"Tons" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 450 tons burden, had sailed from New York February 4, 1846, the date happening to be the same as that on which began the exodus from Nauvoo westward. The voyage was an authorized expedition, counseled by President Brigham Young and his advisers in the early winter. At one time it was expected ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... prophesied soon fell upon the land; for it was just at that time that the great house of Loitz failed in Stettin, leaving debts to the amount of twenty tons of gold, it was said; by reason of which many thousand men, widows, and orphans, were utterly beggared, and great distress brought upon all ranks of the people. Such universal grief and lamentation never had been known in all Pomerania, as I have heard my father tell, of blessed ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... little vessel, 215 feet long, they told me, and about 525 tons. She is fitted with mahogany throughout; the staterooms all have brass double beds and private bathrooms attached; she has her own wireless telegraph and telephone, refrigerating apparatus, and everything to make the owner and his guests comfortable. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... one Year the Married Man got Gay and swam out to where it was over his Head. In his keen Anxiety to enlarge his Business he took on about three Tons of Liabilities. Ninety days make but a fleeting Span when Notes are falling due. One day the Married Man found himself hanging on the edge of the Gully, with a Choice of jumping to the Rocks below or waiting to be Scalped. It was not ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... years after peace had been made the statesmen of the United States and of Great Britain had the uncommon sense to take a great step toward banishing war between the neighbor peoples. The Rush-Bagot Convention, limiting the naval armament on the Great Lakes to three vessels not exceeding one hundred tons each, and armed only with one eighteen-pounder, though not always observed in the letter, proved the beginning of a sane relationship which has lasted for a century. Had not this agreement nipped naval rivalry in the bud, fleets and forts might have lined ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... because they would have placed some impediments in his way, or would have demanded more money of him than he had, and he says that the people were becoming very tired. The fifth cause, was because the ships he had were large for making discoveries, as the one was of more than 100 tons and the other more than 70, and only smaller ones are needed to make discoveries; and because of the ship which he took on his first voyage being large, he lost it in the harbor of Navidad, kingdom of the King Guacanagari.[361-1] Also the sixth reason which ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... already on the ground for—now, get this; it's straight dope, no bull—for what will be the largest refrigerating cold storage plant in the world. Its construction, by the time this article sees the light of print, will be well under way. It will have a manufacturing capacity of 500 tons of ice, and will be capable of handling 2,000 tons of fresh beef daily, besides having storage space for 5,000 tons of beef additional, to say nothing of other fresh food supplies whenever they may be awaiting ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... average of 700 pounds of worm casts per acre are produced each day. Over a year's time in the humid eastern United States, 100,000 pounds of highly fertile casts per acre may be generated. Imagine! That's like 50 tons of low-grade fertilizer per acre per year containing more readily available NPK, Ca, Mg and so forth, than farmers apply to grow cereal crops like wheat, corn, or soybeans. A level of fertility that will grow wheat is not enough nutrition to grow vegetables, but earthworms ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... got out, but I know that tons lifted as the door closed behind him. Clemens made his shot, then ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... more than sixty tons, drifted slowly past. There were seven hands on deck; all boys of sixteen and eighteen, save one. This is the training which makes the Gloucester sailors ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... Ordnance may possibly be devised which will throw shot or shell weighing each a thousand pounds; but by the new principle, which is evidently growing in practicability and favor, the weight of thousands of tons will be precipitated against vessels of war, and naval combats will become a conflict of gigantic forces, in comparison with which the discharge of guns and the momentum of cannon balls will be little more than the bursting ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... bullet had not opened up, but it had not needed to. It had practically exploded the creature anyway—the .450 has two tons of striking energy at the muzzle. From what was left, Ed deduced a smallish, rabbit-sized thing, smooth-skinned, muscular, many-legged, flattish, mottled to camouflage perfectly in the leaves. There was a head at one end, mostly undamaged since it had ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... With one motion, he unclamped his skates and threw them from him. The next instant he had plunged into the tons of snow and his arms were working like flails as ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... in the country, are white and red clover, timothy, lucerne, browntop, &c. Good uplands produce one and a half tons per acre, and the intervale from two to three tons. There are several species of wild grass, such as blue-joint, &c. found in meadows, in the woods, and along streams, which make very good ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... commence that winter, setting their nets through the ice. At Lobstick Creek, where the new road would reach them sometime in April or May, they could freeze their fish and keep them in storage. Five hundred tons in stock, and perhaps a thousand, would not be a bad beginning. It would mean from forty to eighty thousand dollars, a half of which could be paid ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... lifting her eight thousand-odd tons from the ground almost instantly. Inside, her occupants grimaced helplessly as they watched various instruments guide tiny pointers across calibrated faces. Mac's throat mike threatened to crush his Adam's apple, weighing ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... small vessels at anchor, whom he told they would have no quarters if they resisted; which so frightened the Masters of the vessels, that they all yielded. Out of them he took whatever he wanted, keeping for his own Use a Schooner of 80 Tons, on board of which he put 10 Carriage Guns, and 50 men, and named her the Fancy making himself Captain, and appointing Charles Harris Captain of the Brigantine. Making up a complement of 80 men out ...
— Pirates • Anonymous
... up by the action of ice in the spring floods, and varies all the way from twenty feet at its beginning to fifty and sixty feet farther down. One of the remarkable things about it is that the largest boulders lie at the top, some of them so huge as to weigh tons. On the terrace, moss berries and blue berries were so thick as to make walking slippery. The river grows more magnificent all the time. I took one photograph of the sun's rays slanting down through a rift in the ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... is barquentine rigged, and has triple-expansion engines giving her a speed under steam of nine to ten knots. To enable her to stay longer at sea, she will carry oil fuel as well as coal. She is of about 350 tons, and built of selected pine, oak, and greenheart. This fine vessel, equipped, has cost ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... Sacramento and waited over one day. There Sedgwick ordered four seven-ton wagons, with four trail wagons of five tons each, and four more of three tons each, and twelve sets of team harness, a dozen of yokes and no end of chains; also a strong, covered spring wagon with ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... passed, it was found that Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his crew had perished, and only the Hind was left to carry back the disheartening tidings to Raleigh and the English queen. The vessel which carried Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his crew was of only ten tons burden, and very poorly able to stand the gales along the American coast. The Delight, another one of the fleet, had gone down a few days before the ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... we were bound for. We knew only that we had to join the Serbian division of the Russian Army, but where that Division was or how we were to get there we could not tell. We were seventy-five all told, with 50 tons of equipment and sixteen automobiles. We had a special transport, and after nine days over the North Sea we arrived ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... she loves me, sir. I've left the privateering. I've enough to set me up and buy a tidy sloop—Jack Lee's; you know the boat, Captain; clinker built, not four years old, eighty tons burthen, steers like a child. I've put my mother's ring on Arethusa's finger; and if you'll give us your blessing, I'll engage to turn over a new leaf, and make her a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fine-looking skipper gave signs of distress. The ship mustn't miss the next morning's tide. He had to take on board forty tons of dynamite and a hundred and twenty tons of gunpowder at a place down the river before proceeding to sea. It was all arranged for next day. There would be no end of fuss and complications if the ship didn't turn up in time.—I couldn't help hearing all this, while wishing him to take ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... afterward they were in Oban, watching from the heights the exquisite bay, and the lovely isle of Kerrera, the high mountains of Mull, and Ossian's "Misty Morven." The Petrel, a cutter yacht of forty tons, was lying at anchor. In the morning they were to start for a glimpse of the Atlantic across the purple bogs of the Lews; going by way of Mull and Canna, and swinging round Barra Head, toward the red, rent bastions of Skye. Through that charmful circle of the ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... is now the only port, the headquarters having suffered from the sand-bar at the mouth of the Senegal. Here our quondam rivals have made the splendid harbour of Dakar, whose jetties accommodate 180,000 tons of shipping at the same time. This powerful and warlike colony, distant only twelve hours' steaming from Bathurst, has her fleet of steamers for river navigation; her Tirailleurs du Senegal, and her large force of fighting native troops. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... to was that of Pedro Nino, who had sailed with Columbus on his first voyage and on his third. With a caravel of only fifty tons, and a crew of thirty-three men, he sailed from Palos in June, 1499, returning in April, 1500, with a richer cargo of pearls than any other that had been brought from the new country. He had steered directly for the Pearl Coast, and at or near Cumana ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... jeopardize his political, social or business interests by casting any kind of obloquy upon the women who have exercised the right of the elective franchise for the last five years. This is the result of success. We have Municipal Suffrage. One little ounce of fact outweighs whole tons of theory.... ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... had made several trips to the Canaries. He now formed a joint-stock company to trade with the Spaniards farther off. Two Lord Mayors of London and the Treasurer of the Royal Navy were among the subscribers. Three small vessels, with only two hundred and sixty tons between them, formed the flotilla. The crews numbered just a hundred men. 'At Teneriffe he received friendly treatment. From thence he passed to Sierra Leona, where he stayed a good time, and got into his possession, partly by the sword and partly by ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... stations and trains, from which tons of cabbages, carrots, onions, and all the vegetable tribe issue, but from the docks where steamers from Rotterdam and Antwerp and India and America, and all that lie between, come the contributions, ranged presently in due order in stall ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... papers. His conversation consisted of fragmentary statements about height and weight and depth and time and population, and his conversation was a nightmare of dulness. During the shortest pause he would ask whether his interlocutors were aware how many tons of rust were scraped every year off the Menai Bridge, and how many rival shops Mr. Whiteley had bought up since he opened his business. The attitude of his acquaintances towards this inexhaustible entertainer varied ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... happens that one can get all the manure he wants at one time; it accumulates by degrees. This is the case with the market grower who uses many tons, and hauls it home from the city stables a little at a time; also with the private grower, who uses only a few bushels or half a cord, and has it accumulate for days or weeks from his own stable. As the manure accumulates ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... canal is still open, but as it passes through what is now Dutch territory, it is little used; nor is it adapted to any save ships of comparatively small burden. Another canal, suitable for craft of 500 tons, leads through Belgian territory to Ostend; but few vessels now navigate it, and those for the most part only for local trade. The town has shrunk to half its former size, and has only a quarter of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... only a prudent and seamanlike course but it would conduce to the comfort of the passengers. The ship was now running into a stiff gale. Each hour the sea became heavier, and even the eight thousand tons of the Kansas felt the impact of the giant rollers on her starboard bow. Dinner, therefore, promised to be a meal of much discomfort, cheered only by the knowledge that as soon as the vessel reached the lee of Desolation Island the giant waves of the Pacific would lose their ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... by a familiar notion or a pompous name. They were but little more than rowboats, as may be easily imagined from the fact that Cicero instances for its uncommon magnitude a ship of only fifty-six tons! These ancient vessels were occasionally sheathed with leather or lead, and had the prow decorated with paint and gilding, while the stern was sometimes carved in the figure of a shield, elaborately adorned. Upon a staff there erected hung ribbons distinctive of the ship and serving at the same ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... place. He had been to the Far East and its fascination, together with an impulse to benefit the natives, drew him back again. After resigning his commission in the army of the British East India Company, he built his own yacht of 140 tons, practised his crew in the Mediterranean and then set sail for the Malay Archipelago. In his Proposed Exploring Expedition to the Asiatic Archipelago, 1838, are found these stirring words which strike a responsive chord in the heart ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... whose quartzose sediment tinkled metallically about her iron prow, the clumsy Honda made slow headway. She was a craft of some two hundred tons burden, with iron hull, stern paddle wheel, and corrugated metal passenger deck and roof. Below the passenger deck, and well forward on the hull, stood the huge, wood-burning boiler, whose incandescent stack pierced the open ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... point ten days and eight hours out. The captain showed us his chart to-day, and it was reassuring to see that to-morrow we shall pass within 120 miles of land—the Midway Islands. Upon one of this coral group the Pacific Mail Company has deposited 3,000 tons of coal and a large amount of mess pork as a reserve supply in case any steamer should be disabled. We passed the Sandwich Islands, not more than 450 miles to the southward, when one quarter of the way over, and the Bonin Islands occupy about the same relative ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... an' seventeen Deuks o' Wellington out o' my puddins? Will your castor oil, an' your calomel, an' your croton, do that? D'ye ken a medicamentum that'll put brains into workmen—? Non tribus Anti-cyrus! Tons o' hellebore—acres o' strait waistcoats—a hall police-force o' head-doctors, winna do it. Juvat insanire—this their way is their folly, as auld Benjamin o' Tudela saith of the heathen. Heigho! ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... different appearance from that which it now presents. He next went with Oxley on his Lachlan expedition. On his return, he commenced the first of his five coastal voyages, in which he accompanied Captain P.P. King around most of the continent of Australia. In the tiny cutter the Mermaid, of 84 tons, they left Port Jackson on the 22nd of December, 1817, and sailed round the south coast of Australia to King George's Sound, the west coast, the north coast, and finally to Timor. The Mermaid returned by the same route and anchored in Port Jackson on the 24th of July, 1818. Again ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... like a game of checkers. When on March 14, 1915, there came the end of still another of the German raiding cruisers, the Dresden. She was a cruiser built in 1907 and having a displacement of 3,544 tons. Her speed was good—24.5 knots—and her armament of ten 4.1-inch guns and eight 5-pounder guns made her quite a match for enemy warships of her class and superior as for merchantmen. She was a sister ship to that other ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... Jerry's. Even the stout man admitted it. Clancy's famous crouching pose met with mishap early in the round, for Jerry by fine judgment twice evaded the advancing left arm and straightened Clancy with terrific upper cuts, the kind that Flynn had said were like tons of coal. At the end of the round Clancy realized, I think, that his opponent was well worth considering seriously, for when he came to the center of the ring again, his face washed clean, he wore a solemn expression ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... give you a chance to do so," said Zog. As he spoke, the great marble blocks in the ceiling of the room directly over the heads of the captives gave way and came crashing down upon them. Many tons of weight were in these marble blocks, and the magician had planned to crush his victims where they stood. But the four were still unharmed. The marble, being unable to touch them, was diverted from its course, and when the roar of the great crash had died away, Zog saw his intended victims standing ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... require a trough nine feet by two feet six inches by two feet. If we separate the cream, of course, it wouldn't require such a large trough. But we used this as a basis of the dairy requirements. Then we found by looking up another Government bulletin that it would take about twenty tons of ice to take care of this milk, but we need ice around the farm for other things, too, so we decided to make the icehouse large enough for thirty tons. Aunt Bettie and I read all the bulletins we could ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... till they reached the side of the boat. This was not a flat such as now are in general use, but a large boat some forty feet in length by fourteen wide, almost flat-bottomed, and capable of carrying a cargo of eight or ten tons of goods. In the stern was a little cabin some eight feet long for the captain and his mate. In front was a similar structure for the four negroes who ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... existence to the Cistercian monks of the Chiaravalle Abbey, who began their fruitful agricultural labours in the country near Milan in the twelfth century. There is a recorded instance of one of these meadows which yielded in a single season 140 tons of grass per hectare, equal to 75 tons of hay, or 30 tons per acre! The meadows are mowed six times a year, and the grass is fed green to Swiss cows, which are kept in great numbers for the manufacture of "frommaggio di grana," or Parmesan cheese. This system of green soiling ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... reg'lar three tons a shift," the ugly face was shoved closer to his, and Hanlon shrank back from the stench of raw spirits breathed on him. "What'sa idea drivin' yer crew up t' three ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... evident if we consider a still coarser sample. A heap of ore in stones about 2 inches across would be 50 times coarser than the sand, and an equivalent sample would need to be 125,000 times heavier; this would amount to about 1000 tons. Experienced samplers would say that under such conditions so large ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... will. We have run down a whaler of about five hundred tons, which was cruising along under reduced canvas and showing no lights. Our fore compartment is stove right in, bulging out the plates on each side of the cut-water, and loosening the fore bulkhead. The carpenter and his mates are doing their best to shore it ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... that he picked up and threw two tons of rocks every day, and he has no idea how many tons the six families of Patmos heaved at and after the goats. When they weren't going headfirst into barrels of water they were chewing something not meant ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... electric fluid fill and transform a dead wire into a live one, which you dare not touch? How can a magnetic current fill a piece of steel, and transform it into a mighty force which by its touch can raise tons of iron, as a child would lift a feather? How can fire dwell in a piece of iron until its very appearance is that of fire, and it becomes a ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... There was the Canal; there was the sunken wreck, marked by one elderly Arab in a little boat with a red flag, and there was about five foot clearance on each side for the P. & O. She went through a-tiptoe, because even fifty tons of dynamite will jar a boat, perceptibly, and the tramp held more—very much more, not to mention detonators. By some absurd chance, almost the only passenger who knew about the thing at the time was an old lady ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... direct sea route to India. To achieve this end he collected at his Court all the learned men he could attract; he improved the methods of shipbuilding, and began to build full-decked ships of 100 tons; he did much to perfect the knowledge of navigation; and exploration became ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... is an honest man, no harm has been done. If he stole our steers—and, mind you, I don't say he did—three slices off the breast of a turkey will hardly offset my interest in five tons of beef. As for this packing scheme, it sounds promising; but we lack figures. To-morrow we will drive into San Lorenzo, and talk to the Children of Israel. If Ikey Rosenbaum says that bacon is likely to rise or stay where it is, we ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... were sixty-eight people, who brought back with them one and one-half tons of gold. This is worth nearly ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 39, August 5, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... to fifteen hundred. Among these were many who enlisted without compensation, including several persons of rank, hidalgos, and members of the royal household. The whole squadron amounted to seventeen vessels, three of them of one hundred tons' burden each. With this gallant navy, Columbus, dropping down the Guadalquivir, took his departure from the bay of Cadiz, on the 25th of September, 1493; presenting a striking contrast to the melancholy plight, in which, but the year previous, he sallied forth like some forlorn ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... this last kind could not be seen to fall like the larger ones, yet they do fall in such numbers that calculations have been made showing that the earth must catch about a hundred millions of meteors daily, having altogether a total weight of about a hundred tons. This sounds enormous, but compared with the weight of the earth ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... triangle of cylinders again, in the circle about Woking. Signallers with heliographs were pushing forward upon them from all sides. Guns were in rapid transit from Windsor, Portsmouth, Aldershot, Woolwich—even from the north; among others, long wire-guns of ninety-five tons from Woolwich. Altogether one hundred and sixteen were in position or being hastily placed, chiefly covering London. Never before in England had there been such a vast or rapid concentration of ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... and Greenway to the right. At Sandbridge was born the famous navigator John Davis, who was the first to explore the Arctic regions. On June 7th, 1575, he left Dartmouth with two small barques—the Sunshine, 50 tons, carrying 23 men, and the Moonshine, 35 tons, and 19 men—and after many difficulties reached a passage between Greenland and North America, which was so narrowed between the ice that it was named Davis' Straits. He made other voyages ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... pure air we beheld a sight that would appall the strongest heart. The great flat rock, that had stood on edge at the back of the cabin, was now slanting at a sharp angle above our heads. The avalanche from near the summit of the Sangre de Christo had struck the cliff and with its incalculable tons tilted it, piling itself hundreds of feet in the depth about us. The cliff might fall at any moment and blot us out ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... them, same as the old—different laws maybe, but things you could perhaps reckon with if you knew them. And when he knew them, I reckon he'd have a look at his timber and stone and iron, and get out plans. Maybe, these days, he'd help out with a few tons of reinforced concrete, and get in a bit o' work with some high explosive. I'm no saying. But if he came from north of the Tweed, my lad," he added, with a twinkle in his eye and a touch of accent, "I should be verra surprised if that foreshore hadn't a breakwater that ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... stretched upwards at a rakish angle, and the rigging seemed like spun silk. No sails were set; the yacht was under steam, and doing about seven or eight knots. She judged that it was a boat of a hundred tons or so, probably Clyde-built, and not more than two or ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... Koelnische Zeitung, "is the taste of defeat." A reference, presumably, to the thirty thousand tons of American bacon sold to Germany ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... as natural hygeia in the form of rain was and is still caught in our country cisterns. Every exposed place is crowned by a cluster of huge windmills that lift water to some pond or reservoir placed as high as possible. Every stiff breeze, therefore, raises millions of tons of water which operate hydraulic turbines as required. Incidentally these storage reservoirs, by increasing the surface exposed to evaporation and the consequent rainfall, have a very beneficial effect on the dry regions in the interior of the continent, and in some cases have almost superseded irrigation. ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... sport, and shake it so violently that the tiller, striking against some heavy object on deck, was actually broken in two pieces. It is a well-authenticated fact, that some years ago a shark, playing round a whaling vessel of upwards of 300 tons, whilst lying at anchor during a calm, got entangled in the buoy-rope of the anchor, and in its efforts to free itself actually tripped the anchor. The people on board, perceiving something extraordinary had happened, hove up the anchor, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... a standstill, pending the coal decision. Guess you know our few finished miles of railroad, built at immense expense and burdened with an outrageous tax, are operating under imported coal. Placed an order with Japan in the spring for three thousand tons." ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... attrition in tin cylinders, and tempered, as in the case of the steel plate, by being brought to the required color by heat. Some idea of the extent of this manufacture will be formed from the statement, that nearly 150 tons of steel are employed annually for this purpose, producing ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the story of this Harvard College undergraduate's experience, one should bear in mind, to appreciate the dangers of his rounding the Cape, that the brig Pilgrim was only one hundred and eighty tons burden and eighty-six feet and six inches long, shorter on the water line than many of our summer-sailing ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... motor cars and motor lorries to the bogie wheels of German trucks and sent a little fleet of motor cars along the railway. Light and very speedy, these little trains sped along, each dragging its thirty tons of food and supplies for the army then ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... thing I did was to explore the great ship. It was four hundred feet long, made entirely of iron, and sank twenty feet deep in the water. The masts were of hollow iron, and seventy feet high. It took nine furnaces and forty tons of coal a day to keep the ship going. The crew numbered a hundred and thirty-five. It seems very wonderful that a great heavy iron ship should not sink; the reason it does not is that it is lighter ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... construction." Its span exceeded that of any arch then known, being 236 feet, with a rise of 34 feet, the springing commencing at 95 feet above the bed of the river; and its height was such as to allow vessels of 300 tons burden to sail underneath without striking their masts. Mr. Stephenson characterised the bridge as "a structure which, as regards its proportions and the small quantity of material employed in its construction, will probably ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... fresh trout stream, emblem of purity and perfect truth; thou hast accomplished a mighty work, thou hast a mighty work to do. Who can count the millions of tons of lime that thou hast borne down to the sea in far-off Kent? Thou hast indeed "strength to remove mountains," for day by day the soil that thou hast taken from these limestone hills is being piled up at the mouth of the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... reached in safety. On the 18th of November, La Salle sent a small vessel of ten tons burden, with a deck, to go to the farther end of Lake Ontario, a distance of about two hundred miles, and to ascend the Niagara River until the falls were reached. The vessel contained about thirty workmen, with provisions and implements for erecting a fort and building ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... appreciated and taken advantage of by the most wide-awake, economical and thrifty. News that must not get old by repetition. There is nothing more important about the business than advertising. Of what use to have tons of merchandise to sell if the people are not told about it, told about it regularly? Keeping everlastingly at it. Hammering away day after day. Continuous effort in the right direction, systematic, persistent. The advertising ...
— How Department Stores Are Carried On • W. B. Phillips
... six hundred tons, and mounting fourteen guns— called the "Santiago," proved to be of considerable value. A prize crew being put on board, we steered for Saint Helena, where it was possible we might find a purchaser, and if not, Captain Oliver resolved to take her to the Cape. ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... good friend, how did these pebbles get three hundred yards across the lake? Hundreds of tons, some of them three feet long: who carried them across? The old Cymry were not likely to amuse themselves by making such a breakwater up here in No-man's-land, two thousand feet above the sea: but somebody or something ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... us. If fulness and leisure and power of living are no more with us, nothing shall save us. Walls of encyclopaedias—not even walls of Bibles shall save us, nor miles of Carnegie-library. Empty and hasty and cowardly living does not get itself protected from the laws of nature by tons of paper and ink. The only way out for civilisation is through the practical men in it—men who grapple daily with ideals, who keep office hours with their souls, who keep hold of life with books, who take enough time out ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... was activity aboard the destroyers. Directly, through his glass, Jack sighted nine rusty, English tramp steamers, of perhaps eight thousand tons, and a big liner auxiliary flying the ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... orders to my agents at Liverpool to send so many tons to Washington and every port and place on the seaboard of the United States except New York, but not too many to any one town; and then I took passage in a steamer, and ordered all my agents to close the consignment immediately, and ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... It is curious, like many things that fall out at sea, but not so wonderful as her towing a ship of four hundred tons, with the foresail, mizzen, and jib all aback. Well, sir, did you ever hear of Nantucket? It is a port in the United States; and our harpooner happened to be there full four years after we lost this whale. Some Yankee whalers were treating him to ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... The black cliff seemed to rock behind us, and as Maru pulled me down on my knees five hundred tons of rock shot from the heights and flattened ten square yards of the packed shrubs ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... perhaps commerce revolts and invokes nature against so vast an oppression, and nature comes and crushes our speculator. But if he be wise and puts on what mankind can bear, say three mites per pound, then he sells tons and tons at this fractional profit on each pound, and makes fourteen thousand pounds by lac-dye or the like of which you and I thought creation held thirty or at ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... before, upon an expedition to this coast; and the fleet was then lying in different places to the westward, five or six together, Pobasso's division being the foremost. These prows seemed to be about twenty-five tons, and to have twenty or twenty-five men in each; that of Pobassoo carried two small brass guns, obtained from the Dutch, but the others had only muskets; besides which, every Malay wears a cress or dagger, either secretly or openly. I inquired ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... emblazoned page, The calendar of every age Down from Creation's primal dawn; With archetypes of spears and bones, And tons of undeciphered ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... a confoundedly poor property, but I think a few tons of ore from the Yankee Boy will sell it ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... you fellows haven't seen Lee Fu's cruising sampan," he remarked. "In reality, she's more of a junk than a sampan, a sizable craft of over a hundred tons, and the best product of the Chinese shipyard. Lee Fu had her built for trips along the coast, and many of his own ideas, born of an expert knowledge of ships of every nationality entered into her construction. The result is distinctly a Chinese creation, a craft that seems ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... will care much about it one way or another," O'Driscol remarked; "their pockets are so full of English gold that the loss of a few tons of tobacco won't affect them much. I enjoy my cigar immensely, and have the satisfaction of knowing that for once I have got something out of a Spaniard—it is the ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... Elsie is being gutted, and new timbered, and Mr. Silver has bought a new dandy of forty tons, and Ablett Percival" (cf. spelling in other letters) "is to be Captain. I think of going down the river soon to see Captain Newson. I have been on the River To-day and thought that I should have been with you on the way ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... This may perhaps give a better idea than I can, of the situation of their cause. His inquiries have led him to believe they are innocent men, but that they must lose their vessel under the edict, which forbids those under thirty tons to approach the coast. Admitting their innocence, as he does, I should suppose them not the objects on whom such an edict was meant to operate. The essential papers, which he says they re-demanded from him, and did not return, were sent to me, at my desire. I am, with sentiments of the highest respect, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... shores of alluvium were constantly caving and falling into the river, bringing down tons of earth and tall forest-trees. The latter, after freeing their roots of the soil, would be swept out into the stream as contributions to the great floating raft of drift-wood, a large portion of which was destined to a long voyage, for much of this floating forest is carried into the Gulf ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... a month the five paupers worked there, sometimes well, sometimes badly. They dried nearly two tons of apples, which, if I remember right, brought six cents a pound that year. The profit from that venture alone ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... English South Sea Company, was also conceded the permission to send one merchant vessel each year to the South Seas with as much English goods to sell to the Spanish colonies as a {151} ship of 500 tons could carry. As everybody might have expected, the provisions of the treaty were constantly broken through. The English traders were very eager to sell their goods; the Spanish colonists were very glad to get them to buy. All other commerce than that in slaves and the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... the Sooloo Islands, the coast of Coromandel, and the shores of Algiers. In Ceylon he is busiest, and you may find him from the first of February to the middle of April risking his life in the perilous seas. His boat is from eight to ten tons burden, and without a deck. At ten o'clock at night, when the cannon fires, it is his signal to put off for the bank opposite Condatchy, which he will reach by daylight, if the weather be fair. Unless it is calm, he cannot follow his trade. As soon as light dawns, he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... moderate quantity of stable-manure, and ten loads of leached ashes to the acre. We saw it in haying time, the third season after it had been manured and subsoiled and seeded down, and they were then taking fully three tons of timothy hay from an acre, which was the quantity it had yielded three years in succession, without any top-dressing. If a top-dressing of manure is to be applied, harrow the land quite thoroughly, and always apply ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... hundred and thirty miles from Virginia. A party of Iowa emigrants found fair prospects here, and made it their home, calling their mines Emigrant Gulch, and their half-dozen log-huts Yellowstone City. Their gulch is rich in gold, but the huge boulders, many tons in weight, make it impossible to obtain the treasure by the present rude methods. The few profitable claims are high up in the mountains, and are free from ice only in the hottest days of summer. Even the donkeys, so much in use in transporting supplies to the mountain miners, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... eight thousand four hundred ninety-six tons and had accommodations for three hundred thirty passengers. Of these, Hank Kuran estimated, approximately half were Scandinavians or British being transported between London, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki on the small ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Naipor settled her tens of thousands of tons of mass into her landing cradle on Viornis as gently as an egg being settled into an egg crate, and almost as silently. Then, as the antigravs were cut off, there was a vast, metallic sighing as the gigantic structure ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Powers. As to Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Theta, they were by no means modern vessels, and found their prototypes in the old F class of British boats, having a submerged displacement of eight hundred tons, with heavy oil engines of sixteen hundred horse-power, giving them a speed of eighteen knots on the surface and of twelve knots submerged. Their length was one hundred and eighty-six and their breadth twenty-four feet. They had a radius of action of four thousand miles and ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the electrolyte and to precipitate chemically pure copper on the cathode, the copper of the solution being replenished from the raw material used as the anode by which the current is passed into the bath. At this Welsh factory 250 tons yearly were produced, and small earthenware pots sufficed for the electrolyte. Thirty years later one American factory alone was able to produce at least 350 tons of electrolytic copper in twenty-four hours, and over 400,000 ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... quick." Except to impress guides and mule-drivers, it is not an essential article. In six campaigns I have carried one, and never used it, nor needed it but once, and then while I was dodging behind the foremast it lay under tons of luggage in the hold. The number of cartridges I have limited to six, on the theory that if in six shots you haven't hit the other fellow, he will have hit you, and you will not require ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... old England[22] every one played games; and laughter, their natural accompaniment, abounded. Queen Elizabeth's maids of honor played tag with hilarity, but the spirit of play with full abandon seems taking its departure from our overworked, serious, and tons, age. To requote Stevenson with variation, as laborari, [To labor] so ludere, et joculari orare sunt. [To play and to jest are to pray] Laughter itself, as Kuehne long ago showed, is one of the most precious forms of exercise, relieving ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... from the introduction of steam-boats on the western waters, can only be appreciated by comparing the former means of communication with the present. Previous to 1812, the navigation of the Upper Ohio was carried on by means of about 150 small barges, averaging between thirty and forty tons burden, and the time consumed in ascending from the Falls to Pittsburg was a full month. On the Lower Ohio and the Mississippi there were about twenty barges, which averaged 100 tons burden, and more than three ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... as if its first impulse had been undisturbed, and produces, by that energy, an exactly equivalent quantity of effect. This is true even when the force leaves the body as it found it, in a state of absolute rest; as when we attempt to raise a body of three tons' weight with a force equal to one ton. For if, while we are applying this force, wind or water or any other agent supplies an additional force just exceeding two tons, the body will be raised; thus ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... our needs,—and even when wider disclosures of science are being made to us every day, we still bar knowledge by obstinacy, and remain in ignorance rather than learn. A few grains in weight of hydrogen have power enough to raise a million tons to a height of more than three hundred feet,—and if we could only find a way to liberate economically and with discretion the various forces which Spirit and Matter contain, we might change the whole occupation of man ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... at that time in command of H.M.S. Bandersnatch, a vessel of nine hundred thousand horse-power, and a mean average displacement of four hundred thousand tons. Ah, the dear old Bandersnatch! Never can I forget the thrill of exquisite emotion which pervaded my inmost being as I stepped on board in mid-ocean. Everything was in apple-pie order. Bulkheads, girders, and beams shone like glass in the noonday sun. The agile torpedo-catchers had been practising ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... from the shipping there destroyed, were prodigious quantities of gross snuff, from the Havannah, in bales, bags, and scrows (untanned buffalo hides, used with the hairy-side inwards, for making packages), which were designed for manufacture in different parts of Spain. Altogether fifty tons of snuff were brought home as part of the prize of the officers and sailors of the fleet. Of the coarse snuff, called Vigo snuff, the sailors, among whom it was shared, sold waggon-loads at Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Chatham, for not more than three-pence or four-pence a pound. The greater ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... in from the outside where they had broken loose from the cliff, that not more than one-fourth of the area could be excavated. These rocks varied in size from cobblestones to blocks weighing 3 or 4 tons. They were at all levels, some lying on the rock floor, others only slightly imbedded in the earth. Yet the superficial accumulation extended under all of them except such as were in direct contact with ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... hurled away together. Horses, children, and women, rolled together in confusion. One child had a very strange escape. It had been forced out of its bed, and was found on the top of a huge mass of clay, weighing forty or fifty tons; he was crying, and asking who had put him there. Had all the inhabitants of the cottages been within, at least forty must have perished; but notwithstanding the severity of the weather, the day being Sunday, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of this great principle Thyrsis had to revise all his previous knowledge; he had to cast out tons of rubbish from the chambers of his mind, and start his thinking life all over again. Just as, in early days, he had exchanged miracles and folk-tales for facts of natural science; so now he saw political institutions and social ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... as follows: I propose to have a ship built as small and as strong as possible—just big enough to contain supplies of coals and provisions for twelve men for five years. A ship of about 170 tons (gross) will probably suffice. Its engine should be powerful enough to give a speed of 6 knots; but in addition it must also be fully rigged ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... the access of a railway to our little port, the building of jetties for the china-clay trade, the development of our harbour which now receives over 300,000 tons of shipping annually—all these have, in ways direct and indirect, more than doubled the old gentleman's income. But to do him justice, he regards this scarcely at all. He sets it down—and rightly—to what he has ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... everything—and that had he been in the station that it was expected he should have held, they could not have escaped. The fact is they came here destitute of everything, one of his ships had not 20 tons of water, and none of them were in a condition to follow the enemy to a distant point. Those insinuations, though they advance nothing positive, are disgusting—the season of the year and the situation ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... the end bulwarks to the boat when crossing the bay. On arriving at the opposite shore the operation is repeated, the other platform is lowered, and the hauling engine runs the trucks, etc., on to the shore. With a load of 25 tons the draught ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... was thrown on shore near Bombay, in 1819. It was about 40 feet long, and must have weighed many tons. A violent gale of wind threw it high above the reach of ordinary tides; in which situation it took nine months to rot; during which process travellers were obliged to change the direction of the road for nearly a quarter of a mile, to avoid the offensive effluvia. It ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... him, we forthwith started to ride to Cape Town. Finding that a vessel for our expedition could be procured here more readily and economically than at Swan River I determined on making this my point of departure, and after diligent enquiry I finally hired the Lynher, a schooner of about 140 tons, Henry Browse master, and subsequently found every reason to be satisfied, both with the little vessel ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... conflict of historians over the time and place of the beginning of ship-building in America. The first vessel of which we have record was the "Virginia," built at the mouth of the Kennebec River in 1608, to carry home a discontented English colony at Stage Island. She was a two-master of 30 tons burden. The next American vessel recorded was the Dutch "yacht" "Onrest," built at New York in 1615. Nowadays sailors define a yacht as a vessel that carries no cargo but food and champagne, but the "Onrest" was not a yacht of this type. She was of 16 tons burden, and this small size explains ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... I were shipped, she bein' 830 tons or thereabout, with three royal yards across, and loaded with flour and grain, there bein' sixteen of us afore the mast, with two mates, carpenter and cook, and steward, leavin' on the 16th of November, and, unless I'm ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... hire a boat with a cabin that will hold us both. Of course it will be a sailing boat, say of three or four tons burden. I intend that we shall live on board. It might be noticed if two strange sailors were often coming in and out of your place; whereas, if we were in a boat moored against the bank, no one would notice us. ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... it was in Noah's ark. The best calculations, allowing eighteen inches to a cubit, show that the ark was capable of receiving many more than this selection from all the animals now known, together with their requisite provender. Dr. Hunter estimated the tonnage at 42,413 tons measurement.—Ed. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the hay there had ought to be in the mows, neither," Mrs. Starling went on to her daughter. "I know there ain't; not by tons. And there's no sort o' a crop o' rye. I wish to mercy, Diana, you'd ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... turned upon him. "Fo' de Lawd sake, you scared me! If it ain't Vitus Marsden. Prodigal, come heah! Whah at is you been?" The Wildcat was engulfed in an embrace which reminded him of the time he had been buried under seven tons of fermented hay. ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... tons, Glendinning declares that an aircraft built from his designs could sail round the world without the slightest danger of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... is that the Germans had accumulated enormous stocks for their great offensive and that they had expended these stocks at a greater rate than their factories could replace them. We learn from Schwarte's book that, "Although the production of Yellow Cross almost reached 1000 tons a month, yet finally the possibilities of use and the amount required were so great that only a much increased monthly ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... strike a single cutting; and on looking about him for the cause, quickly discovered that the fault lay entirely in the sand! but my gullible friend, to leave no stone unturned, freighted at once two tons of silver sand from New York to Illinois! Need I tell the result, or that John was soon returned to where the ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... than this leaking in of Nature through all the cracks in the walls and floors of cities. You heap up a million tons of hewn rocks on a square mile or two of earth which was green once. The trees look down from the hill-sides and ask each other, as they stand on tiptoe,—"What are these people about?" And the small herbs at their feet look up and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Adirondack continental nucleus. The slab shows the trails of animals crossing in all directions, especially those known as clemactechnites, said by Dr. J. M. Clarke to have been made by a a simple primitive type of mollusk. The slab, weighing over fifteen tons, was moved in six sections and ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... packet Mercury, of seventy tons, under Captain Simeon Sampson, one of America's ablest naval commanders. She had been built for rapid sailing and when, the second day out, they saw a British frigate bearing down upon her they wore ship and easily ran away from their enemy. Their first landing was at St. ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... in Austrian Galicia, near Cracow, famous for its salt mines, which have been wrought continuously since 1250, the galleries of which extend to more than 50 m. in length, and the annual output of which is over 50,000 tons. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... a boat on shore to inquire if any vessel could be procured there for his purpose. The boat returned next morning, and brought intelligence that no vessel was then at that island, but that Donna Beatrix de Bobadilla, the propriatrix of the island, was then at Gran Canaria in a hired vessel of 40 tons belonging to one Gradeuna of Seville, which would probably suit his purpose and might perhaps be got. He therefore determined to await the arrival of that vessel at Gomera, believing that Pinzon might have secured a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... think that Bell Weir lock must have been done away with after the same manner. George had towed us up to Staines, and we had taken the boat from there, and it seemed that we were dragging fifty tons after us, and were walking forty miles. It was half-past seven when we were through, and we all got in, and sculled up close to the left bank, looking out for a spot to haul ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... flood of scarlet poppies—on one hand; and to the blue, surf-fringed sea on the other. The terrible coast was still lined with wrecks, and just before reaching the town, we passed a vessel of some two hundred tons, recently cast ashore, with her strong hull still unbroken. We forded the rapid stream of El Anjeh, which comes down from the Plain of Sharon, the water rising to our saddles. The low promontory in front now broke into towers and white ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... see that a few daring minds pierced the veil, and peered out wonderingly into the real universe beyond, but for the great mass of men it was quite impossible. To them the modern idea of a universe consisting of hundreds of millions of bodies, each weighing billions of tons, strewn over billions of miles of space, would have seemed the dream of a child or a savage. Material bodies were "heavy," and would "fall down" if they were not supported. The universe, they said, was a sensible scientific ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... and ready to run. Among other things, there was a land vehicle on light caterpillar treads capable of running where there were no roads and carrying a load of several tons. And there was an ...
— Shepherd of the Planets • Alan Mattox
... as in my chest I dived— That vast receptacle of all things known— "To teach this truth my outfit was contrived, It is not good for man to be alone!" Then fly with me! My bark is on the shore (Her mark A 1, her size eight hundred tons), And though she's nearly full, can take some more Dry goods, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton |
