"Scarcity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Louis d'Amours were married at Port Royal while very young. Perhaps they possessed their mother's winsome manners, perhaps, also the scarcity of marriageable girls in Acadia may have had something to do with the matter; at any rate Charlotte d'Amours was but seventeen years of age when she married the young baron, Anselm de St. Castin. Their ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... delay, not even one piece out of four turns out good, although there is plenty of material, which I have caused to be collected with the greatest care. I beg your Majesty to send me these masters because there is a great scarcity of artillery for the defense and protection of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... pale, and very lame, and with the air of a respectable servant, her manners particularly pleasing. It appeared that she was the daughter of a first wife, and, after the period of schooling, had been at service, but had been lamed by a fall downstairs, and had been obliged to come home, just as scarcity of work had caused her father to leave his native parish, and seek employment at other quarries. She had hoped to obtain plain work, but all the family were dismayed and disappointed at the wild spot to which they had come, and anxiously ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... to the scarcity of distinctive forms, and to the consequent flexibility of English speech, words which are usually other parts of speech are often used as nouns; and various word groups may take the place of nouns by ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... sale of their scanty household stuff drove them to wander homeless abroad, to be thrown into prison as vagabonds, to beg and to steal. Yet in the face of such a spectacle as this we still find the old complaint of scarcity of labour, and the old legal remedy for it in a fixed scale of wages. The social disorder, in fact, baffled the sagacity of English statesmen, and they could find no better remedy for it than laws against the further extension of sheep-farms, and a formidable increase ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... of this system may be attributed to the scarcity of labour brought about especially by the Black Death. When men could not be had in sufficient number, the necessary consequences was the expansion of pasture and the contraction of tillage; and this dual ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... excursion into the interior, he spent some time on the larger islands at the mouth of the Amazon, on one of which he immediately noticed the scarcity of trees, while "the abundance of every kind of animal life crowded into a small space was here very striking, compared with the sparse manner in which it is scattered in the virgin forests. It seems to force us to the conclusion that the luxuriance ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... was let into the secret, and unseen by any one in the gloom of the midnight hour and in the scarcity of travel that night, she was sent on her way to her mother, Franklin saying ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... of Laurion had been worked from a very remote period—beyond even any traditional date. But as it is well and unanswerably remarked, "the scarcity of silver in the time of Solon proves that no systematic or artificial process of mining could at that time have been established." [35] It was, probably, during the energetic and politic rule of the dynasty of Pisistratus that efficient means were adopted to ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... considered it in the order of that day. For experience had shown that a progress of troops through the surrounding country districts generally conduced to the appearance before the recruiting officer of sundry long-limbed, loose-jointed Pats, Micks, and Joes; and a recent scarcity of this raw material made it seem expedient to bring such an influence to bear upon the new ground of remote Kilmacrone. Certain brigades and squadrons were accordingly directed to move thitherward, under the general idea that an invading force from the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... Volagases, being met at Nisibis by envoys from Corbulo, who threatened an invasion of Parthia in retaliation of the Parthian attack upon Armenia, consented to an arrangement. A plague of locusts had spread itself over Upper Mesopotamia, and the consequent scarcity of forage completely paralyzed a force which consisted almost entirely of cavalry. Volagases was glad under the circumstances to delay the conflict which had seemed impending, and readily agreed that his troops should suspend the siege ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... made of a tinned iron plate, and agitated in it, the acrid juice of the root along with the mucilage will be dissolved, or swim, in the water; while a starch perfectly wholesome and nutritious will subside, and may be used as food in times of scarcity. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... hemisphere, yet the advance of the "Albatross" towards the Pole more than neutralized this increase, and consequently the daylight became very short. There was thus very little to be seen. At night time the cold became very keen; but as there was no scarcity of clothing on board, the colleagues, well wrapped up, remained a good deal on deck thinking over their plans of escape, and watching for an opportunity. Little was seen of Robur; since the high words that had been exchanged in the Timbuktu country, the engineer had left off speaking to ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... advantage has recently eroded as the economies of neighboring France and Spain have been opened up, providing broader availability of goods and lower tariffs. The banking sector, with its "tax haven" status, also contributes substantially to the economy. Agricultural production is limited by a scarcity of arable land, and most food has to be imported. The principal livestock activity is sheep raising. Manufacturing consists mainly of cigarettes, cigars, and furniture. Andorra is a member of the EU Customs Union and is treated as an EU member for trade in manufactured goods (no ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... vigour in England. That educated people to whom exact weather records are accessible should still find satisfaction in the fanciful lunar rule, is an interesting case of intellectual survival." [345] No marvel that the "heathen Chinee" considers lunar observations as forecasting scarcity of provisions he is but of the same blood with his British brother, who takes his tea and sends him opium. "The Hakkas (and also many Puntis) believe that if in the night of the fifteenth day of the eighth month (mid autumn) there are clouds obscuring ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... inconsiderable. Since then the burden has continually been growing heavier, and the price of provisions has proportionately increased—nay, the advantage accruing from the exportation of corn to France and rye to Germany will probably produce a scarcity in both Sweden and Norway, should not a peace put a stop to it this autumn, for speculations of various kinds have ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... be this tying and weaving of hemp. Then a still greater curiosity will be the making of pine-apple fiber. This manufacture has been sadly neglected and crippled by the war and its devastations. They have learned to mix in other fibers because of the scarcity of the pine-apple. I did not see this prepared at all; only secured with difficulty some of the good cloth. It is considered by the natives their very best and finest fabric. They spend much time on its embroidery and ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... have no need of you;" neither could the elders say to the deacons, "We have no need of you." When the sweet singer was absent, every one admitted that the congregational music was less interesting; when the skilful penman removed to another district, the Church soon began to complain of a scarcity of copies of the sacred manuscripts; and even when the pious widow died in a good old age, the blank was visible, and the loss of a faithful servant of the Church was acknowledged and deplored. "As the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... it hitherto, from Hogarth downward, have not been many—you can count their names on your fingers! And the wide popularity they have won may be due as much to their scarcity as to the interest we all take in having the mirror held up to ourselves—to the malicious pleasure we all feel at seeing our neighbours held up to gentle ridicule or well-merited reproof; most of all, perhaps, to the realistic charm that lies ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... throngs of children were bitter enough; and it was heart-breaking too to hear the men declare that they had worked like horses, and that it was hard upon them now to see their children starve like dogs. For in this earlier part of the famine the people did not seem to realize the fact that this scarcity and want had come from God. Though they saw the potatoes rotting in their own gardens, under their own eyes, they still seemed to think that the rich men of the land could stay the famine if they would; that the fault was with them; that the famine could be put down if ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... up of an infinite number of distinct centres of sensation and will, each one of which is personal, and has a soul and individual existence, a reproductive system, intelligence, and memory of its own, with probably its hopes and fears, its times of scarcity and repletion, and a strong conviction that it is itself ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... suffering in the Crimea; and after the battles of Balaclava and Inkermann, and the fearful storm of the 14th of November, the worst anticipations were realized. Then we knew that the hospitals were full to suffocation, that scarcity and exposure were the fate of all in the camp, and that the brave fellows for whom any of us at home would have split our last shilling, and shared our last meal, were dying thousands of miles away from the active sympathy of their fellow-countrymen. Fast and thick upon the news of ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... mistress, of course," replied Julien, sarcastically, "from what you said to me, there is no scarcity here of girls inclined to be good-natured, and you have only the trouble of choosing among them. I supposed you were courting some woodman's young daughter, or some pretty farmer girl, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Lancashire of great scarcity of corn, and that the famine was sore among them, after which the plague overspread itself in many parts of the country, taking away whole families together, and few escaped where any house was visited, and that ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... life and soul of the expedition. He first pointed out the possibility of advancing; he warned them of the approaching scarcity of provisions; he showed how they might ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... for she sent him a small supply of powder. The men of the little colony, which had begun so pretentiously with its constitution and assembly, were now obliged to put all other plans aside and to concentrate on the question of food and defense. There was a dangerous scarcity of powder and lead. The nearest points at which these necessaries could be procured were the Watauga and Holston River settlements, which were themselves none too well stocked. Harrod and Logan, some time in 1777, reached the Watauga fort with three or four ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... justify the faith which is in him against those who cry out that bibliography is naught, Leigh Hunt is a good example to his hand. This active and often admirable writer, during a busy professional life, issued a long series of works in prose and verse which are of every variety of commonness and scarcity, but which have never been, and probably never will be, reprinted as a whole. Yet not to possess the works of Leigh Hunt is to be ill-equipped for the minute study of literary history at the beginning of the ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... that he should be able to distinguish himself in this brief period, for it might be years before he again obtained such an opportunity. His youth was against him, and he was aware that he had been selected to take the steamer to the Gulf because there was a scarcity of officers of the proper grade, and his ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... "Nay I deem not, at least not at first: he will have thee home to Utterbol, to make the most of his bad bargain, and there shalt thou be a mere serving-thrall, either in the house or the field: where thou shalt be well-fed (save in times of scarcity), and belike well beaten withal." Said Ralph, somewhat downcast: "Yea, I am a thrall, who was once a knight. But how if thou fail before me?" Otter laughed again: "That is another matter; whatever I do my Lord ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... elected to have settled, or presumed to have been spawned, upon his island. Then, as if he were not desirous of resting his claim on its mere legal merits, he would remind them of the superiority of his grain, and the impossibility of a scarcity, in the event of which calamity an insular people could always find a plentiful though temporary resource in sea-weed. He then clearly proved to them that, if ever they had the imprudence to change any of their old laws, they would necessarily never have more than one meal a day as ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... and of wealth, for they were the homes of mining and manufacturing activity. The iron manufactures were limited to Kent and Sussex, though their prosperity in this quarter was already threatened by the growing scarcity of the wood which fed their furnaces, and by the exhaustion of the forests of the Weald. Cornwall was then, as now, the sole exporter of tin; and the exportation of its copper was just beginning. The ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... So, also, any deviation from those tints best adapted to conceal a carnivorous animal would render the pursuit of its prey much more difficult, would place it at a disadvantage among its fellows and in a time of scarcity would probably cause it to starve to death. On the other hand, if an animal spreads from a temperate into an arctic district, the conditions are changed. During a large portion of the year, and just when the struggle for existence is most severe, white is the prevailing ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... scarcity of food that horses were killed and eaten at the Hotel de Ville, on the third day of ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... scarcity and distress, when the question has arisen of how to feed the largest number of persons upon the least quantity of food, the aliment chosen has always been soup. There are two reasons for this: first, ...
— Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six • Juliet Corson
... river, the authorities require every man to catch one-tenth more than enough for his own use. This surplus is placed in a public storehouse and issued in case of famine. It is the rule to keep a three years supply always at hand. Several seasons of scarcity led to the adoption ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... dated 1873, the other 1894. The mere incident that at this hour eighteen months later I can recall the dates of these coins should be proof, if any were needed, of the importance of the coppers in my eyes, and therefore of the relative scarcity of funds in my possession. Raffles was dead—killed as you may remember at the battle of Spion Kop—and I, his companion, who had never known want while his deft fingers were able to carry out the plans of that insinuating and marvellous mind of his, was now, in the vernacular of ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... Kutusow, who was even more unfitted than Barclay for the post of commander-in-chief, refused to adopt this course, and fell back towards Moscow, followed by the French. The sufferings of the latter had already become severe—the nights were getting very cold, the scarcity of food was considerable, the greater part of the army was already subsisting on horse-flesh, the warm clothing, which was becoming more and more necessary, was far in the rear, their shoes were worn out, and it was only the thought that they would have a long period of rest and comfort in Moscow, ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... to six feet, the bottom full of quicksands. The Nebraska is studded with islands covered with that species of poplar called the cotton-wood tree. Keeping up along the course of this river for several days, they were obliged, from the scarcity of game, to put themselves upon short allowance, and, occasionally, to kill a steer. They bore their daily labors and privations, however, with great good humor, taking their tone, in all probability, from the buoyant ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... "My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language; but you know the Scottish idiom,—she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she, altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... lowering or wet on Childermas or Innocence Day, it threatens scarcity and mortality among the weaker sort of young people; but if the day be very fair, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... morning and evening Family Prayer and of Grace at Meat took a very wonderful hold upon the people; and became, as I have shown elsewhere, a distinctive badge of Christian versus Heathen. This was strikingly manifested during a time of bitter scarcity that befell us. I heard a father, for instance, at his hut door, with his family around him, reverently blessing God for the food provided for them, and for all His mercies in Christ Jesus. Drawing near and conversing with them, I found that their meals consisted of fig leaves ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... in some barbarous places as yet, enter houses after all are at rest, and set the kitchens in order, cleansing all the vessels. Such drags go under the name of Brownies. When we have plenty, they have scarcity at their homes; and, on the contrary (for they are not empowered to catch as much prey everywhere as they please), their robberies, notwithstanding, ofttimes occasion great ricks of corn not to bleed so well (as ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... gain. The bishops would often lead in person their contingent of troops, until they were forbidden to do so by law. Nine-tenths of the population of Gaul were slaves. Charlemagne made Alcuin the present of an estate on which there were twenty thousand slaves. Especially in times of scarcity, as in 805 and 806, their lot was a miserable one. At such times, they fled in crowds to the monasteries. The social state was that of feudalism "in all but the development of that independence in the greater lords, which was delayed by the strength of Karl, but fostered, at the same time, by his ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... our God. This is He who sends food and wealth, rain and sunshine. Shall we not trust Him? If we thank Him for plenty, and fine weather, which we see to be blessings without doubt, shall we not trust Him for scarcity and bad weather, which do not seem to us to be blessings, and yet may be blessings nevertheless? Shall we not believe that His very chastisements are mercies? Shall we not accept them in faith, as the child takes from its parent's ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... are also involved in those gifts of nature to man by which his biotic life is sustained, his food, drink, clothing and shelter. These bounties come not in a never-changing stream, but are apparently fitful and capricious. Seasons of plenty are accented by seasons of scarcity, and thus prosperity and adversity are strangely commingled in the history of the people. To secure this prosperity and avert this adversity seems to be the second great motive in the development of the superstitious practices ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... January it came off bitterly cold. Coal went up half a dollar on a ton; and flour rose, more by the greed of speculators than any scarcity, or any demand for it abroad. There was considerable suffering, though not as much as the winter before. The men and women and boys and girls at Hope Mills were thankful enough for their seventy-five per cent, and did their very best. A spirit of economy and emulation ran through the whole ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... despair. It was believed—and events in the main confirm the belief—that he contemplated a new expedient, the use of what still remained of the financial power of the Bank to produce deliberate scarcity and distress, in the hope that a reaction against the President's policy would result. Jackson resolved to strike the Bank a crippling blow before such juggling could be attempted. The Act of Congress which had established the Bank ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... is unsatisfactory, both by reason of their scarcity, and the enormous difference of merit, even among those few which can be considered as genuine. Morelli writes: "His drawings are found in all the most important collections of Europe,"[78] but he mentions only thirteen, and although many certainly in all the galleries bear his name, and the impress ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... the ground with its feet to say so and warn all off whom it might concern. The silver tabby, however, neither wild nor satisfied to be tame, did not know. She sat on, and in doing so wondered, perhaps, at the scarcity of rabbits thereabouts. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... fable, was a monster that fed only on good women, and was always very thin from scarcity of such food; a corresponding monster, Bycorne, fed only on obedient and kind husbands, and was always fat. The origin of the fable was French; but Lydgate has a ballad on the subject. "Chichevache" literally ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... great scarcity and cruel exactions. Applying it to the only department of society which is analogous to civil life, and the famine symbolized, is like that predicted by Amos: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine into the land, not a famine of bread, nor a ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... solicitude; but owing to the breaking up of the country into small states, their respective resources could not be combined in such general operations as were needed for controlling the inundations and effectually remedying the excess or the scarcity of water. Khammurabi witnessed the damage done to the whole province of Umliyash by one of those terrible floods which still sometimes ravage the regions of the Lower Tigris,* and possibly it may have been to prevent the recurrence of such a disaster that ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... further attention upon it. In the meantime, the state of the country was gradually assuming a worse and more depressing character. The season was unfavorable; and although we do not assert that many died of immediate famine, yet we know that hundreds—nay, thousands—died from the consequences of scarcity and destitution—or, in plainer words, from fever and other diseases induced by bad and insufficient food, and an absence of the necessary comforts of life. Indeed, at the period of our narrative, the position of Ireland was very gloomy; but when, we may ask, has it been otherwise, within the memory ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... issues: scarcity of hazardous waste disposal facilities; rural to urban migration; natural fresh water resources scarce and polluted in north, inaccessible and poor quality in center and extreme southeast; raw sewage and industrial effluents polluting rivers in urban areas; deforestation; widespread erosion; ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... "finish'd speaker," generally unsought, unreck'd of, both by teacher and pupil? Though may-be it cannot be taught, anyhow. At any rate, we need to clearly understand the distinction between oratory and elocution. Under the latter art, including some of high order, there is indeed no scarcity in the United States, preachers, lawyers, actors, lecturers, &c. With all, there seem to be ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... fact, the reputation of fruits and fresh vegetables for "purifying the blood" and "clearing the complexion" is really well deserved. The keenness of our liking for fruit at all times, and our special longing for greens and sour things in the spring, after their scarcity in our diet all winter, is a ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... Sylla, when the Republic was deprived of a regular administration of justice, and of its former dignity and splendor. But the very favourable reception he met with was, in some measure, owing to the great scarcity of good Orators which then prevailed in the Forum. For Sulpicius was dead; Cotta and Curio were abroad; and no pleaders of any eminence were left but Carbo and Pomponius, from each of whom he easily carried off the palm. His nearest successor ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... bearded and virtuous as her husband, besides entitling her to the political franchise. They are perverse creatures, however, and it is possible that this deprivation is responsible for many of their ill-humours and crankinesses. Their scarcity of beard is the more remarkable when we observe that the female cat is as magnificently whiskered as her male companion. The wisdom of cats is proverbial, and I have never heard of a cat who has hired another cat to bite out, tear off, scrape or otherwise ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... course, at that moment he was out of reach, being in the army that was blockading us. Not that we should ever have found out that we were blockaded, if we could have got any letters from any one, except for the scarcity of firewood. My mother wanted much to get to our own Queen, but the approaches to the Louvre were watched lest she should communicate with the Regent; and we were cut off from her till M. Darpent gave his word for us, and obtained ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... political and social aspects of the Revolution, of recent years the economic has been the point of emphasis. And it was to consider a financial problem that the States-General were summoned in 1789; while most of the riots that broke out in Paris that same year were due to scarcity of food. ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... Prithee, be not sad, Thou art true and honest; ingenuously I speak, No blame belongs to thee.—[To Servant.] Ventidius lately Buried his father; by whose death he's stepp'd Into a great estate. When he was poor, Imprison'd and in scarcity of friends, I clear'd him with five talents; greet him from me, Bid him suppose some good necessity Touches his friend, which craves to be ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... to demand higher wages, and in many cases combined to refuse to work at the old accustomed rates. A royal ordinance of 1349 states that, "because a great part of the people, especially of workmen and servants, have lately died in the pestilence, many, seeing the necessity of masters and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they may receive excessive wages." A contemporary chronicler says that "laborers were so elated and contentious that they did not pay any attention to the command of the king, and if anybody wanted to hire them he was bound to pay them what they asked, and ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... has now been adopted in part by the Government, has been of great service to the small agriculturalists. The invention of an extremely simple and yet greatly improved hand loom has proved, and will prove, very valuable to the weavers. New plans of relief in times of scarcity and famine have also greatly helped in some districts to win the confidence of the people. Industrial schools, chiefly for orphan children, have also been a feature of the work in ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... too subdued for a Hebe, she would yet, with the adjunct of doves or nectar, have stood sufficiently well for either of those personages, if presented in a pink morning light, and with mythological scarcity of attire. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... northern part of the province, and only the rivers Champoton, and the Uzumacinta with its branches, in the south-western portion; but there are several small lakes in the centre of Yucatan, and a large number of artificial ponds in the central and southern districts. The scarcity of water is the one great natural difficulty to be surmounted in most parts of the country; but a supply can commonly be obtained by digging wells, though often at so great a depth that the cost ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... and fair weather in the Forenoon, but in the Afternoon Showers. We have had a Scarcity of all sorts of Fruit for these 2 days past, which we immagine to be owing ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... it mattered more that a statement were true or false than that we should be able to get a useful lesson from it. A wise man should consider history a tissue of fables whose morals are well adapted to the human heart.] under the pressure of great scarcity, decided to invent sports and other amusements with which to cheat their hunger, and they passed whole days without thought of food. Your learned teachers may have read this passage time after time without seeing ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... wheat. Granted sufficient rain in the rainy season—that is, from November till February—and the husbandman seeks nothing more; Nature does all the rest, and a bountiful harvest is a certainty. In some years there is a scarcity of rain, but to provide against even this sole remaining contingency the rivers have but to be properly used for irrigation; with this done, the wheat crop of the Pacific coast will outstrip in value, year after ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... The impending scarcity of spruce logs to feed the hungry maws of the machines that make paper for our daily journals has turned attention to several forms of the rapid-growing poplar for this use. The aspen is acceptable, and also the Carolina ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... presence of foreigners and Christians on the soil of Spain caused a suspension of interior quarrels amongst the Arabs, who rose in mass, at all points, to succor Saragossa. The besieged defended themselves with obstinacy; there was more scarcity of provisions amongst the besiegers than inside the place; sickness broke out amongst them; they were incessantly harassed from without; and rumors of a fresh rising amongst the Saxons reached Charlemagne. The Arabs demanded negotiation. To ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... impossible to reconcile the want of water so severely felt at Ostracine (Joseph. de Bel. Jud. l.4, ad fin. Plutarch, in M. Anton. Gregor. Naz. ep. 46.), with El Arish, where there are occasional torrents, and seldom any scarcity of well water, either there or at Messudieh, two hours westward. Ostracine, therefore, was probably near the [Greek text] of the lagoon Sirbonis, about mid-way between El Arish and Katieh, on the bank described ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... easy for one or more persons to crawl along the rough gulf which the water coursed over, and stopping under the former, kindle a fire that would give us great difficulty to extinguish in the absence of engines and scarcity of water. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... The scarcity of hogs at Otaheite may be owing to two causes; first, to the number which have been consumed, and carried off by the shipping which have touched here of late years; and, secondly, to the frequent wars between the two ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... Contents as relate to your Application to the Govr of N Y, to the Delegates of that State. They assured me that the Govrs refusing to grant a Permit to Mr Shepperd for the Transportation of Flour from thence must have been owing to the real & very great Scarcity of that Article there; and they desired me to satisfy you in that point, fearing that it mt be supposd to arise from other Motives. I will consult with my Colleagues and if any Means can be used by us to ensure Success to your Application from that Quarter ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... loudly complained, as injurious to trade. He recommended to the assembly to consider of ways and means for sinking it, and told them they were bound in honour and justice to make it good. The Indian war had occasioned a scarcity of provisions; by the large emissions of paper money it sunk in value, and the price of produce arose to an exorbitant height. As the value of every commodity is what it will bring at market, so the value of paper money is according ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... may be found anywhere, and genteel people are not articles of greater scarcity out of London than in it; but this compound of the two—this shabby-gentility—is as purely local as the statue at Charing-cross, or the pump at Aldgate. It is worthy of remark, too, that only men are shabby-genteel; ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... metal types by their form. It may be well here to meet an objection that has been raised against a special use of copper in Ireland. It has been urged that the large number of flat copper celts may have been due to a scarcity of tin, and that as copper cannot be cast in closed moulds, casters who could cast advanced forms of bronze celts were obliged to return to the primitive form necessary for casting in an open mould. Copper ores are, however, very rarely found in a pure ...
— The Bronze Age in Ireland • George Coffey
... many people say that a scarcity of money is our only difficulty. In my opinion we have money enough, but we lack confidence in each ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... perpetration of that ill-omened act. He spoke admiringly of the skill displayed by the government in making the necessary and immediate reductions in the daily supplies of food; he lamented the terrible scarcity which followed, too inevitably, those seasonable reductions. He pronounced an eloquent eulogium on the noble charity of Laeta, the widow of the Emperor Gratian, who, with her mother, devoted the store of provisions obtained by their imperial revenues to succouring, at that important ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... my advice," he said, "you will grant them a reprieve, and make a scarcity of yourself. There is a train for Glasgow which you can just catch. I wouldn't distress the Mater and Governor ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... Finn's spell that brought the wolves in such unheard-of numbers, and the peasant maintaining that it was a judgment on our desecration of Christmas-eve. For my own part, I think the long storm, and a great scarcity of food had something to do with it, for tales of the kind were never wanting in our province. The wolf-gathering, however, saved us a journey to Siberia: thanks to old Wenzel. And sometimes yet, when any strange noise breaks in upon my sleep ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... was, however, not an unmixed evil. Causes were necessarily argued upon principle. How well this conduced to the making of the real lawyer is well known. The admonition, "Beware the man who reads but one book," is of deep significance. The complaint to-day is not of scarcity, but that "of the making of many books there is no end." Professor Phelps is authority for the statement that "it is easy to find single opinions in which more authorities are cited than were mentioned by Marshall in the whole thirty years of his unexampled judicial life; and briefs ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... her brother were reminiscent of a multiplicity of children and a scarcity of room. To her the Inferno presented no more disquieting prospect than the necessity of sharing her bedroom. She always returned from these sojourns in the country with impaired digestion, and shattered ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... an excellent judge "pretentious, insufficient, and unsound". But I will say that it does not fit men to be men of business as it ought to fit them. Till lately the very simple attainments and habits necessary for a banker's clerk had a scarcity-value. The sort of education which fits a man for the higher posts of practical life is still very rare; there is not even a good agreement as to what it is. Our public officers cannot be as good as the corresponding officers of some foreign nations till ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... had seized several cargoes of salt which the speculators had been holding for higher prices. There was at that early day, and all during the war, a salt famine in the South. The farmers found it difficult to save their meat, owing to the scarcity of salt. It is a curious fact, that, when the famine was at its height, a pound of salt was worth a pound of silver. Foreseeing this famine, a great many shrewd business men had laid in large stocks of salt, storing it about in ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... of the new-comer had a little worn off, the three young fellows plunged into a flood of amusing gossip about the storm and the blocking of the roads, the scarcity of food in Barbizon, the place in general, and its inhabitants. David fell silent after a while, stiffening under a presentiment which was soon realised. He heard his sister's wretched lot discussed with shouts of laughter—the chances of Brenart's escape ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the bird that is well known to hunters of "big game" by various names such as "Whiskey Jack", "Moose Bird", "Camp Robber", etc. During the winter months, owing to the scarcity of food, their thieving propensities are greatly enhanced and they remove everything from the camps, which looks as though it might be edible. Birds of this genus are smoky gray on the back and lighter below, shading to white on the throat; the forehead and part of the crown is white ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... comfort like a bird, to shelter itself from inclement weather; if it could dam up a river like the beaver, to store water for the annual drought; if it could only, like the ordinary squirrel or field mouse, make a store for a season of scarcity, how marvellous we should think this creature, simply because it is so huge! It actually does nothing remarkable, unless specially instructed; but it is this inertia that renders it so valuable to man. If the elephant were to be continually exerting its natural intelligence, and volunteering all ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... which, one with another, weighs about a China pecul, or 133 1/3 lbs, is an average yearly export, should the Government not prohibit the article from being exported for a longer period than usual, which is annually regulated by the scarcity or abundance of food in ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... "sent you a' crock of her own lard. When, you're makin' colcanon, sir, or sthilk,* in the college, if you slip in a lamp of this, it'll save you the price of bufther. The grace 'ill be useful to you, whether or not; an' they say there's a scarcity of it ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... continental artists, also to the Reformation. I suggest that the intellectual capacity of the nation was directed towards literature, politics and religious controversy, rather than to art and religion. I cannot think there was any scarcity of the artistic germ in the English nation which had already expressed itself in the great Abbeys and Churches, such as Glastonbury, Tintern, Fountains, and York. And you must remember that the minor art of embroidery, the 'opus anglicanum' ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... population by farming, it remained, when I came there, entirely uncultivated, and hunting and fishing were still the only means the people had of supporting themselves. The consequence was, that at times they suffered greatly from scarcity of provisions, and this naturally brought disease. The year after my marriage was a bad one, and the women and children especially felt the want of their usual supplies. A great many of them left the island, and tried to find food by begging, or by selling mats, and ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... of postage on letters was still twenty-five cents, and small as the earnings of the office undoubtedly were, a little change found its way now and then into his hands. In the scarcity of money on the frontier, this had an importance hard for us to realize. A portion of this money, of course, belonged to the government. That he used only what was rightfully his own we could be very sure, even if a sequel to this ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... the emigration question. Reports have been received here that all who have gone north are at work and pleased with the splendid conditions in the North. It is known here that in the North there is a scarcity of labor; mills and factories are open to them. People are not paying any attention to King and are packing and ready to travel north ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... the background of the lower view are graves; the fence behind the animals is made from the stems of the large millet, kaoliang, while that at the right of the donkey is made of earth, both indicative of the scarcity of lumber. The buildings, too, are thatched and their walls are of earth plastered with an earthen mortar ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... the Stage. Accordingly we offered our services to one and were accepted; our Company was indeed rather small, as it consisted only of the Manager his wife and ourselves, but there were fewer to pay and the only inconvenience attending it was the Scarcity of Plays which for want of People to fill the Characters, we could perform. We did not mind trifles however—. One of our most admired Performances was MACBETH, in which we were truly great. The Manager always played BANQUO himself, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... provisions, resolved to dine together in memory of former times. But at so melancholy a Christmas dinner, I do not remember to have been present. We dined in a barn; of tableware, of viands, and of good cookery, there was a dismal scarcity. These were matters, however, of minor thought; the want of many well-known and beloved faces thrilled us with pain. While sitting at the table, a loud shriek from outside startled the guests. On running out, we found that a shot from the enemy's ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... gathered in farm-fields, where it had been turned up under the plough one piece at a time. All parts of the United States are represented, but some regions more plentifully than others, not only because one district may contain more persons interested in the matter, but because of the comparative scarcity of relics in some parts. One of the most densely populated districts in the whole Union in Indian life was the Atlantic slope of the Alleghanies; and the valleys of the fishing-rivers draining this slope have yielded an enormous quantity of examples of primitive wares, in the shape of architecture, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... is the way they planned. When their boots wore out, men were appointed to tan hides and make boots; even the women busied themselves in this kind of work. When there was a great scarcity of soap,—an article used also by Boers,—the women boiled a serviceable substance with the help of the ashes of various weeds. When the British began destroying the mills everywhere mills were mounted on waggons and carried off on the ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... elaborate directions are given for washing the face, hands and feet before each prayer, there is no order to bathe the whole body daily, and this may probably not have been customary in Arabia owing to the scarcity of water. [336] And while many Muhammadans have adopted the Hindu custom of daily bathing, yet others in quite a respectable position have not, and only bathe once a week before going to the mosque. Gambling as well as the drinking ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... curate preaching to an agricultural congregation at a harvest thanksgiving after a disastrous season, when the earth had not yielded much by way of increase, remarking that in such a time of scarcity we might be thankful that plenty of foreign corn would be available; good theology, perhaps, but scarcely expedient under ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... which according to Deborah saved my life, by compelling other thoughts to come. My father had been buried in a small churchyard, with nobody living near it, and the church itself was falling down, through scarcity of money on the moor. The Warren, as our wood was called, lay somewhere in the parish of Brendon, a straggling country, with a little village somewhere, and a blacksmith's shop and an ale house, but no church that anyone knew of, till you came to a place called ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... said himself, in the course of one month, he believed, than ever was made by any individual within the kingdom of Scotland in the course of a year.—He said, however that he might have made more if he had bought up the corn at home; but being convinced by us that there would be a scarcity, he thought it his duty as an honest man to draw from the stores and granaries of foreign countries, by which he was sure he would serve his country, and be abundantly rewarded. In short, we all reckoned him another Joseph when he opened his garnels at the cotton-mill, and, ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... gallop towards the jungle, offering a splendid side shot at about a hundred paces. The leading cow plunged head-foremost into the grass as the four-ounce struck her through both shoulders. She was a fine young cow, and we cut some steaks from her in case we should find a scarcity of provisions at Minneria and, quitting the shores of the lake, we started ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... one flying squirrel or one wood mouse will plunder the stores of another I do not know. Probably not, as the owner of such stores is usually on hand to protect them. Moreover, these provident little creatures all lay up stores in the autumn, before the season of scarcity sets in, and so have no need to plunder one another. In case the stores of one squirrel were destroyed by some means, and it were able to dispossess another of its hoard, would it not in that case be a survival of the fittest, and so conducive to the well-being of ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... was a feeling of depression over Richmond. Bread was higher, Confederate money was lower; the scarcity of all things needed was growing; the area of Southern territory had contracted, the Northern armies were coming nearer and nearer, and a false note sometimes rang in the gay life of ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... principal difficulty with this region, is one common to all countries of volcanic, origin,—a scarcity of water. The porousness of the rocks allows it to pass under ground to the sea. Consequently one finds few streams and springs in Lower California. From the Cape San Lucas to the mouth of the Colorado, six hundred miles, there are only ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... understood me very well, but his nervousness and his constant fear held him back from rapping out anything beyond his yes and no answers. (At a later date I was obliged to give him away, owing to the scarcity of food.) Lola's progeny, therefore, seemed to offer more promising material for fresh ventures, but all—excepting the little lady-dog—Ulse—had been dispersed, going to their several new owners, before the winter days immediately after ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann |
