"Expanse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a coping of worn brick on which she had set her feet, but she did not see it now. She saw migratory birds traveling steadily through a vast expanse of gray sky; birds that were going, at the appointed time, to some far-distant place, in search of a golden climate, in search of the sun. Inevitably they would come into the golden climate, inevitably they would find the sun which they needed. Like them she was traveling ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... with a loud voice, that filled the whole expanse, and thrilled with various emotions the dumb assembly. "To Boabdil el Chico, King of Granada, Ferdinand of Arragon and Isabel of Castile send royal greeting. They command me to express their hope that the war is at length concluded; and they offer to the King of Granada such ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... swim well, and play tricks in the water. I now found myself in paradise, considering the horrors of mind I had just been released from. After looking about me some time, I could discover nothing but an expanse of sea, extending beyond the eye in every direction; I also found it very cold, a different climate from Master Vulcan's shop. At last I observed at some distance a body of amazing magnitude, like a huge rock, approaching me; I soon discovered it to be a piece of floating ice; I swam round it till ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... could see, myriads of lights glimmered like watch fires through the murk of the dismal streets, growing thicker and thicker as we approached the heart of the city, and appearing to blend their lustres. Through the midst of the glittering expanse we could trace the black tide of the river, crossed by the sparkling lines of the bridges, and reflecting the red lanterns of the ships and barges. The principal squares and thoroughfares were picked out, with ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... Salicornia. This plant abounded particularly where the plain sloped into the system of salt-water creeks; the approaches of which were scattered over with the raspberry-jam tree. A west-north-west and west course led me constantly to salt water; and we saw a large expanse of it in the distance, which Charley, to whose superior sight all deference was paid, considered to be the sea. I passed some low stunted forest, in which a small tree was observed, with stiff pinnate leaves and a round ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... during the autumn had a fine effect, and contrasted well with the mass of darker and larger trees, by which the back portion of the house and the offices was almost concealed. Both the house and green were in an elevated position, and commanded a delightful expanse of rich meadows to the extent of nearly one hundred acres, through which a placid river wound its easy way, like some contented spirit that glides calmly and happily through the gentle vicissitudes of ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... storm, clearing away at about sunset, opened a noble prospect from the porch of the colonel's house, which stands upon a high hill. The sun streamed from the breaking clouds upon the swift and angry Missouri, and on the immense expanse of luxuriant forest that stretched from its banks back ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the events recorded, and a month since the curtain rose upon this episode, a man might have been spied praying on the sand by the lagoon beach. A point of palm-trees isolated him from the settlement; and from the place where he knelt, the only work of man's hand that interrupted the expanse was the schooner Farallone, her berth quite changed, and rocking at anchor some two miles to windward in the midst of the lagoon. The noise of the Trade ran very boisterous in all parts of the island; the nearer palm-trees crashed and whistled in the gusts, those farther off contributed a humming ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on the western range of the Great North mountains towering above the picturesque Shenandoah Valley, and from the summit of one of the loftiest peaks, where, until then, the foot of a white man had never trod, they viewed the vast expanse of plain and forest with glistening eyes. Returning to Williamsburg they told of the wonderful richness of the newly discovered country and thus opened the way for the venturesome pioneer who was destined to overcome all difficulties and make a home ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... with the light of the sun diffused over the whole islands, distant hills, and the broad expanse of the lake, with its creeks, bays, and little slips of water among the islands, it must be a ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... absolute slaughter as I saw that afternoon on the green slope of Malvern Hill. The guns of the entire army were massed on the crest, and thirty thousand of our infantry lay, musket in hand, in front. For eight hundred yards the hill sank in easy declension to the wood, and across this smooth expanse the Rebs must charge to reach our lines. It was nothing short of downright insanity to order men to charge that hill; and so his generals told Lee, but he would not listen to reason that day, and so he sent regiment after regiment, and brigade ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... party of six had just appeared over the brow of a rising, which was the last great wave toppling monstrously down toward that great expanse of the shallow valley, in the midst of which flows the Missouri. This tiny party, so meagre and insufficient-looking as they faced the sun-bound plains, had just left the river route to strike in a more ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... the yard, on the western side of the cabin, the log barn and the "lean-to" thrust up their laden roofs from the surrounding snow. In front, the cleared ground sloped away gently to the woods below, a snow-swathed, mystically glimmering expanse, its surface tumbled by the upthrust of the muffled stumps. From the eastern corner of the clearing, directly opposite the doorway before which Dave was standing, the Settlements trail led straight away, a lane ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... no great distance from Lisconnel as the crow flies, but little intercourse takes place between the two hamlets. For the crow's flight would be over a rugged mountain ridge, sinking into a trackless expanse of bog, which often spreads rough and wet walking before wayfarers who have to experience it at closer quarters than those who merely throw down a flapping shadow as they pass. And round by the road is a good long tramp, not to be lightly undertaken. So it does not ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... summit of one of the highest plateaus bordering the Missouri River, surrounded by a rich expanse of foliage, lies Independence, the beautiful residence suburb of Kansas City, only ten ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... florid Doctor, with his majestically curving expanse of waistcoat and his inscrutable face, whirred through the streets of Fairbridge in his motor car, with that meek bulk of womanhood beside him, many said quite openly how unfortunate it was that Doctor Sturtevant had married, when so young, a woman so manifestly ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... nature, so far as can be done, is destroyed; there is no fine sweep of forest, no broad expanse of meadow or pasture ground, no ancient and towering trees clustered about the villas, no rows of natural shrubbery following the course of the brooks and rivers. The streams, which are often but the beds of torrents dry during the summer, are confined in straight channels ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... came up, and with it a moaning wind, at the breath of which the silence began to whisper mysteriously. Lonely enough in the newborn light looked the wide expanse of mountain, plain, and forest, more like some vision of a dream, some reflection from a fair world of peace beyond our ken, than the mere face of garish earth made soft with sleep. Indeed, had it not been for the fact that I was beginning to find the log on which I sat very hard, ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... them to a long winding road, with clumps of trees here and there on the borders of it. The road was apparently not much used, for it was more than sprinkled with grass all over. A ploughed field was on one side, and a wild heathy expanse, dotted with fir-trees, on the other. Suddenly on the side of the field, gradually on that of the heath, the ground changed to the ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... flat expanse of brown and sun-dried earth, completely devoid of grass, and divided roughly into sunken beds containing small orange-trees, mimosas, rose-bushes, poinsettias, and geraniums. It was bounded on three sides by earthen walls and on the fourth ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... columned and curtained bed loomed out vaguer; the room seemed to fill with greyness; and my eyes wandered to the mullioned bow-window, beyond whose panes, between whose heavy stonework, stretched a greyish-brown expanse of sore and sodden park grass, dotted with big oaks; while far off, behind a jagged fringe of dark Scotch firs, the wet sky was suffused with the blood-red of the sunset. Between the falling of the raindrops from the ivy outside, there came, fainter or sharper, the recurring bleating of ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... and the horses had all been picketed upon the moor. The stragglers who had dotted the grass had closed in until the huge crowd was one unit with a single mighty voice, which was already beginning to bellow its impatience. Looking round, there was hardly a moving object upon the whole vast expanse of green and purple down. A belated gig was coming at full gallop down the road which led from the south, and a few pedestrians were still trailing up from Crawley, but nowhere was there a sign of ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hawk, in his estimation, hath more charms than Guido's Madonna:—how he envies every rider upon his white horse!—how he burns to bestride the foremost steed, and to mingle in the fair throng, who turn their blue eyes to the scarcely bluer expanse of heaven! Here he recognises Gervase Markham, spurring his courser; and there he fancies himself lifting Dame Juliana from her horse! Happy deception! dear fiction! says Florizel—while he throws his eyes in an opposite ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... considered a peculiar circumstance, and a great inconvenience to its navigation; we, however, found a sufficient number of stopping-places to answer all our purposes, and in general without going far out of our way." From this, archipelago, extending about sixty miles, the strait widens into a broad expanse, which swells to the north in a deep sound, filled with islands, called Broughton's Archipelago. This part was named by Vancouver Queen Charlotte's Sound; and is here fifteen miles broad, exclusive of the archipelago, ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... to a cliff fully two hundred yards distant, and of half that height. On this projecting ledge stood a noble buck, with antlers and head raised, while he seemed to be gazing over the wild expanse of country below him. They knew he was a fine animal, though the distance made ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... St. John's dancers of the fourteenth century saw, in the spirit, the heavens open and display all the splendour of the saints, so did those who were suffering under the bite of the tarantula feel themselves attracted to the boundless expanse of the blue ocean, and lost themselves in its contemplation. Some songs, which are still preserved, marked this peculiar longing, which was moreover expressed by significant music, and was excited even by the bare mention of the sea. Some, in whom this susceptibility was carried to the ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... past the mountains at whose base Mentone nestled unseen, past the Italian frontier, past the bight of Ventimiglia, to where the Capo di Bordighera stood faintly outlined between sea and sky. There was not a solitary sail on the whole expanse of the Mediterranean. A line of white, curving at rhythmic intervals along a small patch of sandy beach, showed that there was a gentle swell upon the sea, but its surface was mirror-like. A lovelier scene there is not in the world, and it was at its very loveliest. I took the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... an azure sky. The sunshine glinted merrily on the swift waters of the Clady, which flows almost beneath our windows from Dunlewy Lough to the sea. The birds were singing in the trees, which all about our hotel make what in the West would be called an "opening" in the wide and woodless expanse of ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... I said, and examining the map, I added, "We have passed Cape Portland, and those fifty leagues bring us under the wide expanse ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... wide expanse of the river to the opposite shore, wondering a little. Down there, miles and miles below, were the English settlements. The men, as traders, came to Quebec now and then. Were the English women like the French? Were there young girls among ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... plain. I turn my face to the north, to the south, to the east, and to the west; and on all sides behold the blue circle of the heavens girdling around me. Nor rock, nor tree, breaks the ring of the horizon. What covers the broad expanse between? Wood? water? grass? No; flowers. As far as my eye can range, it rests only ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... loosely connected with the body that it is difficult to catch the insect without breaking the greater part of it off. Mr. Bates has suggested that the large brittle wings of the metallic Morphos may often save them from being caught by birds, who are likely to seize some portion of the wide expanse of wing, and this, breaking off, frees the butterfly. Probably the long cumbersome tail of the Phenax has a similar use. When flying, it is the only portion of the insect seen; and birds trying to capture it on the wing are likely to get ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... lay with a book on the rocks, overlooking a familiar scene, the great expanse of the sands at low tide. In the far distance near the river was a dim feminine figure in a long coat, accompanied by three dogs. Half an hour later, when I glanced up from my book, I chanced to notice that the slender feminine figure was marching ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... my share, perhaps. Your picture, with its wide expanse of calm sea, was just reminding ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... mysterious empyrean, a single star flashed with a weird brilliance down upon the death-like stillness of the immemorial ocean. Yet the good old Marlinspike was rolling from side to side and rising and falling as if the liquid expanse were stirred by the rush of a tempest instead of lying as motionless as a country congregation during the rector's sermon. Suddenly Captain BABBIJAM closed his binoculars with an angry snap, and turned to me. His face showed of a dark purple ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... who stand near this mansion, is she who hath done these deeds of horror, Medea, in this house; or hath she withdrawn herself in flight? For now it is necessary for her either to be hidden beneath the earth, or to raise her winged body into the vast expanse of air, if she would not suffer vengeance from the king's house. Does she trust that after having slain the princes of this land, she shall herself escape from this house with impunity?—But I have not such care for her as for ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... of ground overlooking a wide expanse of level turf covered with coarse grass and stunted heather stood a man with his hands clasped behind his back. In the courage, judgment and sober self-confidence of that solitary figure had rested the destiny of an Empire through one of the greatest crises in its history: even as he stood ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... that the unperverted palate would swallow no liquid capable of occasioning disease.)), for the animals drink it too; not the earth we tread upon; not the unobscured sight of glorious nature, in the wood, the field, or the expanse of sky and ocean; nothing that we are or do in common with the undiseased inhabitants of the forest. Something, then, wherein we differ from them: our habit of altering our food by fire, so that our appetite is no longer a just criterion for the fitness of its gratification. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... For, although that kaleidoscopic expanse of buildings showed not the slightest break, yet they were now located on the sea. The houses were packed as closely together as anywhere; apparently all were floating, yet not ten square yards of open sea could be seen ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... hand lay the marshes, a white expanse of snow with a single dark line drawn across it—the Langfuhr road with ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... element in the midst of nature. Every now and then a dark patch fluttered across the shining road, and with a weird and plaintive cry, a night bird dashed abruptly from hedge to hedge, and seemingly melted into nothingness. I quitted the main road on the brow of a low hill, and embarked upon a wild expanse of moor, lavishly covered with bracken and white heather, intermingled with which were the silvery surfaces of many a pool of water. For some seconds I stood still, lost in contemplating the scenery,—its utter abandonment and grand sense of isolation; and inhaling at the same time long and ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... morning star. The enchanted Tritons left their noisy sport, And nymphs cerulian in their crystal court; Regardless of their frowns, or jealous smiles, While beauty's queen each eager eye beguiles. They gaze, and held in most delightful trance, Pursue her moving o'er the smooth expanse. ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... troops, and they continued a steady and swift movement. . . . . . . . . . . . . "The clan of Fergus had now gained the firm plain, which had lately borne a large crop of corn. But the harvest was gathered in, and the expanse was unbroken by trees, bush, or interruption of any kind. The rest of the army were following fast, when they heard the drums of the enemy beat the general. Surprise, however, had made no part of their plan, so they were not disconcerted by this intimation ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... music in Holland is to be heard. Its pier and its promenade are not at the first glimpse unlike Brighton's; but the vast buildings have no counterpart with us, except perhaps at Blackpool. What is, however, peculiar to Scheveningen is its expanse of sand covered with sentry-box wicker chairs. To stand on the pier on a fine day in the season and look down on these thousands of chairs and people is to receive an impression of insect-like activity that I think cannot be equalled. Immovable as they are, the chairs ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... Trinidada, leading the way, eagerly looking out ahead. How anxious he must have felt when the channel narrowed, and it became possible that some rocky barrier might impede his progress! Then, as he saw it again stretching out into a broad, lake-like expanse, how he must have rejoiced, while seamen in the chains on either side kept heaving the lead and announcing the depth of water. On and on the explorers pushed their way under all sail. If they saw the natives in their tiny canoes, darting out from behind some rocky ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... to ask for her hand and heart—to ask her to be his—an officer's wife? There lay before her fancy a glittering expanse of earlier dreams that almost made her giddy; and the whole week she was absent and pale, thinking anxiously of Sunday, when he was to return. What ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... surface of the ocean looked like waving corn before the ears are ripe. The vegetation beneath the water delighted the eyes of the sailors tired of the endless expanse of blue. But the seaweed soon became so thick that they were afraid of entangling their rudders and keels, and of remaining prisoners forever in the forests of the ocean, as ships of the northern seas are shut ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... garnet brooch, on her finger a ring set with rubies—an engagement ring. Her eyes are bent to the Weald. She frowns a little—not in anger, but as a brave child frowns when he is trying not to cry. In all that expanse no human eye is looking at her, and she may frown unrebuked and measure the spaces that yet survive between Apollo and the ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... the repression of the salient soul? If; instead of this, poverty should act as the liberator of the spirit, awakening it to trust in God and sympathy for man, and placing it aloft, fresh and free, like morning on the hill-top, to survey the expanse of life, and recognise its realities from beneath its mists, it should be greeted with that holy joy before which all sorrow ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... the large iron nails in the floor were polished to steel. Ellen sat a while listening to the soothing chirrup of the cricket and the pleasant crackling of the flames. It was a fine cold winter's day. The two little windows at the far end of the kitchen looked out upon an expanse of snow; and the large lilac bush that grew close by the wall, moved lightly by the wind, drew its icy fingers over the panes of glass. Wintry it was without; but that made the warmth and comfort within seem all the more. Ellen ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... modern improvements it is at present. It was then one of the most flourishing sea-ports in Suffolk, and occasionally sheltered in its ample bay the stateliest ships in the British navy. And, in addition to the little corn-brigs and colliers, whose light sails alone vary the blue expanse of waters, a mighty fleet of vessels of war might not unfrequently be seen stretching in majestic order along the undulating coast between Eastenness and Dunwich, and the more remote promontory of Orford-Ness. Dunwich, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... track, known as the "Fox's Path," leads to the summit, and there is a fine view northward across the valleys to the distant summits of Snowdon and its attendant peaks, while spread at our feet to the westward is the broad expanse of Cardigan Bay. Lakes abound in the lowlands, and, pursuing the road up the Mawddach we pass the "Pool of the Three Pebbles." Once upon a time three stones got into the shoe of the giant Idris as he was walking about his domain, and he stopped here and ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... rapidly augmenting, had not yet filled the bay at our feet. The moon now streamed fairly over the tops of Caerlaverock pines, and showed the expanse of ocean dimpling and swelling, on which sloops and shallops came dancing, and displaying at every turn their extent of white sail against the beam of the moon. I looked on old Mark the mariner, who, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... open window: "Is it true that you are empty?" I cried, looking up at the pale expanse of sky which spread above me. "Reply, reply! Before I die grant that I may clasp in these arms of mine ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... persons this little known land of the great Southwest is regarded as the one which God forgot. But to those who are familiar with its vast expanse of plain and horizon, its rugged sierras, its wild desolate mesas and solitary peaks of half-decayed mountains—its tawny stretches of desert marked with the occasional skeletons of animal and human remains—its golden wealth of sunshine and opalescent skies, and have felt the brooding ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... depicts the bringing to earth by the hands of angels of the Holy Grail, the vessel in which Joseph of Arimathea caught the last drops of Christ's blood upon the cross. With the opening chords we seem to see the clear blue expanse of heaven spread before us in spotless radiance. As the Grail motive sounds for the first time pianissimo in the topmost register of the violins, a tiny white cloud, scarcely perceptible at first, but increasing every moment, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... solution would consist in returning, with some small modification, to the solution of the ancients, by placing our meridian near the Azores; the second by throwing it back to that immense expanse of water which separates America from Asia, where on its northern shores the New ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... a bell in some tower tolling the hour of nine as they circled a busy city that lay beyond and below, them, a blur of light. Dave at the levers kept the Monarch II at a fair height, constantly scanning an expanse to the north dotted only here and there with lights. Once past the outskirts of the ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... a Motor-boat" we might have dubbed the trip. We had soon crossed the unbroken expanse of the lake and were moving through a submerged forest. Splendid royal palms stood up to their necks in the water, corpulent, century-old giants of the jungle stood on tip-toe with their jagged noses just above ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... just on the point of seeking Mr. Cherry and his promised assistance, when out of the bleak expanse of that awful and lonely platform Providence had sent this other help: a Man with reassuring grey hairs and a smile which she could not possibly mistake for anything but kindness. She seized it gratefully: ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... homely little post-office and turned into the lane leading to Golder's-green—a way which may have been pleasant enough in summer, but had no especial charm at this time. The level expanse of bare ploughed fields on each side of the narrow road had a dreary look; the hedges were low and thin; a tall elm, with all its lower limbs mercilessly shorn, uplifted its topmost branches to the dull gray sky, here and ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... to interest an idle mind, no doubt. First, there was the sea, a wide expanse of blue, dotted by numerous sails; then the beach, enlivened by groups of young people dressed like popinjays in every color; then the village street, and, lastly, a lawn over which there now and then strayed young ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... descendants still form in part the labouring classes of the two counties. Here, too, the English settlers probably clustered thickest along the coast, like the Danes in later days; and the great swampy expanse of the Fens, then a mere waste of marshland tenanted by beavers and wild fowl, formed the inland boundary or mark ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... expanse for traces, and found only too many. Here horses' hoofs, there large and small feet had pressed the snow, yonder hounds had run, and—Great Heaven!—here, by the tree-stump, red blood stained ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... time, even in the snugness of the Dragon bar. The rich expanse of corn-field, pasture-land, green slope, and gentle undulation, with its sparkling brooks, its many hedgerows, and its clumps of beautiful trees, was black and dreary, from the diamond panes of the lattice away to the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... sliding through a wooden channel across the floor to fall into the river in a half-concealed cataract, there bubbling up through the bottom of a huge wooden cave or vat, there resting placid in another; here gurgling along a spout; there flowing in a narrow canal through the green expanse of the well-mown bleaehfield, or lifted from it in narrow curved wooden scoops, like fairy canoes with long handles, and flung in showers over the outspread yarn—the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... sailed out of the rough water between the great headlands into the lake-like expanse of the glorious harbour; and before long, after signalling, boats were seen approaching, their white sails ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... undulating green and white expanse, save for a distant golf-player with the inevitable ragged following, seemed bare of human figures. The veering breeze shepherded flocks of white clouds across the harebell-tinted meadows of the sky. It sang a thin, sweet song in Lynette's little rose-tipped ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... The whole expanse of the Bay of Naples was coming continually more and more fully into view, with the mountainous islands in the offing, which border it towards the sea, and a long line of hamlets, villages, and towns, ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... the sea. Close by is the tennis court, which receives the warmest rays of the afternoon sun; on one side a tower has been built with two sitting rooms on the ground floor, two more on the first floor, and above them a dining-room commanding a wide expanse of sea, a long stretch of shore, and the pleasantest villas of the neighbourhood. There is also a second tower, containing a bedroom which gets the sun morning and evening, and a spacious wine cellar and store-room at the back of it. On the floor beneath is a sitting-room ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... amid a little avalanche of snow While he was sliding he thought of what would happen if some broken gap should come in his way. At the edge he stumbled to his feet ankle deep in slush thanking heaven for an opaque footing again. His guide was already clambering up a metal screen to a level expanse. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... the termination of the verb, into se, ce, sion, tion, ation, or ition: as, expand, expanse, expansion; pretend, pretence, pretension; invent, invention; create, creation; omit, omission; provide, provision; reform, reformation; oppose, opposition. These denote either the act of doing, or the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... was a large sloop that had left the bay and was sailing up a wide inlet or creek that pierced the land, cork-screw fashion, until it vanished from sight amidst innumerable green marshes. The channel, indicated by a deeper blue in the midst of an expanse of shoal water, was narrow, and wound like a gleaming snake in and out among the interminable succession of marsh islets. The vessel, following its curves, tacked continually, its great sail intensely white against the blue of inlet, bay and sky, and the shadeless green of the marshes, zigzagging ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... house and gone out with Marlowe in the car. People had seen him at close quarters. But was it he who returned at ten? That question too seemed absurd enough. But I could not set it aside. It seemed to me as if a faint light was beginning to creep over the whole expanse of my mind, as it does over land at dawn, and that presently the sun would be rising. I set myself to think over, one by one, the points that had just occurred to me, so as to make out, if possible, why any man masquerading as ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... plains are a dreary expanse of undulating grazing-land, traversed by small sloughs and their adjacent cultivated areas. Along this route it is without trees, and the villages one comes to at intervals of eight or ten miles are shapeless clusters ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... this staircase, they had suspended work until "Effendi" had been sent for and found. Under his eye and partly by his own pickaxe, the little flight of embryo steps, with a very steep gradient, had been laid bare. In the vast expanse which the work covered, it seemed a very small thing, but the greatest underground temples—for the tombs are veritable temples—of Egypt, and some of the most wonderful of her monuments, have been discovered by far fainter clues. The little staircase, about twenty feet below the surface of the ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Saint-Benoit is neither of these, for it was re-constructed in the XVII century, the XVII century in all its confusion of ideas, all its lack of taste, all its travesty of styles. There is the usual multitude of detail, the usual unworthiness. Portals which have no beauty, an expanse of unfinished facade, dark, ugly walls whose bareness is not sufficiently hidden by the surrounding houses, heavy buttresses, ridiculously topped off by globes of stone,—such are the salient features of the exterior ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... stand again before the paper-littered table and sway to and fro upon tottering legs. He heard, from a great distance, the deep rumble of Captain Carew's voice—but all he could see of Carew was a foot and a section of leg. He saw a wide expanse of bare floor, and the ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... apparently as completely engrossed with the sport as any of them, yet through it all was furtively watching Vi and Rosie as they strolled slowly onward, now stooping to pick up a shell or pausing a moment to gaze out over the wide expanse of waters, then sauntering on again in careless, aimless fashion, thoroughly enjoying the entire freedom from ordinary tasks ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... kinds were in full bloom. Where the ground was comparatively bare of grass, it was studded with the yellow blossoms of wild heart's-ease, and amongst some stunted alder-trees Godfrey found a dwarf rose already in bud, and wild onions and wild rhubarb in flower. Then he came upon a broad expanse of a shrub that looked to him like a rhododendron, with a flower with a strong aromatic scent. Several times he heard the call of a cuckoo. On a patch of sand there were some wild anemones in blossom. Godfrey pulled a bulb of wild onion, cut off a slice and tasted ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... and bosom like a mantle of night hid her face from his view, and the man let his glance rest in contented admiration upon the graceful curves of the youthful figure; then he sighed softly, and again his eyes turned to the wide, sailless expanse of the Pacific, that lay shimmering and sparkling before him under a cloudless sky of blue, and he thought again ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... sitting aloft in the careless expanse of ether rolled her destined chariots thundering along the pre-ordained highways of heaven, crushing a soul here and a life there with the tragic completeness of a steam-roller, granite-smashing, steam-fed, irresistible. And butter was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... Carson dictated the facts upon which this book is written. They were then placed in the writer's hands, with instructions to add to them such information as had fallen under his observation, during quite extensive travels over a large part of the wide expanse of country, which has been Christopher ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... water, their immature stages living under water feeding on aquatic animal life. Our present order of dragon-flies is the remains of an ancient race of insects of immense size. From fossil remains we learn that ancient dragon-flies had a wing expanse of ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... Earthquakes prevailing in this region, has prevented the people erecting any lofty edifices, while a bamboo hut will stand any amount of shaking without being brought to the ground. By a hurricane, however, they are easily overthrown. Over the wide expanse of water, which was blue and clear like that of the ocean, fish of various sorts were rising to the surface, as if to look out for the appearance of the glorious sun over the mountain tops. As we pulled ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... thaw," he supposed, for there was no one living within fifty miles, and no other fur-path at that time, anyhow, in the bay. The northern komatik trail crossed twenty miles seaward, where the calm, wide expanse made the ice much safer in the early winter than near the swift current at the river mouth. But as he stooped to clear the trunk for his own axe, he noticed that, though disguised as a break, a cut had been first made to weaken the bough. "Some one's been here, that's sure," he said ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... to that part of the road which ran along the face of the cliff overlooking the sea; and here they paused, and gazed upon the wild and strange view before them. Where the sea had stretched all glorious in motion, expanse, and colour, there was now a deep valley, the bottom of which was rough with rocks, black for the most part, but in places glittering with the white salt from which the water had evaporated, and which the winds had rolled together. Further out from the coast, where ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... waves in the eternal night. Then was the glorious Spirit of heaven's guardian 120 borne over the sea with sovereign virtue. For the King of the angels commanded Light, dispenser of life, to come forth over the broad expanse: quickly was the Arch-King's mandate fulfilled, and Holy Light appeared 125 over the waste spaces, as the Creator had ordained it. The Wielder of Victory next sundered light from darkness, shadow from radiance, over the surge of the sea. Then he formed the two names of the dispensers ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... scenery of the lake is very beautiful. The ruins of the old fortress of Ticonderoga rise upon it, standing upon a steep rocky headland, and commanding the lake, which narrows at this point; a wide expanse of water swelling out both above and below. Ticonderoga was taken from the French by the English, by the use of artillery fired down from the mountain above it. In the American war of independence it was taken from us by surprise by one Colonel Ethen Allen. It is reported that Allen awakened ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... "bright spot," and he was quite sure that it was a fire. Then he took a look at the heavens, now a solid expanse of cloud behind which the stars twinkled unseen. A slight wind was blowing up the river, and its touch was damp on his face. When the lightning flared, as it still did now and then, he saw that it was not mere heat lightning but the token of ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Christian people that saved the nation from ruin. At the end of thirty years from the time when the soil of Missouri was devoted to slavery the "Kansas-Nebraska Bill" was proposed, which should open for the extension of slavery the vast expanse of national territory which, by the stipulation of the "Missouri Compromise," had been forever consecrated to freedom. The issue of the extension of slavery was presented to the people in its simplicity. The action of the clergy of New ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... from his own reflections, he rushed on toward the sea; and there he stopped to gaze, as oft before he had gazed, on the mighty expanse, seeming, in the liquid sunlight, as it stretched away from the yellow sand, a resplendent lake of molten silver bounded ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... fury and force of the Muscovite hosts. Its appearance from the sea is very attractive, for its port is surrounded with mountains, the highest of which still retains a memorial of the old Genoese dominion, while in part of its blue expanse lies the pretty Greek town, with its balconied houses and masses of foliage rising in terraces one above the other. Above it towers a ruined castle, whence the Genoese, in their days of supremacy, scanned with vulture-gaze the sweep of sea, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... Missouri River it was without civil government, inhabited almost exclusively by Indians. The few white men in it were voyageurs, or connected in some way with the United States army. It was supposed to be uninhabitable, without any natural resources or productiveness, a vast expanse of arid plains, broken here and there with barren, snow-capped mountains. Even Iowa was unsettled west of the Des ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... voyage. The Indians had never been to sea before, and had never dreamed that such an expanse of water existed on the planet. They would stand at the rail, after the first days of seasickness were over, gazing out across the waves, and trying to descry something that looked like land, or a tree, or anything that seemed familiar and like home. ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... flat lowland surface, the canal sage grew thick, a gray-green expanse stretching unbroken to the distant cliff that was the other side of the canal. Occasionally above its smoothness thrust the giant ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... struggling through the curtains that cover its fantastic windows allows a mellow light to fill the expanse of the building. A toothless old woman and a young girl, both of them thinly and poorly clad, are the sole occupants of the church, and they are evidently too much absorbed in prayer to notice our presence. They have placed beside ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... caravan had ever braved this desert expanse, or it would have left visible traces of its encampments, or the whitened bones of men and animals. But nothing of the kind was to be seen, and the aeronauts felt that, ere long, an immensity of sand would cover the whole ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... on high ground, and below the sloping garden lay a broad expanse of country—meadows and plowed fields—that in autumn would be rich with waving corn, closed in by dark woods, beyond which lay the winding invisible river. As Hugh came up the straight carriage drive, he caught sight of a ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... gather lofty thoughts? I scorn to offer Spartans such exhortations as these. Look! we are protected by our position. Though he bring with him the whole East, and parade his useless numbers before our craven eyes, this sea which spreads its vast expanse before us is pressed into a narrow compass, is beset by treacherous straits which scarce admit the passage of a single row-boat, and then by their chopping swell make rowing impossible; it is beset by unseen shallows, wedged between deeper ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... live-oak, overlooking a wide expanse of prairie, dotted here and there with patches of timber. Behind them flowed the broad and muddy stream, with a stretch of treacherous marsh-land separating them from the water. The soldiers had been formed into something resembling companies, and Mr. Radbury had been assigned ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... withered. One hand seemed to be shrunken, and his head was permanently crooked to one side. The face was mean and sinister; two fangs alone remained in his mouth; his nose was hooked; the eyes were small, sharp, penetrating and restless; but the expanse of brow above them was grand and noble. It was one of those heads that look as if they had been packed full, and not an inch of space wasted. His person was unclean, however, and the hands and the long finger-nails were black with dirt. I should have picked him out anywhere as ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... admirably fair, With guileless dimples, and with flaxen hair That waves in ev'ry breeze? he's often seen Beside yon cottage wall, or on the green, With others match'd in spirit and in size, Health on their cheeks and rapture in their eyes; That full expanse of voice, to childhood dear, Soul of their sports, is duly cherish'd here: And, hark! that laugh is his, that jovial cry; He hears the ball and trundling hoop brush by, And runs the giddy course ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... sea, and of the land; possessing powers of flight capable of outstripping even the tempests themselves; unawed by any thing but man; and, from the ethereal heights to which he soars, looking abroad, at one glance, on an immeasurable expanse of forests, fields, lakes, and ocean, deep below him, he appears indifferent to the little localities of change of seasons; as, in a few minutes, he can pass from summer to winter, from the lower to the higher regions of the atmosphere, the abode of eternal cold, and from thence ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... Roger and his cousin the conversation became general for a few minutes, then Lady Gertrude drew her son towards a French window opening on to the garden—a garden immaculately laid out, with flower-beds breaking the expanse of lawn at just the correct intervals—and eventually she and Roger passed out of the room to discuss with immense seriousness the shortcomings of the gardener as exemplified in the shape of one of ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... poured boiling coffee into the bowls. A few oaths and the groans of sleepers whom Tartarin crushed on his way to the table, and then to the door. Abruptly he found himself outside, stung by the cold, dazzled by the fairy-like reflections of the moon upon that white expanse, those motionless congealed cascades, where the shadow of the peaks, the aiguilles, the seracs, were sharply defined in the densest black. No longer the sparkling chaos of the afternoon, nor the livid rising upward of the gray tints of evening, ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... strong current. But nothing had been seen from there of the missing craft, and though he traversed the entire distance by way of the cliffs, he saw nothing throughout his walk but flecks of foam here and there over the tumbling expanse of water. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... dinner (as there were nearly two hours to spare) I walk'd off in another direction, (hardly met or saw a person,) and taking possession of what appear'd to have been the reception-room of an old bath-house range, had a broad expanse of view all to myself—quaint, refreshing, unimpeded—a dry area of sedge and Indian grass immediately before and around me—space, simple, unornamented space. Distant vessels, and the far-off, just visible trailing smoke of an inward bound steamer; ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... never, for any length of time, lost sight of the Danube. Here and there, indeed, the road struck inwards, so as to carry us away, perhaps, an English mile or more, from its banks; but the river, after it reunites, is so broad, and the country rises over it to such a height, that its noble expanse is seldom concealed from you, and that only for a moment. Moreover, the monuments of other days,—old castles, dilapidated towers, with here and there a rude pillar, or block of granite,—became, at each post which we gained in advance, ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... wincing while he recognised it as the one connexion in which he wasn't straight. He had in fact for this connexion a vivid mental image—he saw it as a small emergent rock in the waste of waters, the bottomless grey expanse of straightness. The fact that he had on several recent occasions taken with Kate an out-of-the-way walk that was each time to define itself as more remarkable for what they didn't say than for what they did—this fact failed somehow ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... now almost insufferable—all nature seemed sinking under it. The distant country presented to the eye a dreary expanse of sand, with a few stunted trees and prickly bushes, in the shade of which the hungry cattle licked up the withered grass, while the camels and goats picked off the scanty foliage. The scarcity of water was greater here than at Benowm. Day and night the wells were ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... to the Spectabiles Spes and Domitius a certain tract of land which was laid waste by wide and muddy streams, and which neither showed a pure expanse of water nor had preserved the comeliness of solid earth, for them ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... the engagement weeks, the strange colorings of mood and feeling, all the petty cares of the event itself, had suddenly vanished. She did not see even him, the man she was to marry, only the rugged face of the old minister, the bit of fluttering vine, the expanse of blue sky. She stood before the veil of her life, which was about ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... He still held my hand, and we looked out together on the shining expanse of the sea where there was no vessel visible and where our schooner alone flew over the watery, moonlit surface like a ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... Sir A. Burnes went in a boat to the ruins of Sindree, where a single remaining tower was seen in the midst of a wide expanse of sea. The tops of the ruined walls still rose two or three feet above the level of the water; and, standing on one of these, he could behold nothing in the horizon but water, except in one direction, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... that the inhabitants of Paradise sometimes grieve over their luck. Even Madeline Anderson, whose heart knew no constriction at the remembrance of brother or husband at some cruel point in the blue expanse, had come to turn her head more willingly the other way, towards the hills rolling up to the snows, being a woman who suffered by proxy, and by observation, and ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... was lovely beyond measure. Coutances lies within four miles of the sea, so that to the west and south there appeared an immense expanse of ocean. On the opposite points was an extensive landscape, well-wooded, undulating, rich, and thickly studded with farm-houses. Jersey appeared to the north-west, quite encircled by the sea; and nearly to the south, stood out the bold insulated little rock ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin |
