitting by the thunderous mill Have seen the headlong wheel made ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley

... by Ruysdael. But to paint the actual play of hue on the reflective surface, or to give the forms and fury of water when it begins to show itself—to give the flashing and rocket-like velocity of a noble cataract, or the precision and grace of the sea wave, so exquisitely modeled, tho so mockingly transient—so mountainous in its form, yet so cold-like in its motion—with its variety and delicacy of color, when every ripple and wreath has some peculiar passage of reflection upon itself ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... inhabitants were at all deaf. I conversed with several, and was as easily heard by them as I heard them. The mist that rises from this fall of water may be seen much farther than the noise can be heard. After this cataract the Nile again collects its scattered stream among the rocks, which seem to be disjoined in this place only to afford it a passage. They are so near each other that, in my time, a bridge of beams, on which the whole Imperial army passed, was laid over ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo

... House, utterly stunned by the uproar of the wind among the trees on the other side of the valley. Sometimes, we would have it it was like a sea, but it was not various enough for that; and again, we thought it like the roar of a cataract, but it was too changeful for the cataract; and then we would decide, speaking in sleepy voices, that it could be compared with nothing but itself. My mind was entirely preoccupied by the noise. I hearkened to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... her slimy deck, where the dead are corrupting below; Where the dense-starr'd flag is borne at the head of the regiments, Approaching Manhattan up by the long-stretching island, Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance, Upon a door-step, upon the horse-block of hard wood outside, Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good game of base-ball, At he-festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironical license, bull-dances, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... grade. That will give us a downhill pull on all heavy freight." "Sounds as simple as a pair of suspenders, doesn't it?" inquired Slater. "But wait till you see it. The gorge below Niagara is stagnant water compared with the cataract above those glaciers. It takes two looks to see the top of the mountains. And those glaciers themselves—Well! Language just gums up and sticks when ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... What a cataract of animal spirits! I am afraid, Hephaestus, that you do not escape, even here, from the echoes ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse

... man to visit the cataract was Dr. Livingstone, who named it in honor of his Queen. This was in 1855. For untold years the natives of the region had trembled at its fury. They called it Mois-oa-tunga, which means "Smoke That Sounds." When you see the falls you can readily understand ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... Senegal; this tree is most beautiful, always green and in blossom, but bearing no fruit whatever. On the back of the village there is a foundery for casting iron; at a little distance on the river there is a cataract, not quite so high as the Feloups. I took guides to shew me the right road. Departed early; at noon arrived at Soubacarra, passed Tacoutalla; crossed there a small rivulet; farther on crossed another, and stopped at Sirecaime, a village situated between ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park

... moving scene there followed what Mr. Gladstone himself described as the first period of comparative leisure he had ever known, extending to four and a half months. They were marked first by increasing blindness, then by an operation for cataract, and finally by a moderate return of sight. In July he notes that "during the last months of partial incapacity I have not written with my own hand probably so much as one letter a day." In this faded packet of mine lies one of these rare letters, written ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... minute hanging on, and waiting for resolution to come back to us after the shock of grounding. On the weather side the seas struck and curled over the brig with a noise like thunder, and the force of countless tons. They came over the top of the deck-house in a cataract of solid water, and there was a crash, crash, crash of rending wood, as plank after plank gave way before that stern assault. We could feel the deck-house itself quiver, and shake again as we stood with our backs against it, and at last it moved so much that we knew it ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... not. The effendi knows that the descendant of a hundred tigers was laughing at the funny little story, of how the two cotton-mills that Claridge Pasha built were burned down all in one night, and one of his steamers sent down the cataract at Assouan. A knock-down blow for Claridge Pasha, eh? That's all you thought of, wasn't it? And it doesn't matter to you that the cotton-mills made thousands better off, and started new industries ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... glorious valley, bowl-shaped, green with grass and groves of aspen and fir, and flooded with a cataract of sunshine. All about it ran a rim of lofty summits, purple in shadow, garnet and gold and green in the sun. Here and there a prospect-hole showed like a scar, or a gray, dismantled stamp-mill stood ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... four visits to an oculist, and at the last visit the redness was nearly gone,—as it ought to have been by that time. The specialist called my complaint conjunctivitis, but that did not make it feel any better nor get well any quicker. If I had had a cataract or any grave disease of the eye, requiring a nice operation on that delicate organ, of course I should have properly sought the aid of an expert, whose eye, hand, and judgment were trained to that special ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... confused angry cries rose with them. The troopers struck about them, giving back slowly as they did so. But their efforts were in vain. With a scream of triumph a wild torrent of people broke through between them, leaving them stranded; and rushed in a headlong cataract towards the steps. Bezers was close to us at the time. "S'death!" he cried, swearing oaths which even his sovereign could scarce have equalled. "They will snatch him ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... invited us to accompany them on the first trip over the newly laid track, after its breaking up by the Rebels. It began to rain, in the early morning, pretty soon after we left Washington, and continued to pour a cataract throughout the day; so that the aspect of the country was dreary, where it would otherwise have been delightful, as we entered among the hill-scenery that is formed by the subsiding swells of the Alleghanies. The latter part of our journey lay along ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... except by accident. They are confined by low basaltic banks, which, at the foot, suddenly close in and make the channel about 30 yards wide. It is here the danger lies, as there is a sudden drop and the water rashes through at a tremendous rate, leaping and seething like a cataract. The miners have constructed a portage road on the west side, and put down rollways in some places on which to shove their boats over. They have also made some windlasses with which to haul their boats up hill, notably one at the ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue

... on the deck, with their backs to the poop. The cataract of water which from time to time swept over them from above, fell beyond ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... you must pay me a little more attention," expostulates the teacher. "What does the operation for cataract resemble in a familiar point ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... arch of the boulders below was shaped so peculiarly that the scent of her breath and body was sucked into a cavity and carried down-stream, and, passing beneath the stone, mingled, at the raging cataract near the rock, with air in the bubbles formed by the tumult of the waters. These bubbles, instead of bursting, were drawn into the vortex of a little whirlpool; and the keen-nosed hounds, though suspicious, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... shook his head sadly, and Shivers buried his head on Zoraya's shoulder, pressing his painted cheek close to hers, while the dull roar of the circus, off under the big top, drifted to them faintly, like the sighing of a distant cataract. ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... and the king would treat with the United Provinces as with countries to which they made no pretensions; and to spend the best part of another year in futile efforts to recal that phrase; if all this had been recklessness and haste, then, surely, the most sluggish canal in Holland was a raging cataract, and the march of a glacier ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... familiarly called a Buffalo, exists in vast herds in the prairies of the New World. A mob of them, as a herd is called, is irresistible; destroys everything over which it passes; numbers hundreds of thousands, and rushes like a cataract over the plains, with a noise resembling that of thunder. They are very dangerous animals to attack, hence the sport they afford is more exciting. For graphic pictures of it, I would advise my readers to peruse the pages of Mr. Catlin. They delight ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... Troy begun. Where his wayward waters thundered, roaring o'er the rocky walls, Dusky hunters sat and wondered, listening to the spirits' calls. "Ha-ha!" [76] cried the warrior greeting from afar the cataract's roar; "Ha-ha!" rolled the answer, beating down the rock-ribbed leagues of shore. Now, alas, the bow and quiver and the dusky braves have fled, And the sullen, shackled river drives the droning ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... Island of Elephantine, in the Nile, near Assouan (Syene) is styled in hieroglyphical writing "The Land of the Elephant;" but as it is a mere rock, it probably owes its designation to its form. See Sir GARDNER WILKINSON'S Ancient Egyptians, vol. i. pl. iv.; vol. v. p. 176. Above the first cataract of the Nile are two small islands, each bearing the name of Phylae;—quaere, is the derivation of this word at all connected with the Arabic term fil? See ante, p. 76, note. The elephant figured in the sculptures of Nineveh is universally ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... you're surely not comparing such trifles with a thing like the great Nile Barrage? You were on that for some years, weren't you? Do let's hear something about that. Up by the first cataract, wasn't it? And hadn't you enormous quarries there on the spot? You see, even sitting at home here, I haven't quite lost touch. But you—good Lord! what things you must have seen! Fancy living at—what was the name of the ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer

... sides, and the red-hot fire glowed through these as through the bars of a grate. The main-mast had fallen on the starboard side, and trailed a blackened wreck in the water, causing the unwieldy vessel to lean over heavily. The fire roared like a cataract, and huge volumes of flame-flecked smoke poured up out of the hold, and rolled away in a low-lying black cloud over ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... tower must arise in due majesty; the figures which he introduces must have the costume and character of their age; the piece must represent the peculiar features of the scene which he has chosen for his subject, with all its appropriate elevation of rock, or precipitate descent of cataract. His general colouring, too, must be copied from Nature: The sky must be clouded or serene, according to the climate, and the general tints must be those which prevail in a natural landscape. So far the painter is ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... thought, the bounds of prose, did much to refer her to the realm of fantasy, some fairy-land forlorn; an effect the more marked as the wrapper she appeared hastily to have caught up, and which was somehow both voluminous and tense (flowing like a cataract in some places, yet in others exposing, or at least denning, the ample bed of the stream) reminded me of the big cloth spread in a room when any mess is to be made. She apologized when I said I had come to inquire for Miss Talbert—mentioned (with play ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... But the cataract fell in snowy sheet—the waves hissed round the sable rocks—and the rainbow played on the torrent's foam;—but these possessed not a charm, to rouse to a sense of their beauty, the sad ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... waited but some chance, or act, To shiver the electric spell, And pour in one fierce cataract A rain of blood and fire of hell On Freedom's ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland

... enjoyed remarkably good health. In her old age, she had suffered from a rheumatic stiffness of the joints, which had necessitated the use of a stick, and, eventually, a wheeled chair; but no other ailments attacked her, until, in 1898, her eyesight began to be affected by incipient cataract. After that, she found reading more and more difficult, though she could still sign her name, and even, with some difficulty, write letters. In the summer of 1900, however, more serious symptoms appeared. Her memory, in whose strength ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... He wore no beard, but a short-clipped military moustache, and smoked cigars. As he was always too hot, he used all the year round to wear a canvas coat at home and at the warehouse. He had lately had an operation for cataract. His sight was bad, and he did nothing in the business but talk to the customers and have tea ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... we, also, have known suffering. Because we believe in America—first, last, and always in America—we have stayed here, enduring sneers and contumely, in order that when America speaks it will be like the sound of a rushing cataract—one voice, one heart, but the voice and heart of Humanity. In no other way can America go to war. . . . And until that moment arrives I shall wear this garb of neutrality as proudly as any soldier his ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... restore the proper tone when lost by negligence or disease. The harsh friction of the stiff, "penetrating hair-brush," the scraping of the fine comb, "the 'shampooing' operation of the hairdresser, with his exacerbating compound, a hundred degrees too violent, and his cataract of cold water at the end," are all condemned as injurious, together with the myriad nostrums in the form of oils, pomades, and the like. In dealing with these last, the author is indeed severe, remarking that "generally ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... and plaintive, or brisk and lively, or perhaps even that it is defiant or stirring; but how insensible you are to the delicate shades of its meaning! How hidden is the song in the heart of the composer till he gives you the key! You hear as though you heard not. You hear the thunder, and the cataract, and the crash of the avalanche; but the song of the nightingale, the chirp of the katydid, the murmur of the waterfall never reach you. This cannot be the ultimatum. Music must hold in its own bosom its own interpretation, and man must have in his its corresponding ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... which had some years previously injured the sight of his right eye returned in 1636. In the following year the left eye became similarly affected, with the result that in a few months Galileo became totally blind. His friends at first hoped that the disease was cataract, and that some relief might be afforded by means of an operation; but it was discovered to be an opacity of the cornea, which at his age was considered unamenable to treatment. This sudden and unexpected calamity was to Galileo a most deplorable ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... threatenings and slaughter and making havoc of the church, fell headlong to the earth, as a blinding light burst forth from heaven and the voice of the Lord sounded in his ears—the "still small voice," yet mightier than the roar of any cataract. ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... "I had not the sanction. To know that my work must be lost made me intolerably wretched. I believed in prayer, and to make my appeals pure and strong, like you, my brethren, I went out of the beaten ways, I went where man had not been, where only God was. Above the fifth cataract, above the meeting of rivers in Sennar, up the Bahr el Abiad, into the far unknown of Africa, I went. There, in the morning, a mountain blue as the sky flings a cooling shadow wide over the western desert, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... at all. The mantling of the pools in the rock shadows, with the golden flakes of light sinking down through them like falling leaves, the ringing of the thin currents among the shallows, the flash and the cloud of the cascade, the earthquake and foam-fire of the cataract, the long lines of alternate mirror and mist that lull the imagery of the hills reversed in the blue of morning,—all these things belong to those ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... resounded through the house, and Averil, suppressing a disappointed sigh, allowed Cora to take possession of her arm, and, followed by the two children, became parts of a cataract of people who descended the great staircase, and flowed into a saloon, where ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... down a cataract; the shops were all shut; few of the street lamps were lighted; and there was little except the frequent flashes of lightning to show him his way. When about half the length of Chatham street, which lay in the direction he had ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... result would be no exaggeration of the truth, although we cannot assume that the retrograde movement has been uniform. At some points it may have receded much faster than at present; but in general its progress was probably slower, because the cataract, when it began to recede, must have been nearly ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... first relay of prisoners, including John and Fleury, was hurried into them. A bridge farther down the stream rumbled heavily as the artillery crossed on it. But the French force was coming closer and closer. A shell struck in the river sixty or eighty feet from them and the water rose in a cataract. Some of the prisoners had been put at the oars and they, like the Germans, showed eagerness to reach the other side. John noted the landing, a narrow entrance between thick clumps of willows, and he confessed to himself that he too would feel better ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the way which was visible in front had the appearance of a muddy cataract, through which we must ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... recall her past. The real Egypt is not the vast territory which we find laid down by geographers, reaching to the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and embracing equatorial regions; it is and was, even in the days of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies, the valley of the Nile, from the First Cataract to the Mediterranean Sea, hemmed in by the Libyan and Arabian deserts, whence there came to the rest of the world so much of art, science, and philosophy. The fellah or peasant, he who tills the soil, is of a fine and industrious race, well built, broad chested, and lithe of frame. He is ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... angry. His green robe changed to the black of the sea in a storm, and his voice was as loud as a mountain cataract. Acheloues could be almost as powerful as Hercules when he ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... others slept. On the following morning the party resumed their march, still followed by their pursuer, who hoped to cut off some straggler during the retreat; but no such victim fell in his way. In the course of a day or two the roar of waters, and the ascending mist of the cataract, warned them of their approach to the mighty falls of Niagara; and soon the Oneida party had encamped among the gloomy pines ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... dust increased, enveloping the lower part of the procession, till the black heads and waving arms emerged as if from a maelstrom. The thunder of the drums was like the thunder of a cataract in which the singers, disappearing towards the village, seemed ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... rise, And into reputation multiplies. This prologue finds pat applications In men of all this world's vocations; For fashion, prejudice, and party strife, Conspire to crowd poor justice out of life. What can you do to counteract This reckless, rushing cataract? 'Twill have its course for good or bad, As it, indeed, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... called it Buttermilk Falls. It was a charming spot, notwithstanding its homely name, before the speculative spirit of progress—stern foe of Nature's beauties—had pushed the borders of the city close upon the tiny cataract, hewed down the pines upon its banks, and opened ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown

... into it. Nor is this the worst. As soon as he ceases to write trifles, he begins to write lies; and such lies! A man who has never been within the tropics does not know what a thunderstorm means; a man who has never looked on Niagara has but a faint idea of a cataract; and he who has not read Barere's Memoirs may be said not to know what it is to lie. Among the numerous classes which make up the great genus Mendacium, the Mendacium Vasconicum, or Gascon lie, has, during some centuries, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... us, and dared not touch denizens of the supernal regions. Then from the edge of that dread gulf, we let ourselves descend, like two stars falling from the canopy of heaven, down, down for myriad millions of miles, over many sulphurous rocks, and many a hideous cataract and fiery precipice, where all things bent downwards ever, with impending aspect; yet they all avoided us, except when once I poked my nose out of the veil, there struck me such a stifling and choking stench as would have ended me had he not saved me out of hand with the ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... say— The red-skinn'd Samson could he stray From the happy hunting ground away— Could he behold the stream to-day— The great Kah-nah-jo, where the God Of the Algonquins used to nod In dreamy slumber 'mid the smoke Which from the mighty cataract broke, Hemm'd in by sawmills, booms and piers— The features of a thousand years Of beauty ruthlessly defaced— The landmarks of the past displaced, And little left to tell the story Of Ottawa's departed glory; But water running where it ran When the red deer chase began. 'Twould ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett

... turned them to the south, and afterwards to the west again; on the way, they met with a grand fall one hundred and fifty feet in height, which they named Becket's Cataract. At the head of the glen they found another fall which they estimated at two hundred and thirty feet in height; crossing above this cataract, which was called Bathurst's Fall, the eastern course was ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... endless windings through forest deserts and varying plains, sometimes extending its deep bed, sometimes confining it, reflecting the bending trees and the red painted block houses of solitary towns, and sometimes rushing like a cataract over immense blocks ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... thrilling; but also never emphatic, never affected, never languishing, and never dull. Madame du Deffand herself had a most vigorous flow of language. 'Ecoutez! Ecoutez!' Walpole used constantly to exclaim, trying to get in his points; but in vain; the sparkling cataract swept on unheeding. And indeed to listen was the wiser part—to drink in deliciously the animation of those quick, illimitable, exquisitely articulated syllables, to surrender one's whole soul to the pure and penetrating precision of those phrases, to follow without a breath the happy swiftness ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... assembled at the barrier of l'Etoile, insulted the people passing by in carriages in the grossest manner; some of the wretches on the footsteps exclaiming: 'Next year you shall be behind the carriage and we inside.'" At the close of the year 1788, the stream becomes a torrent and the torrent a cataract. An intendant[5320] writes that, in his province, the government must decide, and in the popular sense, to separate from privileged classes, abandon old forms and give the Third-Estate a double vote. The clergy and the nobles are detested, and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the Moffat-water. The character of the scenery is uncommonly savage; and the earn, or Scottish eagle, has, for many ages, built its nest yearly upon an islet in the lake. Loch-skene discharges itself into a brook, which, after a short and precipitate course, falls from a cataract of immense height and gloomy grandeur, called, from its appearance, the "Grey Mare's Tail." The "Giant's Grave," afterwards mentioned, is a sort of trench, which bears that name, a little way from the foot of the cataract. It has the appearance ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... His fate was like that which may be supposed to have overtaken the first adventurous boatman who rowed from Erie to Ontario. Broad and smooth was the river on which he embarked; rapid and pleasant was his progress; and who was to stay him in his career? Alas for him! the cataract was nigh. He saw, when it was too late, that the tide which wafted him so joyously along was a tide of destruction; and when he endeavoured to retrace his way, he found that the current was too strong for ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... hospital was admirably managed, and was attended by a large number of patients, half of whom were women. The disease moat prevalent in Kabul was ophthalmia, caused by dust, dirt, and exposure, while cataract and other affections of the eye were very common. Dr. Owen, amongst his other many qualifications, excelled as an oculist, and his marvellous cures attracted sufferers from all parts ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... the beginning and end of each reign I drove a three-foot white-pine stake in the turf by the roadside and wrote the name and dates on it. Abreast the middle of the porch-front stood a great granite flower-vase overflowing with a cataract of bright-yellow flowers—I can't think of their name. The vase of William the Conqueror. We put his name on it and his accession date, 1066. We started from that and measured off twenty-one feet of the road, and drove ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... power is a material belief, a blind miscalled force, 192:12 the offspring of will and not of wisdom, of the mortal mind and not of the immortal. It is the headlong cataract, the devouring flame, the tempest's 192:15 breath. It is lightning and hurricane, all that is selfish, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... enters in the garb of an Indian {341} penitent. His strength is nearly exhausted, he has sought his bride all over the earth, and he now demands her from the spirit of the rock and from that of the cataract, but all tell him, that she is only to find where glowing life grows. Tired to death, he draws his sword to end his life, when Tschitralekha laying her hand on his arm, points out the rose-bush. The King kisses it, and falling on his knee beside the virgin who joins ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... spoken hesitantly and cautiously. Now like the epileptic or the mad dog, he burst into a volcanic outpouring in which wild words tumbled upon themselves in a cataract of boiling abandon. His fists were clenched and veins stood out ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... with that which surrounded her now; but so unearthly, that it could not be understood and must not be talked about. Juanita could not be understood here; could Daisy? She felt hurt and troubled and sorry; she did not like to hear such talk, but Gary was about as easy to stop as a cataract. ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner

... constant succession of rapids and small cascades, at every one of which the bluffs grew lower, or the bed of the river became more on a level with the plains. At the distance of two and a half miles he arrived at another cataract of twenty-six feet. The river is here six hundred yards wide, but the descent is not immediately perpendicular, though the river falls generally with a regular and smooth sheet; for about one third of the descent a rock protrudes to a small ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... near the door, the river broke off—poured into the open sea—or fell over a cataract—he did not know what—and he woke up with a sweating start and took his medicine. He was so painstakingly docile about his medicine that Robert Stonehouse guessed he had no faith in it. Sometimes indeed he had an idea that Cosgrave was rather sorry for him, very much as old people are sorry ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... blue chin and the latency of a fine brogue, was either Lysander or Demetrius; Mr. Davidge (also, I surmise, with a brogue) was Bottom the weaver and Madame Ponisi Oberon—Madame Ponisi whose range must have been wide, since I see her also as the white-veiled heroine of The Cataract of the Ganges, where, preferring death to dishonour, she dashes up the more or less perpendicular waterfall on a fiery black steed and with an effect only a little blighted by the chance flutter of a drapery out of which peeps the leg of a trouser and a big ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... from its deep reservoirs, from the mysterious basements of the mountain, wells the silent stream; pauseless and motionless it fills its urn, rises unruffled, glides until the brink is reached, then overflows, and foams, and dashes noisily, a cataract, among the boulders of the hills. Nothing at Vaucluse is more impressive than the contrast between the tranquil silence of the fountain and the roar of the released impetuous river. Here we can realise ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... crossed the trail, and the hot embers burned through their moccasins. Once Jackpine uttered a cry of pain. But Jan's lips were set. Then, above the roar of the flames sweeping down upon the right of them, he caught the low thunder of Dead Man's Whirlpool and the cataract that had made the portage necessary. From the heated earth their feet came to a narrow ledge of rock, worn smooth by the furred and moccasined tread of centuries, with the chasm on one side of them and a wall of rock on the other. Along the ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... the power of nature, embodied in the whirlpool, seemed equal. Neither could gain the mastery. The ship continued to slide around in ever narrowing circles while the big cable of water, forced through the tunnel by the screw, was like a cataract. ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood

... with mad waves and more mutinous spirits, Battled he with the dreadful ache at heart Which tempts, with devilish subtleties of doubt, The hermit, of that loneliest solitude, The silent desert of a great New Thought; Though loud Niagara were to-day struck dumb, Yet would this cataract of boiling life Rush plunging on and on to endless deeps, And utter thunder till the world shall cease,— A thunder worthy of the poet's song, 120 And which alone can fill it with true life. The high ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... happiness on earth . . ." Janina whispered to herself, and it seemed to her that hitherto she had had a cataract blinding her eyes which fate had now brutally torn off. She now saw, but there were moments in which she yearned for her former blindness ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... The cataract of Tequendama, although not the largest in the world, yet affords a very beautiful sight. When swollen by the addition of all the waters of the valley, the river, a little above the Falls, is 175 feet wide, but on entering the defile which appears to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... the bluffs grew lower or that the bed of the river rose nearer to a level with the plains. still pursuing the river with it's course about S. W. passing a continued sene of rappids and small cascades, at the distance of 21/2 miles I arrived at another cataract of 26 feet. this is not immediately perpendicular, a rock about 1/3 of it's decent seems to protrude to a small distance and receives the water in it's passage downwards and gives a curve to the water tho it falls mostly with a regular and smoth sheet. the ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... high over the foreyard, or else trying vainly to poop her; and, when foiled in this, they would dash against her bows with the blow of a battering-ram, or fling themselves bodily on board in an angry cataract that poured down from the forecastle on to the main-deck, flooding the waist up to the height of the bulwarks to leeward, for we heeled over too much to allow of the sea running off through the scuppers, ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... said it was a Kentucky of a place. Sir, this preacher had never visited the western counties of North Carolina. I have spent days of rapture in looking at her scenery of unsurpassed grandeur, in hearing the roar of her magnificent waterfalls, second only to the great cataract of the North; and while I gazed for hours, lost in admiration at the power of Him who by his word created such a country, and gratitude for the blessings He had scattered upon it, I thought that if Adam and Eve, when driven from paradise, had been near this land, they would have thought ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... first rows in the orchestra first, and ripple in laughter back to the standees against the wall, and then with a fine resurgence come again to the rear orchestra seats, and so rise from gallery to gallery till it fell back, a cataract of applause from the topmost rows of seats. He was such a practised speaker that he knew all the stops of that simple instrument man, and there is no doubt that these results were accurately intended from his unerring knowledge. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... gaze, with rapt interest, upon the river when it leaps wildly over the cataract, or sweeps foaming down perilous rapids, or rushes through mountain gorges; but turn away from its quiet beauty when it glides pleasantly along through green savannahs. Such is our interest in life. And so we drop the curtain, and close our ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... accelerating speed. The air throbbed with that most awe-inspiring sound, the guttural murmur of approaching hail. For some minutes the rain descended in drowning sheets. Then the hail smote us like a roaring cataract. The wind was so furious that the wagon tilt was almost torn to pieces. But, as terrifying agencies, these were as nothing to the lightning which appeared to stab the ground so closely and incessantly all around us that escape seemed an impossibility and to the thunder, which kept up a continuous ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... vast plateau region is found, stretching to the Grand River. The mountains of this region are the La Plata Mountains, Bear River Mountains, and San Miguel Mountains on the east, and the Sierra El Late, the Sierra Abajo, and the Sierra La Sal on the west, the latter standing near the brink of Cataract Canyon, through which the Colorado flows immediately below the junction of the Grand and Green. Throughout the region mountains, volcanic cones, volcanic necks, and coulees are found, while the mountains themselves rise ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... along the side of the mountain down which the stream poured in a torrent, unseen till it came roaring out of the forest at the road-side, surging furiously across the road, and disappearing down the tangled wood on the opposite side with the roar of a cataract. A distance of not more than a hundred feet of its course was visible. We heard it coming, saw it rush by us, and heard its awful leap into the depths of the wilderness again. It was the leap of ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood

... long the mysterious black craft would put in an appearance somewhere near this spot. Penrun knew it all too well. There by the cataract of the White River, half a mile across the plateau from the insect city, ...
— Loot of the Void • Edwin K. Sloat

... castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various

... with the finest salmon, more than any other river of Wales; it has a productive fishery near Cilgerran, which is situated on the summit of a rock, at a place called Canarch Mawr, {134} the ancient residence of St. Ludoc, where the river, falling from a great height, forms a cataract, which the salmon ascend, by leaping from the bottom to the top of a rock, which is about the height of the longest spear, and would appear wonderful, were it not the nature of that species of fish to leap: hence they have received ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis

... back with him to the villa, to remain as long as Veranilda should be there. Firm in this purpose he rose with the rising sun, called for his horse, and rode to the bridge. There, looking down at the white cataract, stood ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... with what we suppose is meant for energy. We then have the deathbed of a Christian made as ridiculous as false imagery and false English can make it. But this is not enough. The Day of Judgment is to be described, and a roaring cataract of nonsense is poured forth upon this tremendous subject. Earth, we are told, is dashed into Eternity. Furnace blazes wheel round the horizon, and burst into bright wizard phantoms. Racing hurricanes unroll and whirl quivering fire-clouds. The white waves ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... canon to the south a prodigious river of mist was rushing, a silent cataract of ashy vapor plunging to a soundless beach. Above and beyond it the high peaks shone in radiance so pure that the heart of the lover ached with the pain of its evanescent beauty. It was as if he were looking across a foaming flood upon the stupendous and ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... cold, gray light of the dawning On old Carillon falls, And dim in the mist of the morning Stand the grim old fortress walls. No sound disturbs the stillness Save the cataract's mellow roar, Silent as death is the fortress, Silent ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... a long alarm of which she lost the count; a great explosion. Then that horrible cataract of flame and sparks overhanging the stars as it did before, and ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... asleep. This Giant was about as large as two mammoths. It was useless for Ting-a-ling to stand on the floor, and endeavor to make himself heard above the roaring of the snoring, which sounded louder than the thunders of a cataract. So, climbing upon one of the Giant's boots, he ran up his leg, and hurried over the waistcoat so fast, that, slipping on one of the brass buttons, he came down upon his knees with ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton

... rise of wildfowl spent itself before another and larger flight roared up. It seemed that all the ducks in the world must be a-wing; and yet, even after that, a third body arose, its rush sounding like the abrupt, overwhelming noise of a cataract in a sudden shift of wind. I should be afraid to guess how many ducks had been on that lake. Its surface was literally covered, so that nowhere did a glint of water show. I suppose it would be a simple matter to compute within a few thousand how many ducks ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... bent head, and closed it behind them. The dog lay down weary, but Steenie set about lighting the peats ready piled between the great stones of the hearth. The wind howled over the waste hill in multitudinous whirls, and swept like a level cataract over the ghastly bog at its foot, but scarce a puff blew against the door of ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... a season with which a man cannot trifle; but I imagine that the mid-winter is the best time for seeing the Falls of Montmorency. The water in its fall is dashed into spray, and that spray becomes frozen, till a cone of ice is formed immediately under the cataract, which gradually rises till the temporary glacier reaches nearly half way to the level of the higher river. Up this men climb—and ladies also, I am told—and then descend, with pleasant rapidity, on sledges of wood, sometimes not without an innocent tumble in the ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... waiting with arms extended wide, to fold them all in her embrace. There was now but "one wide river to cross," and the cars rolled on to the bridge. In the distance was heard the roar of the mighty cataract, and now as they neared the center of the bridge, the falls might be clearly seen. Harriet was anxious to have her companions see this wonderful sight, and succeeded in bringing all to the windows, except Joe. But Joe still sat with his head ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford

... a germinal variation, belonging to the same large class as all other biological variations, occurring, for the most part, in the first place spontaneously, but strongly tending to be inherited. It thus resembles congenital cataract, deaf-mutism, the susceptibility to ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... veil, moved from me, and seated herself on a crag above that cleft between mountain and creek, to which, when I had first discovered the gold that the land nourished, the rain from the clouds had given the rushing life of the cataract; but which now, in the drought and the hush of the skies, was but a ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... hair-dresser's window in the Rue Saint Honore. She was gazing at the display of hair with an expression of intense envy. High up in the window was a streaming cascade of long manes, soft wisps, loose tresses, frizzy falls, undulating comb-curls, a perfect cataract of silky and bristling hair, real and artificial, now in coils of a flaming red, now in thick black crops, now in pale golden locks, and even in snowy white ones for the coquette of sixty. In cardboard boxes down below were cleverly arranged ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... River — N. running water. jet, spirt^, spurt, squirt, spout, spray, splash, rush, gush, jet d'eau [Fr.]; sluice. water spout, water fall; cascade, force, foss^; lin^, linn^; ghyll^, Niagara; cataract, rapids, white water, catadupe^, cataclysm; debacle, inundation, deluge; chute, washout. rain, rainfall; serein^; shower, scud; downpour; driving rain, drenching rain, cloudburst; hyetology^, hyetography^; predominance of Aquarius^, reign of St. Swithin; mizzle^, drizzle, stillicidum^, plash; dropping ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... I was helping the sick. It was a case of cataract,' said Miss Delacour. 'I had to hold her hand while the operation went on, otherwise she might have been blind for life. Would you take away a living, breathing person's ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade

... speed of the wind it moved on, till a quick, fresh blast struck the ship and sighed through the rigging. Then a faint breathing of wind succeeded; but far away there rose a low moan like that which arises from some vast cataract at a great distance, whose roar, subdued by distance, sounds faintly, yet ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... one day,' she replied, 'thou wilt come to a stream of fire, with a fiery cataract, and in the fire-fall a rock, and on the rock a fiery hill, and on its top an eagle made of flames, who devours all ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind

... towards the island. The noise was incessant and most tiresome. On walking rapidly into the centre of the island, countless myriads of birds rose shrieking on every side, so that the clangour was absolutely deafening, "like the roar of some great cataract." The voyagers could see no traces of natives, nor of any ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... chance was to run with the storm until the rough edge was taken off, and then heave to. I cried, "All hands down!" as the gale struck us with the force of a thunderbolt, carrying a wall of white water with it which burst over us like a cataract. I thought we were swamped as I clung desperately to the tiller, though thrown violently against the boom. But after the shock, our brave little boat, though half filled, rose and shook herself like a spaniel. The mast bent like a whip-stick, and I expected to see it blown out of her, but, ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... boat, and, giving the boys a hint to tighten the line, he plunged in his arms once more, got well hold, and the next minute, by a dexterous lift, raised the bag, so that its contents came pouring over the edge of the punt in a silvery, glittering cataract of fish, leaping, gliding, and flapping all over the bottom ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... portage which led past the great cataract of Niagara and launched his canoes on Lake Erie. From its south shore, during seven days of heart-breaking labor, the party dragged the canoes and supplies through dense forest and over steep hills until they reached Chautauqua Lake, the waters ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong

... cataract glancing brightly, Dashed and sparkled; and beside Lay a broken marble monster, Mouth and eyes were ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... been the theme of the painter's pencil and the poet's lyre. Never shall I forget the moment when my spirit plunged into the roar and the foam, the thunders and the rainbows of Niagara. I paused involuntarily a hundred paces from the brink of the cataract. I was about to realize one of the magnificent dreams of my youthful imagination. I hesitated and trembled. I felt something of the trepidation, the blissful tremor that agitated my whole being when Ernest asked me into the moonlight garden at Cambridge, and I thought ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... a short day. The engineering feats on these roads are in many cases notable. On the Simplon route a wide mountain stream rushes down over a post-road tunnel, and from within the traveler may see through the gallery-like windows the cataract pouring close beside him down into the valley. On the route that passes the great Rhone glacier, the road ascends a high mountain in a zigzag that, as viewed in front from the valley below, looks like a colossal corkscrew. This road is as well kept as the ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan

... contrivance for regulating the number of strokes made by a steam-engine, is used in Cornwall: it is called the cataract, and depends on the time required to fill a vessel plunged in water, the opening of the valve through which the fluid is admitted being adjustable at the will ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... flash—another roar—then tumbled the great sheeted rain. Like blows of the hammer on the anvil beat it on the water—like the smitings of a mounted host trampled it upon the roof—like the spray flying from the cataract smoked it upon the earth. The fierce elements of fire and air and water were now at the climax of their strife—the dark blended shadow of the banners under which they fought almost blotting out the view. Occasionally glimpses of writhing ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... a frightening thud. Red pieces of glass and streaming water poured in a cataract down across the broncho's eyes as if very doom itself had suddenly cracked. A cataclysm could not have been more horrible. An indescribable fright and awe overwhelmed the brutish mind as ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... and windows, I saw, heavily shuttered. Books lined the walls on every side, and a large desk in the bow window was piled up with volumes, some open, some shut, some showing scraps of paper stuck between the leaves, and all smothered in a general cataract of untidy foolscap and ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood



Words linked to "Cataract" :   waterfall, eye disease, nuclear cataract, posterior subcapsular cataract, cortical cataract, falls, cataract surgery



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