"As the crow flies" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... About thirty miles, as the crow flies, from my place, down York River, is situated, in Gloucester County, "White Marsh," an old Virginia home which then belonged to Dr. Prosser Tabb, who with his wife and children was living there. Mrs. Tabb was a near cousin of my father, and as a little girl ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... beautiful duchess later appealed to him in person, he relented, and presented Crabbe to the two livings of Muston in Leicestershire, and Allington in Lincolnshire, both, within sight of Belvoir Castle, and (as the crow flies) not much more than a mile apart. To the rectory house of Muston, Crabbe brought his family in February 1789. His connection with the two livings was to extend over five and twenty years, but during thirteen of those years, as will be seen, he was ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... Ouse—immortal stream—runs through the middle of the High Street. To the east towards fenland, the country is flat, and the river is broad, slow, and deep. Towards the west it is quicker, involved, fold doubling almost completely on fold, so that it takes sixty miles to accomplish thirteen as the crow flies. Beginning at Kempston, and on towards Clapham, Oakley, Milton, Harrold, it is bordered by the gentlest of hills or rather undulations. At Bedford the navigation for barges stopped, and there were ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... spans the Cologne; then back along the north bank of the river by the street that leads to the Postern. From the House under the Wall to the Postern, by way of the Cologne bridge, is a half-hour's walk, though in a direct line, as the crow flies, it may be less than three hundred yards. Neither Max nor I knew whether our journey had been a ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... this immediate determination to make straight for the capital where the largest number of the enemy's troops was massed, instead of seeking an illusionary safety for his weak army in the open country. As the crow flies the distance from Marsala to Palermo is not more than sixty or seventy miles, but the routes being mountainous, the actual ground to be covered is much longer. About midway lies Calatafimi, where all the roads leading from the eastern coast ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... they were heading for the Channel port as straight as the crow flies. The sun was getting far down in the western sky, and it was now necessary to shield their eyes when looking ahead, on account of the dazzling glare that at times ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... exertions of marching and fighting which they had already made and a long pause to recuperate was necessary. That pause enabled the Turks to re-marshal their forces and to make a stand at the fortified lines of Chatalja some twenty miles as the crow flies from Constantinople. Against those lines a Bulgarian attack was finally launched, but too late. The entrenched Turks were strong enough to withstand the attack of the Bulgarian forces. My diary of these three critical ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... he has been there. Then he went quietly to his hunting lodge which is ten miles, as the crow flies from the capital, yet barred off by the mountain ridge. It is two days' journey by sea from Puntal, and save by the sea one comes only through the mountain pass, which is always guarded. Yet on that occasion heliographs reported his movements; the ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... chosen her den well, on the edge of the untrodden solitudes—sixty miles as the crow flies—that stretch northward from Harbor Weal to Harbor Woe. It was just under the ridge, in a sunny hollow among the rocks, on the southern slope of the great mountains. The earliest sunshine found the place and warmed it, bringing forth the bluebells for a ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... which it expands into lagoons that collect at length into a mass in Lake Merom (Huleh), 2 m. below which it plunges into a gorge and rushes on for 9 m. in a torrent, till it collects again in the Sea of Galilee to lose itself finally in the Dead Sea after winding along a distance of 65 m. as the crow flies; at its rise it is 1080 ft. above and at the Dead Sea 1300 ft. below ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... who was going at a frantic pace across the country, and putting his horse at leaps that no man in his senses would have attempted. I kept the high-road, and we had thus ridden about half an hour perhaps, when a bright flame about a mile distant, as the crow flies, shot suddenly forth, strongly relieved against a mass of dark wood just beyond it. I knew it to be Dutton's house, even without the confirmation given by the frenzied shout which at the same moment arose on my left hand. It was from Dutton. His horse had been staked, in an effort to clear ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... "we were only overlooked by the Black Spur Range and the Sierran snow-line; where the nearest voice that came to you was quarter of a mile away as the crow flies and nearly a ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... shore was so abrupt that the impetus of turning drove the canoe half a length into the long grass, and it was with some difficulty backed out. We were cut off from our companions' canoe, but could see their heads apparently only a few feet from us, as the crow flies; but so numerous were the turns of the river between us, that they were ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... of the cart with a bound. Away he ran over a field of potatoes, straight as the crow flies, while the cart went ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... as the crow flies and a bold huntsman will ride in that heath country, from the Punch-Bowl, right across the mounds and the broad water, lies the estate of the Fakenhams, who intermarried with the Coplestones of the iron mines, and were ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... accompanies it on the beginning of its downward path. From this corner a wide view was opened to her of the whole stretch of braes upon the other side, still sallow and in places rusty with the winter, with the path marked boldly, here and there by the burn-side a tuft of birches, and - two miles off as the crow flies - from its enclosures and young plantations, the windows of Hermiston glittering in ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... until they arrived at a house near Oatlands, a place belonging to the Earl of Argyll, but rented at that time by Lady Elizabeth's cousin, Sir Edmund Withipole. The distance from Holborn to Oatlands, as the crow flies, is about twenty miles; but, by the roundabout roads which the fugitives took in order to prevent attempts to trace them, the distance must have been considerable, and the journey, in the clumsy coach of the period, over the rutted highways and the still worse by-roads of those times, must have been ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... of the blind man's domain now became apparent. They had traveled twenty miles almost as the crow flies, and yet they had not reached its confines. As Arizona said, in response to a remark from his companion, "The sky-line ain't no limit fer the ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... midi jusques a la Mer Occeane, ou il y a deux journees." It is not possible in any way to reconcile this description as it stands with truth, though I do not see much room for doubt as to the direction of the excursion. Peking is 100 miles as the crow flies from the nearest point of the coast, at least six or seven days' march for such a camp, and the direction is south-east, or nearly so. The last circumstance would not be very material as Polo's compass-bearings ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... river from the mouth is flat and uninteresting, and little is to be seen but nipa and other palms on either side, and although Kuching is but seven miles from Santubong as the crow flies, it is quite twenty by river. It was not till ten o'clock, therefore, that signs of civilisation commenced, in the shape of a few Malay houses built close to the water's edge. These are usually built in the same manner on piles of wood of ten to fifteen feet high, the walls and roof ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... there is a slight complication, because there is actually something of a headland about the Battery Rocks, and the town arms are St. John Baptist’s head in a charger; but when we find that Tremaine is some ten miles, as the crow flies, from the nearest point of the coast, we may be quite justified in doubting whether Pryce is right in calling it “the town on shore ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... the bottom on the sloping side of some lofty downs, which extended far away east and west, as well as a considerable distance southward towards the ocean, which was, as the crow flies, about ten miles off from the highest point above it. The hill formed one side of a valley, through which flowed a sparkling stream bordered by trees, with here and there scattered about the cottages of the hamlet ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... miles north of New York city,—not as the crow flies, for of the course of that bird I have no knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief, but as the Mary Powell ploughs her way up the tortuous channel of the Hudson river,—lies the little village of Wheathedge. A more beautiful site even this most ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... of Portsmouth stretches along the south bank of the Piscataqua, about two miles from the sea as the crow flies—three miles following the serpentine course of the river. The stream broadens suddenly at this point, and at flood tide, lying without a ripple in a basin formed by the interlocked islands and the mainland, it looks more like an island lake than a river. To ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... on the morning of the 8th instant. The town of Kuchin is built on the left-hand side of the river Sarawak going up; and, from the windings of the river, you have to pull twenty-five miles up the river to arrive at it, whereas it is only five miles from the coast as the crow flies. It consists of about 800 houses, built on piles driven into the ground, the sides and roofs being enclosed with dried palm leaves. Strips of bamboo are laid across, which serve as a floor. In fact, there is little difference between these houses and those built by the Burmahs and other tribes ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... He flew, as the crow flies, across the fields, to where M'Alister was on duty. It was a much shorter distance than by the road, which was winding; but whether this would balance the difference between a horse's pace and his own was the question, ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... "Redgauntlet," and declaring that had the Prince been a more capable man we should be living in a castle in Scotland. From the incompetence of Prince Charlie, then, it came that my mother entered life in a red brick house in McLaurinville instead of in a highland keep, and as it is just six miles as the crow flies over the ridges to Malcolmville in Windy Valley, she met my father in the course of time, and in the course of time the two great families were united in my small self. The Malcolms were a great family, too. They were a ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... rotted wood, bound hand and foot in lianas, shovelled unceremoniously off the one shore and driven to try my luck upon the other—I saw I should have hard enough work to get my body down, if my mind rested. It was a damnable walk; certainly not half a mile as the crow flies, but a real bucketer for hardship. Once I had to pass the stream where it flowed between banks about three feet high. To get the easier down, I swung myself by a wild-cocoanut—(so called, it bears bunches of scarlet nutlets)—which grew upon the brink. As I so ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... through miles of country so stony that all the world had turned grey as though it had remembered how old it was. The road twisted and curled about the mountains like the flourish of Corporal Trim's stick: below one could see the road, only half a mile off as the crow flies, but a good five miles by the curves. We were blocked by a great hay-cart. Our driver shouted and cursed without effect, so he climbed down from the box, and, running round the hay, slashed the driver of it with ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... disembarked on the confines of occupied territory. From near this point, where the Platte river empties into the Missouri, to the mouth of the Columbia, on the Pacific - which we ultimately reached - is at least 1,500 miles as the crow flies; for us (as we had to follow watercourses and avoid impassable ridges) it was very much more. Some five-and- forty miles from our starting-place we passed a small village called Savannah. Between it and Vancouver there was not a single white man's abode, with the exception ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... distance of several miles to the place of rendezvous, which was in the town of Hancock, close to the boundary line between New York and Massachusetts. On leaving the station I inquired the way to Hancock, and was told that as the crow flies, i.e. across an intervening mountain, it was twelve miles without even a footpath; but, by the road around the mountain, twenty, and that, unless I knew the mountain, I could not possibly find my way over it. It was just sunset as I ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... child, and keep in the narrow path by the cornfields; it's two miles and a half from here as the crow flies. No, no, my dear, I don't want your pennies; but you might humor my little girl here by telling her fortune—she's wonderful taken ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... for us, lads, 'cept when it blows," said the mate. "The nearest land that I know of is five hundred miles off as the crow flies. We've got a compass by good luck, so we can make for it, but the grub on board won't hold out for quarter o' that distance, so, unless we fall in with a ship, or fish jump aboard of us, ye ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... her come down to breakfast en Amazone, and took her the most enchanting rides in that Seductive April weather. Her equestrian experience previously had been limited to steady macadamizing on the roads. Bertie took her as the crow flies, never pulled a fence, but merely gave her a lead, and Cecil, who had plenty of nerve, exulted in the new excitement. The farmers might not have thought it a very orthodox month for this amusement; but hunting was scarcely over, though the copses were filled with primroses, and violets ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... claiming to be a woodsman," he told Bluff when the other looked a little incredulous over something or other, "if you don't keep track of your direction? I feel sure that as the crow flies Cabin Point lies over there, right beyond that tree with the ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... As the crow flies, the length of this line, from the Gulf of Riga to the Rumanian border was six hundred and twenty miles. Actually, counting its many turns and twists and salients, it covered more than seven hundred and fifty miles. From the Gulf to the Pripet River the eastern ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Austro-German war staff were kept fully informed of the straits in which Przemysl found itself. General Boehm-Ermolli, with Army A, was making desperate efforts to extricate himself from the Russian grip round Uzsok, Lupkow, and Dukla; he did not get beyond Baligrod, as the crow flies, thirty miles ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... Constable J. Brockie left Herschell Island and established the most northerly outpost of the Force 65 miles east of the mouth of the Coppermine River. The isolation of this post may be judged by the fact that the nearest post office is at Fort Macpherson over 600 miles away as the crow flies and the nearest telegraph office is at Dawson, over 1,000 miles distant. Here the Union Jack flies in the Arctic breeze and here revenue is collected for the Dominion from traders and trappers who venture north in schooners to ply their occupation. ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... to proceed by rail to Lahore, the capital of the Punjab, whence, I am told, there will be a good road all the way to Calcutta. As the crow flies, Lahore is nearer to Furrah than Karachi is, so that my purpose of making a continuous trail will be better ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... to Harwich, as the crow flies, is about one hundred and thirty miles. First, however, I went to Northampton, and put the previous body on the car. Then the road I took was by Huntingdon, Cambridge, Halstead, and Colchester—in all, about one ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... soil which covers it all washed away, a curved band of white chalk, here broader, and there narrower, might be followed diagonally across England from Lulworth in Dorset, to Flamborough Head in Yorkshire—a distance of over 280 miles as the crow flies. From this band to the North Sea, on the east, and the Channel, on the south, the chalk is largely hidden by other deposits; but, except in the Weald of Kent and Sussex, it enters into the very foundation of all the ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley |
