"Torrential" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... accomplished after years of heroic effort and an enormous expenditure of money, leaving the harbor only the slender, tortuous entrance of Boca Chica—"little mouth"—dangerous to incoming vessels because of the almost torrential flow of the tide through it, but much more readily defended. The two castles of San Fernando and San Jose, frowning structures of stone dominating this entrance, have long since fallen into disuse, but ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... enriched from year to year. It was the axes of their fathers that felled the trees, to sell for fuel, and the billhooks of their mothers that hacked away the bushes and grubbed up their very roots to burn on the household cooking hole. Then the torrential rains of the south-west monsoon came down on the naked, defenceless, parched and cracked soil and swept it in muddy cascades down to the sea, leaving flats of bare rock, strewn thick with round stones, sore to the best-shod foot of man and ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... of torrential rain, when she was a girl living in her father's house in Cheshire, she and her sister saw a carriage and pair coming through the park towards the house. The coachman and footman on the box were soaking wet, and kept their heads down to avoid the sting of the rain in their ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... exceedingly small stream, which now carries off all the surface drainage and must therefore be only remotely related to its great precursor that carved this enormous trench out of the limestone tableland. Compared to the torrential rushes of water carrying along huge quantities of gravel and boulders that must have flowed from the lake at the upper end, Newton Dale can almost be considered ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... water except as a medium for quenching his thirst. He hated it because he connected it with the chill and discomfort of the torrential rains, and he feared it for the thunder and lightning and ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sewers to deal with the maximum quantity of rain which may possibly fall either in the form of waterspouts or abnormally heavy torrential rains, and the amount of risk which it is desirable to run must be settled after consideration of the details of each particular case. The following table, based principally upon observations taken at the Birmingham Observatory, shows the approximate ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... a last torrential rush, but the sergeant withstood it, and they merely locked themselves together. Nay, they were now so exhausted that they could only hang on to each other for support, a spectacle which brought me to their ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... further to be observed, that the surface of this vast interior is entirely exempt from the coarse superficial drift that encumbers so many countries, as derived from lofty mountain-chains from which either glaciers or great torrential streams have descended. In this respect, it is also equally unlike those plains of Germany, Poland, and Northern Russia, which were sea-bottoms when floating icebergs melted and dropped the loads of stone which they were ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... Bentinck street. It had become his accustomed place; sitting there he had begun to feel like the adventurer under Niagara, it was the only spot from which he could observe, try to understand, and cope with the torrential nature of his passion. Nearer to the fair charm of her presence in the uncertain flare of the kerosene lamp and the sound of the big drum, he grew blind, lost count, was carried away. His persistent refusal of a better place also profited him in that it brought ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... miles of land area which constitute the group 4,015 belong to Hawaii. Except in temperature, which varies only about 11 degrees mean for a year, diversity marks the physical features of these mid-sea islands. Lofty mountains where snow lies perpetually, huge valleys washed by torrential freshets, smooth sand dunes, or fluted ridges, arid plains and rain-soaked forests, fringes of white beach, or abrupt bluffs that drop sheer into the deep sea, days of liquid sunshine or fierce storms from the south that whip across the island for half a week, a rainfall ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... now proceeding along a dry, wide river bed, which had on one side a tiny stream, a few inches broad, of crystal-like water dripping along. Evident signs could be noticed that during the torrential storms of the rainy season this bed must occasionally carry large volumes of water. A foot track can be perceived on either side some twelve feet above the bed, which is followed by caravans when the river ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... crash and bellowing of a great thunderstorm. The lightning flashed fearfully all about us, killing two oxen quite near to my wagon, and the thunder rolled and echoed till the very earth seemed to shake. Then came a wail of cold wind, and after that the swish of torrential rain. Although I was well accustomed to such natural manifestations, especially at this season of the year, I confess that these sights and sounds did not tend to raise my spirits, which were already lower than ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... and, as they still hesitated, took one swift stride toward the man that stood nearest, swinging his rifle over his head. Forward sprang the doctor to his side, his poplar club likewise swung up to strike. Back fell the Indians a pace or two, the Chief following them with a torrential flow of vehement invective. Slowly, sullenly the crowd gave back, cowed but still wrathful, and beginning to mutter in angry undertones. Once more the tent flap was pushed aside and there issued two figures who ran to the side of the Indian boy, now ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... thousand feet below. Sometimes he had to spring far across great gorges in the mountains that had once been bridged by mighty trunks of trees, long since moldered away. Sometimes there was nothing for him to do but to scramble down the steep sides of some dark canyon and force himself through cold torrential mountain streams that almost swept him from his feet. Again his path lay over cliffs green with moss and wet with spray, which afforded most precarious support to his grasping hands or slipping feet. Sometimes he had to force a way ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... big wave, that was just in time to overhear this conversation imperfectly, thought it would like to wet Sally through, and leaped against the bulwark of the jetty. But it spent itself in a huge torrential deluge while Sally waited a minute. A friend followed it, but made a poor figure by comparison. Then Sally got in between, followed by the doctor.... Well! they were really not so very wet, after all! Sally was worst, as she was too previous. She got implicated in the friend's ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... those who have had the fortune to travel through this country can realize how difficult this endeavor has been and must continue to be, chiefly because of the great local complexity of the mountain system, but also because of the severely destructive storms of this region, with consequent torrential violence of the streams affected. But little money, too, can be, or has been, spent for the necessary road-work. In spite of the difficulties involved, however, a system of road-making has been set on foot, ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... Transvaal. This virtually ended all opposition to General Botha. The invasion of German Southwest Africa began on January 5, 1915, and was one uninterrupted chapter of successes. Through jungle and swamp, swept by torrential rains and encountering obstacles that would have disheartened any but the stoutest heart, the little force of invasion swept forward. Most of the engagements by the enemy were in the nature of guerrilla and rear-guard actions. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... patience of the reader by describing in detail our daily progress. Let it suffice to say that we worked all day and every day from dawn to sunset, until at length, after five weeks of strenuous but uneventful labour, punctuated at intervals by thunderstorms of terrific violence, accompanied by torrential downpours of rain—which we thankfully utilised for the replenishment of our fresh-water supply—the carpenter work of our projected house was finished, and then came the still more formidable task ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... hole from 4 to 5-1/2 inches in diameter. These holes are nearly all situated a little above the surface of the surrounding soil, and as Price has suggested (in Allen, 1895, 213), this is doubtless a wise provision against flooding, as torrential rains sometimes occur in ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... expression, by ejaculating "Nong, nong!" and a profoundly understanding "Ah, wee!" at intervals in the one-sided conversation. He tried this method when called upon by a puzzled private to interpret the torrential speech of a Frenchman, who wished to know whether the Towers had any jam to spare, or whether they would exchange a rum ration for some French wine. 'Enery interjected a few "Ah, wee's!" and then at the finish explained to ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... proportion of truth, if we spiritualize everything, and pass over, as if unworthy of consideration, His bodily pain. For this Thirst of the Crucified is the final sum of all the pains of crucifixion: the physical agony, the fever produced by it, the torrential sweat, the burning of the sun—all these culminated in the torment of which this Cry is ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... we don't, and—for the curious reason, based on the intense individualism of sexual attraction, that no man can appreciate, save intellectually, another man's desire for a particular woman—we can't realize the poor, fool hunger of his heart. The man who pours into our ears a torrential tale of passion moves us not to sympathy, but rather to psychological speculation, if we are kindly disposed, or to murderous inclinations if we are not. On the other hand, he who is silent moves us not at all. In any and every case, however, we entirely fail to comprehend why, if Neaera ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke |
