"Peat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at once. The wounded bull I slew with my own hand, and I cannot say that I felt much compunction in so doing. He knew me again, and made a desperate effort to get at me, but I am glad to say that the peat held him fast. ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... bear a good deal from a fellow; but she used to fire up sometimes, and that was more than she could stand. "You don't deserve to be cared about, for speaking like that!" says she, with her cheeks as red as peat-coals. ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... home beyond the sea, and it is not strange faces he will be seein', but the lads and lassies of the Glen, and it is John McNeash who holds the drone under his arm and the chanter in his hands, and the salty tang of the sea comes up to him and the peat-smoke is in his nostrils, and the pipes skirl higher and higher as Tonald McKenzie dances the dance of his forbears in a strange land. They had seen Tonald dance before, but this was different, for it was not Tonald McKenzie ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... also became a permanent part of the School life. The Cricket-field had been purchased in 1869, and had been used for both Cricket and Football. Unfortunately it was a fair-weather ground. Its foundations rested on peat, and continuous play all the year round did not improve it. The first matches that were played took place in the early seventies, when the Hostel had as yet only fourteen boys, but in spite of their ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... the heather-clad hills which form the broad dividing barrier between England and Scotland, the little river Esk brawls and bickers over its stony bed through a wild land of barren braesides and brown peat mosses, forming altogether some of the gloomiest and most forbidding scenery in the whole expanse of northern Britain. Almost the entire bulk of the counties of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, and Ayr is composed ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... is a fossil wood carbonized to a certain degree, but retaining distinctly its woody texture. Dr. MacCulloch, On Rocks, p. 636., observes: "In its chemical properties, lignite holds a station intermediate between peat and coal; while among the varieties a gradation in this respect may be traced; the brown and more organised kinds approaching very near to peat, while the more compact kinds, such as jet, approximate ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... degree, affect the growth of plants, but their practical importance is of too doubtful a character to justify us in considering them. The application of manures, containing organic matter, such as peat, muck, animal manure, etc., supplies the soil with carbon on the same principle, and the decomposing matters also generate[Q] carbonic acid gas while being decomposed. The agricultural value of carbon in the soil depends (as we ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... the days when the Spaniard lay at Smerwick; and, mean and crumbling, still gave rise to emotions which the stern battlements of Stralsund or of Rostock had failed to evoke. Soil and sky, the lark which sang overhead, the dark peat-water which rose under foot, the scent of the moist air, the cry of the curlew, all spoke of home—the home which he had left in the gaiety of youth, to return to it a grave man, older than his years, and with grey hairs flecking the ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... a thicket or shaw, they would lodge them there softly. Victual and drink failed them not, for they bore what they needed on sumpter-horses, and shot some venison on the way withal. They saw but few folk; for the most part naught save a fowler of the waste, or a peat-cutter, who stood to look on the men-at-arms going by, and made obeisance to the ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... famous Flemish workmanship, in each of which were fixed eighteen of the best candles, while on the sideboards were branch candlesticks, also of worked brass. The light thus provided was supplemented by that from the great fire of peat and old ships' timber which burned in a wide blue-tiled fire-place, half way down the chamber, throwing its reflections upon many a flagon and bowl of cunningly hammered silver that adorned ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... blackened gables, and ruinous walls, showed Desolation's triumph over Poverty. On some huts the rafters, varnished with soot, were still standing, in whole or in part, like skeletons, and a few, wholly or partially covered with thatch, seemed still inhabited, though scarce habitable; for the smoke of the peat-fires, which prepared the humble meal of the indwellers, stole upwards, not only from the chimneys, its regular vent, but from various other crevices in the roofs. Nature, in the meanwhile, always changing, but renewing ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Douglas, a Murray or a Seaton, has nothing more to learn. Though you be a hard man, you will always meet as hard a one if you ride northward. If the Welsh be like the furze fire, then, pardieu! the Scotch are the peat, for they will smolder and you will never come to the end of them. I have had many happy hours on the marches of Scotland, for even if there be no war the Percies of Alnwick or the Governor of Carlisle can still raise a little bickering with the ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... anything more clearly. As far as I could judge, the figure was that of a tall, thin man. He stood with his legs a little separated, his arms folded, his head bowed, as if he were brooding over that enormous wilderness of peat and granite which lay before him. He might have been the very spirit of that terrible place. It was not the convict. This man was far from the place where the latter had disappeared. Besides, he was a much taller man. With a cry of surprise I pointed him ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... nor "No." Moved by the soft and insinuating talkativeness of Herzog, she felt herself treading on dangerous ground. It seemed to her that her foot was sinking, as in those dangerous peat-mosses of which the surface is covered with green grass, tempting one to run on it. Cayrol was under the charm. He drank in the German's words. This clever man, who had never till then been duped, had found ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... business to be out on the hills at such a season, for they are deathly quiet except for the lashing of the storm. You will never hear a bird cry or a sheep bleat or a weasel scream. The only sound is the drum of the rain on the peat or its plash on a boulder, and the low surge of the swelling streams. It is the place and time for dark deeds, for the heart grows savage; and if two enemies met in the hollow of the mist only one ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... A red peat fire was burning on the hearth, and a man sat by it. A woman was engaged at needlework by the light of a ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... exposed their titles, one just beyond the margin of the other. He turned from the door and went into the dining-room, where the stove was ostentatiously roaring over its small logs and its lozenges of peat, But even here the fire had been so recently lighted that the warmth was potential rather than actual. By stooping down before the stove, and pressing his shoulder against its brass doors, Colville managed to lull his enemy, while he studied the figures of the woman-headed, woman-breasted ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... to combine for the purpose of a legal assassination more cruel and terrible than if he had, like so many other Irish gentlemen, been shot down upon the public road. The latter terrible fate befell Mr. E. White, of Abbeleix, for asserting his right to some peat land which he had purchased. This circumstance offended the "Ribband" men, who in open day lodged a bullet in his heart, in a populous neighbourhood. The murderers were well known, but the populace sympathised with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... At home she would sit and spin in the old tapestried room, her own life as faded, and sometimes she would dream in the hall, among the antlers and beast-skins, and watch the great burning logs, so much more poetic than this peat smoke which hurt one's eyes. Ah, but then there was O'Flanagan. Well, he would not be much in the way. He liked riding over his new estate in his buckskin breeches, cracking his great loaded whip. She had met him herself once ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... you might look in all directions and not see a sign of human or any other habitation. Even then however, you might, to be sure, most likely smell the perfume—to some nostrils it is nothing less than perfume—of a peat fire, although you might be long in finding out whence it came; for the houses, if indeed the dwellings could be called houses, were often so hard to be distinguished from the ground on which they were built, that ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... of sight. They were a long way down the valley, miles from Lobourne, in a country of sour pools, yellow brooks, rank pasturage, desolate heath. Solitary cows were seen; the smoke of a mud cottage; a cart piled with peat; a donkey grazing at leisure, oblivious of an unkind world; geese by a horse-pond, gabbling as in the first loneliness of creation; uncooked things that a famishing boy cannot possibly care for, and must despise. Ripton ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... no impression on Katherine, who was glad to have an unusual amount of work for Mrs. Needham, who had started—or rather promised her assistance in starting—a new scheme for extracting wax candle out of peat. Respecting this she was immensely sanguine, for the first time in her life she was to be properly remunerated for her trouble, and in a year or two would make ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... they gave. But above and around these rare and fertile vales there were moors for many a mile, here and there bleak enough, with the red freestone cropping out above the scanty herbage; then, perhaps, there was a brown tract of peat and bog, uncertain footing for the pedestrian who tried to make a short cut to his destination; then on the higher sandy soil there was the purple ling, or commonest species of heather growing in beautiful wild luxuriance. Tufts of fine elastic grass were occasionally to be found, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... lost the heather, and trod a bare spongy soil, something like dry, powdery peat. To my dismay it gave a momentary heave under me; then presently I saw what seemed the ripple of an earthquake running on before me, shadowy in the low moon. It passed into the distance; but, while yet I stared ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... headland, like some of the Palisades on the Hudson; the highlands of the Mull of Cantire were on the opposite side of the Channel, and the wind being ahead, we tacked from shore to shore, running so near the Irish coast, that we could see the little thatched huts, stacks of peat, and even rows of potatoes in the fields. It was a panorama: the view extended for miles inland, and the fields of different colored grain were spread out before us, a brilliant mosaic. Towards evening we passed ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... and though Markham forthwith rebuked him for not listening, his heart was still beating as at the first sight of a dear old friend, when that peep was far behind. More black heaths, with stacks of peat and withered ferns. Guy was straining his eyes far off in the darkness to look for the smoke of the old keeper's cottage chimney, and could with difficulty refrain from interrupting Markham to ask after the ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... letter, considered in language, crafty in purpose, really, an overture for the hand of Marget Forbes, and I sat far into the night, while my peat fire died out in Corgarff Castle, wondering how I was to answer it, and, even more, how I myself stood towards the acute personal situation which it created. For I saw that the Black Colonel meant to make love and do ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... that name. For she is of her country, and more, of her county. She has the love of it in her bones. I do not think that she could be quite happy in India, or indeed in any place which was not within reach of Donegal, the smell of its peat, its streams, and the brown friendliness of its hills. ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... 'exceedingly distress'd for want of fuell' because of the traffic up and down the estuary being interrupted. Hence Evelyn was appointed one of a Committee to search the environs of London and find if any peat or turf were fit for use. Experiments were made with houllies or briquettes of charcoal dust and loam in the Dutch manner, and Evelyn shewed to many proof of his 'new fuell, which was very glowing and without smoke or ill smell'. But the process never caught on, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... took a mouthful, sir. It tasted of peat: oh! something horrid, sir. The people here call peat turf. Potcheen and strong porter is what they like, sir. I'm sure I don't know how they can stand it. Give ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... is now a sandy bay into which the Atlantic flows without hindrance, and the latter, reclaimed within the present century by an enterprising governor, formed for centuries a channel of the sea by which the Clos du Valle, on which the Vale Church stands, was separated from the mainland. A stratum of peat extends over the whole arm of the Braye, while as regards Vazon there is the remarkable evidence of an occurrence which took place in December, 1847. A strong westerly gale, blowing into the bay concurrently with a low spring tide, broke up the bed of ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... and where they commit great ravages among the young lambs, the following methods are used for destroying them:—When the nest happens to be in a place situated in the direction of a perpendicular from the edge of a cliff above, a bundle of dry heath or grass inclosing a burning peat is let down into it. In other cases, a person is let down by means of a rope, which is held above by four or five men, and contrives to destroy the eggs or young. The person who thus descends takes a large stick with him, to beat ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... barrens of New Jersey, Grand Lake, Nova Scotia, and in New Brunswick. Several new stations for the curly grass have recently been discovered in the southwest counties of Nova Scotia by the Gray Herbarium expedition, mostly in bogs and hollows of sandy peat or sphagnum. ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... withdrawn twenty-two pounds of carbonic acid gas from the atmosphere, and replaced it with sixteen pounds of oxygen gas, occupying the same bulk. And when we consider the amount of carbon that is contained in the tissues of living, and of extinct vegetation also, in the form of peat and coal, we may have some idea of the vast body of oxygen which the vegetable kingdom has added ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... those barbaric decorations she had placed in the chamber; and here, around him, seemed to be the walls of the old fashioned little room at Borvabost, with its big shells, its peacocks' feathers, its skins and stuffed fish, and masses of crimson bell-heather. Was there not, too, an odor of peat-smoke in the air?—and then his eye caught sight of the plate that still stood on the window-sill, with the ashes of the burned peat ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... a bridle-path all along a wonderful brown trout stream that goes racing down our hill. There's a moor on one side, and a wood on the other, and a peat bog at the bottom.' ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... feared—neither guard nor coachman had come through. Therefore, if by remote chance they still lived, the men must lie buried in the snow, perhaps within very few yards of the high-road. For two days scores of men searched every likely spot, but never a clue they found, except Goodfellow's hat, which lay in a peat-hag at no great distance from the post where the mail-bags ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... finest we have seen belonged to the Rev. H. B. Hutchings, of Appleshaw, Hants,[100-*] and was found in a meadow at Bosington, near Stockbridge, in the same county, by a labourer who saw it among a heap of peat. We give a side and front view of this interesting relic; the whole is of gold, and is of considerable weight and thickness; the gold threads are all beautifully reeded, and the lettering and head executed with great care. The inscription reads—NOMEN EHLLA FID IN XPO, equivalent to its ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... life—the great manatee or sea-cow in herds on the kelp-beds, blue foxes in thousands, the seal rookeries that were to make the islands famous; but there was no timber to build houses for wintering in. It was a barren island. They could make floors of sand, walls of peat, roofs of sea-moss; but what shelter was ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... (oxycoccos), the Marsh Whortleberry, or Cranberry, or Fenberry—from growing in fens—is found in peat bogs, chiefly in the North. This is a low plant with straggling wiry stems, and solitary terminal bright red flowers, of which the segments are bent back in a singular manner. Its fruit likewise makes excellent tarts, and forms a considerable article of commerce at Langtown, on the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... I said, and my mind saw in a vivid picture a (p. 147) barefooted boy going over the hills of Corrymeela to morning Mass, with his beads in his hand. On either side rose the thatched cabins of the peasantry, the peat smoke curling from the chimneys, the little boreens running through the bushes, the brown Irish bogs, the heather in blossom, the turf ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... seen der peat uf dot!" gasped Hans, his eyes bulging. "Uf dot don't peen a recular fight, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... idol; a proud mincing peat, and as perverse as he is officious. She dotes as perfectly upon the courtier, as her husband doth on her, and only wants the face ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Sis' Judy pray, Ha'd sinnahs trimble in dey seat Ter hyuh huh voice in sorro 'peat; (While all de chu'ch des sob an' weep) "O Shepa'd, dese, dy po' los' sheep!" ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... colouring of the surrounding ground and the rocks and bushes amid which it stood. It was weather-worn and dilapidated, and appeared altogether unfit to be the abode of a human being; indeed, a thin wreath of peat smoke ascending from an aperture in the roof alone made it likely that it was inhabited. Its appearance offered no temptation to the young stranger to turn aside from the path he was pursuing, and he continued his ascent ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... neighbourhood of the camping-grounds, which were always at a stream or water-hole, had long since been cleared off by the travellers who had preceded them. The chips afforded excellent fuel, burning with a fierce, steady glow, and making a fire something like that afforded by well-dried peat. Another source of fuel were the bones which lay in many places, scattered pretty thickly. Sometimes these marked the spot where long before a party of Indians had come upon a herd of buffalo, sometimes ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... tissue, and the invention of the low-priced cameras have increased enormously the amount of paper called for. In the attempt to supply the demand all sorts of materials have been used, such as hemp, old rope, peat, the stems of flax, straw, the Spanish and African esparto grass, and especially wood; but much more paper is made of wood than of all the rest together. Poplar, gum, and chestnut trees, and especially those trees which bear cones, such as the spruce, fir, ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... buy fertilizers liberally, but use all the skill and care within our power to increase them. Barn-yard manure can be doubled in bulk and almost doubled in value by composting with the right materials. We make the most of our peat swamps, fallen leaves, and rubbish in general. Enough goes to waste on many farms every year to keep several acres in good heart. But, as you say, we cannot begin to procure enough to go over all the land from which we are taking crops of some kind; therefore we maintain a rotation which is adapted ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... the entire crew of Bering's castaways, prisoners on the sea-girt islands of the North Pacific, were lodged in five underground huts on the bank of a stream. In 1885, when these mud huts or yurts were examined, they were seen to have walls of peat three feet thick. To each man was given a pound of flour. For the rest, their food must be what they caught or clubbed—mainly, at first, the sea-otter, whose flesh was unpalatable to the taste and tough as leather. Later, Steller discovered that the huge sea-cow—often ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... distinctive features; it was a region difficult to attack and easy to defend; it consisted first of a spongy plain, saturated with water, with scattered artificial mounds on which stood the clustered huts of the villages; between this plain and the shore stretched a labyrinth of fens and peat-bogs, irregularly divided by canals and channels freshly formed each year in flood-time, meres strewn with floating islets, immense reed-beds where the neighbouring peasants took refuge from attack, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... sharks. He went out and examined the stakes, and found that block 26 did not contain the oak, but was much farther down in the slough, and that the corner lots that were to have been Katy's wedding portion stretched quite into the peat bog, and further that if the Baptist University should stand on block 27, it would have ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... interesting to relate, recognises the following minerals and mineral ores, which may accordingly be taken as existing in the country: Gold, silver, copper, lead, tin, hematite, antimony, quicksilver, zinc, iron, manganese and arsenic, plumbago, coal, kerosene, sulphur, bismuth, phosphorus, peat. ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... is dead." Captain Caffin adds—"And there—fearful reality—was the daughter, a skeleton herself, crouched and crying over the lifeless body of her mother, which was on the floor, cramped up as she had died, with her rags and her cloak about her, by the side of a few embers of peat." They came to the cabin of a poor old woman, the door of which was stopped up with dung. She roused up, evidently astonished. They had taken her by surprise. She burst into tears, and said she had not been able to sleep since the corpse of ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... in their arms, ran like lunatics, uttering cries of despair, while men abandoned their houses, carrying off whatever was most valuable, running against and knocking each other over in the darkness. On all sides was heard, "Mauve qui peat; we are going to be blown up, we are all lost;" and the maledictions, lamentations, blasphemies, were sufficient to make ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... stretch away for miles and miles, feeding a few herds of mountain sheep, harbouring some wild conies and hares, giving a nesting-place to the birds of heaven, and, for the use of man, neither grain nor pasturage, but quarries of stone and piles of peat luridly smouldering up ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... ducks for sale. But the Twins had plenty of those at home. There were stalls and stalls of vegetables just like Father's, and there were booths where meat and fish and wood and peat were sold. But the Twins couldn't find anything they wanted that cost ...
— The Dutch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... gun! Why the blazes couldn't you have come home and brought me a bit of peat from the pit? A fine hunter you are! I might as well have married the devil.—And his wife turned from him with ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... so sorry," she said penitently. "I only knew by the smell of the peat stacks." I could not restrain a groan of disappointment, and Myra stroked my face, and ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... And Mrs. Jarvis tells me—"Mrs. Flanders liked Mrs. Jarvis, always said of her that she was too good for such a quiet place, and, though she never listened to her discontent and told her at the end of it (looking up, sucking her thread, or taking off her spectacles) that a little peat wrapped round the iris roots keeps them from the frost, and Parrot's great white sale is Tuesday next, "do remember,"—Mrs. Flanders knew precisely how Mrs. Jarvis felt; and how interesting her letters were, about Mrs. Jarvis, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... wound, unconfined, through the heather, where the raindrops sparkled like diamonds. Farther down, they ran in between rough limestone walls with gleaming spar in them, smothered here and there in trailing brambles and clumps of fern, while the streams that poured out from black gaps in the peat and flowed beside the road flashed with coppery gold in the evening light. It was growing brighter ahead of them, though inky clouds still clung ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... Norway the country people repair to the summer pastures among the mountains, and take their cattle there to grass. On the west coast of Jutland, among the sand-hills, are huts built of pieces of wrecks, and covered with peat and layers of heather. The sleeping-places stretch round the principal room; and there sleep and live, during the early spring time, the people employed in the fishing. Every one has his AEsepige, as she is called, whose business it is to put bait on the hooks, to await ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... nickel, uranium, rare earth oxides, peat, cobalt, copper, platinum (not yet exploited), vanadium, ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... bowman Mr. Archer Wavy hair dancing wave ... Morris dance Mr. Morrison Black eyes white ... snow ... pure as snow Mr. Virtue Retreating chin retiring ... home-bird Mr. Holmes High instep high boots ... mud ... peat Mr. Peat Crooked legs broken legs ... crushed Mr. Crushton Apprehension suspension ... gallows Mr. Galloway Sombre sad ... mourning ... hat-band Mr. Hatton Music stave ... bar Mr. Barcroft Violinist violin ... high note ... whistle Mr. Birtwistle Painter paint ... colored cards ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... bred in a studio, and brought up among the cloud-swept mountains of Westmorland, amid the purple heather and the sunset in the peat-moss puddles, barrack-life soon became like penal servitude. I was like a caged wild animal. I knew now why the tigers and leopards pace up and down, up and down, behind their ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... a place where they had to climb, and then to a long peat level beside a rivulet. There a quantity of delicate little pink flowers caught Bert's eye. "Gaw!" he said, and stooped to pick one. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... farther inland. Taking so little room and supplying the poor with a handy and cheap fuel, I doubt that these little bogs are any detriment to the country. Some of them have been made to take on a soil (by draining, cutting, drying and burning the upper strata of peat, and spreading the ashes over the entire surface), and are now quite productive.—Drainage and ridging are almost universally resorted to, showing the extraordinary humidity of the atmosphere. The Potato is now ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... large part of the enemy's body from this attack. Finding the rebels so strong in numbers and position, Aremberg was disposed only to skirmish. He knew better than did his soldiers the treacherous nature of the ground in front of the enemy. He saw that it was one of those districts where peat had been taken out in large squares for fuel, and where a fallacious and verdant scum upon the surface of deep pools simulated the turf that had been removed. He saw that the battle-ground presented to him by his sagacious enemy was one great sweep of traps and pitfalls. Before he could carry ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... some newsboy told him that the war was over, and he was glad, because it meant that Peat Brothers, publishers, would get out their new edition of "Spinoza's Improvement of the Understanding." Wars were all very well in their way, made young men self-reliant or something but Horace felt that he could never forgive the President for allowing a brass ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... she should re-peat, All sit still; but if she say "Twi-light," each must change his seat, Or a for-feit ...
— The Infant's Delight: Poetry • Anonymous
... observation made on the Mahakam was the effect of dry weather on the jungle. At one place, where it covered hills rising from the river, the jungle, including many big trees, looked dead. From what I later learned about the burning of the peat in Sarawak, where unusually dry weather may start fires which burn for months, this was undoubtedly also the case here, but it seems strange that in a country so humid as Borneo the weather, although admittedly of little stability, may become ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... for some moments. The peat-fire was falling into masses of white ash, and she thought vaguely of putting on some more turf; then her attention was caught by the withering ferns in the flower-glasses, then by the soaking pasture-lands, then by the spiky branches of the chestnut-trees ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... ripples in beauty and bloom by the side of your muddy, stagnant self-complacence, and you discern no essential difference. "Water's water," you say, with your broad, stupid generalization, and go oozing along contentedly through peat-bogs and meadow-ditches, mounting, perhaps, in moments of inspiration, to the moderate sublimity of a cranberry-meadow, but subsiding with entire satisfaction into a muck-puddle; and all the while the little brook that you patronize when you are full-fed, and snub when you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... and structure of their buildings, and from the remains of art found in them. This is often a perplexing, always an arduous task; much more so is it to decipher the earth's history."[363] "The canoes, for example, and stone hatchets found in our peat bogs afford an insight into the rude arts and manners of the earliest inhabitants of our island; the buried coin fixes the date of some Roman emperor; the ancient encampments indicate the districts once occupied by invading armies, and the former method of constructing ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... bottom of the glass? And then to think that, after all, I should be left out of his funeral—it's the height of barbarity. Tim, this rum of yours is poor stuff—there's no punch worth the trouble of drinking, except whisky-punch. A glass of right potheen, straw-color, peat-flavor, ten degrees over proof, would be the only thing to drown my cares. Any such thing in the cellar? There used to be an odd bottle or so, Tim—in the left bin, near ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... waste lands, where Heaths (Ericae) are produced: it is composed of decayed vegetable matter and white sand. The best sort is light when dry, of a black colour, and easily reduced to powder. Care should be taken to distinguish it from Peat, which is hard when dry, destitute in a great measure of the sand, and mostly of a red colour. This contains in great quantities sulphureous particles and mineral oil, which are known to ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... wind blowing Over hill-flower and peat, Where the bell heather's growing, And the brown burn flowing, And the ghost-shadows going Down the glen on stealthy feet. There's a clean wind blowing, And the breath of it ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... know what the Ingvorstrup horses were intended for. They were to blind the judge and to lead him aside from the narrow path of righteousness. The rich Morten Bruns covets poor Ole Anderson's peat moor and pasture land. It would have been a good bargain for Morten even at seventy thalers. But no indeed, my good fellow, you don't know ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... and carried their borings down to bed rock at about thirty feet, which roughly coincides with the present mean sea-level. The modern meadow-soil went down about five feet. Then came a bed of moss-peat, one to three feet thick. There had been a bog here at a time which, to judge by similar finds in other places, was just before the beginning of the bronze-age. Underneath the moss-peat came two or three feet of silt with sea-shells in it. Clearly the island of Jersey underwent in those days some ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... the fabric of Peregrine's life, and he belonged to them as exclusively as the grouse or mountain linnet. He knew every rock upon their crests and every runnel of water that fretted its channel through the peat; he could mark down the merlin's nest among the heather and the falcon's eyrie in the cleft of the scar. If he started a brooding grouse and the young birds scattered themselves in all directions, he could gather them all around ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... pedlar, "must be the out-scourers of Murray's party; let us lie down in the peat-hag, and keep ourselves ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... F, for cutting the material into suitable lengths in a peat machine having a continuous discharge from the expelling mill, substantially ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... Gilfillan, that a minister from this vicinity, having once lost his way in travelling through a distant part of Scotland, vainly solicited the services of a guide for some time, all being engaged in peat-cutting; at last one of the farmers, some of whose ancestors had been included among the sufferers, discovering that he came from this vicinity, had seen the gravestones, and could repeat the inscriptions, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... tasted great weather on high, white, green-turreted cliffs by the sea. I have tramped the tough heather, the purple, the brown, By pools of peat water; from the night to the day, Till the moon has dropped down: the ghost of a minim, low down, In a ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... the Philadelphia sailed for Norfolk Island, having on board for that settlement Mr. Grimes, the deputy surveyor; Mr. Jamieson who was to superintend the convicts employed there in cultivations; Mr. Peat, the master-carpenter (there being a person* in that situation here of much ability); a convict who came out in the Royal Admiral, to be employed as a master-tailor; two Convicts sawyers, and one convict ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... the tendency of this material to flow back into the original space causes pressure, of which the friction will be a measured percentage. In this case, however, the friction itself between the material and the clays or peat is usually very much less than 40%, and it is for this reason that piles of almost indefinite length may be driven in materials of this character without offering sufficient resistance to be depended on, as long as no good bearing ground is found ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... as far as Brough under Stanemoor, and back by the great 'Nick,' and then athwart Cross Fell's desolate moor, but we had not taken the weather into our consideration, nor thought of possible sopping peat-hags on ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... Huge continuous heaths spread before, behind, and around us, in hopeless barrenness—now level and interspersed with swamps, green with treacherous verdure, or sable with turf, or, as they call them in Scotland, peat-bogs,—and now swelling into huge heavy ascents, which wanted the dignity and form of hills, while they were still more toilsome to the passenger. There were neither trees nor bushes to relieve the eye from the russet livery of absolute ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 'The proud peat! She is jealous of every word Harry speaks—even to his cousin,' muttered James, as he reached his own room. 'You saw her, though,—you saw her!' he added, smiling, as he laid his hand ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... laird's younger brother, worthy Lord Bladderskate, whilk ye are aware sounds as like being akin to a peatship [Formerly, a lawyer, supposed to be under the peculiar patronage of any particular judge, was invidiously termed his PEAT or PET.] and a sheriffdom, as a sieve is sib to a riddle. Now, Peter Drudgeit, my lord's clerk, came to me this morning in the House, like ane bereft of his wits; for it seems that young Dumtoustie is ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... rivers Brosna, Barrow and Boyne take their rise in these morasses, and the Grand and Royal canals cross them. The Bog of Allen has a general elevation of 250 ft. above sea level, and the average thickness of the peat of which it consists is 25 ft. It rests on a subsoil ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... hostin' to clear his throat. I dreedit he wud mak' a gutter o't somewey or ither, an' so I keepit my een open. Sandy shut his, an' so did a' the rest. He leaned forrit an' spread oot the muckle clunkers o' hands o' him on the tap o' the peat o' a big roobarb tert. "O Lord," was a' the len'th he'd gotten, when in he gaed, up near to the elbas amon' the het roobarb; an' by a' the skoilin' an' roarin' ever I heard, there never was the like! A gey grace it was, I can tell ye! It'll no' be the morn nor next day 'at I'll ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... evening, near nine o'clock—wild rainy weather. I am seated in the dining-room, having just concluded tidying our desk-boxes, writing this document. Papa is in the parlour—Aunt upstairs in her room.... Victoria and Adelaide are ensconced in the peat-house. Keeper is in the ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... filled, have formed in the several valleys a great variety of swamps, where the Indian grass and the blue bent, peculiar to such soils, grow with tolerable luxuriancy. Some of the swamps abound with peat, which serves the poor instead of firewood. There are fourteen ponds on this island, all extremely useful, some lying transversely, almost across it, which greatly helps to divide it into partitions for the use of their cattle; others abound with peculiar fish and sea fowls. Their streets ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... book, what would you like to talk about, Mr. Barton?" she asked conscientiously. "Would you like to talk about peat-bog fossils?" ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... huge circle is, we gain our best clue to the age of all these monuments, everywhere so much like each other in their massive form and dimensions, everywhere so like in their utter mystery. Round the lakes of Erne there are wide expanses of peat, dug as fuel for centuries, and in many places as much as twelve feet deep, on a bed of clay, the waste of old glaciers. Though formed with incredible slowness, this whole mass of peat has grown since some ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... peat-fire scattered capering shadows across the smooth, stone floor, flickered among the dim rows of hams suspended from the ceiling and on the panelled cupboards of dark, glistening oak. A servant-girl, spreading the cloth for supper, clattered her clogs in and out of the kitchen: ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... see from the turn of the hill-side the Blair of Drummond waving with corn and shadowed with rich woods, where eighty years ago there was a black peat-moss; and far off, on the horizon, Damyat and the Touch Fells; and at his side the little loch of Ruskie, in which he may see five Highland cattle, three tawny brown and two brindled, standing in the still water—themselves ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... of this knowledge leads sometimes into strange contrasts. One friend of mine lay stretched for long hours on top of a roof of sticks and peat-scraws which was propped against the wall of a ruined cabin, while within the evicted tenant, still clinging to his home as life clings to the shattered body, lay bedridden on a lair of rushes, and chanted the deeds of heroes; his voice issuing through the vent in the roof, at once window ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... supposed that she had come from Iceland, but nobody remembered to have brought her, nor knew of her origin. In these days she lived by herself in a hut of the Settlement at the Ness, and crouched over a peat fire all the winter, singing songs to herself which nobody could understand. In the summer she was often seen about among the pastures below the hills, but always by herself. When she was asked she might go out and show herself at men's houses where ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... the first place a conveyance. The whole of the front part of the boat represents the hold in which the cargo is placed. This is generally represented by cheese or vegetables, timber, peat, and stones, the last-named being a return-cargo for the repairing of dykes and the construction of quays. But in the second place it is a house or place of residence, and the stern of the boat is given up for that purpose. The living room is the raised deck or poop, on which ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... imperceptible gradation. Accepting this reservation, we may group together, under the general head of "Post-Glacial Deposits," most of the so-called "Valley-gravels," "Brick-earths," and "Cave-deposits," together with some "raised beaches" and various deposits of peat. Though not strictly within the compass of this work, a few words may be said here as to the origin and mode of formation of the Brick-earths, Valley-gravels, and Cave-deposits, as the subject will thus ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... as long as it is above ground. I'll bury it." In pursuance of this wholesome resolve, he took it home again. Digging a deep grave in the peat-moss behind this cottage, he thrust in the object of his apprehensions, trusting that he was now ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... dreaming what he is;—whom a sad chance has paralysed in the lower extremities. For, it seems, he sat once a whole night, not warm in his true love's bower (who indeed was by law another's), but sunken to the middle in a cold peat-bog, being hunted out; quaking for his life, in the cold quaking morass; (Dumouriez, ii. 370.) and goes now on crutches to the end. Cambon likewise, in whom slumbers undeveloped such a finance-talent for printing of Assignats; Father of Paper-money; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... "I've swallowed as much peat smoke as any man of my years. Come out of that now, and let me have ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... Hernan and Hilda. Her astonishment at seeing them was very great, but without losing time in asking unnecessary questions, she set to work to remedy, as far as she had the power, the effects of the pelting rain to which her guests had been exposed. Fresh fuel was added to the already hot peat fire on the hearth, that the foreign captain and her husband might dry their clothes while she retired with her female visitors, that they might change theirs for such as her own ample wardrobe could supply. Her best Sunday gown well became Hilda, for except in height they differed but little ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... Covenanting captain up into the hills to hold a meeting out of the reach of persecuting troopers. We know that battle may follow prayer; and as we believe that in the worst issue of battle heaven must be our reward, we are ready and willing to redden the peat-moss with our blood. That music stirs my soul; it wakens all my life; it makes my heart beat—not with its temperate daily pulse, but with a new, thrilling vigour. I almost long for danger—for a faith, a land, or at ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... reproach to the landlords in the eyes of all good farmers.'[640] The farm-buildings of Belgium, Holland, France, and the Rhenish Provinces were much superior. In parts of England indeed no progress seems to have been made for generations at this date. Thousands of acres of peat moss in Lancashire were unreclaimed, and many parts of the Fylde district were difficult even to traverse. Even in Warwickshire, in the heart of England, between Knowle and Tamworth, instead of signs ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... peat deposits, small quantities of oil and natural gas, granite, dolomitic limestone, marl, chalk, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... power, and historical majesty. And this element among the wilds of our own country I found wholly wanting. The Highland cottage is literally a heap of gray stones, choked up, rather than roofed over, with black peat and withered heather; the only approach to an effort at decoration consists in the placing of the clods of protective peat obliquely on its roof, so as to give a diagonal arrangement of lines, looking somewhat as if the surface had been scored ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... during which he lived at Stirling, and travelled to and from his work. He was succeeded in 1738 by his son, who became Sir William Moncrieff Wellwood. In that year the old kirk was burned in rather curious circumstances. The kirk was being used as the parish school, and was heated by a peat fire. In the master's absence one day the boys amused themselves by throwing about the lighted peats. The kirk caught fire, and was burned to the ground. Sir Henry Moncrieff succeeded his father in 1771, the sixth minister of the family in a ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... by Rusticus.—Beyond Godalming, on the Liphook road, is a great tract of barren heathy land: it stretches wide in every direction, and includes immense peat-bogs, and several large ponds. One particular district, called the Pudmores, is the favourite resort of the fern owl. In the daytime, while walking across the moor, you will every now and then put up one of these singular birds; their flight is perfectly without noise, and seldom far at a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... earth of Dartmoor is still called ven or fen. Is it not more probable that the adjoining parishes (or parts of them) are said to be in Venville or fengfield, from their being within the peat district, than that an abbreviation of a legal term, fines villarum—fin. vil., should become naturalised among the peasantry, as is the case with the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... comfort," said the tall lady in the green peaked hat. "Here is money enough to pay your rent and buy another cow." With that, she sat down at the round table near the peat fire. Opening her bag, the shining gold coins slid out and formed a little heap on ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... youths were grappling together like wild cats, striking, kicking, and biting with no thought except of who should have the best of the battle. They rolled on the floor, now tussling among the crackling faggots, anon pitching soft as one body on the peat dust in the corner, again knocking over a bench and bringing down the tools thereon to the floor with a jingle which might have been heard far out on the loch. They were still clawing and cuffing each other in blind rage, when a ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... of Cairngorm in the Highlands, through the long valley of Glenavon, and thence to the sea-port town of Greenock from which the packet ships went weekly out into the mists, heading for the land of promise somewhere beyond the sky-line. He slept with his companions on heather beds in front of peat fires in the homes of the Highlanders through whose villages they passed, and the Gaelic tongue of one of their number was always a charm sufficient to secure them food. He reached Greenock on the 20th of March, but because of unforeseen delay it was not until April ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... grows in Denmark except under careful cultivation, which, however, is largely practised in Jutland (q.v.). But again, abundant traces of ancient extensive forests of fir and pine are found in the numerous peat bogs which supply a large proportion of the fuel locally used. In Bornholm, it should be mentioned, the flora is more like that of Sweden; not the beech, but the pine, birch and ash are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... Davie's roasting the black hen's eggs. I daur say, Mr. Wauverley, ye never kend that a' the eggs that were sae weel roasted at supper in the Ha'-house were aye turned by our Davie? there's no the like o' him ony gate for powtering wi' his fingers amang the het peat-ashes and roasting eggs.' Davie all this while lay with his nose almost in the fire, nuzzling among the ashes, kicking his heels, mumbling to himself, turning the eggs as they lay in the hot embers, as if to confute the proverb, that 'there goes reason to ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... for the greater efficacy, he tacked on 'damnable' and 'hellish.' Fas est ab hoste doceri— disrespect is made more pungent by quotation; and there is no doubt but he felt relieved, and went upstairs into his tutor's chamber with a quiet mind. M'Brair sat by the cheek of the peat-fire and shivered, for he had a quartan ague and this was his day. The great night-cap and plaid, the dark unshaven cheeks of the man, and the white, thin hands that held the plaid about his chittering body, made a sorrowful picture. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... She did not know why these subjects should be forbidden, but she was in a strange land and going to see strange people, whose habits were different from hers. Moreover, when her husband had gone she reflected that these people, having no fishing and no peat-mosses and no wild-duck, could not possibly be interested in such affairs; and thus she fancied she perceived the reason why she should avoid all mention ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... this, to my notion, is pleasant cheer, To lie all alone on a ragged heath, Where your nose isn't sniffing for bones or beer, But a peat-fire smells like a garden beneath. The cottagers bustle about the door, And the girl at the window ties her strings. She's a dish for a man who's a mind to be poor; Lord! women ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bell of Beaulieu was ringing. Far away through the forest might be heard its musical clangor and swell. Peat-cutters on Blackdown and fishers upon the Exe heard the distant throbbing rising and falling upon the sultry summer air. It was a common sound in those parts—as common as the chatter of the jays and the booming of the bittern. Yet the fishers and the peasants raised their heads and looked questions ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... where you are—in one of Nature's hottest and dampest laboratories. Nearly eighty inches of yearly rain and more than eighty degrees of perpetual heat make swift work with vegetable fibre, which, in our cold and sluggard clime, would curdle into leaf-mould, perhaps into peat. Far to the north, in poor old Ireland, and far to the south, in Patagonia, begin the zones of peat, where dead vegetable fibre, its treasures of light and heat locked up, lies all but useless age ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... undiminished herd Of antlered monarchs of the glen That never crossed their eagle ken: But a' unfrettit turn and say, 'Hoots, but the sport's been grand the day!' For none but Scotsmen born and bred, When ither folk lie snug in bed, Would face yon cauld and watery pass, The eerie peat-hag's dark morass, Where wails the whaup wi' mournful screams, Tae wade a' day in icy streams An' flog the burn wi' feckless flies Though ilka trout declines tae rise, Then hameward crunch wi' empty creel Tae sit and hark wi' unquenched zeal Tae dafties' tales ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... newspapers. In the window a dozen geraniums are blooming, and beyond them the eye rests on the slope of Sharpitor and the distant ridge of Sheepstor. The fireplace, which faces the window, is deep and capacious, and floored with granite slabs. On these burns a fire of glowing peat, and over the fire hangs a crock of milk in process of scalding. In the ingle behind it sits the relator of this story, drying his knees after a Dartmoor shower. From his seat he can look up the wide chimney and see, beyond the smoke, the sky, and that ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... legend says that "the stone Adamant in the land of India grows no colder in any wind or snow or ice; there is no heat in it under burning sods" (this is such an Hibernian touch! The peat fuel was the Celtic idea of a heating system), "nothing is broken from it by striking of axes and hammers; there is one thing only breaks that stone, the blood of the Lamb at the Mass; and every king that has taken that ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... and branches, which lie as close together as possible; they spread new seeds, and at last a large spot is covered; the lowermost fibres, roots, stalks, and leaves, gradually decay and push forth on the top new verdant leaves: The decaying lower parts form a kind of peat, or turf, which gradually changes into mould and soil. The close texture of these plants hinders the moisture below from evaporating, and thus furnishes nutriment to the vegetation above, and clothes at last whole hills and isles with a constant verdure. Among these pumilous plants, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... annoying. Thorpe's old tin pail was pressed into service as a smudge-kettle. Every evening about dusk, when the insects first began to emerge from the dark swamps, Charley would build a tiny smoky fire in the bottom of the pail, feeding it with peat, damp moss, punk maple, and other inflammable smoky fuel. This censer swung twice or thrice about the tent, effectually cleared it. Besides, both men early established on their cheeks an invulnerable glaze of a decoction of pine tar, oil, and a pungent ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... crack, the folk I see are so few ... Aye! There was a power of trouble. There were two men killed themselves and families broken up all by reason of me. I meant no harm, wee Shane, but it happened, and it does be troubling me in my old days. And I sit there afeared by the peat fire, and when I've thought too much on it, I get up and go to the half-door. And I look out on the Moyle, wee Shane, and I think: that's been roaring since the first tick of time, and I see the stars so many of them, and the moon that never changed its ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... led away the talk to their home in Devonshire, and the red, bright earth, and the deep green combes, and the peat streams like cairngorm pebbles, and the wild moor with its high, cloudy tors for a giant background to the picture, till Tom got jealous, and stood up for the clear chalk streams, and the emerald water meadows and great elms and willows of the dear old royal county, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... quantity of rain which had fallen, the surface of the whole country was swampy. I suppose my horse fell at least a dozen times, and sometimes the whole six horses were floundering in the mud together. All the little streams are bordered by soft peat, which makes it very difficult for the horses to leap them without falling. To complete our discomforts we were obliged to cross the head of a creek of the sea, in which the water was as high as our horses' backs; and the little waves, owing to the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... he now saw he might be of service to James: he went four miles into the country to a farm on the other side of Stonecross, to hold there a Sunday-school. It was the last farm for a long way in that direction: beyond it lay an unproductive region, consisting mostly of peat-mosses, and lone barren hills—where the waters above the firmament were but imperfectly divided from the waters below the firmament. For there roots of the hills coming rather close together, the waters gathered and made marshy ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... to bygone times, while I, not wishing to interrupt her, had taken the poker in my hand and with it was tracing geometrical figures in the peat-ash on the hearthstone. So absorbed was I in my circles and pentagons that I did not notice that Grannie had stopped short in her story, and was taking a lively interest in what I was doing. It was with no little surprise, therefore, that I suddenly ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... even—with weather such as this. Nay, with a storm for variety; clouds from the top of Scawfell falling thick about us; a fierce wind shrieking across the tarn; sheets and torrents and floods of rain beating upon our roof; and you and I by the peat-fire. With a good supply of books, old and new, I can picture it for three months, for half ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... of asparagus is from one to four tons of marketable shoots per acre, according to age and thrift of plants, etc., the largest yields being on the peat lands of the river islands. On suitable lands one ought to get at least two tons per acre. Roots may yield a few days' cuttings during their second year in permanent place; the third year they will stand much more cutting, and for several years after that will ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... wonderful gray house rising above the river in the evening light, found G—— waiting at the open door for us, and plunged into the hall, the sitting-rooms, and all the intricacies of the upper passages and turrets with the delight and curiosity of a pack of children. Wood and peat fires were burning everywhere; the great chimneypieces in the drawing-room, the arms of Elizabeth over the hall fire, the stucco birds and beasts running round the Hall, showed dimly in the scanty lamplight (we shall want about six more lamps!)—and the beauty of the marvelous ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... through the mossy swamp, leading the pack-horse by the bridle. Sometimes he was ankle-deep in water of a greenish slime. Again he had to drag the animal from the bog to a hummock of grass which gave a spongy footing. This would end in another quagmire of peat through which they must plough with the mud sucking at their feet. It was hard, wearing toil. There was nothing to do but keep moving. The young man staggered forward till dusk. Utterly exhausted, he camped for the night on a hillock ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine |
