"Steeply" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... discipline, and its members sank into indolence and luxury. The Premonstratensians were brought to England shortly after A.D. 1140, and were first settled at Newhouse, in Lincolnshire, near the Humber. The ground-plan of Easby Abbey, owing to its situation on the edge of the steeply sloping banks of a river, is singularly irregular. The cloister is duly placed on the south side of the church, and the chief buildings occupy their usual positions round it. But the cloister garth, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... without its silver coating of choya cactus. There were benches and ledges and ridges bare and glistening in the sun. From the crests of these Yaqui's searching falcon gaze roved near and far for signs of sheep, and Gale used his glass on the reaches of lava that slanted steeply upward to the corrugated peaks, and down over endless heave and roll and red-waved slopes. The heat smoked up from the lava, and this, with the red color and the shiny choyas, gave the impression of a world ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... trees suddenly opened and they came out upon a flat bare knoll, where the road, making a loop, signified that its journey was over. Around the outside edge was a wall of loose stones from which the hill sloped steeply in all directions, and before them, stretching away for miles, lay the country through which they had passed, till soft and green and gray in the distance. A huge smoke pall, its feathery top drifting slowly eastward, ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... while do I traverse Japanese streets. The houses separate, become scattered along the feet of the hills: the city thins away through little valleys, and vanishes at last behind. And we follow a curving road overlooking the sea. Green hills slope steeply down to the edge of the way on the right; on the left, far below, spreads a vast stretch of dun sand and salty pools to a line of surf so distant that it is discernible only as a moving white thread. The tide is out; and thousands of cockle-gatherers are scattered ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... glorified the science of engineering, and told you that it was a triumph of modernity. But this strange, unkempt Pass, with its inadequate road,—now overhanging a sheer precipice, now dipping down steeply towards the wild bed of its sombre river,—this Great St. Bernard, seemed a secret way back into other centuries, savage and remote. I felt shame that I had patronised it earlier, with condescending admiration of some prettinesses. No wonder ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... victims enough and to spare beside them, too ready for the sacrifice, and up the main street he goes unabashed, springing in at one door and at another, on either side of the street, but fondest of the western side, where the hill slopes steeply down to ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... summit of the hill, we sat down for a look around. Before us, nearly a mile away, three shallow, grass-filled valleys dropped steeply from the rolling meadowland. Almost instantly through my binoculars caught the moving forms of three sheep in the bottom of the central draw. "Pan-yang," I said to the Mongol. "Yes, yes, I see them," he ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... a night of tempest with rain and wind, a great wild wind that shouted mightily near and far, filling the world with halloo; while, ever and anon, thunder crashed and lightning flamed athwart the muddy road that wound steeply up betwixt grassy banks topped by swaying trees. Broken twigs, whirling down the wind, smote me in the dark, fallen branches reached out arms that grappled me unseen, but I held on steadfastly, since every stride carried me nearer to vengeance, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... "On the opposite side there are no houses; there is only a wall. Behind the wall there are climbing gardens and the ground falls steeply to the turn of the road below. There's a flight of steps leading down which corresponds with the flight of steps from the garden. Very often there's a serjent-de-ville stationed on the top of the steps. But there was not ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... is devoid of flints, and rests, in somewhat steeply sloping beds, upon the Totternhoe stone. It forms the western slopes of the Dunstable Downs, and of the Chiltern Hills. It is fossiliferous, one of the commonest of its ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... crosses the mountains in its southward course, the record of an earthquake is preserved in unique fashion. The steep face of a terrace is covered with trees forty or fifty years old. Near the base the trees are bent in peculiar fashion. Their lower portions stand at right angles to the steeply sloping face of the terrace, but after a few feet the trunks bend upward and stand vertically. Clearly when these trees were young the terrace was not there. Then an earthquake came. One block of the earth's crust was dropped down while another was raised up. ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... sank, this being, as they were aware, about three o'clock. They then lay down in the boat for a nap, and when they awoke it was daylight. They found that the wind had got up, and was blowing steadily off shore, and that they were now distant some five miles from land, the Rock of Gibraltar rising steeply from the sea some ten miles from them ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... Anthony had become in late years. Still, there were the aquiline features, the long, rather sad eyes shaded with thick, straight lashes, the eyebrows raised at the bridge of the thin nose, then sloping steeply down toward the temples; the slight working of muscles in the cheeks; the peculiarly charming mouth which could be irresistible in a smile, the stern, contradictory chin marring by its prominence the otherwise perfect oval of the face. I wondered ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... new-found relative. Then one evening—when solution seemed least near—the key, metaphorically speaking, fell at his feet. Returning home from a ramble over the headland, his observant eye was caught by the sight of a narrow foot-track that, crossing the main pathway of the cliff, wound steeply upward and seemingly lost itself in a tangle of gorse and bracken. Stirred by a boyish desire for exploration, he paused, turned into this obscure track, and incontinently ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... beyond the barren valley, the land could be seen dropping in its long sweep to the southern lowlands where the unicorns and swamp crawlers lived. To the north the hills climbed gently for miles, then ended under the steeply sloping face of an immense plateau. The plateau reached from western to eastern horizon, still white with the snows of winter and looming so high above the world below that the clouds brushed ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... broken concrete blocks from which the twisted ends of iron rods projected. A little further on a concrete shelter stood intact except for deep vertical fissures. I peered into the narrow entrance that sloped steeply down. I slipped in the soft mud, but by stretching out my arms and clasping the outer wall I just saved myself from falling flat on to a rotting corpse that lay half-immersed in greenish-black water. I drew slowly ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... Hastingsia, common, Desmodium hispidisum, Artemisia minor, Briedelia, Mimosa, and several Compositae: we continued descending very steeply, and observed Holcus elegans, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... is shaped like a loaf of bread, sloping off steeply at the ends, its sides guarded by sheer cliffs.. It was these cliffs I feared and strove to avoid. I had heard startling tales of the effects of high altitude on one; how the atmosphere was very rare and light. Had it been any heavier that day, I could not have survived. ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... the Gulf of Spezzia, and Turbia, just above Monaco, are at the two ends of the Riviera; between them the mountains rise steeply from the shore, along which in Dante's time ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... return."[40] And with this perishable substance the most majestic forms were to be framed that were consistent with the safety of man; and the peak was to be lifted, and the cliff rent, as high and as steeply as was possible, in order yet to permit the shepherd to feed his flocks upon the slope, and the cottage to nestle beneath ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... the army emerged into a broader but still barren portion of the pass, the road winding steeply for several miles along a snowy water-course, whence they passed over a plain, which, from the number of guinea fowls found there, obtained the name of "Guinea Fowl Plain." Here were seen tulip trees of enormous size, and graceful acacias, while the cactus, with its ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... gate, and when I did, there was no bush or tree of any kind. But I felt sure that up this field was in the right line, so on I went. It was a ploughed field and it really was "up," for it sloped rather steeply. Oh how tired I was when I got to the top! But now I thought all my troubles were over—I had only to go a quarter of a mile along the lane, to reach our own back entrance ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... island! And the tide had turned, The milky sea had got a purple rim, And from the rim that mountain island rose, Purple, with two high peaks, the northern peak The higher, and with fell and precipice, It ran down steeply to the water's brink; But all the southern line was long and soft, Broken with tender curves, and, as she thought, Covered with forest or with sward. But, look! The sun was on the island; and he showed On either peak a dazzling cap of snow. Then Gladys held her breath; ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... was still young, and he knew that it would be foolish to attempt escape from the pool before dark. In front of him the mountain rose steeply till, so far as he could judge, it reached a pass which lay some two miles off, at the base of that main peak, on whose snows the priests had watched the breaking of the dawn. Part of this declivity was covered with blocks of green ice, but here and there appeared patches of earth, on which grew ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... feeling that he had better rely on the inspiration of the moment, he sought distraction from his errand by noting the beauty of the hillside. He had always liked the way the road dipped and then ascended steeply to the principal street in the town. There were some pretty houses in the dip—houses with narrow doorways and long windows, built, no doubt, in the beginning of the nineteenth century—and his ambition was once to live ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... their course leading steeply up the gorge in which they had rested. Although the pathway became more and more indistinct, Ghamba appeared never to be at a loss. Langley several times shuddered, when they passed by the very edge of some immense precipice, or clambered along some ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... go!" cried Tom, and the tank started. It was a queer sensation to be moving upside down, but it did not last very long. Tom steered the tank straight at the opposite wail of the ravine, where it rose steeply. One of the broad belts ran up on that side. The other was revolved in the opposite direction. Up and up, at a sickening angle, went ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... Corbury valley, the church reared its slim white steeple and narrow peristyle. As the young man walked toward it the upper windows drew a black arcade along the side wall of the building, but from the lower openings, on the side where the ground sloped steeply down to the Corbury road, the light shot its long bars, illuminating many fresh furrows in the track leading to the basement door, and showing, under an adjoining shed, a line of sleighs ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... Stadthaus. The rain fell in sheets, deluges, streams, and the lightning flashed perfectly blue through a "darkness which could be felt." There is a sort of grandeur about this old Dutch Stadthaus, with its tale of two centuries. Its smooth lawns, sloping steeply to the sea, are now brilliant with the gaudy parrot-like blossoms of the "flame of the forest," the gorgeous Poinciana regia, with which they are studded. Malacca is such a rest after the crowds of ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... at one side, a dear little round table before the fire, and a large arm-chair. The room was a large attic which really stretched over the whole of the top of the house, but though it was so large, there was really not very much available space in it, for the sides sloped steeply. Miss Patch had curtained off the sides, and out of the long narrow strip down the middle had formed, in Jessie's opinion, one of the nicest ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... opposite direction, they saw the mountain slope melting away in the great valley of the Yukon, with the trail leading through a narrow, rocky gap, and with naked granite rocks rising steeply to the partly snow-clad mountains. The party had been fortunate in completing the ascent in less than a day, when it often requires twice as long. The first half mile of the descent was steep, when the slope becomes more gradual. The ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... bunks. The increasing size of the seas told us we were dragging, and when we struck the scoured channel we could tell by the feel of it that our two anchors were fairly skating across. It was a deep channel, the farther edge of it rising steeply like the wall of a canyon, and when our anchors started up that wall ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... reader is already familiar with the type of country, which resembled that between Jerusalem and Jericho. The downward slopes were exceptionally steep, in places precipitous. The slopes were swept by machine-gun and rifle fire, and the beds of the wadis were enfiladed. The ascent on the far side was steeply terraced. Men had alternately to hoist and pull each other up under fire, and finally to expel the enemy from the summits in hand-to-hand fighting. Under these conditions no rapid ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... was sultry and clouded. Drenching tropical showers succeeded bursts of sweltering sunshine. The green pathway of the road wound steeply upward. As we went, our little schoolboy guide a little ahead of us, Father Simeon had his portfolio in his hand, and named the trees for me, and read aloud from his notes the abstract of their virtues. Presently the road, mounting, showed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... made the round of the camp. The red field, as he called it, was in reality a low-lying meadow, which rose steeply to the bank of the river on the one side and more steeply—since it first sloped downward in that direction—to the Ochori forest, two miles away. He made this discovery with a little feeling of alarm. He knew something ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... fell into the Cordevole, rested on a steeply inclined stratum of limestone, with a thin layer of calcareous marl intervening, which, by long exposure to frost and the infiltration of water, had lost its original consistence, and become a loose and slippery mass instead of a cohesive and ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... lovers of the heights, would often wander up from their shaggy and austere plains in quest of this aromatic forage. But this lofty mountainside barren had yet another attraction for the caribou. Close at its edge, just where a granite buttress fell away steeply toward the lake, a tiny, almost imperceptible spring, stained with iron and pungent with salt, trickled out from among the roots of a dense, low thicket. Past the bare spot made by these oozings, and round behind the thicket, led a dim trail, worn by the feet of caribou, moose, bear, deer, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Wellesley; two years about equally divided among Paris, Dresden and Florence. And now Jane Hastings was at home again. At home in the unchanged house—spacious, old-fashioned—looking down from its steeply sloping lawns and terraced gardens upon the sooty, smoky activities of Remsen City, looking out upon a charming panorama of hills and valleys in the heart of South Central Indiana. Six years of striving in the East and abroad to satisfy the restless energy she inherited from ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... the devastated neighbourhood had there been a cock for a long time past. They crossed the brook on a small plank, beyond which rose the opposite bank, which appeared higher than the one behind them and rose steeply. It seemed as though this were the strong point of the citadel upon which the besieged could rely; at all events, the earthen wall was lower there, and no garrison appeared behind it. But farther on rose the thick monastery walls. The steep bank was overgrown with steppe-grass, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... shore of the lake in a north-westerly direction, sounding all the time. We found the lake deep and the bottom rocky and steeply shelving toward the center, and once when I moved straight out from shore to take other soundings we could find no bottom whatsoever. In open spaces along the shore we caught occasional glimpses of the ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the forks of Pigeon Roost Creek the trail that followed its banks widened into a track wide enough for wagon wheels. On one side lay the diminished creek, now filmed over with a glaze of young ice. On the other the mountain rose steeply. Fifteen feet up the bluff side a fallen dead tree projected its rotted, broken roots, like snaggled teeth, from the clayey bank. Behind this tree's trunk, in the snow and half-frozen, half-melted yellow mire, Anse Dugmore was stretched ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... erratically cut foundations, monumental rocks seemed to defy the laws of balance. From between their stony knees, trees sprang up like jets under fearsome pressure, supporting other trees that supported them in turn. Next, natural towers with wide, steeply carved battlements leaned at angles that, on dry land, the laws of gravity ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the brook, had rushed down the beach to leap into the sea. Reaching the edge of the water, where the beach falls steeply into the sea, he slipped on a pebble and fell into ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... for an artist the group would have made, as they stood examining the misty iron, and talking of the unhappy people so ruthlessly sent into banishment! For background, the quaint, unpainted house, black with age, the roof of the "lean-to" so steeply sloping that the eave-trough was on a line Avith the heads of the group Beyond lay the lovely valley, with the winding quille on its serpentine way to join the greater river; the whole picture framed in the long range of wooded and ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... about 1698 on the site of the gardens of Berkeley House, the residence of Sir John Berkeley, afterwards Lord Berkeley, of Stratton, to whose descendant, Earl Fitzhardinge, the property still belongs. It slopes somewhat steeply to the south, and has a well-wooded garden in the centre, planted about the end of the eighteenth century. The equestrian statue of George III., by Beaupre and Wilton, erected by Princess Amelia in 1766, was removed in 1827, and the ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... some claim to valour. For the wall of Naples was inaccessible, on one side by reason of the sea, and on the other because of some difficult country, and those who planned to attack it could gain entrance at no point, not only because of its general situation, but also because the ground sloped steeply. However, Belisarius cut the aqueduct which brought water into the city; but he did not in this way seriously disturb the Neapolitans, since there were wells inside the circuit-wall which sufficed for their needs and ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... not find the key of the room or the key of the outer door, which was the main object of my search, I must make further examination, or all my efforts would be in vain. It was open, and led through a stone passage to a circular stairway, which went steeply down. ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... islands, rising steeply from the sea, are rugged and mountainous; South Georgia is largely barren and has steep, glacier-covered mountains; the South Sandwich Islands are of volcanic origin with some ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... racing in the dark along the ridge of a deep coulee, the wall on the right of which went down steeply to a depth of thirty ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die. Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore, Thou say'st: 'Man's measured path is all gone o'er: Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh, Man clomb* until he touched the truth; and I, Even I, am he whom it was destined for.' How should this be? Art thou then so much more Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... a frenzied grasp of her skirts, and, with an able-bodied man steadying her on each side, made the run and brought up safe on the other side. There did not seem to be much to see—nothing but the precipitous face of the cliff towering above us, the road cut out of it, winding steeply down to the right, and the shoulder of the left-hand peak running up into a cloud-swept sky. Below us was a floor of mist, swaying to unfelt airs, ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... were taken up in another canoe. Several villages were passed on the way. The river became a mere rapid, against which the canoes with difficulty made their way. They had now entered the mountains which rose steeply above them, embowered in wood. Two days of severe work took them to the foot of the falls. Here the canoes were unloaded. The men hired on the coast received their pay, and turned the boat's head down stream. The other canoe accompanied it, and the travelers remained with their bodyguard of ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... walk from the top brought me out upon a high hill of snow that sloped steeply down into the woods. The snow was soft, and I sat down in it and slid "a blue streak"—my blue overalls recording the streak—for a quarter of a mile, and then came to a sudden and confusing stop; one of my webs had caught ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... vantage, and in more level spots the waxy bell-heather beginning to come into blossom. Still it was rather over praise to call it as smooth as the carefully-levelled and much-trodden Queen's path at Buxton, considering that it ascended steeply all the way, and made the solemn, much-enduring Earl pant for breath; but the Queen, her rheumatics for the time entirely in abeyance, bounded on with the mountain step learned in early childhood, and closely followed the brisk Emmott. The last ascent was a steep pull, taking away ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... essentially different from those which traverse the prairies on their eastern declivities. The latter, though sometimes boisterous, are generally free from obstructions, and easily navigated; but the rivers to the west of the mountains descend more steeply and impetuously, and are continually liable to cascades and rapids. The latter abounded in the part of the river which the travellers were now descending. Two of the canoes filled among the breakers; the crews were saved, but much of the lading ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... being the point at which change in income may be supposed to not affect size of family. This means exemption of all incomes under $2,000, an additional $2,000 for a wife and an additional $2,000 for each child, and a steeply-graded advance above that amount, as very large incomes act to reduce the size of family by introducing a multiplicity of competing cares and interests. There is also a eugenic advantage in heavy taxes on harmful ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... the other side, was the river Medway, from whose depths the castle once rose steeply. Now the debris and perhaps also a slight swerving of the river from its old course have left a rough margin, over which it would not be difficult to make an ascent. Rochester Bridge, too, is here, and the "windy hills" in the distance; and again, on ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... winding path and dim retreat, Till I grew weary: when I chose a seat Upon an oak-tree, which had been laid low By some wind storm, or by some lightning stroke. And Roy stood just below me, where the ledge On which I sat sloped steeply to the edge Of sunny meadows lying at my feet. One hand held mine; the other grasped a limb That cast its checkered shadows over him; And, with his head thrown back, his dark eyes raised And fixed upon me, silently he gazed Until I, smiling, turned to him and ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... day waned they saw through their port-hole a mass of high walls, somewhat overtopped by a great round tower. A moment afterwards the carriages entered beneath a low archway, and then stopped in the centre of a long courtyard, steeply embanked, surrounded by high walls, and commanded by two buildings, of which one had the appearance of a barrack, and the other, with bars at all the windows, had the appearance of a prison. The doors of the carriages were opened. An officer who wore a ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... than half that height above the plain below. This limestone mountain, the modern Monte Glicestro, presents on the north a precipitous and unapproachable side to the Sabines, but turns a fairer face to the southern and western plain. From its conical summit the mountain stretches steeply down toward the southwest, dividing almost at once into two rounded slopes, one of which, the Colle di S. Martino, faces nearly west, the other in a direction a little west of south. On this latter slope is situated ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... thoughts turned to the downs above this stricken place, where, even in the sultriest days some breath of wind was always moving. Just opposite him, on the other side of the road, was the street that led steeply upward to the ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... lookout for points where an enemy might be checked; and had fixed upon one, about halfway between the two towns. A stream some four feet in depth passed under a bridge, where the road dipped into a hollow; beyond this the ground rose steeply, and was covered with a thick wood, of very considerable extent. As soon as he reached this point, he set his band to work to destroy the bridge. As groups of peasants came flocking along, and saw what was intended, they at once ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... extraordinary was about to happen, gave a sudden and forcible start backward, so that not only the hind wheels of the light wagon, but the fore wheels and his own hind legs went into the water. As the bank at this spot sloped steeply, the wagon continued to go backward, despite the efforts of the agitated horse to find a footing on the crumbling edge ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... to ourselves the protective value of the river in old times without rowing both up and down the stream for a mile or more. Above the town, before reaching the railway bridge we should look back and notice how steeply the land rises from the river on this side. On the margin is the mill, and above are the houses, roof over roof, descending again in steps to the river bridge. At the top is the Bell Tower, and the church spires are ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... is small and steeply inclined, with its free posterior edge abutting against a semicircular, deeply depending collar. It is moderately transparent, and bears two pairs of short stiff bristles, in the same position as in the other species. The presence of these ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... Providence is a good shot with a pistol. Stop talking nonsense and listen. If those were paths worn by feet they would run to the edge of the rock. They do not. They begin there in that gentle depression and slope upwards somewhat steeply. The air machines, which were evidently large, lit in the depression, possibly as a bird does, and then ran on wheels or sledge skids along the grooves to the air-shed in the mountain. Come to the cave and you ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... from the precipitous river front of the citadel hill of Quebec, in 1889, dashed across Champlain Street, wrecking a number of houses and causing the death of forty-five persons. The strata here are composed of steeply dipping slate. ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... church, and, in a word, do something to shake myself into my new garments. The day was glorious. I wandered along a green path, in the opposite direction from our walk the evening before, with a fir-wood on my right hand, and a belt of feathery tamarisks on my left, behind which lay gardens sloping steeply to a lower road, where stood a few pretty cottages. Turning a corner, I came suddenly in sight of the church, on the green down above me—a sheltered yet commanding situation; for, while the hill rose above it, protecting ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... away to the sea. There the cliff rose steeply to a lighthouse, standing on a bare summit; dipped, and rose again. In the hollow between the two hills a white coastguard station sentinelled the Gap, across which the line of the sea ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... when the storm-cloud shrouds it. Of our party, some betook them to the diligence, and were carried over asleep; others of us, leaving the vehicle to follow the road, which zig-zags up to the summit, addressed ourselves to the old route, which winds steeply upward, now through forests of stunted firs, now over a matting of thick, short grass, and now over the bare debris-strewn scalp of the mountain. The convent bells followed us with their sweet chimes up the hill, and formed a link between us and the living world ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... old town of Mayenfeld is charmingly situated. From it a footpath leads through green, well-wooded stretches to the foot of the heights which look down imposingly upon the valley. Where the footpath begins to go steeply and abruptly up the Alps, the heath, with its short grass and pungent herbage, at once sends out its soft perfume to ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... over their heads, and, notwithstanding the protection afforded by the sides of the canon, occasionally received a gust that made the Callisto swerve. They kept on steadily, however, till sunset, at which time it became very dark on account of the high banks, which rose as steeply as the Palisades on the Hudson to a height of nearly a thousand feet. Finding a small island near the eastern bank, they were glad to secure the Callisto there for the night, below the reach of the winds, which they, still heard ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... is a hill beside the silver Thames, Shady with birch and beech and odorous pine; And brilliant underfoot with thousand gems, Steeply the thickets to his floods decline. There is a Hill beside the Silver Thames. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... immediately around and beneath them their blood curdled and their brains whirled with the vertigo which seized them as they peered appalled and shrinkingly down upon the sharp crags, the sheer precipices, the steeply-sloping snow-fields with their lower edges generally overhanging some fathomless abyss, the great glaciers, the awful crevasses spanned here and there by crumbling snow bridges—the effect of the scene being heightened and intensified in its ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... no means satisfying my curiosity by gazing at the lichened stone and thatch of the old house, at the pigeons, pigs, and hens at large between it and the barns, I passed on down the lane, which turned up steeply to the right beside a little stream. To my left was a long larch wood, to my right rough fields with many trees. The lane finished at a gate below the steep moorside crowned by a rocky tor. I stood there leaning on the top bar, debating whether I should ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... commission, Murray Frobisher had hurried back to his little ship, helped the astonished stokers with his own hands to raise steam, and at midnight on a dark, blustering night, with half a gale blowing from the south-east, the sea running steeply, and a heavy driving rain lashing right in their faces, he and his little crew cleared from Portland Roads, dashed across Weymouth Bay at a reckless speed—considering the height of the sea—and doubled ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... were up, and the snow-covered fells rising steeply above the house filled it with a wintry, reflected light; a dreary light, that a large fire could not dispel. On the white bed lay Hester, breathing quickly and shallowly; bright colour now in each sunken cheek. The doctor himself had cut off a great part of her hair—her glorious ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wall of the court they came to an answering door. This was already unlocked and partially ajar. It opened directly upon the highest terrace of the cemetery which led down steeply in great, curved, irregular steps to a plain. The crimson light in the west had almost gone. Here to the north, where rice-fields and small huddled villages stretched out as far as the eye could see, a band of hard, white light still rested on the horizon, throwing back among the hillside ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... ourselves in a small passage, drier than the former, and descending rather steeply for some distance, suddenly entered another spacious chamber hewn from the solid rock. Immediately we were inside some peculiarity of its walls attracted my gaze, and I noticed, in addition, that we were in ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... the north side of Cape Evans were small patches of even gritty sand. In the neighbourhood of our Cape hard, brittle rocks cropped up everywhere, rocks that played havoc with one's boots. Sloping up fairly steeply from Cape Evans itself we had more and more rock masses until a kind of rampart was reached, on which one could see a number of extraordinary conical piles of rock, which looked much as if they had been constructed by human hands for landmarks or surveying beacons—these ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... hill of Jalapahar towered a thousand feet above Darjeeling, crowned with bungalows and barracks. To the north the ground fell as sharply; and a thousand feet below Darjeeling lay Lebong, set out on a flattened hilltop. On three sides of this military suburb the hill sloped steeply to the valleys below. But beyond them, tumbled mass upon mass, rose the great mountains barring the way to Sikkim and Tibet, towering to the clouds that hid the white summits of the ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... sometimes it is more broken, and rises amidst trees from a broad plinth of emerald meadow that is interposed between its base and the windings of the river. Sometimes we thread the exact margin of the stream, or traverse in the open a scrap of level pasture; sometimes we clamber steeply by a stony path along the sides of an abrupt and densely wooded hillside, where the thicket is yellow in spring with Anemone Ranunculoides, or starred with green Herb Paris. This is the kind of glen scenery that is found along the courses of the ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... I think there was one officer further along, but it was quite dark. Some of the men talked very low. Then I heard voices whispering and talking near us on the river side of our bank. It was of earth perhaps five feet high and six feet thick. On the other side the slope fell steeply to the river. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... almost all the length of its western side. In the middle of that was a gate—a double gate of rather elaborate iron scroll-work, which allowed something of a view beyond. Through it he could see that the ground sloped away almost at once to a bottom, along which a stream must run, and rose steeply from it on the other side, up to a field that was park-like in character, and thickly studded with oaks, now, of course, leafless. They did not stand so thick together but that some glimpse of sky and horizon could be seen between their stems. The sky was now golden and the horizon, ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... patrols that the west bank of the canal between the posts, both of which may be described as bridgeheads, were unoccupied by our troops. The west bank between the posts is steep and marked by a long, narrow belt of trees. The east bank also falls steeply to the canal, but behind it are numerous hollows, full of brushwood, which give good cover. Here the enemy's advanced parties established themselves and intrenched before the main ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... second day the road rose steeply to a grass spur above the forest; and it was here, about sunset, that they came across an aged lama—but they called him a bonze—sitting cross-legged above a mysterious chart held down by stones, which he was explaining to a ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... been winding steadily uphill for some miles and were now on the heath from which Ryton took its name. The ground fell steeply to the west, showing glimpses of a great river in the valley below, where the still-leafless woods had burst here and there into faint tokens of spring. Beyond the river rose the characteristic grey hills of the neighborhood, with their stone ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... water-falls and rapids of a pretty brook. Here is a little village, with Romish and Protestant steeples, and the dwellings of fishermen, with the universal appendages of fishing-houses, boats, and "flakes." One seldom looks upon a hamlet so picturesque and wild. The rocks slope steeply down to the wonderfully clear water. Thousands of poles support half-acres of the spruce-bough shelf, beneath which is a dark, cool region, crossed with foot-paths, and not unfrequently sprinkled and washed by the surf,—a most kindly office ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... unbroken into the bluer vault above, and the cream-coloured facades of the houses, with their faded blue shutters and verandas, the gay striped awnings of the little fleet of rowing boats, the gray of the stone parapet, and the dull green of the mountainous opposite shore, were mirrored steeply in the bight of narrowing, sunlit lake. The wide, dusty esplanade was almost empty, except at the corners, where voluble market women gossiped over their fruit-baskets, heaped with purple-brown figs, little mountain-born strawberries, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... into a sprint. Hunters were behind him, and others were closing in from the sides. He leaped a five-foot gap between buildings, managed to hold his balance on a steeply pitched roof, and scrambled around ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... James Craig, Member of Parliament for East Down. It is a spacious country house standing on a hill above the road leading from Belfast to Holywood, with a fine view of Belfast Lough and the distant Antrim coast beyond the estuary. The lawn in front of the house, sloping steeply to the shore road, forms a sort of natural amphitheatre offering ideal conditions for out-of-door oratory to an unlimited audience. At the meeting on the 23rd of September the platform was erected near the crest of the hill, enabling the vast audience ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... by Pierre Lapierre for Chloe Elliston's school was, in point of location, as the quarter-breed had said, an excellent one. Upon a level plateau at the top of the high bank that slants steeply to the water of the Yellow Knife River, a short distance above its mouth, Lapierre set the canoemen to cutting the timber and brush from a wide area. The girl had come into the North fully prepared for a long sojourn, and in her thirty-odd tons of outfit were found all tools ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... considerable colonies of wild raspberry and gooseberry bushes. The two ends of the horseshoe formed bare slabs of smooth granite running into the sea and forming dangerous reefs just below the surface, but the rest of the island rose in a forty-foot ridge and sloped down steeply to the sea on either side, being nowhere more than a hundred ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the bugle steadily now, and saw that this seemed to relieve the watchers. For the first time he took his eyes from the culvert itself and looked around. The road here descended much more steeply than the railway, and that, Fred judged, was the reason for the culvert. For the first time he realized that the culvert was not quite at the bottom of the hill; that beyond it the road still bore downward quite sharply for ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... shading off the sun, an oak copse sloped steeply towards the river, painting upon the surface a still shimmering likeness of the summit of the wood, every mass of foliage, every blushing spray receiving a perfect counterpart, and full in the midst of the magic mirror floated what might have been compared to ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their horses for the night. They set out again before sunrise and were glad of the spare team when they came to places where all the horses could scarcely haul one wagon through the soft black soil. There were other spots where the graded road sloped steeply to the hollow out of which it had been dug, and with the lower wheels sinking they had to hold up the side of the vehicle. Great clods clung to the wheels; the men, plodding at the horses' heads, could scarcely pull their ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... glacier difficulties now confronted us in the fullest degree. Immediately above our tent the ice rose steeply a couple of hundred feet, and at that level began to be most intricately crevassed. It took several days to unravel the tangle of fissures and discover and prepare a trail that the dogs could haul the sleds along. Sometimes a bridge would ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... piles of giant books in a neglected library, were immense rectangular rocks; one would say that only the grey and knotted cords of the ivy that had crept over them, held them in their place upon those rugged shelves. At one end of the level place the ground fell steeply to a wild stream, the Feorish, from whose farther bank another hill, but little less formidable than Carrigaholt, rose like an enemy tower, threatening its defences. The hounds swarmed like bees among the rocks, jumping or falling from shelf to shelf, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... border the oceans, for the lines of weakness occur where the land dips steeply down beneath the water. It sometimes happens that the fractures in the rocks where mountains are being made are situated underneath the water, or in some position where water passes down through them in ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... and wild as the song of the woodlark; now stretching quietly along, giving back the rich tufts of the golden marsh-marigolds which grow on its margin; now sweeping round a fine reach of green grass, rising steeply into a high mound, a mimic promontory, whilst the other side sinks softly away, like some tiny bay, and the water flows between, so clear, so wide, so shallow, that Lizzy, longing for adventure, is sure she could cross unwetted; now dashing through two sand-banks, a torrent ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... the rocky peak of Temetiu rose steeply, four thousand feet into the air, its lower reaches clothed in jungle-vines, and trees, its summit dark green under a clear sky, but black when the sun was hidden. Most of the hours of the day it ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... the doorplates—which are large squares of tin fastened over the porte cochere, or on the gate of the courtyard—bear titles. Next door, perhaps, stands a log house, flush with the sidewalk, its moss calking plainly visible between the huge ribs, its steeply sloping roof rising, almost within reach, above a single story; and its serpent-mouthed eave-spouts ingeniously arranged to pour a stream of water over the vulgar pedestrian. The windows, on a level with the eyes of the passer-by, are draped with cheap lace curtains. The broad ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... wildly happy. She could have sung for joy, a song of triumph, and losing her head a little she lost her scant foothold as well, slipped, tried to hold on, failed, and slid down the steeply sloping rock. ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... had never been climbed. I had explored the adjacent wilderness summer after summer, but my studies thus far had never drawn me to the top of it. Its height above sea-level is about 13,300 feet, and it is fenced round by steeply inclined glaciers, and canons of tremendous depth and ruggedness, which render it almost inaccessible. But difficulties of this ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... many forms of evil which compel us to repeat them for other reasons than the force of habit. For instance, a fraudulent book-keeper has to go on making false entries in his employer's books in order to hide his peculations. Whoever steps on to the steeply sloping road to which self-pleasing invites us, soon finds that he is on an inclined plane well greased, and that compulsion is on him to go on, though he may recoil from the descent, and be shudderingly ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... bold in that part of Devon. Even where there are no cliffs, the land rises steeply from the sea, in grassy hills, with boulders and broken rock, instead of a beach, below them. There are small sandy beaches wherever the brooks run into the sea. Everywhere else the shore is "steep-to"—so much so that in many places it is very ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... worked at once, each concentrated upon a specific job. The ardour with which those engaged upon the ceiling inside the hut plied their nails resulted in several minor casualties to those sitting on the roof, deeply intent on the outer lining. A climax was reached when McLean, working on the steeply inclined roof, lost his footing and, in passing, seized hold of the wire-stay of the chimney as a last hope. Alas, that was the only stay, and as he proceeded over the end of the roof into a bank of snow, Ninnis, within the hut, convinced that nothing less ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... the capital is in the early period widely flaring, making in some very early examples an angle at the start of not more than fifteen or twenty degrees with the horizontal (Fig. 59); in the best period it rises more steeply, starting at an angle of about fifty degrees with the horizontal and having a profile which closely approaches a straight line, until it curves inward under the abacus (Fig. 51); in the post-classical period it is ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... houses that clustered together in the centre of the town, of the spiritual GEMUTLICHKEIT, the absence of any pomp or pride in their romantic past, which characterises the old buildings of a German town. These quaint and stately houses, wedged one into the other, with their many storeys, their steeply sloping roofs and eye-like roof-windows, were still in sympathetic touch with the trivial life of the day which swarmed in and about them. He wandered leisurely along the narrow streets that ran at all angles off the Market ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... it often happens that if the water be shallow, and you are looking steeply down into it, the reflection of objects on the bank will consist simply of pieces of the bottom seen clearly through the water, and relieved by flashes of light, which are the reflection of the sky. Thus you ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... in a southern land, By rounded hills closed in on every hand. The streets slope steeply to the market-square, Long lines of white-washed houses, clean and fair, With roofs irregular, and steps of stone Ascending to the front of every one. The people swarthy, idle, full of mirth, Live mostly by the ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... in which Due lived lay far up the long street, which ran steeply down to the sea. It was an old watercourse, and even now when there was a violent shower the water ran down like a rushing torrent between the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... ran back of the Brown house was rather deep in places, and some of these places were near shore where the bank went steeply down into the water. It was at one of these places that ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope
... that fort. The side towards the sea sloped gradually but steeply, and two forts were placed one above another, like big steps. Above these stood a tall tower, very strongly built. The forts had no guns; but had they had them they could not have used them against the enemy's battery on ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... upon a vantage ground, looking over the valley and the bay. To him it was as if the soul of this land, like the soul of Lucia Harden, had put on a veil. The hillside beneath him dropped steeply to the valley and the town. Down there, alone and apart from Harmouth, divided from the last white Regency villa by half a mile of meadow-land, stood Court House; and as he looked at it he became more acutely ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... music and rustled with life. Through the boughs of beeches and elms and firs the young day flickered gold, so that the bluebell patches were half lit, like blue water in the sun, half grey, like water at twilight. Between two great waves of them a brown path ran steeply down to a deep little stream. Neville and Esau, scrambling a little way upstream, stopped at a broad swirling pool it made between rocks. Here Neville removed coat, shoes and pyjamas and sat poised for a moment on the jutting rock, a slight and naked body, long in the leg, finely and supplely knit, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... said Lever, coolly, "if they're going to come down, it may be a good idea for us to go up," and, suiting the action to the word, he elevated the nose of the big plane skyward, and they started to climb steeply. The American machine was equipped with a tremendously powerful motor, and this, combined with its great wing spread, enabled it to climb with great rapidity, in spite of the heavy load it was carrying. The Germans had not counted on this, and the result was that they miscalculated their ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... far hollow depths. Scarcely could we travel a hundred yards but we were compelled to leap some deep, dark crack. Often they were so wide a running jump was necessary, and at times the smooth rock sloped on both sides toward the crevice rather steeply. Once the Major came sliding down a bare slope till at a point where he caught sight of the edge of a sombre fissure just where he must land. He could not see its width; he could not return, and there he hung. Luckily ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... girls, with deep blue eyes, And hands which offer early flowers, Walk smiling o'er this paradise; Above, the frequent feudal towers Through green leaves lift their walls of grey, And many a rock which steeply lours, And noble arch in proud decay, Look o'er this vale of vintage bowers: But one thing want these banks of Rhine, - Thy gentle hand to clasp ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... many painters. There is a wide quay, shaded by an avenue of beautiful trees, and there are views across the broad, shining waters of the Seine, which here as in most of its length attracts us by its breadth. The beautiful chalk hills drop steeply down to the water's edge on the northern shores in striking contrast to the flatness of the opposite banks. On the side of the river facing Caudebec, the peninsula enclosed by the windings of the Seine includes the great forest of Brotonne, and all around the town, the steep hills that tumble ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... blue water, margined with green and gold; gloriously rugged, steeply sloping pasture alps, dotted with picturesquely carved chalets, weatherworn by sun and rain to a rich, warm brown; higher up, the sehn hutte—the summer farmsteads of the peasants, round and about which graze gentle, soft-faced ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... the Captain, who was evidently trying to be civil. He pointed to a great island rock, that rose steeply from the sea, crowned with huge walls and towers. There was another city ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... told him how extraordinary it looked out there now that the trees were gone, but as they would have had to come out in the boat to see it he had let the remark pass. Now he decided to land there. The shore rose steeply from the water, but he scrambled up. He had expected to find limestone, but he could hardly believe his own eyes: it was cement stone! Absolutely, undoubtedly, cement stone! How far did it extend? As far as he could see; it might even extend to the boundary of the estate. ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... upon the foundations of the former palace of King Olaf Kyrre, the founder of the city. The narrow harbour between is crowded with fishing-vessels,—during the season often numbering from six to eight hundred,—and beyond it the southern promontory, quite covered with houses, rises steeply from the water. A public grove, behind the fortress, delights the eye with its dark-green mounds of foliage; near it rise the twin towers of the German Church, which boasts an age of nearly seven hundred years, and the suburbs ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... stopped to show him the Athena of AEgina as one of the most important of the Greek examples lately obtained for us by Professor Richmond. The statue is (rightly) so placed that in looking up to it, the plait of hair across the forehead is seen in a steeply curved arch. "Why," says Mr. Baker, pointing to it, "there's the Norman arch of Iffley." Sure enough, there it exactly was: and a moment's reflection showed me how easily, and with what instinctive fitness, the Norman builders, ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... lumbar vertebrae (l.v.) are larger, and have cleft transverse processes, each giving rise to an ascending limb, the metapophyses, and a descending one. The latter (generally spoken of as the transverse processes) point steeply downward, and are considerably longer than those of thoracic series. The sacral vertebrae (s.v.) have great flattened transverse propcesses for articulation with the ilia. The caudal vertebrae (c.v.) are gradually reduced to the mere elongated centra, ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... the ordinary traffic arrangements our coach met the incoming stage at a part of the road so narrow that it seemed absolutely impossible for the two to pass each other. On the one side was a yawning precipice, on the other the mountain rose steeply from the roadside. The off-wheels of the incoming coach were tilted up on the hillside as far as they could be without an upset. In vain; our hubs still locked. We were then allowed to dismount. Our coach was backed ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... from Moozuffernuggar fares straight across the plain towards the crumbling mountains. Behind, in the heat mist, the castle and palace on their steeply-scarped crag, with the squalid town that clustered at their feet, reminded me once more most strangely of Edinburgh, where I used to spend my vacations from Girton. But the pitiless sun differed greatly from the gray ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... burned; it was a place accursed, and to purify the air, as a safeguard against pestilence, the offal was consumed by bonfires that were constantly renewed and never extinguished. At its extremity was an elevation, a hilly contour which to the popular fancy suggested a skull. To the west it fell steeply away. It was ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... with acacia and rose blooms, rose steeply into the bright sunshine beyond the marshes skirting the bay glittering in light. Cherry's eager eyes missed nothing, and when they left the train at Mill Valley, and the mountain air enveloped them in a rush of its clear softness and purity, she was in ecstasies. She welcomed the ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... plan, I crossed the country—meeting with no worse obstacles than hedges, ditches, and thickets, which every now and then obliged me to alter my course for a little while—until I found myself on a hill-side, with the ground sloping away steeply before me. I descended to the bottom of the hollow, squeezed my way through a hedge, and got out into a lane. Having turned to the right on leaving the road, I now turned to the left, on the chance of regaining the line from which I had wandered. After following the muddy windings ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... the top of a bank which descended steeply for a great distance. It was almost a cliff, only it was not rock, but sandy soil, dotted here and there with patches of grass and clumps of trees. Far below us was the river, whose broad bosom lay spread out for miles, dotted with the white sails ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... of the Rocky Mountains where this process is less complete and more active than is usual,—hills which are the remaining vestiges of a former average level of the plain adjacent, and which have happened to wear away so steeply and sharply that very little vegetation ever finds support on their sides, which every rain is still abrading. At a single point only do I remember a phenomenon presented by some other mountain bases,—that of a water-course (dry perhaps half the year, but evidently a heady torrent ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the road to the town, but a battery deemed impregnable commanded this approach, forming an effectual clasp for that strong cestus which the fecund, supple, and heated land made possible to all Spanish fortifications. Beyond the tunal the naked hillside fell steeply to a narrow plain, all patched with golden flowers, and from this yellow carpet writhed tall cacti, fantastic as trees seen in a dream. Upon the plain, pearl pink in the sunset light, huddled the town. Palm-trees and tamarinds overhung it; palm-trees, ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... again and then started off to follow the boys, trying hard to walk slowly and steadily; but it was all in vain. The hill-side sloped very steeply to the broad bed of willows and reeds far below, making the way very bad for so heavy and inactive a man. Worse still: walking over the short grass in the hot sun had made the bottoms of the monk's sandals as slippery as glass, and so it was that before he had ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... defended on three sides by earthworks, by stockades, by a cliff or steeply sloping bank, and by streams; on the fourth side by an earthwork, stockade, and trench. The ground was slightly irregular, rising from 30 to 60 feet. An open moor full of quagmires and ponds also protected it on the north. On the east on the other side of the stream ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... So steeply did the yard between the low houses run downhill, that, standing at the top of a worn path like a seam in some old garment, the two Europeans could look over the mud wall. Squalid as were the mud huts and the cattle-yard connecting them, the picture framed in the square enclosure blazed ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the inn and a neglected truck patch. Starting from a point beyond the truck patch and leading straight away to the woodland beyond was a fenced lane, with the corn-field and the pasture-lot on either hand. Immediately below his window was the steeply slanting roof of a shed. For a moment he considered the night, not unaffected by its beauty, then, turning from the window, he moved his bundle and rifle to the foot of the bed, where they would be out of his way, kicked off his trousers, blew out the candle and ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Tahitians, by climbing amongst these ledges, searching for fruit, had discovered a track by which the whole precipice could be scaled. The first ascent from the valley was very dangerous; for it was necessary to pass a steeply inclined face of naked rock, by the aid of ropes which we brought with us. How any person discovered that this formidable spot was the only point where the side of the mountain was practicable, I cannot imagine. We then cautiously ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... passed a great town clock with four faces (one for each of the four diverging streets) and drew up before a flat-faced building with the name "Hotel Splendide" stretching across its dim, yellow front. Inside a big, open doorway, stairs went steeply up, past piles of commercial travellers' show trunks, and an Arab bootblack who clamoured for custom. At the top Max Doran and his charge came into a hall, whence a bare-looking restaurant and several other rooms opened out. On a gigantic hatrack like ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... country became more open, and suddenly wafted the hat from its proper post, almost to the hoofs of Ernest's horse. The child naturally made a spring forward to arrest the deserter, and her foot slipped down the bank, which was rather steeply raised above the road. She uttered a low cry of pain. To dismount—to regain the prize—and to restore it to its owner, was, with Ernest, the work of a moment; the poor girl had twisted her ankle and was leaning upon her servant for support. But when she saw the anxiety, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a pretentious structure. It has four rooms and a bath! A wide porch extends along the full front of the house, with a steeply pitched awning protecting it from the rain and sun. At one end of the porch is a very cosy arrangement of hand-wrought chairs and a commodious swinging seat. The other end, just off the parental bed-chamber, has been ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... peasant girls with deep blue eyes, And hands which offer early flowers, Walk smiling o'er this paradise; Above, the frequent feudal towers Through green fields lift their walls of gray; And many a rock which steeply lowers, And noble arch in proud decay, Look o'er this vale of vintage bowers; But one thing want these banks of Rhine— Thy gentle hand to clasp ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott |
