"Slaty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... size it is like a swan, in shape like a lapwing, only with a powerful curved gallinaceous beak. It is adorned with a long pointed crest and a black neck-ring, the plumage being otherwise of a pale slaty blue, while the legs and the naked skin about the eyes are bright red. On each wing, in both sexes, there are two formidable spurs; the first one, on the second joint, is an inch and a half long, nearly straight, triangular, and exceedingly sharp; the second ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... more interesting, as it seems to unite the northern European formations to those of the central chain. It is known that the zechstein is situated between the muriatiferous gypsum and the conglomerate (ancient sandstone); or where there is no muriatiferous gypsum, between the slaty sandstone with roestones (buntesandstein, Wern.), and the conglomerate or ancient sandstone. It contains strata of schistous and coppery marl (bituminoce mergel and kupferschiefer) which form an important object in the working of mines at Mansfeld in Saxony, near Riegelsdorf ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... as Max stood upon his tiny rock island with his rod bent, gazing wistfully down at the pool, Tavish sent in a great piece of slaty shale, which fell with a great splash, and then began to zigzag down through the dark water with so good a movement, that it touched the fish on the flank and started it off ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... their ears. Colonel Cochrane had lit a match, and he stood with it in one hand and the unlit cigarette in the other until the flame licked round his fingers. Belmont whistled. The dragoman stood staring with his mouth half-open, and a curious slaty tint in his full, red lips. The others looked from one to the other with an uneasy sense that there was something wrong. It was the Colonel who ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in Biggar, one of the gray, slaty-looking little towns in the pastoral moorlands of southern Scotland. These towns have no great beauty that they should be admired by strangers, but the natives, as Scott said to Washington Irving, are attached to their ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... to the moorhen. Nevertheless some ambitious young gentleman of aesthetic tastes might do worse than get himself up in this bird's livery. An open coat of olive-brown silk, with an oblique white band at the side; waistcoat or cummerbund, and knickerbockers, slaty grey; stockings and shoes of olive green; and, for a touch of bright colour, an orange and scarlet tie. It would be pleasant to meet him in Piccadilly. But he would never, never be able to get that quaint pretty carriage. The "Buzzard lope" and the crane's stately stride are imitable by man, but ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... 1522, Bishop Jewel of Salisbury, of whom it is recorded by that faithful biographer Fuller that he "wrote learnedly, preached painfully, lived piously, died peacefully." To the westward are Watersmouth, with its natural arch in the slaty rocks bordering the sea, and Hillsborough rising boldly to guard a tiny cove. Upon this precipitous headland is an ancient camp, and it overlooks Ilfracombe, the chief watering-place of the northern Devonshire coast. Here a smart new town has rapidly developed, with paths cut upon the cliffs ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... saw new beauties in the old Hulk. It always seemed to adapt itself to the changing moods of the weather,—being grave or gay as the skies lowered or smiled. In the dull November days, when the clouds drifted in straight lines of slaty gray, it assumed a weird, forbidding look. When the wind blew a gale from the northeast, and the back water of the river overflowed the marsh,—submerging the withered grass and breaking high upon the foot-bridge,—it seemed for ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... blue, ranging from a sort of greyish robin's-egg to the darkest navy, in which the army is clothed. The result attained is the conviction that no blue is really inconspicuous, and that some of the harsh new slaty tints are no less striking than the deeper shades they have superseded. But to this scale of experimental blues, other colours must be added: the poppy-red of the Spahis' tunics, and various other less familiar colours—grey, and a certain greenish khaki—the ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... by the alpine lakes and brooks on the mountains of the West. It is a modest-appearing bird, about the size of a thrush, and wears a plain dress of slaty blue. This dress is finished with a tail-piece somewhat like that of the wren, though it is not upturned so much. The bird seems to love cascades, and often nests by one. It also shows its fondness for water by often flying along the brook, following every bend and break made by the stream, ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... shingle, so fine as to be mere dust, are all the available material for road-making. I am told that later on I shall find that a cartload of sand in Maritzburg is indeed a rare and costly thing: there we are all rock, a sort of flaky, slaty rock underlying every place. Our last day, or rather half day, in D'Urban was very full of sightseeing and work. F—— was extremely anxious for me to see the sun rise from the signal-station on the bluff, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... sea and sky a more melancholy tone had come,—dull, slaty grays crowding in from every quarter. And over the darkening waters there seemed a tragic note, half-threatening, intensified by every plunge of the steamer and by the swish of waters very near the deck. There was a touch of melancholy, also, in the ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... elephant, old and wise, who fell into a trap, and the sharpened stake in the pit scarred him from a little above his heel to the crest of his shoulder, leaving a white mark." Mowgli threw out his hand, and as Hathi wheeled the moonlight showed a long white scar on his slaty side, as though he had been struck with a red-hot whip. "Men came to take him from the trap," Mowgli continued, "but he broke his ropes, for he was strong, and went away till his wound was healed. Then came he, angry, by night to the ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... came. Strange to say, there is a shadow over His coming from the beginning. A gray chilling shadow of the sort of gray that a stormy sky sometimes shows, gray tingeing into slaty black. Yet it was the coming that made the shadow. It takes light, and some thick thing like a block, and some distance for perspective, to make a shadow. The nearer the light to the block thing ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... at two o'clock in the afternoon she had been seen going up Ballure. The sound rocket was fired as he pushed through the town. A schooner riding to an anchor in the bay was flying her ensign for help. The sea was terrific—a slaty grey, streaked with white foam like quartz veins; but the men who had been idling on the quay when the water was calm were now struggling, chafing, and fighting to go out on it, for the blood of the old Vikings was ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... eastern of three channels into which the river is here divided. A low flat island of about a quarter of a mile in breadth lies between the town of Boussa and the fatal spot. The banks are not more than ten feet above the level of the water, which here breaks over a grey slaty rock, extending across ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... on white make it appear yellow. " " red make it appear orange-brown. " " orange make it appear orange-yellow. " " yellow make it appear deeper yellow. " " green make it appear yellowish-green. " " blue make it appear slaty-gray. " " violet make it appear purplish-gray. " " black make ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... flower-hunting over rough ground, were less pleasant than she thought at first. The hills, bare of trees, exposed them to the full power of the sun, yet were covered with a growth of tall heaths, mingled with patches of the cistus ladaniferus, which covers so much of the surface of the slaty hills of this region. The close growth and gummy exudations of this plant often made the thickets impenetrable, and forced the party to many a long circuit, in their efforts to reach the ridge of the high grounds. Mrs. Shortridge at length sat, or rather sunk, down upon a fragment ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... picture! I was tempted to halt and get out my paint-box and sketch-book; and abandoning my lunch, which was being cooked, I climbed to the summit of a high peak in order to obtain a more extensive view. The ascent, first on slippery grass, then over slaty rocks, was by no means easy, nor devoid of a certain amount of danger; but so keen was I to get to the top that I reached the summit very quickly, leaving half-way down the mountain slope the two men who had followed me. In places near the top there were rocks to climb that stood almost perpendicular, ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... equipment for a poet, but still one that should not be waived or considered lightly. At the village school William was neither precocious nor dull, neither black nor white: his cosmos being simply a sort of slaty-gray, a condition of being which attracted no special attention from either his schoolfellows or his tutors. From the village school he went to Marlborough Academy, where by patient grubbing he fitted ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... these statues, broken in the middle, lie strewed upon the ground; the other, which remains whole and standing, is frightful to behold. It represents a man of gigantic proportions, with a head three feet high; the expression of the countenance is ferocious, eyes of brilliant slaty black are set beneath gray brows, the large, deep mouth gapes immoderately, and reptiles have made their nest between the lips of stone; by the light of the moon, a hideous swarm is there dimly visible. A broad ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... ship was under way, boats put out from the surrounding trawlers, and converged on us for our outward cargo, the empty fish-trunks. That intense band of light which had first betrayed the smoke of the fleet eroded upwards into the low, slaty roof of nimbus till the gloom was dissolved to the zenith. The incubus vanished; the sun flooded us. At last only white feathers were left in the sky. I felt I had known and loved these trawlers for years. All round us were ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... apparently, driven the warmth, the sun, from the earth. The mountains rose starkly to the slaty sky. ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... mysterious effect of the haze had gathered about the island; its lofty cliffs seemed to tower on high more majestically, and to lean over more frowningly; its fringe of black sea-weed below seemed blacker, while the general hue of the island had changed from a reddish color to one of a dull slaty blue. ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... peaked insulated hill of limestone, between three and four hundred feet above the level of the sea, several pieces of coal, which he found to burn with a clear bright flame, crackling much, and throwing off slaty splinters.” ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... three shillings a yard, the piece being actually reckoned in piastres for price and pies for measurement. The prettiest, I think, are those which are undyed and retain the natural colour of the cocoon, from creamy-white to the darkest gold. Some prefer a sort of slaty grey, of which a great quantity is made, but I think it ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... along thus at a merry swing, for the freshness of autumnal dew was sparkling in the valley, until we came to a rocky pass, where walking turned to clambering. After an hour of sharpish work among slaty shelves and threatening crags, we got into one of those troughlike hollows hung on each side with precipices, which look as if the earth had sunk for the sake of letting the water through. On our left hand, cliff towered ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... view of possible difficulties in the shape of rocks inside the cavern, for it should be borne in mind that in gouffres of this character the stream frequently descends by a series of cascades. The weather was very sultry, and the sky towards the west was of a slaty blue. A fierce storm was threatening, but we paid no attention to it—a mistake which others bent on exploring caverns where streams still flow should be warned against. There is probably no force in nature more terrible, or which makes a man's ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Leif, bold son of Eric the Red, To the South of the West doth flee — Past slaty Helluland is sped, Past Markland's woody lea, Till round about fair Vinland's head, Where ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... ten-foot section of her port rail gone, a great dent in the steel deck-house forward, began to climb over the water hills with much of her usual precision—down on her side, clear to the bottom of a hollow, then settling on an even keel with a jerk, climbing the slaty incline, stiff as a church, then down, down, half on her side again, then ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... which ran the burn. They were very desolate-looking hills, with little heather, and that bloomless, to hide their hard gray bones. Their heads were mostly white with frost and snow; their shapes had little beauty; they looked worn and hopeless, ugly and sad—and so cold! The water below was slaty gray, in response to the gray sky above: there seemed no life in either. The hearts of the girls sank within them, and all at once they felt tired. In the air was just one sign of life: high above the ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... are slaty coloured here and have breasts striped like a hawk, that is no reason why in the hot climates, where the sun burns your skin brown, they should not be brightly coloured in scarlet and green. You have seen that the modest ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... grades of flour are white in color, or of a slight creamy tinge. Dark-colored, slaty, and gray flours are of inferior quality, indicating a poor grade of wheat, poor milling, or a poor quality of gluten. Flours, after being on the market for a time, bleach a little and improve to a slight degree in color. ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... for, after standing staring stupidly at the elephants for some moments, the great slaty-black creatures slowly moved off into the dense growth on ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... there, James, and fetch me a specimen of that slaty outcrop you see there—just above the ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... snugged down to the jib—with the bonnet off,—reefed foresail, and close-reefed mainsail. It was at this time looking very black and wild to windward; the sky all along the south-western horizon being of a deep slaty, indigo hue, swept by swift- flying streamers of dirty, whitish-grey cloud; while the leaden-grey sea, scourged into a waste of steep, foam-capped ridges and deep, seething, wind-furrowed valleys, had already risen to such a height as to completely becalm our low canvas every time that the ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... itself in a peculiar coloring of the skin (Argyria Fuchs), especially in the face, beginning first on the sclerotic. The skin does not always take the same color; it becomes in most cases grayish blue, slaty sometimes, though, a greenish brown ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... never dream of in smooth weather, That toss and gore the sea for acres, Bellowing and gnashing and snarling together; Look northward, where Duck Island lies, 280 And over its crown you will see arise, Against a background of slaty skies, A row of pillars still and white, That glimmer, and then are gone from sight, As if the moon should suddenly kiss, While you crossed the gusty desert by night, The long colonnades of Persepolis; Look southward for White Island light, The lantern stands ninety feet o'er the tide; There is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... dawn we were both up, and gazing along our pointer at the cliff; but we could make out nothing save the one dead, monotonous, slaty surface, rougher perhaps at the part we were examining than elsewhere, but ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... ground, intersected by numerous rivulets, which, uniting at a short distance from the beach, formed a deep and rapid stream, near the mouth of which we landed. This spot was, I think, the most barren I ever saw, the ground being almost entirely covered with small pieces of slaty limestone, among which no vegetation appeared for more than a mile, to which distance Mr. Ross and myself walked inland, following the banks of the stream. Among the fragments we picked up one piece of limestone, on which was the impression of a fossil-shell. We saw here a ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... Sir Roderick Murchison to a vast series of fossiliferous strata, which lies between the non-fossiliferous slaty schists below and the old red sandstone above. The system is well developed in the region of Shropshire, etc., once inhabited by the Silures ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... wildly scampering over the slaty shingle, emerged from the leaden mist that muffled the fell-top, and a shrill shepherd's whistle broke the damp stillness of the air. And presently a man's figure appeared, following the sheep down the hillside. He halted a moment to whistle curtly to his two dogs, who, laying back ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... thought but for the slight column-shape astern of us. Its swaying had become perceptible. For a moment she remained dazzlingly white, then faded away slowly to nothing in a squall, only to reappear again, nearly black, resembling a post stuck upright against the slaty background of solid cloud. Since first noticed she had not gained on ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... in which I established my home was fertile and extremely rich in tropical vegetation, the adjoining ranges were in striking contrast to it; many districts being rugged and slaty and painfully difficult to traverse on foot. There were, however, many interesting natural curiosities which beguiled ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... weather became fine at sunset, when we again encamped on the Sweet Water, within a few miles of the SOUTH PASS. The country over which we have passed to-day consists principally of the compact mica slate, which crops out on all ridges, making the uplands very rocky and slaty. In the escarpments which border the creeks, it is seen alternating with a light-colored granite, at an inclination of 45 deg.; the beds varying in thickness from two or three feet to six or eight hundred. At a distance, the granite frequently has the appearance ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... great care and minuteness. It is subject to one great inconvenience, that vessels drawing more than 12 feet water, cannot enter the river, even in perfectly calm weather, on account of a stratum of slaty limestone, which runs at a depth at high water of fifteen feet, from a point on the main land to some rocks in the middle of the entrance of the harbour, and which are just even with the water's ...
— A Succinct View of the Importance and Practicability of Forming a Ship Canal across the Isthmus of Panama • H. R. Hill |
