"The pits" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the kings of the five towns had concentrated their troops in the vale of Siddim, and were there resolutely awaiting Kudur-lagamar. They were, however, completely routed, some of the fugitives being swallowed up in the pits of bitumen with which the soil abounded, while others with difficulty reached the mountains. Kudur-lagamar sacked Sodom and Gomorrah, re-established his dominion on all sides, and returned laden with booty, Hebrew tradition adding that he was overtaken ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... surrounded by a multitude which increased in size by the moment, for the officer in charge of the detachment sent to the church tower told me that the roads leading to the town were full of miners from the pits of Jemmapes, heading for the town of Mons. My little troupe and I were at risk of being wiped out if I had not taken decisive action. My address had produced a marked effect among the rich noblemen, the promoters of this disturbance, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... in his excitement—"God, if that's so, what a chance there's in Barbie! It has been a dead town for twenty year, and twenty to the end o't. A verra little would buy the hauf o't. But property 'ull rise in value like a puddock stool at dark, serr, if the pits come round it! It will that. If I was only sure o' your suspeecion, Weelyum, I'd invest every bawbee I have in't. You're going home the night, ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... division moved forward. They had never failed in such an undertaking. Their charge had always pierced the enemy's line. This had been their record during three years of warfare. But men can not accomplish impossibilities. Baffled by the swamp, cut by the merciless fire that blazed out from the pits, they are driven back, rally, re-form and charge the second and third time, and then retire to the position from which they had ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... the 96, as far as we at present know. Turning, however, to that part of the coal-field regarded as precarious, and consisting of first, second, and third-rate household coal, we have for future use 300 square miles. London was formerly supplied from the pits east of Tyne Bridge, where is the famous Wallsend Colliery, which gave the name to the best coal. That mine is now drowned out, and, like the great Roman Wall, at the termination of which it was sunk, and from which it derived its name, is now an antiquity. There is now no Wallsend coal, and ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... covered pits, the supply obtained as forage for the horses largely exceeded expectations, for the peasants regarded the British as deliverers from their oppressors, and upon being assured by the sheik that they paid well for everything that they required, the pits that had escaped the French searchers were thrown open at once. General Hutchinson, on his return to carry out the siege of Alexandria to a conclusion, reported to Admiral Keith his very warm appreciation ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... between the lines down in their pits, with some brush in front to shield them while on the look out. The least shadow or moving of the branches would be sure to bring a rifle ball singing dangerously near one's head—if he escaped it at all. The service in the pits here for two weeks was the most enormous and fatiguing of any in the service—four men being in a pit for twenty-four hours in the broiling sun during the day, without any protection whatever, and the pit was so small that one could neither ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... such materials did ever tumble down, it was a comfort to know that they were considerably lighter than stone and cast iron. He felt a great respect for such persons of rank as professed to be supporters of the drama, trusting that they would keep the ceilings of the theatres from tumbling into the pits. He spent great part of his time in the Thames Tunnel, and if he ever felt a doubt respecting the ultimate success of that undertaking, he did justice to the enterprise and skill of its projector, that illustrious mole, and sincerely wished that zeal and talent might ultimately be crowned ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... before them, scattered along the river's bars, waist high in the pits. Here and there a tent showed white, but a blanket under a tree, a pile of pans by a blackened heap of fire marked most of the camps. Some of the gold-hunters had not waited to undo their packs which lay as they had been dropped, and the owners, squatting by the stream's ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... exceedingly sensitive to warmth, however, may be proven by the fact that when a warm rain comes some night in February or March, thawing out the crust of the earth, the next morning reveals in our dooryards the mouths of hundreds of the pits or burrows of these primitive tillers of the soil, each surrounded by a little pile of pellets, the castings of the active artisans of the pits during the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... No doubt Arend, seeing that the bucket was taken away from the camp, and finding that they did not return, would come toward the drift,—the only place where water could be dipped up. In doing so he must pass within sight of the pits. With this calculation, therefore, Swartboy could reconcile himself to patience and silence, whereas the Kaffir had no such ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... unmoved. Not a bow was drawn till the impetuous squadrons, in full charge toward the flanks of the Scots, fell into the pits; then it was that the Highland archers on the hill launched their arrows; the plunging horses were instantly overwhelmed by others who could not be checked in their career. New showers of darts rained upon them, and, sticking into their flesh, made ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... But your other difficulties are not so formidable as they seem. He is not a stranger to the district. He has twice lodged at Tavistock in the summer. The opium was probably brought from London. The key, having served its purpose, would be hurled away. The horse may be at the bottom of one of the pits or old mines upon ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... and the feudal lords, and in addition to the general subsidies, such as the quit-rent and the tithes, these communities had to provide for the repair of the walls or ramparts, for the paving of the streets, the cleaning of the pits, the watch on the city gates, and the ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... bamboo, and the water in small pails; but in the rainy season the holes cannot possibly be kept free from water, as they are situated on the slope of the mountain, and are filled quicker than they can be emptied. The want of apparatus for discharging water also accounts for the fact that the pits are ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... smaller the last formed. The rude elevations about these pits—some of which rise to the height of ten thousand feet or more—constitute the principal topographic reliefs of the lunar surface. Besides the pits above mentioned, there are numerous fractures in the surface of the plains and ringlike ridges; on the most of these the walls have separated, forming trenches not unlike what we find in the case of some terrestrial breaks such as have ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... window. The little court below was bright with moonlight, and standing just on the edge of the shadow thrown by one of the cherry trees was McTeague. A bunch of half-ripe cherries was in his hand. He was eating them and throwing the pits at the window. As he caught sight of her, he made an eager sign for her to raise the sash. Reluctant and wondering, Trina obeyed, and the dentist came quickly forward. He was wearing a pair of blue overalls; a navy-blue flannel shirt without a cravat; ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... covered with underbrush, and lie there in the dark for hours, waiting for a shot. Then our men took to the rifle-pits,—pits ten or twelve feet long by four or five feet deep, with the loose earth banked up a few inches high on the exposed sides. All the pits bore names, more or less felicitous, by which they were known to their transient tenants. One was called "The Pepper-Box," another "Uncle Sam's Well," another "The Reb-Trap," and another, I am constrained to say, was named after a not to ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... hollows, made by stones and drifted pine-needles that had melted themselves into the mass by the radiation of absorbed sun-heat. These afforded good footholds, but the surface curved more and more steeply at the head, and the pits became shallower and less abundant, until I found myself in danger of being shed off like avalanching snow. I persisted, however, creeping on all fours, and shuffling up the smoothest places on my back, as I had often done on burnished granite, until, after slipping several times, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... means the people had taken to defend themselves against the invaders, had been to dig deep holes, at the bottom of which sharp-pointed stakes were fixed, the pits being then carefully covered over with branches and grass, so as completely to conceal them. Similar pitfalls are used in many parts of Africa for entrapping the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... or sledge weighing twenty-five pounds. Old trees showing 395 rings of annual growth stood in the debris, and "the fallen and decayed trunks of trees of a former generation were seen lying across the pits." Figure 19 (opposite) presents a section of this mining shaft of the Mound-Builders: a shows the mass of copper; b the bottom of the shaft; c the earth and debris which had been thrown out. The dark spots ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... manner of your death. Even the service that you rendered the arms of Kaol shall avail you naught; it was but a base subterfuge whereby you might win your way into my favor and reach the side of this holy man whose life you craved. To the pits with him!" he concluded, addressing the ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... same breadth, in a perfectly dry soil, with the stalks and leaves to them, the latter being carefully doubled over and lapped round the heads, instead of hanging them up in sheds or other places, as is the usual practice in preserving them. In performing the work, it is begun at one end of the pits, laying the heads in with the root-stalks uppermost, so as that the former may incline downwards, the roots of the one layer covering the tops or heads of the other, until the whole is completed. The pits are then to be closely covered up with the earth into a sort of ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... loss of time in transferring the ingots, after allowing for this loss, there remains a surplus, which goes into the brickwork of the soaking pits, so that this surplus of heat from successive ingots tends continually to keep the pits at the intense heat of the ingot itself. Thus, occasionally it happens that inadvertently an ingot is delayed so long on its way to the pit as to arrive there somewhat short of heat, its temperature will ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... descended the hill again, a lad, who had attached himself to us, offered to show us the two common pits in which are cast the dead bodies of paupers and criminals. The pits are at the foot of the hill, open-mouthed in the uncut grass. With famine in the city, with people dying at that very hour of starvation, there was no lack of dead, and both pits were filled to within a few feet of the surface. Bodies are thrown in here without ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... scoundrels, the masters, they won't give in; but we're bound to beat 'em—bound to. If they don't come to our terms we mean to call the engine-men, and the hands they've got to keep the ways clear, out of the pits. That'll bring 'em to their senses quick enough. I've been ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... success, yet he had preserved a native sincerity and wrought under the guidance of an ideal. Like all men who are worth anything, either in public or private, he possessed a keen sense of humour, and was too awake to the ludicrous aspects of charlatanry to fall into the pits it offered on every band. His misfortune was the difficulty with which he uttered himself; even when he got over his nervousness, words came to him only in a rough-and-tumble fashion; he sputtered and fumed ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... the damsel is like any oriental pearl, and looked at on the right side seems a very flower of the field; but on the left not quite so fair, for on that side she wants an eye, which she lost by the small-pox; and though the pits in her face are many and deep, her admirers say they are not pits but graves wherein the hearts of her lovers are buried. So clean and delicate, too, is she, that to prevent defiling her face, she carries ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... fro; and the clatter of the working machinery was mixt up with the roar of waters, and with the various noises from the pounding and smelting-houses. The smoke of the coals however, the steam from the pits, and the black heaps of dross and slag piled up on high all around, gave the gloomy sequestered valley a still more dismal appearance; so that no one who travelled for the sake of seeking out and enjoying the beauties of nature, would have any mind ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... account of the Makalaka strangers at the kraal as the Zulus. As a matter of fact, after the alarm was given late in the afternoon, as many of the Makalakas as could be communicated with had assembled here. Scouts had reported in the evening that the strangers were looting the corn from the pits, and only a couple of hours before Kondwana called a halt in the darkness, the fires that the Zulus had lighted were still to be seen burning brightly. Moreover, Kondwana had been very careful in preventing the huts being burnt, lest ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... but, in both cases, the meaning is "the well of Nijber," and "the well of Yeghen." Teenbuktu follows the same rule of Berber or Touarghee combination, and means "the Well of Buktu," probably Buktu being the digger of the pits of Timbuctoo. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... as close to the pits as he could get. He was a chubby, red-faced little man, and he beamed at me as if he were Santa Claus. "Mr. Carboy," he said in a voice that needed roughage badly. "I'm so glad you're here. I'm sure you'll be able to ...
— The Man Who Played to Lose • Laurence Mark Janifer
... external atmosphere to a ratchet-wheel, from its property of allowing the passage of hot rays down to the surface of the earth, and resisting their return: it may equally be so described on other grounds, inasmuch as the cold and heavy atmosphere will sink in the winter into the pits which lead to glacieres, and will refuse to be altogether displaced in summer by anything short ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... cloak with his teeth, as did Julius Caesar; then with the help of one hand he entered forcibly into a boat, from whence he cast himself again headlong into the water, sounded the depths, hollowed the rocks, and plunged into the pits and gulfs. Then turned he the boat about, governed it, led it swiftly or slowly with the stream and against the stream, stopt it in its course, guided it with one hand, and with the other laid hard about him with a huge great oar, hoisted the sail, hied up along the mast by the shrouds, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... prepare for a sporting excursion, and order a number of pits to be dug on the road sufficiently large to hold Rustem and his horse, and in each several swords must be placed with their points and edges upwards. The mouths of the pits must then be slightly covered over, but so carefully that there may be no appearance of the earth underneath having been removed. Everything being thus ready, Rustem, on the pretence of going to the sporting ground, must be conducted by that road, and ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... and now he seemed to see the burning tents at Ludlow; the fleeing women and children, shot down by barbarous thugs and gunmen, ghouls in human form! He saw the pits of death, where the charred bodies of innocent victims of greed and heartless rapacity lay in mute protest under the far Colorado sky. And more he saw, east and west, north and south, of this man's inhuman work; and his thoughts, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... the line of which the men posted themselves. Inside the oval eight more wagons were drawn up for the purpose of corralling the animals, and there was also a pit provided for sheltering the wounded. Behind the pits ran a path to the nearest bend of Milk River, which was used for obtaining water. The command held its position until 8:30 o'clock that night, when the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... eyes ten thousand francs could alter the laws of optics; he saw in Mariette a neat figure; he did not perceive the pits and seams which virulent smallpox had left on her flat, parched face; to him the crooked mouth was straight; and ever since Savaron, by taking him into his service, had brought him so near to the Wattevilles' house, he had laid siege systematically to the maid, who was ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... spitting out hard stuff that is swallowed with the food. A crow tucks away many a discarded cud of that sort; and even the thrush, half an hour or so after a dainty fare of wild cherries, taken whole, drops from his bill to the ground the pits that have been squeezed out of the fruit by the ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... language groups; and these leaders would meet and draw up a set of demands, which would be submitted in mass-meeting, and ratified, and then presented to the bosses with the announcement that until these terms were granted, not a single North Valley worker would go back into the pits. ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... of miners, listening in dead silence to the baby-songs, and the English songs, and the Scotch songs she poured forth without stint, for she sang more for them than for her baby. No wonder they adored her. She was so bright, so gay, she brought light with her when she went into the camp, into the pits—for she went down to see the men work—or into a sick miner's shack; and many a man, lonely and sick for home or wife, or baby or mother, found in that back room cheer and comfort and courage, and to many a poor broken ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... siluer and copper, which they weare on their toes. [Sidenote: Gold found.] Here at Patanaw they finde gold in this maner. They digge deepe pits in the earth, and wash the earth in great holies, and therein they finde the gold, and they make the pits round about with bricke, that the earth fall not in. Patenaw is a very long and a great towne. In times past it was a kingdom, but now it is vnder Zelabdim Echebar, the great Mogor. The men are tall and slender, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... Flies swarmed over infected fecal matter in the pits and then visited and fed upon the food prepared for the soldiers at the mess tents. In some instances where lime had recently been sprinkled over the contents of the pits, flies with their feet whitened with lime were ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... her plague-marks. The dead-cart's dreadful bell no longer sounded in the silence of an afflicted city. Coffins no longer stood at every other door; the pits at Finsbury, in Tothill Fields, at Islington, were all filled up and trampled down; and the grass was beginning to grow over the forgotten dead. The Judges came back to Westminster. London was alive again—alive and healed; basking ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... New Jersey and Fifth Vermont regiments leaped into the boats, quickly crossed, and, rushing from the bank, charged upon the pits. The rebels were now, for the first time offered an opportunity for flight; for while the artillery was filling the whole plain with bursting shells, there remained no alternative but to hug the earth behind the rifle pits; now that the artillery ceased, they scattered across the plain ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... Rhynchophora, grooves at the sides of the rostrum to receive the scape of antenna 2: also applied to grooves on the sides of mandibles: in Hymenoptera, the usually circular impressions upon the frons, in which the scapes revolve: in Orthoptera, the pits in which the antenna; ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... more or less plundered; if recently, the pits show; if anciently, there are scraps of pottery lying about. If there are pebbles or marl thrown up from deep levels, there is evidence of tombs, and they may be unplundered. Blown sand or grass may hide all trace of tombs. ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... hole with its watchful, well-equipped couple of assassins, turning up their eyes in expectation. The wind is with our enemy, and his captive balloons have been disagreeably overhead all through the hot morning. His big guns have suddenly become nervously active. Then, a little murmur along the pits and trenches, and from somewhere over behind us, this air-shark drives up the sky. The enemy's balloons splutter a little, retract, and go rushing down, and we send a spray of bullets as they drop. Then against our aerostat, and with the wind driving them clean overhead of us, come the antagonistic ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... be learnt from native scholars, and afterwards to form his own opinion. His experience as a practical man, his judicial frame of mind, his freedom from literary vanity, kept him, here as elsewhere, from falling into the pits of learned pedantry. It will seem almost incredible to later generations that German and English scholars should have wasted so much of their time in trying to prove, either that we should take no notice whatever of the traditional ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... had formerly been much used was evident from the piles of shells, and the pits in which, as I was informed, sweet potatoes used to be kept as a reserve. As there was no water on these hills, the defenders could never have anticipated a long siege, but only a hurried attack for plunder, against which the successive terraces would have afforded good ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Association at Aberdeen, in the same year.* (* See "Report of British Association" for 1859. ) On my way through Rouen, I stated my convictions on this subject to M. George Pouchet, who immediately betook himself to St. Acheul, commissioned by the municipality of Rouen, and did not quit the pits till he had seen one of the hatchets extracted from gravel in its natural position.* (* "Actes du Musee d'Histoire Naturelle de ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... peeled, but are cut into halves, the pits removed and dried in the same way as peaches. Small, thin-fleshed varieties of plums are ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... Hulot by heart, simply by observing the variations of the grimace with which the commander screwed up his cheek and snapped his eyes and vented his oath. On this occasion the tone of smothered rage with which he uttered the words made his two friends silent and circumspect. Even the pits of the small-pox which dented that veteran face seemed deeper, and the skin itself browner than usual. His broad queue, braided at the edges, had fallen upon one of his epaulettes as he replaced his three-cornered hat, and he flung it back ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... failure. Sort of a gentleman farmer had the notion he knew better than others, and tried it on year after year till he made a laughing-stock of himself. Anyhow, that's the tale. Mr. Bates has shown me the basis of the pits—built over now by the buildings you were looking at. Ah, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... the light Of some outbreaking doom! Up, brothers! away! a storm is nigh! Smite we the wing up a steeper sky! What matters the hail or the clashing winds, The thunder that buffets, the lightning that blinds! We know by the tempest we do not lie Dead in the pits of eternity! ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... of our march that they were taking me to Phutra. Once there I did not need much of an imagination to picture what my fate would be. It was the arena and a wild thag or fierce tarag for me—unless the Mahars elected to take me to the pits. ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Liege, Namur, and other fortresses, which Krupp and the German Army uncovered as the surprise of this war. They could be heard even from Metz speaking at five-minute intervals. A battery of them, dug into the ground so that only the gun muzzles projected above the pits, was observed in action at a distance of about a half mile, the flash of flames being visible ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... the air and launched themselves in a solid mass upon the two. Chet saw Anita for one instant as he felt himself lifted in air. About him was a pandemonium of flailing wings; ahead and below was the red of hidden fires. They were being lifted out and over the pits. ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... length is 100 miles, its breadth 60. A remarkable bed of coal runs horizontally, at from 6 to 8 feet only, below the surface through a large portion of the island: a fire was once accidentally kindled in one of the pits, which is now continually burning. Cape Breton has been termed the Key to Canada and is the principal protection, through the fine harbor of Louisburg, of all the fisheries ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... opening, as in the Astraeans, these central openings elongate, run into each other, and form waving furrows all over the surface, instead of the small round pits so characteristic of the Astraeans. The Porites resemble the Astraeans, but the pits are smaller, with fewer partitions and fewer tentacles, and their whole substance is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... upon this wild, is gorse and ling: The vegetation upon the road and the adjacent lands, seem equal: The pits are all ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... and ask me what about it, and haven't the sense to alter it? Couldn't you set up a proper Government to-morrow, if you liked? Couldn't you contrive that the pits belonged to you, instead of you belonging to the pits, like so many old pit-ponies that stop down till they are blind, and take to eating coal-slack for meadow-grass, not knowing the difference? If only you'd learn to think, I'd ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... since the pits were only large enough to hold a tithe of them, till at length, horsemen and footmen mixed up together in inextricable confusion, their mighty mass became faintly visible quite close to us, a ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... grew, the pits increased in size. At first they were about as large as a threepenny-piece, but ended by measuring ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... carriage, which will run on a conductor located in the pit. The carriage has attached to it a flexible wire which can be connected to the shoe-hanger of the truck or to the end plug of the car, so that the cars can be moved around in the shops by means of their own motors. In the north bay, where the pits are very shallow, the conductor is carried overhead and consists of an 8-pound T-rail supported ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... means of shafting, gearing, or belting, but I mean transmission over long distances. In 1831, we had for this purpose flat rods, as they were called, rods transmitting power from pumping engines for a considerable distance to the pits where the pumps were placed, and we had also the pneumatic, the exhaustion system—the invention of John Hague, a Yorkshire-man, my old master, to whom I was apprenticed—which mode of transmission was ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... by putting in boxes with moist sand, or the mould in which they grew. This excludes air, and, if kept a little moist, will preserve them perfectly. Roots are always better buried below frost out-door on a dry knoll, where water will not stand in the pits. But in cold climates it is necessary to have some in the cellar for winter use. The common method of burying beets, and turnips, and all other roots out-door, is well understood. The only requisites are, a dry location secured from frost, straw next ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... deal of chaffering going on; a little courting, and some cheating. Meynell recognized some of his parishioners, spoke to a farmer or two, exchanged greeting with a sub-agent of the miners' union, and gave some advice to a lad of his choir who had turned against the pits and come to "hire" ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hoofs; dragons that had wings of brass, and vomited flames from cavernous throats; huge birds, enormous reptiles, flew or crawled in their appointed places. Two-headed men wielded clubs of stone; men with no heads at all, but one great eye in the centre of their breasts, glared malevolently from the pits wherein they had their habitation. The little company in the tavern parlour shivered with affright, and cast uneasy glances at the doorway. Then—wonderful Rob!—a sinewy, thumbless hand swept the air like an enchanter's wand, and lo! the scene ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... of rounds governed only by the carrying power of the Mayther. Prester Kleig knew them all: the guns in the wings, the guns which fired through the three propellers, and the guns set two and two in the fuselage, to right and left of the pits, which could be fixed either up or down—all by the mere pressing of buttons. It was marvelous, miraculous, yet even as Kleig told himself that this was so, he felt, deep in the heart of him, that Moyen knew all about ships like these, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... the Black-down range, with the Beacon hill upon the north, and Hackpen long ridge to the south; and beyond that again the Whetstone hill, upon whose western end dark port-holes scarped with white grit mark the pits. But flint is the staple of the broad Culm Valley, under good, well-pastured loam; and here are ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... we left the pits where we had been for several days, to join the column of attack coming up at daylight, having to defile through the woods several miles. General Grover's Division supported the advance. The 159th advanced under a severe ...
— History of the 159th Regiment, N.Y.S.V. • Edward Duffy
... deep and soft. The sledges would sink to the depth of the cross-bars. Traveling was slow, and the dogs became demons; at one time, sullen and stubborn; then wildly excited and savage; and in our handling of them I fear we became fiendlike ourselves. Frequently we would have to lift them bodily from the pits of snow, and snow-filled fissures they had fallen into, and I am now sorry to say that we did not do it gently. The dogs, feeling the additional strain, refused to make the slightest effort when spoken to or touched with the whip, and to break ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... Vale in the Moon; what call'd by Hevelius and Ricciolus, and how describ'd by them: with what substances the hills of the Moon may be cover'd. A description of the pits of the Moon, and a conjecture at their cause: two Experiments that make it probable, that of the surface of boyl'd Alabaster dust seeming the most likely to be resembled by eruptions of vapours out of the body of the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... wonder, always, everywhere— Not that vast mutability which is event, The pits and pinnacles of change, But man's desire and valiance that range All circumstance, and ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater
... Wady at one hour below the village on the west side, after recrossing the bridge; they are situated upon the declivity of a chalky hill; the bitumen is found in large veins at about twenty feet below the surface. The pits are from six to twelve feet in diameter; the workmen descend by a rope and wheel, and in hewing out the bitumen, they leave columns of that substance at different intervals, as a support to the earth above; pieces of several Rotolas in weight each[The ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... with a laugh; "you don't call this deep? Why, it's nothing to some of the pits out Saint Just ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... been, in fact, a painful walk-over. The seven labourers seemed to expect a death-blow. When it fell, they met it with the apathy of despair. Every felt as though he were sentencing a bunch of forest ponies to the pits, and the dumb hopelessness of their demeanour plucked ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... of breaking big coal down into slack? The idea was suggested to me by Sir W. Thomson in a chance conversation, and it struck me at once as a brilliant one. The amount of coal wasted by being in the form of slack is very great. Thousands of tons are never raised from the pits because the price is too low to pay for the raising—in some places it is only 1s. 6d. a ton. Mr. McMillan calculates that 130,000 tons of breeze, or powdered coke, is produced every year by the Gas Light and Coke Company alone, and its price is 3s. a ton at the works, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... ourselves climbing the gentle acclivities which led up to Reno's old rifle-pits, now almost obliterated. The most noticeable feature of the spot is the number of blanched bones of horses which lie scattered about. A short distance from the pits—which are rather rounded, and follow the outline of the hills in shape—and in a slight hollow below them, are more bones of horses. This is where the wounded were taken, and the hospital established, and the horses kept. From the wavy summit ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... the two, as they drew apart into a shadowed place, where, nevertheless, the light from the bonfire could reach and bring their faces into relief. He watched the girl unfasten her mask and throw it on the grass. He drew a deep breath. Her face was pitifully ugly. It was covered with the pits and dents and scars that small-pox had left. The skin was coarse and rough and of a yellowish white. Her eyes were dim and red and bleared. Her eyebrows and lashes were gone. Her expression was like that of a furtive, crouching creature who ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... on the surface, and also their propellers when running close, to the boat. At 3.30 the temperature had dropped to eighty-five degrees. At 3.45 found a little sign of carbonic acid gas, very slight, however, as a candle would burn fairly bright in the pits. Thought we could detect a smell of gasoline by comparing the fresh air which came down the pipe (when hand blower was turned). Storage lamps were burning during the five hours of submergence, ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... pig,' said he, 'blind I am, and old I am, but, before ever you were born, I was gray among the coal. Even in the days when the Twenty-Two khad was unsunk and there were not two thousand men here, I was known to have all knowledge of the pits. What khad is there that I do not know, from the bottom of the shaft to the end of the last drive? Is it the Baromba khad, the oldest, or the Twenty-Two where Tibu's gallery runs up to ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... was turned to her, just as if he had been sitting squarely in front of her. Some laughed at this foolish notion; but others, who knew more of the nebulous sciences, told her it was like's not jes' so. Folks had read letters laid ag'in' the pits o' their stomachs, 'n' why should n't they see out o' the backs o' ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... this juncture he placed two batteries on my right and began to mass troops behind them, and General Gilbert, fearing that my intrenched position on the heights might be carried, directed me to withdraw Hescock and his supports and return them to the pits. My recall was opportune, for I had no sooner got back to my original line than the Confederates attacked me furiously, advancing almost to my intrenchments, notwithstanding that a large part of the ground over which they had to move was swept by a heavy fire of canister ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... all remained quiet throughout our progress, and at last we arrived at the entrance to the gun position, which was to be our home for the next fortnight. The guns were speedily unlimbered and man-handled into the pits awaiting their reception, the ammunition was unloaded from the vehicles, and the teams were returned to the ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... he began to indoctrinate his comrades with a spirit of revolt. His influence grew, and he became the acknowledged leader of the strike which followed. The result was disastrous. After weeks of misery from cold and hunger the infuriated workmen attempted to destroy one of the pits, and were fired upon by soldiers sent to guard it. Many were killed, and the survivors, with their spirits crushed, returned to work. But worse was yet to come. Souvarine, an Anarchist, disgusted with the ineffectual struggle, brought about an inundation of the pit, whereby many of his comrades ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... the hunters sometimes dig pits, cover them lightly over with twigs, grass, and leaves, and then drive the game into them. While they are engaged in digging the pits, they have to observe a number of taboos. They may not spit, or the game would turn back in disgust from the pits. They may not laugh, or the sides of the pit would fall in. They may eat no salt, prepare no fodder for swine, and in the pit they may not scratch ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... up in the air and a white magnesium cluster descended slowly, lighting up all the trenches in a sudden blaze which made the pioneers look like ghosts peering over the black brink of the pits. Then the light went out, and the eyes trying in vain to pierce the darkness saw nothing but glittering fiery red circles. The Japanese batteries on the other side opened fire. The air-ship had entirely disappeared, and no one knew whether the uncanny night-bird ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... leakages. The sun beat down upon the place unshaded. Water escaped into all the pits the men were digging as they worked, so that they slopped around in mud above their ankles. Dave wore rubber boots and was apparently protected. As a matter of fact the boots promptly filled with water. Napoleon and Gettysburg made no effort to ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... E.; the skipper once more rowed ashore with the pinnace, and having caused three pits to be dug he at last found fresh water forcing its way through the sand; we used our best endeavours to take in a stock of the same; about 400 paces north of the farthest of the pits that had been dug, they also found a small fresh-water lake, but the water that collected in the pits was found to be a good ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... they dwelt in the pits; in earth and in stocks they hid them like badgers, in wood and in wilderness, in heath and in fen, so that well nigh no man might find any Briton, except they were in castle, or in burgh inclosed fast. When they heard of this word, that Constantin was ...
— Brut • Layamon
... save his men from ambush and from train, Some troops of horse that lightly armed ride He sent to scour the woods and forests main, His pioneers their busy work applied To even the paths and make the highways plain, They filled the pits, and smoothed the rougher ground, And opened ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... Also, in summer, the pits are slack. Often, on bright sunny mornings, the men are seen trooping home again at ten, eleven, or twelve o'clock. No empty trucks stand at the pit-mouth. The women on the hillside look across as they shake the hearthrug ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... visited it, at noonday, I saw a solitary coffin of plain deal: uncovered by any shroud or pall, and so slightly made, that the hoof of any wandering mule would have crushed it in: carelessly tumbled down, all on one side, on the door of one of the pits—and there left, by itself, in the wind and sunshine. 'How does it come to be left here?' I asked the man who showed me the place. 'It was brought here half an hour ago, Signore,' he said. I remembered ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... quantity of hemp, the largest and strongest I ever saw. Part of this, when dressed, is exported to other countries; and part is manufactured into cordage. However profitable it may be to the grower, it is certainly a great nuisance in the summer. When taken out of the pits, where it has been put to rot, the stench it raises is quite insupportable; ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... up the sides of the giant crater. From the pits on both sides of them the other sections were doing ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... spared. But Stephen was right; nothing could keep her from the pronouncement of the words that would free him and bind herself in intolerable ill. Her uprightness was terrible. It would take her fearful but determined into the pits of any hell. His hands slowly clenched, his muscles tightened, in a spasm of anguish. God, why hadn't he recognized the desperation in Essie's quivering face! It would have been already too late, he added in ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Penselcoit, was reported in Somersetshire. Habitations sunk deep in the rock, with only a roof above ground. But the spade has cracked these archaeological theories like filberts, and has proved that the pits in the wolds were sunk after iron ore, or those in Somerset were burrowings for the extraction of chert. [Footnote: Atkinson, "Forty Years in a Moorland Parish." Lond. 1891, p. 161, et seq. Some pits are, however, not so dubious. At Hurstbourne, in Hants, pit habitations have been explored; ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... were made to hold the blood of sacrifice which was poured over the slab, and from some such idea may have arisen some of the legends of human victims which still cling round the dolmens. Others have opposed to this the fact that the pits sometimes occur on vertical walls or under the cover-slabs, and have preferred to see in them some totemistic signification or some expression of star-worship. It is possible that we have to deal with a complex and not a simple phenomenon, ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... a violent poison, is sometimes taken by children in eating the pits of stone fruits or bitter almonds which contain it. The antidote is to empty the stomach by an emetic, and give water of ammonia or chloric water. Affusions of cold water all over the body, followed by warm hand ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... hanging, mixed with the smoke from the chimneys; the hedges seemed dulled and black in spite of their green; the cinder path they walked on was depressing, the rain-fed road even more so. They passed a dozen men on their way to the pits, who made remarks on the three, and retaliation was out ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... they set off to visit the pits, accompanied by the boys. In rather more than an hour they came back, Leo and Natty dragging a beautiful little animal between them, while the two men brought the head and skin and a quantity of meat of another. David, who was with me, ran out ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... power. He knew well what it is that penetrates the soul. His images of horror in the infernal regions were all founded on those familiar to every one in the upper world; it was from the caldron of boiling pitch in the arsenal of Venice that he took his idea of one of the pits of Malebolge. But what a picture does he there exhibit! The writhing sinner plunged headlong into the boiling waves, rising to the surface, and a hundred demons, mocking his sufferings, and with outstretched hooks tearing his flesh till he dived ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... of the Spaniards, and may be taken as a concrete example. It was a system of slavery under which these mines were worked—an atrocious system of forced labour which took no heed of Indian life, save as it might most cheaply extract a given quantity of gold or silver ore from the pits and adits beneath the ground. Thousands of peones were impressed into this forced labour; armed soldiers were stationed at the entrances of these labyrinths to see that each wretched serf deposited his sack of rock, under the load of which he had toiled up fathoms of ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... almost like stands. They are sometimes connected in such a way that the parallel flanges appear like the letter 'h' with the two down-strokes much prolonged. In the morning the chalky rubble brought from the pits upon the Downs and used for mending gateways leading into the fields glistens brightly. Upon the surface of each piece of rubble there adheres a thin coating of ice: if this be lightly struck it falls off, and with it a flake of the chalk. As it melts, too, the chalk splits and crumbles; ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... return to the river by the same path on two successive nights, they become so apprehensive of danger from this human art. An old elephant will walk in advance of the herd, and uncover the pits with his trunk, that the others may see the openings and tread on firm ground. Female elephants are generally the victims: more timid by nature than the males, and very motherly in their anxiety for their calves, they carry their trunks up, trying every breeze ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... not effective unless fired from very close quarters, but even its possession made the guerrillas stronger than the people of the country and undoubtedly had much to do with securing their cooeperation, not only as bolomen but also in the digging of the pits which were placed in the trails and also set about the towns. These were required to be constructed by the local authorities. In the bottom was set a sharp spike of bamboo, sometimes poisoned; and the pit was covered with leaves and soil upon a fragile framework; so ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... therefore that the free miners valued their rights, and not only took thought for the morrow, but provided for it. They added a proviso that the servants of the Deputy Constable should have the benefit of always being supplied first at the pits, showing that they knew something also of public diplomacy. This "Order" has the names of forty-eight miners attached, all severally sealed, but ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... "Yuara comes. Tell girls to run to welcome him and guide him between the pits. A spy is watching. If Yuara walks on the pits he dies and our trap is revealed. Por amor ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... men with the worth of their souls until they are utterly and everlastingly lost. 'What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' That is, men when their souls are lost, and shut down under the hatches in the pits and hells in endless perdition and destruction, then they will see the worth of their souls, then they will consider what they have lost, and truly not till then. This is plain, not only to sense, but by the natural scope ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... just at the opening of Thunder Bay, and immediately contiguous to the Grand Portage, where the canoe route to Rainy River, so late as our own century, started from Lake Superior. According to the American Geologists the traces for a mile are found of an old copper mine on this Island. One of the pits opened showed that the excavation had been made in the solid rock to the depth of nine feet, the walls being perfectly smooth. A vein of native copper eighteen inches thick was discovered at the bottom. Here is found also, ...
— The Mound Builders • George Bryce
... which has gone on in Egypt during the last few years; and it is also easy to see that he, in common with many other Coptic writers, misunderstood the purport of them. The outer darkness, i.e., the blackest place of all in the underworld, the river of fire, the pits of fire, the snake and the scorpion, and such like things, all have their counterparts, or rather originals, in the scenes which accompany the texts which describe the passage of the sun through the underworld during the hours of the night. Having once misunderstood the general meaning of such ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... change came over the even course of his young life. His parents sent him to work in a coal-pit; people in these days will scarcely credit such a thing, but it is nevertheless true; nor was this an extraordinary case, for children of poor parents were commonly sent to work in the pits at that early age, when Abe was a child. The work which they did was not difficult; perhaps it might be the opening or shutting of a door in one of the drifts; but whatever it was our hearts revolt at the idea of sending a child of such tender years ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... just skinned, for she meant playing a trick upon her father. Then she dug four pits for us to lie in, and sat down to wait till we should come up. When we were close to her, she made us lie down in the pits one after the other, and threw a seal skin over each of us. Our ambuscade would have been intolerable, for the stench of the fishy seals was most distressing {45}—who would go to bed with a sea monster ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... in the long ago when man was young, we lived beside great swamps, where the hills drew down close to the wide, sluggish river, and where our women gathered berries and roots, and there were herds of deer, of wild horses, of antelope, and of elk, that we men slew with arrows or trapped in the pits or hill-pockets. From the river we caught fish in nets twisted by the women of ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... of prey, with weapons, sledges, and household articles. They have perhaps begun to abandon the old custom of burning the dead, since the hunting has fallen off so that the supply of blubber for burning has diminished. I have before described the pits filled with burned bones which Dr. Stuxberg found on the 9th September, 1878, by the bank of a dried-up rivulet. We took them for graves, but not having seen any more at our winter station, we began to entertain doubts as to the correctness of our observation[280]. It is at ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... these discoveries: the other affords a description of a Vale in the Moon, compared with that of Hevelius and Ricciolo; where the Reader will find several curious and pleasant Annotations, about the Pits of the Moon, and the Hills and Coverings of the same; as also about the variations in the Moon, and its gravitating principle, together with the use, that may be made of this Instance of ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... endless pains to acquaint himself at first hand with the facts. 'In factories,' he said afterwards, 'I examined the mills, the machinery, the homes, and saw the workers and their work in all its details. In collieries I went down into the pits. In London I went into lodging-houses and thieves' haunts, and every filthy place. It gave me a power I could not otherwise have had.' And this was years before 'slumming' became fashionable and figured in the pages of Punch; it was no distraction caught up for a week or a month, but a labour ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... white man, and over a wide district with David as a center, discredits the statements of De Zeltner in respect to the form illustrated in Fig. 4, and states that generally the graves do not differ greatly in shape and finish from the ordinary graves of to-day. He describes the pits as being oval and quadrangular and as having a depth ranging from a few feet to 18 feet. The paving or pack consists of earth and water worn stones, the latter pitched in without order and forming but a small percentage of the filling. He has never seen such ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... pottery is made of two clays — one a reddish-brown mineral dug from pits several feet deep on the hillside, shown in Pl. LXXXII, and the other a bluish mineral gathered from a shallow basin situated on the hillside nearer the river than the pits, and in which a little water ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... had not been built for such harmless spectacles as those first described. The fierce Romans wanted to be excited and feel themselves strongly stirred; and, presently, the doors of the pits and dens round the arena were thrown open, and absolutely savage beasts were let loose upon one another—rhinoceroses and tigers, bulls and lions, leopards and wild boars—while the people watched with savage curiosity to see ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... It had, properly speaking, only one room, but there was a shed-room attached, for the purpose of storage, and also a large open shed at one side. The rail fence inclosed the space of an acre, perhaps, which was covered with spent bark. Across the pits planks were laid, with heavy stones upon them to hold them in place. A rude roof sheltered the bark-mill from the weather, and there was the patient mule, with Birt and a whip to make sure that ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... take a little of the coarsest powder, wetting it to the consistency of cream, and spread on the glass, work as before (using short straight strokes 1-1/2 or 2 in.) until the holes in the glass left by the grain emery are ground out; next use the finer grades until the pits left by each coarser grade are ground out. When the two last grades are used shorten the strokes to less than 2 in. When done the glass should be semi-transparent, ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... from the pits at and about Greenwich, in Kent: perhaps they are styled barbers, from their constant shaving ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... heard the cry, "Hannah is in the well!" She ran there, but all was right. Then they led her to an opening just before the back door, saying, "The earth opened and swallowed her up." The covering of one of the pits had given way, and she had fallen perhaps twenty feet below the surface. Fortunately, as in the case of Joseph, there was no water in the pit, and in a few days she was able to resume her place in school, but much more gentle and subdued than ever before. The change was marked by all. ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... plan to spread manure on the land and let it lie, as in such cases, much of the strength of the manure is lost. Young gardeners should be very careful in preparing and collecting manure, and also when they are moving it from the pits to the ground, they should take care and not soil ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... reached him, was lying upon his side with his face turned away from Ginsburg and his shrapnel helmet half on and half off his head. Ginsburg stooped, putting his hands under the pits of the captain's arms, and gave a heave. The burden of the body came against him as so much dead heft; a weight limp and unresponsive, the trunk sagging, the limbs loose ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... has come to naught. Many times has my rage almost betrayed my secret; which none knew but my dear child Azalia. Her I could not long deceive. Let the guards drag from our sight these wretches whose fat carcasses are to make a banquet for the royal beasts in the pits beneath ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood
... therefore, he mentioned the shaft, on which he pretended to have come in his rambles. Remarking on the danger of such places, he learned that this one served for ventilation, and was still accessible below from other workings. Thereafter he begged permission to go down one of the pits, on pretext of examining the coal-strata, and having secured for his guide one of the most intelligent of those whose acquaintance he had made at the inn, persuaded him, partly by expressions of incredulity because of the distance ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... told her what she was doing when his back was turned to her, just as if he had been sitting squarely in front of her. Some laughed at this foolish notion; but others, who knew more of the nebulous sciences, told her it was like's not jes' so. Folks had read letters laid ag'in' the pits o' their stomachs, 'n' why should n't they see out o' the ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... alone were respected. All the other bodies, together with the entrails or hearts, enclosed in separate urns, were thrown into large pits, lined with a coat of quick lime: they were then covered with the same substance; and the pits were afterwards filled up with earth. Most of them, as may be supposed, were in a state of complete putrescency; of some, the bones only remained, though a few ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the filling of the pits for reserve against need was in progress. Up and down the trails the men were hastening, bearing the kookas filled with the ripe fruit, large as Edam cheeses and pitted on the surface like a golf-ball. A breadfruit weighs from two to eight pounds, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... of the people. The Frisians could get no lions or tigers, for these fierce brutes live in hot countries; but they sent hundreds of hunters into the woods for many miles around. These bold fellows drove the deer, bears, wolves, and the aurochs within an ever narrowing circle towards the pits. Into these, dug deep in the ground and covered with branches and leaves, the animals fell down and were hauled out with ropes. The deer were kept for their meat, but the bears and wolves were shut up, in pens, facing the ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... winter, as do also the Ainu now living in Saghalien. If any further proof were needed, it might be drawn from the fact that no excavation has brought to light any relics whatever of a race preceding and distinct from the Yemishi (Ainu), all the pits and graves hitherto searched having yielded Yamato or Yemishi skulls. Neither has there been found any trace ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... strata by past physical actions shows that these were similar to those which now obtain. Ancient beaches are met with whose pebbles are like those found on modern shores; the hardened sea-sands of the oldest epochs show ripple-marks, such as may now be found on every sandy coast; nay, more, the pits left by ancient rain-drops prove that even in the very earliest ages, the "bow in the clouds" must have adorned the palaeozoic firmament. So that if we could reverse the legend of the Seven Sleepers,—if we could sleep back through the past, and awake a million ...
— Time and Life • Thomas H. Huxley |
