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Debris   Listen
noun
Debris  n.  
1.
(Geol.) Broken and detached fragments, taken collectively; especially, fragments detached from a rock or mountain, and piled up at the base.
2.
Rubbish, especially such as results from the destruction of anything; remains; ruins.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Debris" Quotes from Famous Books



... headache: she looked like a garden after an early frost. But perhaps the most terrifying thing about her aspect was her complete indifference to it. A recollection suddenly came to Mr. Lanley of a railway accident that he and Adelaide had been in. He had seen her stepping toward him through the debris, buttoning her gloves. She was ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... sounds from the galley or dining-room. The sun had not yet cleared the tree-tops to the east; the decks of the Doraine were still wet with dew. A few sailors were abroad; a dull-eyed junior officer moodily picked his way through the debris on the forward deck. Birds were singing and chattering in the trees that lined the shore; down at the water's edge, like sentinels on duty, with an eye always upon the strange, gigantic intruder, strutted a number of stately, bright-plumaged birds of ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... in after his painful experiences in the forest. He continued to follow the stream, though there was now little possibility of his finding anything to eat. The water had become sluggish and dark. The channel was choked with charred debris that had fallen into it when the forest had burned, and its shores were soft and muddy. After a time, when Baree stopped and looked about him, he could no longer see the green timber he had left. He was alone in that desolate wilderness of charred tree corpses. It was as still ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... table for the first course: each helped herself to one, laying it on the table before her (we had no plates, knives or forks), picking it to pieces and eating it with her fingers. When this was ended the debris was thrown on the platter and removed, the table wiped off, and a dish of rice and mutton brought: for this we had spoons, but all ate from the dish. Then came an immense cauliflower covered thick with strange-tasting cheese, and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... get them, I'd crumble the earth away—bury them. They're underneath the debris, Kay, a mile deep, buried, beneath the impalpable powder that represented the inorganic salts and minerals of the earth. They'll never get out of that. Protoplasm needs oxygen. They'll ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... it was found that after passing a certain point the footpath was almost unencumbered by volcanic debris. This was owing to the protection afforded to it by the cone of Rakata, and the almost overhanging nature of some of the cliffs on that side of the mountain; still the track was bad enough, and in places ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... down the stream, except a thin spiral of blue smoke that slowly wound its way upward. An instant he stared, believing it to be the fire of some emigrant's camp; then realized that he looked upon the smouldering debris of the ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... windows. The train still ruthlessly clattered and shook and swayed and thundered; and weary lords, ladies and financiers had read all the illustrated magazines and six-penny novels in existence, and they lolled exhausted and bored amid the debris of literature and light refreshments. Then the speed of the convoy slackened, and Audrey, looking forth, saw a pale cathedral dome resting aloft amid dark clouds. It was a magical glimpse, and it was the first glimpse of Paris. "Oh!" cried Audrey, far more like ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... sudden lurch; once more a mighty green cliff of water came rushing up, bearing its tide of dead and debris; again Frohman started to say the speech that was to be his valedictory. He had hardly repeated the first three words—"Why fear death?"—when the group was engulfed and all sank beneath ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... from measles, was all about, and his party went for flowering plants and lichens. He climbed to the summit of the island—2000 ft.—and gave it as his opinion that the dead trees strewn all round the base of the island had been carried down with the volcanic debris from higher altitudes. It was also his suggestion that the island had only recently risen, the trees which originally grew on the top of the island having died from unsuitable climate in the higher condition. ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... a general cannonade on both sides; and now the very atmosphere was vibrating with the deafening concussions, as the guns on the battlements roared and the heavy conical shot from the attacking party plunged against the thick masonry of the walls, toppling down great masses of stone, mortar, and debris at every hit. ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... realized the difficulty of their attempt; for when little more than half-way to the foot of the mountain they came to a ledge down which there appeared no place for safe descent. As they were skirting this precipice perilously near the edge, he holding Madge's hand, some loose debris gave way ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... opposite shore, the eye embraced the range of rampart-like rocks that beetle over Villeneuve and Chillon, the latter a snow-white pile that seemed to rest partly on the land and partly, on the water. On the vast debris of the mountains clustered the hamlets of Clarens, Montreux, Chatelard, and all those other places, since rendered so familiar to the reader of fiction by the vivid pen of Rousseau. Above the latter village the whole of ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... hiding-place in the lazarette, where he had lain hidden under a heap of old jute bagging and other debris, Maru saw Deschard return to the cabin and take up a loaded musket. Sitting in the captain's chair, and leaning back, he placed the muzzle to his throat and touched the trigger with his naked foot. As the loud report rang out, and the cabin filled ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke

... what had hitherto been nothing more than a romance to him. There was something very dark and sinister in the events of family history, which now assumed a reality that they had never before worn; so much tragedy, so much hatred, had been thrown into that deep pit, and buried under the accumulated debris, the fallen leaves, the rust and dust of more than two centuries, that it seemed not worth while to dig it up; for perhaps the deadly influences, which it had taken so much time to hide, might still be ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... build new cabins on new ground, though not far removed from the old. Not all the sites of ancient Otesaga, if ancient Otesaga existed, can have been covered by Cooperstown. Some fields should still produce something out of "an abundance" of village debris. Yet only one hatchet has come, in many years, from all the foot of the lake.[5] Many points, spear and arrow, have been found on all shores of Otsego; for beyond doubt the lake, from very early time, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... perpendicular face of the horizontal strata of the sandstone rock. The glacis is formed of a bed of basalt in all stages of decomposition, with which this, like the other sandstone hills of Central India, was once covered, and of the debris and chippings of the rocks above. The walls are raised a certain uniform height all round upon the verge of the precipice, and being thus made to correspond with the edge of the rock, the line is extremely ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... rocked under an explosion, and the debris Morey's ray had torn down over the door was blasted away. A score of men leaped through the gap before the dust had settled. Morey beamed them down mercilessly before they could fire ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... angels' heads carved in stone, but when we touched them they fell to powder. The heat inside must have been terrific, for all the features of the church had disappeared, and we were surrounded by merely a mass of debris. In the apse a few fragments of old gold brocade buried beneath masses of brick and mortar were all that remained to show where ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar

... should not make fun of the English officers' letters, and therefore that he burnt them with his own hands. Another anecdote was remarkable—namely, that of an officer searching sadly among the heap of debris for some eagerly expected letter, and who came across an uninjured envelope directed to himself, containing his bank-book from Messrs. Cox and Sons, absolutely intact and untouched. It can only be conjectured whether he would as soon have known ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... away with startling abruptness, sometimes in sheer descents of several hundred feet till the top of the ancient shale pile is reached (now covered deep with soil) and then dropping away more gradually with that lovely curve of debris. But nowhere is this Palisade-like wall continuous, and here is where the southern Cumberlands get their unique flavor. The descending water from the plateau top has eroded deep into the precipice every mile or even every half mile, each brook in ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... effect on the senses came from. They are always 'guessing' through the nose. I mean, the remainder of breakfast here. Perhaps I satirized them too smartly—if you know the letters. When they are not 'calculating'. More offensive than debris of a midnight banquet! An American tour is instructive, though not so romantic. Not so romantic as Italy, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... heavily and what remained of the city was further reduced to a mass of debris. One of the main bridges from Goritz across the Isonzo was blown up by the Italians and the enemy movement ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... her at once. Her face lay buried deep in his mind, covered with the debris of innumerable carouses, forgotten women, and every defiance he had been able to fling in the face of the civilization he had been made to adorn. As she stood quite still looking at him he had a confused idea that she was a Madonna, and ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... folded back, rather than punching out a circle/rectangle; it was clear that if the Chadless keypunch didn't make them, then the stuff that other keypunches made had to be 'chad'. There is a legend that the word was originally acronymic, standing for "Card Hole Aggregate Debris", but this has all the earmarks of a ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... conclusions reached by Captain Beecher of the British Navy some fifty years ago, that the landing was made on what is known as Watling's Island, one of the Bahamas. This island is about thirteen miles long, north and south, and six wide, and is made up of coral, shell and other marine debris. A monument was erected on it by a Chicago newspaper in 1892, with this inscription: "On this spot Christopher Columbus first set foot on the soil of the New World." The monument is said already to be in a state of decay, having been poorly constructed. ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various

... river with a sapphire blue, while its higher reaches glistened as though studded with gigantic diamonds. Near at hand, where the Orlegna rushed noisily from thraldom, the broken surface was somber and repellent. In color a dull gray, owing to the accumulation of winter debris and summer dust, it had the aspect of decay and death; it was jagged and gaunt and haggard; the far flung piles of the white moraine imposed a stony barrier against its farther progress. But that unpleasing glimpse of disruption was ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... walked swiftly down the passageway that separated dining-room from kitchen. Tillie, the scrub-woman, was down on her hands and knees in one corner of the passage. She was one of a small army of cleaners that had begun the work of clearing away the debris of the long night's revel. Miss Fink lifted her neat skirts high as she tip-toed through the little soapy pool that followed in the wake of Tillie, the scrub-woman. She opened the swinging doors a cautious little crack ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber

... torture. Men, women and children were struggling helplessly in the water and trying in vain to reach the higher benches. At the next moment the water receded and carried many back struggling into the channel of the river. Hias Peter found himself, with others, struggling among logs, timbers and debris of every description. Just before the water receded he saw his wife and heard her yell for help. He seized her skirt and dragged her to safety, clinging to a friendly sage brush. For a moment Peter thought that, so far as he was personally concerned, she was scarcely worth saving; ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... the female abdomen on either side of the uterus, and connected to it by two sensitive tubes. There ripens in one of these bodies each month a human baby-seed, which finds its way to the uterus through the little fallopian tube and is apparently lost in the debris of cells and mucus which, with the accompanying hemorrhage go to make up the menstrual flow. This continues from puberty to menopause, each gland alternatingly ripening its ovum, only to lose it in the periodical phenomenon of menstruation, which is seldom interrupted save by that ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... you are for dainties! There; do you hear that? That's the old gentleman;" and then, as the voice of Mr. Mollett senior was heard abusing the car-driver, Miss O'Dwyer smoothed her apron, put her hands to her side hair, and removed the debris of the ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... the solemn guard for something between a quarter and half a mile, till at length we climbed the debris of a mighty wall that once had encompassed the city, and by the moonlight saw beneath us a vast hollow which clearly at some unknown time had been the bed of an enormous moat and ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... will require great nicety to disengage this virtue from the commoner elements with which it may be found in combination. Few artists, not Goethe or Byron even, work quite cleanly, casting off all debris, and leaving us only what the heat of their imagination has wholly fused and transformed. Take, for instance, the writings of Wordsworth. The heat of his genius, entering into the substance of his work, has crystallised a part, but only a part, of it; and in that great mass of ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... Geological Society of London in successive communications from the two distinguished observers. The mountainous districts of England and Wales and Ireland were also considered to constitute centres for the dispersion of glacial debris; and Agassiz remarked "that great sheets of ice, resembling those now existing in Greenland, once covered all the countries in which unstratified gravel (boulder drift) is found; that this gravel was in general produced by the trituration of the sheets of ice upon the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... trails of debris! You fish-shaped Island! I take what is underfoot; What is yours is ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... no more than a medley of disjected members; the quadragenarian torso prone against the pedestal; the lascivious countenance leering down the kitchen stair; the legs, the arms, the hands, and even the fingers, scattered broadcast on the lobby floor. Half an hour more, and all the debris had been laboriously carted to the kitchen; and Morris, with a gentle sentiment of triumph, looked round upon the scene of his achievements. Yes, he could deny all knowledge of it now: the lobby, beyond the fact that it was partly ruinous, betrayed no trace of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... before, hollow of flank, with the mother anxiety in her eyes, the same noble creature had battled and contrived to keep life in herself and in this same lusty pup out there on the open Down, four miles and more away, among the small wild creatures and the debris of her cave home. ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... was not far short of thirty feet, and he brought up with a bump which left him not breath enough to squeal. The ground was soft, however, with undergrowth and debris, and he had no bones broken. In a couple of minutes he was busy licking himself all over to make sure he was undamaged. Reassured on this point, he went prowling in exploration of the ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... window, Sam saw a mass of debris; old cans, ashes and the like were scattered in the center of the court or alley, while on both sides, near the buildings, a narrow ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... that which there will be need more especially to prove, is the subtilty and constancy of curvature in all natural forms whatsoever. I believe that, except in crystals, in certain mountain forms admitted for the sake of sublimity or contrast, (as in the slope of debris,) in rays of light, in the levels of calm water and alluvial land, and in some few organic developments, there are no lines nor surfaces of nature without curvature, though as we before saw in clouds, more especially in their ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... the trenches with Headquarters. We gathered curios, Turkish and German, from among its debris. At Headquarters the telephone, orderly-room and dressing-station alone denoted the presence of war. They were fixed in a beautiful ravine, looking upon a smooth sea, warm in the sunlight, with Imbros ten miles across the water. The meals were of first importance, ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst

... Tim, in the mean time, had not been idle. Hastily throwing off his clothing, he dived again and again into the deep pool, swimming to the bottom and groping about there. He brought up handfuls of sticks and small stones, and the debris of the water's bed. A dozen times he was unsuccessful—and then, at last, as he clung to the bank and opened his fist for the water to thin the mud and ooze that he had clutched, there lay the golden coin, bright and ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... remained in place for days, if not weeks or months, after the carboys burst, as indicated by the greater charring of the larger end of the plug. I burrowed under the debris, and found the hole which that plug fitted. It was worked loose, or knocked out of the hole by some internal movement of the broken carboys, perhaps. At any rate, it came out, after remaining in place long enough for the acids ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... daughter of an ancient family of Noyon. But now, her ancestral home was a heap of debris, a tomb for men of many nations, which she did not like to visit. She took me there once, and we walked through the old tennis court where a little summer house remained untouched, its jaunty frailty seeming to mock at the desolation ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall

... three days, but the hurricane shutters were put up, and proved a great protection, though the house was dark and airless. Trees went crashing all around us. There was a curious exhilaration in the air, and the natives shouted with glee whenever anything came down. The road was filled with debris from the storm, which had to be cleared away before any one could pass. In the evening I was told that both the Fiji man and Simi had been spitting blood. The Fiji man seems to have a touch of pneumonia. Much to Simi's ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... upon this vale of woe; Ten thousand corpses at your base their soulless faces show; Some hid beneath the debris, some covered o'er with slime, Their spirits fled to meet their God, beyond the shores of time. The aged sire and lassie; the careworn mother, too, With her strong son, whom she had hoped would guard life's journey thro', Are lying there together, the old and young ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Tourgenieff, and completed by Dostoieffski. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as surely as the People's Palace rose out of the debris of a novel. Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac. Our Luciens de Rubempre, our ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... around her. Snoqualmie told her briefly that she must walk up the bank to the place where the canoe was to be launched again above the falls. She listened mutely, and started to go. But the way was steep and rocky; the bank was strewn with the debris of the ruined bridge; and she was unused to such exertion. Snoqualmie saw her stumble and almost fall. It moved him to a sudden and unwonted pity, and he sprang forward to help her. She pushed his hand from her as if it had been the touch of a serpent, and went on alone. His eyes flashed: for ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... of the domesticated dog at the beginning of the Neolithic period. However, these animals may have still been nearly half wild. It is not until the period of the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland that we can discriminate between the wild animals and those that have been tamed. In the Lake Dwelling debris are found the bones of the wild bull, or urus, of Europe. Probably this large, long-horned animal was then in a wild state, and had been hunted for food. Alongside of these remains are those of a small, short-horned animal, supposed to have been ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... in the building fished chairs, dry goods boxes and a quantity of other floating property from the flood. The debris swept down the main business street with such force that every plate glass window ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... explanations. Through the debris of the door there sprang into the room half-a-dozen of the loiterers from the room below. They faced the King, standing like a giant in the centre of the floor with his long military sword flashing ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

... palaces, churches, and halls, and all who saw these splendid buildings and great treasures exclaimed admiringly: "What a mighty prince!" But they did not know what endless misery he had brought upon other countries, nor did they hear the sighs and lamentations which rose up from the debris of the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... (Mechelen) the devastation appeared perhaps more shocking because we had known the russet and gray old city so well in peaceful years. Many of the streets were impassable, choked with debris. One side of the great Square was knocked to fragments. The huge belfry, Saint Rombaud's Tower, wherein hangs the famous carillon of more than thirty bells, was battered but still stood firm. The vast cathedral was a melancholy wreck of ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke

... temperature of 108. Though feeble and of such readily dissolvable texture, bche-de-mer may be regarded as among the mightiest agents in the conversion of the waste of the coral reef into mud—the sort of mud of which some of the toughest of rocks are compounded. Graded by this and that species, the debris is reduced to fine particles, which upon sedimentation help to raise the level of the reef and thus prepare foundations ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... it was over. A woman who had been lying in wait for tourists at the gate, guided them to the bend of the glen, where they were to climb up to pay their respects to the waterfall. The ascent was not far from perpendicular, only rendered accessible by the slope of fallen debris at the base, and a few steps cut out from one projecting rock to another, up to a narrow shelf, whence the cascade was to be looked down on. The more adventurous spirits went on to a rock overhanging the fall, and with a curious chink or cranny, forming a window with a seat, and called King O'Toole's ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... take us to that biggest house burning on the Moss plantation. No sooner was the suggestion made than Curlie got his ambulance ready for us, and we were soon in front of the smoldering mansion. The proprietor was raking over the debris for gold and silver or other imperishable treasure. Among the ashes; were hand- cuffs, chains, shackles, and other slave-irons. He was occupying one of his slave cabins, as the long row was vacated by seventy of his former slaves. He was said to be one of the wealthiest ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... scene in its weirdness the most extraordinary and most appallingly grand I had ever seen. A huge wilderness lay before us like the dry bed of a vast ocean, whose waters by some subterranean convulsion had been sucked into the bowels of the earth, leaving in its whirling eddies the debris of submarine mountains heaped up in rugged confusion or scattered over its sandy bottom. Porphyry and black granite bowlders, in every conceivable form and size, lay strewn over the plain. Sometimes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... which the fine specimens are to be and have been obtained are exposed by the railroad cutting about a thousand feet north of the station at West Paterson, and on the west side of the rails. Near or below the beds is a small pile of debris, prominent by being the only one in the vicinity near the rails. In this loose rock and the veins which are by this description readily found and identified, they are about three inches in thickness, and in some places widen out ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various

... and to state generally what have been the results effected. In making this summary, I have no important rivers to enumerate, no fertile regions to point out for the future spread of colonization and civilization, or no noble ranges to describe from which are washed the debris that might form a rich and fertile district beneath them; on the contrary, all has been arid and ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... death." It was at this time that the commander himself, leading the party, was knocked over by a shell explosion and then barely escaped the blast of one of his own 12-inch guns by rolling through an open hatch and falling 8 feet to a pile of debris below. ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... by a narrow gorge, where a small stream trickled its way from the moorlands above. The shelving platforms of the cliff were here comparatively easy to climb, and the action of water and weather combined had carried down a mass of stones and debris that would be worth investigation. Miss Roberts was as active and enthusiastic as any of the girls; she jumped lightly from stone to stone, tapping likely spots with her hammer, and finally, seeing something protruding from a ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... nearer, and, just as she stooped to catch him, he succeeded in folding the end of her ancient Persian rug above an overturned Chelsea saucer and a widening pool of oatmeal and cream. Then he retired under the table and smiled suavely up at her, while she removed the debris. ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... great gash blown in the hard rock which had acted as a bar to the further progress of the tunnel. A great heap of rock, broken into small fragments, was on the floor of the shaft, and there was a big hole filled with debris which would have to be removed before the extent of ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton

... shore, with trails of debris! You fish-shaped island! I take what is underfoot: What is yours ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... to lift what looked like an enormous plate. He was unable to raise the object, still weighed down as it was with the ghastly remnants of the dead. With feverish haste we cleared away the debris, and at last lifted and brought to light a huge and massive disk of gold, divided into rays which spread from the centre, each division being adorned with strange figures in relief—figures of animals, plants, and ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... broken by ravines caused by rain; it is thinly covered with Kureel, Salsola robusta, Chenopodium, etc. The vegetation along the river is the same as at Mysoor. Durand finds nummulites, but thinks them brought down by the river. The strata or rather debris of slips often intersected by nearly erect projecting lines of a fibrous dyke. There is some wheat cultivation in the fields, a new Plantago, a Ruta, Silenacea, a curious Composita, two Boragineae, Phalaris, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... after I went out to the tan where these Roms had camped. But the birds had flown, and a little pile of ashes and the usual debris of a gypsy camp were all that remained. The police told me that they had some very fine horses, and had gone to the Northwest; and that is all ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... where the masonry had crumbled into a cave, and left a gap some twenty feet high. Below it he could dimly see a thick mass of ivy which would enable him to cover the further forty feet to the ground, but at that cave he stuck most finally. All around the lime and stone had lapsed into debris, and he could find no safe foothold. Worse still, the block on which he relied proved loose, and only by a dangerous traverse ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... his extreme solicitude for his clothes amused her. She found his outlook on life refreshing. Smith was an optimist. Whatever cataclysm might occur, he never doubted for a moment that he would be comfortably on the summit of the debris when all was over. He amazed Betty with his stories of his reportorial adventures. He told them for the most part as humorous stories at his own expense, but the fact remained that in a considerable ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... making a noise of any sort to attract undesirable attentions, the boy took to it in self-defence. But before long it had become his passion. He read, by stealth, everything that fell into his hands, a weird melange of newspapers, illustrated Parisian weeklies, magazines, novels: cullings from the debris of guest-chambers. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... concluded to take ten per cent. For four days they worked hard on the wreck, removing the confused mass of iron, which was twisted into fantastic shapes by the action of the fire. On the forenoon of the fifth day, Paul sounded something solid and heavy with his pry, far down through the debris near the keel, and after about an hour's hard work sent up the joyful signal: "I've got it," which was received on deck with loud cheers. The chain hooks were now sent down and after a lashing was placed around the safe, the order to "haul away" was given. All hands manned the windlass and the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... citizens in times of suffering and emergency — and stays at it until they're back on their feet. So far the federal government has committed $85 billion to the people of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. We're removing debris and repairing highways and rebuilding stronger levees. We're providing business loans and housing assistance. Yet as we meet these immediate needs, we must also address deeper challenges that existed before the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... the glorious young general as he turns into the forest. A grim look settles on the general's face. He runs his eye over the map. As the tiger's approach is heralded by the clatter of the meaner animals, so from out that forest the human debris tell of Hood's battle hammer crashing down on that left "in air." Is there yet time to reform a battle, now fighting itself in sudden bloody encounters? All is at haphazard. A sigh of relief. McPherson ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... is a dam also. All the debris from the upper reaches collects against it and soon there will be floods to add to the other distress the Grass has brought. More than half the country is gone now: the territories pillaged from Mexico, argued from Britain, bought from France, have all been lost. Only the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... of men were scrambling over the debris; gaunt men with dishevelled hair, practically naked, covered with dirt and the greasy brown dust of the disintegrator ray. In the lead, hardly recognizable, his menore awry upon his tangled locks, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... Edith by Freeling's letter to her mother, all the repressed love of years, never dead nor diminished, but only chained, held down, covered over, shook itself free from bonds and the wrecks and debris of crushed hopes. It filled her heart with an agony of fullness. Her first passionate impulse was to go to him and throw herself into his arms. But a chilling thought came with the impulse, and sent all the outgoing heart-beats back. She was no longer the wife of George Granger. ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... inter-tubular substance. We have thus produced hollow tubes, united together by cells, all arising from the rete Malpighii of the coronary corium. Section of the lower part of the horn tubes shows them to contain a cellular debris. ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... debris were hurled skyward on gigantic pulsations of blinding light, to the detonations that shook men from their feet in many sections of the American line seven and eight ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan

... degrees throughout the entire distance of the river below; these were formed of decomposed basalt rocks that had apparently been washed from decaying hills by the torrents of the rainy season. At other parts of the route, we crossed above similar debris of basalt that lay at an angle of about sixty degrees, from a height of perhaps two hundred feet to the water's edge, and reminded me of the rubbish shot from the side of a mountain when boring a tunnel. The whole of the basalt in this portion ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... himself in Caracas, going hither and thither among the ruins, counteracting with his words the effect of the speeches of the royalists and assisting to dig out of the debris corpses and the wounded, giving the latter ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... walls of Canyon de Chelly are but 20 to 30 feet high, descending vertically to a wide bed of loose white sand, and absolutely free from talus or debris. Three miles above Del Muerto comes in, but its mouth is so narrow it appears like an alcove and might easily be overlooked. Here the walls are over 200 feet high, but the rise is so gradual that it is impossible to appreciate its amount. At the point where Monument canyon comes in, ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... other gun, blowing it and the crew into nothingness. We went on firing until we had exploded 18 shells and had made several gaps in the wire, when, without a moment's warning, our trench mine exploded. The trenches were packed with troops ready for the word. A mountain of debris was shot in the air and back over us, burying a number of soldiers in the trench, where they died miserably from suffocation. The concussion was so powerful that it blew the shield of my gun off downwards, cleaving Corporal King's skull in twain ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... am certain it must be a luxury in the debris," I laughed; "but," I added, "I am afraid I must postpone the pleasure until another time." I was still ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... found signs of this period of habitation. On a shelf in a cupboard, hidden by a debris of paper and empty boxes, he came upon two cans evidently overlooked. He took them to the window, threw back the shutter, and saw they contained tomatoes and cherries. This heartened him to new efforts and he began a search through the dirty desolation ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... mountain sides, bringing with it first good soil and then subsoil, stones and rock. The hills eventually become those peaked deserts the queer look of which must have puzzled many students of Japanese pictures. The debris washed away is carried into the rivers, along with trees from the lower slopes, and the level of the river beds is raised. Because there is less space in the river beds for water the rivers overflow their banks, and disastrous floods take place. The farmers, the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... above sea-level), to the right, and, turning sharply northward, began our ascent toward the pass. The snow we struggled over was so soft and deep that we sank into it up to our waists. Occasionally there was a change from snow to patches of loose debris and rotten rock. The fatigue of walking on such a surface was simply overpowering. Having climbed up half a dozen steps among the loose, cutting stones, we would slide back almost to our original point of departure, followed by a ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor

... canal is the sewer of the body. It removes a large amount of the impurities. In some cases of fasting that I have personally supervised, there has been a daily action of the bowels merely from the waste matter that has accumulated. The debris that is removed from the body in this way does not by any means consist entirely of the remains of food that is not absorbed by the circulatory system. The blood is purified to a large extent by the various waste elements that seek the alimentary canal for an outlet. If these waste products ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden

... moraine and glacier and to the Staffel Alp, over the green meadows. The Hoernli (9,490 feet high) is the ridge running out from the Matterhorn. It is reached by a stiff climb over rocks and a huge heap of fallen stones and debris. From it the view is similar to that from the Schwarzsee, but much finer, the Theodule Glacier being seen to great advantage. Above the Hoernli towers the Matterhorn, huge, fierce, frowning, threatening. Every few moments comes a heavy, muffled sound, as new showers of falling stones come down. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... portion of a harrow—in another place some old iron press of which I do not know the use. The rest of the village was like a deserted brick-field, or the remains of some ancient mining camp—I do not think there were three fragments of wall over 10 feet high left. And in and out of this debris wandered the German front line. We jumped down into those trenches where some shell had broken them in. They were deep and narrow, such as we had in Gallipoli. Back from them led narrow, deep, winding ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean

... the air, to give forth a chunky, smacking sound, as it struck water-softened, spongy wood. The attack against the cave-in had begun, to progress with seeming rapidity for a few hours, then to cease, until the two men could remove the debris which they had dug out and haul it by slow, laborious effort to the surface. But it was a beginning, ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... making gossip of the day. The only serious shadow cast over the scene had been the persistent presence, in foreground or background, of Courtenay Youghal. And now the shadow suddenly stood forth as the reality, and the castle of hopes was a ruin, a hideous mortification of dust and debris, with the skeleton outlines of its chambers still standing to make mockery of its discomfited architect. The daily anxiety about Comus and his extravagant ways and intractable disposition had been gradually lulled by the prospect of his making an advantageous marriage, ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... of the Convent of St. Clara. In the background appears a partly demolished convent building, from which a gang of workmen are carrying out timber and debris. At the left is a mortuary chapel. Its windows are lighted from within, and whenever the door is opened, a brilliantly illuminated crucifix on the chancel wall, with a sarcophagus standing in front of it, becomes visible. A number of the graves ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... expansion and contraction. Scientific men were awake to the interest of these facts, but had considered them only as local phenomena. Venetz and Charpentier were the first to detect their wider significance. The former traced the ancient limits of the Alpine glaciers as defined by the frame-work of debris or loose material they had left behind them; and Charpentier went farther, and affirmed that all the erratic boulders scattered over the plain of Switzerland and on the sides of the Jura had been thus distributed by ice and not by water, as ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... The French ran to the threatened spot and worked hard, in spite of the storm of British shot and shell. But nothing was saved, except Drucour's own quarters. During the confusion the wind blew some burning debris against the timbers which protected the nearest casemates from exploding shells. An alarm was raised among the women and children inside. A panic followed; and the civilians of both sexes had their nerves so shaken that they thought of nothing but ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... of broken stone formation were on our right and left, inclosing us in a small space of barren, waste earth. The elements had crumbled the rocks down for ages, until what perhaps had been once a deep canyon was now a narrow flat, a mass of debris, terminating at the top of the steep, ragged cliff that pitched downward before us. The high, rocky ridges on both sides were wholly impassable, at least for the teams. A search finally disclosed, at the base of the ridge on our right, a single possible passage. It was narrow, ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell

... Morgan, as she surveyed the debris of Henry's Sunday clothes, and her womanly wrath for the destroyer of them began to boil, "Henry, now tell me honestly, is this little boy telling the truth? Now, don't you ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White

... time the earl sat silent and thoughtful; the old lawyer fussing about, putting papers and debris of all sorts into their right places, but feeling it awkward to ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... thrown up to him. It was coated with clay, but the gold shone through, and Done handled his first nugget—a plump one of about ten ounces. A little later they set to work, puddling the best of the wash dug out in the course of sinking; and then the debris was put through the cradle, and Jim awoke at last to the full zest of the digger's lust. Pawing among the gravel in the hopper of the cradle, he picked out the gold too coarse to pass through the holes, and the gleaming yellow metal fired him with a passion ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... peculiar to Europe. A new country, if it is to be capable of a Cabinet government, if it is not to degrade itself to Presidential government, must create that Cabinet out of its native resources—must not rely on these Old World debris. ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... was also given to the movements of the curious little rock hoppers and petrels. These made burrows in the ground under the basaltic debris at the foot of the cliffs, just like rabbits, popping in and out of their subterranean retreats in the same way as people travelling in the American backwoods have noticed the "prairie dogs" do; but, ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... somewhat more imaginative power, I should have taken the forest for a fairy wood, for besides the merry monkeys, I saw many remarkable things. The rock sides and debris to the left of the road, for example, had the most singular and varied forms. Some resembled the ruins of temples and houses, others trees; indeed, the figure of a woman with a child in her arms, was so natural, that I could ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... out the weak counterpoise of its wheeled tail. If it comes to a house or a tree or a wall or such-like obstruction it rams against it so as to bring all its weight to bear upon it—it weighs some tons—and then climbs over the debris. I saw it, and incredulous soldiers of experience watched it at the same time, cross trenches and wallow amazingly through muddy exaggerations of small holes. Then I repeated ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... have lain near the centre of the old town. And where are the paving-stones? The painstaking John Leo says that the streets of Gafsa are "broad and paved, like those of Naples or Florence." Have they been slowly submerged under the debris of Arabism, or taken up and worked into the masonry of the Kasbah and other buildings? Not one is left: ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... the ground rose sharply, and the stream flowed out of a deep ravine which they followed. The rocks, as far as Wyllard could remember, were of volcanic origin, and some of them had crumbled into heaps of ragged debris. The slope of the ravine became a talus it was almost impossible to scramble along, and they were forced back upon the boulders and the half-thawn ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... acknowledged authority. Sam rolled out two vinegar-barrels, both pronounced good. Following there came what seemed at least a hundred apple-barrels, potato-barrels, turnip-barrels, ash-barrels, boxes, benches, sections of shelving, and a general heap of debris, some of it unrecognizable even by 'Lias Mullins, oldest member of ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... tottered along over the rough foreshore which had been cleared of its human debris. His blanket-clad shoulders, though gay with color, were bowed with senility, a mockery of the vaunting splendor which glared out in vivid stripes. His escort, too, was mostly elderly. There were no fighting men ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... she wore a filthy blue dressing-gown and torn stockings thrust into streaky pink satin mules. Her face was sunken. She seemed to have but half as much hair as Babbitt remembered, and that half was stringy. She sat in a rocker amid a debris of candy-boxes and cheap magazines, and she sounded dolorous when she did not sound derisive. But ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... their devotions in the ancient church that stood beside the route; but no one is likely to do so again, as the edifice—when we passed it—was falling into ruins and looked in a deplorable condition, the finely-sculptured doorway being partly hidden by the fallen debris. But not only the church, but more or less the whole village, seemed in a tumble-down condition, and this appeared to us especially strange, as everywhere around prosperity seemed to reign; and further, since the railway ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... tumbling roof and toppling wall, giving vent to their feelings in laughter and loud shouts of approval, like delighted children, whenever another bulky square of mud and thatch comes tumbling down. Fortunately, nobody happens to be hurt, beyond the half-burying in the debris of some donkeys, which are finally induced to extricate themselves by being vigorously bombarded with stones. No sympathy appears to be given on the part of the spectators, and evidently nothing of the kind is expected by the tenants of the tumbling ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... French "push" advanced. No house on this street escaped. Some of them are absolutely destroyed. The church is a mere shell. Its tower is pierced with huge holes. Its bell lies, a wreck, on the floor beneath its tower. The roof has fallen in, a heaped-up mass of debris in the nave beneath. Its windows are gone, and there are gaping wounds in its side walls. Oddly enough, the Chemin de la Croix is intact, and some of the peasants look on that as a miracle, in spite of the fact that the High Altar is buried ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... three men found themselves in an evil-smelling room furnished with a bench, some broken chairs, a litter of tools and shoes and leather findings. It was untenanted, but, seeing another door ahead of him, Blake stumbled toward it over the debris. Like the outer door, it was barred, but ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... his home to Quartpot Alley, he little dreamed of the treachery with which he had been treated. "Has Phineas Finn been here?" he asked as he took his accustomed seat within a small closet, that might be best described as a glass cage. Around him lay the debris of many past newspapers, and the germs of many future publications. To all the world except himself it would have been a chaos, but to him, with his experience, it was admirable order. No; Mr. Finn had not been there. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... the consistency of ice and spotted with boulders that had lodged there. The peak itself was torn and shattered, so that it revealed great gleaming surfaces and pits, in which glittered mica, or some other mineral. The vast gulf behind was half filled with the avalanche and its debris. But for the rest, it seemed as though nothing had happened, for the sun shone sweetly overhead and the solemn snows reflected its rays from the sides of a hundred hills. And we had endured it all and were still ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... the square of lawn on the Terrace side was sodded, and from the street in front of the shop all the debris was carried away. Surely, ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard

... do the qualities of land vary from one formation to another, but upon the same formation there is frequently considerable difference in the quality of land depending upon chemical difference in the substratum, or upon an intermixture of foreign debris derived from ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... remains of an extensive edifice, intermixed with a blackish mold, in which human bones frequently occur, with stirrups, buckles, and other decayed fragments of ancient armor. In an excavation were found a quantity of black earth, the debris of animal matter, some human bones, a bracelet, and a considerable portion of charcoal, from which it may be concluded that the individuals whose remains were discovered, had perished during a conflagration of the castle. The tradition ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... at the detective's side in the Mackwaytes' little dining-room. The room was in considerable disorder. There was a litter of paper, empty bottles, overturned cruets and other debris on the floor, evidence of the thoroughness with which the burglar had overhauled the cheap fumed oak sideboard which stood against the wall with doors and drawers open. In the corner, the little roll-top desk showed a great gash in the wood round ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... profound. The history of Babylonian religion is divided into periods of growth and periods of decadence. The influence of domestic religion was invariably opposed to the new and high doctrines which emanated from the priesthood, and in times of political upheaval tended to submerge them in the debris of immemorial beliefs and customs. The retrogressive tendencies of the masses were invariably reinforced by the periodic invasions of aliens who had no respect for ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... corner and went on to a sort of market-place, where sweepers were gathering up the debris after the day's sales. They glanced about the city. Salem had made rapid strides since the grand declaration of peace, but at the end of the century it was far from the grandeur the next twenty ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... hear that?" she whispered. "Something clinked! Ashes or wood won't make that sound. Oh, suppose it is the key!" She raked away again frantically, and hauled out a quantity of charred debris, but nothing even faintly resembling a key. When nothing more remained, she poked the fragments disgustedly, ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman

... his study, and he laid the debris before me. I could understand his regarding it as of small importance when I looked at it, for the metal was almost black, and the stones lustreless and dull. I rubbed one of them on my sleeve, however, and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... This was in June, 1910; the Campanile was being built to replace the old one that had fallen in 1902, and to little Maria and Andrea, there was a fascination in watching the workmen lift the great stones into place from the confused debris at ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard

... appearance and took up a position here he could address the crowd from the centre of the pit, inside the barriers. The roughs and dry goods clerks piled themselves up as high as the roof, tier after tier, and a sickening odor came from the dogs and debris of ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... see about that," said Denham in a low tone, intended for my ears only; and we climbed on over a heap of debris, at the top of which we had a good view outward to where one of the Boer parties had dismounted and were resting their horses before retiring ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... a mile away, has a sad interest as being the scene of the terrible accident in 1862, when a number of men and boys were imprisoned in the workings owing to the blocking up of the only shaft by a mass of debris, caused by the fall of an iron beam belonging to the pumping engine at the pit-head. Before the shaft could be cleared and a way opened to the workings, all the poor fellows had died, overcome by the deadly "choke-damp." Joseph Skipsey, the ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry

... ugly such objects were, when the feeling that had made them precious no longer existed! The debris of human life was more worthless and ugly than the dead and decaying things in nature. Rubbish... junk... his mind could not picture anything that so exposed and condemned all the dreary, weary, ever-repeated actions by which life is continued from day to day. Actions without meaning.... ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... the midst of the illusions of life. It descends so far, with its huge human foundations, that it gives one the impression of a monstrous concrete Base, sunk into eternity, upon which, for all its accumulated litter and debris, man will be able to build, perhaps has begun already, to build, his Urbs Beata. And Dickens entered with dramatic clairvoyance into every secret of this Titanic mystery. He knew its wharfs, its bridges, its viaducts, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... Evans. Notice the Whale-back clouds on Erebus, the debris cones on the Ramp, and the anemometer pipes which had to be cleared during blizzard by way of the ladder at the end of the Hut. 172 From a photograph by ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... making words out of pieces of words, or compounded words. Besides this difficulty, no language can be taught successfully by means of a dictionary, until the human memory acquires more power. Three years of hopeless struggle with the mighty debris of his symbols left him, although in the main reticent, a mighty man of words. But his labors were not lost. Through that heroic, unaided struggle he gained the first true glimpses into the elements of language. It is a startling fact, that ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown

... and moved, slowly at first, then faster as it worked into the current. The Texan gazed dumbfounded at the rapidly widening strip of water that separated them from the shore. But he found scant time to stare idly at the water. All about them it's surface was clogged with floating debris. The river had risen to within a foot of the slender cable that held the boat on its course, and the unwieldy craft was trembling and jerking as uprooted trees and masses of flotsam caught on the line, strained it almost to the ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx

... sliding trunk so useful. It would "telescope," and being thus adjustable, lent its proportions to any sized burden imposed upon it. Into this the girl tossed a few articles selected from the rummage on the table, a pair of shoes gathered from more debris in a corner, and on top a sweater and skirt, taken from a peg on the door. All together this composed rather a pretentious assortment ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis

... to be arrested than the strange sweeping loop formed by the junction of the Alps and Apennines, and enclosing the great basin of Lombardy. This return of the mountain chain upon itself causes a vast difference in the character of the distribution of its debris on its opposite sides. The rock fragments and sediment which the torrents on the north side of the Alps bear into the plains are distributed over a vast extent of country, and, though here and there lodged in beds ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... awhile the attempt was made to fall back in order, and then everything went to pieces. My heart failed me utterly. I thought the day was lost. A confused mass of men and guns, caissons, army wagons, ambulances, and all the debris of a beaten army surged and crowded along the narrow dirt road to the landing, while that pitiless storm of leaden hail came crashing on us from the rear. It was undoubtedly at this crisis in our affairs that the division ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... Record holder for the first tumble. Selected water as the spot for his fall, and was not picked up with the debris. Ambition: A Wright machine. Recreation: Tuning up. Address: ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous

... he would find himself the centre of interest, and feel unutterably uncomfortable in the discovery. Being obliged to say something, he would mine his brain and put in a blast and when the smoke and flying debris had cleared away the result would be what seemed to him but a poor little intellectual clod of dirt or two, and then he would be astonished to see everybody as lost in admiration as if he had brought up a ton or two ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... localities,—the deep arenaceous bed and soft sand-beach; and these now form no inconsiderable proportion of the entire mass. I found the deposit thickly inhabited by spatangi, razor-fish, gapers, and large, well-conditioned cockles, which seemed to have no idea whatever that they were living amid the debris of a charnel house. Such has been the origin here of a bed of shell-sand, consisting of many thousand tons, and of which at least eighty per cent. was once associated with animal life. And such, I doubt not, is the history of many a calcareous ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... buildings, the groups of men on one side, the running figures on the other. And poised, stationary, as it seemed, in mid-air, above the instant eruption, hung a mushroom cloud of smoke and dust, specked with fragments of riven wood and shattered concrete. Through the succeeding contrasted blackness the debris thudded upon the earth. With scarcely an interval followed a second shot, a third, a fourth. The air became alive with hurtling masses ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... the old road, I wander over soft logs and gray yielding debris, across the little trout brook, until I emerge in the overgrown Barkpeeling,—pausing now and then on the way to admire a small, solitary now and then on the way to admire a small, solitary white flower which rises above the moss, with radical, heart-shaped ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... the leader of the rescue squad made it clear that the man was to be carried out, and Tom helped with this while Ned, using an axe, cleared away some debris to enable the door to be opened fully so the men could pass ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton

... lay upon one side or the other, or again she hurtled along keel up, or rolled over and over, or stood upon her nose or her tail at the caprice of the great force that carried her along. And the watchers saw that this great ship was merely being blown away with the other bits of debris great and small that filled the sky. Never in the memory of man or the annals of recorded history had such a storm raged ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... centuries more so now. Still more was the Tiger stalking abroad: there were two or three tigers in particular, among the Great Powers, evidentlv crouching for a spring—that should settle things. Time was building the funeral pyre for the Phoenix, and building it of the debris of ruined worlds. In the early sixth century, the best minds were retiring in disgust to the wilds;—you remember the anchorite's rebuke to Tse-Lu. But now they were all coming from their retirement—the most active minds, whether the best or not—to shout their nostrums and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... toward the butt. In the glare of the sun timbers strained and snapped, and men with bars and axes chopped and wrenched at the massive frames and twisted iron on the track. The wrecking gang moved like ants in and out of the shapeless debris, and at intervals, as the sun rose higher, the tramp dragged himself nearer the butt. He lay on the burning sand like a crippled insect, crawling, and waiting for strength to crawl. To him there was no railroad and no wreck, but only the blinding sun, the hot sand, the torture ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman

... landslide was not difficult, since it had passed to their right. They soon made out its trail, which moved down to the creek in a zigzag fashion. Sure enough the creek was partly filled with the debris, and here the opposite bank was overflowed to the ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield

... sculptors are borrowed from Praxiteles, who succeeded in giving an appearance of living flesh. The Museum of the Vatican alone contains several thousand specimens of ancient sculpture which have been found among the debris of former magnificence, many of which are the productions of Grecian artists transported to Rome. Among them are antique copies of the Cupid and the Faun of Praxiteles, the statue of Demosthenes, the Minerva Medica, the Athlete of Lysippus, the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... springs, mud volcanoes, and the appearance of bell-formed or dome-shaped trachytic rocks without openings; the opening of these rocks, or of the elevated beds of basalt, as p 226 craters of elevation; and, lastly, the elevation of a permanent volcano in the crater of elevation, or among the 'debris' of its earlier formation. At different periods, and in different degrees of activity and force, the permanent volcanoes emit steam acids, luminous scoriae, or, when the resistance can be overcome, narrow, band-like streams of molten earths. Elastic vapors sometimes elevate either separate ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... thousands of birds have made their nests. There are islets too, occasionally large enough to have once supported something of a population, such as Amerade, Salug, Sehel. The granite threshold of Nubia, is broken beyond Sehel, but its debris, massed m disorder against the right bank, still seem to dispute the passage of the waters, dashing turbulently and roaring as they flow along through tortuous channels, where every streamlet is broken up into small cascades, ihe ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... upper for twelve bodies.[667] It is thought that originally the cubic mass, which is all that now remains, was surmounted by a pyramidical roof, many stones from which were found by M. Renan among the debris that were scattered around. The height of the monument was thus increased by perhaps one-half, and did not fall much short of sixty-five feet.[668] The cornice, which is now seen on one side only, and which is there imperfect, originally, no ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... the wind god whispered into his ear and warned him not to partake of the refuse; so he said to the woman; "My mother, I can not eat these things." Then she went to another corner of the den, where there was another pile of debris; but again the wind god prompted him and again he refused. After this she visited in turn two other piles of trash in the corners of her lodge and tried to make him accept it as food, but he still rejected it. Now, while he had been ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews

... confusion there was a sound from the church next door. Mr. Meech sat up among the debris and listened. It was the opening ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... months after the close of said fair or exposition, the corporation or association aforesaid shall clear the park, or in the event of the selection of Forest Park, the part thereof above described, of all tramways and railway tracks, rubbish and debris, and of all buildings, sheds, pavilions, towers, and other structures of every kind, and shall within twelve months after the close of such fair or exposition, fully restore the park selected as a site, or in the case of Forest Park, that portion thereof above-described, ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... had completely forgotten the purchase of the afternoon. In turn he rose, delved into the debris of his closet and, returning, spread before his end of the table one tin of deviled turkey (Snorky's favorite), a large piece of American cheese and a bottle ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... the passageway along which they had come; they could make out its narrowing continuation on into the mass of the mountain. They looked up and saw an ever dwindling space merging with darkness and finally lost in utter obscurity. Underfoot was debris, rocky soil worn away from the cliffs throughout the ages, here and there fallen slivers and scale of rock. Shadows moved somberly, misshapen and grotesque, like brooding spirits ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory

... there. "Perhaps they've gone!" There was a shapeless thing lying on the ground, outside the gates, but he could not make out what it was. In the dim light, it looked like a great piece of paper ... the debris of a ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... may be told, you have now a clear field; the thorns and brambles have all been extirpated, the debris of others' buildings has been carted of, the rough places have been made smooth; come, do a little construction yourself, and show that you are not only good at destroying, but capable of yourself planning a model, in which criticism itself shall ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... assume the eternity of matter, and often they are found to regard the present cosmos as only a certain stage in an endless circle of changes from life to death and from death to life. The world rebuilds itself from the wreck and debris of former worlds. It is quite consistent with many of these systems that there should be gods, but as a rule they recognize no God. While all races of men have shown traces of a belief in a Supreme Creator and Ruler far above their inferior deities, yet ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... Subaltern, staggering to his knees, and flung him headlong. And as he picked himself up again the air darkened with whizzing clods and mud and dust and stones and dirt that rained down from the sky. Before the echoes of the explosion had died away, before the last fragments and debris had fallen, there came the sound of another roar, the bellowing thunder of the British guns throwing a storm of shell and shrapnel between the German supports and the ruined trench. That, and another sound, told the Subaltern that the full fruits of his work were to be fully reaped—the ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... society that issues still trembling from the saturnalia of atheism and anarchy. . . . The literature of the present, the actual literature, is the expression, by way of anticipation, of that religious and monarchical society which will issue, doubtless, from the midst of so many ancient debris, of so many recent ruins. . . . If the literature of the great age of Louis XIV. had invoked Christianity in place of worshipping heathen gods . . . the triumph of the sophistical doctrines of the last century would have been much more ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers



Words linked to "Debris" :   rubbish, junk, debris storm, detritus, debris surge, rubble, dust



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