"Clumps" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Grey-coloured woods covered a large part of the surface. This even tint was indeed broken up by streaks of yellow sandbreak in the lower lands, and by many tall trees of the pine family, out-topping the others—some singly, some in clumps; but the general colouring was uniform and sad. The hills ran up clear above the vegetation in spires of naked rock. All were strangely shaped, and the Spy-glass, which was by three or four hundred ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on the pampas were mostly remains of a vanished past. To these clumps or plantations we shall return later on when I come to describe the home life of some of our nearest neighbours; here the houses only, with or without trees growing about them, need be mentioned as parts of the landscape. The houses were ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... for granted. One must be constantly on the alert, and, more than that, one must be able to make fine distinctions with both the ear and the eye. Here is a case in point. For many days, while strolling about in quest of bird lore, I heard a quaint little song in the bushy clumps, and that, too, in some of the most out-of-the-way places. "It is nothing but the house wren," I muttered to myself, I know not how often. "It isn't worth while to look for it when there are new birds to be found. Still, it's singular," I continued, "that the house ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... could look into the heart of the mountains whence the stream issued through a narrow canyon, with steep, forested ridges on either side, and little level glades along the water, set with tall, conical blue spruce trees, pines with their warm red boles, and little clumps of aspen with gleaming white stems, and trembling leaves of ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... a family. She occupied but a single apartment in her house, and left the use of the rest to her lodgers. This was an arrangrment with which I was particularly gratified. Her cottage lay half way up on the side of a hill which was crowned with thick clumps of the noblest trees. Long, winding, narrow foot-paths, carried us picturesquely to the summit, where we had a bird's-eye view of the town below, the river beyond—now darting out from the woods and now hiding securely beneath their umbrage—and fair, smooth, lawn-looking ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... passed along at some distance Archie saw that the shore was in several places smooth and shelving, and that there would be no difficulty in effecting a landing. He saw also that there were many clumps of trees and ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... think aloud there with impunity. In 1804, Canal street was the upper boundary of New Orleans. Beyond it, to southward, the open plain was dotted with country-houses, brick-kilns, clumps of live-oak and groves of pecan. At the hour mentioned the outlines of these objects were already darkening. At one or two points the sky was reflected from marshy ponds. Out to westward rose conspicuously the old house and willow-copse of ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... are long rectangular flower-beds, sunk six inches below the surface of the court. This pavement, which consists of what we should call pantiles, is clean and perfect, and freshly sprinkled; and the sprinkling and consequent evaporation make a grateful coolness. In the flower-beds are irregular clumps of marvel of Peru, some three feet high, of varied coloured blossom, coming up irregularly in wild luxuriance. The moss-rose, too, is conspicuous, with its heavy odour; while the edging, a foot wide, is formed by thousands of bulbs of the Narcissus poeticus, ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... paid by the different licensees to the cultivation of their banks by removing the poor oysters from the high ridges, after being carefully culled and separated into clumps containing from three to four oysters, are deposited on the grass flat and lower ground lying near. Upwards of 4,000 bags have been treated in this manner with ...
— Report on the Department of Ports and Harbours for the Year 1890-1891 • Department of Ports and Harbours
... story of Kearny who knew not to yield! 'Twas the day when with Jameson, fierce Berry, and Birney, Against twenty thousand he rallied the field, Where the red volleys poured, where the clamor rose highest, Where the dead lay in clumps through the dwarf oak and pine, Where the aim from the thicket was surest and nighest,— No charge like Phil Kearny's along ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... happened to be a perfect one; the air was balmy, with a touch of the Indian summer about it. The last roses were blooming on their respective bushes; the geraniums were making a good show in the carefully laid out beds. There were clumps of asters and dahlias to be seen in every direction; some late poppies and some sweet-peas and mignonette made the borders still look very attractive, and the ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... dwindling 320 Seemed knocking at Death's door: Then Lizzie weighed no more Better and worse; But put a silver penny in her purse, Kissed Laura, crossed the heath with clumps of furze At twilight, halted by the brook: And for the first time in her life Began ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... of one of these rock-bastions, on a fan-shaped plat of green, backed by clumps of ivy and wind-tortured thorns, a group of tents had sprung up like a cluster of enormous mushrooms. More tents aligned the upper terrace, under the lee of the hedge: and here also five or six waggons stood against the sky-line, with men busy about them. Smaller knots of men in khaki toiled in ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... leaflets seem to whirl like the spokes of a green glass wheel. Ah that we could wander with you through the Botanic Garden beyond, amid fruits and flowers brought together from all the lands of the perpetual summer; or even give you, through the great arches of the bamboo clumps, as they creak and rattle sadly in the wind, and the Bauhinias, like tall and ancient whitethorns, which shade the road, one glance of the flat green Savannah, with its herds of kine, beyond which lies, buried in flowering trees, and backed ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... little wooden bridges; and the water is fed by torrents that plunge down among pine-woods from crags of fantastic form, glowing with hues of lapis-lazuli and jade; under towering peaks are luxuriant valleys, groves with glimpses of scattered deer, walled parks, clumps of delicate bamboo, and the distant roofs of some nestling village. Here and there is a pavilion by the water in which poet or sage sits contemplating the beauty round him. These happy and romantic scenes yield at last ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... village, only a very small grove of palms and near it the outline of a bordj. The place was set in a cup of the Sahara. All around it rose low hummocks of sand. On two or three of them were isolated clumps of palms. Here the eyes roamed over no vast distances. There was little suggestion of space. She drew up her horse on one of the hummocks and gazed down. She heard doves murmuring in their soft voices among the trees. The tents ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... made bright spots of emerald against the dun landscape. The quaking aspens were just beginning to turn yellow; everywhere purple asters were a blaze of glory except where the rabbit-bush grew in clumps, waving its feathery plumes of gold. Over it all the sky was so deeply blue, with little, airy, white clouds drifting lazily along. Every breeze brought scents of cedar, pine, and sage. At this point ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... growth of woods, sixty or seventy years old, in the midst of which the remains of old enclosures and other indications of former habitations are not unfrequently observable. On the cleared farms, also, may often be seen three or four different clumps of aged fruit-trees, scattered about in the nooks and corners of the lot, and sometimes extending into the woods, in such a manner as to preclude the idea that they could have been planted under any thing like the present arrangements of the farm and its buildings. Near these old ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... evicted, and great flocks of sheep were put in possession of the land; and now the sheep-pastures have been changed into deer-forests; and far and wide along the valleys and across the hills there is not a trace of habitation, except the heaps of stones and the clumps of straggling bushes which mark the sites of lost homes. But what is one country's loss is another country's gain. Canada and the United States are infinitely the richer for the tough, strong, fearless, honest ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... and stony beaches, though at times farther inland, you may find the beach plum. It is a low shrub and grows in clumps. The fruit is apt to be abundant and is sweet when quite ripe. This plum, also, is used for preserving. The color of the fruit is from red to red-purple, it has a bloom over it and grows on a slender stem. The thin stone ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... so broad, with irregular hills rising up on each side, in outline resembling the old-fashioned valances of a bed. There is a great deal of arable land; the corn ripe; trees here and there—plantations, clumps, coppices, and a newness in everything. So much of the gorse and broom rooted out that you wonder why it is not all gone, and yet there seems to be almost as much gorse and broom as corn; and they grow one among another you know not how. Crossed the Nith; the vale becomes narrow, and ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... in sprouts from the upper parts of their roots. These sprouts become independent plants, and continue to tiller (thus keeping the land supplied with a full growth), until the roots of the stools (or clumps of tillers), come in contact with an uncongenial part of the soil, when the tillering ceases; the stools become extinct on the death of their plants, and ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... exception of the rich grass which covered the surface of the ground, the only vegetation visible consisted of a few clumps of palm-trees, with fan-like leaves, scattered here and there over the wide expanse. The farm-buildings consisted of palm-thatched huts surrounded by a fence of palm-trunks, beyond which were ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... sun. Then it reached the height at which evergreens cease to grow. The birches were shorter and sparser, and through the thinning woodland appeared glimpses of a treeless pasture dotted with scrubby low bushes and clumps of rushes. A glint of clear green water betrayed a small lake in a dip of the hills. And now were heard sounds most unusual in that lonely place, the ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... carriage-window as they drove rapidly along, could see the grand outlines and the nearer beauties of the scene—the long winding drive bordered with evergreens backed by huge gray stems: then the opening of wide grassy spaces and undulations studded with dark clumps; till at last came a wide level where the white house could be seen, with a hanging wood for a back-ground, and the rising and sinking balustrade of ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... those excellent dark evergreen trees—shall we call them hemlocks?—whose flat fronds silhouette against the sky and contribute a feeling of mystery and wilderness. On this little hill are several japonica trees, in violent ruddy blossom; and clumps of tiger lily blades springing up; and bloodroots. The region prickles thickly with blackberry brambles, and mats of honeysuckle. Across the pond, looking from the waterside meadow where the first violets are, your gaze skips (like a flat stone deftly flung) from the level ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... attracted the admiration of our little party as the train sped along, was the exquisite beauty of the country. Almost every view would have furnished a subject for a landscape painter. We saw vast lawns green as emeralds, with clumps of fine trees here and there, and dotted with cattle and sheep; and would frequently catch a glimpse of castles and country seats beautifully ornamented with parks and gardens. It was a series of ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... flower-beds—of the rose, the crocus, the wallflower, the narcissus, the violet, but not, for example, the tulip—laid out in geometrical patterns. There are trellis-work arbours and walks covered with leafy vines or other trailing plants. There are clumps of bay-trees, plane trees, or myrtles, with marble seats beneath. There is either an avenue or a covered colonnade, where the ground is made of soft earth or sand, and where the family may take exercise by being carried in a litter up ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... to horse!" Hamilcar exclaimed. And the general and his son, leaping upon their steeds, dashed out from the grove in pursuit of the troop of lions. These, passing between the two clumps of trees, were making for the plain beyond, when from behind the other grove a dark band ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... is very abundant; the ulu or bread-fruit, pori or plantain and the vi, (spondias dulcis, Parkinson,) or, Brazilian plum, with numerous other kinds, sufficiently testify the fertility of the island. Occasionally the mournful toa or casuarina equisetifolia, planted in small clumps near the villages or surrounding the burial-places, added beauty to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... a capital place for the purpose, for clumps of gorse and holly were thickly scattered over the heath, affording excellent cover, and through these clumps the trainer would lay a track which each boy must follow for a quarter of a mile, and make the journey ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... was, for a rarity, fine. I started up the wood road ahead of my guide, so that I might take my climb as easily as such a thing can be taken. Passing through the bare pasture, I entered the outlying clumps of spruce which form the advance-guard of the forests on Greylock, and here my leader overtook me, urging his fiery steeds, with their empty sled. Now horned beasts have had a certain terror for me ever since ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... small hawser fast he started the taxi stunt and presently they were moving past the outlying clumps of mangroves with never a bit of trouble. Perk made himself comfortable by throwing his really fatigued form flat on the deck and stretching his muscles ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... of many generations. Fifty or more graves are quite plainly traceable, and as many more decay'd out of all form—depress'd mounds, crumbled and broken stones, cover'd with moss—the gray and sterile hill, the clumps of chestnuts outside, the silence, just varied by the soughing wind. There is always the deepest eloquence of sermon or poem in any of these ancient graveyards of which Long Island has so many; so what must this one have ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... rutty road, past a stone-cutter's yard with a high fence tapestried with theatrical advertisements, to a little red house with green blinds and a garden paling. Really, Mr. Ramy had not deceived them. Clumps of dielytra and day-lilies bloomed behind the paling, and a crooked elm hung romantically over the gable of ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... air-plants as to form a series of aerial gardens, their twigs bearing pods filled with down. Beside them palm-trees raised their heads, heavy with clusters of nuts resembling dates in size and form, but fit only for wild pigs. Clumps of bamboo were scattered about, their shoots springing from a common centre like the streams from a fountain, and sweeping through graceful curves to a spray of shimmering green. He had never seen such varieties of growth. There were thick trees with bulbous swellings; tall trees ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... midway across the vast common to the north of Guignen when he came to a halt. He had left the road, and taken heedlessly to the footpath that struck across the waste of indifferent pasture interspersed with clumps of gorse. A stone's throw away on his right the common was bordered by a thorn hedge. Beyond this loomed a tall building which he knew to be an open barn, standing on the edge of a long stretch of meadowland. That dark, silent shadow it may have been that had ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... of scrub-pine dot the gently sloping sward. Here and there clumps of tall pines stand in the bare, brown sod as if to guard the young outshoots clustering about them in wanton dispersion. Cow-paths, marked only by the worn edges of the bushes, run in zigzags across the hillside and up to the plateau. The remnants ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... where the new acquisition was locked up in company with a sufficient meal. Moore and I dined hastily, and then he summoned all his negroes together into the court of the house. "Look here, boys," he cried: "all these trees"—and he pointed to several clumps "must come down immediately, and all the shrubs on the lawn and in the garden. Fall to at once, those of you that have axes, and let the rest take hoes and knives and make a clean sweep of the shrubs." The idea of wholesale destruction seemed not disagreeable to ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... line, clear as a racecourse, by golden gorse covers, and leftward over the gorse the dark ridge of the fir and heath country ran companionably to the Southwest, the valley between, with undulations of wood and meadow sunned or shaded, clumps, mounds, promontories, away to broad spaces of tillage banked by wooded hills, and dimmer beyond and farther, the faintest shadowiness of heights, as a veil to the illimitable. Yews, junipers, radiant beeches, and gleams of the service-tree or the white-beam spotted the semicircle of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... threw up a window and thrust out his head, thus bringing clearer into view a stretch of meadow bordered with clumps of willows shading the ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... house was rough with stones and muddy clumps of grass. A track, he saw, circled the dwelling to the back; but he walked steadily and directly up to the shallow portico between windows with hanging, partly slatted shutters. The house had been painted dark brown a long while before; the paint had weathered and blistered ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... comes up again when the sun sets; but you never sees 'em when the sun's a-shining bright as it was that arternoon. It was the rummiest weather I ever see. By and by, the mist lifted a bit, and then there were clumps of fog dancing about on the surface of the sea, which was oily and calm, just like patches of trees on a lawn. Sometimes these fog curtains would come down and settle round the ship, so that you couldn't see to the t'other side ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... of wholesome water; and gardens of flower-beds. Its inhabitants are a mixed race (Akhlat min el-Nas).[EN71] The traveller making Meccah from Aylah takes the shore of the Salt Sea, to a place called 'Aynuna (variant, 'Uyun, plural of 'Ayn, an eye of water, a fountain): here are buildings and palm clumps, and seeking-places (Matalib: see Lane for the authorities), in which men search for gold." Dr. Badger draws my attention to the last sentence, which seems also to have been noticed by Sprenger ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... regarded as impregnable; such, for instance, as the heights on the left bank of the Isonzo, from Plava to Salcano Pass. The steep slopes, covered with rocks and dotted here and there with thick clumps of brush, constituted a formidable obstacle to an infantry advance. Successive lines of trenches, prepared months before above deep caverns, well supplied with defensive and offensive material, were defended by seasoned troops and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... phantasmagoria of vast masses of armed men in field grey moving across that wide, thickly peopled valley of lovely villages and cosy little towns. He saw as in a vision the rich stretches of arable land, the now red, brown, and yellow spinneys and clumps of high trees, the meadows dotted with sleek cattle, laid waste—while sinister columns of flames and massed clouds of smoke rose ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... behind the mountain; the mists lifted and rolled away as if they had been gray curtains. Everything showed clear out like a playhouse, the same Jim and I used to see in Melbourne. From where we stood you could see everything, the green valley flats with the big old trees in clumps, some of 'em just the same as they'd been planted. The two little river-like silver threads winding away among the trees, and far on the opposite side the tall gray rock-towers shining among the forest edges of the high green wall. Somehow the sun wasn't risen enough to light up the mountain. ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... Overton was soon on the spot where he was sure that he had seen some one. But now there was no one in sight. There were other clumps of bushes near, and the prowler ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... animal he moved in the shoals, seeing more drifting garden clumps. And then a dark object that did not drift. He felt for it slowly, and then straightened ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... drill-floor, cleared as if by magic from the disorderly weed-growth which had encumbered it, began to make manifest its proper crop—long lines of gray and white, like sprouting sage, at first but a dot here and there, to indicate the direction, then a scattering, then distinct clumps, finally a thick, serried row. In the distance, a bugle sounded, followed by a long ruffle of drums, and Colonel Broadcastle stepped quickly to the window ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... shore of that little pond. At last, a little back from the water, she found a place to suit her, a place so well hidden by bushes that only the sharpest eyes ever would find it. And a little later it would be still harder to find, as she well knew, for all about clumps of tall ferns were springing up, and when they had fully unfolded, not even the keen eyes of Sammy Jay looking down from a near-by tree would be able to discover her secret. There she made a nest on the ground, a nest of dried grass and leaves, and lined it with the softest and most beautiful of ...
— The Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack • Thornton W. Burgess
... she knew was to enable the pursued to make better time in getting away. After a short distance the trail turned upward, then led to the east again. Bushes were getting more scarce. Only occasional clumps of them were to be found, making the work of following the trail ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... should be ahead of us even in such a country matter as spring. Flower-baskets indeed! Why, we haven't as much as a daisy for miles around. It is true that on the terrace there the crocuses blaze like a street on fire, that the primroses thicken into clumps, lying among their green leaves like pounds of country butter; it is true that the blue cones of the little grape hyacinth are there, quaintly formal as a child's toy-flowers; yes! and the big Dutch hyacinths are already shamelessly enceinte with their buxom waxen blooms, so ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... hands of the local builder. For the Lomaxes, unlike many Australians, respected the hand of Nature even when it had traced Australian rather than English designs on their land. And the young gum trees still tossed their light heads here and there, and clumps of noble old ones stood everywhere smiling benevolent ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... neighbourhood of Tokyo, where three crops are taken in the year and sometimes four or five, I found between the rows of growing winter barley two lines of green stuff which would be cleared off as the barley rose. The barley was sown in clumps of two dozen or even thirty plants, each clump being about a foot apart, and liberally treated with liquid manure. In Saitama 100 bushels per acre has been produced by a good farmer. The clump method of sowing ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... advance; storm supervenes In heaviness unparalleled, that screens With water-woven gauzes, vapour-bred, The creeping clumps of half-obliterate red— Severely harassed past each round and ridge By the inimical lance. They gain the bridge And village of Genappe, in equal fence With weather and the enemy's violence. —Cannon upon the foul and flooded road, Cavalry in the cornfields mire-bestrowed, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... off his legions, since nothing further could be done, drew his victorious army back to some isolated clumps and avenues, where they intended to make their camp for the night. But in the course of an hour the rumours increased so much, and so many messengers arrived with the same intelligence and additional particulars, that Ah Kurroo Khan, dreading lest it should be true, sent out a squadron ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... in search of the herd of wild cattle, which we knew, from the reports of natives, to be somewhere in the neighbourhood. We rode down an extensive plain, covered plentifully with grass, and presenting numerous clumps of trees, which afforded shelter to bronze-winged pigeons and immense flights of white cockatoos. The latter screamed fearfully as we drew nigh, but did not remain long enough to allow us the chance of a shot. Many tracks of the cattle were visible, traversing these plains in every direction; but ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... gently downward from the windows till it met the broad level on which stood, in clumps, or solitarily scattered, some of the noblest timber in England. Hoar in the moonbeams stood those graceful trees casting their moveless shadows upon the grass, and in the background crowning the undulations ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... heavy for her years; but she hugged the little creature sleeping on her breast, and still kept her eyes upon the scene. Beyond she could see the smoke rising from the buildings in the city of Albany, where they were to draw the boat up for the night. On each side of the river bank, behind clumps of trees, stood the mansions of those men for whom, according to Scraggy Peterson's belief, the world had been made. Finally her gaze dropped to the scow, where little rivers of water made crooked paths across the deck. Piles of planks reared high at her back, and edged ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... chair. In the windows were pots of fragrant flowers: geraniums, asters, gillyflowers, and violets. The traveller stepped to one of the windows—a new marvel was before him. On the bank of the brook, in a spot once overgrown with nettles, was a tiny garden intersected by paths, full of clumps of English grass and of mint. The slender wooden fence, fashioned into a monogram, shone with ribbons of gay daisies. Evidently the beds had but just been sprinkled; there stood the tin watering-pot full of water, but the fair gardener ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... walls still in view, it was relief to find ourselves again in the region of life. I never felt for trees and flowers such a sense of intimate relationship and sympathy. When we had no longer excuse for resting, I invented the palpable subterfuge of measuring the altitude of the spot, since the few clumps of low, wide-boughed pines near by were the highest living trees. So we lay longer with less and less will to rise, and when resolution called us to our feet the getting up was sorely like Rip Van Winkle's in the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... that skirted the edge of the valley, now grown up to brush, but still passable for footmen. As he ran lightly along down the beautiful path, under oaks and hickories, past masses of poison ivy, under hanging grapevines, through clumps of splendid hazelnut bushes loaded with great sticky, rough, green burrs, his heart threw ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... quite wide at this point, and very lovely. It was more like a beach than anything else; and the sands, of course, like those of most beaches, were of gold; but instead of being bare, like most beaches, it was sprinkled quite thickly with lovely clumps of fog-bushes, which were of a different color every hour of the day and every day of the year; and the shells had stems and leaves, and were prettier even than most shells. And Avrillia's house had sails, instead of curtains. Still, it was not a boat, because it had star-vines ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... find the spreading poplar and the ilex in all the robust growth of an indigenous flora.... Among the minor valleys Birmal perhaps takes precedence by right of its natural beauty. Here are stretches of park-like scenery where grass-covered slopes are dotted with clumps of deodar and pine and intersected with rivulets hidden in banks of fern; soft green glades open out to view from every turn in the folds of the hills, and above them the silent watch towers of Pirghal and Shuidar ... look down from their snow-clad heights across ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... are seen to consist of a single species of grass or clover. The natural condition in meadows is the occurrence of clumps of grasses and some clovers, mixed up with perhaps twenty or more species of other genera and families. The numerical proportion of these constituents is of great interest, and has been studied at Rothamstead in England and on a number of other farms. It is [103] ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... he spoke, and I had hardly time to spring out when the coachman lashed the horse and the carriage rattled away. I looked around me in astonishment. I was on some sort of a heathy common mottled over with dark clumps of furze-bushes. Far away stretched a line of houses, with a light here and there in the upper windows. On the other side I saw the ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... spaces were like white marble in the moonlight and in these open spaces there was utter silence and emptiness. The place seemed deserted—and yet, in every shadow, in long lines under the cottage wells, in little clumps and clusters round trees or ruins there were eyes staring, the gleam of muskets shone, little specks of light, dancing from wall to wall. Everywhere there were bodies, legs, boots, arms, heads, sudden caps, sudden fingers, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... sisters into the country, with a company of the neighbors, all in little French carts, to gather strawberries and blackberries, which grew in abundance in Lucas Place, Chouteau avenue, and all about, where now are elegant mansions and paved streets. It was then a prairie, with clumps of trees here and there, springs of water and sweet ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... Hapgood house. It stood close to the street, under a row of huge elms, and surrounded with clumps of purple and white lilac bushes whose topmost blossoms peeped curiously in at the chamber windows. Such houses are only found in New England, but there they abound with their broad front "stoops," the long slant of their rear roofs, where a ladder is firmly ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... from the wood through which they had been marching, they saw the river in front of them. In its midst rose a large island, a mile and a quarter long, and more than three-quarters of a mile wide. There were clumps of sand hills upon it. They had learned that the intervening stream was rapid, but not deep; while that on the other side of the island was very deep, ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... life and war, the Zmudzians took advantage of the logs, cuts and clumps of young hazelnut growths, and fir saplings—so that it seemed as if the earth had swallowed them up. No one spoke, neither did the horses snort. Now and then, big and little forest animals passed those lying in wait and came upon them before seeing them and were frightened and rushed ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the fall. And Blue Mountain looked very different from the way it had looked all summer. The leaves had turned to brown and yellow and scarlet, except where there were clumps of fir-trees, as there were around Mr. Bear's house. Indeed, Blue Mountain looked almost as if it were all aflame, so bright were the autumn colors. Mr. Bear remarked as much to Mrs. Bear ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Then they turned to the left, and followed the wooded banks of the river for about two miles. After this the road entered the gorges of the Seille, a narrow pass between two giant walls of rock scorched by the ardent rays of the summer sun. Pine trees pushed their way through the clefts; clumps of trees, scarcely thicker at the roots than tufts of grass, fringed the crests and hung over the abyss. It was a chaos; a blasted landscape, a mouth of hell, with its wild turns, its droppings of blood-colored earth sliding ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... wondered whether I dared begin. It is always an eerie sensation to be alone in the forest, what with the whispering leaves overhead, the stir and hum of insects, the rustle of ghostly foot-falls, and (in my case) the uneasy sense of green-liveried keepers sneaking up at one through the clumps of gorse. However, I was not the man to belie the blood of Revolutionary heroes and meanly carry my unexploded crackers beyond the scene of danger, so I remembered the brave days of old and touched a whitey off. It burst with the roar of a cannon and reverberated through the glades like ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... was on dispatch duty. It was his work to obey commands and to get back to camp at once. It was bad enough to be handicapped by Mahan's grasp on his collar. He was not minded to suffer further delay by running into any of the clumps of gesticulating and cabbage-reeking Germans between him and his goal. So he steered clear of such groups, making several wide detours in order to do so. Once or twice he stopped short to let some of the Germans ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... below; the little Kuhbach gushing kindly by, among beech-rows, through river after river, into the Donau, into the Black Sea, into the Atmosphere and Universe; and how "the brave old Linden," stretching like a parasol of twenty ells in radius, overtopping all other rows and clumps, towered up from the central Agora and Campus Martius of the Village, like its Sacred Tree; and how the old men sat talking under its shadow (Gneschen often greedily listening), and the wearied laborers reclined, and the unwearied children sported, and the young men and maidens often ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... An old stone linhay, covered to its broken thatch by a huge ivy bush, stood at the angle where the meadows met. The spot had a strange life to itself in that smooth, kempt countryside of cornfields, grass, and beech-clumps; it was favoured by beasts and birds, and little Gyp had recently seen two baby hares there. From an oak-tree, where the crinkled leaves were not yet large enough to hide him, a cuckoo was calling and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... her. And she was startled. It was not the old camp of a score or more of lodges clustering and huddling together in the open as though for company, but a mighty camp. It began at the very forest, and flowed in and out among the scattered tree-clumps on the flat, and spilled over and down to the river bank where the long canoes were lined up ten and twelve deep. It was a gathering of the tribes, like unto none in all the past, and a thousand miles of coast made up the tally. They were all strange Indians, with wives and chattels ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... hill-slope, gridironed with trenches which broke out above the green grass like the wandering burrow of a mole. The last visible trench was in redder soil and ran along the crest of the hill. It passed through or near to several small woods and clumps of trees—the edges of them torn to shreds with shell-fire. They stood up against the skyline. In one of them, clearly visible, was ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... and replaced by ramparts and ditches like those on some inland courses in England. On the putting greens the natural undulations of the ground have been levelled, and the greens are all as flat and smooth as billiard-tables. There are clumps of ornamental wood, flower-beds, and artificial ponds with goldfish swimming in them. It is all very pretty, but it is hardly golf. What with the 'Grand Prix d'Ostende,' the 'Prix des Roses,' the 'Prix des Ombrelles, handicap libre, ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... mountain districts of southern Europe. It is cultivated for the sake of its leaves, which are used in salads and soups as a substitute for young onions. It will grow in any good soil, and is propagated by dividing the roots into small clumps in spring or autumn; these are planted from 8 to 12 in. apart and soon form large tufts. The leaves should be cut frequently so as to obtain them ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... where more Indians were awake and alert, roused by the cries of the herd guards. The dust-cloud is still settling. Galloping forms still issue from it and the western skirts of the village, from the clumps of Cottonwoods, from under the banks, whither the mad dash of some horses had carried their riders. But Cranston's face loses its smile, a world of anxiety suddenly replaces it, for shots and yells ring from the midst of the village still, and the chief of the first ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the Civil War there were large plantations of cotton and tobacco, dotted only here and there with the planter's mansion and clumps of negro cabins. Village life was not a characteristic of Southern society. The old South had its picturesque plantation life, and the aristocracy made its sociable visits from family to family, but that rural type disappeared with the war. With the breaking up ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... which runs far into the north and which includes much of Texas. Before them lay another and great change in the country. They were now to enter a land of little rain, where they would find the ragged yucca tree, the agave and the cactus, the scrubby mesquite bush and clumps of coarse grass. But they had passed through so much that they did not ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... proceeded some four miles up a gradually inclining slope, when the City of Nezub appeared in sight, on the brow of a hill, almost buried in a grove of palms, and surrounded by picturesque scenery, over which the clear atmosphere threw a charm not easily described. Clumps of mango, palm, and olive trees gave a beautiful contrast to the softer herbage on the slopes; while the earth seemed teeming with the richest flowers, impregnating the air with their ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... felled tree there. I was sitting on it the day before yesterday and thinking of you. Will you come there and sit with me on it? When you sit on it you get a view, oh! a perfectly lovely English view, just a bit of the house and those clumps of trees and the valley away there with the lily pond. I'd love to have you in my memory ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... more footprints a little farther, on another border which the owner of the boots had crossed, and they led him away from the house, toward a series of clumps of trees where he saw them twice more. Then he lost ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... Small cheer for a tired horse and rider! Haslam watered his steed and pounded ahead without rest or refreshment. Before he had covered half the distance to the next station, darkness was falling. The journey was enshrouded with danger. On every side were huge clumps of sage-bush which would offer excellent chances for savages to lie in ambush. The howling of wolves added to the dolefulness of the trip. And haunting him continuously was the thought of the ruined little ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... trailed into a mere whisper. He put his hand over hers and again they were silent. About them the green of the forest had been transformed by the growing night into great clumps of velvety darkness and the vault overhead was empty of stars. June airs fanned their discontent into mild despair, and simultaneously they dreamed of another life, of a harmonious existence far from Paris, into which the phantom of Theophile Mineur ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... with as much hurry as the look of the thing would permit, to reach the schoolhouse where the Paymaster had laid out the last service of meat and drink for the mourners. The tide was out; a sandy beach strewn with stones and clumps of seaweed gave its saline odour to the air; lank herons came sweeping down from the trees over Croitivile, and stalked about the water's edge. There was only one sound in nature beyond the soughing of the wind in the shrubbery of the Duke's garden, it was the plaintive call ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... modest houses met the highway face to face; a few more turned their backs upon it and were content with an outlook across Long Meadow and toward Beacon Hill, beyond which lay the village of Hillcrest which grew in importance as St. Ange degenerated. There were scattered houses among the clumps of maple and pine growths, and there was a forlorn railroad station before which a rickety, single track branch ended. Sometime during the day a train came in, and after an uncertain period it departed; it was the only link with the outer ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... consisting of three knots. The Danavas were unable to gaze at that shafts inspired with Yuga-fire and composed of Vishnu and Soma. While the triple city commenced to burn, the goddess Parvati repaired thither to behold the sight. She had then on her lap, a child having a bald head with five clumps of hair on it. The goddess asked the deities as to who that child was. Sakra, through ill-feeling endeavoured to strike that child with his thunderbolt. The divine lord Mahadeva (for the child was none other), smiling, quickly paralysed the arm of the enraged Sakra. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... friends, sisters, and servants of her husband she should behave as they deserve. In the garden she should plant beds of green vegetables, bunches of the sugar cane, and clumps of the fig tree, the mustard plant, the parsley plant, the fennel plant, and the xanthochymus pictorius. Clusters of various flowers, such as the trapa bispinosa, the jasmine, the gasminum grandiflorum, the yellow amaranth, the ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... were grazing close to the edge of the forest in which Nobs and I were concealed, while the ground between us and them was dotted with clumps of flowering brush which offered perfect concealment. The stallion of my choice grazed with a filly and two yearlings a little apart from the balance of the herd and nearest to the forest and to me. At ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... pergola stretched its row of trim white wooden Doric pillars, while over the latticed roof and through it hung bine and vine, grape, wistaria, and kadsu. Below the pergola the land broke to a brook that gurgled through copses of alder, tangles of wild raspberry, and clumps of blueberry and goldenrod, carrying the waters of the lake to the Ashuelot, which bore them to the Connecticut, which swept them southward, till quietly, and almost as unobserved by the human eye as when they rose in the bosom of the hills, ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... fashions. Some wore convolvulus on their heads, ivy-leaves, trailing fuchsia, or sprigs of plants known only to suburban haberdashers; others appeared boldly in caps of the pork-pie order, adorned with cherry-coloured streamers, clumps of feathers that had never seen a bird, bunches of shining fruits, or coins that looked as if they had just emerged from the seclusion of the poor-box. Thread gloves abounded, and were mostly in what saleswomen ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... the play of sunrays among the clumps of green at the windows; herself in white muslin which covered her slender neck and childish breast, and with naked arms, she might remind one of a butterfly escaping from the ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... stagnant day of heat. Not a breath of air moved over the river valley on which I sometimes gazed. Hundreds of feet beneath me the wide river ran sluggishly. The farther shore was flat and sandy and stretched away to the horizon. Above the water were scattered clumps ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... in the cloister garden. The place was charming. Everywhere grew clumps of palms and magnolia trees. A grapevine, over a century old, occupied a trellis in one angle of the walls which surrounded the garden on two sides. Along the third side was the church itself, while ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... moor, cloven by that one ribbonlike stretch of uneven road, broken here and there with great masses of lichen-covered grey rock, by huge clumps of purple heather, long, glittering streaks of yellow gorse. The morning was young, and little shrouds of white mist were still hanging around. His own clothes were damp. Little beads of moisture were upon his face. But below, where the Atlantic ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the air pipe of an oval or other equivalent form, and uniting the sections of which it is composed by socket joints, with clumps and keys, substantially as shown ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... in towards Dublin, running evenly like pellets in the groove of the Naas Road. At the crest of the hill at Inchicore sightseers had gathered in clumps to watch the cars careering homeward and through this channel of poverty and inaction the Continent sped its wealth and industry. Now and again the clumps of people raised the cheer of the gratefully oppressed. ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... precedence still went on in the neighbourhood of the imperial tent ground, where, under the standard of Germany, lounged some veterans of the Kaiser's guard, calmly watching the scramble. Up to the edge of the cultivated land nothing was to be seen but brawling clumps of warriors asserting the superior claims of their respective lords. Variously and hotly disputed were these claims, as many red coxcombs testified. Across that point where the green field flourished, not a foot was set, for the Kaiser's care of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... poles; there were thick ranks of brown twigs tangled over with dried peas; large flat pumpkins seemed rolling on the ground; cucumbers showed yellow under their dusty angular leaves; tall nettles were waving along the hedge; in two or three places grew clumps of tartar honeysuckle, elder, and wild rose—the remnants of former flower-beds. Near a small fish-pond, full of reddish and slimy water, we saw the well, surrounded by puddles. Ducks were busily splashing and waddling about these puddles; a dog blinking and twitching in every limb was gnawing ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... it spreads out low along the ground in the hollows or between the rocks, growing more stout and scrubby, until it forms, not a tree as yet, but a little pyramidal, stiff, twiggy mass, almost as solid and impenetrable as a rock. Some of the densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have ever seen, as well on account of the closeness and stubbornness of their branches as of their thorns, have been these wild-apple scrubs. They are more like the scrubby fir and black spruce on which you stand, and sometimes ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... the girl withdrew her gaze from the sky and hearkened to her companion. His voice, now remarkably eager and young for a man of his years, came to her clearly through the clumps ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... stretch himself across the parapet, and look down, over the narrow patch of stone paving, down into the deep moat, whose waters were lit up by the sunshine, so that the boy could see the lily and other water-plant stems and clumps of reed mace; at the farther edge the great water-docks and plantains, with the pink-blossomed rush. But his attention was wholly riveted by the fish which swarmed in the sunny depths, and for a time he lay ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... curd, what the sweet, dense, musky perfume of the hyacinth is to the shallow scent of rhododendron. Even the Titian-haired setter recognized the imperial nature of the woodcock, and was all emotion about the willow-clumps. ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... the parched grass was red, the earth so hard that a horse made no hoofprint in passing. Across this he hurried in a ferment of fear that he would come too late, and down a long slope where sage grew again, the earth dry and yielding about its unlovely clumps. ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... swards, dotted with the circular shadows thrown by fifteen huge cedars, and seven planes, I can see on all sides an edge of forest, with the gleam of a lake to the north, and in the hollow to the east the rivulet with its little bridge, and a few clumps and beds of flowers. I can also ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... Behind the house were clumps of lilacs with a century's growth upon them, and looking more like trees than like shrubs. Shaded by a group of these was the ancient well, of huge circuit, and with a low arch opening out of its wall about ten feet below the surface,—whether ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... close enough to the wall to assist them. This they climbed, got along a branch which extended over the top of the wall, and thence dropped into the garden. Here there were pavilions and fountains, and well-kept walks, with great clumps of bushes and flowering shrubs well calculated for concealment. Into one of these they crept, and ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... the sun came and filled the valley, panoramic from the farmhouse ridge, with a glory of light. Milk-white clouds capped the western hills. Nearer, dotted peacefully with farms, red barns and dark, straggling clumps of evergreen, the rolling valley stretched unevenly among intersecting lines of trees. At the foot of a hill rose the spire of the village church. To the south a crystal blaze of sun ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... time before my host could exactly realize the state of affairs, but when he did, his horse and buggy were soon in readiness, and driving along the narrow road which here led almost uninterruptedly through little clumps and thickets of poplars, we reached the Lower Fort Garry not very long after the sun had begun his morning work of making gold the forest summits. I had run the gauntlet of the lower settlement; I was between the Expedition and its destination, ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... slowly and cautiously through the clumps of trees and mesquite-bushes, until some time during the afternoon, when they came to a bend in the river known as the Horseshoe, where was located the ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... brow of the precipice, our view was perfect, and we could see both parties as they passed along, its base directly below us. Both were riding in straggling clumps, and scarcely two hundred paces separated the rearmost of the pursued from the headmost of the pursuers. The latter still uttered their war-cry, while the former now rode in silence—their breath bound, and their voices hushed in ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... camels moved off soon after eight, and they took shelter from the sun, under the shade of some clumps, covered with high grass, near the wells, in order that the horses might drink at the moment of their departure. They had three or four long days to the next water, and the camels were too much fatigued to carry more than one day's food ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Gloucester;[54] he has great dignity of manner, and his accent and delivery were forcible. Drove out with the Duke in a phaeton, and saw part of the park, which is a fine one, lying along the Alne. But it has been ill-planted. It was laid out by the celebrated Brown,[55] who substituted clumps of birch and Scottish firs for the beautiful oaks and copse which grows nowhere so freely as in Northumberland. To complete this, the late Duke did not thin, so the wood is in poor state. All that the Duke cuts down is so much waste, for the people will not buy it where ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... flesh side of the coyote pelt showed flint white before throwing out his trap line. He made the first set three hundred yards from the cabin, choosing the spot with care, for he knew that the last place a coyote would enter was the one where guiding clumps of sage formed an inviting lane across the traps. He selected an open spot instead and dismounted on a sheep pelt spread flat upon the ground; with a hand-axe he hewed out a triangular trap bed a foot across by three inches deep, placing every shred of fresh earth removed from it ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... looking under all the big leaves and clumps of ferns for his fortune. But he didn't find it, and pretty soon he came to a hole in the ground. And in front of this hole was a little sign, printed on a piece of paper, and ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... Woollahra, leafless and dusty where they had trampled the trees and green grass beneath their feet; the streets cut like furrows in a field of brick. As the eye travelled eastward from Double Bay to South Head the red roofs became scarcer, alternating with clumps of sombre foliage. Clara looked at the scene with parted lips as she listened to music. This frank delight in scenery had amused Jonah at first. It was part of a woman's delight in the pretty and useless. But, as his eyes had become accustomed to the view, he had begun to understand. There was no ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... end of an hour the basalt gorge opened out to a wide steep slope of talus on which grew in clumps the first sage brush of the desert. Here California John called a halt. The line of the Reserve, unmarked as yet save by landmarks and rare rough "monuments" of loose stones, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... windows breaking up into the eaves, a chimney standing in the middle of the ridge and another at each end. The window-shutters were not yet closed, and the fire- and candle-light within radiated forth upon the thick bushes of box and laurestinus growing in clumps outside, and upon the bare boughs of several codlin-trees hanging about in various distorted shapes, the result of early training as espaliers combined with careless climbing into their boughs in later years. The walls of the dwelling were for the most part covered with creepers, ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... which I am describing, a young man was wandering among the clumps of hoary olive-trees which shaded a valley on the eastern side of Jerusalem. The red sunbeams pierced here and there between the grey branching stems and through the foliage, and shone full on the figure of Lycidas the Athenian. No one could have mistaken him for a Hebrew, even ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... opened the gate, and those few words set the currents of their thoughts singing yet more sweetly as they flowed. They entered the great park, through the trees that bordered it, still in silence, but when they reached the wide expanse of grass, with its clumps of trees and thickets, simultaneously they breathed a deep breath of the sweet wind, and the fountains of their deeps were broken up. The evening was lovely, they wandered about long in delight, and much was the trustful converse they held. It ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... horizon's rim. Narrow ribbons of silver here and there were the numerous brooks and creeks that cut the country. Groves, still heavy and dark with foliage, hung on the hills, or filled some valley, like green in a bowl. Now and then, among clumps of trees, colonial houses with their ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... something intangible, something antagonistic, mystic, devilish. I turn from it and shudder. Then my mind reverts to the elm—the elm on which Sir Algernon hanged himself. I remember it is not more than twenty yards from where I stand. I stare down at the soil, at the clumps of crested dog's-tail and stray blades of succulent darnel; I force my attention on a toadstool, whose soft and lowly head gleams sickly white in the moonbeams. I glance from it to a sleeping close-capped dandelion, from it to a thistle, from it again to a late ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... the eye can reach the whole ground is seen strewn with boulders of rock and fallen trees, scattered round in the wildest confusion. Here and there charred stumps rise from the green-sward; in some spots clumps of spruce are seen, against which the white stems of the graceful birch stand out in bold relief; while the bank of some stream, or the margin of a lake, is marked by fringing thickets of alder. In many parts are moist, swampy bogs, into which the sportsman sinks ankle-deep at every step. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... the combe's north slope, climbing up to the old earthwork on the top. I took care to climb the slope at a place where there was no sentry, which was, of course, not only the steepest bit of the hill but covered with gorse clumps, through which I could scarcely thrust my way. Up towards the top the gorse was less plentiful; there were immense foxgloves, ferns, little marshy tufts where rushes grew, little spots of wet bright green moss. Yellow-hammers drawled their ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... must be absorbed in matters of so much higher import; that they did not require the help of any man whose work upon the pinnace would be at all important, and that the sandy beach, the pool of fresh water, and the clumps of stunted shrubs fairly spread upon the shore in front of them were all the facilities they required. As for the weather, as ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... a slope looking out upon an arm of the sea, and apparently remote from human abode. The scenery was exquisitely beautiful. A little distance off we saw the edge of the forest; the open country was dotted with clumps of trees; on the other side of the arm of the sea was an easy declivity covered with trees of luxuriant foliage and vast dimensions; farther away on one side rose the icy summits of impassable mountains; on the other side there extended the blue expanse of the boundless sea. The ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... passage between two fallen boulders. About midday I caught up the tail of the troops, who were already past the village of Teru, the highest inhabited spot in the valley; there are only a few houses, and these are scattered about in clumps a few hundred yards apart. Passing on, I caught up the battery, and reached the leading infantry, when suddenly the word to halt was passed down the ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... from the trench. There was a roar higher up the ravine, and a turgid flood, streaked with frothy lines, came pouring down the new channel, bearing with it small nut bushes and great clumps of matted grass. By degrees it subsided, and the men, gathering about the edge of the muskeg, hot and splashed with mire, lay down to smoke and wait, while the pools that still remained grew smaller. They had been working hard since early morning ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... chain of beautifully rounded hills, over which trees are thinly scattered, as if planted to embellish the scene. This is the singular charm of prairie scenery. Although it is a wilderness, just as nature made it, the verdant carpet, the gracefully waving outline of the surface, the clumps and groves and scattered trees, give it the appearance of a noble park, boundless in extent, and adorned with exquisite taste. It is a wild but not a savage wild, that awes by its gloom. It is a gay and cheerful wilderness, winning by its social aspect as well as its variety and intrinsic ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... brigade) faced the west; but they did not know whether they faced the enemy, they did not see him; annihilation struck without showing itself; they had to deal with a masked Medusa. Our cavalry was excellent, but useless. The field of battle, obstructed by a large wood, cut up by clumps of trees, by houses and by farms and by enclosure walls, was excellent for artillery and infantry, but bad for cavalry. The rivulet of Givonne, which flows at the bottom of the valley and crosses it, for three days ran with more blood than water. Among other places of carnage, Saint-Menges ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... was level and easy. Rocks and precipices were left behind, and were displaced by a soft, slippery sort of sand, where from space to space were planted, like so many oases in a desert, clumps of giant reeds. By a strange but natural caprice these beds of rustling verdure were cut in an infinity of well-defined geometric forms. Seen from an eminence and at a distance, this arrangement gave a singular effect. In the midst of these native garden-beds ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... found to be very narrow in some places, and very low, almost on a level with the sea. Some parts were bare and rocky; others were covered with vegetation, while in several places there were clumps of trees— chiefly cocoa-nut palms. When the ship came within a mile of the breakers, the lead was hove, but no bottom was found with 130 fathoms of line! This was an extraordinary depth so near shore, but they afterwards found that most of the coral islands have great depth ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... echo of the drivers' horns, and the continued whirl of wheels; and on the other—deep bay windows looking on to a lawn of softest green, winding paths shaded with grand old trees, and, beyond all, a meadow stretching down to the riverside, where punt and canoe stood waiting in happy proximity, and clumps of bamboos flourished in ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a zigzag course southward across the desert, trotting down the aisles, cantering in wide, bare patches, walking through the clumps of cacti. The desert seemed all of a sameness to Dick—a wilderness of rocks and jagged growths hemmed in by lowering ranges, always looking close, yet never growing any nearer. The moon slanted back toward the west, losing its white radiance, and the gloom of the earlier evening ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... unimportant! On the rear of the house was an iron veranda—roped with wistaria; below, inclosed in a crumbling brick wall, was the back yard—"Garden, if you please!" Maurice announced—for Bingo's bones. Clumps of Madonna lilies had bloomed here, and died, and bloomed again, for almost a century; the yard was shaded by a silver poplar, which would gray and whiten in the wind in hot weather, or delicately ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... as if pursued by the tempest upstairs, Claude disappeared behind the clumps of shrubbery in the garden. But two hours later Sandoz, who after losing Mahoudeau had just found him again with Jory and Fagerolles, perceived the unhappy painter again standing in front of his picture, at the same spot where he had met him the first time. At the moment of ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... injur'd fields, ye once were gay, When Nature's hand displayed Long waving rows of willows grey And clumps of hawthorn shade; But now, alas! your hawthorn bowers All desolate we see! The spoiler's axe their shade devours, And cuts down ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... and not particular about its surroundings, so long as it has enough water. While the flowers are pretty, being a cheery yellow, the plant is grown for its foliage. New plants may be had by dividing old clumps. ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... athwart a tree, but for the recollection, as I was reeling to the ground, of a hulk of a fellow suddenly fronting me, and he did not hesitate with his fist. I went over and over into a heathery hollow. The wind sang shrill through the furzes; nothing was visible but black clumps, black cloud. Astonished though I was, and shaken, it flashed through me that this was not the attack of a highwayman. He calls upon you to stand and deliver: it is a foe that hits without warning. The blow took me on the forehead, and might have been worse. Not seeing the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... may be a misprint for mezquitas, referring to the mezquit (Algarobia) of Nueva Espana—the writer meaning that along the Quingua valley were numerous thickets of some shrub resembling the mezquit. The river is now fringed with clumps of prickly bamboo. It is also possible that mosquitas is simply a misprint ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... Reading the lessons! What was the meaning of that? And with his arm in a sling! It must have really required attention when he disappeared so mysteriously the other day. Handsome? Yes, he was very handsome. That broad white forehead crowned with its tawny clumps of hair! She would like to thank him once more, for he had certainly saved her life. She rang the bell, and ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... wooden bench. A tall hedge of prickly thorns prevented passers-by on the narrow village street from peeping in. At one end a heavy grapevine clambered over a trellis, while at the other there were several rich clumps of myrtle that showed dark against the surrounding grass. Below the thorn hedge stood a row of bold flaunting tulips, and there were two flower-beds, one of white, the other ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... incident. Leaves that made crimson glories by day still clung low down about the wide-girthed trunks beyond the straggling hedge of ancient thorns, but the higher branches rose nakedly against faintly luminous sky. Spruce firs formed clumps of solid blackness, and here and there a delicate tracery of birch boughs filled gaps against the sky-line between. The meadows behind him were silent and empty, streaked with belts of spectral mist, and, because it was not very late, he could see a red glimmer of ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... wild fig and strawberry; The milky pine-nuts which the autumn-blast Shakes into the tall grass; or such small fry As from the sea by winter-storms are cast; And the coarse bulbs of iris-flowers he found 140 Knotted in clumps under the spongy ground. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Vyell—the Collector's only child, and motherless—sat and gazed out of the windows in a delicious terror. For hours that morning the travellers had ploughed their way over a plain of blown sand, dotted with shrub-oaks, bay-berries, and clumps of Indian grass; then, at a point where the tall cliffs began, had wound down to the sea between low foothills and a sedge-covered marsh criss-crossed by watercourses that spread out here and there into lagoons. At the head of this descent the Atlantic had come ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... There was very little shrubbery, but here and there orange boughs bent beneath their load of golden fruitage, while the glossy foliage, stirred by the wind, trembled and glistened in the sunshine. Beyond the inclosure stretched the common, dotted with occasional clumps of pine and leafless oaks, through which glimpses of the city might be had. Building and grounds wore a quiet, peaceful, inviting look, singularly appropriate for the purpose designated by the inscription "Orphan Asylum," ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... covered with dark pines and huge rocks showing here and there on the bare fall of some precipice. Between the foot of the mountains and the track was rugged ground, with large bowlders scattered here and there. Clumps of trees and bushes and numerous gullies ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... he takes rank with the best. His phrase is always a short-cut to his sense, for his estate was too spacious for him to need that trick of winding the path of his thought about, and planting it out with clumps of epithet, by which the landscape-gardeners of literature give to a paltry half-acre the air of a park. In poetry, to be next-best is, in one sense, to be nothing; and yet to be among the first in any kind of writing, as Dryden certainly was, is to be one ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell |
