"Foliage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... worked up into stovewood, fine of grain, hard of texture, stately as a forest tree, comely and clean as a shade tree, glorious in autumn, a fountain of coolness in summer, sugar in its veins, gold in its foliage, warmth in its fibers, and health ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... and on, over the rich green flower-decked earth; past groves of trees whose names he did not know,—some bearing the thin foliage of grey or sage green, with delicate shades of pink and blue, others like a coarse-leaved spiky-looking fir, whose boughs touched the ground, and densely clustered upward in a pyramid of dark glistening growth that would have hidden a dozen men from ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... In the common spots of mould, which my mother, good housekeeper that she was, fiercely scooped away from her jam pots, there abode for me, under the name of mildew, enchanted gardens, filled with dells and avenues of the densest foliage and most astonishing verdure, while from the fantastic boughs of these microscopic forests, hung strange fruits glittering with green, and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... dust of these deposed monarchs of the forest sprang a numerous progeny—lusty claimants, every one of them,—their foliage feathery and of the most delicate green, being fed only by the thin sunshine that sifts through the dense canopy, supported far aloft by the majestic columns that clustered about us. Under foot the russet moss ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... stretched away to the horizon, dotted with villages and farmhouses and apparently in a high state of cultivation. All was unfamiliar in its every aspect. The trees were unlike any that I had ever seen or even imagined, the trunks being mostly square and the foliage consisting of slender filaments resembling hair, in many instances long enough to reach the earth. It was of many colors, and I could not perceive that there was any prevailing one, as green is in the vegetation to which I was accustomed. As far as I could ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... inhabitants in the open air. He and the poet, arm in arm, still talking together as they went along, proceeded to the spot. It was a small nook among the hills, with a gray precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by the pleasant foliage of many creeping plants, that made a tapestry for the naked rock, by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. At a small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure, there appeared a niche, spacious enough ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... of man, and the discussions arising therefrom, to the stupendous natural scenery by which we were surrounded; the unexplored forests that clothe the mountains to their very summits, the torrents that leaped and sparkled in the sunshine, the deep ravines, the many-tinted foliage, the bold and jutting rocks. All combine to increase our admiration of the bounties of nature to this favoured land, to which she has given "every herb bearing seed, and every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food," while her veins are rich with precious metals; the useful and ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... forest's skirts I rest, Whose branching pines rise dark and high, And hear the breezes of the West Among the threaded foliage sigh. ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... the spot, the stranger turned with the trail that now began to skirt its edge. This was no easy matter, as the undergrowth was very thick, and the foliage dense to the perilous brink of the precipice. He walked on, however, wondering why Bradley had chosen so circuitous and dangerous a route to his house, which naturally would be some distance back from the canyon. At the end of ten minutes' ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... pursued by an angry farmer with a pitchfork. One characteristic of the medival imagination is its fondness for the grotesque. It loved queer beasts, half eagle, half lion, hideous batlike creatures, monsters like nothing on land or sea. They lurk among the foliage on choir screens, leer at you from wall or column, or squat upon the gutters high on roof ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... sporting shot and was killed with a bullet in the heart. As the cabin is small and hot, we arrange to sleep on the bridge of the steamer which is almost embedded in trees when we tie up to the bank for the night. A tornado bursts about midnight, but the dense foliage acts as a protection and very little water finds its ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... thoroughfare of the north leading eastward to Boston and westward to a shore of the midland seas. This road was once the great trail of the Iroquois, by them called the Long House, because it had reached from the Hudson to Lake Erie, and in their day had been well roofed with foliage. Here the travelers got their first view of a steam engine. The latter stood puffing and smoking near the village of Utica, to the horror and amazement of the team and the great excitement of those in the wagon. The boy clung to his father for ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... in a wood of oaks, open to the south-west whose dense foliage shelters and protects it. It is now the sole vestige of the gipsy haunts, and comprises a space of more than twenty-five acres; the gentle inclination of the ground keeping the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... the gigantic St. Peter Martyr, or, indeed, in a score of other genuine productions, that the depth, the vigour, the authority of Titian himself are here to be recognised. The weak treatment of the great Titianesque tree in the foreground, with its too summarily indicated foliage—to select only one detail that comes naturally to hand—would in itself suffice to bring such ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... which were fruit and wine; the room was a small one, and in its furniture exhibited nothing remarkable. Over the mantelpiece, however, hung a small picture with naked figures in the foreground, and with much foliage behind. It might not have struck every beholder, for it looked old and smoke-dried; but a connoisseur, on inspecting it closely, would have pronounced it to be a judgment of Paris, and a masterpiece of the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... and through the burnished haze that seemed to slope obliquely between us and it we saw the square white house, lying a little blow the level of the line, and all but hidden behind a delicate, intricate profusion of light green foliage. Behind it rose a rolling slope, clothed half-way up with a copse of young larch trees, whose slender stems sent long shadows down the whole length of its side, falling across the sun-baked, waving, brown-and-yellow grasses, and the red cows, lying lower down the slope, drowsy, ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... all the time, but for all that H. B. S. does stand for H. B. Smith. There are ever so many charming walks about here and from some points the scenery is wonderfully picturesque. I never was in the country so late as to see the trees after a frost, and although the foliage here is less brilliant, it is said, than that of American forests, I find it hard to believe that there can be anything more beautiful than the wooded mountains covered with the softest tints of every shade and coloring interspersed with snowcapped peaks and bare, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... into indecision; and this judgment still holds. Of Davidson, my immediate teacher, there was only to be got certain ways of doing certain things, limited to the elements of landscape; how to wash in the sky, to treat foliage in masses, and those tricks of the brush in which the English water-color school abounds; but no larger views, or more individual, of art itself. What he taught was, perhaps, what I most needed to learn, but I was already too far on the way ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... and they continued along this road northward from the place where they dismissed the automobile. Half a mile they traveled in this direction, their course keeping well along the lake shore. They passed several cottages of designedly rustic appearance and buried, as it were, amid a wealth of tree foliage and wild entanglements of shrubbery. Suddenly Katherine caught hold of Hazel's ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... its rugged talus-dammed canyon, oftentimes stopping to take breath and look back to admire the wonderful views to be had there of the great Half Dome, and to enjoy the extreme purity of the water, which in the motionless pools on this stream is almost perfectly invisible; the colored foliage of the maples, dogwoods, Rubus tangles, etc., and the late goldenrods and asters. The voice of the fall was now low, and the grand spring and summer floods had waned to sifting, drifting gauze and thin-broidered folds of linked and arrowy lace-work. When ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... effectually as the dwelling. Under these circumstances, Carlis was looking around, perplexed and uncertain, not knowing what to do, when he perceived some scattered oaks standing by themselves in a field not far from the house, one of which seemed to be so full and dense in its foliage as to afford some hope of concealment there. The tree, it seems, had been headed down once or twice, and this pruning had had the effect, usual in such cases, of making the branches spread and grow very thick and full. The colonel thought that though, in making a search for fugitives, ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... through the foliage thick, And her cheek grows pale and her heart beats quick, There whispers a voice through the rustling leaves, And her blush returns, and her bosom heaves; A moment more—and they shall meet. 'Tis past—her lover's ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... Cloom lay on the wind-swept promontory where only occasional folds in the land could give some hint of what gentler-nurtured pastures might be like, the whole little grey town of St. Renny seemed embowered in foliage that did not indeed encroach upon its actual ways, but that gave the rolling slopes of its guarding hills a richness of dark green that Ishmael had never imagined trees could hold. The life itself bore a very similar analogy to that he had led hitherto, not because the school was at all luxurious ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... behind a tree. The stream was full of water-cresses, while the burnt-up little garden contained an abundance of beautiful flowers. There were scarlet and yellow mimosas, of many kinds, combining every shade of exquisite green velvety foliage, alpinias, with pink, waxy flowers and crimson and gold centres, oleanders, begonias, hibiscus, allamandas, and arum and ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... is more propitious or advisable for the amateur bird lover to begin his studies than the first of the year. Bird life is now reduced to its simplest terms in numbers and species, and the absence of concealing foliage, together with the usual tameness of winter birds, makes identification ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... neighbourhood is pretty strongly marked by a scarcity of hedges; by many stone walls of varying height; by a fair amount of timber, some of it well grown, but apt to be of a bushy, northern profile and poor in foliage; by here and there a little river, Esk or Leith or Almond, busily journeying in the bottom of its glen; and from almost every point, by a peep of the sea or the hills. There is no lack of variety, and yet most of the elements are common to all parts; and the southern district is alone distinguished ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gathers both good and bad fish; the good are preserved, and the rest are thrown away.[3] The germ of this great revolution will not be recognizable in its beginning. It will be like a grain of mustard-seed, which is the smallest of seeds, but which, thrown into the earth, becomes a tree under the foliage of which the birds repose;[4] or it will be like the leaven which, deposited in the meal, makes the whole to ferment.[5] A series of parables, often obscure, was designed to express the suddenness ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... and then, after a short ride, drove up a long private avenue bordered with odd, foreign-looking trees. Although the foliage was gone, one could see by the form of the trunk and branches that they were not the trees usually seen at Avondale. The house, a stately homestead, stood well back from the street, and the porch, with its colonial pillars, gave grandeur to ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... are illumined by the rays of the full hunter's moon, which transforms the trailing streamers of dewy Spanish moss into long-drawn chains of sparkling silver. From swamp and foliage the voices of the night fill the balmy air with quavering wailings, punctured by the occasional screams of wild-cats and hootings of the melancholy owls. Here in this forest primeval, mid the murmuring pines and star-eyed magnolias, nature ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... would come mighty near stepping on one without seeing it? You would. If you had that thing set up as it should be, these museum visitors of yours would pass the case believing it was a mere collection of foliage. They wouldn't see the snake itself. See what I mean? Set up as they are in real life they'd come ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... where young pines huddled together in the trough; and from the upper end of this he emerged upon a steep ridge, eyes and ears alert for the least sign of human presence. A third shot had rung out while he was in the dense mass of foliage of the evergreens, but now silence lay heavy all about him. The gathering darkness blurred detail, so that any one of a dozen bowlders might be a shield ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... supports a gray or yellow lichen, which has been gently removed from some old wall or tree. A bit of stick or a twig, incrusted with a bright orange-colored lichen, supports a trailing branch of delicate green ivy, the most beautiful and adaptable of all winter foliage. Over this little arrangement is placed a bell glass, to preserve it from dust and the effect of a dry atmosphere; and we know how pleasing to the eye is its varied beauty of form and color, lasting thus, a constant source of pleasure, for many ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... that Cardinal WOLSEY'S ancient seat has for all classes of Londoners, especially now when the spires of pink and yellow blossoms rise amidst the dark foliage of Bushey Park, but it is not generally known how many celebrities of the day are attracted to Hampton Court Palace unobserved by anybody but me, who make a habit of noticing this kind of thing. Leaders in the worlds of politics ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... now, dressed in their gorgeously colored foliage. Brown, orange, scarlet, with just enough somber evergreen to set off the brilliancy of the other trees by contrast, the scene was at the height of its splendor. But so intent were the girls upon watching the water, they hardly noticed ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... five feet from the ground, covered with flowering plants (the admirable passiflores quadrangulatoe, planted in a deep ebony box, from the centre of which rose the trellis-work), surrounded this couch with a sort of screen of foliage enamelled with large flowers, green without, purple within, and as brilliant as those flowers of porcelain, which we receive from Saxony. A sweet, faint perfume, like a faint mixture of jasmine with violet, rose from ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... nuisances and annoyances that men must meet who come face to face with nature itself. You have set out your upper acres to peach trees: and the deer come down from the hills at night and strip the young foliage; or the field mice in winter, working under the snow, girdle and kill them. The season brings too much rain and the potatoes rot in the ground, the crows steal the corn, the bees swarm when no out is watching, the cow smothers her calf, the hens' ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... behind the live oak in the Rambler's Retreat," she thought, and climbed up the steep bank from the path, clinging to bits of shrubbery and foliage. But Marie was not there. And then as Eveley turned, she heard quick running steps in the pathway under the swinging bridge that spanned the ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... nature is very dear to us, and during long years have we closely observed its forms, its changing hues and expressions. We do like when we look at a picture to know whether the trees be oaks, elms, or pines; whether the rocks be granitic, volcanic, or stratified; whether the foliage be of spring, midsummer, or autumn; even whether the foreground herbage be of grasses or broad-leaved weeds; but is there no danger that minutiae may absorb too much attention, that the larger parts may be lost in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... more secure, a peace more perfect, than are enjoyed by the occupant of this rambling old house? Blessed be the earth that bears this solace for weary brains! Its very odor is pregnant with dreams of the Vuelta Abajo. You see the luxuriant foliage of the tropics, the dark-green waves curling on the coral beach, and the scarlet flamingoes that gather shell-fish in the marshes away off in the golden sunset. You hear the wild song of the Spanish fruit-man as ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... occur in the vegetable kingdom; thus "from seeds gathered from the finest cultivated varieties of Heartsease (Viola tricolor), plants perfectly wild both in their foliage and their flowers are frequently produced;"[72] but the reversion in this instance is not to a very ancient period, for the best existing varieties of the heartsease are of comparatively modern origin. With most of our cultivated vegetables there is some tendency to reversion to ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... the view of the great harbor within, filled with shipping, and the town beyond, with houses having no chimneys and painted in white and red, and green and pink, with nodding palms and other tropical foliage growing—all strange enough to a lad who had been all his ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... under the eaves of cloud. There was a curious clarity about the sunrise; as if its sun might be made of glass rather than gold. It was the first time I had seen so closely and covering such a landscape the grey convolutions and hoary foliage of the olive; and all those twisted trees went by like a dance of dragons in a dream. The rocking railway-train and the vanishing railway-line seemed to be going due east, as if disappearing into the sun; and save for the noise of the train there was no sound in all that grey and silver solitude; ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... Maine woods in the neighborhood of a summer hotel. It is the middle of July. The trees are covered with foliage, a hot sun casts dancing shadows upon the mossy ground, and the air is full of the twittering of birds and the rustle of leaves. A winding path crosses from one side to the other, and near the center is a little ...
— The Noble Lord - A Comedy in One Act • Percival Wilde
... represents a cowled monk raising from the ground the figure of a swooning knight in complete armor, in front of an abbey church with an image of the Virgin and Child sculptured in a niche above the door; and the building is thus described in the text: "Its windows crowded with the foliage of their ornaments, and dimmed by the hand of the painter; its numerous spires towering above the roof, and the Christian ensign on its front, declared it a residence of devotion and charity." An episode in the story narrates the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... beyond this we descended to a valley in which I saw, for the first time, that beautiful shrub of the interior, the Acacia pendula. The foliage is of a light green colour and it droops like the weeping willow; the bark is rough, and the trunk seldom exceeds nine inches in diameter. The wood of this graceful tree is sweet-scented, of a rich dark-brown ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... deck was a perfect parterre of flowers and foliage, intertwined with the flags of all nations, and enclosed under an awning, which latter had a canvas screen all round to keep out the prying eyes of the bluejackets ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... is peaceful and friendly, without being remote or secluded. The grove is large and free from all undergrowth: the trunks of the ancient olive-trees are gnarled and massive, the foliage soft and tremulous. The corner that George has chosen for us is raised above the road by a kind of terrace, so that it is not too easily accessible to the curious passer-by. Across the road we see a gray stone wall, and above it the roof of the Anglican ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... There they stood crowded together in utter darkness and stillness, unless, as Genifrede feared, the beating of her heart might be heard above the hum of the mosquito, or the occasional rustle of the foliage. ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... stranger. As Jack advanced, he retreated, till Jack reached the centre of the tree, where he could coil himself away without the possibility of any one below discovering him. He looked round before sitting down. Below him was a dense mass of foliage, with only here and there an opening. To the west, in the far distance, was the sea, looking bright and blue; to the east were ranges of mountains, the most remote evidently of considerable elevation; while to the north he caught a glimpse of the river, to his great satisfaction, ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... the stars and stripes. The whole open space is covered with the softest green turf. Not a lawn, mind you, such as one may see in almost any immaculately kept northern town, with artistic flower beds dotting it, and a carefully trimmed border of foliage plants surrounding it. No, this circle has real Virginia turf; the thick, rich, indestructible turf one finds in England, which, as an old gardener told the writer, "we rolls and tills it for a thousand years." Nature had been rolling and tilling this green plot of ground ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... chief town of the Canton, and contains about 1800 inhabitants. It is a small but picturesque town, the buildings being half concealed by foliage and chestnut trees. Not far off, by the river Candou, the scenery reminds one of the wooded valley ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... "in the Bas-Poitou, a canton, of which no one in France suspects the existence. Twenty leagues of country is immense, is it not? Twenty leagues, monseigneur, all covered with water and herbage, and reeds of the most luxuriant nature; the whole studded with islands covered with woods of the densest foliage. These large marshes, covered with reeds as with a thick mantle, sleep silently and calmly beneath the sun's soft and genial rays. A few fishermen with their families indolently pass their lives away there, with their great ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... joy and we set out together through the thick woods. The leaves were just come and their vivid, glossy green sprinkled out in the foliage of the little beeches and the woods smelt of new things. The trail was overgrown and great trees had fallen into it and we had to pick our way around them. The Comptroller carried me on his back over the wet places and we found the brook at ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... hedge that ran beside the road, and although the shadow still left the nobler half of his person exposed to the rays of the sun, he kept carefully within such shelter as it afforded. If he encountered any one, he stood still and examined the foliage of the hedge. To dispute the path in any other manner, with the merest urchin he might meet, was out of the question. It would have caused excitement. Moreover he was a meek man, and in all doubtful points yielded to the claim of others. Grocery-boys and barrow-women always had the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... "ball-practice" of the woods. He was his own commissary, for he carried his "rations" on his back, and replenished his havresack with his rifle. He needed no quartermaster; for he furnished his own "transportation," and selected his own encampment—his bed was the bosom of mother-earth, and his tent was the foliage of an oak or the canopy of heaven. In most cases—especially in battle—he was his own commander, too; for he was impatient of restraint, and in savage warfare knew his duty as well as any man could instruct him. Obedience was no part of his nature—subordination ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... he pointed to a two-story white-stuccoed house with wide galleries rising amid the deep-green tropical foliage on a wooded hill that sloped gently ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... The sweep of steps that spread so proudly from the portico was flanked by two sleeping lions in stone, both appearing, by the savage expressions which distorted their visages, to be suffering from terrifying dreams. In the garden the spiked foliage of the dark, slender dracaenas and the fringed fans of giant filamentosas ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... this tree spread out, a few feet above its base, into several branches, any one of which would have been deemed a large tree in England, and these branches were again subdivided into smaller stems with a network of foliage, which rendered it quite possible for a man to move about upon them with facility, and to find a convenient couch. Here,—the fire at the foot of the tree having been replenished,—each man sought ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... devotions. But I had not heard that it was a Benedictine custom to rehearse aves in tree-tops." Then, as she leaned forward, both elbows resting more comfortably upon the wall, and thereby disclosing her slim body among the foliage like a crimson flower green-calyxed, he said, "You are not a nun—Blood of God! ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... lovers that he selects for his idyllic romances. Gushingly he does his work, but thoroughly; and there are other flowers than lackadaisies to be discerned in his herbage. GUSTIBUS blows gently the foliage aside, and gives us glimpses through it of rural contentment in connection with a mill, or some other interesting object beyond. The pencil of SAGEGREEN imbues canvases, both large and small, with infinite variety and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... scattered gardens, palaces, temples, and pagodas on terraces and artificial hills. Some of these were like the one seen by Marco Polo in the palace enclosure of Kublai Khan, being from three hundred to four hundred feet in height, their sides covered with forest-trees of all kinds, through whose foliage the yellow-tiled palace roofs appeared. In the midst of these hills lay a large lake, containing two or three islands, on which were picturesque buildings, the islands being reached by quaint ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... be about forty acres of the park. The main building of the monastery faced the south, and stood in a space of green meadow, picturesquely intersected by several tiny clear streams, and by larger sheets of water so disposed as to have a natural effect. Shapely trees with contrasting foliage grew here and there. Grottos had been ingeniously contrived; and broad terraced walks, now in ruin, though the steps were broken and the balustrades eaten through with rust, gave to this sylvan Thebaid a certain character of its own. The art of man and the picturesqueness of nature had wrought ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... was a child. She sang of the big tree-trunks, standing close together, with their roots intertwining below the earth and their branches intertwining above it; of their rough coating of bark and queer, gnarled limbs; of the bushy foliage that roofed the entire forest, save where the sunbeams found a path through which to touch the ground in little spots and to cast weird and curious shadows over the mosses, the lichens and the drifts of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... feet upon this accursed spot of mother earth. Never in my life did I feel so sick at heart—so revolted at man's crimes and cruelties. The tree itself was a true picture of death—a tree of dark, impenetrable foliage, with a great head, or upper part larger than the lower one, and this head crowned with fifty filthy vultures, the ministers of the executioner, which eat the bodies of the criminals! The number of executions here performed is very great—some two or three hundred in a year. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... sunrise, swiftly, to cover as much distance as was possible before the sun grew hot; they marched again towards sunset when a grateful coolness refreshed the weary patient. They passed through interminable forests, where the majestic trees sheltered under their foliage a wealth of graceful, tender plants: from trunk and branch swung all manner of creepers, which bound the forest giants in fantastic bonds. They forded broad streams, with exquisite care lest the sick man should come to hurt; they ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... rich, and at 8000 feet trees common also to the top of Sinchul appeared, with R. Hodgsoni, and the beautiful little winter-flowering primrose, P. petiolaris, whose stemless flowers spread like broad purple stars on the deep green foliage. Above, the path runs along the ridge of the precipices facing the south-east, and here we caught a glimpse of the great valley of the Ryott, beyond the Teesta, with Tumloong, the Rajah's residence, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... books were protected by wire-work; between each pair of cases was a bust of a Roman emperor or an ancient philosopher; at the crossing of the two galleries was a dome which seemed to be supported on a palm-tree in plaster-work at each corner, out of the foliage of which peered the heads of cherubs; while the convenience of readers was consulted by the liberality with which the library was thrown open on three days in every week, and furnished with tables, chairs, a ladder to reach the upper shelves, and ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... in the night For one to lead him to his waiting love, To lead him to the temple of delight, To the white ivory casket where his soul Is set with lovely secrets? Do I not hear The little echoes roll, and fade, and fret About the murmuring foliage of the garden Wherein the temple lies? Do I not fear Lest in the outer glories he be lost And thwarted of his heart's desire, that flies Like a dove before his coming, and alights Within the inner courtyard of my soul Bearing such messages ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... a laugh, pulling himself together. "This September weather always gets me. I guess I have a streak of Indian; it comes of being brought up on the ranges. And in September, after the first frosts have touched the foliage—" He paused, as though it was not necessary ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... Louis to Vincennes, thence to Cincinnati, and up the Ohio to the beautiful island he had visited in the month of May. Change of season had transformed a paradise of soft verdure and tender bloom into an Eden of gorgeous foliage and gaudy flowers. The house of Blennerhassett he saw embowered in trees magnificently colored by the wonder-working frosts of October. The place was Faerie Land, but had not Gloriana been there, it may be doubted whether other attractions of the lovely isle ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... boundless forest, or of meeting some one who would be his guide. At last, the sun appeared to be near its setting, and he could see the high branches of the trees, shining like gold, as its last rays fell upon them. But underneath, the foliage was getting darker and darker; the birds were preparing to sleep, and everything soon became so still that he could hear his steps echoing through the wood, and when he stopped, he heard his heart beating, or a leaf falling; but nowhere did he see ...
— The Gold Thread - A Story for the Young • Norman MacLeod
... and when heat alone prevails, the wonder is that the whole patch of luxuriant greenness does not collapse and wither. But the broad leaves woo the cool night airs, and while the thin, harsh, tough foliage of the wattles becomes languid and droops and falls, the banana grove retains its verdancy, each plant ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... shed by the moonbeams sifting through the thick foliage a man wandered through the forest with slow and cautious steps. From time to time, as if to find his way, he whistled a peculiar melody, which was answered in the distance by some one whistling the same air. The man would ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... tar-barrels on election nights; up a lane the jail where he had seen the prisoners flatten their noses against the bars to beg tobacco; a tall Lombardy poplar at a corner stood stolid except at its summit, where a portion of the foliage whispered with a freshening sound. How still; as if every thing was in suspense like him—the favorite of the old town for so many years, and soon to become the possessor of its ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... Florence as the city towards which he directs his steps. His way is through a country where corn grows under groves of fruit trees, whose tops are woven into green arcades by thickly-clustering garlands of vines; the dark masses of foliage and verdure which every where appear, melt insensibly, as he advances, into a succession of shady bowers that invite him to their depths; the scenery is monotonous, and yet ever various from the richness of its sylvan ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... sex either of the cooking or any other animals in the moon; they are all produced from trees of various sizes and foliage; that which produces the cooking animal, or human species, is much more beautiful than any of the others; it has large, straight boughs and flesh-colored leaves, and the fruit it produces are nuts or pods, with hard shells, at least two yards long; when they become ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... and bloom. The tonic air put to shame the pharmacopaeia. The glades were dark with mossy shade, and bright with shy rivulets winking from the ferns and laurels. On the lower side they viewed, framed in the near foliage, exquisite sketches of the far valley swooning in ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... the Pitkin farm-house had been stripped of its golden glory, and now rose against the yellow evening sky, with its infinite delicacies of net work and tracery, in their way quite as beautiful as the full pomp of summer foliage. The air without was keen and frosty, and the knotted twigs of the branches knocked against the roof and rattled and ticked against the upper window panes as the chill evening ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... scenery now became very striking; primeval masses of poplar and birch foliage, which spread away and upward in smoothest slopes, like vast lawns, studded with the sombre green of the pine tops which towered above them. Here and there the bends of the river crossed at such angles as to enclose a lake-like expanse of water. The river also took a fine colouring from its ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... garden behind it that, sloping down to the harbor front, was planted pretty thick with palms and ferns, grouped into clusters with flowers and plants. Here were a number of tables, some in little grottos, like our Vauxhall in New York, with red and blue and white paper lanterns hung among the foliage. Thither gentlemen and ladies used sometimes to go of an evening to sit and drink lime-juice and sugar and water (and sometimes a taste of something stronger), and to look out across the water at the shipping and so to enjoy the cool ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... now advances in his robe of gauze? He comes when the rosy morn first trembles in the east. Slow and languid is his step; he seeks the damp cavern and the impervious shade. It is the heat of noon, and the kine no longer low. Not a breeze stirs: the foliage of the groves, all—is still, except the insect world, who dimple the stream, or, buzzing round the head of the sleeping youth, rouses the panting dog that lies ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... risen and had gained the antechamber unperceived. This was the very room which, eight months before, he had entered black with mud, with blood and powder, bringing back the grandson to the grandfather. The old wainscoting was garlanded with foliage and flowers; the musicians were seated on the sofa on which they had laid Marius down. Basque, in a black coat, knee-breeches, white stockings and white gloves, was arranging roses round all of the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... birds, the flowers, the foliage of the trees, The stars which seem so fixed and so sublime, Vast continents and the eternal seas— All these ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... crossed at right angles by a stream spanned by a small natural stone bridge. A line of poplar-trees shaded each foot-path. The little log cabins and stone houses and cottages were half hidden in foliage now tinted with autumn colors. Toward the center of the town the houses and stores and shops fronted upon the street and along one side of a green square, or plaza. Here were situated several edifices, the most prominent of which ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... though her face was so bright and full of color, her hand was thin and transparent. But what a picture she made as she sat there in magnificent beauty, relieved by such a back-ground of foliage, flowers, and artistic objects! ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... must have many quarters of an hour when he longs for the brilliancy and the movement and the stimulus of his Paris. The gardens of the Villa Medici are large, but they are laid out with narrow paths bordered with box, forming a wall as impervious as if of stone, and dark and damp by the shade of foliage. These walks are paved with gravel, and are always damp. These formal rectangles and alleys are utterly shut in, so that in any one part one can see only the two dense green walls of box that inclose him and the glimpse of sky overhead,—not precisely a cheering promenade. ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... that stands upon the road between Kaiserthal and Mannheim, at about three-quarters of the distance from the former town, and commands a view of the latter. Mannheim is seen rising calm and smiling amid gardens which once were ramparts, and which now surround and embrace it like a girdle of foliage and flowers. Having reached this spot, he lifted his cap, above the peak of which were embroidered three interlaced oak leaves in silver, and uncovering his brow, stood bareheaded for a moment to feel the fresh air that rose from the valley of the Neckar. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... one can have failed to notice the unusual richness and brilliance of the autumnal tints on the foliage this year. I have more particularly remarked this in Clydesdale, the lake districts of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and in Somersetshire and Devonshire. Can any of the contributors to "N. & Q." inform me if attributable to the extraordinary ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... mountain, which is about seven thousand feet high, surrounds the larger circle, and the same is the case with the smaller circle on a proportionate scale. Down these valleys flow streams and rivulets of clear water, and the most luxuriant and verdant foliage fills their sides and the hilly ridges that separate them, among which were once scattered the smiling cottages and little plantations of the natives. All these are now destroyed, and the remnant of the population has crept down to the flats and swampy ground on the sea shore, completely ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... into the bush. "It usually happens that, when she is successful, she returns from her expedition, tumbled, beaten, scratched, even bitten on the nape and shoulders, her wounds thus bearing witness to the quadrupedal attitude she has assumed amid the foliage." (Foley, Bulletin de la Societe ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... June, the barque was completed, and Champlain, with a complement of men and material, took his departure. As he glided along in his little craft, he was exhilarated by the fragrance of the atmosphere, the bright coloring of the foliage, the bold, picturesque scenery that constantly revealed itself on both sides of the river. The lofty mountains, the expanding valleys, the luxuriant forests, the bold headlands, the enchanting little bays and inlets, and the numerous tributaries bursting into the broad waters ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... who honoured him equally with his sons. Him the son of Telamon smote under the ear with his long javelin, and plucked out the spear; but he indeed fell, like an ash, which, on the summit of a mountain conspicuous from afar, cut down with a brazen axe, strews its tender foliage on the earth. Thus he fell, and his armour, variegated with brass, rang about him. Then Teucer rushed on, eager to strip him of his armour; but Hector hurled his shining spear at him, hastening. He, however, seeing it from the opposite side, avoided, by a small ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... the shirts and petticoats, and miscellaneous linen of the inhabitants; fluttering out to dry publicly on certain days of the week, and enlivening the treeless little gardens where they hung, with lightsome avenues of pinafores, and solemn-spreading foliage of stout Welsh flannel. Here that absorbing passion for oranges (especially active when the fruit is half ripe, and the weather is bitter cold), which distinguishes the city English girl of the lower orders, flourished in its finest development; ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... in the (early) springtime there came to tempt him a druid who said to him:—"In the name of your God cause this apple-tree branch to produce foliage." Mochuda knew that it was in contempt for divine power the druid proposed this, and the branch put forth leaves on the instant. The druid demanded "In the name of your God, put blossom on it." Mochuda ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... a land breeze is easily explained. It is usually only during the lulls in the wind that Culex can fly. Generally on our coast a sea breeze means a stiff breeze, and during these mosquitoes will be found hovering on the leeward side of houses, sand dunes, and thick foliage.... While the strong breezes last, they will stick closely to these friendly shelters, though a cluster of houses may be but a few rods off, filled with unsuspecting mortals who imagine their tormentors are far inland ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... he would have given half that he possessed to regain. When he lands upon the island, what a change! Winter has become summer, the naked trees which be left are exchanged for the most luxuriant and varied foliage, snow and frost for warmth and splendour; the scenery of the temperate zone for the profusion and magnificence of the tropics; fruit which he had never before seen, supplies for the table unknown to him; a bright sky, a glowing sun, hills covered with ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... life of which every tender blade of grass, every venturesome flower thrusting its head above the sod, seemed to speak. There was health and strength in the gentle breeze which wantonly played with the budding leaves of the great trees, already putting forth little evangels of that splendid foliage with which they decked themselves in the full glory of summer. That merry wind which swept through the open boat-house at the end of the wharf laid a bold hand upon the curls which fell about the neck of the young girl sitting there by the door near ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... like Raoul, but few words; yet those few were felt and full of meaning. The sky was cloudless, the tall trees had burgeoned, a few green shoots were already brightening their myriad of brown twigs. The shrubs, the birches, the willows, the poplars were showing their first diaphanous and tender foliage. No soul resists these harmonies. Love explained Nature as it had already explained society to ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... glorious morning. The sun blazed like a great golden shield out of a cloudless sky, and hardly a breath of air stirred the foliage ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... snows melt away during that spring of 1603. The bare branches of the oak and maple showed tufts of browns, reds, and greens. The fish stirred in the streams, and by the time that Nonowit's forest home had its roof of thick green foliage the Indians themselves were astir. For far up the river at the falls fish could be found in plenty, and that was a welcome change from the game ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... critical. I lost many until I learned to clean their boxes thoroughly the instant they stopped eating and leave them alone until they exhibited hunger signs again. They eat greedily of the leaves preferred by each species, doing best when the foliage is washed and drops of water left for them to drink as they would find dew and rain out of doors. Professor Thomson, of the chair of Natural History of the University of Aberdeen, makes this statement in his "Biology of ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the holly. Now you could not find anything lovelier in the way of foliage than holly, only such a little suffices. At Christmas time you are literally saturated with it. In every house you enter, in everything you eat, at every step you take, nothing ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... that it was designed for the spot on which it was located, and it fitted in the slope of the hillside and between the giant forest trees as if it were a part of nature's plan. The structure with its plastered walls and red gable roofs, amid the green foliage, was a welcome relief from the general massive ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... sweet-heather soil, its top bristling with barbed javelins and jagged arrows; the Cibotium Spectabile, surpassing the others by the craziness of its structure, hurling a defiance to revery, as it darted, through the palmated foliage, an enormous orang-outang tail, a hairy dark tail whose end was twisted into the ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... never do the silent artillery of time has done—the leveling of its walls. They are gone. They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-restless hurricane has swept over them, and left only here and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few more ruder storms, then to sink ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... of a thick yew hedge at the side of the gardens. Suddenly, at a particular point, he stopped, and drawing something out of his towels, thrust it, at the full length of his arm, into the closely interwoven mass of twig and foliage at his side. Then he moved forward towards the house; a bushy clump of rhododendron hid him from my sight. Two or three minutes later I heard a door close somewhere near my own; Mr. Cazalette had evidently re-entered ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... the beautiful magnolia opens her splendid blossoms; the sassafras adds its evidence of life; the pearl-white blossoms of the dog-wood light up every forest: and while our stranger is rubbing his eyes in astonishment, the earth is covered with her emerald velvet carpet; rich foliage and brilliant colored blossoms adorn the trees; fragrant flowers are enwreathing every wayside; the swift-winged birds float through the air and send forth joyous notes of gratitude from every tree-top; the merry lambs skip joyfully around their verdant ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... delightful, for the evening was balmy and fragrant with unfolding flowers and foliage. Arriving at Madam Alberti's, they found her fashionable rooms filled with customers, and were obliged to wait sometime before ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Aileen ran to a gnarled old tree whose trunk was divided into two parts, and from which spread out a series of stout branches that formed a sort of net-work of foliage about eight or ten feet from the ground. Climbing actively up to these branches, she crept out upon them, and from that position, parting the twigs, she looked down ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... woods of it are found in Maine and New Hampshire—for it loves a cold climate—and in other Northern portions of the country. The tall trunks of the trees resemble pillars of polished marble supporting a canopy of bright-green foliage. The leaves are something of a heart-shape, and their vivid summer green turns to golden tints in autumn. The bark of the canoe birch is almost snowy white on the outside, and very prettily marked with fine brown stripes two or three inches ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... yet soul-stirring, is the view from that majestic height! The towers of Windsor Castle behind us breathing of the historic past; the Thames unrolling its silver windings below; the meadows; the roofs of Eton College lifting through the veil of foliage— can aught on earth surpass it? A distant sound of cheering from the Eton playing-fields reached us, to announce that some young votary of athletic games had reached his goal. Over all floated the sunshine. Why seek foreign shores for recreation which these sylvan bowers, ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... up a weedy gravel walk, under a noble avenue of China trees, whose graceful forms and ever-springing foliage seemed to be the only things there that neglect could not daunt or alter,—like noble spirits, so deeply rooted in goodness, as to flourish and grow stronger amid ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to have to die while his heart was still young enough to love beauty! Blackbirds sang recklessly in the shrubbery, swallows were flying high, the leaves above him glistened; and over the fields was every imaginable tint of early foliage, burnished by the level sunlight, away to where the distant "smoke-bush" blue was trailed along the horizon. Irene's flowers in their narrow beds had startling individuality that evening, little deep assertions of gay life. Only Chinese and Japanese painters, and perhaps ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... natives. The vegetation is so dense that there are no shadows, and, the location of the sun being an unsolvable mystery, one becomes affected by a strange lost feeling. The loneliness, the silence, the impossibility of seeing far into the surrounding wall of foliage, all oppress the soul, and strange alarms attack the most hardy. Then at night, when there is no moon and the darkness is thick, a phosphorescent light, due to decaying wood, shines fearsomely all about on the ground, so that it seems, as Louis ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... running on the road. They heard the terrible gallop gaining on them. Now the waves arrived in a single line, rolling, tumbling with the thunder of a charging battalion. With their first shock they had broken three poplars; the tall foliage sank and disappeared. A wooden cabin was swallowed up, a wall was demolished; heavy carts were carried away like straws. But the water seemed, above all, to pursue the fugitives. At the bend in the ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... bungalows, which served as quarters for the officers. The soldiers got abundance of firewood from the forest, and the place presented a picturesque appearance, after nightfall, with its blazing fires and their reflection on the deep circle of foliage. ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... own till the day when fire and wind took the part of his enemy against him.* The trees, shaken and made to rub against each other by the tempest, broke into flame from the friction, and the forest was set on fire. Usoos, seizing a leafy branch, despoiled it of its foliage, and placing it in the water let it drift out to sea, bearing him, the first of his race, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... lands red as Virginia or New Jersey fields, stretching and billowing away from the yellow Tagus in the foreground to the mountain-walled horizon, with far stretches of forest in the middle distance. What riches of gray roof, of white wall, of glossy green, or embrowning foliage in the city gardens the prospect included, one should have the brush rather than the pen to suggest; or else one should have an inexhaustible ink-bottle with every color of the chromatic scale in it to pour the right tints. Mostly, however, I should say that the city of ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... roses, and carved work of exquisite character. Behind these arches are two rows of trefoil niches; and between them also rises a square column, of the Doric order, surmounted by carved pinnacles. On the extremity of the arches is placed richly carved foliage, of a similar character to that which ornaments the edges of the arches; and in the centre are circles enclosing quatrefoils. From the bases of the two middle square columns descend roses, and other foliage; and from the lower extremities of the interior ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... upon its stagnant waters the still shadows of the autumnal foliage. As is common in ancient forests in the neighbourhood of men's wants, the trees were dwarfed in height by repeated loppings, and the boughs sprang from the hollow, gnarled boles of pollard oaks and beeches; the trunks, vast in girth, and covered ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in her own heart, she knew very well why. For there in the background, coiled up against the dense wall of rock and fern, Sardanapalus lay knotted in sleepy folds, with his great ringed back shining blue in the sunlight that struggled in round patches through the shimmering foliage. More consciously now than even in the train, the beautiful deadly creature seemed to fascinate Elma and bind her to the spot. For a moment she hesitated, unable to resist the strange, inexplicable attraction that ran in her blood. That brief interval ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... suburbs, and desirous to contemplate the nature of the rustic scenery, he, with listless step, came up to a spot encircled by hills and streaming pools, by luxuriant clumps of trees and thick groves of bamboos. Nestling in the dense foliage stood a temple. The doors and courts were in ruins. The walls, inner and outer, in disrepair. An inscription on a tablet testified that this was the temple of Spiritual Perception. On the sides of the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Plymouth and Taunton surrounded the swamp. They cautiously penetrated the tangled thicket, their feet at almost every step sinking in the mire and becoming shackled by interlacing roots, the branches pinioning their arms, and the dense foliage blinding their eyes. Philip, with characteristic cunning, sent a few of his warriors occasionally to exhibit themselves, to lure the English on. The colonists gradually forgot their accustomed prudence, ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... plantations of which commence about 1300 feet above the level of the sea, and proceed up the hill till they reach the height of 4000 feet. Nothing can be more beautiful than a full-grown coffee-plantation: the deep green foliage, the splendid bright-red berry, and the delicious shade afforded by the trees, render those spots altogether fit for princes; and princely lives their owners lead. One is always sure of a hearty ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... the things he saw on his journey Robinson was most delighted with the birds. They were of the most beautiful colors. The forest was full of them. They gleamed like jewels in the deep masses of foliage. In the morning their singing filled the ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... again early in the day, and pitched our tent on the summit of a sloping bank that overlooked one of its long still reaches. We were protected from the sun by the angophora trees, which formed a hanging wood around us, and, with its bright green foliage, gave a cheerfulness to the scene that was altogether unusual. The opposite side of the river was rather undulated, and the soil appeared to be of the finest description. The grass, although growing in ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... day in autumn. Like the fate which attends us all, the foliage had assumed the paleness of death; and the winds, cold and damp, were sighing among the branches of the trees, and causing every other feeling rather than that of comfort. Four others and myself had been out hunting during the day, and we returned at nightfall ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... the brink of the river's chasm, or again between jagged cliffs. Anon the awed girls gazed down into fearful depths as the wagon skirted the dangerous brink, or craned their necks to look at the wonderful vines and foliage hanging from the tops of massive rocks. By the time they reached the ridge of foot-hills where the trail led off to the cliffs at the Devil's Grave, both sisters were silenced by the impressive scenery, so that petty problems of puny mortals faded ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Many will be familiar with the Vatican pigeons and the fountain so frequently copied. It is said that the Derbyshire workers in mosaic excelled themselves in the production of a beautifully inlaid vase covered with flowers, foliage, and birds, prepared for the late Queen Victoria, in 1842. Half a century ago fancy shops were filled with the products of the Derbyshire mines, but most of the best pieces are now among household curios. The wide-topped vase shown in Fig. 55 is made from ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... background of towering green hills and a dazzling blue of velvet sky and crystal sea, like that of Algiers, greeted our enchanted gaze! Like some of the coast towns of Italy, Charlotte Amalia is gay with color, and its white, red-roofed villas nestle among their luxuriant gardens and tropical foliage, standing out in a perfect riot of orange and yellow, blue ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... yet had reach'd the other bank, We enter'd on a forest, where no track Of steps had worn a way. Not verdant there The foliage, but of dusky hue; not light The boughs and tapering, but with knares deform'd And matted thick: fruits there were none, but thorns Instead, with venom fill'd. Less sharp than these, Less intricate the brakes, wherein abide Those animals, that hate the cultur'd fields, Betwixt ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... 111, is perhaps the simplest form of shelter employed. Ten or a dozen cottonwood saplings are set firmly into the ground, so as to form a slightly curved inclosure with convex side toward the south. Cottonwood and willow boughs in foliage, grease-wood, sage brush, and rabbit brush are laid with stems upward in even rows against these saplings to a height of 6 or 7 feet. This light material is held in place by bands of small cottonwood branches laid in continuous horizontal lines around the outside of ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... your foliage, and be seen To come forth like the spring-time, fresh and green, And sweet as Flora. Take no care For jewels for your gown, or hair: Fear not, the leaves will strew Gems in abundance upon you: Besides, the childhood of the day has kept, Against ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of the searchers went to the northeast into the dense and tangled swamp woods between Bald Peak and Cloudy Peak—the wildest wilderness in the mountains. The light barely penetrates the foliage on the brightest days. The ground is rough, sometimes precipitous, closely covered with bushes and ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... across the depth of this blessed and peaceful valley, have I followed, in solitude, the impulses of a wild and wayward fancy, and sought the quiet dell, or viewed the setting sun, as he scattered his glorious and shining beams through the glowing foliage of the trees, in the vista, where I stood; or wandered along the river whose banks were fringed with the hanging willow, whilst I listened to the thrush singing among the hazels that crowned the sloping green above me, or watched the splashing otter, as he ventured from the dark angles ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... he saw the ibises motionless on one leg at the edge of the water, which reflected their pale pink necks. The willows stretched their soft grey foliage to the bank, cranes flew in a triangle in the clear sky, and the cry of unseen herons was heard from the sedges. Far as the eye could reach, the river rolled its broad green waters o'er which white sails, like the wings of birds, glided, and here and there on the shores, ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... discovery of five or six parallel walls, built of blocks of peperino, of marble steps in the centre of this singular monument, of gates with marble posts and architraves, leading to the spaces between the six parallel walls, and finally, of a column with foliage carved upon its surface. On my return to Rome, in the spring of 1887, every trace of the monument had disappeared under the embankment of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. I questioned foremen and workmen, I consulted ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... just as the head darted downward. The release clicked home. And, wonder of wonders, the blue flame crackled spitefully. Exploding atoms, dazzling in the green twilight. Mighty thrashings of the huge coils high up in the tangled foliage. Crashing and tearing of great stems and rope-like tendrils. But the enormous body was headless; a dead thing in the throes of its final reflexes. Only the one charge had been spoiled; the little pistol ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... like shuttles in a loom. The river reflected the yellow foliage of the white birch and the scarlet of the maples. The wayside was bright with goldenrod, with the red tassels of the sumac, with the purple frost-flower and ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... stalks which are hidden now; but darker in the tops. Yet here two shades of greenness: the male plants paler, smaller, maturing earlier, dying first; the females darker, taller, living longer, more luxuriant of foliage and flowering heads. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... said Hadria. She was waving a twig of lavender, and little Martha was making grabs at it, and laughing her gurgling laugh of babyish glee. Professor Theobald stood in the road facing up hill towards Craddock, whose church tower was visible from here, just peeping through the spring foliage of the vicarage garden. He only now and again looked round at the picture that he professed ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... accelerated your passage by their rebounding pressure; fragrant shrubs covered with dazzling flowers, the fleeting tints of which changed every moment; groups of tall trees, with strange birds of brilliant and variegated plumage, singing and reposing in their sheeny foliage, ...
— Ixion In Heaven • Benjamin Disraeli
... creeper and, with these, they constructed a platform among the higher branches; and on it erected a sort of arbour, amply sufficient to hold four or five people, lying down. This arbour would hardly be noticed, even by persons searching; as it was, to a great extent, hidden by the foliage beneath it. Stanley told Meinik that they had better buy some rope for a ladder, and take out the pegs; as these might catch the eye of a passer-by, and cause him to ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... short time the withered branches were ready for burning, and in the midst of the stumps the first crop of corn and vegetables was planted. Often the settler did not even burn the girdled trees, but planted his crop under the dead foliage. ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... transfixes the cornice immediately above, as well as in the sill of the window, and then unites with the mullion of the latter.—The roof takes a very high pitch.—A figured cornice, upon which it rests, is boldly sculptured with foliage.—The chimneys are ornamented by angular buttresses.—All these portions of the building assimilate more or less to our Gothic architecture of the sixteenth century; but a most magnificent oriel window, which fills the whole of the space between the centre and the left-hand divisions, is ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... cedar which was thirty-six feet six inches in girth, and one hundred and eleven feet in the spread of its boughs; the foliage is ever green, and it mounts up to an ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... deep and entangled morass, which had only been explored by the veteran hunter of former days, or by the hunted outlaw of the present. Streams had overflown their banks, the water had stagnated, rank foliage had arisen, and giant trees ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... exchanged, but with no advantage to either side; till the slave-trader (doubtless acquainted with the roads of this intricate country) suddenly discovered an opening in the forest. Through this opening he, followed by a number of the volunteers, entered, and, sheltered by the surrounding foliage and trees, took deadly aim at those of their enemies who were exposed to their view. Many of my countrymen fell in this cruel slaughter, and amongst them were two of the recently captured slaves. Horrible to relate, one of these slaves was my mother. ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... engineering talent and his beautiful art. [1] So they had him removed from that post. My father took this very ill, and it seemed to him that they had done him a great despite. Yet he immediately resumed his art, and fashioned a mirror, about a cubit in diameter, out of bone and ivory, with figures and foliage of great finish and grand design. The mirror was in the form of a wheel. In the middle was the looking-glass; around it were seven circular pieces, on which were the Seven Virtues, carved and joined of ivory and black bone. The ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... interval! There is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for, instead of the restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the bleak upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their living plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less lovely, that have stood ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... the second perched it on the shoulder of the stoutest lady. Duncan and Llewellyn tittered louder, and even Eric could not resist a smile. But when the lady, feeling some irritation on her shoulder, raised her hand, and the grasshopper took a frightened leap into the centre of the green foliage which enwreathed her bonnet, none of the three could stand it, and they burst into fits of laughter, which they tried in vain to conceal by bending down their heads and cramming their fists into their mouths. Eric, having once given way, enjoyed the joke uncontrollably, and the ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... Very slow was this progress; almost like a continual dream was that long column, moving, moving on—white in front, black behind—when seen winding over a hill, or, sometimes, the banners peering over the autumn foliage of some thicket, all composed to profound silence and tardy measured tread; while the chants rose and fell with the breeze, like unearthly music. Many moved on more than half asleep; and others of the younger ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... month we get the finest effects of the changing tints of foliage; after a wet, windy summer the colours are poor, but fine and varied after ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... Furneaux did not reprove the giggler. Lying there, screened even in broad daylight by the bulk of the rock and some hazels growing vigorously in that restricted area owing to the absence of foliage overhead, he listened to the voices of the night, never dumb in a large wood. Birds fluttered uneasily on the upper branches of the trees—indeed, Furneaux was lucky in that the occasional gleam of the torch had not sent a pheasant hurtling ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy |
