"Undergrowth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I jumped up with a terrified scream, only to find myself in the rough grasp of a brawny savage, and completely at his mercy. With a malicious leer he motioned me to accompany him. Feeling sick at heart, and drooping under the weight of my new misfortune, I was led through the tangled undergrowth, and after a walk of about fifteen minutes, we emerged into a small clearing, where I found myself in the midst of a large party of Indians. My advent created no little excitement, and I was soon the centre of a circle of curious savages, who were more persistent ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... of the garden-gate and down the lane. But she would not stay where she was; and edging through a slit in the garden-fence, walked away into the wood. Just about here the trees were large and wide apart, and there was no undergrowth, so that she could be seen to some distance; a sylph-like, greenish-white creature, as toned by the sunlight and leafage. She heard a foot-fall crushing dead leaves behind her, and found herself reconnoitered by Fitzpiers himself, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... scream, the youth turned his head in the direction of the sound; but when it was repeated, he pushed aside the undergrowth and soon dashed into an open space on the banks of the stream, where stood ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... a felled oak-trunk in the shadows of the beech undergrowth, and were looping the wires Hobden had given ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... my usual pace, and I did not, therefore, reach my destination before sundown. Walking on in the dark, we saw the distant flickering forest fires crawling here and there like incandescent snakes along or up the mountain-side: these are caused by the igniting of the grass, shrubs, and undergrowth by the natives, the flames not unfrequently spreading and playing havoc among the ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... doubt in the ages long ago the hill was much steeper than it now is, and there were no trees or undergrowth. On that side it was impregnable. The river, however, in receding, silted up much earth and boulders at the bend, and has ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... by refraction as to be visible as a dark line, from the distance of many miles. It is, however, very poor, all the large trees having been removed. We rode for several miles into it, and found the soil dry and hard, but supporting a prodigious undergrowth of gigantic harsh grasses that reached to our heads, though we were mounted on elephants. Besides Sal there was abundance of Butea, Diospyros, Terminalia, and Symplocos, with the dwarf Phoenix palm, and occasionally Cycas. Tigers, wild elephants, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... on that road. Do you know how the wind blows through the trees on the steep mountain side, and will make music in your heart, if your heart is tuned to its music, even while you are pushing your way through thorny tanglewood and undergrowth? Do you know how, as you go down the deep mountain ravines, with the wild rushing torrent far below, where a single misstep would mean so much, how the breeze playing through the leaves makes sweetest melody, if your heart's ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... around him, whipped by icy blasts— Gigantic chestnuts, without leaf or bird, And, like himself, grown old in that same place. Through the dark network of their undergrowth, Pallid his aspect; and the earth was brown. Starless and moonless, a rough winter's night Was letting down her lappets o'er the mist. This—nothing more: old Faun, dull ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... its lair. But there are the whirring of locusts, the demoniac chuckle of the laughing jack-ass, the screeching of cockatoos and parrots, the hissing of the frilled lizard, and the buzzing of innumerable insects hidden under the dense undergrowth. And then at night, the melancholy wailing of the curlews, the dismal howling of dingoes, the discordant croaking of tree-frogs, might well shake the nerves ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the young man was left alone. For a few minutes he stood contemplating the point behind which his companion had disappeared; then giving a hasty glance at the priming of his rifle, he threw it across his shoulder, and striding rapidly up the bank, was soon lost to view amid the luxuriant undergrowth of the forest. ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... for me the hands as well as the three overseers, were on the other side of the house. I kept the house between them and myself, and ran as fast as I could for the woods. On reaching them I found myself obliged to proceed slowly as there was a thick undergrowth of cane and reeds. Night came on. I straggled forward by a dim star-light, amidst vines and reed beds. About midnight the horizon began to be overcast; and the darkness increased until in the thick forest, I could scarcely ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... When she had fed him and put him to rest again, she went out to discover what means of egress by land was to be found from this lonely dwelling. She followed the faint trace of wheel-ruts over the grass, which for a short distance ran through undergrowth of fir and weeds. She came out upon a cleared space of some acres, from which a fine crop of hay had clearly been taken, apparently about a month before. Whoever had mowed the hay had evidently been engaged also in a further clearing of the land beyond, ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... nearer the fire with an amiable little shiver, well excused by the mountain coolness, but Rebecca was beguiled into stepping out into the moonlight The brightness of the moon and the blackness of the shadows cast by trees and rocks and undergrowth, seemed somehow to heighten the effect of the intense and utter stillness reigning around them,—even the occasional distant cry of some wandering wild creature marked, rather than broke in upon, the silence. Rebecca's glance ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... grassy lane that skirted the stunted oaks. A few hundred feet from the street stood a cottage built of yellow "Milwaukee" brick. It was quite hidden from the street by the oak grove. The lane ended just beyond in a tangle of weeds and undergrowth. On the west side there was an open, marshy lot which separated the cottage in the trees from Stoney Island Avenue,—the artery that connects Pullman and the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... now approaching, now leaving the trees. Where there was dense undergrowth they could see ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... again. Gold must exist elsewhere in California, and he swore anew that it should yield itself to him. The last miles of his ride lay along the cliffs. Sometimes the steep hills covered with redwoods rose so abruptly from the trail that the undergrowth brushed him as he passed; on the other side but a few inches stood between himself and death amidst the surf pounding on the rocks a thousand feet below. The sea-gulls screamed about his head, the sea-lions barked with the hollow note of consumptives ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... great beauty and wildness, and grand beyond description; amid the most profuse vegetation, every imaginable flower is seen in its wild state, and bank, meadow, hill-side and grass plot are literally covered with all that is most lovely; in every forest and grove, and all undergrowth even, indeed wherever the pure air of heaven and its divine light is not obstructed, the earth ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... towards the verge of the glade, and as he did so there came a shower of light laughter from the undergrowth. Pushing aside the bracken came forth two arms; a merry face appeared; then, quick as a flash, upstood a page, gaily clad, with black curly hair ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... river brings it, for three hundred yards or more, close under the hanging woods, only the width of the roadway between the broad stream and living wall of trees. Here transparent bluish shadow haunted the undergrowth, and the air grew delicately chill, charged with the scent of fern, of moist earth, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... as far as the eye could pierce stretched brown, columnar aisles, carpeted with the brown of needles and the green of June undergrowth: aisle on aisle, green arch on green arch, flecked with sunshine, mighty trunks supporting great swaying boughs, drooping with ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the picturesque foothills of Tumbala, which border upon Guatemala, in a true tropical environment of luxuriant forest and brimming streams. From this setting the ruined temples and pyramids stand forth like a vision of a charmed or fabled story. Dense tropical undergrowth covers them, and grows again as soon as explorers, who have removed portions of Nature's persistent covering, leave the place. The main structures take the form of great truncated pyramids built up of earth, stones, and masonry, with ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... struggled along now, sometimes it seemed that they had thrown their pursuers off the trail, or completely outdistanced them, but always a moment later they would hear again the crunch of the Cossacks' boots on the dry undergrowth. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... the 1st Battalion on their left, and had gone nearly a mile before they were checked by machine-gun fire ahead of them. Half-way from their starting point to Regnicourt stood a little group of houses at the top of a small hill, and from here, as well as from the thick scrub and undergrowth which covered the country on both sides, the enemy's machine gunners had a good target. Thinking that this was probably some small post left behind by the Boche as he retired, and knowing that the ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... and the same thing, and the condition of that thing was speed. He must fall upon the Arabs unawares, like a bolt from the blue. They forgot that he who led that expedition was speaking to them now; they were with him in the obscure depths of the undergrowth, surging against gigantic barriers of fallen tree-trunks, twenty, thirty feet high; they were marching behind him, like him at grips with nature in a six-weeks' struggle of life and death; and when finally he burst into the clearing on the ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... branches pattering down around me, with shells bursting all round, I continued to film the general attack until the spool in the camera ran out. To have changed spools there would have been the height of folly, so I plunged down a side path, where in the shelter of a dell, with thick undergrowth, I loaded up my camera again, and utterly careless of direction, made a dash for the edge of the wood again, emerging just in time to catch the passage of a French regiment advancing along the edge ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... a nightmare tramp. The rain never ceased. By day we lay in icy misery, chilled to the bone in our sopping clothes, in some dank ditch or wet undergrowth, with aching bones and blistered feet, fearing detection, but fearing, even more, the coming of night and the resumption of our march. Yet we stuck to our programme like Spartans, and about eight o'clock on the third evening, hobbling painfully ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... an inviting shade. It was seven o'clock in the evening, the men were packing up their tools to go home. They would be obliged to march back through the tunnel; for there was no way round, except through the wildest forest with a tangled undergrowth of brambles and ferns. But they had their lamps, and did not mind the tunnel; it was familiar enough to them, who had worked in it ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... swishing. She heard a low tremulous growl, and then everything was still again. The stillness lengthened—would it never end? She held her breath; she bit her lips to stop screaming. Then something scuttled through the undergrowth. Her scream was involuntary. She did not hear the answering yell ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... spurs they are there in plenty—crocketts, king parrots, leatherheads, "butcher" and "bell" birds, and the beautiful bronze-wing pigeon—while deep within the silent gullies you constantly hear the little black scrub wallabies leaping through the undergrowth and fallen leaves, to hide in ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... vegetate, take root, and grow in those salt marshes, lagoons, incipient islands, or what you please to call them. Their roots serve to bind the surface of the coral; and the annual shedding of their leaves, in time creates a soil which produces a verdure or undergrowth. This affords a favourite resting-place to sea-fowls, and the whole feathered race, who in their dung drop the seeds of shrubs, fruits, and plants; by which means all the variety of the vegetable kingdom is disseminated. At last the variegated landscape rises to the view; and when the ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... serve as puss's resting-place. These are her screen, her couch, her canopy; (16) apart, it may be, or close at hand, or at some middle point, among them she lies ensconced. At times, with an effort taxing all her strength, she will spring across to where some jutting point or clinging undergrowth on sea ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... creeping through the undergrowth, before Ned could utter a warning, and the latter sat down to wait for his return. The cluster of buildings was not very far away, and Jack could ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... deep into the cushions, with a shiver, "a graceful, cruel, merciless beast." She remembered a tiger she had shot the previous winter in India. After hours of weary, cramped waiting in the machan the beautiful creature had slipped noiselessly through the undergrowth and emerged into the clearing. He had advanced midway towards the tree where she was perched and had stopped to listen, and the long, free stride, the haughty poise of the thrown-back head, the cruel curl of the lips and the glint in ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... of the Oappadocian marches as the first objects of attack. In regions so difficult of access, war could only be carried on with considerable hardship and severe loss. The country was seamed by torrents and densely covered with undergrowth, while the towns and villages, which clung to the steep sides of the valleys, had no need of walls to become effective fortresses, for the houses rose abruptly one above another, and formed so many redoubts which the enemy would be forced to attack ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... heat of the fight she saw a warrior fall, who had advanced some fifty yards before the main body in front. She at once resolved to possess herself of his rifle, and crouching in undergrowth she crept to the spot, and succeeded in her enterprise, being all the time exposed to the cross fire of the defenders and assailants—her practised eye had early noticed the fatal rock, and hers was the mysterious hand ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... of the moorlands and their nooks and crannies enabled Mallalieu to make his way down to the bottom of the quarry by a descent through a brake of gorse and bramble. He crept along by the undergrowth to where the body lay, and fearfully laid a hand on the still figure. One touch was sufficient—he stood up trembling and ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... island is, or rather I should say was, heavily forested almost to its peak, with a grand and varied type of forest, very rich in oil palms and tree-ferns, and having an undergrowth containing an immense variety and quantity of ferns and mosses. Sugar-cane also grows wild here, an uncommon thing in West Africa. The last botanical collection of any importance made from these forests was that of Herr Mann, and its examination showed that Abyssinian genera and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... evening, and he stood in the shadow, looking into it. There was a tangle of undergrowth, and a heavy grove of palms. It was all dark as you looked in. Behind was the shrine of the demon steeds, the god and his wife who ride out at night to chase evil spirits away. Near by was an old tree, also in shade, with an idol under it. ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... hard-wood, and open, except for a thick undergrowth of moose-bush. It was raining,—in fact, it had been raining, more or less, for a month,—and the woods were soaked. This moose-bush is most annoying stuff to travel through in a rain; for the broad leaves ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... "I half suspected it might be so. This is the work of that rascal Flat Nose—and if that is so, he is moving northward with all speed to get away with his booty. More than likely some French hunters—ha!" He broke off short, for in the undergrowth he had caught sight of another form, that of a white man leaning against a fallen tree, with a gun clutched tightly in ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... flirt of his eye back to the absorbed station agent Billy was off down the mountain after the heavy one, walking stealthily as any cat, pausing in alert attention, listening, peering out eerily whenever he came to a break in the undergrowth. Like a young mole burrowing he wove his way under branches the larger man must have turned aside, and so his going was as silent as the air. Now and then he could hear the crash of a broken branch or the crackle of a twig, or the rolling of a stone set free by a heavy foot, but he ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... Reynard's, or of animals that climb or dig. Yet it is very pretty like all the rest, and tells its own tale. There is nothing bold or vicious or vulpine in it, and his timid, harmless character is published at every leap. He abounds in dense woods, preferring localities filled with a small undergrowth of beech and birch, upon the bark of which he feeds. Nature is rather partial to him, and matches his extreme local habits and character with a suit that corresponds with his surroundings,—reddish gray in summer ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... thwart, I panting and dripping in the bows. Yet for a touch of such sweet madness now, when all young nature was strung to a delicious contest, and the blood spun through the veins full of life! Our boat lay motionless on the sea, and the setting sun caught the undergrowth of red-brown hair that shot through Barbara's dark locks. My own state was, I must confess, less fair ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... that the building was in sight of none of the roads in the neighborhood, while less than a hundred feet from it was a strip of woods in which the removal of the larger trees had stimulated a sturdy and densely matted undergrowth that was penetrable only by means of paths that had been made by the cattle. It was what was called a 'woods pasture.' With this cover for his movements any one could approach or leave the old barn with ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... strolled alone through the tangle of undergrowth, of flowering vines in which frightened mocking-birds and catbirds were darting, to the side of the island nearest the bank of ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... sometimes throw themselves from tree to tree across a road which has not been lately used, and render it as impassable to horses as so many strains of barbed wire. When they merely escape from the undergrowth of wild ginger and tree-fern and stinging-bush, which fringes the scrub, and coil themselves in loose loops upon the ground, they are dangerous enough as traps for either man or horse. In the jungle, where they weave themselves ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... on up to the top of their steep climb, and soon passed into the dense growth of small pines which covered it. Their leader pushed on ahead, calling to them to follow; and, although the going was very difficult on account of burned timber and tangled undergrowth, they passed on rapidly down the farther slope, until presently they broke from the cover and stood at the edge of the beautiful little mountain lake which lay green and mirrorlike, a mile or so in extent, surrounded closely on all sides by ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... the wild turkey that he had pilfered, and knowing that he must keep warm, he started on a dreary walk toward the north. The snow was pouring so hard that he could scarcely see, but he heard a sound to his right, and presently he was able to discern an immense stag floundering in some undergrowth in which its hoofs seemed to ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... suitable leaves in one year or less. The most satisfactory results are obtained by transplanting the mature plants, since leaves are obtainable in a few months and in half a year suckers large enough for transplanting are produced. It is stated that in setting the plants out, the undergrowth is cleared away and the suckers are placed in the ground about 1 1/2 meters apart. Some attention is given to the young plants such as loosening the earth around them; but as soon as they obtain a good foothold no ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... village of Canterbury, which was the goal of my day's march, must lie about to the north just beyond the edge of the mountain, and in that direction I turned, pushing forward as rapidly as possible through the undergrowth. ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... took a sudden turn into the woods. The oaks and elms gave way to a grove of pines, and the tangled jungle of undergrowth was replaced by a slippery carpet of brown needles. The path climbed upward until it ended in a comparatively open space, and there, under the branches of a pine, her white hands clasped upon her knees, he saw a ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... strictly speaking, it is not with any or all of these three religions that the Christian missionary comes first, oftenest or longest in contact. In ancient, in mediaeval, and in modern times the student notices a great undergrowth of superstition clinging parasitically to all religions, though formally recognized by none. Whether we call it fetichism, shamanism, nature worship or heathenism in its myriad forms, it is there in awful reality. It is as omnipresent, as persistent, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... and became more contracted and rapid, with occasional islands and frequent sand-banks. These islands are furnished with a number of ponds, and at certain seasons abound with swans, geese, brandts, cranes, gulls, plover, and other wild-fowl. The shores, too, are low and closely wooded, with such an undergrowth of vines and rushes as ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... steamboats and flew forty ways in search of women and children, dwelt the Callenders. Out among Pemberton's trenches and redans, where the woods were dense on the crowns and faces of the landside bluffs, and the undergrowth was thick in the dark ravines, the minie-ball forever buzzed and pattered, and every now and then dabbed mortally into some head or breast. There ever closer and closer the blue boys dug and crept ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... storage facilities (the Japanese Government has built one desalination plant and plans to build one other); beachhead erosion because of the use of sand for building materials; excessive clearance of forest undergrowth for use as fuel; damage to coral reefs from the spread of the Crown of Thorns starfish; Tuvalu is concerned about global increases in greenhouse gas emissions and their effect on rising sea levels, which threaten the country's underground water table; in 2000, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... denominated a mail coach, which ran daily between Galle and Colombo. Nothing could be more beautiful than the road. We were literally travelling under an avenue, seventy miles long, of majestic palm-trees, with an undergrowth of tropical shrubs bearing flowers of the most gorgeous hues, and orchids and climbers hanging in graceful wreaths to all the branches. Birds of the gayest plumage, gaudy butterflies, and insects with ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... began to mark out a semicircle, with a radius of some fifty yards, on the river bank. Ten of the cattle were killed and skinned, and as others of the party came up they were set to work to cut down the trees and undergrowth within the semicircle, and drag them to its edge, casting them down with their heads outwards so as to form a formidable abbatis. Within half an hour of the appointed time the twenty boats had arrived together with as many more, ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... the thorn-bearing branches of a big lime tree. Dick soon recovered his nerve, and hunting up a big stick, went cautiously in search of the reptile, which he found still coiled. He broke the creature's back with his first blow and had struck several more when Johnny came crawling through the undergrowth, and ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... in the undergrowth on their right, and presently a crouching form came creeping rapidly towards them under cover of the sheltering bank. In a terse aside Yorke acquainted the doctor with the details of his comrade's mischance, keeping a wary eye meanwhile on the window. The ex-naval ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... my return I paid a visit to the Island of Talim, which, with the exception of a clearing occupied by a few miserable huts, is uninhabited and thickly overgrown with forest and undergrowth. In the center of the Island is the Susong-Dalaga (maiden's bosom), a dolerite hill with a beautifully formed crest. Upon the shore, on a bare rock, I found four eggs containing fully developed young crocodiles. When I broke the shells ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... history, and the more local and less logical energy on the whole prevailed. Whether there was something in those island idiosyncracies, shapeless as sea-mists, with which this story began, or whether the Roman imprint had really been lighter than in Gaul, the feudal undergrowth prevented even a full attempt to build the Civitas Dei, or ideal mediaeval state. What emerged was a compromise, which men long afterwards amused themselves by calling ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... the undergrowth, out of which they had just pushed. No doubt his imagination was working at full speed, and he could see a face leering out from behind every scrub bush. Smithy was at least a great reader, even ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... inarticulate cries for his mother, weeping, stumbling, his tender skin cruelly torn by brambles, his little heart beating hard with terror—breathless, blind with tears—lost in the forest! Then, for more than an hour, he wandered with erring feet through the tangled undergrowth, till at last, overcome by fatigue, he lay down in a narrow space between two rocks, within a few yards of the stream and still grasping his toy sword, no longer a weapon but a companion, sobbed himself to sleep. The wood birds sang merrily above ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... was younger here; thickets of laurel and holly grew in the undergrowth, and, attempting a short cut out, she became entangled. For a few minutes her horse, stung by the holly, thrashed and floundered about in the maze of tough stems; and when at last she got him free, she was on the edge of another clearing—a burned one, lying like a path of black velvet in the ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... long we were in sight of the ocean; now and then some wooded promontory obscured our view; now and then we were threading woods and valleys farther inland; now and then the road almost lost itself in thickets of shrubbery and undergrowth, but each time we would emerge in sight of the broad expanse of blue water which lay like a vast mirror on that bright and ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... of the main cliff was a cluster of fruit-bearing trees, plantains, areca-nuts, and cocoa-palms. A couple of cinchonas caught his eye. In one spot the undergrowth was rank and vividly green. The cassava, or tapioca plant, reared its high, passion-flower leaves above the grass, and some sago-palms ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... were now large, and stood in regular, almost geometric, fashion, with roomy spaces between. There was little undergrowth, and I could see a long way in every direction. The forest was like a great church, solemn and silent and empty, for I met nothing on two feet or four that day. Now and then, it is true, some swift thing, and again some slow thing, would cross the space on which my eye happened that moment ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... retreated aft and looked about us. The deck was a tangle of planks on edge, of planks on end, of splinters, of ruined woodwork. The masts rose from that chaos like big trees above a matted undergrowth. The interstices of that mass of wreckage were full of something whitish, sluggish, stirring—of something that was like a greasy fog. The smoke of the invisible fire was coming up again, was trailing, like a poisonous thick mist in some valley choked with dead wood. Already lazy wisps were beginning ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... authority of the Khedive was established there. On the 7th of November, following the Blue Nile up, he reached Karkoj, but a short distance below the point at which the navigation of the river ceased. He had come in contact with a portion of Fadil's force, but nothing could be done, in the thick undergrowth in which the latter was lurking; and he therefore remained, waiting for the next move on the part of the Dervish commander, while the gunboats patrolled the Blue ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... toward the Magdalena; and they are waiting for it beside the miserable rut which serves for a road, encamped in a forest of oaks which would make them almost fancy themselves back again in Europe, were it not for the tree-ferns which form the undergrowth; and were it not, too, for the deep gorges opening at their very feet; in which, while their brows are swept by the cool breezes of a temperate zone, they can see far below, dim through their everlasting ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... because they are driven to the living tree for nutriment and cover. The forest of Fontainebleau is almost wholly without birds, and their absence is ascribed by some writers to the want of water, which, in the thirsty sands of that wood, does not gather into running brooks; but the want of undergrowth is perhaps an equally good reason ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... and steadied him with a grimy hand. The leap was at last successfully taken, and the three scrambled up a rough scaur, all reddened with iron springs, till they struck a slender track running down the Dean on its northern side. Here the undergrowth was very thick, and they had gone the better part of half a mile before the covert thinned sufficiently to show them the stream beneath. Then Dougal halted them with a finger on his ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... went by slowly. To Antony, lying hidden in the undergrowth at the foot of his tree, a new problem was presenting itself. Suppose Cayley had to make more than one journey that night? He might come back to find them in the boat; one of them, indeed, in the water. And if they decided to wait in hiding, on the chance of Cayley coming back again, what was the ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... describe this dell as it should be described; and I will therefore only beg of thee, gentle reader, who peradventure mayst not have lingered in this classical neighbourhood, to fancy a deep, deep dell, its steep sides fringed down with hazel and beech, and fern and thick undergrowth, and clothed at the bottom with the richest and greenest sward in the world. You descend, clinging to the trees, and scrambling as best you may,—and now you stand on haunted ground! Tread softly, for this is the Boggart's clough; and see in yonder dark corner, and beneath the projecting ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... walking through the woods, I came to a clearing on a hillside, and as I climbed the slope I was startled by loud, profane and boisterous voices which seemed to proceed from a thick cover of undergrowth about two hundred yards ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... signal to advance when a most unexpected interruption occurred. They heard the snapping of twigs behind them, accompanied by a slight rustling among the leaves, such as might be made by some heavy body working its way cautiously through the thick undergrowth. The astonished troopers hugged the ground closely, holding their breath in suspense; and in a second more, without a single footstep being audible, the bushes parted and the form of an Indian warrior could be dimly seen ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... my scrutiny of the bushes, when I saw a large bird, with some object in its beak, hopping along on a low branch near the ground. It disappeared from my sight for a few moments, then came up through the undergrowth into the top of a young maple where some of the finches had alighted, and I beheld the shrike. The little birds avoided him and flew about the tree, their pursuer following them with the motions of his head and body as if he would fain arrest them by his murderous gaze. The birds ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... treasure convoy on the way from Panama. His movements were silent and rapid. One interesting incident is mentioned which is authentic. The Cimarons took him through the forest to the watershed from which the streams flow to both oceans. Nothing could be seen through the jungle of undergrowth; but Drake climbed a tall tree, saw from the top of it the Pacific glittering below him, and made a vow that one day he would himself sail a ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... Muriel, exhilarated by the keen, life-giving air, ran gaily on ahead of the others in a wood—and came on a tiger enjoying its midday siesta. But the striped brute only uttered a startled "Wough! Wough!" like a big dog and dashed away through the undergrowth. Another time they disturbed a red bear feeding on the carcase of a strange beast that seemed a mixture of goat, donkey and deer—Tashi called it a serao. And at a lower elevation they blundered on two black bears—not flesh-eaters these, yet more dangerous—grubbing for roots, and on another ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... here and there in the careless irresponsibility of forest spirits off duty. This was Bobby's first experience with woods; and his keenest perceptions were alive to them. The tall trunks of trees rising from the graceful, fragile, half-translucence of undergrowth; little round tunnels to a distant delicate green; lights against shadows, and shadows against lights; the wing-flashes of birds hidden and mysterious; and above all the marvellous green transparence of all the shadows, which tinted the very air itself, so that to the little boy it seemed ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... in human life, are due to the cutting away of the forests. This allows the water from rain and melting snow to reach the streams at times faster than it can be carried off, and so we have a flood. The forest floor, with its undergrowth and humus, in those localities where the forests still exist about the headwaters of our rivers, acts like a huge layer of blotting paper which holds the water back and allows it to escape to the streams slowly, and so floods ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... to do this, only to find themselves caught in a tangle of undergrowth from which it was almost impossible to extricate themselves. Then they came out at a point that was all but surrounded by big rocks. It was now so dark they could scarcely see in ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... the footpath and went through the undergrowth. He stamped on every fungus that grew on his way. He was in a destructive mood. He looked for a snake so as to trample on it or kill it ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... masts, and wholly destitute of limbs, except the little, umbrella-like crest at the very top, stand far apart from each other in an unfriendly isolation. There is no fraternal interlacing of branches to form a kindly, umbrageous shadow. Between them is no genial undergrowth of vines, shrubs, and demi-trees, generous in fruits, berries and nuts, such as make one of the charms of Northern forests. On the ground is no rich, springing sod of emerald green, fragrant with the elusive ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... a cup-like hollow of no very great extent. On the side by which the party had approached it the ground shelved down gradually, thickly covered with bushes and undergrowth; but on the opposite side, as the Gascon boys discovered, the drop was almost sheer, and though trees grew up to the very edge of the dell, nothing could grow ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Again all seemed to be happening as he wished. Presently he left the hill and, face toward the south, began to walk swiftly and silently down the rows of trees. There was but little undergrowth, nothing to check his speed, and he strode on and on. After a while he came to a brook running through low soft soil and then he did a strange thing, the very act that a white man travelling through the dangerous forest would have avoided. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... turned deliberately to face each direction; solemnly selected that from which the muttering of the guns seemed to come, and started again, moving very slowly with her hands stretched out. Something rustled in the undergrowth, quite close; she saw a pair of green eyes shining. Her heart jumped into her mouth. The thing sprang—there was a swish of ferns and twigs, and silence. Noel clasped her breast. A poaching cat! And again she moved forward. But she had lost direction. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of Sweetwater River, twenty miles out from South Pass, revived many pleasant memories and some that were sad. I could remember the sparkling, clear water, the green skirt of undergrowth along the banks, and the restful camps, as we trudged along up the stream so many years ago. And now I saw the same channel, the same hills, and apparently the same waters swiftly passing. But where ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... back into the dense undergrowth. He knew where he was, now. As he retreated swiftly in the opposite direction from that in which Jeff had approached, he could vaguely hear the excited voices at the still, questioning, replying, denouncing, exclaiming. Presently he came out upon the main trail, rounded the Gulch, ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... about us a gloom of woods and thickets that hemmed us in like a dark and sombre tide, whence stole a sweet air fraught with spicy odours; and over all a deep and brooding quietude. But little by little upon this silence crept sounds near and far, leafy rustlings, a stirring in the undergrowth, the whimper of some animal, the croak of a bird, and the faint, never-ceasing murmur ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... words of the dying man had made a deep and terrific impression on nerves not easily shaken. He accomplished it, however, so far as to drag the late steward out of the open path, and bestow his body amongst the undergrowth of brambles and briers, so as not to be visible unless particularly looked for. He then returned to Phoebe, who had sate speechless all the while beneath the tree over ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... separated, Jim and Tommy working their way up the stream, while Drusie wriggled through the thick undergrowth, with a view to approaching the fort at the back. To Helen was given the easier task of skirting round the clearing, keeping well under cover of the bushes, and holding herself in readiness to dash into the open and fire when the signal ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... turned the Germans out of it. Shattered trees and old barbed wire in a solution of mud was the chief effect produced by the parts nearest the trenches, but further back "Plugstreet Wood" was quite a pretty place to walk about in. Birds singing all around, and rabbits darting about the tangled undergrowth. Long paths had been cut through the wood leading to the various parts of the trenches in front. A very quaint place, take it all in all, and one which has left a curious and not ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... its center, which since issuing from the heart of its native rock could scarcely have been warmed or gladdened by a ray of sunshine. After advancing for some time, I conceived myself to be entirely alone; but coming to a part of the glen in a great measure free of trees and undergrowth, I saw at some distance the black head and red shoulders of an Indian among the bushes above. The reader need not prepare himself for a startling adventure, for I have none to relate. The head and shoulders belonged to Mene-Seela, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... am nearly dead. I had gone for a stroll to do a bit of hunting like, and had shot a lion who ran away into some brushwood. I knew the animal had received a mortal wound, and ran after it. But I could only see a yard or so ahead through the thick undergrowth, and was following the bloodstained track. Seeing the animal I put down my gun and was stepping over the trunk of an old tree; but just as I put my foot down, lo! I saw a terrible monster standing with ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... nothing as amply and with as ecstatic a satisfaction as the world allows, and so to me (whether it was there before I cannot tell, and if it came miraculously, so much the more amusing) appeared this thicket. It was to the left of the road; a stream ran through it in a little ravine; the undergrowth was thick beneath its birches, and just beyond, on the plain that bordered it, were reapers reaping in a field. I went into it contentedly and slept till evening my third sleep; then, refreshed by the cool wind that went before the twilight, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... and dismal, holding, it seemed, no light, yet reflecting it; and all in an extraordinary cold clearness. Nature seemed herself, yet struck to dumbness. No breeze stirred the twigs overhead or the undergrowth through which they rode. Once, as the two, riding a little apart, turned suddenly together, up a ravine into thicker woods, they came upon a herd of deer, who stared on them without any movement that the eye ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... a desperate effort to batter down the door. My horse bore me past the little lady in a flash, although she was using the whip. With a cry of "Halt and surrender!" I rode at the men pistol in hand. They whipped around the house without turning their heads, and ran off into the thick undergrowth, where it would have been both useless and ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... there for a few minutes he heard footsteps and the rustle of a skirt among the undergrowth, and presently a woman stole out from the darkness, and, running up to the man, clutched his arm, panting and ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... entering the wood, I not only found myself embosomed in the darkness of the night, but I also found myself entangled in a thick forest of undergrowth, which had been quite thoroughly wetted by ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... the best spot possible for the fugitive to land, being covered with wood and undergrowth, extending almost to the verge of the ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... permanent change of direction. Nor can one judge otherwise even when he stands before so humiliating an exhibition of groundling bigotry as is presented by some of the religious sects of the present day. The world of lower organisms survives the ascent of the higher. There is always undergrowth; but before the fall of a great tree its seeds sprout, withal in the very soil of the weedy thicket below. So out of the rank garden of Hindu superstitions arise, one after another, lofty trees of an old seed, which is ever renewed, and ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... became thinner. The scrub-pines gave place to poplar-trees, with here and there an undergrowth of willows. The trees stood far apart, and the willows grew only in clumps or "islands," so that the view was nearly open for many hundred yards around. Basil walked on with all the silence and watchfulness of a true "still" hunter—for, among backwoodsmen, this species of hunting is so called. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... of it when any happened to be there. Out in the boat sat Mr. Archibald, trusting that some fish might approach the surface in search of insects disabled by the rain. Farther on, at a place by the water's edge that was clear of bushes and undergrowth, Martin was giving Miss Dearborn a lesson ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... line of flame moved onward like a line of battle, when it moves at a charge against a flying enemy. The hungry flames ate up the woods as a monster might eat food when starving. Grasses, shrubs, bushes, thickets of undergrowth and the great trees, which stood in groves over the level plain on either side of the stream, disappeared at its touch as if swallowed up. The evergreens crackled and flamed fiery hot. The smoke eddied up in rushing volumes. Overhead, and far in advance of the on-rolling ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... apples. He soon convinced himself that this man was indifferent to his movements, and, watching his opportunity, when the man's back was turned, he slipped beyond the orchard, into a dense swamp, covered with a thick undergrowth of saplings and bushes. Here there was a huge prostrate log twenty feet in length, curtained with a dense tangle of ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... were hot scents, and strange flowers, and dazzling birds darting about, and thick moss, and little cascades bursting out. The path grew narrower and steeper, and the flower scents and the sultriness made it like walking in a hothouse. He heard rustlings in the undergrowth, which might have been made by any kind of wild animal; once he stepped across a deadly snake without seeing it. But it was asleep and did not hurt him. He knew the natives had been convinced that he would not reach the ledge; but for some strange reason ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... amid a thick undergrowth. Moving on into a passage of large, stately hemlocks, with only here and there a small beech or maple rising up into the perennial twilight, I paused to make out a note which was entirely new to me. It is still in my ear. Though unmistakably a bird note, it yet suggested the bleating ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... merchandise and faring southwards, and the first waggon had met a piled-up load of charcoal coming forth from the forest at a place in the road where they were pent between a deep ditch on one hand and thick brushwood and undergrowth on the other; thus neither could turn aside, and their wheels were so fast locked that they barred the road as it had been a wall. Thus the second waggon likewise had come to hurt by the sudden stopping of the first, and it was but hardly saved from turning over into ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... her hand—to make sight possible against the blaze—at a man who is plodding across the nearest opening in the woodland. How drenched he must be! What can possess him, to choose a day like this to go afoot through an undergrowth of bracken a day's raindrift has left water-charged? She knows well what a deluge meets him at every step, and watches him, pressing through it as one who has felt the worst pure water can do, and is reckless. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... falling. She remembered a tall aged pine that stood a short distance to the south of the tent. Between the tree and the tent was a fairly open space, that was filled principally with saplings and scrub undergrowth. Harriet in that moment understood, she thought, that the heavy downpour of rain had weakened the hold of the aged roots of the tree in the ground. The heavy wind blowing against the old pine had been too much for the weakened roots. The tree was falling with mighty crashings and reports ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... misery. The youth followed him closely, his eyes wide open with fear, as they neared the dreaded jungle. In its dark shadows who could say what dangers lurked? They pressed on, however, through trails of prickly foliage, clinging undergrowth, and fallen timber, which lay like so many traps for unwary feet. The cry had sunk to a moan, but the dog's whine was shriller and more urgent as they neared the end of ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... luck; and he, like her, felt a delightful awe, which thrilled him at each repeated sigh of the forest trees. The perfume of the foliage, the soft green light which filtered through the leaves, the soughing silence of the undergrowth, filled them with tremulous excitement, as though the next turn of the path might lead them ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... activity, the males being, during the season of nesting, very pugnacious, continually chasing one another about the woods. It lives near the ground, making its artfully concealed nest among the low herbage and feeding in the undergrowth, the male singing from some old log or low bush, his song recalling that of the Cardinal, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... had parted from the river at one of its great bends, and for an hour we had been slowly climbing a long hill. When we reached the top, we unsaddled for dinner in the shade of a tree by the wayside. A hundred yards from the road was a dense copse of undergrowth and bushes on the edge of the forest. Off to the east flowed the majestic Rhine, a league distant, and to the north ran the road like a white ribbon, stretching downhill to the valley and up again to the top of another ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... been well chosen for secrecy; indeed, we might have remained there for days were it not for fear. A giant poplar had been uprooted by some storm and had crushed in its fall an opening in, the undergrowth. The trunk spanned the little brook, and the boughs, intermingling with the ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... caught by placing one noose in the nest and others round the edge or mouth, making fast the end wires to any contiguous branch or twigs. Moorhens or water-rails, which swim or run through the constantly frequented tracks which they have made in dense undergrowth or rushes in bogs, may be captured by attaching these nooses to a string stretched across—indeed, a writer in the Field, of July 8, 1876, says, speaking ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... for the road in as direct a line as possible. Progress was bound to be slow through the dense undergrowth, and the sooner they struck the open the quicker they could hope ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... retired to our tents and the screeching-hot bath so grateful in the tropics. When we emerged, in our mosquito boots and pajamas, the daylight was gone. Scores of little blazes licked and leaped in the velvet blackness round about, casting the undergrowth and the lower branches of the trees into flat planes like the cardboard of a stage setting. Cheerful, squatted figures sat in silhouette or in the relief of chance high light. Long switches of meat roasted before the fires. A hum of talk, bursts of laughter, ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... raised drawbridge indicated that whoever occupied the castle, seclusion was important to him. Deciding that he knew enough to warrant closer investigation, Renwick moved slowly along the mountain side into the gorge, under the cover of rocks and undergrowth, slowly descending toward the road, with the idea of crossing the stream and climbing the rugged cliff beyond, from which he could gain a nearer view of the northern and ruined end ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... advanced bravely, my heart beating with all the pleasure of one who was exploring some unknown land. I saw no living thing by the way, save two grey rabbits that scuttered across my path and vanished in the undergrowth on the other side. Pretty frisky creatures! how I should like to have caught them, and fed them, and made pets of them as ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... dissatisfaction; they struck down effete institutions, but they were not the men to inaugurate a new society. It is seldom we find the pioneers of civilization the best mechanics. They strike down the forest—they turn the undergrowth—they throw a log over the stream, but they seldom rear factories, or ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... was coolness and delicate shade. It resembled a large copse, about two acres in extent. In the heart of the tangle of small trees and undergrowth was a partially cleared space—perhaps the roots of the giant tree growing in the centre had killed off the smaller fry all around it. By the side of the tree sparkled a little, bubbling fountain, whose water ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... the intricacies of the wood, he had been seriously incommoded by the thick undergrowth, and he had accidentally encountered several miry pools, with which he had involuntarily made a closer acquaintance than was at all conducive either to his personal appearance or comfort. The doctor's ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... which it is connected by a high-road. Having disclosed my intentions to La Trape, I left this road and struck into a woodland path which promised to conduct us in the right direction. But the luxuriance of the undergrowth, and the huge chaos of grey rocks which cumber that part of the forest, made it difficult to keep for any time in a straight line. After being an hour in the saddle we concluded that we had lost our way, and were confirmed in this, on reaching a clearing. ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... which was a bench. "Sit there, Man of Day," she ordered, "for you cannot see beyond your hand. You cannot know how the living things are creeping about, unafraid now of your cruel power. You cannot discern the difference in the colors of the fresh young bracken and the undergrowth; you cannot perceive the ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... they wandered on overclouded with the same foliage in gorgeous masses. The sunbeams came shining through it in a rich haze, as if the branches were only throwing off their natural light, and the very wind as it stirred the woods seemed sluggish with healthy scents flung off by the dying undergrowth. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... they cut out a space at one side of the undergrowth, into which the yaks were driven and thus afforded protection, and the guns were taken out and arranged in order to enable them to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... him as he pushed sturdily up the opposite slope, his grey felt hat and wide shoulders showing above the undergrowth. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... of brook that is, for every one knows the kind of country arbutus loves—hilly country, with slopes toward the north; bits of woodland, preferably with pine in it, to give shade, but not too deep shade; a scrub undergrowth of laurel and huckleberry and bay; and always, somewhere within sight or hearing, water. It is curious how arbutus, which never grows in wet places, yet seems to like the neighborhood of water. It loves the slopes above a brook or the shaggy ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... more terrible than a continuous cannonade. Our sentinels fired twice close by; we did not know why. The shots resounded in the forest. We lay down in our boat and hid our heads. It was difficult for us to advance through the undergrowth as the spaces between the bushes were generally very narrow. We could not row, and we had to punt with ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... easy at first, because the wood for a little space was all of beech, so that there was no undergrowth, and he went lightly betwixt the tall grey and smooth boles; albeit his heart was nought so gay as it was in the dale amidst the sunshine. After a while the beech-wood grew thinner, and at last gave out altogether, and he came into a space of rough broken ground with nought but a few scrubby ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... Piang became conscious of a heavy steam-like vapor rising from the undergrowth at the edge of the jungle; the atmosphere grew suddenly sticky and sultry. Almost within a moment the brilliant sunshine was blotted out, and a gray twilight settled over the lake. Frightened birds, squawking and screaming, hurried by; a fawn, drinking at the ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... flower-beds upon which the creeper-covered house looked forth, into many a leafy nook and shrub-bound fastness the phantom little form ran happily. Where the trees grew tall and close above an undergrowth of shepherd's-parsley and blue-bell had been a favourite resort of the child's. When the eyes of the young man followed him there, and saw him stop beside the smooth trunk of a silver birch, he knew that a new knife had been given ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... he had lost his bearings; and although he had only to go always downhill—everywhere the way to safety when one is lost—the absence of trails had so impeded him that he was overtaken by night while still in the forest. Unable in the darkness to penetrate the thickets of manzanita and other undergrowth, utterly bewildered and overcome with fatigue, he had lain down near the root of a large madrono and fallen into a dreamless sleep. It was hours later, in the very middle of the night, that one of God's mysterious messengers, gliding ahead of the incalculable ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... densely wooded hill over which the electric road runs from East End to West End, is an attractive spot to nature lovers. Hundreds of old chestnut trees make it a favorite resort for picnic parties in summer and nut-hunters in the fall. It is altogether a charming piece of woodland without undergrowth, and needs no gravelled walks or other evidences of the hand of man to add to its ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... few hours high we were moved forward with the rest of our brigade; then, later, off to the left, and placed in position on the brow of a hill that descended steeply before us, and was covered with rocks, huge boulders, and undergrowth. The right of our regiment was in the edge of a wood with a smoother slope before it. I and my company had no other shelter than the rocks and boulders, which formed a marked feature of the locality, and protruded from the soil in every imaginable shape. If we had only thrown ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... transverse gullies here and there, washed down to deep indentations; above the whole a stretch of burnt, broken timber that goes by the name of "fire-scald," and is a relic of the fury of the fire which was "set out" in the woods with the mission to burn only the leaves and undergrowth, and which, in its undisciplined strength, transcended its instructions, as it were, and destroyed great trees. And this is all. But once more, at a coigne of vantage on the opposite side of the gorge, and the experience ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... another sentry standing on watch with his loaded rifle. Him, too, I eluded, and was congratulating myself upon my success when I was disturbed by the clattering of approaching horses. I peered through the trees and saw a squadron of cavalry trotting towards me. I slipped into the undergrowth to throw myself prone under a sheltering bush. The soldiers passed within twelve feet of me. I held my breath half-dreading that perhaps one of the horses, scenting something unusual, might give a warning. I kept to my cover until the soldiers had disappeared from sight. Then ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... When he had thus got what he considered a sufficient stock, he tied their legs together with rushes, and ran a stout stick through the whole lot. Soon afterwards he came upon a wood of stunted pines, which, though there was not much undergrowth, nevertheless afforded considerable shelter and enabled him to gather wood enough to make himself a good fire. This was acceptable, for though the days were long, it was now evening, and as soon as the sun had gone the air became crisp ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... and began to graze, while the party rode through the lush saplings and bushes that had sprung up so that it was hard work to get through, till they passed under the spreading branches of the trees, where the undergrowth became ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... Salvia with a blue corolla, dotted with red glands, was very striking, a new variety, as it proved. We also observed elders with flowers and leaves at the same time, and the Bambusa formed a thick light-green undergrowth in beautiful contrast to the darker shades of the oaks, elders, and fan palms. The latter were the last of their kind we saw on this ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... had already caught sight of a lovely bird upon the ground, which stood looking at them for a few moments before hopping away beneath the bushes and undergrowth, appearing again farther on, and then spreading its wings for a short flight, and displaying the lovely colours with which it was dyed, the most prominent being shades of blue relieved by delicate fawn and pale ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... natural enough to my youth, were necessarily transient, and soon gave way to others more business-like. Perceiving the curve of an arch rising above the undergrowth still blocking my approach, I pushed my way resolutely through, and presently found myself stumbling upon the steps of an unexpectedly spacious domicile, built not of wood, as its name of Cottage had led me to expect, but of carefully cut ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... be plenty of undergrowth down in that hollow. Take my knife and cut away some of it. There's a piece of an old stump, too, that ought to burn well if ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... color in the distance, which obscurely prophesied the spring. Through the wood behind the house the snow-drops were rising, in a white invading host, over the ground covered with the red-brown deposit of innumerable autumns. Above their glittering white, rose an undergrowth of laurels and box, through which again shot up the magnificent trunks—gray and smooth and round—of the great beeches, which held and peopled the country-side, heirs of its ancestral forest. Any one standing in the wood could see, through the leafless trees, the dusky blues and rich violets ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... noise of the man's retreat through the undergrowth told that he was willing to risk ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the Conquest of Mexico the Spaniards let the native irrigating-works fall into decay; and they took still more active measures to deprive the land of its necessary water, by their indiscriminate destruction of the forests on the hills that surround the plains. When the trees were cut down, the undergrowth soon perished, and the soil which had served to check the descending waters in their course was soon swept away. During the four rainy months, each heavy shower sends down a flood along the torrent-bed ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... on picket we could see a short distance in front, the ground having been partially cleared of trees and undergrowth. A chain of double sentries was posted, and the utmost vigilance observed. We could hear the batteries opening on the ridge, while occasionally, as if to harass the picket, a 13-inch shell would ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths |
