"Blacksnake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... touched." The great soft mass came directly over the spot on which they had been standing, and stopped its descent about three feet from the ground, parallel to which it was slowly carried by the wind. A few yards off, in the direction in which it was moving, lay a long black snake asleep on the sand. When directly over its victim the jelly globule again sank till it touched the middle of the reptile's back. The serpent immediately coiled itself in a knot, but was already dead. The jellyfish did not swallow, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... I saw a black snake today about two feet long the Belly of which was as black as any other part or as jet itself. it had 128 scuta on the belley 63 on ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... where lay coiled, and perfectly still, a spotted viper, an immense black snake, and one very light and silvery like ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... low, she was wiggling like a black snake through the white-topped seas. We had men in our foretop looking for the guard-ship, and because they knew almost exactly where to look for her, we saw her in time and swung the Bess inside her, yet closer to the breakers. ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... passing, and whistling cheerily, blow high or low, with never a fear of falling! The mother bird must feel very comfortable about it as she goes off caterpillar hunting, for no bird enemy can trouble the little ones while she is gone. The black snake, that horror of all low-nesting birds, will never climb so high. The red squirrel—little wretch that he is, to eat young birds when he has still a bushel of corn and nuts in his old wall—cannot find a footing on those delicate ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... distinguish their families by the names of various plants and animals, from which each family boasts its descent. Thus you have a family called Kangaroos, descended, as they fancy, from the kangaroo; another from the cockatoo, another from the black snake, and so forth. Now, in many quarters of the globe, this custom and this superstition, combined with the imitative faculty in man, has produced a form of art representing the objects from which the families claim descent. This art is a sort of rude heraldry—probably the origin of heraldry. ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... the motions of the serpent tribe. They make our hands and feet, the wings of the bird, and the fins of the fish seems very superfluous, as if nature had only indulged her fancy in making them. The black snake will dart into a bush when pursued, and circle round and round with an easy and graceful motion, amid the thin and bare twigs, five or six feet from the ground, as a bird flits from bough to bough, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... nothing but a few stunted ivies and straggling trees. The truth flashed upon me. I had been the laughing-stock of the family and neighborhood for years. My valuable 'Ivy Island' was an almost inaccessible, worthless bit of barren land, and while I stood deploring my sudden downfall, a huge black snake (one of my tenants) approached me with upraised head. I gave one shriek and ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... holding up a finger at him in mute warning. Thrilled by a sense of impending tragedy, perhaps, Max watched the woods boy slowly but constantly making toward him. Obed moved with the noiseless nature of a black snake creeping over the ground; his footfalls were so light that even a trained ear could not have detected them. He kept on toward Max until soon he had managed to reach the ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... the discovery rendered him speechless, yet he stood fascinated and unable to move. At this moment a small black snake darted from the mouth of the princess, who was seated at the table, and wriggled quickly towards him. But the Arab was watching for something of the sort to happen, and seizing the serpent with some pincers that ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... their trains, sedately watched By milk-white herons and the small house-owls. The plum-necked parrots swung from fruit to fruit; The yellow sunbirds whirred from bloom to bloom, The timid lizards on the lattice basked Fearless, the squirrels ran to feed from hand, For all was peace: the shy black snake, that gives Fortune to households, sunned his sleepy coils Under the moon-flowers, where the musk-deer played, And brown-eyed monkeys chattered to the crows. And all this house of love was peopled fair With sweet attendance, ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... those who were watching saw a small black snake make an ineffectual effort to leap out of the blazing mass, fall back into the flames, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... home life happened one Sunday morning in March—one Easter Sunday. All of the smaller children were seated on the floor eating their breakfasts from pans and skillets, when a big black snake, without any regard for the children, went into a hole by the fireplace. When one of my older brothers undertook to find him and opened this hole, he found, instead of one, four black snakes that had been wintering in the side ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... squaws fastened their linden cradles to their limbs while they planted their maize in the springtime, and when they had grown larger, orioles hung their corded hammocks amid their pendulous branches, with no fear of squirrels or that horror of all low nesting birds—the black snake. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... again, we had ten miles of desolation, then a tiny hamlet which seemed only to emphasize that desolation; again another ten-mile stretch of desert, and another hamlet; here and there a glimpse of the railway line, like a great black snake, lost in the snow; now and then the gilded picture of an ancient town, crowning some tall crag that stood up from the flat plain below like a giant bottle. And there was one thrilling view of a high viaduct, flinging a spider's web of glittering steel across a vast and shadowy ravine. "Garabit!" ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... the Jackals, and the Bull The Story of the Monkey and the Wedge The Story of the Washerman's Jackass The Story of the Cat who Served the Lion The Story of the Terrible Bell The Story of the Prince and the Procuress The Story of the Black Snake and the Golden Chain The Story of the Lion and the Old Hare The Story of the Wagtail and ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... Janet had learned to pick up even large black snakes, knowing they would not harm her, and once she and her brother had even tamed a good-sized black snake, so that it would let the children pick it up, and it would lie, ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... on the fire while he hunted through his pockets for a paper of tobacco or something else just as important," said Bruce. "Of course the other nozzleman couldn't hold onto the hose alone and it twisted out of his hands. The thing acted like a big black snake, fellows, and hit Chief Blaney a whack in the chest that knocked him sprawling. Then it proceeded to wet down the whole fire department before some one captured it. It was a scream. Didn't any of you ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... Alecto from her dark retreat Among the Furies in the shades of Hell. Sweet are war's sorrows to her soul, and sweet Are evil deeds, and hatred and deceit. E'en Pluto, e'en her sister-fiends detest The monstrous shape, so many forms complete The grisly horrors of that hateful pest, So many a coal-black snake sprouts from ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... President Washington sent a man to Ohio who made the Indians beg for peace. This man was General Wayne; he had fought in the Revolution, and fought so furiously that he was called "Mad Anthony Wayne." The Indians said that he never slept, and named him "Black Snake," because that is the quickest and boldest snake there is in the woods, and in a fight with any other creature of his kind he is pretty sure to win the day. General Wayne won, and the Indians agreed to move off and give up a very large ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... not know what to do for it. It did not pass. It grew worse. But I hid it, talking very little, never telling anybody how I felt. They said I was depressed and needed cheering up. All the while there was that black snake coiled around my heart, squeezing tighter and tighter. But my body grew stronger every day. The wounds were all healed. I was walking around. In July the doctor-in-chief sent for me to his office. He said: 'You are cured, Pierre Duval, but you are not yet fit to fight. You are ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... time my father hired a chaise; I borrowed William's shot-gun, and we went together on a delightful tour to visit all our relations in Holliston, Milford, and elsewhere. At one time we stopped to slay an immense black snake; at another to shoot wild pigeons, and "so on about" to Providence and many places. From cousins who lived in old farmhouses in wild and remote places I received Indian arrow-heads and a stone tomahawk, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... "No, a black snake can't bite—they havn't got any fangs. If it had been a rattlesnake or a viper, I'd been a gone chicken. I don't think I'll ever leave my knife behind again, even if I wasn't to go ten steps from home. ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... cry he stretched out his hand towards the blunderbuss, but drew it back with a thrill of horror. A huge black snake lay in its place! ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... Turkey, White Spine Arlington Brussells Sprouts.—Improved Half Dwarf, Improved Dwarf German, Improved Long Island, Improved Perfection Egg Plant.—Improved New York, Early Dwarf Purple, Long Purple, Round French, Black Pekin, Mammoth Pearl, Scarlet Chinese, Round White, Long White, Striped White, Black Snake Leeks.—Large Flag Winter, Large Rouen Winter, Large Musselberg, London Summer Parsnips.—Guerney, Long Smooth, Hollow Crown, Delmonico, Abbot, Maltese, Student Salsify.—Long White French, Sandwich Islands, Thick Rooted Brussells Sprouts.—Seven ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... of purpose which kept him from squandering time on the chase. Only once he halted, and that was when the cries and flutterings of a pair of excited thrushes caught his attention. He saw their nest in a low tree—and he saw a black snake, coiled in the branches, greedily swallowing the half-fledged nestlings. This was an opportunity which he could not afford to lose. He ran expertly up the tree, pounced upon the snake, and bit through its back bone just behind the head. The strong, black coils straightened ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... in my room, some years ago, a male black snake (Bascanion constrictor). Whenever this creature became hungry, he would follow me about the room like a dog or a cat. He would wind his way up my legs and body, until his head was on a level ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... their joy over mating time, nests, young, much food, and running water. Their social, inquiring, short cry was to locate a mate, and call her to good feeding. The sharp wild scream of a note was when a hawk passed over, a weasel lurked in the thicket, or a black snake sunned on the bushes. She remembered these things, and lay listening intently, trying to interpret every ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter |
