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Lagoon   Listen
noun
lagoon  n.  (Written also lagune)  
1.
A shallow sound, channel, pond, or lake, especially one into which the sea flows; as, the lagoons of Venice.
2.
A lake in a coral island, often occupying a large portion of its area, and usually communicating with the sea. See Atoll.
Lagoon island, a coral island consisting of a narrow reef encircling a lagoon.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lagoon" Quotes from Famous Books



... the harbors of the Atlantic coast on service in distant waters. But now, as a piece of good fortune amid many untoward occurrences, the steam sloop-of-war Brooklyn, a new and formidable vessel of twenty-five guns, which had been engaged in making preliminary surveys in the Chiriqui Lagoon to test the practicability of one of the proposed interoceanic ship canals, unexpectedly returned to the Norfolk navy yard on the 28th of November, less than a week before the meeting of Congress. She had until recently been under the command of Captain Farragut, afterwards famous ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... we anchored. He asked me if I should like to be one of the party. I thankfully said yes. "Well," said he, "to-morrow morning at daylight I intend going round the Cape Donna Maria (which has the shape of the mysterious helmet of Otranto), and exploring a river which runs into a large lagoon, and we shall be away most likely two days. I shall find prog, but don't forget your great coat ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... sail in May, high of hope for wealth great as Spaniard carried from Peru. June 8 the ships slip in to St. John's, Newfoundland, for water. Seventeen fishing vessels rock to the tide inside the landlocked lagoon, and who comes gliding up the Narrows of the harbor neck but Viceroy Roberval, mad with envy when he hears of the diamond cargoes! He breaks the head of a Portuguese or two among the fishing fleet and forthwith orders Cartier ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... Myriad ripples swirl and swoon; Shiv'ring 'mid the ruddy stars, Mirrored in the deep lagoon, ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles

... was situated on the edge of an extensive tract of marsh,—lagoon would be a more descriptive word for it, perhaps,—a splashy, ditch-divided district, extending along the borders of a lake for miles. Snipe-shooting was my motive there; and dull work it was in those dark, Novembry, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... burnished horizon. The sky passed, by an admirable gradation, from cherry red to enamelled blue; and the water, calm and limpid as a glass, gave back the exact reflection of this immense iridescence. Nearer the town the lagoon was like a vast mirror of bronze. Never had I seen Venice so lovely and ...
— A Summary History of the Palazzo Dandolo • Anonymous

... evening. The moon, rising over the city of Venice, shone down on towers and domes and marble palaces, and made a golden path in the rippling waters of the lagoon. ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald

... when,—after traversing for many days some wide expanse of ocean, unvaried save by its banks of floating sea weed, or, where occasionally and at wide intervals, he picks up some leaf-bearing bough, or marks some fragment of drift weed go floating past,—he enters at length the sheltered lagoon of some coral island, and sees all around the deep green of a tropical vegetation descending in tangled luxuriance to the water's edge,—tall, erect ferns, and creeping lycopodiaceae, and the pandanus, with its aerial roots and its screw-like ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... Ghent responded o'er lagoon and dike of sand, 'I am Roland! I am Roland! there is ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... the chill of the wind had become more biting. There was a smell of salt in the air now, and once or twice Jill had caught the low booming of waves on some distant beach. This was the Atlantic pounding the sandy shore of Fire Island. Brookport itself lay inside, on the lagoon called ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... gondoliers take them to the Piazzetta, and presently they were gliding across waters of flame and silver, where the white front and red campanile of San Giorgio—now blazing under the sunset—mirrored themselves in the lagoon. The autumn evening was fresh and gay. A light breeze was on the water; lights that only Venice knows shone on the tawny sails of fishing-boats making for the Lido, on the white sides of an English yacht, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... entrusted with an official mission in Honduras, witnessed an event of this kind, and though he sought to conceal his identity, he was generally believed to be Herr Heine, the well-known painter and explorer of Central America. Upon the day in question he was sailing across a large lagoon named Criba, some twenty miles broad, the weather being calm, and the sun shining brilliantly. After having secured his boat to the shore, he had landed at the entrance to a beautiful little village ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... Along all the line of the reef the clamorous surges ran; And the clouds were piled on the top of the island mountain-high, A mountain throned on a mountain. The fleet of canoes swept by In the midst, on the green lagoon, with a crew released from care, Sailing an even water, breathing a summer air, Cheered by a cloudless sun; and ever to left and right, Bursting surge on the reef, drenching storms on the height. So the folk of Vaiau sailed and were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... mouths of the Niger: it is now expelled, and thence Liverpool obtains, instead, its supplies of palm oil. So also, later still, at Whydah, and the other ports of the kingdom of Dahomy, and along the Lagoon, which connects Dahomy with the Benin River, there the Spanish slave dealers are themselves inaugurating a commerce in palm oil. Already the trade in that quarter is considerable, and it would have extended much more rapidly than it ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... that sort. But the man's got the pride of an emperor, and it came to my knowledge he'd been making a living out of fishing in the lagoon, and I worked on that. Look out of that window; it's a bit glary with the sun full on, but do you see those rows of stakes the nets are made fast on? Well, one of those belongs to Captain Owen Kettle, and he works ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... rose in one! To find thy peer Exceeds belief, all through the varying year, For chance thereof, and hope thereof, is none. There comes no rival to the rising sun, And none to thee!—no rival to the moon That sets in Venice on the far lagoon, And none to thee, thou marvel of the months, That art the cynosure of ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay

... consequently its strength, we knew by the red tinge of the water in its wake; still it held on. I glanced towards the shore—I could see a gap in the line of surf, beyond which the land rose to a greater height than anywhere near. It formed, I concluded, the entrance to a bay or lagoon, but seemed so narrow that even a boat would run the danger of being swamped by the surging waters on either side. Galled or terror-stricken as the whale evidently was, I could scarcely suppose that it would run itself on shore, yet from the course ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston

... lanes of my native land, occasionally visiting friends at a distance, and sometimes, for variety's sake, I stayed at home and amused myself by catching huge pike, which lie perdue in certain deep ponds skirted with lofty reeds, upon my land, and to which there is a communication from the lagoon by a deep and narrow watercourse. I had almost ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow

... footprints that I described to you, usually on the edge of a stream or in the soft loam along some forest lake or lost lagoon. ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... that his cry was not human, was not of himself, but of something four-footed, the snarl of some exasperated brute. He paused abruptly in his walk, listening, for what he did not know. The silence of the great city spread itself around him, like the still waters of some vast lagoon. Through the silence he heard the noise of the throng of college youths. They were returning, doubling upon their line of march. A long puff of tepid air breathing through the open window brought to his ears the distant joyous sound of ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... only fresh water to be found within fifty miles, was just then on the eve of being dried up. A long season of drought—that is to say, three or four years—had reigned over this particular portion of the desert, and the lagoon, formerly somewhat extensive, had shrunk into the dimensions of a trifling tank, containing little more than two or three hundred gallons. This, during the stay of the two tribes united as wreckers, had been daily diminishing; and had the occupants of ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... Achaean cities was strictly a colonization. The cities had no harbours—Croton alone had a paltry roadstead—and they had no commerce of their own; the Sybarite prided himself on growing gray between the bridges of his lagoon-city, and Milesians and Etruscans bought and sold for him. These Achaean Greeks, however, were not merely in possession of a narrow belt along the coast, but ruled from sea to sea in the "land of wine" and "of oxen" (—Oinotria—, —Italia—) or the "great Hellas;" the native agricultural ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... Messrs. ALFY and 'ARRY, With our trumpet and spear for the Doges, their mute, Opalescent, profanity-proof sanctuary, And we swell the lagoon—and lagoonster, to boot. Stare away at this pageant of eld—ever new 'tis,— In the glimmering gondolas loll, if you like; But I'll warrant one eye would be closed to their beauties, Could I only escape for a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various

... waste beyond the swamp and sand, The fever-haunted forest and lagoon, Mysterious Kor, thy fanes forsaken stand, With lonely towers beneath the lonely Moon! Not there doth Ayesha linger,—rune by rune Spelling the scriptures of a people banned,— The world is disenchanted! oversoon Shall Europe send her spies ...
— HE • Andrew Lang

... the sea into the fresh-water lagoon of Liimfjord in Jutland, in 1825—one of the most remarkable encroachments of the ocean in modern times—is expressly ascribed to "mismanagement of the dunes" on the narrow neck of land which separated the fjord from the North Sea. At earlier periods the sea had swept across ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... Pickens, and the Confederates the forts on the mainland. The negroes said the Teaser was anchored at the mouth of the lagoon, or very near it. This was not very definite, even if it were accepted as true. It was very important that the Teaser should not be permitted to get out of the bay, for she might do a great deal of mischief to the shipping of ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... oil painting into Venice. It is not till we come to Giovanni Bellini, born about 1430, that we find a work of the Quattrocento in the delightful but puzzling Allegory (631), where Our Lady sits enthroned beside a lagoon in a strange and lovely landscape of rocks and trees; while beside her kneels St. Catherine of Alexandria, and again, St. Catherine of Siena; farther away stand St. Peter and St. Paul, while below children are playing with fruit and a curious tree; on the ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... have urged Whewell to make him read it at our next meeting. I must give up my volcanic crater theory for ever, though it cost me a pang at first, for it accounted for so much, the annular form, the central lagoon, the sudden rising of an isolated mountain in a deep sea; all went so well with the notion of submerged, crateriform, and conical volcanoes,...and then the fact that in the South Pacific we had scarcely any rocks in the regions ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... at dawn, we came through the channel into the lagoon of the north island. It is a very difficult channel. A current sweeps the shore and runs through it like it was a big funnel, and all the driftage hereabouts comes into the lagoon. We let go anchor in ten fathoms, a half ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... had his wits about him, and swam along on a line with the breakers for some distance, until at length an opening appeared, into which he directed his course. Passing through this we reached still water, which seemed like a lagoon surrounded by a coral reef. The athaleb swam on farther, and at length we saw before us an island with a broad, sandy beach, beyond which was the shadowy outline of a forest. Here the monster landed, and dragged himself wearily upon the sand, ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... rising mist from the lagoon and the bay hindered the vision, and the sound of the rolling drum ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott

... insures Immediate cures Of weird, uncanny spells; The most unruly patient Gets docile as a lamb And is freed from ill by the potent skill Of Hoodoo-Doctor Sam; Feathers of strangled chickens, Moss from the dank lagoon, And plasters wet With spider sweat In the ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... till our path was barred by a big lagoon. It looked far more imposing than the channel; but Davies, after a rapid scrutiny, treated it to a ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... stockyard they took up the trail leading into the bush at a point where Jones was seen to go. Working up this for some two hundred yards and pointing out various signs as they proceeded, they arrived at a small slimy lagoon or pond, on the edge of which they picked up something they called "white man's fat." Some of them now dived into the pond, where they discovered the body of Jones, or what ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... little advantage at the time. It was for his own solace, forgetful for a moment of the intrigues of court life and the uncertain sunshine of princes, that he wrote his Sicilian idyls. For him, as at a magic touch, the walls of the heated city melted like a mirage into the sands of the salt lagoon, and he wandered once more amid the green woods and pastures of Trinacria, the noonday sun tempered by the shade of the chestnuts and the babbling of the brook, and by the cool airs that glide down from the white cliffs of Aetna. There once more he ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... letter to Gibbs (Bureau of Ethnology), states that "Coos in the Rogue River dialect is said to mean lake, lagoon or inland bay." ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell

... allowed us to paddle into the flooded European quarter, past the telegraph office, standing knee-deep in muddy water, up over the main road to Nedou's Hotel, where boats lay moored outside the dining-room windows, then across the lagoon, lightly rippled by a tiny breeze, beneath which lay the polo-ground, to the Residency, where ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... of history, there are few more interesting or wonderful than that which tells the story of the rise and progress of Venice. Built upon a few sandy islands in a shallow lagoon, and originally founded by fugitives from the mainland, Venice became one of the greatest and most respected powers of Europe. She was mistress of the sea; conquered and ruled over a considerable territory bordering ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty

... bright April day. On the broad lagoon which separates Venice from the narrow strip of accumulated sea sand, called the Lido, a gondola was gliding—swaying rhythmically at every push made by the gondolier as he leaned on the big pole. Under its low awning, on soft leather cushions, ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev

... refusal, the company begins to disperse; they prepare to go out, some to have a row on the lagoon, others to saunter before the cafes at St. Mark's; family discussions arise, gruntings of fathers, murmurs of mothers, peals of laughing from young girls and young men. And the moon, pouring in by the wide-open windows, turns this old palace ballroom, nowadays an ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... cart-horse: "death on the pale horse," I suggested—and young Hunt the missionary, who met me to-day on the same charger, squinted up at my perch and remarked, "There's a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft." The boat was ready and we set off down the lagoon about seven, four oars, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... could find out later. I would wear my large tortoise-shell spectacles (possibly blinders in addition), and I should attend strictly to business for a while, but when a full moon rose over a South Sea lagoon, and the palm trees rustled and the phosphorescence broke in silver on the bow of the pearl schooner, where she rode at anchor in our little bay, could I keep my contract and avoid sentiment? How ridiculous ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... and they were passing through a denser part than ever; so close were they that the large drooping boughs of some of the trees cracked and rustled and snapped as they passed by, to get to what seemed to be quite a lagoon shining clear and silvery, as seen by those on board the steamer through quite a tunnel ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... could not stay in the house. The man that had driven Marion over, saddled horses in the afternoon and the two women rode up above Mud Lake, now become through rainfall and seepage from the river a long, shallow lagoon. For an hour they watched the shovelling and carrying of sandbags, and rode toward the river to the very edge of the disappearing willows, where the bank was melting away before the undercut of the resistless current. They rode away with ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman

... in our park," said Mary Jane as she sat on the edge of the lagoon and watched the row boats and the electric launches gliding about on the water. "I liked those swans at ...
— Mary Jane's City Home • Clara Ingram Judson

... type of human longing and disappointment? What would become of him, if this fresh soul should stoop upon him in her first young passion, as the flamingo drops out of the sky upon some lonely and dark lagoon in the marshes of Cagliari, with a flutter of scarlet feathers and a kindling of strange fires in the shadowy waters that ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... side of the house the ground sloped away down to a beach seen between the Pandanus and cocoanut trees, of fine white sand fringing a calm lagoon of the deepest blue, beyond which appeared a long line of foaming breakers, ever dashing against a coral reef, which extended parallel with the coast as far as the eye could reach. On the other side rose the steep sides of a range of rocky and picturesque mountains, clothed ...
— Mary Liddiard - The Missionary's Daughter • W.H.G. Kingston

... stream hastening to the ocean, its rapid waters here sparkling in the sunshine, and there tumbling merrily in cascades. On its banks were vineyards and cheerful villages; close to where I stood, in a granite basin with steep and precipitous sides, slumbered a deep, dark lagoon, shaded by black pines, cypresses, and yews. It was a wild, savage spot, strange and singular; ravens hovered above the pines, filling the air with their uncouth notes, pies chattered, and I heard the cry of an eagle from a neighbouring peak; there ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... mighty sure as we'd a sighted somethin' o' them long afore this, my hearty. I recollect when I wuz in ther navy how I wuz once fooled this way. Yer see we'd been chasin' one o' ther enemy's ships, an' drove her into a lagoon. Thar we pounded her with our guns, an' ther crew desarted her, an' went ashore. We sunk ther ship, an' mannin' ther boats, we pulled ashore arter ther crew. We found ther shore lined with cliffs a thousand feet high. Thar wus no coast, that water beatin' up again ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"

... idea. I see from aloft that there is a good-sized blue water lagoon there, and as likely as not there may be pearl-shell in it. Anyway, it's worth seeing into, and so if Drake and yourself like to take our boat and half a dozen men, you might have a look in there. I can't see any houses, but at the same time, be careful. You can run in ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke

... Malaita, Solomon Islands. The language spoken on the coast from Uru on the northeast to Langalanga, Alite Harbor, on the northwest of Big Malaita, is practically Lau. On the west coast there is considerable admixture of Fiu, which is the language of the bush behind the Langalanga lagoon. In Dr. Codrington's "Melanesian Languages," pp. 39 et seq., certain words are given as spoken at Alite in Langalanga. These words are probably Fiu ...
— Grammar and Vocabulary of the Lau Language • Walter G. Ivens

... rainy evening when our cars rumbled over the long railroad bridge across the lagoon that leads to the station. Nothing but flat, dreary swamps, and then the wide expanse of sea on either side. The cars stopped, and the train, being a long one, left us a little out of the station. We got out in a driving rain, in company with flocks of Austrian ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... all. Professor David succeeded in obtaining the aid of a very skilful engineer from Australia, while the Admiralty allowed Commander F.C.D. Sturdee to take a surveying ship into the lagoon for further investigations. By very ingenious methods, and with great perseverance, two borings were put down in the midst of the lagoon to the depth of nearly 200 feet. The bottom of the lagoon, at the depth of 101 1/2 feet ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... lagoon we came upon such a boat. The man in it—a gay youth in red and black motley, with the mask fallen from his laughing, perspiring face—was in its stern, manipulating it with a long, thin paddle. The girl was lying face down on cushions in its prow. She was facing ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... a small stream descending from a lagoon, and rowed up it for about a mile until it became too shallow to proceed. Eight or ten aboriginals put in an appearance, and Bass and Flinders began to entertain doubts of securing a retreat from these people should they be inclined to be hostile. "They ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... Cape Horn on January 26, 1769. She ran for seven hundred leagues without land being seen. After that she passed several coral islands, the appearance of which is now familiar to most people, but in those days was but little-known. To three of them the names of Lagoon Island, Bow Island, and Chain Island were given; several ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

... "Just about like home, but I don't see much of any place to land without getting wet, do you? Those reflectors are probably solar generators, and they cover the whole island except for that lagoon right under us." ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... dark, but a strong breeze was blowing, which sent the surf high over the reef, so that the passage could easily be distinguished. Mr Hart, even to the last, was very unwilling to desert his station, and begged old Tom to remain inside the lagoon till they could see what would happen. They were not left long in doubt, for a few minutes only had elapsed after they had quitted the beach when fearful shouts and yells rent the air. The savages, expecting to entrap their victims, had evidently ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston

... brilliant-plumaged herons disport themselves, and gorgeous butterflies almost outshine the feathered denizens. From the tangled boughs the pendant boa-constrictor coils himself, and hissing serpents, basking crocodiles, and prowling jaguars people the untrodden wilds of jungle and lagoon. In these great virgin forests tribes of monkeys find their home, and the tapir and the cougar have their being. Mangroves, palms, rubber-trees, mahogany, strange flora, and ungathered fruits run riot amid this ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... moving down that thoroughfare, what appeared to his startled eyes to be the smokestacks of some small, flat-bottomed steamer. He rubbed his eyes; it was no illusion, for the next moment he had reached the crowd, who were standing half a block away from the thoroughfare, and on the edge of a lagoon of yellow water, whose main current was the thoroughfare he was seeking, and between whose houses, submerged to their first stories, a steamboat was really paddling. Other boats and rafts were adrift on its ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... leagued foes—swordfish and thrasher and shark. And to give you an idea of the fearful tide breaking through the narrow fiords of that rock-bound coast, I may tell you that La Chesnaye and I have often seen those leviathans of the deep swept tail foremost by the driving tide into some land-locked lagoon and there beached high on naked rock. That was the sea M. Radisson was navigating with cockle-shell boats unstable of pace as a ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... retreat from the commonplace prose of life into an atmosphere at once devotional and poetic; and prayers and sacred hymns consecrated the elegant labors of the chisel and the pencil, no less than the more homely ones of the still and the crucible. San Marco, far from being that kind of sluggish lagoon often imagined in conventual life, was rather a sheltered hotbed of ideas,—fervid with intellectual and moral energy, and before the age in every radical movement. At this period, Savonarola, the poet and prophet of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... mean anything but wild, untamed. You're that, you know, old lady. Untamed even by motherhood. And I'd have thought that would have tamed even Petruchio's handful. But this Maori woman I was thinking about was in the King Country in New Zealand—You know, I'd read 'The Blue Lagoon' and ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... fleet, and at last he found himself with but eight vessels and 400 or 500 men, scarcely more than half his original company. With these small numbers he changed his resolution to attempt Cartagena, and set sail for Maracaibo, a town situated on the great lagoon of that name in Venezuela. This town had been pillaged in 1667, just before the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, by 650 buccaneers led by two French captains, L'Olonnais and Michel le Basque, and had suffered all the horrors attendant upon such a visit. In March 1669 Morgan ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... city are numerous exasperating sand islands, exposed to view at low tide. The amateur gondolier seeks this lagoon, to be safe from scoffers at his clumsy rowing, and often, right in the midst of his "getting the knack of it," the tide leaves him stuck fast on a sand island, ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... once the red man's trail, he can enjoy a wide prospect from this vantage point. Deep in the valley glitters the little Juniata, route of the ancient canoe and the blundering barge. Beside it lies a long lagoon, an abandoned portion of the Pennsylvania Canal. Beside this again, as though some monster had passed leaving a track clear of trees, stretches the right of way of the first "Pennsylvania," and a little nearer swings ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... in him as he drifted late that evening on the lagoon beyond the Guidecca, after the sun was gone down and the sea and the sky reflected each to each, one roseate glow like a hollow shell of pearl. Lit peaks of the Alps ranged in the upper heaven, and nearer the great dome of the ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... the schooner 'Elizabeth', and took in her a cargo of sheep, and landed them at Port Fairy. The three old convicts whom Griffiths had sent there along with his father Jonathan, had planted four or five acres of potatoes at a place called Goose Lagoon, about two miles behind the township. The crop was a very large one, from fifteen to twenty tons to the acre, and Davy had received orders to take in fifty tons of the potatoes, and to sell them in South Australia. He did so, and after four days' passage went ashore at the ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... but pleasing sight. It is originally a native of America and has attractive light-blue flowers, but multiplies to such an extent that the growth finally may interfere with traffic. In India I saw a lagoon completely choked with it. ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... the place where the snares were to be set, they passed a lagoon, or marshy lake, in which were many kinds of birds peculiar to these high regions. Out on the open water they saw a wild goose of a very beautiful species. It is called the "Huachua" goose. Its plumage is of a snowy whiteness, all except the wings, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... would be sure to have a cow or two to supply me the civilised drink of milk. None of the strife and turmoil of the outer world could penetrate into my retreat. One day would pass as peacefully as its predecessor; never would she disturb the tranquillity of my life, for she is like the lagoon, without ever a ripple on its surface. Once in a while the spirit of the feasts might inspire her to utter an angry word, but she would not mean much by it, and would soon resume her usual placid role, moving along in the even tenor of her daily ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... the Virgins my mid-sea course was ta'en Over a thousand islands lost in an idle main, Where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed breakers croon Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon. ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... enliven the picturesque landscape. Throughout the woods and groves flit a variety of birds, whose dazzling colors defy the palette of the artist. Here the loquacious parrot utters his harsh natural notes; there the red flamingo watches by the shore of the lagoon, the waters dyed by the reflection of his scarlet plumage. It would require a volume to describe the vegetable and animal kingdom of Cuba, but among the most familiar birds are the golden robin, the bluebird, the catbird, the Spanish woodpecker, the gaudy-plumed paroquet, and the pedoreva, with ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... one day with a brace of alligators sent by express from Florida. They were the patriarchs of a considerable consignment, and arrived pretty miserable five days back in wooden boxes. They were put into a lagoon in the open grounds. Then we had bitter wintry gales with snow flurries, and a blizzard which, had the season been earlier and the ground frozen, would have given us a foot of snow. Anyhow, it made ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... pine-grove, whispering tales of love. Anglers repaired to the deep pond in quest of trout, but more likely to find water-snakes and snapping turtles. Far in the distance, on the right, moving like fairy gondolas through the cypress-covered lagoon, little barks skim the dark surface. They move like spectres, carrying their fair freight, fanned by the gentle breeze pregnant with the magnolia' sweet perfume. The fair ones in those tiny barks are fishing; they move from tree to tree trailing their lines to tempt the finny tribe here, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... still quite queer—so queer that Peter and Leslie only stayed a few minutes more. Peter refused Urquhart's suggestion that they should have tea together on the island, and they crossed over to the lagoon side and ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... "My ship at anchor rides In yonder broad lagoon; I only wait the evening tides, And the rising of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... the hide-and-seek quality in nature. Where is it—that mysterious outlet? Behind yonder long point? Nothing here but a narrow arm of the lake. At the end of this deep bay? Nothing here but a little brook flowing in. At the back of the island? Nothing here but a landlocked lagoon. Must we make the circuit of the whole shore before we find the way out? Stop a moment. What are those two taller clumps of bushes on the edge of this broad curving meadow—down there in the corner, do you see? Turn ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... populous rancherias of the Indians, and everywhere they were received in the most hospitable manner and provided with more food than they could eat. The next stop was three leagues beyond, on the shore of a large lagoon and marsh, containing a good-sized island on which was a large rancheria, while four others lined the banks of the lagoon. Portola gave to this group the name In Mediaciones de las Rancherias de Mescaltitan - The Contiguous Rancherias ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge

... that was of the utmost value in checking the Austrians was the system of lagoon defenses running from the lower Piave to the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... was making the sketch for that big Giudeeca picture—the one that went to Munich that year—you remember it?—lot of figures around a fruit-stand, with the church on the right and the Giudeeca and Lagoon beyond—and had my gondolier Marco posing some twenty feet away with his back turned toward me, when my mysterious friend walked out from a little calle tins side of the church, looked at Marco for a moment without turning his head—he didn't see me—and stopped at a door next to old Pietro ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... reached the ground. There they were, two large grizzled brutes, feeding on the salt marsh grass like two cows. We made a most exciting approach in our baidarkas, winding in and out, across the open, up a small lagoon which cut into the meadow where the bears were feeding. We got to within two hundred yards when they became suspicious, but could not quite make us out. One now rose on his hind legs to get a better view, and offered a beautiful chance, but I waited for my friend, whose turn it was to have first ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... an island, crossed a narrow lagoon, and settled to the ground beside the guard flier. Lanko started pulling tools from his kit. Working carefully, he removed the cover from the control console, examined the terminal blocks, then attached a small ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole

... where man rarely makes his way. And even in such scenes but rarely witnessed; and only by the lone Dyak hunter straying along the banks of some solitary stream, or threading the mazes of the jungle-grown swamp or lagoon. ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... When we reached the lagoon, a catamaran with three natives on it came off to us. We asked for Koitan, the chief, which at once gave them confidence in us, so that they came alongside, one getting into the boat. He expressed his friendship to us in the usual way, viz. by touching his nose and stomach, and, being very much ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers

... turned up to hide the absence of linen. One day Fanny found herself at Fifty-first street, and there before her lay Washington Park, with its gracious meadow, its Italian garden, its rose walk, its lagoon, and drooping willows. But then, that was Chicago. All contrast. The Illinois Central railroad puffed contemptuous cinders into the great blue lake. And almost in the shadow of the City ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... where the sun had once beat down on her so fiercely. At length an empty car appeared, its yellow flank emblazoned with the name of Mrs. Hochmuller's suburb, and Ann Eliza was presently jolting past the narrow brick houses islanded between vacant lots like giant piles in a desolate lagoon. When the car reached the end of its journey she got out and stood for some time trying to remember which turn Mr. Ramy had taken. She had just made up her mind to ask the car-driver when he shook the reins on the backs of his lean horses, and the car, still ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... which mud and water still lay, and upon reaching one of these they found to their surprise that it was far more extensive than they had anticipated. For there before them stretched acres upon acres of a muddy lagoon, dotted with islands, and evidently alive with fish ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... rising only when almost trodden upon, and going off in a wild sacred manner like a nocturnal species, then dropping again into hiding at a short distance. The natives call it dormilon—sleepy-head. On one side of the lagoon, where the ground was swampy and wet, there was always a breeding-colony of these quaint birds; at every few yards one would spring up close to the hoofs, and dismounting we would find the little nest on the wet ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... turned; the boat nearly went over, but she was a staunch little craft, and the fish started down the lagoon between the reefs at its top speed. Often the creature put its two horn-like tentacles down for a dive, but the water was everywhere shallow and there was no chance ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... first place, his people were to be kept at Fort Keogh, Montana, over the winter and then returned to their reservation. Instead they were taken to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and placed between a lagoon and the Missouri River, where the sanitary conditions made havoc with them. Those who did not die were then taken to the Indian Territory, where the health situation was even worse. Joseph appealed to the government ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... dined well and were happy. Without doubt there were persons who knew her by name and had seen her act. From the Grand Canal they came out into the great Canal of San Marco, the beginning of the lagoon. Here Kitty forgot for the moment her troubles; her dream-Venice had returned. There were private yachts, Adriatic liners, all brilliant with illumination, and hundreds of gondolas, bobbing, bobbing, like ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... going down too. He is going to show the men how to make log canoes like his instead of the tule canoes our people use. But I like the tule canoes, because I can use my feet for paddles." When they reached the river, which was really a lagoon or arm of the sea, the children stopped to watch the men at work. A large log, washed down from the mountains by some flood, lay on the bank. It was good hard wood, and the children saw that it was smoking in ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini

... shallow lagoon (called Galveston Bay) on a trestle-bridge two miles long; this leads to another tete-de-pont on Galveston island, and in a few ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... off at the beautiful little island, and as his eye took in all of the little lagoon where the submarine was anchored he ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton

... DuLuth follows fast in the wake of Tamdka. On the slopes of the emerald shores leafy woodlands and prairies alternate; On the vine-tangled islands the flowers peep timidly out at the white men; In the dark-winding eddy the loon sits warily, watching and voiceless, And the wild goose, in reedy lagoon, stills the prattle and play of her children. The does and their sleek, dappled fawns prick their ears and peer out from the thickets, And the bison-calves play on the lawns, and gambol like colts in the clover. ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... several of the Tahaa students have been ordained as pastors in Tahiti and the out-stations; the Directors have recommended the ordination of others, as TAUGA, the Evangelist in charge of the churches in Manua; ELIKANA, the Evangelist of the Lagoon Islands; and ISAIA, the well-known Evangelist of Rarotonga; and five have been ordained in Samoa. In Madagascar a practical Native pastorate grew up in the days of persecution, which was judiciously fostered by Mr. Ellis ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various

... not mistaken. Below the "Albatross" appeared Montreal, easily recognizable by the Victoria Bridge, a tubular bridge thrown over the St. Lawrence like the railway viaduct over the Venice lagoon. Soon they could distinguish the town's wide streets, its huge shops, its palatial banks, its cathedral, recently built on the model of St. Peter's at Rome, and then Mount Royal, which commands the city ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the previous summer, had cut off the trans-Mississippi region from the body of the Confederacy. We used to see the big, light-draught steamers coming up the river, or crossing the lagoon-like bay, sometimes crowded with people; and the possibility was discussed of their carrying troops, and of their coming out to attack us, as not long before had been successfully done against our vessels inside Galveston Bay. In a norther, possibly, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... happened until we were within a mile or so of the mouth of the long lagoon. I could see a bit of the strait and over the rocky headland appeared a banner of smoke. It was from the stack of a steamship bound east. I pointed it out to the mate of the Sea Spell and told him how ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... shoes, removed his socks, and thrust both feet over the side to dabble them in the saline water of the lagoon. ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... later a new survey laid out streets between Broadway and California, Montgomery and Powell. A fresh-water lagoon, or lake, was near the present corner of Montgomery and Sacramento, and an Indian temescal, or sweat-house, beside it. The bay came up to Montgomery Street then, with five feet of water at Sansome, and mudflats to the east. ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton

... fated brig lay anchored within a deep, smooth, circular lagoon, margined on all sides but one by the most beautiful groves. On that side, was the outlet to the sea; perhaps a cable's length or more from where the brigantine had been moored. An hour or two after the party were gone, and when the boat was completely out of sight, the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... was, such was her power that she was soon dropping vertically toward a large lagoon in the middle of the Nevian city. That bit of open water was strangely devoid of life, for this was to be no ordinary landing. Under the terrific power of the beams braking the descent of that unimaginable load of allotropic ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... in a province of the same name, at the head of the Adriatic, in a shallow lagoon dotted with some eighty islets, and built on piles partly of wood and partly of stone, the streets of which are canals traversed by gondolas and crossed here and there by bridges; the city dates from the year 432, when the islands were a place of refuge from the attacks of the Huns, and took shape ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... though canoes and small boats take refuge in stormy weather at the mouths of the rivers already mentioned. A thick growth of spruce and cedar generally reaches down to the sea shore. About seven miles south of Rose Spit Point there is a lagoon three or four miles in length, which we have named Long Lagoon. The Hoy-kund-la River, not mentioned on the charts, about two rods in width, and choked with the usual obstructions, was passed, ten miles further south. Three brooks, from ten to ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden

... the wind roared round the old palace and the rain lashed the lagoon, Pemberton, for exercise and even somewhat for warmth—the Moreens were horribly frugal about fires; it was a cause of suffering to their inmate—walked up and down the big bare sala with his pupil. The ...
— The Pupil • Henry James

... of chronometrical measurements round the world. From Australasia a run was then made for Keeling or Cocos Island in the Indian Ocean. This lonely island, 600 miles from the coast of Sumatra, is an atoll, or lagoon island. The land is entirely composed of fragments ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... rising ground of any kind within the compass of our view, which was only bounded by the horizon in every quarter, entirely devoid of timber except a few diminutive gums on the very edge of the stream, might be so termed. The water in the bed of the lagoon, as it might now be properly denominated, was stagnant; its breadth about twenty feet, and the heads of grass growing in it, shewed it to be about three ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth



Words linked to "Lagoon" :   laguna, lake



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