"Rafts" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... natives didn't dare to attack again, but no hunting party was safe, and the food supply was dropping. They had gotten on the island only by the help of the natives, who had ferried them over on rafts. But getting off was another thing, now that the natives were hostile. Cutting down trees to build rafts might possibly be managed, but during the loading the little company would be too vulnerable ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... went ashore and, making my way to the carpenter's shop which formed part of our shore establishment among the islands, ordered a certain number of small triangular rafts to be made, of a size just sufficient to support a bamboo staff ten feet long, to the top of which a flag six feet long by three feet wide was to be firmly lashed, the flags to be of different colours, arranged ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... him two lofty walls of crag and forest, towards those obstructions in the channel, which, in times of flood, converted the whole river into a boiling caldron. They were masses of rock, among which had lodged rafts of drift timber, forming a dam or barrier on either side of the river, from which the descending floods were whirled into a central channel, ample enough in the dry season to discharge the waters in ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... The rafts were very well, and the house-boats and the traders' boats, but the most majestic feature of the riverlife was the tow of coal-barges which, going or coming, the 'Avonek' met every few miles. Whether ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... lumps of white, cotton-looking dumpy dogs and toting them around, to the disgust of the lookers-on—with all the fondness and blind infatuation of a mamma with her first born, bran new baby. Wherever you see any quantity of white and black loafers—Philadelphia, for instance, you'll see rafts of ugly and wretched looking curs. Boz says poverty and oysters have a great affinity; in this country, for oysters read dogs. Who has not, that ever travelled over this remarkable country, had occasion ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... fishing is widely carried on over the inland waters; but the rod, except as a matter of pure sport, has given place to the businesslike net. The account of the use of fishing cormorants was formerly regarded as a traveller's tale. It is quite true, however, that small rafts carrying several of these birds, with a fisherman gently sculling at the stern, may be seen on the rivers of southern China. The cormorant seizes a passing fish, and the fisherman takes the fish from its beak. The bird is trained ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... "sluicing" the logs. When the boom reaches the run which connects the lake or river with the dam through the sluice of which the logs must pass, the chain of guard-logs is detached, and fastened in lines along both sides of the run, and the rafts are drawn off to one side and anchored to trees. The river-drivers, armed with their pick-poles, are then stationed along the run, on the dam, wherever ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... thinking of the various links with life, the rafts, rather, which should carry age over the cold seas of tedious regret. "And there's natural gaiety. And intellectual interests. And contacts with other people—permanent contacts and temporary ones. And beauty. All those things. For some people, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... the harbor at this time appears to have been more effective than convenient. Twenty boats or rafts filled with earth and stone were sunk with a purpose of destroying the harbor. De Saint Luc, the governor, succeeded in removing only four or five. The entrance for vessels afterward remained difficult ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... Venture was tied up for the night near other rafts, and its crew exchanged visits with theirs. The regular river raftsmen were generally powerful young giants, rough and unlettered, but a good-natured, happy-go-lucky lot, full of tales of adventure in the woods or on the river, to which the boys listened with a never-failing delight. Nor were the ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... varied forms of the mountains called to mind those delightful streams that are discharged from the lakes of the northern counties of England. Like these too, the Kan-kiang-ho abounded with fish, not however with the delicious trout but one of much less flavour, a species of perch. Great numbers of rafts were floating on the river with the fishing corvorant, and we observed that he seldom dived without success. For the whole distance of three days' journey, the hilly country bordering on the river produced very little ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... and his men had a sterner duty to perform by the maple trees. They cut them down and of the trunks constructed a number of rafts wherewith to transport the baggage and provisions of the army across ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... Kenton, a distinguished Indian fighter, was placed in command. The trail of the Indians being taken, it was found they had crossed the Ohio just below the mouth of Lee's creek, which was reached by the pursuing party towards evening. Having prepared rafts, they crossed the Ohio that night, and encamped. Early next morning the trail was again taken and pursued, on a north course, all day, the weather being bad and the ground wet. On the ensuing morning twelve of the men were unable ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... with another of her kind who cheerfully drank my health at the Government's expense, and chatted on things Martian. She took me to see a funeral by way of amusement, and I found these people floated their dead off on flower-decked rafts instead of burying them, the send-offs all taking place upon a certain swift-flowing stream, which carried the dead away into the vast region of northern ice, but more exactly whither my informant seemed to have no ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... the High Gods still desired me for Their own purposes, and blinded the great beasts' eyes when I slunk to cover as they passed. Twice rivers of scalding water roared boiling across my path, and I had to delay till I could collect enough black timber from the forests to build rafts that would give ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... When day ended the gale did not abate, and everything was lashed for a night of unusual fury. Our good ship was turned to the south to avoid the possibility of icebergs. The City of Boston, however, undoubtedly went to the north. Her boats, life-preservers and rafts were all securely lashed; and when she went down, everything went with her, never to re-appear until the sea ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... march along the coast northwards on March 25th. They had to improvise rafts to cross some rivers; once a party of kindly aboriginals helped them over a stream in canoes; at another time they encountered blacks who hurled spears at them. They lived chiefly on small shell-fish. Hunger and exposure brought their strength very low. On April 16th, after ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... be a very difficult task. He wandered along the bank of the Ekaterininsky Canal for half an hour or more and looked several times at the steps running down to the water, but he could not think of carrying out his plan; either rafts stood at the steps' edge, and women were washing clothes on them, or boats were moored there, and people were swarming everywhere. Moreover he could be seen and noticed from the banks on all sides; it would look suspicious for a man to ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the Mississippi, which traverse extensive sylvan regions, and from other circumstances to be adverted to, it is held likely by some that the vegetable matter, the rubbish of decayed forests, was carried by rivers into estuaries, and there accumulated in vast natural rafts, until it sunk to the bottom, where an overlayer of sand or mud would prepare it for becoming a stratum of coal. Others conceive that the vegetation first went into the condition of a peat moss, that a sink in the ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... peninsula, I recall heaps of white oak slabs in the forest which I was told were the remains of the timber-men who had gone through buying and cutting out the oaks for square timber that floated away in rafts, probably to build tramp steamers in England. The bush farmer hired to wield the broad-axe on that oak was as much an industrialist as any moulder in a foundry. He would have fought with his naked fists any agitator who proposed to ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... the face of terrible fire. Men who could swim breasted the stream carrying ropes, which were stretched from bank to bank and along which those who could not swim made their way over the river. Some crossed in collapsible boats, others on rafts and finally on pontoon and foot bridges, which were constructed ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... a strange tribe that had broken away from "Americanski" and gone to live on a great island in the middle of the lakes, where no one could touch us unless they risked their lives on great wooden rafts. I thought the amount of inverted truth in this charming description very pleasing if not very flattering to ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... yellow herb with a ball at the top, and which float on the water. At thirty leguas from the coast are seen many great bunches of grass which are carried down to the sea by the great rivers of the country. These grasses are called balsas ["rafts or floats"]. Also many perrillos are seen, and, in turn, all the various signs. Then the coast is discovered, and it is very high and clear land. Without losing sight of land, the ship coasts along it with the northwest, north-northwest, and north winds, which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... following the withdrawal of former Soviet subsidies, worth $4 billion to $6 billion annually. Havana portrays its difficulties as the result of the US embargo in place since 1961. Illicit migration to the US - using homemade rafts, alien smugglers, or falsified visas - is a continuing problem. Some 3,000 Cubans took to the Straits of Florida in 2000; the US Coast Guard interdicted only ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... without even a blanket to cover their shivering frames. Their feet became blistered. Passing beyond the bounds of the open prairie, they sometimes found themselves in bogs, sometimes in tangled forests. There were streams to be waded or to be crossed upon such rude rafts as they could frame with their hatchets. Their clothes hung in tatters around them, and, most deplorable of all, ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... consisted of one launch, one eight-oared pinnace, and two six-oared yawls, with careful hands in them, were kept astern of the ship; a small quantity of bread, water, and other necessary articles, were put into them; two canoes, which we had on board, were lashed together and put into the water; rafts were made, and all floating things ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... Rhine ere it leaves the land of liberty; where, sunning itself in a glory of blue sky and white cloud, and overbrooded by the eternal mountains; it swirls its fresh green waves and hurries its laden rafts betwixt the quaint old houses and dreaming spires, and under the busy bridges of the Golden ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... paddle their rafts through the jungle; They swim through a network of leaves; They clamber with never a bungle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... of all sorts of laborers,[4243] "all who help handle, transport and retail produce and articles of prime necessity," "country people who usually get in the crops," and, more particularly, thrashers, reapers, carters, rafts men, and also shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths and the rest.—At every point of the social organism, the same principle is applied with the same result. Substitute everywhere an external, artificial and mechanical ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... through northern Spain, where he conquered all before him. Then he marched through Gaul to the Rhone. This he crossed in the face of an army of hostile Gauls, who had gathered to oppose him. He had more difficulty with his elephants, of which he had thirty-seven. Rafts were built to convey these great beasts across the stream, but some of them, frightened, leaped overboard and drowned their drivers. They then swam across themselves, and ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... known Lyman. As other people were listening, I felt no delicacy about doing the same, for the conversation was an eloquent one, and well worth catching. So interested did I become that I forgot the great rafts floating by, the picturesque shores, the splendid river, and leaned nearer and nearer that no word might be lost, till my book slid out of my lap and fell straight down upon the head of one of the gentlemen, giving him a smart blow, and knocking his ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... logs the huge trees. To Dennis and others remained the arduous labour of guiding, with the help of windlasses, these immense logs to the river, whence they would descend in due time to the inlet, there to be joined together into vast rafts, later on again to be towed to their destination. Of all labour, this steering of logs through dense forest to their appointed waterway is the hardest and roughest. Dennis, of course, wore thick gloves, but in spite ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... morning, viz., February 17th, I rode to the head of General Howard's column, and found that during the night he had ferried Stone's brigade of Woods's division of the Fifteenth Corps across by rafts made of the pontoons, and that brigade was then deployed on the opposite bank to cover the construction of a pontoon-bridge ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... crew, as well as preserve their cargo, they must adhere to specified conditions. The number of passengers and crew is regulated by law, as is the amount of the cargo. Ocean liners, for example, must have aboard a certain number of lifeboats, rafts, belts, life preservers, fire extinguishers, lines of hose; and the size of all these is carefully designated. There must be frequent drills in manning the boats; the fire hose must be tested to see that it ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... should be cleared for the building. The work of evacuating Ste Marie began early in May, and on the 15th of the month the buildings were set on fire. The valuables of the mission were placed in a large boat and on rafts; and, with heavy hearts, the fathers and their helpers went aboard for the journey to their new ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... Lower down it parts Peshawar from the Panjab district of Attock. In this section after a time the hills recede on both sides, and the stream is wide and so shallow that it is fordable in places in the cold weather. There are islands, ferry boats and rafts can ply, and the only danger is from sudden freshets. Ohind, where Alexander crossed, is in this section. A more famous passage is at Attock just below the junction of the Kabul river. Here the heights again approach the Indus on either bank. The volume ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... Into such a sudden zest Of summertime joys That he hies to a pool neighbouring; sees it is the best There; sweetest, freshest, shadowiest; Fairyland; silk-beech, scrolled ash, packed sycamore, wild wychelm, hornbeam fretty overstood By. Rafts and rafts of flake-leaves light, dealt so, painted on the air, Hang as still as hawk or hawkmoth, as the stars or as the angels there, Like the thing that never knew the earth, never off roots Rose. Here he feasts: lovely ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... variously reported, and the different chiefs, ignorant of the real cause of the alarm, contended themselves with waiting in their several quarters; under arms. About four thousand of the sultan's troops, in this interim, crossed the river in boats and rafts which had been prepared for the purpose. The enemy's foot, stationed to oppose the passage, terrified by the alarm in camp and the approach of the sultan's forces, fled in confusion without waiting to be attacked. Before the morning Feroze Shaw ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... moved up the harbour and along the Hudson River with a superb and courteous stateliness. Round her snorted and scuttled and puffed the multitudinous strange denizens of the harbour. Tugs, steamers, queer- shaped ferry-boats, long rafts carrying great lines of trucks from railway to railway, dredgers, motor-boats, even a sailing-boat or two; for the day's work was beginning. Among them, with that majesty that only a liner entering a harbour has, she went, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... do nothing but stand and look. Skiffs, canoes, hastily improvised rafts, were moving in every direction, carrying the unsightly chattels of the poor out of their overflowed cottages to higher ground. Barrels, boxes, planks, hen-coops, bridge lumber, piles of straw that waltzed solemnly as they went, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... populous, and much frequented by strangers, being the centre of intercourse between Persia, Turkey, and Arabia, caravans going frequently from it to these and other countries. It is well supplied with provisions, which are brought from Armenia down the river Tigris, upon rafts made of goat skin bags blown full of wind, over which boards are laid, on which the goods are loaded. When these are discharged, the skin bags are opened and emptied of air, and are then carried back to Armenia on camels ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... wild as could be, great rafts of them, and travelling faster than the old seiners in the gang said they had ever seen them travel before, and what was worse, not staying up long. There were boats out from three or four vessels before we pushed off with ours. I remember the porgy steamer had cut in ahead and given their boat ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... a feint, though this is not perceived by the Austrians as yet. The real movement is on the right hand of the foreground, behind a spur of the isle, and out of sight of the enemy; where several large rafts and flat boats, each capable of carrying three hundred men, are floated ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... reached the Colorado river we stayed two days making rafts to cross the river on. The last day we were there, laying on the bank of the river, I presume there came five hundred of these Indians within fifty yards of our camp. Most of them laid down under the trees. One of our men shot a bird that was in a tree close ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... passengers were off. Under the mist the sea rose and fell quietly; the boats and rafts had drawn off to a safe distance. The Greek, who had humour as well as imagination, kept up the spirits of those about him while he held ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... army at Fredericksburg the South was thrilled by the feat of General McGruder in Galveston harbor. The daring Confederate Commander had seized two little steamers and fitted them up as gun boats by piling cotton on their sides for bulwarks. With these two rafts of cotton cooeperating on the water, his infantry waded out into the waters of Galveston Bay and attacked the Federal fleet with ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... four of his sloops and schooners, boldly attacked the enemy, but though, as Washington wrote, "our officers and men, during the whole affair, behaved with great spirit and bravery," neither side sustained serious damage. On the night of the 16th two fire-rafts were directed against the ships, which were successful so far as to destroy one of the tenders; and on the 18th the enemy weighed anchor and returned to the Narrows as readily ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... a raft, Miss Percival, which is coming down the river," replied Captain Sinclair. "You will see when we are nearer to it, that perhaps it covers two acres of water, and there are three tiers of timber on it. These rafts are worth many thousand pounds. They are first framed with logs, fastened by wooden tree-nails, and the timber placed within the frame. There are, perhaps, from forty to a hundred people on this raft to guide it down the stream, and the houses you see are built on it for the accommodation of ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... going to join my friend Smart in one of his wars with his opposite neighbours and rivals, the Cammarancies, inhabiting the country towards the Port Logo. The cause of quarrel was, that these people had seized upon the rafts and canoes which brought the camwood over the falls higher up the river, and had demolished several storehouses belonging to Smart and his people, engaged in that trade. Smart, with a part of his forces, had crossed ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... to go down the river bank for a considerable distance, build rafts, and, by means of a stout rope, ferry some of the best of his men across the stream in the dark. The landing of the men was to be covered by the heaviest possible fire from the American side, and, as soon as they were safe ashore, the Kansas soldiers were to secure ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... while from where I stood there were the great black buildings, the tall shafts, and close beneath me the dam which, in spite of the sunshine, suggested nothing but men coming down from the head on rafts of ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... the Thames, even above bridge, the Seine is far from exhibiting a busy scene; a few rafts of wood for fuel, and some barges occasionally in motion, now and then relieve the monotony of its rarely-ruffled surface. At this moment, its navigation is impeded from its stream being swollen by the late heavy rains. Hence ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... and Lord Tremlyn invited the party to proceed to the apartments at the Royal Hotel which he had bespoken for them. The commander made no further objections to the matter of expense, and the invitation was promptly accepted. A number of the masulah-boats, not the rafts, were engaged to land them. They were much like any other boat, though they were paddled, and not rowed. They saw the catamarans, constructed as the Hindu gentleman had described, paddled on the waves by a single man, wearing ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... through a valley with cottonwood groves on either side. The river is deep, broad, and quiet. About two hours after noon camp we discover an Indian crossing, where a number of rafts, rudely constructed of logs and bound together by withes, are floating against the bank. On landing, we see evidences that a party of Indians have crossed within a very few days. This is the place where the lamented Gunnison crossed, in the year 1853, when making ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... Bruni to-day. The discus-knife, a wooden weapon, is not now in use, but is known to have been used formerly. The wild Kadayans sacrifice after every new moon, and are forbidden to eat a number of things until they have done so. The Malanaus set laden rafts afloat on the rivers to propitiate the spirits of the sea. The very names of the two kinds of cotton, then evidently a novelty to the Chinese, are found in Borneo: KAPOK is a well-known Malay word; but TAYA is the common name for cotton among the Sea Dayaks, though it is doubtful whether it is ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the open country. Here it runs noisily over the shallows, as if boasting aloud of the victory it had achieved in breaking its way through such mighty barriers; but within the Gap it sleeps in quiet pools, or flows in deep glassy currents. By the side of these you see large rafts composed of enormous trunks of trees that have floated down with the spring floods from the New York forests, and here wait for their turn in the saw-mills along the shore. It was a bright morning, with a keen autumnal ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... eager to see the ocean. To which purpose he caused a great many row-boats and rafts to be built, in which he fell gently down the rivers at his leisure, yet so that his navigation was neither unprofitable nor inactive. For by several descents upon the banks, he made himself master of the fortified ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... which threatened the two rafts: I perceived it on looking back toward burning the vessel: the blacks were threatening to swim after, and seek refuge upon the rafts. Large numbers of them showed that they had formed this intention. It was apparent from their movements and attitudes. They were ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... wide, where cascades and rapids succeeded each other almost without intermission. Even had the opposite banks, therefore, been such as to permit a continuance of their journey, it would have been madness to attempt to pass the tumultuous current either on rafts or otherwise. Still bent, however, on pushing forward, they attempted to climb the opposing mountains; and struggled on through the snow for half a day until, coming to where they could command a prospect, they found ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... of June the caravan reached Erbil, anciently Arbela, the scene of one of Alexander the Great's most famous victories. Two days later they crossed the great river Sab upon rafts of inflated skins, fastened together with poles, and covered with reeds, canes, and planks. Rapidly traversing the Mesopotamian wastes, they arrived at Mosul on the 1st of July, and thence Madame ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... on by the swift wind, showers of rain poured down without intermissions, filling all sides round. And, O lord of men, all around there began to flow many rivers covered with foam and turbid with mud; and these bearing volumes of water spread over the frothy rafts rushed down with tremendous roar uprooting trees. And afterwards when that sound had ceased and the air had arisen they (each of them) cautiously came out of their coverts and met together, O descendant of Bharata. And then the heroes ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... attack us any night; and, besides, we have no means of making a big raft. We might tie two or three trunks together with the lariats and spike a few cross-pieces on them, we might even make two such rafts; that is the outside. They will carry us and our stores, but as for the horses, we must either leave them down in the hollow for the Indians to find, or put a bullet through their heads. I expect the latter will be the best thing for them, ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... resumed its natural character of wildness, as it trotted on to the little hamlet of Greenhill. This brook my brother was at one time disposed to treat as Remus treated the infant walls of Rome; but, on maturer thoughts, having built a fleet of rafts, he treated it more respectfully; and this morning, as will be seen, the breadth of the little brook did us "yeoman's service." Me at one time he had meant to put on board this fleet, as his man Friday; and I had a fair prospect of first ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Captain Herbert, were sent up to destroy any fortifications they might meet with. On reaching Whampoa Roads, a large armed fort, mounting 47 guns, was seen on the left bank, and extending across the river was a line of rafts secured to sunken junks, on the other side of which were forty large junks and the Cambridge, carrying the admiral's flag. The steamer pushing on, opened a heavy fire on the Chinese fleet, as well as on the batteries. For about ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... crew landed in their boats, with arms and provisions, leaving the slaves on board in their irons. This happened in the night. When morning came, it was discovered that the Negroes had broken their shackles, and were busy in making rafts; upon which afterwards they placed the women and children. The men attended upon the latter, swimming by their side, whilst they drifted to the island where the crew were. But what was the sequel? From an apprehension that the Negroes ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... provinces on the South Sea. They who go to look for them, and do not enter there, will be lost. On the coast is no maize: the inhabitants eat the powder of rush and of straw, and fish that is caught in the sea from rafts, not having canoes. With grass and straw the women cover their nudity. They are a ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... place, and he commenced some works to block up the mouth of the harbor. He built piers on each side, extending out as far into the sea as the depth of the water would allow them to be built. He then constructed a series of rafts, which he anchored on the deep water, in a line extending from one pier to the other. He built towers upon these rafts, and garrisoned them with soldiers, in hopes by this means to prevent all egress from the fort. He thought ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... he met no resistance except at Panormis (Palermo), but observing that his masts overtopped the walls, he hung up small rafts full of archers, whose arrows disconcerted the inhabitants so that they surrendered, and the whole island was restored to the Roman power. Theodatus tried to treat with Justinian, and while the negotiations were going on, Belisarius ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... out to their messmates to come and lash them into their hammocks. Other stout fellows were in tears as they thought of their country and those dear to them, whom they were never to see again. Some, though they must have known it would be of no use, were lashing themselves to gratings and small rafts, which they had formed of spars. Larry wanted me ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... two pairs of their strongest canoes lashed together in the stream, ready for the reception of the cannon when they should come. How was he to get at them? He knew that he could not use a fire boat again, but these rafts, for such they were, must ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... on the canal to the north of St. Quentin. It was well supported by several American divisions, and the great episode of the day was the capture of Bellenglise by troops who crossed the canal equipped with life-belts, mats, and rafts. East of Bellenglise, Lehaucourt and Magny were also stormed, and north of it Nauroy and Bellicourt. Meanwhile the Third Army captured Masnires and penetrated into the western outskirts of Cambrai while the Canadians ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... flat-bottomed canoes, called pit-pans. Their crews are employed in liberating the logs from the branches of the overhanging trees and other impediments, till they are stopped by a beam placed near the mouth of the river. The logs of each owner are now collected into large rafts, in which state they are floated down to the wharves of the proprietors. Here they are newly smoothed, and made ready ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... the shores of nameless lakes and unknown streams, to cut the pine or oak lumber, such being the name they give to the felled stems of trees, which are then hewn, and in the winter dragged out upon the ice, where they are formed into rafts, and floated down the waters till they reach the great St. Lawrence, and are, after innumerable difficulties and casualties, finally shipped for England. I have likewise known European gentlemen voluntarily leave the comforts of a civilized home, and associate themselves with the Indian ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... Atlantic, islands drifted like those tissues of root and sedge that break from the edges of northern lakes and are sent to and fro by the gales: floating islands. The little rafts bearing that name are thick enough to nourish trees, and a man or a deer may walk on them without breaking through. Far different were those wandering Edens of the sea, for they had mountains, volcanoes, cities, and gardens; ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... walk of a mile along a road skirted by handsome country seats, but contrasting strangely in its loneliness with the broad thoroughfare of the river constantly occupied by long tows of barges and rafts, I came to the rectory gate. The house was a stone cottage, covered with trailers, and standing well back from the road. In the same inclosure, surrounded by a grove of firs, was a little stone chapel with high pitched roof and rustic belfry. In front of the house ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... rafts, splashing them with waves. The beams are in continual motion under the blows of the waves; the men on the rafts in blue shirts, staggering, look at the steamer and laugh and shout something. The big, beautiful vessel goes sidewise on the river; the yellow scantlings with which it is loaded ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... "I am going to have the Harrigans over for tea this afternoon. Come over! You'll like the family. The girl is charming; and the father is a sportsman to the backbone. Some silly fools laugh behind his back, but never before his face. And my word, I know rafts of gentlemen who are not fit to stand in ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... continuing problem; Cubans attempt to depart the island and enter the US using homemade rafts, alien smugglers, direct flights, or falsified visas; Cubans also use non-maritime routes to enter the US including direct flights to Miami and overland ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... stalk, was then extracted by another machine. These piths were then treated to a water-proofing process, sent to a shop on the farm, and made up into life preservers. Both life preservers and life rafts, made from pith treated in this way, proved lighter, cheaper, and more buoyant than those made from cork. This, you will observe is another profitable industry, added to the financial resources of Solaris. It is also an addition to the fitting ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... Islets, my; attention was called to a reddish-brown appearance in the sea. The whole surface of the water, as it appeared under a weak lens, seemed as if covered by chopped bits of hay, with their ends jagged. These are minute cylindrical confervae, in bundles or rafts of from twenty to sixty in each. Mr. Berkeley informs me that they are the same species (Trichodesmium erythraeum) with that found over large spaces in the Red Sea, and whence its name of Red Sea is derived. [8] Their numbers must be infinite: the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... deeming their force too small for the object contemplated, abandoned the enterprise and retreated to the fort. The remaining nineteen, not discouraged by the desertion of their companions, heroically persevered. They crossed the Ohio to the present site of Cincinnati, on rafts. They then painted their faces, and in other respects assumed the guise and garb of savages, and marched upon the ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... masses had approached to the edge of the jungle, ready to rush from their cover at break of day. A great number of war-boats had been seen in the morning, by the "Teignmouth," coming down the river; and in the evening they came forward with fire-rafts. The post was left open to a furious attack by land and water; but it was courageously defended by the garrison under Major Yates, supported on the river by a small naval force. Hostilities commenced on the morning of the 1st of December with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the little Queen!" "Long live the good Duc de Bouillon, who is coming to us! He has a hundred thousand men with him, all on rafts on the Seine. The old Cardinal de la Rochelle is dead! Long live the King! Long live Monsieur ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... cistern, tightly covered; one barrel we left open to the warm sun and air, and the other we covered with the finest mosquito netting. The barrel left open was soon thronged with mosquitoes, constructing their little rafts of eggs and paving their way for the swarms of young wigglers that in the course of a week or two made their appearance in the open barrel in immense numbers. The process by which these wigglers hatch out into mosquitoes is an interesting ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... trembled, as the unfriendly clouds drove out the lingering tints of day. Here were the strange floating city, with its stranger people on all the open porches, quays, and jetties; the innumerable rafts and boats, canoes and gondolas, junks, and ships; the pall of black smoke from the steamer, the burly roar of the engine, and the murmur and the jar; the bewildering cries of men, women, and children, the shouting of the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... Generals Morgan L. Smith's, John E. Smith's, and Hugh Ewing's divisions of the 15th Corps, under command of Major-General Frank P. Blair, of his army. The pontoon bridge at Brown's Ferry having been broken by the drift consequent upon the rise in the river and rafts sent down by the enemy, the other division (Osterhaus') was detained on the south side, and was on the night of the 23d ordered, unless it could get across by eight o'clock the next morning, to report to Hooker, who was instructed, in ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... of your flesh, of your old self! Good! Now keep still: the pilgrims are coming on their wooden rafts to celebrate the ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... perhaps," he said at length. "We have learned to journey on the water. We must build us rafts, many rafts, to carry all the tribe. And when we can no longer hold our fires and our caves we will push out upon the water, and perhaps make our way to that blue shore yonder, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... undamaged boats were lowered and the survivors from the liner once again cast adrift to face the horrors of the previous night. Rafts floated free with all that were left of the crew of the sloop—two officers and thirty men. Their condition was pitiable. There had been no time to get either food or extra clothing, and so heavily laden were the light structures ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... alliance with the Spaniards, but they, being warned by experience with the treasons of the Moros, continued the hostilities, without attaching any importance to that signal. While they constructed rafts with which to attack the fortress of Corralat, Captain Antonio de Palacios went to destroy the village of Tampacan and its environs; and Adjutant Antonio Vazquez disembarked with orders to cut off the retreat of the enemy's spies. These were twenty in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... boat of basket-work covered with bitumen, often of a size sufficient to carry five or six horses and a dozen men. These boats have been employed from the remotest antiquity through all this region, and are often depicted on the old Assyrian monuments. Equally ancient are the rafts called kellek, constructed of inflated goat-skins, covered with a framework of wood, often supporting a small house for passengers, which descend the Tigris from above Diarbekr. The wood of these rafts is sold in Bagdad, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... there'll never be anything like it again. All the Colonies sent men, and Lord Howe brought thousands of English soldiers. England was our friend then," said Nathan. "They had thousands of boats, and rafts to carry their big guns. They had big flags, and music; and they didn't lurk or skulk about. Their boats came right down the lake in fine shape; they landed, and marched toward the fort. But the French were ready for them, and beat them back. ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... went to their hammocks, and desired their messmates to lash them in; others were securing themselves to gratings and small rafts; but the most predominant idea was that of putting on their best and cleanest clothes. The boats ... were got over the side."—"Loss of the Centaur," Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the hollow of the sea, she rolled, and at the third roll the half-ton of metal toppled over, crashed down through the bottom of the ship, and sought the company of the screw. She was a compartmentless steamer, and in half an hour had followed, leaving her crew afloat in boats and on life-rafts. Scotty found himself in the boat with the captain, and wisely anticipating rebuke, had brought his shovel. The captain glared ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... turf Within their rampart lines. But when they knew That Baslus was on th' opposing shore With friendly force, by novel mode of flight They aim to reach him. Not the accustomed keel They lay, nor build the ship, but shapeless rafts Of timbers knit together, strong to bear All ponderous weight; on empty casks beneath By tightened chains made firm, in double rows Supported; nor upon the deck were placed The oarsmen, to the hostile dart exposed, But in a hidden space, by ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... from Tennessee says that nearly eight hundred square miles of territory is covered with water, from three to seven feet deep. What cabins are still standing are filled with people and cattle, crowding the upper floors or huddled together on rafts ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... to be blown up at a moment's notice; and they were sure of the fee. At the mouth of the St. John's River, New Brunswick, they have a fall both ways, at a certain time of tide, through which and up and down which boats and rafts plunge headlong so as to take away your breath, while you are watching them from the bridge; but really, this little pitch of not more than three or four feet under London Bridge I should think more dangerous, and the people seem to think so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... had observed that every year, during the eighth month, a raft of precious wood came floating to the shore on which he lived; and he wanted to know where that wood grew. So he loaded a boat with provisions for a two years' voyage, and sailed away in the direction from which the rafts used to drift. For months and months he sailed on, over an always placid sea; and at last he arrived at a pleasant shore, where wonderful trees were growing. He moored his boat, and proceeded alone into the unknown land, until he came to the bank of a river whose waters were bright ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... steamers, described the Teutonic losses in the Jutland battle as colossal. A number of the crew of the cruiser Wiesbaden and men from several German torpedo boats were rescued and brought to Copenhagen. They reported that many of their comrades, after floating for thirty-six hours on rafts without food or water, drank the sea water, became insane and ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... the Yaqui in canoes and upon rafts. White, brown and black, the horses swam the stream. Again nigh impenetrable forest, again villages, again clear singing and running waters. But ever the mountains came closer. At last we entered hilly ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... the Ohio, above the camp, by means of seventy-eight rafts. They worked hard, and formed for battle ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... a quarter of a mile in length, to be first constructed; and the trunks of trees, stripped of their branches, were rolled together in this roadway, until a "slide" was made, down which the heavier logs could be shunted towards the harbour. The timber thus obtained was made into rafts, and floated to the sheds, or arranged for transportation to Hobart Town. The convicts were lodged on Sarah Island, in barracks flanked by a two-storied prison, whose "cells" were the terror of the most hardened. Each morning they received their breakfast of porridge, water, and salt, and then ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Anchor in Halfway Bay, and explore Munster Water and Hanover Bay in a boat. Visit Hanover Bay, and procure water and fish. Interview with natives. The surgeon speared. Retaliate upon them, and capture their rafts and weapons. Description of their implements. Port George the Fourth. Islands to the westward. Red Island of Captain Heywood. Strong tides. Camden Bay. Buccaneer's Archipelago. Cygnet Bay. Dangerous situation of the brig. High and rapid tides. Cape Leveque. Examination of the coast to Cape ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... monks, twelve physicians, Cossack soldiers—in all, nearly six hundred men—were to accompany him; and to transport this small army of explorers, four thousand pack-horses were sent winding across the desert wastes of Siberia, with one thousand exiles as guides and boatmen to work the boats and rafts on the rivers and streams. Great blaring of trumpets marked the arrival and departure of the caravans at the Russian forts on the way; and if the savants, whose {16} presence pestered the soul of poor Bering, had been ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... recalcitrants; but by forethought for them and their wants, and a strict watchfulness for their rights and comfort, I was able in a short time to make them obedient and the detachment cohesive. In the past year they had made long and tiresome marches, forded swift mountain streams, constructed rafts of logs or bundles of dry reeds to ferry our baggage, swum deep rivers, marched on foot to save their worn-out and exhausted animals, climbed mountains, fought Indians, and in all and everything had done the best they could for the service and their ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... Billing's Port, while the upper line was defended by a battery, mounting heavy cannon, and situated on a flat, marshy land, near the Pennsylvanian bank of the liver. On the opposite bank, also, there was a formidable redoubt and intrenchments, with floating batteries, armed galleys under cover, rafts, with guns upon them, and a great many fire-ships. Moreover, higher up the river, the Americans had two frigates, and several gondolas or gun-boats; while, lower down, there were various works to obstruct the navigation. At this time Lord Howe arrived with his fleet, and soon after ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... saws, sixteen in a gang, not to mention circular saws. On one side, they were hauling the logs up an inclined plane by water-power; on the other, passing out the boards, planks, and sawed timber, and forming them into rafts. The trees were literally drawn and quartered there. In forming the rafts, they use the lower three feet of hard-wood saplings, which have a crooked and knobbed butt-end, for bolts, passing them up through holes bored in the corners and sides of the rafts, and keying them. In another ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... woods of the densest foliage. These large marshes, covered with reeds as with a thick mantle, sleep silently and calmly beneath the sun's soft and genial rays. A few fishermen with their families indolently pass their lives away there, with their great living-rafts of poplar and alder, the flooring formed of reeds, and the roof woven out of thick rushes. These barks, these floating-houses, are wafted to and fro by the changing winds. Whenever they touch a bank, it is but ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... toward its destination after nightfall. From twenty-five to thirty galvanized iron pontoon boats, seven and a half meters in length, which had been dragged in carts across the desert, were hauled by hand toward the water. With one or two rafts made of kerosene tins in a wooden frame, all was ready for the attack. The first warning of the enemy's approach was given by a sentry of a mountain battery who heard, to him, an unknown tongue across the water. The noise soon increased. It would seem that Mudjah Ideem—"Holy ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... territory, must have fancied himself secure against any attack by the Mongols. He was destined to a rude awakening. Kublai and Uriangkadai, marching across Szchuen and crossing the Kinchakiang, or "river of golden sand," which forms the upper course of the Great River, on rafts, burst into Yunnan, speedily vanquished the frontier garrisons, and laid siege to the capital, Talifoo. That town did not hold out long, and soon Kublai was in a position to return to his own state, leaving Uriangkadai ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... even to the stumps of trees. There were no teams to draw it from the opposite bank, where it was abundant. The only way of supplying fuel, for some time before my arrival, had been to cut trees on the north bank of the river at a considerable distance up the stream, form rafts of it and float it down with the current, effecting a landing on the south side within our lines by the use of paddles or poles. It would then be carried on the shoulders of the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... in our young literature. We have no songs; American domestic life has never been hallowed and beautified by the sweet and graceful and tender associations of poetry. We have no Yankee pastorals. Our rivers and streams turn mills and float rafts, and are otherwise as commendably useful as those of Scotland; but no quaint ballad or simple song reminds us that men and women have loved, met, and parted on their banks, or that beneath each roof within their valleys the tragedy and comedy of life have been enacted. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... tribe has ever been known to cultivate the ground, to use metals, pottery, or any kind of textile fabric. They rarely construct huts. Their means of navigation are limited to rafts or canoes, made of sheets of bark. Clothing, except skin cloaks for protection from cold, is a superfluity with which they dispense; and though they have some singular weapons, almost peculiar to themselves, they are wholly ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Samoki during the high water of the rainy season. Probably one-fourth of the firewood is borne by the river a part of its journey to the pueblos. But there is no effort at comprehensive water transportation; there are no boats or rafts, and the wood which does float down the river journeys in ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... beneath the purple tent-roof, the oars struck the water, the boats moved, the golden cords stretched, and the raft with the feast and the guests began to move and describe circles on the pond. Other boats surrounded it, and other smaller rafts, filled with women playing on citharae and harps, women whose rosy bodies on the blue background of the sky and the water and in the reflections from golden instruments seemed to absorb that blue and those reflections, and to change ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... there. Since then roads have been formed in all directions, and already great improvements have taken place besides those I have described. We, however, were now to travel where there were no carriage roads or bridges, and often no ferries, so that we had to construct rafts on which to carry across the streams our saddles, and baggage, and provisions, while ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Joam Garral, then a young man, had arrived in the country, he had never left it for a day. Though the sight of the Amazon, with its waters gently flowing to the east, invited him to follow its course; though Joam every year sent rafts of wood to Manaos, to Belem, and the seacoast of Para; though he had seen each year Benito leave after his holidays to return to his studies, yet the thought seemed never to have occurred to him ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... son of La Salle, and others, but seven in all, obtained a guide from the Indians for the Arkansas, and, fording torrents, crossing ravines, making a ferry over rivers with rafts or boats of buffalo hides, without meeting the cheering custom of the calumet, till they reached the country above the Red River, and leaving an esteemed companion in a wilderness grave, on the 24th of July, came upon a branch of the Mississippi. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... against the towns along the line of the Ganges and Jumna, were unhappily disqualified for action, by the shallows and sand-banks on those great rivers. But this apology does not stand good as regards flotillas of gunboats or rafts with a very light draught of water; still less as regards the seamen ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... coast a head-wind forced the ship to tack repeatedly; she was sometimes so near the land that people could be seen moving, like black dots, along the shore. Native fishermen, mounted upon the high seats of their catamarans—the frailest rafts,—drifted within hailing distance; and over night the brave ship was within almost speaking distance of Pernambuco. The lights of the city were like a bed of glowworms,—but the small, sad boy was blown off into the sea again, for his hour had not ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... the tide, all we had to do was to pump her out, and then she would float again. To effect this, we had to lighten her as much as possible, by taking out of her her guns and stores of every description; then to get purchases on her from the shore, and assist the purchases with rafts under her bilge, so as to raise her again upon an even keel. On the second day after she filled, when the tide had run out, we removed all our chests from the lower deck; most of them were broken, and a large proportion of the contents missing. On the 27th May every thing had been ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... stretched more than four hundred miles of unbroken wilderness. The snow-covered Alleghanies were just in advance. The chill of the coming winter already was making itself felt. Recent rains had swollen the streams. They could be crossed only on log-rafts, or by the more primitive methods of wading or swimming,—expedients none too agreeable in freezing weather. But youth and a lofty spirit halt not for ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... tugs were owned by Mr. Bobbsey for use in hauling lumber boats, and lumber rafts about Lake Metoka. Some of these tugs were always at the dock, and one always had steam up, ready ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... impossible any longer to keep up his communications with Canada by way of the lakes, so as to supply his army on his southward march; but having by unremitting exertions collected provisions for thirty days, he crossed the Hudson by means of a bridge of rafts, and, marching a short distance along its western bank, he encamped on the 14th of September on the heights of Saratoga, about sixteen miles from Albany. The Americans had fallen back from Saratoga, and were now strongly ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... of artillery took place. The force immediately turned out and prepared for battle, but no enemy being, visible, it was necessary to wait for daylight. It then appeared that the French commander had despatched eight fire-ships and rafts, freighted with explosives, towards the British fleet in the river. These explosives had been launched from the shore in the darkness, but had been lighted prematurely, and failed to accomplish anything beyond ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... The mules, donkeys, and ponies gave the best results, but do not abound in sufficient quantities to enable an army in Afghanistan to dispense with camels. A successful experiment in rafting, from Jelalabad to Dakka, was tried. The rafts consisted of inflated skins lashed together with a light framework; between June 4-13, seven thousand skins were used, and, in all, 885 soldiers and one thousand tons of stores were transported forty miles down the Kabul River, the journey ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... bridge was finished, about four hundred men were carried part of the way across the river on two miserable rafts, which could hardly sustain themselves against the current; and we saw them from the bank rudely shaken by the great blocks of ice which encumbered the river. These blocks came to the very edge ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... through the streets laden with barrels of petroleum or piled as high as possible with charcoal and coal. That fine river, the Ohio, carried along with it steamers, barges, loads of timber fastened together and forming enormous rafts, which floated down the river alone, to be stopped on the way by the owner for whom they were destined. The timber is marked, and no one else thinks of taking it. I am told that the wood is not conveyed in this way now, which ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... had ever had. Monotonous?—when one felt oneself a year older to-day than yesterday and growing half a month's growth every hour? In yesterday's childishness she had begun at Post Forty-six to keep count of all the timber rafts and flatboats met, and here in this long stretch came three more of the one and five of the other, with men hurrahing to her from them—men as wild as the wilderness, yet with homes and families away back up the great tributaries ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... they did not stop entirely, but slid by and tossed ropes to the people on the raft, dragging them aboard one by one. A seaman standing near Jimmie explained this procedure; it appeared that the submarines were accustomed to lurk near rafts and life-boats, preying upon those vessels which came to their rescue. Distressed castaways were bait—"live bait", explained the seaman; the U-boats would lurk about for days, sometimes for a week, watching the people in the life-boats struggle against ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... name, of that region where there are no roads for (the passage of) horses and cars and elephants, and good vehicles, and asses, and goats and bullocks, and palanquins; where there is swimming only by rafts and floats.' Yayati next addressed Anu and said, 'O Anu, take my weakness and decrepitude. I shall with thy youth enjoy the pleasures of life for a thousand years.' To this Anu replied, 'Those that are decrepit always eat like children and are ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... were covered down stream, and then Tom tried the opposite direction. But all to no purpose. A number of boats were seen, and several rafts, but they had no white ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... and upon those steps at Benares that come down the hillside between the conquering mosque of Aurangzeb and the shining mirror of the Ganges a thousand silent seated figures fall into meditation. And other memories recur and struggle with one another; the crowded river-streets of Canton, the rafts and houseboats and junks innumerable, riding over inky water, begin now to twinkle with a thousand lights. They are ablaze in Osaka and Yokohama and Tokio, and the swarming staircase streets of Hong Kong glitter with a wicked activity ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... these "slides," as they are technically termed, consisted of a series of wooden rollers, along which the deals raced in endless sequence from the saws, to drop with a plunge into a spacious basin, at the lower end of which they were gathered into rafts. Whenever there was a break in the procession of deals, the rollers would be left spinning briskly with a cheerful murmur. There was also a shorter and steeper "slide," diverging to the lumber yard, where clapboards and such light stuff were piled till they could ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... He run rafts from one place to another and sho' made a lot of money. He was drowned while doing this while I was a ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... foreign countries. Artillerymen arrived from Holland and Austria, engineers from Prussia, and Admiral Lima from Venice. Peter hurried on the creation of a fleet with feverish impatience. He built of green wood twenty-two galleys, a hundred rafts, and seventeen hundred boats or barks. All the small ports of the Don were metamorphosed into dock-yards; twenty-six thousand workmen were assembled there from all parts of the empire. It was like the camp of Boulogne. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... he could find it, even though it was only on a raft. So the Venture's "shanty" was very different from the rude lean-to or shelter of rough boards, such as was to be seen on most of the timber rafts of the great river. Its interior was divided into two rooms, the after one of which was a tiny affair only six by ten feet. It was furnished with two bunks, one above the other, a table, two camp-chairs, ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... near this place and rested his troops. The country was then rude, unbroken, and still beset with enemies, however, and when the march was resumed it was thought best to gain time over a part of the way by descending the Chemung River on rafts. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... "Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Behring's Straits," tells us that several of the islands, especially the largest, have a fertile appearance. The Captain gives an interesting account of his interview with some of the natives, who approached the ship in rafts, carrying from sixteen to twenty men each, as ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... were then, you could count us by the dozens, The wonder was that sometimes the old walls wouldn't burst: Herself (the Lord be good to her!), the aunts and rafts of cousins, The young folks and the ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison |
