"Scarp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an angle where the North and West escarpments met. From this high corner of the square earthworks a vast extent of country could be seen. A footpath ran steeply down the green slope, conducting from the shady promenade on the walls to a road at the bottom of the scarp. It was by this path the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... strength, capable of mounting numerous heavy guns at a superior altitude. The only entrance from the land side is at the south-west corner; this is exceedingly striking, as the fosse is about 140 feet wide, the scarp and counter-scarp almost perpendicular, being ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... a palisade horizontal, or nearly so, projecting from the scarp or counterscarp. A modern and better form consists of supports at 3 or 4 feet interval, connected by barbed wire, forming a horizontal wire fence. ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... where, when lodging within the castle, she daily took exercise, whatever might be the weather. The terrace at this time, as it is described by Paul Hentzner, and as it appears in Norden's view, was a sort of balcony projecting beyond the scarp of the hill, and supported by great ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... peasants, all devoted themselves to the common safety. A week before the Tartars appeared on the Angara, earth-works had been raised. A fosse, flooded by the waters of the Angara, was dug between the scarp and counterscarp. The town could not now be taken by a coup de main. It must ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... on the word like a steel trap. "The scarp's thirty feet high, and the ditch accordin'. The last on the west side it will be—over by the river. I know it like your face, and ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... to the present hour, he might have entered without question, for the gates were seldom closed and never locked, the portcullises, sheathed in the wall above, hung moveless in their rusty chains, and the drawbridges spanned the moat from scarp to counterscarp, as if from the first their beams had rested there in solid masonry. And still, during the day, there was little sign of change, beyond an indefinable presence of busier life, even in the hush of the hot ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... of the time when cannons with smooth bore were obliged to approach to within a very short range of a scarp in order to open a breach, and we are far beyond that first rifled artillery which effected so ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... imagine the beginning of the city that spreads before you. First of all you must realize that this point of observation would, in those days, have been offshore, on the shallow water of Yerba Buena Cove. To the right is the scarp of Telegraph Hill, from which ships coming through the Golden Gate were sighted, and to the left is the lesser Rincon Hill, which is being cut away to provide a light manufacturing district. These ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... hand in them. The surrounding wall, at the foot of which there were no ditches, would have formed an oval line of nearly two miles had it not been interrupted, on the side of the mountains and the sea, between the ports of Stabiae and of Herculaneum. These ramparts consisted of two walls—the scarp and counterscarp,—between which ran a terraced platform; the exterior wall, slightly sloping, was defended by embrasures between which the archer could place himself in safety, in an angle of the stonework, so soon as he had shot his arrow. The interior ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... toward ten he and McCrea were spinning away up the west shore under the lofty, rock-ribbed scarp of Crow Nest and Storm King, to ferry over to Fishkill from Newburg, and there take the Pacific express, making its first stop out of New York City. Each had hurriedly packed such store of clothing as seemed most appropriate to the region and the business ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... of recent date may be marked at surface by a scarp, because the face of the upthrown block has not yet been worn to the level of the ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... in this part of Usagara was so scarce and precious. Down to the river-bed sloped the Mpwapwa, roughened in some places by great boulders of basalt, or by rock masses, which had parted from a precipitous scarp, where clung the kolquall with a sure hold, drawing nourishment where every other green thing failed; clad in others by the hardy mimosa, which rose like a sloping bank of green verdure almost to the summit. And, happy sight to me so long a stranger to ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... white with the dust of a long journey on foot, who arrived at the castle by the valley-road from Knollsea. He looked awhile at the ruin, and, skirting its flank instead of entering by the great gateway, climbed up the scarp and walked in through a breach. After standing for a moment among the walls, now silent and apparently empty, with a disappointed look he descended the slope, and proceeded ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... from your flower-beds, two-legged cats from your larder, and sentimental "cousins" from your maids. You may thus, indeed, make your hall or mansion into a little fortified place, with fosse and counter-scarp, and covered way, and glacis; or at any rate, you may put a plain English haw-haw ditch and fence all round the sacred enclosure; and depend upon it that you will find the good effects of this extra expense in the anti-rheumatic tendencies of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... of hearty laughter from the manly-looking lad addressed, as he stood, with his hands clinging and his head twisted round, to look back: for he had spread-eagled himself against a nearly perpendicular scarp of rock which he had begun to climb, so as to reach a patch of ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... east the Dead Sea lay, a stretch of silk. At its edge was the flutter of ospreys feasting on the barbels and breams of the Jordan, which as they enter, die. Beyond was a glitter of white and gold, the scarp of Moriah and its breast of stone, the Tyrian bevel of Solomon, the porphyry of Nehemiah, the marble that Herod gave; ascending terraces, engulfing porticoes, the splendor of Jerusalem at dawn. Between the ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... ports of the cabin were discs of scarlet, that pure translucent colour which comes from the reflection of sunset in leagues of still water. The ship lay at anchor under the high green scarp of an island, but on the side of the ports no land was visible—only a circle in which sea and sky melted into the quintessence of light. The air was very hot and very quiet. Inside a lamp had been lit, for in those latitudes night descends like a thunderclap. Its yellow glow ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... next passed up by Caleb, who, declining the proffered hand, drew himself up, by a firm grasp upon the rocky scarp of the cliff. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... shrubs were dripping, but the fog had almost cleared away, leaving only a haze in the air. A pale, level line of it cut across the scarp of the Big Hill. The sun shone with a peculiar soft light ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... his fear of being seen the boy rendered detection certain by nervous motion. The heather and peat stratum overhung the brow of the pit in mats, hiding the actual verge. The boy had stepped beyond the solid ground; the heather now gave way, and down he rolled over the scarp of grey sand to the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... where the Turkish cannon were planted, and at first drove all before him; but the Janissaries rallied and forced back the Christians out of the trenches. Unfortunately there was a high wind, which drove the smoke of the artillery down on the counter-scarp (the slope of masonry facing the rampart), and while it was thus hidden from the Christians, the Turks succeeded in effecting a lodgment there, fortifying themselves with trees and sacks of earth and wool. When the smoke cleared off, the knights were dismayed ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... its crest about twenty feet above the bottom of the ditch. The berme usually left between the bottom of the parapet slope and the ditch was cut away so as to leave no level standing-place at the top of the scarp. This was the work which Longstreet afterward assaulted. Its chief defect was due to the situation and the contour of the ground around, which made its position so prominent a salient in the lines that the flanking ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox |
