"Bird's-eye" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the sunlight! How magically the great white flower of foam expands and closes on the sapphire water as the long waves, one by one, pass over the top of the big rock between us and Islesford! This is a bird's-eye view: not a high-flying bird, circling away up in the sky, or perched upon some lofty crag, as Tennyson describes ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... great seafaring Nordic race. Never mind the confusing lists of tribes and kings on either side—the Jutes and Anglo-Saxons, the Danes and Normans, on one side, and the Celts of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, on the other; nor yet the different dates and places; but simply take a single bird's-eye view of all the Seven Seas as one sea, of all the British Norsemen as one Anglo-Norman folk, and of all the centuries from the fifth to the twentieth as a single age; and then you can quite easily understand how the empire ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... Squire said, taking up a chip in his fingers. "Bird's-eye maple. Was there more than ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... joy were heard on all sides; then musicians assembled to give a serenade to the chief of state, and proceeded to form themselves into orchestras; and there was dancing the whole night through. I have never seen a sight more striking or more joyous than the bird's-eye view of ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... V-shaped ripple upon its surface like the wake of a swimming dog. Now, as he pushed his way through the looser fringe the head was raised, and there was the grinning, hardy face of the smith looking up at us. He had left his hat in the ring, and was enveloped in an overcoat with a blue bird's-eye handkerchief tied round his neck. As he emerged from the throng he let his great-coat fly loose, and showed that he was dressed in his full fighting kit— black drawers, chocolate stockings, ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... could have gained a bird's-eye view of the vessel would have seen sufficient to excite his distrust of that innocent-seeming craft. From the water-side only ten or twelve men could be seen, but on looking downward the decks would have been perceived to be crowded with men, lying down so as to be hidden behind the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... at the end of the hill, where the ground falls away like a cliff and you have a bird's-eye view of two counties, we sat down on the steps of the monument erected in honour of those Hampdenshire men whose lives were thrown away ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... a grand one. Belforest Park on the one side, the town almost as if in a pit below, with a bird's-eye prospect of the roofs, the gardens and the school-yard, the leaden-covered church, lying like a great grey beetle with outspread wings. Beyond were the ups- and-downs of a wooded, hilly country, with glimpses of blue river here and there, and village and town gleaming out white; a large ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... only posts, rails, and a chain, such as are now in Holborn, Smithfield, and Whitechapel bars. Afterwards there was a house of timber erected across the street, with a narrow gateway and an entry on the south side of it under the house." This structure is to be seen in the bird's-eye view of London, 1601 (Elizabeth), and in Hollar's seven-sheet map of London ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... descending to the harbor,—by flights of old mossy stone steps,—that looking down them to the azure water you have the sensation of gazing from a cliff. From certain openings in the main street—the Rue Victor Hugo—you can get something like a bird's-eye view of the harbor with its shipping. The roofs of the street below are under your feet, and other streets are rising behind you to meet the mountain roads. They climb at a very steep angle, occasionally breaking into stairs of lava ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... will the gentle Dilettanti crew Now delegate the task to digging Gell? That mighty limner of a bird's-eye view, How like to Nature let his volumes tell; Who can with him the folio's limits swell With all the Author saw, or said he saw? Who can topographise or delve so well? No boaster he, nor impudent and raw, His pencil, pen, and shade, alike ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... I found the experience a novel but not a pleasing one, for all my life I have had a tendency to vertigo when ascending to any unusual height. I remember that it was a clear day, and that we had a fine bird's-eye view of Paris on the one hand and of the plain of Saint Denis on the other, but I confess that I felt out of-my element, and was glad to set foot ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... an element of the grotesque in a bird's-eye view of a lady making shots at her mouth with a spoon and trying to smile and look spirituelle ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... Littlefork did it for occupation. I expostulated with him in public and in private; Mr. Pepper cut his society; Mr. Tomlinson read him an essay on Real Greatness of Soul: all was in vain. He was pumped by the mob for the theft of a bird's-eye wipe. The fault I had borne with,—the detection was unpardonable; I expelled him. Who's here so base as would be a fogle-hunter? If any, speak; for him have I offended! Who's here so rude as would not be a gentleman? If any, speak; for him have I offended! I pause for a reply! What, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... We have given a bird's-eye view of the main incidents of his boyhood, for we cannot quite agree with our author in thinking that his "old grammar laid the foundation, in part, of Abraham's future character," seeing we have previously been told that he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... to come from the name to the flower. The English Primrose is one of a large family of more than fifty species, represented in England by the Primrose, the Oxlip, the Cowslip, and the Bird's-eye Primrose of the North of England and Scotland. All the members of the family, whether British or exotic, are noted for the simple beauty of their flowers, but in this special character there is none that surpasses our own. "It is the very flower of ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... a small volume, which might excel in genius, and yet be likely not to be long remembered! All this is labour which never meets the eye. It is quicker work, with special pleading and poignant periods, to fill sheets with generalising principles; those bird's-eye views of philosophy for the nonce seem as if things were seen clearer when at a distance and en masse, and require little knowledge of the individual parts. Such an art of writing may resemble ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... he had had specially taken and framed by a local man in bird's-eye maple, as a present for Arabella, and had duly given her on their wedding-day. On the back was still to be read, "Jude to Arabella," with the date. She must have thrown it in with the rest of her property ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... water, how vastly more interesting and fascinating it is for a man to have a yacht in which he can fly to Europe in one day, and with which the exploration of tropical Africa or the regions about the poles is mere child's play, while giving him so magnificent a bird's-eye view! Many seemingly insoluble problems are solved by the advent of these birds. Having as their halo the enforcement of peace, they have in truth taken us a long step towards heaven, and to the co-operation and higher civilization that followed we shall owe much of the success of the great ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... and the sovereignty of the world is left to the birds. However much all this resembles a mere farcical fairy tale, it may be said, however, to have a philosophical signification, in thus taking a sort of bird's-eye view of all things, seeing that most of our ideas are only true in a human point ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... than mere skeletons of dead branches, we must perforce continue ignorant of the science of grafts. For the nonce we must be content to generalize from our own premises, only rising above them sufficiently to get a bird's-eye view of our neighbor's estates. Such a survey has at least one advantage: the whole field of view ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... you, madam, that box-seat was a queer box for me. I felt as though I was sitting on the eaves of a roof with a herd of horses cavoorting under my feet. I never had a bird's-eye view of horses before. Looking down on their squirming bodies, with the coachman almost standing on his tiptoes driving them, was so different from Jone's buggy and our tall gray horse, which in general we look up to, that for a good while ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... had rung out there. The situation of the Castle was magnificent. It stood on the summit of a wooded cliff which ran sheer into the river, and commanded a splendid prospect of the country round, and a bird's-eye view of the little town that clustered at the ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... looking for the weak point in the ramparts, the place where he might make a breach and put up his scaling ladders. For his plan was to take Orleans by assault. William Glasdale said to him, "My Lord, look well at your city. You have a good bird's-eye view ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... your intellectual heights, eat a good dinner, take a nap, and live like the rest of us till the next Sabbath, when (if it is a fine day) you climb some other theological peak, far beyond the limits of perpetual snow, and there take another bird's-eye view of something that might be found very different if you were nearer ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... intensified this effect. The mantelpiece was crammed with brass ornaments, and there were two complete sets of brass fire-irons in the brass fender. Above the mantelpiece a looking-glass, in a wan frame of bird's-eye maple, with rounded ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... navigators of the air like some mirror of silver in a setting of green fields. Tom could see a winding river, that flowed into the lake, and he noted towns, villages, and even distant cities, interspersed here and there with broad farms or patches of woodlands, like a bird's-eye view of a ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... interesting elements which made the cruise of the Woermann unusual. Mr. Boyce and his party of six were on board and were on their way to photograph East Africa. They took moving pictures of the various deck sports, also a bird's-eye picture of the ship, taken from a camera suspended by a number of box kites, and also gave two evenings of ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... the morning; we found one between some large pieces of rock. We agreed that one should watch while the other two slept; this Hastings undertook to do, as he was not inclined to sleep. At daylight he woke Romer and me, and we made our breakfast. From the place we were concealed in, we had a bird's-eye view of the farmhouse, and of what was ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... London foggy. Kent does not show along its main railway line the evidence of agricultural depression: it is like a garden. Yet, in a very careful and thorough French book just published by a French traveller, his bird's-eye view of the country as he went through Kent just after landing would make you think the place a desert; he seems to have thought the hedges a sign of agricultural decay. The same foreigner will discover a plebeian character in the Commons and an ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... Annabella Powder. Now the fishing rods were put into the ladies' hands; now the cavaliers attentively supplied their hooks with what was supposed to be bait, and performing afterwards the same office for their own, the brook presently had the appearance, or would to a bird's-eye view, ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... geography, which are required by society, almost anything and everything could be omitted if they greatly desired it. But they have forced young people to study in much the same way as they themselves visit European countries, straining to get a bird's-eye view of everything, and settling on nothing long enough to know it intimately and to enjoy it deeply. They justify Herbert Spencer's remark to the effect that he would have known no more than a great many other persons, if he had read as ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... a political resume, a multum in parvo. It is a sermon, a song, a circus, an obituary, a picnic, a shipwreck, a symphony in solid brevier, a medley of life and death, a grand aggregation of man's glory and his shame. It is, in short, a bird's-eye-view of all the magnanimity and meanness, the joys and griefs, the births and deaths, the pride and poverty of the world, and ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... landscape, Cousin Homer? Something foreign, evidently. I always think that a government office should be representative of the government. I have a print at home, a bird's-eye view of Washington in 1859, which I will send you if you like. I suppose you have an express frank? No? How mean of Congress! What did ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... Appleton hisself he'll hate ye worse'n ever, f'r he'll think ye'll be afther crimpin' his bird's-eye game. Take advice, Bill, an' kape on th' good side av um av ye can. He'll t'row ut into ye wid all manner av dhirty thricks, but howld ye're timper, an' maybe ye'll winter ut out—an' maybe ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... means deals in fiction; She gathers a repertory of facts, Of course with some reserve and slight restriction, But mostly traits of human things and acts. Love, war, a tempest—surely there's variety; Also a seasoning slight of lubrication; A bird's-eye view, too, of that wild society; A slight glance thrown on ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... tell me again to-morrow night," said Eileen, enjoying her own comedy powers. "My poor father tried to teach me the difference between bird's-eye and shag, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... the dry rooms it is assorted, counted, and put up in packages of one hundred each, and tied with cords like lath, when it is ready for shipment. Bird's-eye maple veneer is much more valuable and requires more care than almost any other, and this is packed in cases instead of tied in bundles. The drying process is usually a slow one, and conducted in open sheds simply exposed to the air. Mr. Densmore's ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... village the road wound down to a forest that had formed a dark blur in our bird's-eye view of the plain. We passed into the forest and halted on the edge of a colony of queer exotic huts. On all sides they peeped through the branches, themselves so branched and sodded and leafy that they seemed like some transition form between tree and ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... long among them now. She was resolved to get a full and delicately complete first impression of Beni-Mora, and to do that she knew that she must detach herself from close human contact. She desired the mind's bird's-eye view—a height, a watchtower and a little solitude. So, when the eager Mozabite merchants called to her she did not heed them, and even the busy patter of the informing Batouch fell upon ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... "Consider, in the bird's-eye view of the banquet, the trencher cuts, foh! nankeen displays: as intersticed with many a brilliant drop to friendly beck and clubbish hail, to moisten the viands or cool the incipient cayenne. No ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... mists. A bright sun may suit particular scenes, and peculiar moods of the mind, but every connoisseur in the beauties of nature will allow that, as a rule, clouds, and very frequently a partial obscurity, greatly aid a landscape. This is yet more true of a bird's-eye view of a grey old mass of walls, which give up their confused and dusky objects all the better for the absence of glare. I love to study a place teeming with historical recollections, under this light; leaving the sites of memorable ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... someone, it was his human equivalent to killing a rat; but when the professor led off at him, the case was different, and Topper, without warning, went straight at the supposed assailant's throat. Fortunately the professor had a bird's-eye handkerchief round his neck, which protected it from the dog's teeth, for Topper sprang right up and fixed him. It was frightful to look at, but Stubbs had the presence of mind to seize his animal round the throat with both hands immediately and drag him away; his teeth ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... up in a kind of moral balloon," suggested Rainham laughingly, "and get a bird's-eye ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... centre of the earth; and at the same time I was shown the numbers and measures proper to every country, but I have forgotten them, individually as well as in general. Yet I have seen this centre from above, and as it were from a bird's-eye view. In that way a person sees far more clearly than on a map all the different countries, mountains, deserts, seas, rivers, towns, and even the smallest places, whether distant ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... for a bird's-eye view of the city, and the scene is entrancing. We look down upon the calm-flowing Exe threading its way through the valley till it debouches at Exmouth; on the riverside beneath us is the quay, with coasting schooners and barges moored alongside, ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath
... you a bird's-eye view of Germany; rocks, and woods, and clouds, and brooks, and the pebbles in their beds, and mills, and cottages, and fences, and what not; but it is all a feverish dream, ghastly and strange, ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... a wolf weep!" returned Eben Dudley, raising his large frame so as to stand erect on the shaft, where he commanded a bird's-eye view of most of the desolation of the valley. "Evil though it be, we may not say that forewarning signs have been withheld. But what is the cunningest man, when mortal wisdom is weighed in the scale against the craft of devils? Come forth! Belial ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... material damage from the recent conflicts, though the garrison of the citadel have thrown a few shots at its tower, most probably with a view to drive curious eyes out of it, the great height enabling one to get a complete bird's-eye view of what is going on within their walls. The celebrated Rubenses were cased in massive timber to render them bomb-proof, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... no use wandering aimlessly," he decided at length, "and I'll either have to gain a bird's-eye view of the country or get Mr. Balfour to make me a map. To think that I should have discovered him, and here of all places in the world. What a sensation it will make when I tell of it. Of course I shall do so, for I'll get out of this fix all right somehow. What a state of mind poor White must ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... main thing is to get an elevation from which you may see in every direction. If you could come up to Heaven, we should be saved any further trouble; you would then have a good bird's-eye view of everything. But it would be sacrilege for one so conversant with phantoms to set foot in the courts of Zeus. Let us lose no time, therefore, in looking out a good ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... that a young lady, Miss Read, who was standing in the door of her father's residence as Benjamin passed, thought he made a very awkward and ridiculous appearance? She little thought she was taking a bird's-eye view of her future husband, as the youth with the rolls of bread under his arm proved to be. But just then he cared more for bread than he did for her; some years after, the case was reversed, and he cared more for her than he did ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... dragoons; and tradespeople always want to serve dragoons; and hotel-keepers to entertain dragoons; and theatrical managers to be patronized by dragoons. Who could have ever expected that a dragoon would drink sixpenny ale, smoke horrid bird's-eye tobacco, and let his wife wear ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... pointed out to me on the wing that at a spot some 900 miles to the west of the Portuguese coast, just opposite the place where your mushroom city of Lisbon now stands, the water of the ocean, as seen in a bird's-eye view from some three thousand feet above, formed a distinct greenish patch such as always betokens shoals or rising ground at the bottom. Flying out at once to the point he indicated, and poising myself above it on my broad pinions ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... had been lost by this delusive retracing of footmarks. He thought that if he climbed the highest tree he could find, he would be able to get a bird's-eye view of the country round. Oh that he might behold some islet of clearing amid the ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... out upon the plains all day: Heaven knows what we shall do when the berries are gone." But Mrs. Graffam said nothing more. She set out the pine table, and going to an old chest brought a white cloth; it was of bird's-eye diaper. Graffam remembered well who wove it; and a pleasant vision came along with that white table-cloth. He saw his mother, as in olden times, weaving; while he stood by her side, wondering at the skill ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... me in touch with parties that could furnish this." This was a large photographic bird's-eye map of a country which looked very much like Arizona, or the wild places anywhere next the Mexican borderline. "Where I got it I am not at liberty to say. It's a practice map—done for the training in aerial photography that is essential nowadays in warfare. The government is ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... reader, on the first eminence, and let us take a bird's-eye view of the city, always keeping in mind that the Kremlin is the great nucleus from which it all radiates. What a vast, wavy ocean of golden cupolas and fancy-colored domes, green-roofed houses and tortuous streets circle around this magic pile! what ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... summit there was a curious view of the multitudinous wooden houses and the sinuous windings of the river, which could alone be obtained from such a bird's-eye point of inspection. An old temple at the top was in the hands of the Hindoo faction, being dedicated to the goddess Mahadewee, and in charge of it I found two of the dirtiest fukeers, or religious mendicants, I ever had the ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... the air above the game sanctuary on the northern tip of Manhattan Island. In the screen, he had an aerial view of the grassy, rocky mounds where the earth hid the shattered and partially melted ruins of long-collapsed buildings. In the center of the screen was a bird's-eye view of a man holding a rifle. He was walking slowly, picking his way carefully along the bottom of the shallow gully that had ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Robinson had found the horses in a small but extra dense bunch of scrub not twenty yards from the spot where he had tied his horses up. While I was away he had gone on top of the little stony eminence close by, and from its summit had obtained a bird's-eye view of the ground below, and thus perceived the two animals, which had never been absent at all. It seemed strange to me that I could not find their tracks, but the reason was there were no tracks to find. I took it for granted when Carmichael told me of their absence that they ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... chosen green as the predominant colour, and the couch and easy-chairs were upholstered in a lovely design of green and white. The rug was green and white, and for the brass bedstead with its white fittings, a down comfortable with a pale green cover was found. The dainty dressing-table was of bird's-eye maple; and for this Mr. Fairfield ordered a bewildering array of fittings, all in ivory, with Patty's monogram ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... the view. There were the clouds; but their crimson and purple glories had faded. There was the little grove of birch and maple by the side of the brook—the prettiest place on her father's farm, Christie thought; and that was all. A bird's-eye view of the country for many miles around showed no variety of scenery, except the alternation of long, broad fields of grass and wheat, or, rather, fields where grass and wheat had been, with wide, irregular stretches of low-lying ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... of Chaucer, and the precursors of Shakespeare, are alike real persons to him—old Langland reminding him of Carlyle's "Gospel of Labour." The product of a large store of reading has been here secreted anew for the reader who desires to see, in bird's-eye view, the light and shade of a long and varied period of poetic literature, by way of preparation for Shakespeare, [9] (with a full essay upon whom the volume closes,) explaining Shakespeare, so far as he can be explained ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... 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 fields, which glowed at the proper season with the myriad green and white pinnies of corn and cotton. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... cross Central Africa into the Congo region on the Western side, returning afterward to the East for a bird's-eye view of the Abyssinians, the Somali, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... saw from his bird's-eye perch, was a circular clearing two hundred yards across, which was surrounded on all sides by lowering jungle. In the exact center of the circle, like a splotch of ink on gray paper, there gaped a deep hole which might have measured six feet in diameter. Around this hole, eight poles ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... patches of snow lay here and there in the hollows. Two or three miles below them nestled one of the most famous pleasure resorts of the entire region. Three or four times as distant lay the nearest town of any importance. Over the plain and through the clear atmosphere it looked like a bird's-eye-view map rather than an actual town. Far away to the left, gorgeous in coloring and grotesque in outline, could be seen the odd figures ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... very simple way does the value of our educated class define itself: we more than others should be able to divine the worthier and better leaders. The terms here are monstrously simplified, of course, but such a bird's-eye view lets us immediately take our bearings. In our democracy, where everything else is so shifting, we alumni and alumnae of the colleges are the only permanent presence that corresponds to the aristocracy in older countries. We have continuous traditions, as they have; our motto, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... miles at a stretch more than fifty times as deep as the falls and the gorge, generally admitted to be the most awful scenic grandeur within reach of the ordinary traveler. Nor is this all. Visitors to Paris who have enjoyed a bird's-eye view of the gay city from the summit of Eifel Tower, have felt terribly impressed with its immense altitude, and have been astounded at the effect on the appearance of living and inanimate objects so far below ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... the final stages of the dispute, it may be well to take a bird's-eye view of the condition of the chief Powers in so far as it explains their ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... pitched told him nothing, and it was only after he had climbed a high hill a mile and a half away from the river that he began to have any indication of his whereabouts. Then with the country lying before him in a bird's-eye view he was able to learn his position. There was more than one river in view, and a chain of small lakes lay between one of them and the river where he had been left by his captors. From the last of those lakes a long portage, such as had been made on the last day but ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... his neck. Course, I don't let on I can spot anybody I've ever known just by a sectional glimpse like that. But this was no common case of freckles. This was a splotchy, spattery system of rust marks, like a bird's-eye view of the enemy's trenches after a week of drum fire. Besides, there was the pale ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... two soldiers nodded. The position lay before them like a bird's-eye view; and Concepcion, in whom Spain had perhaps lost a guerilla general, had only set eyes on the spot once as he rode ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... tea-plate, we often sallied forth in fancy to explore the Chinese world as portrayed in blue or pink upon earthen table-ware of the olden time. And what a world! How artfully adapted to childish notions, how convenient for bird's-eye views, this arrangement of lofty mountain peaks, deep gorges, and rocks of fantastic forms, tangled up with examples of nature subdued by Chinese art in landscape gardening and ornate architecture. ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... A multum in parvo! A bird's-eye view, as one may say,—and not entertaining, certainly. What other branches have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... chenille-like." The old farmer looked at the architect meaningly; he felt himself suddenly a man of the world; he stood almost straight in his wrinkled boots, looking around the little kitchen fiercely and roaring: "Golden oak or bird's-eye maple! I got catalogues. Spare no expense. Get him what he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and the thickness averaging two metres, seventy-five centimetres. It was possibly intended, like those above Wady Tiryam, to defend the western approach; and, superficially viewed, it looks like a line of stones heaped up over the dead, with that fine bird's-eye view of the valley which the Bedawi loves for his ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... An excellent bird's-eye view of the cathedral can be obtained from the castle, either from the keep itself, or from a convenient opening in the outer wall. On the church's own level good views can be obtained of almost all the principal parts, though ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... of stock, sum up the changes for better or for worse in the use and treatment of the room, in the manners and habits of the children and in their reading. She will have to retire a little from her work, take a bird's-eye view of it, and decide if on the whole progress is making toward her ideal. Without identifying itself with any of the movements such as the kindergarten, child-study, and social settlement, without losing control of itself and resigning itself ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... the finest in Greece. I speak here of the large and diverse views to be obtained from mountain heights. To me, personally, such a view as that from the promontory of Sunium, or, above all, from the harbor of Nauplia, exceeds in beauty and interest any bird's-eye prospect. Any one who looks at the map of Greece will see how the Acro-Corinthus commands coasts, islands, and bays. The day was too hazy when we stood there to let us measure the real limits of the view, and I can not say how near to Mount Olympus ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... country. It is assuredly impossible to form a clear or indeed any correct idea in regard to a nation unless we know something of the manners and customs, the daily life, the amusements, the vices of its people. Unless we can, as it were, take a bird's-eye view of the people at work and at play, at their daily avocations in their homes, see them as they come into the world, as they go through life's pilgrimage, and, finally, as they pay the debt of ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... Tarzan came within sight of the German lines. From a wooded spur of the hills he looked down upon the enemy's left flank and beyond to the British lines. His position gave him a bird's-eye view of the field of battle, and his keen eyesight picked out many details that would not have been apparent to a man whose every sense was not trained to the highest point of perfection as were the ape-man's. He noted machine-gun emplacements ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... interrupted the priest in mild glee, "here's a subject to talk about at lunch. Just get Manners on to it, and you'll have no trouble. He loves lecturing; and he talks just like a history-book. Tell him you've been reading his History and want a bird's-eye view." ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... earth and life were forgotten. A milky whiteness spread more and more over the whole heavens though they were still darkened here and there by wreaths of smoke. Little by little, bright clusters of houses became plainly visible; a bird's-eye view was obtained of the whole city, intersected by streets and squares, which with their shadowy depths described the ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... morning to bring his influence to bear upon her. He relied a good deal upon Valerie's affection for himself, which was strong and single-hearted. Moreover, he had trained her to the masculine habit of taking a broad view, a bird's-eye view, of the whole of a given subject, instead of turning the microscope of her emotions on any one point, ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... martyr'd Raleigh, He cursed the mild cigar, He traced to pipe and cabbage leaf Consumption and catarrh; He railed at simple bird's-eye, By freshmen only tried, And with rude and bitter jest assailed The yard ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... World is so extensive that one could not visit all its parts during the course of a life-time, but there is a place called the Magic Observatory whence an observer can have a bird's-eye view of all the principal scholastic operations of ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... minute investigation of certain special aspects or forms of primitive religion rather than attempt to embrace in a general view the whole of that large subject. Such a relatively detailed study of a single compartment may be less attractive and more tedious than a bird's-eye view of a wider area; but in the end it may perhaps prove a more ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... commencing in January, will be rendered as attractive as means, energy, industry and application can make it. We shall soon lay before our hundred thousand readers our new Prospectus, in which will be given a bird's-eye view of the plan of our prospective operations. Nothing will be promised that we will not fully and faithfully perform; and, unrivaled as this "Magazine" has heretofore been, we intend so to improve upon it, that the new volume shall bear away the palm, and command the universal admission that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... the novelty of my situation, at first checked those lively and varied trains of thought which the bird's-eye view of so many countries passing in review before us, was calculated to excite: yet, after I had become more familiar with it, I contemplated the beautiful exhibition with inexpressible delight. Besides, a glass of cordial, as well as the calm, confiding air of ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... sweets are scarce," she commented. "Thanks very much—I won't have one just now. Where are the others? Can you find them? I'm going to take you all up the church tower to get a bird's-eye view of the town. It will look nice to-day, with the flags out, and we ought to be able to see ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... could be carried sufficiently high above the earth so as to have a bird's-eye view of the whole of Great Britain, what a strange sight it would present during the months of August and September! The county would appear surrounded with a human fringe, the outer edge more resembling a disturbed ants' hill than anything else. I ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... water, float your engraving on the surface—picture side uppermost—and let it remain about an hour. The screen, box or table on which you wish to transfer the design should be of bird's-eye maple or other light-colored hardwood, varnished with the best ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... leaves. It was a little forward thicket, quite detached from the upland copse, to which perhaps it had once belonged, and crusted up from the meadow slope with sod and mould in alternate steps. And being quite the elbow of a foreland of the meadow-reach, it yielded almost a "bird's-eye view" of the beautiful glade and the ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... certainly are more deserving of the name than that of Cleopatra at Alexandria. Narrow winding staircases in the interior lead to the top, upon which a small platform, with a balustrade a foot high, is erected. It is fortunate for those who are not subject to dizziness. They can venture out, and take a bird's-eye view of the endless sea of houses, and the innumerable Hindoo temples; the Ganges also, with its step quays, miles long, lies exposed below. I was told that on very clear, fine days, a distant chain of mountains was perceivable— ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... invited to drive in a four-in-hand. In this way we had a kind of bird's-eye view of the whole. No lady thinks herself too fine to join in the carnival. The procession, which defiles up and down the Paseo during the fray, begins at four in the hot, broiling afternoon, and ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... is too much of a Pisgah sight. We overlook too much. Descendez, cher Moise. Vous voyez trop loin. You see too far all at once, dear Moses. Too much of a bird's-eye view across the Promised Land to the shore. Come down, and walk across, old fellow. And you won't see all that milk and honey and grapes the size of duck's eggs. All the dear little budding infant with its tender virginal mind and various clouds of glory instead ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... appreciation of the new woods of the new country, and made free use of the abundant wild cherry for the furniture called for by the growing prosperity of the settlements, its close grain and warm color giving it the preference over other native woods, excepting always the curly and bird's-eye maple, which were ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... wished him a safe passage, and said, "I was afraid he would find it very dusty." As I could not find the office to book myself by this young gentleman's conveyance, I walked down to St Katherine's Docks; went on board a packet; was shewn into a superb cabin, fitted up with bird's-eye maple, mahogany, and looking-glasses, and communicating with certain small cabins, where there was a sleeping berth for each passenger, about as big as that allowed to a pointer in a dog-kennel. I thought that there was more finery than comfort; but it ended in my promising ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... stratification, but tends to cleave vertically, and is traversed in every direction by sudden crevices, almost glacier-like, narrow, with vertical walls of great depth, and infinite ramification. Smooth as the loess basin looks in a bird's-eye view, it is thus one of the most impracticable countries conceivable for military movements, and secures extraordinary value to fortresses in well-chosen sites, such as that of Tung-kwan mentioned in Note 2 to ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... ideas, as I have mine. What Red did do in the actual game was to lose his head, and then at the end of four minutes' deliberation he had to move, he blundered desperately. He opened fire on Blue's exposed centre and killed eight men. (Their bodies litter the ground in figure 7, which gives a complete bird's-eye view of the battle.) He then sent forward and isolated six or seven men in a wild attempt to recapture his lost gun, massed his other men behind the inadequate cover of his central gun, and sent the detachment ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... coincidence of the cross fallen awry. All the other thoroughfares on all sides of that hill were full of the pulsation and the pain of battle, full of shaking torches and shouting faces. When at length they had risen high enough to have a bird's-eye view of the whole campaign, Turnbull was already intoxicated. He had smelt gunpowder, which was the incense ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... very bare in the morning. Now, it was stocked with neat cane-bottomed chairs, of bird's-eye maple. In the middle of the floor rested an ambitious little mahogany table with claw feet. A stack of green window-blinds stood against the pier between the windows, and at the bottom on the floor lay a paper of screws and ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... its two double hermes leading between towers, and the long prison-like walls of the inland buildings, into an imaginary square—an imaginary city with more towers, more Romanesque belfries. This is a case of the imaginary place due to perspective, to bird's-eye view, to some reminiscence. (I trace a resemblance to the arsenal gate at Venice, perhaps also to the inner town at Castelfranco.) This case is an illustration of how large a part illusion, even recognised as ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... old London Bridge, and half-timbered houses with many over-sailing storeys were very largely built in the city. There is an excellent representation of old London Bridge with its closely packed houses in Robert Prycke's bird's-eye view (here produced). ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... entrance was a reception-room of spacious dimensions, provided with furniture of bird's-eye maple, covered with rich damask. Out of this opened the dining-room, sixty feet in length, in which Hancock was wont to entertain. Opposite was a smaller apartment, the usual dining-room of the family. Next adjoining were the china-room and offices, ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... nationalities and extends over so wide a region—so far beyond the Acadia and Canada which France once called her own. But that the story may be more intelligible from the beginning, it is necessary to give a bird's-eye view of the country, whose history is contemporaneous with that of the United States, and whose territorial area from Cape Breton to Vancouver—the sentinel islands of the Atlantic and Pacific approaches—is hardly inferior to ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... surpassingly beautiful and yacht-like ships that now ply between the two hemispheres in such numbers, and which in luxury and the fitting conveniences seem to vie with each other for the mastery. The cabins were lined with satin-wood and bird's-eye maple; small marble columns separated the glittering panels of polished wood, and rich carpets covered the floors. The main cabin had the great table, as a fixture, in the centre, but that of Eve, somewhat shorter, but of equal width, was free from all encumbrance ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... (figs. 12, 13, and 14), are given an elevation of Gysser's machine, together with a bird's-eye view and vertical section ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... it may, one thing is certain, that no solid plot of earth between its walls or hedges allows us such intricate and unexpected bird's-eye views of streets and squares, of the bustling or resting city; none gives us such a vault of heaven, pure and sunny, or creeping with clouds, or serenely starlit, as do these hanging gardens of ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... some ways, crucial. I have spoken with Jesuits and Plymouth Brethren, mathematicians and poets, dogmatic republicans and dear old gentlemen in bird's-eye neckcloths; and each understood the word 'facts' in an occult sense of his own. Try as I might, I could get no nearer the principle of their division. What was essential to them, seemed to me trivial or untrue. We could come to no compromise as to what was, or what was not, important ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Moreover, a bird's-eye view or a map of a region shows the significant fact that the valleys of a system unite with one another in a branch work, as twigs meet their stems and the branches of a tree its trunk. Each valley, from that of the smallest rivulet to that of the master ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... in the histories is one thing, and seeking to become acquainted with it by reading contemporary letters is another and a far different thing. The two procedures give rise to conflicting impressions. Historians, taking a bird's-eye view of their subject, portray its most general characteristics; they bring out only the prominent features, and sacrificing all the rest, draw pictures whose precision and simplicity captivate our minds. We finally get into the habit ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the enemy fifteen Germans were killed by a bomb dropped upon the ammunition wagon of a cavalry column. It was thought at the time that this might have been the work of one of our airmen, who reported that he had dropped a hand grenade on this convoy, and had then got a bird's-eye view of the finest display of fireworks he had ever seen. From corroborative evidence it now appears that this was the case; that the grenade thrown by him probably was the cause of the destruction of a small convoy carrying field-gun and howitzer ammunition, which now ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... old friend, content I jog Along, amidst life's hurry-skurry, And smoke my bird's-eye, sip my grog, Without a care or thought ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... of sun-baked hue, though the principal thoroughfares show a fair degree of life and activity considering that the population is so largely made up of Mexicans. The area covered by the city cannot much exceed sixty acres, the town being built in a very compact manner, a bird's-eye view of which makes it resemble the outspread human hand. The port has seen its most prosperous days, if we may judge by present appearances. The aggregate of the imports and exports amounted to about thirty million dollars ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... And, sir, when we observe the progress of the human mind, when we take into consideration the quick march of intellect, and the wide expansion of enlightened views and liberal principles; when we take a bird's-eye view of the history of man from the earliest ages to the present moment, I feel that it would be folly in me to conceive for an instant that the measures developed and recommended in that paper will not finally receive ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... bamboo at the back of some of the houses, and pine-apple plantations luxuriating in the dark damp shady nooks. Then there are large fields of the most vivid hues; the bird's-eye pepper and tumeric are found growing like common weeds; while the piper betel, the leaf of which is chewed with ripe or green pieces of the areca-nut, is a most graceful plant, especially when loaded with its long spikes ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... with general bird's-eye view of the Visit combined (in a very incorrect state), there is direct testimony by Voltaire himself. Voltaire himself, twenty years after, in far other humor, all jarred into angry sarcasm, for causes we shall see by and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the naked hills and realized the enormous wastage of wood that had taken place. From this bird's-eye view he realized the monstrous confusion of their excited workings. It was a gigantic inadequacy. Each worked for himself, and the result was chaos. In this richest of diggings it cost out by their ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... front, had apparently no limit but the power of human vision. Beyond the foreground, which was formed by a series of rocky glens diverging from below the point on which we stood, the immense vale of the Saone extended like a bird's-eye view of the ocean, its relative distances marked by towns and villages glittering like white sails. Above the flat line of haze, which, at the first glance, appears to terminate the prospect at ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... Headquarters, where I met also de Lisle and Reed. After hearing their news I started off with the whole band to make a tour of the trenches held by the 88th Brigade, under General Cayley. On the way I was taken up to "Gibraltar" observation post to get a bird's-eye view of the line. Besides my old friends of the 29th Division I saw some of the new boys, especially the 1st Newfoundland Battalion under Colonel Burton, and the 2/1st Coy. of the London Regiment. This was ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... interior of the Alhambra, and may be desirous of a general idea of its vicinity. The morning is serene and lovely; the sun has not gained sufficient power to destroy the freshness of the night; we will mount to the summit of the tower of Comares, and take a bird's-eye view ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... angry. He led me up into a lofty turret which commanded a bird's-eye view of the whole city and its environs, and he pointed out that which the Maid had declared she would straightway do, so soon as the Feast of the Ascension was over, and how the Generals were about to follow ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and Clara duly confided her youth and her innocence and her roses to her English husband, a little ashamed of the wedding presents her friends sent her, even a little doubtful of her parents' handsome gift of a bird's-eye maple bedroom set and a parlor ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... deliciously in Porthlooe, bright with virginal sunshine, and made tender by the breath of the Gulf Stream. Uncle Issy, passing up the road at nine o'clock, halted by the Cherokee to pass a word with its proprietor, who presented the very antipodes of a bird's-eye view, as he knocked about the crumbling clods with his visgy at the top of ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the commencement of a chapter of accidents. I went down the pass, and there, sure enough, I had a fine bird's-eye view of the carriage down a precipice on the road side. One horse was so injured that it was necessary to destroy him; the other died a few days after. Perkes had been intoxicated; and, while driving at a full gallop round a corner, over ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Monument I took a bird's-eye view of the largest of all earthly cities, or at least I looked as far as the smoky atmosphere would permit, and then returned to my stopping place at Twynholm. As I rode back on the top of an omnibus, the houses of one of the ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... any one place where you can get a complete bird's-eye view of it," said Jeff, "and two-thirds of it would be hid in smoke, anyway. You've got to think of a place that would take in the whole population of New England, outside of Massachusetts, and not feel as if it had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells |
