"Scarp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trenches, with features set, On that hot, still morning, in measured pace, Our column climbed; climbed higher yet, Past the fauss'bray, scarp, up the curtain-face, And ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... the lip of a small and perfect lake of poignant blue, that fills the cup made by the meeting of a ring of massive heights. At the end of the lake, miles away, but, thanks to the queerness of mountain perspective, looking close enough to touch, rises the scarp of Mount Victoria, capped with a vast glacier that seemed to shine with curious inner lambency under the clear light of the grey day. There is a touch of the theatre in that view from the windows or the broad lawns of the Chateau, for the mountain and ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... the Raj Mahal climbing in dim majesty to the stars. A single line of white lights outlined the topmost parapet; at the water's edge a single marble entrance was aglow; between the two, towers and terraces, hanging gardens and white scarp-like walls rose in darkened confusion unimaginable—or, rather, fell like a cascade of architecture, down the hillside to the lake. A dark hive teeming with the occult life of unnumbered men and women—Salig Singh the inscrutable and strong, Naraini ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... "all the world over." On passing through a ravine an eagle rose from a jutting scarp; and looking up the rocks, two or three hundred feet in height, Owen wondered if it was among these cliffs the bird built its eerie, and how the young birds were taken by the Arabs. Crows followed the caravan in great numbers, and these reminded Owen of his gamekeeper, a solid ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... valleys which thread their way through the county. It is impossible to escape them. The Cotswold shepherd looks downward on their folds, and marks the gleaming white of the occasional chalk pit which breaks the surface of their scarp. ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... very dense on the river flat, looked like black, poisonous herbage, in thick rows and crowded beds, stretching right away, broken now and then by taller plants, right to where the river glistened in a hieroglyph across the country. The steep scarp cliffs across the river looked puny. Great stretches of country darkened with trees and faintly brightened with corn-land, spread towards the haze, where the hills rose blue ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... signal successes in Mexico, than to the high military character of this population-no young aspirant for glory, fresh from this useful school, could have greater delight in laying out his first bastion, or counter-scarp, or glacis, than Corporal Flint enjoyed in fortifying Castle Meal. It will be remembered that this was the first occasion he was ever actually at the head of the engineering department Hitherto, it had been his fortune to follow; but now ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... finding it out,' added to her list of grievances, that even the otters were nearly all gone 'puir beasties.' 'Well, but what good could the otters do you?' I asked her. 'Good, your honor? why scarcely a morn came but they left a bonny grilse (young salmon) on the scarp down yonder, and the vennison was none the worse of the bit the puir beasts ate themselves,' The people here (Morayshire) call every eatable animal, fish, flesh, or fowl, venison, or as they pronounce it, vennison. For instance, they tell you that the snipes ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... had dug for himself in the drifted snow under a huge scarp of ice a hundred yards from the igloo cabin lay Wapi. His bed was red with the stain of blood, and a trail of blood led from the cabin to the place where he had hidden himself. Not many hours ago, when by God's sun ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... back from the horses. In his fear of being seen the boy rendered detection certain by nervous motion. The heather and peat stratum overhung the brow of the pit in mats, hiding the actual verge. The boy had stepped beyond the solid ground; the heather now gave way, and down he rolled over the scarp of grey sand to the very ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... wall, contravallation^; paling &c (inclosure) 232; palisade, haha, stockade, stoccado^, laager^, sangar^; barrier, barricade; boom; portcullis, chevaux de frise [Fr.]; abatis, abattis^, abbatis^; vallum^, circumvallation^, battlement, rampart, scarp; escarp^, counter-scarp; glacis, casemate^; vallation^, vanfos^. buttress, abutment; shore &c (support) 215. breastwork, banquette, curtain, mantlet^, bastion, redan^, ravelin^; vauntmure^; advance work, horn work, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the whole line of the Berg from Mashonaland to Basutoland. Now, look here. To get to Amsterdam they must cross the Delagoa Bay Railway. Well, they won't be allowed to. If they get as far, they will be scattered there. As I told you, I too have laid my train. We have the police ready all along the scarp of the Berg. Every exit from native territory is watched, and the frontier farmers are out on commando. We have regulars on the Delagoa Bay and Natal lines, and a system of field telegraphs laid ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... track apparently runs point-blank: a confronting mass which, if it were to slip down, would overwhelm the whole town. But in a moment you find that the road, the old Roman highway into the peninsula, turns at a sharp angle when it reaches the base of the scarp, and ascends in the stiffest of inclines to the right. To the left there is also another ascending road, modern, almost as steep as the first, and perfectly straight. This is ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... that we should improve our position, which, indeed, left us a prey to any attack. We therefore wended our way along the northern beach towards the rocks, in the hope of hitting upon a situation in which we might have some chance of defence. The scarp descended boldly into the blue water here, and the edges were planted with brushwood. Brushwood, too, covered the slope of the hills, interspersed with larger trees. Here and there the rough rock outcropped and was broken, no doubt, by the winds of that tempestuous ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... bait beneath; he will see it drink the life-blood and tear the haunch; he will watch it steal away and hide under the karaunda bush; he will sit there till day breaks, when he will creep under the thorn jungle, across the stream, up the scarp of the ravine, through the long grass to the sahib's camp, and give the word that makes the hunter's heart dance. From the camp he will stride from hamlet to hamlet till he has raised an army of beaters; and he will be back at the camp with his forces before ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... through an opening above and pattered upon the dusty carpet at Paul's feet. He glanced upward at the darkening pall which seemed to rest upon the hill top. Its oppressive blackness suggested weight, so that one trembled for the stability of the chalky scarp which must uphold that ebon canopy. Paul moved further along the aisle to a spot where the foliage was unbroken, as rain began a rapid tattoo upon the leafy roof. In the following instant the hillside was illuminated ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... must be immense, since that edge has now receded several miles. Allowing the annual recess to be 5 feet, and the distance 5 miles; the time occupied would be 5,700 years: that the time has been great, is proved by the sides of these places being clothed with large tree-jungle to the base of the scarp. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... my sovereign, and your master. But I am, like a true Scotsman, wise behind hand—the mistake has happened—my Supplication has been refused, and my only resource is to employ the rest of my means to carry Moniplies and myself to some counter-scarp, and die in ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... far off," answered Altamont, "and did not understand? There are eight chances out of ten that he'll come back without suspicion of danger! The bears are hiding behind the scarp of the fort, and he can't ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... one year never exceeded 14,000 tons, and in 1900, owing to the poor quality of material obtained, the collieries were closed down. Recently, small outcrop workings have been developed in the same formation further west on the southern scarp of the Salt Range at Tejuwala ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... Valence, on the farther side of the Rhone, rises a bold scarp of sandstone cliff, crowned with the ruined castle of Crussol above the village of S. Peray at its feet, where is made a very capital sparkling wine, not at all inferior to champagne. There is also there an odd chateau, designed, it ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... the scarp of the cliff, and having climbed out upon the prairie, soon stood over the carcass of the prong-horn. My knife was out in a trice, and next moment I was playing ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... established and preparations made for the offensive, the first step in which was to be the wiping out of the St. Mihiel salient. This salient had existed since 1914, when the Germans, failing to storm the scarp protecting Verdun on the east, had driven a wedge across the lower heights to the south. The elimination of this wedge would have great moral effect; it would free the Paris-Nancy railway from artillery fire; and would assure Pershing an excellent base for attack against the ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... glanced with a rueful smile at the dozen this one made. They scarcely averaged half a pound, and he had spent most of a day that could badly be spared in catching them. Plodding back along the shingle with his load, he reached a little level strip beneath a scarp of rock, where a fire blazed among the boulders. A tent stood beneath two or three small, wind-stunted spruces, and a ragged man in long river-boots lay resting on one elbow near the blaze, regardless of the drizzle. He was a few years over thirty, Lisle's ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... beginning of the city that spreads before you. First of all you must realize that this point of observation would, in those days, have been offshore, on the shallow water of Yerba Buena Cove. To the right is the scarp of Telegraph Hill, from which ships coming through the Golden Gate were sighted, and to the left is the lesser Rincon Hill, which is being cut away to provide a light manufacturing district. These marked ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... instance belongs to the department of physical geography, this comes under the class of effects produced by the works of man. The peculiarity consists in the villages being all placed at high elevations. They are seen perched far up the mountain sides, straggling along the scarp of a narrow terrace, or crowded together on the platform of some projecting spur; churches, convents, towers, and hamlets crowning the peaked summits of lower eminences almost equally inaccessible. The only extensive plains in the island are so insalubrious as to be almost uninhabitable, and this ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... on the word like a steel trap. "The scarp's thirty feet high, and the ditch accordin'. The last on the west side it will be—over by the river. I know it like your face, and its ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... of English people, guests at the ranch that Haig now owns, went on a pleasure trip to Thunder Mountain. They meant to go only as far as timber line. It's not difficult as far as the foot of the scarp that lifts to the flat top you see yonder. It's done on horseback to that point—and across too, if you care to try it. But on top—that's another matter. It isn't the mountain itself that gets you. It's the storms. The English party ventured on top, and three of ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... rumble ominously, and in him there was burning a slow and sullen anger. He buried himself among the rocks; he followed a ledge with Muskwa slinking close at his heels; he climbed over a huge scarp of rock, and twisted among boulders half as big as houses. But not once did he go where Muskwa could not easily follow. Once, when he drew himself from a ledge to a projecting seam of sandstone higher up, and found that Muskwa could ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... there were no ditches, would have formed an oval line of nearly two miles had it not been interrupted, on the side of the mountains and the sea, between the ports of Stabiae and of Herculaneum. These ramparts consisted of two walls—the scarp and counterscarp,—between which ran a terraced platform; the exterior wall, slightly sloping, was defended by embrasures between which the archer could place himself in safety, in an angle of the stonework, so soon as he had shot his arrow. The interior wall was also crested with battlements. ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... near the body of the place; a counterscarp wall, which sustains the earth on the exterior of the ditch; a covered way, which occupies the space between the counterscarp and a mound of earth called a glacis, thrown up a few yards in front of the ditch for the purpose of covering the scarp of ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... his bearings, put the key in his pocket, and scrambled up the wall of hay, which was about fifteen feet high and formed a sort of platform. When he reached the top he slid down on the other side, as though he were descending the scarp of a fortification, and reached the flooring of the church, which was almost wholly composed ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... difficult. The fire from the ramparts is increased by cavaliers of great size and strength, capable of mounting numerous heavy guns at a superior altitude. The only entrance from the land side is at the south-west corner; this is exceedingly striking, as the fosse is about 140 feet wide, the scarp and counter-scarp almost perpendicular, being cut from ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... a squadron would go off to either Kilo 145, at the top of the Scarp, Meherique, the only place the engines could water, or Kharga (Railhead), and latterly to Water Dump A, to take over the outpost there with the I.C.C., or a troop of Gyppy Cavalry. Life there was not quite so pleasant on account of the mosquitoes (which, thanks to Dr Tuke, ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie |
