"Expanse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in dense scrubs, and I may say that very few if any explorers have ever before had such a region to traverse. I had managed to penetrate this country up to the present point, and it was not to be wondered at if we all ardently longed for a change. Even a bare, boundless expanse of desert sand would be welcomed as an alternative to the dark and dreary scrubs that surrounded us. However, it appeared evident to me, as I had traversed nothing but scrubs for hundreds of miles from the east, and had found no water of any size whatever in all the distance ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... later starred with mariposas. The meadow was transversely crossed by a curving line of alders that indicated a rare water-course, of which in the dry season only a single pool remained to flash back the unvarying sky. There had been no attempt at cultivation of this broad expanse; wild oats, mustard, and rank grasses left it a tossing sea of turbulent and variegated color whose waves rode high enough to engulf horse and rider in their choking depths. Even the traces of human struggle, the uprooted stakes, scattered fence-rails, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... ceremony of a knock on the door, Mr. Trentman entered a room at the end of the shanty, and there he found Lapelle reclining on a cot. Two narrow slits in a puffed expanse of purple grading off to a greenish yellow indicated the position of Barry's eyes. The once resplendent dandy ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... lay straight across the mesa. Here and there, in the yellow expanse of sand, were patches of green mesquit, where some underground flow came near enough to the surface to slake their thirsty roots. Elsewhere the sand shifted noiselessly across the plain, under the touch of the wind, which fashioned innumerable oddly shaped ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... sinking when I reached the summit of the hill, and the long slopes beneath me were all golden-green on one side and gray shadow on the other. A haze lay low upon the farthest sky-line, out of which jutted the fantastic shapes of Belliver and Vixen Tor. Over the wide expanse there was no sound and no movement. One great gray bird, a gull or curlew, soared aloft in the blue heaven. He and I seemed to be the only living things between the huge arch of the sky and the desert beneath it. The barren scene, the sense ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... was aware of nothing till she woke up with her head on Veronica's shoulder, against which she had fallen, and on which she had been patiently supported for hours. "Ecco Venezia!" cried the old woman, pointing to a swarm of lights that seemed to float upon an expanse of sea. Lydia did not understand; she thought she was again on board the Aroostook, and that the lights she saw were the lights of the shipping in Boston harbor. The illusion passed, and left her heart sore. She issued from the glare of the station upon the quay before it, bewildered ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... liked better than being on night picket duty. Other men shirked it, but to him there was something delightful to stand there almost alone, rifle in hand, watching the expanse of snow for a moving figure. There was a charm in the dead silence. He liked to think quietly of the past and, somehow, he could do so far better, while engaged on this duty, than when lying awake in his little tent. The expanse and stillness calmed him, and agreed far more ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... longer in his favour. His wings lay closely folded to his body, and he moved only by the aid of his webbed feet and the current, which last happened to be sluggish, as the river at this part spread over a wide expanse of level land. The canoe was evidently catching up, and each stroke was bringing the pursuers nearer to ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... emphasising their communion, accept and in a manner exploit the anomaly, treat it perhaps as romantic or possibly even as comic?—show at least that they needn't mind even though the vast table, draped in brown holland, thrust itself between them as an expanse of desert sand. She couldn't cross the desert, but she could, and did, beautifully get round it; so that for him to convert it into an obstacle he would have had to cause himself, as in some childish game or unbecoming romp, to be pursued, to be genially ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... no humour for visitors and, if she had had a chance, would have drawn back behind one of the great trees. But she saw she had been seen and that nothing was left her but to advance. As the lawn at Gardencourt was a vast expanse this took some time; during which she observed that, as he walked beside his hostess, Lord Warburton kept his hands rather stiffly behind him and his eyes upon the ground. Both persons apparently were silent; but Mrs. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... mysterious union with the sea. But the mind must be rightly prepared. Everything depends upon the point of view. One man, as he says in an elaborate figure, looking upon a series of ridges in spring from their northern side, sees a waste of snow, and from the south a continuous expanse of green. That view, we must take it, is the right one which is illuminated by the 'ray divine.' But we must train our eyes to recognise its splendour; and the final answer to the Solitary is therefore embodied in a series ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... shelter of some large palms at the side of the stage she gave the chairman Mrs. Blythe's message, and sat down to wait. The orchestra sounded as if it were miles away. She had often used the expression, a sea of faces. As she looked across the expanse of those upturned before her now, they seemed indeed a sea, and took on a wave-like motion that made her dizzy. Then she happened to glance down at the little signet ring she always wore. "By the bloodstone on her finger" ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... shirt stuffed with spare clothing—was wet also, but the rain was no longer beating down on the canvas. The air inside the tent was pervaded by a foul, acrid stench. I threw the flap aside and looked out. The vast expanse of steely blue was dotted with glittering stars and on the eastern horizon it merged into a faint pallor. The air was deliciously fresh. We got up one by one, yawning, groaning and grumbling, and dressed and went out ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... hills of the Asian mainland, which are red in the early morning, redder in the glow of noon, and pass away in the glorious sunsets through ruby and vermilion into an amethyst haze, deepening into the purple of a tropic night, when the vast expanse of sky which is seen from this high elevation is literally one blaze of stars. Though they are by no means to be seen in perfection, there are here many things that I love,—bananas, poinsettias, papayas, tree-ferns, dendrobiums, dracenas, the scarlet passion-flower, the ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... finds it hiding from the plow amid the strawberries, or under the currant-bushes and grapevines, is the dandelion; yet who would banish it from the meadows or the lawns, where it copies in gold upon the green expanse the stars of the midnight sky? After its first blooming comes its second and finer and more spiritual inflorescence, when its stalk, dropping its more earthly and carnal flower, shoots upward, and is presently crowned by a globe of the most delicate and aerial texture. It is like the poet's dream, ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... Newfoundland, which still remains outside the Dominion of Canada. On the Atlantic the chief indentations which break its shores are the Bay of Fundy (remarkable for its tides), the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and Hudson Bay (a huge expanse of water with an area of about 350,000 square miles); and the Pacific coast, which is small relatively, is remarkably broken up by fjord-like indentations. Off the coast are many islands, some of them of considerable magnitude,—Prince Edward Is., Cape Breton Is., and ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... extent at the superior part of the thighs; the fulness behind their upper part, and on each side of the lower part of the spine, commencing as high as the waist, and terminating in the still greater swell of the distinctly-separated hips; the flat expanse between these, and immediately over the fissure of the hips, relieved by a considerable dimple on each side, and caused by the elevation of all the surrounding parts; the fine swell of the broad abdomen which, soon reaching ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... the tower the sea lay along the sandy beach like a strip of glistening white glass, beyond which was a broader band of greenish blue that did not glitter; and beyond that, the oily water stretched out to westward in an unending expanse of neutral tints, arabesqued with current streaks and struck right across by the dazzling dirty-white blaze of the ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... rolled from his feet westward. Beyond—what? The shining {144} expanse of the fabled South Sea! The Pacific silver in the morning light! A New World of Waters, where the sun's track seemed to pave a new path, a path of gold, to the mystic Orient! Never before had English eyes seen these waters! Never yet English prow cut these ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... him out of the gutter and given him once more a decent place in the world; he felt too that her merited wrath was in some way connected with this present encompassing peril, which seemed to shake the air all about him, to send round and round in a glancing, vanishing vision the expanse of sky overhead, the alarmed faces of the seconds and doctors, and the remoter figures of two stable boys wildly beating off with their caps the gambolling horses that wanted to come and look on. Suddenly came exclamations, sharp and peremptory: 'Enough! ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... started: a human figure, a woman's dress, disturbing here in the desert expanse, had moved in front of him. Sommers hit the horse with his crop and was about to gallop on, when something in the way the woman held herself caught his attention. She was leaning against the wind, her skirt streaming behind her, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... have dropped the Scythian name, and they called the whole northern expanse of Europe and Asia, Sarmatia, and the barbarous inhabitants Sarmatians. About the time of our Saviour, some of these fierce tribes from the banks of the Theiss and the Danube, commenced their assaults upon the frontiers of the Roman empire. This was the signal for that war of centuries, which terminated ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... that behind the laziness was concealed a huge force, an unconquerable force, as yet unconscious of itself, not having, as yet, created for itself clear desires and aims. And the absence of consciousness in this half-somnolent existence cast upon its whole beautiful expanse a shade of melancholy. Submissive patience, the silent expectation of something new and more active was audible even in the call of the cuckoo, as it flew with the wind from the shore, over ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... repairing our drenched and bedraggled condition. The storm, clearing away at about sunset, opened a noble prospect from the porch of the colonel's house, which stands upon a high hill. The sun streamed from the breaking clouds upon the swift and angry Missouri, and on the immense expanse of luxuriant forest that stretched from its banks ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... warm afternoons of the early summer, it is my pleasure to stroll about Washington Square and along the Fifth Avenue, at the hour when the diners-out are hurrying to the tables of the wealthy and refined. I gaze with placid delight upon the cheerful expanse of white waistcoat that illumes those streets at that hour, and mark the variety of emotions that swell beneath all that purity. A man going out to dine has a singular cheerfulness of aspect. Except for his gloves, which fit so well, and which he has carefully ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... with but a few yards between them. They were not half an hour in the saddle when they discovered the spire of the church they were both in search of, rising gracefully above the trees. As they emerged from the forest, they could see stretching before them a broad expanse of hill and dale, wood and field. Scattered here and there were the humble dwellings of the forester and husbandman, and, from their midst, towering above them, like Jupiter among the demigods, stately ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... preferably a grass plot of an oblong form; but an ordinary lawn or expanse of even turf will answer the purpose, so long as it is of sufficient extent for the operations ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... a wide, turf-covered expanse, we should remember that its smoothness, on which so much of its beauty depends, is mainly due to all the inequalities having been slowly levelled by worms. It is a marvellous reflection that the whole of the superficial mould over any such expanse has passed, and will again pass, every few years ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... bordering the north of the Uxbridge Road is a wide expanse of waste land with one or two farms. This part of the Manor of Fulham was leased in 1549 by Bishop Bonner to Edward, Duke of Somerset, under the name of the Manor of Wormholt Barns. Through the attainder of the Duke the Crown eventually obtained possession of it. It passed through ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... desire to form no figure, that the two are taken as one, and set off against the blackness on the other side. It seems as if this were not taken as empty space, but acquired a meaning of its own. The association with pictures in which the empty space is occupied by a deep vista or an expanse of sky is almost irresistible. The case of Exp. VII. seems a little different. S, at least, separates the two fields as usual, but for him also the black space is living, 'corresponds in distance and depth.' It is at least certain ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... flooded his room. Outside the diamond-spangled earth lay still and frost bound. Craig-Ellachie stood out white, silver-crowned, against the blue of the forest. Gavin raised himself on his elbow and looked out at the silent beauty of the night. The great white expanse seemed calling to him to come away and do as his fellow heroes were doing. He ought to be lying in a freezing trench, grasping a rifle instead of skulking in a feather bed wrapped in warm blankets. But indeed the bed had become a very rack to poor Gavin, the blankets smothered him. He tossed ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... from the fires. These were carried across each other so as to keep the fire in, and eight or ten of these brands being laid together in the heart of the brushwood and fanned vigorously a bright flame soon shot up. The men's spirits had sunk as they passed through the wild expanse of swamp and water, but they rose now as the fire burned up. Meat was speedily frying in the flames, and this was eaten as soon as it was cooked, nothing being done with the grain, which they had no means of pounding. They had also brought with them several jars of beer from the village, and these ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... it, Walter had watched the forest with growing amazement. The river seemed to end at its edge, but as he drew closer the reason for the anxiety of the outlaws to prevent his entering it was plain. No horse could travel through that dark, gloomy expanse. It was a floating forest. Great cypress and giant bays reared their mighty stems from the surface of black scummy water. Amongst their boughs bloomed brilliant orchids and from limb to limb stretched tangled masses ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... acting it was very skilfully done. As she led her guests about the house, and then established them on the lawn, beneath the great elms which furnished a grateful shade at this afternoon hour over nearly the whole expanse, she seemed the embodiment of health ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... more remarkable sentinel than this pyramid on which our hero had now taken his station. There it stood, actually the Ultima Thule of this vast continent, or, what was much the same, so closely united to it as to seem a part of our own moiety of the globe, looking out on the broad expanse of waters. The eye saw, to the right, the Pacific; in front was the Southern, or Antarctic Ocean; and to the left was the great Atlantic. For several minutes, both Roswell and Stephen sat mute, gazing on this grand spectacle. ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... twelve it reached the northwest border of the Great Salt Lake. Thence the passengers could observe the vast extent of this interior sea, which is also called the Dead Sea, and into which flows an American Jordan. It is a picturesque expanse, framed in lofty crags in large strata, encrusted with white salt—a superb sheet of water, which was formerly of larger extent than now, its shores having encroached with the lapse of time, and thus at once reduced its breadth ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... moments watched him sliding his white hands into the white kid, and as he did so his feelings took a singular turn. M. de Bellegarde's good wishes seemed to descend out of the white expanse of his sublime serenity with the soft, scattered movement of a shower of snow-flakes. Yet Newman was not irritated; he did not feel that he was being patronized; he was conscious of no especial impulse to introduce a discord into so noble ...
— The American • Henry James
... amazed to find I had been there, and that I was fond of dancing! I fear this sent me down a great many more pegs in her estimation. In fact, my evening was a total failure, and I was glad to get to bed—though it was an immense expanse of bed, big enough for a ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... bid them farewell, and pass on my way to Amsheet, where Henriette Renan, the sister of Ernest, is buried. An hour's walk, and the incarcerated wadi and its folk lie concealed behind. I breathe again the open air of the mountain expanse; I behold again the emerald stretch of water on the horizon, where the baggalas and saics, from this distance, seem like doves basking in the morning sun. I cross the last rill, mount the last hilltop on my journey, and lo, at the foot of the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... without finishing his sentence, and Stane resumed his sentry go, stopping from time to time to view the long expanse of the snow-covered lake, and to search the woods along the shore. As the time passed without bringing any change, and as the unbroken surface of the snow mocked him with its emptiness, he grew sick at heart, and a feverish anxiety mounted within him. He felt utterly helpless, and a fear that Chief ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... largest of the sea birds and have an enormous expanse of wing, the Wandering Albatross, the largest of the family, sometimes attaining an expanse of fourteen feet. Their nostrils consist of two slightly projecting tubes, one on each side near the base of the bill. They are unsurpassed ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... window. A dozen Monadnocks or Ascutneys or Holyokes, more or less, make a Mont Blanc, with glaciers and avalanches and brooding eternity of frost. Such greatness, though it impresses me much, is not beyond my comprehension. It can be reckoned by cubic miles. So with the sea: it is only an expanse of water larger than the river that winds through the meadows. It is great, but it is only an aggregate of numerable quantities that my eyes can measure, and my mind comprehend. These are great objects, and they are great ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... He strode along with a mountaineer's long swinging pace, striking the snow, which was as hard as a rock, with his iron-shod stick, and with piercing eyes looking for the little black, moving speck in the distance, on that enormous, white expanse. ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... far north, to be sure, the rigorous climate caused all the Indians to live practically alike, whether in the Rockies, the plains, or the Laurentian highland. South of them, in that great central expanse stretching from the latitude of Lake Winnipeg to the Rio Grande River, the Indians of the plains possessed a relatively uniform type of life peculiar to themselves. This individuality was due partly ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... feet of the shore, completely concealed on the sea side, by a thick forest growth lining the higher ridge, of what appeared a narrow island. The Sea Gull's fires were banked, only a thin vapor arising from the stack which instantly disappeared. In the opposite direction there was a wide expanse of water, quiet as a mill-pond in spite of a fresh breeze, revealing in the distance the faint blue blur of a far-off coast line. Nothing broke the vista except the white sails of two sloops, evidently fishing boats, far off on the horizon. It was ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... the Duke as seen by the telescope sleeps shuttered—an expanse of blank walls. Yet the Duke ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... us. He who, for the first time, lifts his eyes upon this expanse, is amazed and delighted at its magnitude. Vastness is the term by which it is, more than any other, described. Clouds robed in sunshine, hanging in fleecy or nebular masses above—a bright, pure illimitable ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... pool. Yet, truth to tell, his mind was very little on the herb he was seeking. His mind dwelt almost completely on the thought of Tag Mosher, once more at large, and most likely roaming about somewhere in this vast expanse of woods. ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... didn't know how to do things, but he was rapidly losing, through disuse, the power to learn how to do things. The modern city dweller, bred, born, brought up on this island, is about as helpless and useless a man, considered as a four-square, self-reliant individual, as you can find on the broad expanse of the globe. I've got no use for a man who can't take care of himself, who's got to have somebody else to do it for him, whenever something to which he hasn't been accustomed rises up ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... The expanse of open plain that we now beheld stretched away uninterruptedly on the right hand, as far as the distant hills. Towards the left, the view was broken and varied by some rough stone walls, a narrow road, and a dip in the earth beyond. Wherever we looked, far or near, we ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... the wide expanse of open country, did not touch this gloomy room, which looked full north, and only caught a gleam of brightness later in the day for ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... And homes must be in the healthiest places—the—the most beautiful places. Isn't it true, Mr Fejevary, that it means a great deal to people to have a beautiful outlook from their homes? A—well, an expanse. ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... heard anything for nearly five minutes now, Jack!" called Herb, who, it seemed, was paying strict attention to business, and not bothering about whether he got anything to eat or not, or what would happen in case they headed out into the vast expanse of salt water ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... was a collie—beautiful of head, sweepingly graceful of line, powerful and heavy coated. The mud on his expanse of snowy chest frill and the grease on his dark brown back were easy to account for, even to Link ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... Grande looked out upon life's opening sky as thoughtlessly as she would look upon the bright waters of the blue harbor that stretched before her father's mansion, where sky and water blended in a peaceful, azure expanse, little heeding or caring whether storms came, or sunshine rested on the deep. Bertha Levy, the little darked-eyed Jewess who stood by her side under the stone archway, was nothing more or less than ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... passage saying that Charles Lloyd and his wife are in London and that such proximity is not too comfortable. "Would you like to see him?" or "isn't it better to lean over a stile in a sort of careless easy half astronomical position eyeing the blue expanse?" ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... time I prepare for the State of the Union, I approach it with great hope and expectations for our nation. But tonight is special—because we stand on the mountaintop of a new millennium. Behind us we see the great expanse of American achievement; before us, even grander ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the hypnotic spell was broken: only acute anxiety remained. For the lamp of her life had made scant progress; and now she was aware of a disturbance in the water, little ominous whirlpools not caused by wind. Presently there emerged a long shadow, like a black expanse of rock:—unmistakably a mugger. And in that moment she felt exquisitely grateful to the hand that had seized her in the nick of time. The next—she wrung her own together with a ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... so handsome in her merriment that Fred's eyes dwelt on her for a moment, a new notion showing in their pleasant expanse of blue simplicity. But loyalty's the thing—and a pleasant thing too when Lady Richard stood for it. Besides May Gaston was rather serious as a rule and given to asking questions; she might be able to flirt though; she just might—if there had happened to be anybody ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... Noir and Gregory sat in the library, silently turning out an immense amount of work, feeding the hungry and consoling the weak with stroke of pen and click of typewriter. If conversation sometimes trickled across the dry expanse of statistical benevolence, it was never, on Grace's part, for pastime. Beneath her words was always an underflowing current, tugging at the listener to bear him away to her chosen haven. As an expert player ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... anything," he pronounced, as he stood looking over the desolate expanse of country, "is that when one comes face to face with the fellow he presents all the appearance of a nerveless and broken-down coward. Then all of a sudden there spring up these evidences of the most amazing, the most diabolical ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... went out she could see nothing of the boys, only rocks rising through an expanse of mud, and the sea breaking beyond. She would have preferred continuing the cliff road, but Gerald had a turn for the moor, and carried her off through the village of Anscombe, up and up, till they had had a lively canter on the moor, and looked far out at sea. When they ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kicked, and yelled, and shouted, and perspired, and squirmed, and wriggled, and pushed, and threatened, and poured itself all seemingly upon some central object. It was a mob that had an aim, that was determined to accomplish that aim, even though the whole azure expanse of sky fell upon them. It was a mob with set muscles, straining like whip-cords, eyes on that central object and with heads inward and sturdy legs outward, like prairie horses reversed in a battle. The cheerers and hat throwers ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... and instantly it would dissolve and vanish as would a dream. Beneath the isle the seas moved, and there in the darkness the fishes of the deep, with luminous, round eyes, passed to and fro, nibbling the roots of the trees above them. Overhead the heavens stretched, and around about spread the expanse of the sea upon which no living thing might be seen, save only the dolphins as they leapt into the sunshine and sank again amidst ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... perhaps, to get excited over or to change one's scheme of life. Yet we did get excited over it, daily, and it had suddenly become a main factor in our problem of life. The thought of going back to "six rooms and improvements," with clanging bells and crashing wheels, and with an expanse of dingy roofs for scenery, became daily less attractive. True, we would have to spend a good deal more money on the old house to fit it for cold weather, but then there would ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... nearly rivalling him than any of the neighbouring hills. Rising straight from the sea, his whole height and magnificent proportions are before us at once, and the view from the summit has an unrivalled expanse. Still there are stronger charms about the great centre of the Cairngorm range. Surrounded by his peers, he stands apart from the every-day world in mysterious grandeur. The depth and remoteness of the solitude, the huge mural precipices, the deep chasms between the rocks, the waterfalls ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... in his saddle and looked off across the unending expanse of sage. Coldriver—probably so named from the fact that the three wells in the town constituted the only source of water within an hour's ride—lay thirty miles to the south, a cluster of some forty buildings nestling on a wind-swept flat. Seventy miles beyond it, and with but two more such centers ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... legislation looking to the election of a Territorial legislature in that vast district. The lack of permanence of residence of a large part of the present population and the small number of the people who either permanently or temporarily reside in the district as compared with its vast expanse and the variety of the interests that have to be subserved, make it altogether unfitting in my judgment to provide for a popular election of a legislative body. The present system is not adequate and does not furnish the character of local control that ought to be there. The only compromise ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... into the plains of Dauphiny,—those great plains that stretch from the Rhone to the Alps, and which offer to the eye, as seen from the heights that overhang Lyons, a vast and varied expanse of wood and meadow, corn-field and vineyard, city and hamlet, with the snowy pile of Mont Blanc rising afar in the horizon. On the previous evening I had climbed these heights, so stately and beautiful, with convents ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... after writing the above, and proceeded at a brisk trot in the direction of Sowster's residence, passing through a beautiful expanse of country, with red brick buildings on either side, and stopping in the marketplace to observe the spot where Mr. Kwakley's hat was blown off yesterday. It is an uneven piece of paving, but has certainly no appearance which ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... further, midway of a flat stretch of road, on one side of which was an expanse of swampy ground, varied with pools bordered by sedge, reeds and bushes, with areas of tussocks and with clumps of willows and alders, we came on Bambilio's and Vedia's carriages, their gilded decorative carvings, coral-red panel-bars, pearl-shell panel-panes, gilded rosette-bosses, silver-plated ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... watch-caps; the girls in toboggan caps and sweaters. Over in the west the sky was a rich rosy glow, for the sun sinks behind the hills by four-thirty during the short winter afternoons. The Naval Academy band stationed at the edge of the broad expanse of the ice-bound creek was sending its inspiring strains out across the keen, frosty air which seemed to hold and toy with each note as though reluctant to ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... lens in the receiving apparatus shone with a brilliant dark blue color. The current of super-radium had reached Earth and returned in less than a second, and I saw, beautifully pictured before me, an expanse of ocean with waves tumbling and tossing so near me that it seemed as if I were but ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... hotel previously patronized by Quincy, having decided to defer their call upon the young ladies until Sunday morning. It was a bright, beautiful day, not a cloud was to be seen in the broad, blue expanse above them. A cool breeze was blowing steadily from the southwest, and as the young men walked down Centre Street towards the Cliff, Leopold remarked that he did not wonder that the Nantucketers loved their "tight little isle" ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... delighted to meet you, Mr. Barnes," said Mr. Bacon, extending his hand. As he did so, his coat sleeve receded half way to the elbow, revealing the full expanse of a frayed cuff. "So delighted, in fact, that it gives me great pleasure to inform you that you have at last encountered a waiter who does not expect a tip. God forbid that I should ever sink so low as that. I have been a ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... soon warm their capacious interiors, from the large, supply of caloric they are now rapidly absorbing; a stand of bayonets before the Dogana, sparkles as if it were on fire; and when we have arrived at the foot of the wide white Scalinata of the Trinita di Monti, the whole expanse from top to bottom shines with unmitigated and unsupportable splendour. No importunate beggar can stand and rattle his tin box on the summit, and if he could, there is no passenger to heed or hear him; the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... now and racing across the great expanse of the floor, past the central tower, past the control-panel which he had ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a stump on such a height as this, overlooking the pond, and study the dimpling circles which are incessantly inscribed on its otherwise invisible surface amid the reflected skies and trees. Over this great expanse there is no disturbance but it is thus at once gently smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water is jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and all is smooth again. Not a fish can leap or an insect ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... deluged our decks. The night closed down darker than pitch, and the wind increased in violence. I have scarcely ever seen so dismal a night. Except when at intervals a blinding flash of lightning illumined the whole heavens and the broad expanse of raging ocean, we could distinguish nothing at a yard's distance, save the glimmer of the phosphorescent binacle light, and the gleam which flashed from the culmination of the huge seas ahead of us, resembling an extended cloud of dull ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... were thus stealing along, we gradually turned round the shoulder of Ben Cruachan, and descending the course of the foaming and rapid Awe, left behind us the expanse of the majestic lake which gives birth to that impetuous river. The rocks and precipices which stooped down perpendicularly on our path on the right hand exhibited a few remains of the wood which ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... nation from ruin. At the end of thirty years from the time when the soil of Missouri was devoted to slavery the "Kansas-Nebraska Bill" was proposed, which should open for the extension of slavery the vast expanse of national territory which, by the stipulation of the "Missouri Compromise," had been forever consecrated to freedom. The issue of the extension of slavery was presented to the people in its simplicity. The action of the clergy of New England was prompt, spontaneous, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... paces over the ground, his thoughts returned to him; and he more clearly comprehended his situation. Escape was out of the question. He was prisoner to a party of wandering Bedouins,—the worst to be found in all the wide expanse of the Saaeran desert,—the wreckers of the ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... ready a boat, and you and Humphrey row me out to our fleet yonder," said Wolfe, looking out over the wide expanse of blue beyond the harbour. "I will speak of this with the Admiral, and see what ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... thy load of wo, Turn, thou stricken one, thine eyes Upward, and behold that glow Spreading brightly o'er the skies! 'Tis the day-star, beaming fair In the blue expanse above; Look on high, and know that there Dwells ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... middle of it stood M. Gournay-Martin, a big, round, flabby hulk of a man. He was nearly as red in the face as M. Charolais; and he looked a great deal redder owing to the extreme whiteness of the whiskers which stuck out on either side of his vast expanse of cheek. As he came up, it struck the Duke as rather odd that he should have the Charolais eyes, set close together; any one who did not know that they were strangers to one another might have thought it a ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... in a thin drizzle of the soaking variety, descending from a sky of lead stretching from horizon to horizon, which in the north would be accepted as an institution of forty-eight hours at least, and on arriving at the summit of Chanctonbury has been rewarded by a glorious green and gold expanse glittering under a dome ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... at once climbing high, higher, until at an elevation of two to three thousand feet they began to circle, climb and dip in a way that reminded one of two high-flying birds playing at tag far up in the blue expanse of sky above. ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... alligator. It is said, by naturalists, of this monstrous reptile, that he delights, when the returning warmth of spring has brought his fellows from their holes, and placed them basking along the banks of a swampy lagoon, to dart into the centre of the expanse, and challenge the whole field to combat. He roars, he blows the water from his nostrils, he lashes it with his tail, he whirls round and round, churning the water into foam; until, having worked himself into a proper fury, he darts back again to the shore, to seek an antagonist. Had the gallant ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... the waking dreams that come to one upon the sea, when the canoe rests tranquil, the torch blazes, and the fish swim to meet the harpoon. The night was moonless, but the sea was covered with phosphorescence, sometimes a glittering expanse of light, and again black as velvet except where our canoe moved gently through a soft and glamorous surface of sparkling jewels. A night for a lover, a lady, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... beams. Failing in this attempt to stir and heave away the mass, he climbed, and began to use his beams as wedges, driving them down more perpendicularly. Whenever this industrious craftsman made a successful split, the fog gaped, and we could see for a moment, indefinitely, an expanse of water, hedged with gloomy forest, and owning for its dominant height a wild mountain, Aziscohos, or, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... gone out with Marlowe in the car. People had seen him at close quarters. But was it he who returned at ten? That question too seemed absurd enough. But I could not set it aside. It seemed to me as if a faint light was beginning to creep over the whole expanse of my mind, as it does over land at dawn, and that presently the sun would be rising. I set myself to think over, one by one, the points that had just occurred to me, so as to make out, if possible, why any man masquerading as Manderson should have done these things that Manderson ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... plain, broken only by the windows, whose jambs are enriched with empty niches; on the north the small windows are placed very high up, the twisted vaulting shafts only come down a short way to a string course some way below the windows, leaving a great expanse of cliff-like wall. At the bottom are the confessional doors, so small that they add greatly to the scale, and above them tall narrow niches and their canopies. But the nave piers are the most astonishing ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... unmarried girls this strip may be wound under the arms and so cover the breast. Rarely a short camisa is worn, but seldom do the camisa and the saya, or skirt, join. Sometimes, owing to the scarcity of cloth, a narrow strip will be worn over the breast, leaving a broad expanse of dark skin between it and the ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... could well know whether we swam or rode we had passed the stream, and our unconquered little horse was tugging us might and main up the opposite bank. That once obtained, we saw before us a wide expanse of heath, rugged and broken, and no trace ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... been very clear, because I remember that near Itchinstow Hall I looked back and saw the estuary of the Thames, that river that has since played so large a part in my life. But at the time I did not know it was the Thames, I thought this great expanse of mud flats and water was the sea, which I had never yet seen nearly. And out upon it stood ships, sailing ships and a steamer or so, going up to London or down out into the great seas of the world. I stood for a long time watching these and thinking whether after all I should not have ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... The expanse was relieved by clumps of oaks with patches of short wild grass; and every mile or two was a chain of cobalt slews, with the flicker ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the neighbourhood the most important is Tregothnan, the residence of Lord Falmouth. The mansion is beautifully placed upon high ground, the views from which include the numerous wooded creeks of the lovely Fal, and the wide expanse of Falmouth Harbour, studded with the shipping of many nations. The house was designed by Wilkins, the architect of the National Gallery, and is in the Early English ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... reply. He still held my hand, and we looked out together on the shining expanse of the sea where there was no vessel visible and where our schooner alone flew over the watery, moonlit ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... Lawrence, for a day's hunting in the marshes of Lake St. Peter. On one side were the forested hills, purple with the mists of rising vapor and still streaked with white patches of snow where the dense woods shut out the sunlight. On the other lay the silver expanse of the St. Lawrence, more like a lake than a river, with mile on mile southwestward of rush-grown marshes, where plover and curlew and duck and wild geese flocked to their favorite feeding-grounds three hundred years ago just as they do to-day. Northeastward, the ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... clouded heaven. And thou hast been the brightest star That shone along my weary way— Brighter than rainbow visions are, A changeless and enduring ray. Nor will my memory lightly fade From thy pure dreams, high-thoughted girl;— The ocean may forget what made Its blue expanse of waters curl, When the strong winds have passed the sky; Earth in its beauty may forget The recent cloud that floated by; The glories of the last sunset— But not from thy unchanging mind Will fade the dreams of other years, And love ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... head leaning back against the creature's glossy shoulder. The person thus standing was Madame Le Maitre, and she was looking up steadfastly at the cliffs, of which this point in the road displayed a new expanse. ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... the memory of those four months with Amy Kelly remained with the boy, an oasis in the trackless Sahara of his school life. In this dreary expanse now and then a shadow of hope arose, as if to lure him on, as some new teacher came up over his horizon, but in the main these all proved delusions, mirages that glittered at phantom distances, but faded away into empty nothingness ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... breathe life into a nation, and will not tell the future that it has existed; whereas Egyptian art, Mexican art, Grecian art, Roman art, with their masterpieces accused of uselessness, have attested the existence of these peoples in the vast expanse of time, there where huge intermediary nations, destitute of great men, have disappeared without leaving their visiting cards on the globe. All works of genius are the epitome of a civilization, and presuppose an immense utility. Forsooth, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the bronze was concerned. During the process of casting the refinements of a clay model would often be impaired, but this shows no sign of having been made from an original of merit. The man is ugly, it is true; but the broad expanse of his lifeless cheek and the bulbous forehead would in real life have been explained and justified by bone and muscle, which the sculptor would have rendered in his clay study. The ugliness of the man, however, is unrelated to the qualities ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... and the mouth of the Gambia, inland to the Niger; embraces the French colony of Senegal, and various ill-defined native States under the suzerainty of France; the interior part is also called the French Soudan; the vast expanse of the contiguous Sahara in the N., and stretches of territory on the S., extending to the Gulf of Guinea, are also within the French sphere of influence, altogether forming an immense territory (1,000), of which ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Eureka! loudly. Even the cautious and discriminating mind of Professor Huxley was caught by this new and grand generalization of the 'physical basis of life;' It was announced by him to the British Association in 1868. Dr. Will Carpenter took up the chorus. He spoke of 'a living expanse of protoplasmic substance,' penetrating with its living substance the 'whole mass' of the oceanic mud. A fine new Greek name was devised for this mother slime, and it was christened 'Bathybius,'" (from two Greek words meaning "depth" and "life,"), "from the consecrated ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... side. There were none of those cataclysms of mire and sloughs of black mud and over-tall grasses, none of that miasmatic jungle with its noxious emissions; it was just such a scene as one may find before an English mansion—a noble expanse of lawn and sward, with boscage sufficient to agreeably diversify it. After traversing the open plain, the road led through a grove of young ebony trees, where guinea-fowls and a hartebeest were seen; it then ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... was ready to return he found that the elevator which he had used in coming up was out of order, and that he must now walk down the many flights of stairs. Accordingly he started, whistling as he went. When he reached the fifth floor he was much surprised to discover that it was vacant. A great expanse it was, flooded with sunshine. Peter paused to look about. Some unused packing-cases littered one corner of the room and instantly the thought flashed into his mind—what a warm, quiet, secluded spot for him and Nat to eat their lunch! Why, they could even bring ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... was able to retire to its own territory, the sea. The army under Wellington, handled with splendid judgment, had to wait long for its opportunity, which came when Napoleon with the Grand Army had plunged into the vast expanse of Russia. Wellington, marching from victory to victory, was then able to produce upon the general course of the war an effect out of all proportion to the strength of the force which he commanded or of ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... companion's shoulder firmly, riding on for some minutes without relaxing his grasp, the touch conveying more in the way of sympathy than any words would have done, while the discomforts of the novel ride seemed to die away, and the soft dreaminess of the night grew soothing; the vast silvery grey expanse, melting away in its vastness, became lit-up with a faint halo of hope, and with his spirits rising, Frank seemed another man ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... case, as in the other, it immediately resumes its course; the tide which has receded, instantly begins to readvance. It might seem, indeed, that, when a country draws its supply of food from so wide a surface as the whole habitable globe, so little impression can be produced on that great expanse by any increase of mouths in one small corner of it that the inhabitants of the country may double and treble their numbers without feeling the effect in any increased tension of the springs of production, or any enhancement ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... remarks: "Asia is one. The Himalayas divide only to accentuate two mighty civilisations—the Chinese, with its communism of Confucius, and the Indian, with its individualism of the Vedas. But not even the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment that broad expanse of love for the Ultimate and Universal which is the common-thought inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to produce all the great religions of the world, and distinguishing them from those maritime people of the Mediterranean and the Baltic who loved to dwell on the particular, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... the South American Government have split have hitherto been bad faith, and consequent temporary expedients. No man has yet arisen, save yourself, capable of soaring aloft, and with eagle eye embracing the expanse of the political horizon. But if in your flight, like Icarus, you trust to waxen wings, your descent may crush the rising liberties of Peru, and involve all South America in anarchy, civil war, and ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... has the eagle eye to measure this vastness. He loves a wide expanse, a boundless horizon. He does not, gypsy-like, hide with Gainsborough beneath a hedge, but his glance sweeps across a continent, and no detail escapes him. This is what makes the "Andes" a really marvellous picture. In intellectual grasp, clear and vivid apprehension of what he wants and where ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... from London and Dublin; champagne, moselle, sherry, and old port, 'rather bothered by travelling twenty miles a day on a camel back.' Following the chief's example, each regiment had a glorious spread, and throughout the wide expanse of tents sounds of rejoicing were heard, for the soldiers kept Christmas ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... hope than such as convey a cold and grim despair? The withered leaf, the snowflake, the hedging bill that cuts and destroys, why these? Why not rather the dear larks for one? They fly in flocks, and amid the white expanse of snow (in the south) their pleasant twitter or call is heard as they sweep along seeking some grassy spot cleared by the wind. The lark, the bird of the light, is there in the bitter short days. Put the lark ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... far!' and holding up her skirts, she picked her way as daintily as her weighty chaussure would permit, along the narrow green footway that crossed the expanse of dewy turf in which the dogs careered, getting their noses covered with flakes of thick gossamer, cemented together by dew. Fly scraped it off with a delicate forepaw, Vixen rolled over, and doubly entangled it in her rugged ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and down the wooded hills, father and son and the slave travelled briskly toward the west. As the twilight fell, they came up with three white wagons, Staunton bound, and convoyed by mountaineers. That night they camped with these men in an expanse of scrub and sassafras, but left them at dawn and went on toward Albemarle. A day of coloured woods, of infrequent clearings, and of streams to ford, ended in an evening of cool wind and rosy sky. They descended ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... hole that served as a window. There were bushes about it, and, at that point, the cliff seemed to be almost perpendicular. He was safe from observation and he looked over a vast expanse of country. The morning was dazzlingly clear, and he saw sections of the Confederate earthworks with their men and guns, and far beyond them other earthworks and other guns, which he knew were those of his ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... from the sea. Such tragedies as this paralyzed enterprise in Africa until white men learned that the climate was not so deadly, after all, if they adhered to the manner of life, the hygienic rules, that should be observed in that tropical expanse. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... meaning of St. Paul when he says that we now see God by means of a mirror. All creatures, the sun, the moon, and the stars, the vast expanse of the ocean, the earth, trees, flowers, animals, and man especially, are a grand mirror in which the perfections of God are reflected in a dark and imperfect manner. We see, in them all, faint reflections of His divine beauty, wisdom, goodness, ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... of the finger with the eyes—and immediately after placed the hand again eastward, indicating the spot with the same emphatic nod of the finger as though carrying the visible distance to a spot upon the expanse of the bay, which, bearing no object, could not be marked otherwise—two ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... and a few dolphins and Portuguese men-of-war flash or float through the scarcely undulating water. But we look in vain for the "sails of silk and ropes of sendal," which are alone appropriate to this dream-world. The Pacific in this region is an indolent blue expanse, pure and lonely, an almost untraversed sea. We revel in these tropic days of transcendent glory, in the balmy breath which just stirs the dreamy blue, in the brief, fierce crimson sunsets, in the soft splendour of the nights, when the moon and ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... male will measure nearly 4 ft. from the tip of the bill to the end of the tail, and its wings have an expanse of 8 ft. or more,—its weight varying (possibly through age) from 22 to 32 lb. This last was that of one which was recorded by the younger Naumann, the best biographer of the bird (Voegel Deutschlands, vii. p. 12), who, however, stated in 1834 that he was assured of the former existence ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... and Idra's isle The god of gladness sheds his parting smile; O'er his own regions lingering, loves to shine, Though there his altars are no more divine. Descending fast, the mountain shadows kiss Thy glorious gulf, unconquered Salamis! Their azure arches through the long expanse, More deeply purpled meet his mellowing glance, And tenderest tints, along their summits driven, Mark his gay course, and own the hues of heaven; Till, darkly shaded from the land and deep, Behind his Delphian ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... three miles from the Capitol, of the dome of which it commands a pretty glimpse across an expanse of foliage, is one of the old residences remaining from the days of the slave-holders. Like many such places it has been much altered and improved. It seems to have been originally a one and-a-half-story stone dwelling, to which some later proprietor has ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... the strand, Through the mid seas the nimble pinnace sails, Aloof from Crete, before the northern gales: But when remote her chalky cliffs we lost, And far from ken of any other coast, When all was wild expanse of sea and air, Then doom'd high Jove due vengeance to prepare. He hung a night of horrors o'er their head (The shaded ocean blacken'd as it spread): He launch'd the fiery bolt: from pole to pole Broad ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... delayed. A party of twenty were sent on shore to mark out the spot where they should rear their store-house and their dwellings. On the side of a high hill, facing the rising sun and the beautiful bay, they found an expanse, gently declining, where there were large fields which, two or three years before, had been cultivated with Indian corn. The summit of this hill commanded a wide view of the ocean and of the land. Springs of sweet water gushed from the hill-sides, and a beautiful ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... you may see a hundred and fifty to two hundred ploughs issue from both establishments; these spread over the plain and till an immense expanse of land. Carts drawn by bullocks, big mules, or superb horses are ceaselessly exporting the products of the fields, the meadows, or the orchards. Innumerable cows cover the pastures, and legions of women and herds are employed to look after ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the great dunes were left behind, and the bassourahs no longer swayed like towers in a rotary earthquake with the movements of the camels. Far away across a flat expanse of golden sand, silvered by saltpetre, a long, low cloud—blue-green as a peacock's tail—trailed on the horizon. It was the oasis of Djazerta, with its thousands of ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... Globe correspondent, is also worth reproducing: "The Great Salt Plains open out like broad, dreary marsh or arm of the sea, from which the tide has gone out. For about thirty-five miles the trail stretches in a north-westerly course across this dismal expanse, and away to the south-west, as far as the eye can reach, nothing save marsh grass, flags, bullrushes, and occasionally clumps of marsh willows can be seen. North-east of the trail scattering bluffs of stunted grey willows cluster along the horizon, and at one point along the trail, about ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the moors, clambering over the granite slabs of a stile, turned his thoughts to a more perceptible danger. If he could see that man more than half a mile away, his own figure must be apparent over a long distance in that clear brown expanse. Perhaps at that very moment the policeman from the churchtown was prowling about the moors in search of him. His actions at that lonely house were suspicious enough to attract anybody's attention. That was an act of imprudence which ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the grand array, when Aurora Borealis plays her antic freaks, fights her mimic battles, waves her flaming banner along the northern skies. We look out upon the blue expanse above, when the bright and beautiful stars, with their sparkling eyes, are looking from their distant homes upon our little earth like angels commissioned to watch over its slumbering inhabitants, till the clear light of day arouses them to life and consciousness. In view of objects and scenes ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... was one calculated to interest an idle mind, no doubt. First, there was the sea, a wide expanse of blue, dotted by numerous sails; then the beach, enlivened by groups of young people dressed like popinjays in every color; then the village street, and, lastly, a lawn over which there now and then strayed young couples ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... glides away in the face of heaven—the sweet yet strong love which this perpetual contact with Nature gives, and the dreams of these nights passed in the brightness of the stars, under an azure dome of infinite expanse. It was during such a night that Jacob, with his head resting upon a stone, saw in the stars the promise of an innumerable posterity, and the mysterious ladder by which the angels of God came and went from heaven ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... given, and a serious alarm it seemed to be. Bodies of troops, and especially cavalry, were on the march in all directions, and it became a matter of the utmost difficulty to avoid contact with them. Finally, Max, as the day dawned, led his men right away into a wide expanse of farm-land, and took them towards ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... intellectual development of the people; and Lyzhin listened with vexation to these observations and looked out of window at the snow drifts which were piled on the fence. He gazed at the white dust which covered the whole visible expanse, at the trees which bowed their heads despairingly to right and then to left, listened to the howling and the ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... sterility. It had been harsh and cold all day when the boat moved, for it was running full in the face of the northeast; the river had widened almost to a sea, growing more and more desolate, with a few lonely islands breaking its expanse, and the shores sinking lower and lower till, near Tadoussac, they rose a little in flat-topped bluffs thickly overgrown with stunted evergreens. Here, into the vast low-walled breadth of the St. Lawrence, a dark stream, narrowly bordered by rounded heights of rock, steals down ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... charms than Guido's Madonna:—how he envies every rider upon his white horse!—how he burns to bestride the foremost steed, and to mingle in the fair throng, who turn their blue eyes to the scarcely bluer expanse of heaven! Here he recognises Gervase Markham, spurring his courser; and there he fancies himself lifting Dame Juliana from her horse! Happy deception! dear fiction! says Florizel—while he throws his eyes in an opposite ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... steel. Ellen sat a while listening to the soothing chirrup of the cricket and the pleasant crackling of the flames. It was a fine cold winter's day. The two little windows at the far end of the kitchen looked out upon an expanse of snow; and the large lilac bush that grew close by the wall, moved lightly by the wind, drew its icy fingers over the panes of glass. Wintry it was without; but that made the warmth and comfort within seem all the more. Ellen would have enjoyed it very much if she had had ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... yellow stretch of cornland lay a high purple belt of forest which always figured in my eyes as a distant, mysterious region behind which either the world ended or an uninhabited waste began. This expanse of corn-land was dotted with swathes and reapers, while along the lanes where the sickle had passed could be seen the backs of women as they stooped among the tall, thick grain or lifted armfuls of corn and rested them against the shocks. In one corner a ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... the steep red face of the sandy slope that rises abruptly from the Holmwood towards Leith Hill, by the Robin Gate entrance. Near the top, they had seated themselves on a carpet of sheep-sorrel, looking out across the imperturbable expanse of the Weald, and the broad pastures of Sussex. A solemn blue haze brooded soft over the land. The sun was sinking low; oblique afternoon lights flooded the distant South Downs. Their combes came out aslant in saucer-shaped shadows. Alan turned and gazed at Herminia; she was hot with climbing, ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... lucrative was the magical or divining faculty. The Chazdim, or Chaldeans, a priestly caste inhabiting a wide and level country, must have soon applied themselves to the study, so useful to their interests, of their brilliant expanse of heavens. By a prolonged and 'daily observation,' considerable knowledge must have been attained; but in the infancy of the science astronomy necessarily took the form of an empirical art which, under the name of astrology, engaged the serious attention and perplexed the brains of ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... the opposite extremity opened upon a landscape bright and picturesque, dotted with those white residences which give that peculiar character of warmth and comfort for which the northern landscapes are so remarkable. Indeed the eye could scarcely rest upon a richer expanse of country than lay stretched out before it, nor can we omit to notice the singularly unique and beautiful effect produced by the numerous bleach-greens that shone at various degrees of distance, and ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... noble Atbara River at the break of day. The wonder of the desert! Yesterday there was a barren sheet of glaring sand, with a fringe of withered bushes and trees upon its borders, that cut the yellow expanse of desert. For days we had journeyed along the exhausted bed; all Nature, even in Nature's poverty, was most poor: no bush could boast a leaf, no tree could throw a shade, crisp gums crackled upon the stems of the mimosas, the sap dried upon the burst bark, sprung with the withering heat ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... time we had remained in our sleighs. The surrounding scene had impressed us all very forcibly, and there was a general disinclination to get out. The expanse of snow, in its half-melted condition, was enough to deter any reasonable being. To get out was to plunge into ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... with points of camp-fire twinkling, where the Boers, indifferent to our little party, were carousing and drinking their dop. Now and then a yawn or groan as a man stretches his cramped limbs. Down below under us an expanse of dark plain, like a murky sea, reaching to our feet, which we peer across, but can make out nothing. Peep-of-day time is the Boer's favourite hour for a call, and we were all very much on the qui vive when the white line showed along the east. No doubt, however, they all had ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... no means such as are usually seen in conjunction with a complexion of such blended freshness and repose: their outline was stern; her forehead was high but narrow; it expressed capacity and some benevolence, but no expanse; nor did her peaceful yet watchful eye ever know the fire which is kindled in the heart or the softness which flows thence. Her mouth was hard: it could be a little grim; her lips were thin. For sensibility and genius, with all their tenderness and temerity, I ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the hands of One of whom it may be said, in the words of Another, {2,}—resumed my usual functions. But I too soon discovered that peace of mind had fled from a brow which, up to that time, Time had merely took the hair off, leaving an unruffled expanse within. ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... steal through the water. The tide was still draining up, and she had not as yet swung. The wind was light, and, as the skipper had predicted, was nearly due south. As the ketch made its way out from the mouth of the river, and the wide expanse of water opened before them, the boys were filled with delight. They had taken their seats, one on each side of the skipper, who was ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... tampering monks; when the ascetic Buddhism was removed; the cults and mysteries, the dogmas of an ancient naive philosophy discarded; the crude science of a Ptolemy who conceived the earth as a flat terrestrial expanse and hell as a smoking pit beneath proved false; the revelation of a Holy City of jasper and gold and crystal, the hierarchy with its divine franchise to save and rule and conquer,—when all these and more were eliminated from Christianity, what ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... florid Doctor, with his majestically curving expanse of waistcoat and his inscrutable face, whirred through the streets of Fairbridge in his motor car, with that meek bulk of womanhood beside him, many said quite openly how unfortunate it was that Doctor Sturtevant had married, when so young, a woman so ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman |
