"Zigzag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rode on amid the gorse and heather till they came to a broad-spreading oak tree, sheltering a farmhouse built in frames of heavy timber, filled up with bricks set in zigzag patterns, with a high- pitched roof and tall chimneys. Barns and stacks were near it, and fields reclaimed from the heath were waving with corn just tinged with the gold of harvest. Three or four cows, of the tawny hue that looked so home-like to the brothers, were being ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Dellius, Dellius! sure to die, Whether in gloom you spend each year, Or through long holydays at ease In grassy nook your spirit cheer With old Falernian vintages, Where poplar pale, and pine-tree high Their hospitable shadows spread Entwined, and panting waters try To hurry down their zigzag bed. Bring wine and scents, and roses' bloom, Too brief, alas! to that sweet place, While life, and fortune, and the loom Of the Three Sisters yield you grace. Soon must you leave the woods you buy, Your villa, wash'd by Tiber's flow, Leave,—and your treasures, heap'd so high, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... like big balls of snow. The aster salicifolius has a slender stem much branched above, long and narrow leaves, with violet, violet-purple or rarely white rays, and aster prenanthoides or crooked stem aster, may be told by its zigzag stem, its oblong, saw-toothed leaves and its violet rays. Two other beautiful species found hereabouts are the aster azureus, which blooms from August until after frost, with a slender but stiff and roughish stem, and many bright violet-blue flowers with short rays; ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... jar, with ancient zigzag decoration, referring to the four wombs of earth and the darts with which they were broken open for the liberation and birth of mankind. K'i-wih na-k'ia t-le, a-wi-ten ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona in 1881 • James Stevenson
... glimpses of some one coming slowly down the zigzag path. Presently, at one of the turnings half-way up the hill, appeared Mowbray Langdon. "What is he doing here," thought I, scarcely able to believe my eyes. "Here of all places!" And then I forgot the strangeness of his being ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... he hated it, to pay for her subsistence. He vindicated the honour of Warbeach by drinking a match against a Yorkshire skipper till four o'clock in the morning, when it was a gallant sight, my boys, to see Hampshire steadying the defeated North-countryman on his astonished zigzag to his flattish-bottomed billyboy, all in the cheery sunrise on the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and corporeal predilections, comported himself in a manner that cannot be likened to anything mortal or immortal, human or inhuman, unless it be to an insane cat, whose veins ran wild-fire instead of blood. Or perhaps we might liken him to that ingenious piece of firework called a zigzag cracker, which explodes with unexpected and repeated suddenness, changing its position in a most perplexing manner at every crack. Baptiste, after the first onset, danced backwards with surprising lightness, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... five unladen donkeys that were kept at the end of the baggage column in case of need, and, one of them trying to push past another, they both rolled over the cliff and went down about a hundred feet on to the road below, which here made a zigzag. The first donkey who came down landed on his head and broke his silly neck; but the second donkey had better luck, and landed on the first donkey in a sitting position. He got up, sniffed contemptuously at his late friend, and resumed his journey. ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... It is a striking, picturesque town, built up a steep promontory, the old part at the bottom, very dingy and mouldy, the new part at the top, very showy and elegant. Nothing can be more exquisite in its way than the grande place in the very heart of the city, surrounded with those toppling, zigzag, ten-storied buildings bedizened all over with ornaments and emblems so peculiar to the Netherlands, with the brocaded Hotel de Ville on one side, with its impossible spire rising some three hundred and seventy feet into the air ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... station, market and principal business houses. It has narrow streets badly paved and drained, and made still more dirty and offensive by the surface drainage of the upper town. Communication with the upper town is effected by means of two elevators, a circular tramway, and steep zigzag roads. The upper town is built on the western slope of a low ridge, the backbone of the peninsula, and rises from the edge of the bluffs to altitudes of 200 to 260 ft. above the sea-level, affording ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... "Fly a kinda zigzag course east till I tell yuh to swing south," Johnny called, close to Bland's ear. "Miss Selmer's off that way somewhere. If you see her, don't fly low enough to scare her horse—keep away a little and hunt a landing. I'll tell yuh when to land, ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... making a leisurely circuit of the two sides of the principal square, was now beginning the ascent of the steep zigzag road to the Palace, which stood on the terraced height of the plateau that commanded the city. The party in the coach caught glimpses of its massive but ornate towers with fantastic spires and turrets, and its great arched and columned ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... addressing these sentences to me, we had crossed the rivulet that gurgled through the valley, and commenced our ascending zigzag way. The skins and bones of sheep destroyed by the wolves that infest these mountains were scattered on every hand, and the foot-marks of these furious brutes and bears were plainly distinguishable on those parts ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... over traces and behind whiffle-trees. On the right, of us was solid rock up, on the left solid rock down, one hundred feet to the stream, and just ahead was the sharp turn the road made to a higher ledge in its zigzag up the mountain. I had always intended to learn to drive four-in-hand, but this first lesson left me no pleasure in the learning. There were no little triumphs of difficulties mastered, no gentle surprises, no long, smooth, ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... this class is provided with flagellae, sometimes at both extremities, which furnish the means of rapid locomotion. The spiro-bacteria multiply by spores, although little is at present known of their life history. They frequently are attached together at their extremities, forming zigzag chains. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... of the zigzag ravine along which they had made their way, to the sunlit amphitheatre, was almost painful, and the party stood in a group shading their eyes, gazing about in silence, till Chris suddenly snatched off his hat, waved ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... ground? But watch them in their evening flight. It is a revelation. They rise above the houses and shoot across my sky like a charge of canister. I can almost hear them whizz. Down by the cemetery I have seen them dash into view high up in the slit of sky, dive for the trees, dart zigzag like a madly plunging kite, and hurl themselves, as soft as breaths, among ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... communication trench, Tom felt his heart grow cold. Still, with set teeth, and a hard look in his eyes, he groped his way along the trench, through Piccadilly, and Haymarket, and Bond Street, and Whitehall (for in this manner do the soldiers name the various parts of the zigzag cuttings through the clay): while all the time he could hear the pep, pep, pep, pep of the machine guns, and the shrieking of ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... done in the following way. Trees of a straight growth and straight also in the grain are selected and cut into twelve feet lengths, and are then, by the means of a beetle and wedges, split into rails as nearly four inches square as possible. The rails are then laid in a zigzag direction, crossing each other about a foot from the end, making an angle of about six feet. Seven rails in height, crowned by a stake and rider, complete the fence. The best timbers for making rails, are pine, cedar, oak ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... Caponsacchi, that of Pompilia Comparini, and the two of Guido Franceschini, are unapproachable, in their kind, by any living or dead poet, 'me judice'. Here Browning's jerkiness comes in with inevitable effect. You get lightning glimpses — and, as one naturally expects from lightning, zigzag glimpses — into the intense night of the passion of these souls. It is entirely wonderful and without precedent. The fitful play of Guido's lust, and scorn, and hate, and cowardice, closes with a master stroke: — "Christ! ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... climbing as marching, and, as Bill Gedge said, "all agin the collar;" but the men did not seem to mind, as they mounted higher and higher in the expectation of finding that the next turn of the zigzag was the top of ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... effect was required; but as the particular action might be supposed to be exerted only at the moments of making and breaking contact, the induction was produced in another way. Several feet of copper wire were stretched in wide zigzag forms, representing the letter W, on one surface of a broad board; a second wire was stretched in precisely similar forms on a second board, so that when brought near the first, the wires should everywhere touch, except that a sheet of thick paper was interposed. One ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... the destination of the fleet was unknown. As it proceeded at first southward and westward, the rumor grew that Newbern was to be attacked. But it was only the course of the channel which thus far shaped its course; and after a few zigzag turns, the cause of which was inexplicable to the green ones, ignorant of the shoals, it began to steer due north. Then all doubts with regard ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... I made my way, on a sunny day in November, past the little shops of the coral-vendors that surround, like a necklace, the Rione de la Bellezza, and wound zigzag along the over-crowded Toledo. I knew that Signor Croce lived in the old part of the town, but had hardly anticipated so remarkable a change as I experienced on passing beneath the great archway and finding myself in old Naples. This has already been described elsewhere, and I will ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... or unwilling dupes,—it might have seemed wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke should be named a Rath, or Councillor, and Counsellor, even in Weissnichtwo. What counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this particular Hofrath give; in whose loose, zigzag figure; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute incessant fluctuation,—you traced rather confusion worse confounded; at most, Timidity and physical Cold? Some indeed said withal, he ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... of the potato-field, and by the faint tints of violet light that flowed over the brown soil from a pallid and fading sunset. As the sky was scrawled by the gray-and-black rampikes, so the slope was scrawled by zigzag lines of gray-and-black snake fence, leading down to three log cabins, with their cluster of log barns and sheds, scattered irregularly along a terrace of the slope. A quarter of a mile further down, beyond the little gray dwellings, a sluggish river wound between ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... man who might soon be dying. One day the sick man was resting. Dr. Campbell went to the window to look out a little, while he was waiting. It was very early now in the southern springtime. The trees were just beginning to get the little zigzag crinkles in them, which the young buds always give them. The air was soft and moist and pleasant to them. The earth was wet and rich and smelling for them. The birds were making sharp fresh noises ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... of the bodies of the Zenichi denote red corn; the black portion black clouds. The red half of the face represents also the red corn; the blue of the bodies of the others denote vegetation in general, and the yellow, pollen of all vegetation. The zigzag lines of the bodies is lightning; the black lines around the head, zigzagged with white, are cloud baskets that hold red corn, which is stacked in pyramidal form and capped with three eagle plumes. There ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... had not been visited by any of the troop—as the major had ascertained before starting. The account was not reassuring. The guide reported that it stood on a rock, which rose perpendicularly some eighty or a hundred feet from the plain; the only access being by a zigzag road cut in the face of the cliff, with a gateway defended by a gun, and loopholed walls at each turn, and with a very strong wall all round the edge of the rock. The garrison, they had learned from the persons ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... the roots of a tree or beneath the foundations of a tottering house. Primitive man naturally took to the grosser and more material conception. He figured to himself the thunderbolt as a barbed arrowhead; and the forked zigzag character of the visible flash, as it darts rapidly from point to point, seemed almost inevitably to suggest to him the barbs, as one sees them represented on all the Greek and Roman gems, in the red right hand of the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... stand at eight o'clock, P.M.; wind ahead, and little of it, performing a zigzag march between Eleuthera and Abaco. On deck, the pretty widow lies in an easy chair, surrounded by her countrymen, who discourse about sugar, molasses, chocolate, and other local topics, together with the relative merits of Cuba as compared with the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... one smith held the article on the anvil while the other applied the point of the shank of a file—previously rounded—and struck the file with a hammer. The other figures were made with the sharpened point of a file, pushed forward with a zigzag motion of the hand. When the chasing was done the silver was blanched by the process before referred to, being occasionally taken from the boiling solution of almogen to be rubbed with ashes and sand. For about five hours both of the smiths ...
— Navajo Silversmiths • Washington Matthews
... by Ernulf were extremely simple, and were decorated with a "peculiar and shallow class of notched ornament", of which many examples exist in other buildings of the period; while the mouldings of William of Sens "exhibit much variety, but are most remarkable for the profusion of billet-work, zigzag and dogtooth, that are lavished upon them." The first two methods of ornamentation are Norman, the last an Early English characteristic. This mixture is not confined to the details of decoration but may be observed also in the indiscriminate employment of round ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... tracks on Exmoor. The uphill and downhill of Devonshire scorns compromise or mitigation by detour and zigzag. But here geography is on a scale so far more vast, and the roadway is so far worse metalled than with us in England—knotty masses of talc and nodes of sandstone cropping up at dangerous turnings—that only Dante's words ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... road. The two wanderers, breathless, with torn uniforms, swollen faces, halt, gasping, to take their bearings. They can see the turnpike far beyond the stone bridge half-way to Centreville: they see crowds fleeing in zigzag lines over the open fields, see horses plunging wildly, laden down by two and even three men on their backs; they see vehicles overturned at the roadside, whence the horses have been cut or killed by the rebel shells; they see an army, in every sense ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... was rushing with extraordinary energy and speed in pursuit of it. To my dismay the creature flew straight for the great mire, and my acquaintance never paused for an instant, bounding from tuft to tuft behind it, his green net waving in the air. His gray clothes and jerky, zigzag, irregular progress made him not unlike some huge moth himself. I was standing watching his pursuit with a mixture of admiration for his extraordinary activity and fear lest he should lose his footing in the treacherous mire, when I heard the sound of steps, and turning round ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... at the victim. There was a thud, with a crackle like a breaking egg, and the bar flew into pieces. The heads-man gave a dreadful cry, and dropped his axe, clapped his two hands to his head, and running zigzag across the scaffold, fell over, a dead man, into ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this to be our place of refuge in case of danger, sir," observed Ready; "and therefore I have selected this thick part of the wood, as it is not very far from the house, and by cutting the path to it in a zigzag, it will be quite hidden from sight; and we must make the path just wide enough to allow the wheels to pass, and stump up the roots of the trees which we are obliged to cut down, otherwise the stumps would ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... direction; but, standing in many places in this giant battlefield, it was impossible for me to say where were the Germans and where the French, so completely was I turned around on account of the constant zigzag of the trench lines. Sometimes, when I was positive that a furious cannonade coming from a certain position was German, it turned out to be French. At other times, when I thought I was safely going in the direction of the French, I was hauled ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... keeping his watch, and fancying himself once more at his duty on board ship. "This is an uncommonly lively vessel in a sea-way," he used to mutter under his breath, when his legs took him down the passage in zigzag directions, or left him for the moment studying the "Pints of the Compass" on his own system, with his back against the wall. "A nasty night, mind you," he would maunder on, taking another turn. "As dark as your ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... the ruin'd shrine he stept, And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock, Came on the shining levels ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... must have the necessary conditions and surroundings. Man is a product; you must have the soil and food. The obstacles presented by nature must not be so great that man cannot, by reasonable industry and courage, overcome them. There is upon this world only a narrow belt of land, circling zigzag the globe, upon which you can produce men and women of talent. In the Southern Hemisphere the real climate that man needs falls mostly upon the sea, and the result is, that the southern half of our world has never produced ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... citizens live happy as monks. They are so well shut in by high rocks that they can laugh at enemies, and through a hollow in the rocks with softest pace creeps the river Oysivius (the Idle). There is only one way up, their rocks for the inhabitants, and that is not by zigzag steps, but by a rope and basket. Birds wholly peculiar to the place supply food by being themselves eatable, and by the great multitude of their eggs, and by the loads of fish they bring into their nests to feed their young. The citizens make to themselves also beds of the soft feathers of ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... To shorten the distance home, as the hour was late and the bright moon threw some light even among the thick trees, he determined to take a footpath among the hills. This course led him close to the cabin of Simon Wiles, Sam Wiles' father. He was walking in a zigzag path, now watching the moonlight as it lilted down through the leafy canopy, making a dim but peaceful light around him; now listening to the sounds which exist in Kentucky forests in winter, the flight of nocturnal birds and moving of animals; seeing ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... in the unself-conscious and unhurried fashion of the West, stroking the yellow, spotted skin that lay over the black arm of her chair and letting her eyes flit like butterflies in a garden on a zigzag journey to one after another of the flowers of ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... through which they passed became every day more and more rugged, until at length it assumed the character of a wild mountainous district. Sometimes they wound their way in a zigzag manner up the mountain sides, by paths so narrow that they could scarcely find a foot-hold. At other times they descended into narrow valleys where they saw great numbers of wild animals of various kinds, some of which the Indians killed for food. After they reached the mountain ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... it was covered towards the top with a wood, apparently of oak, between which and the ravine were small green fields. Both sides of the ravine were fringed with trees, chiefly ash. I descended the road which was zigzag and steep, and at last arrived at the bottom of the valley, where there was a small hamlet. On the further side of the valley to the east was a steep hill on which were a few houses—at the foot of the hill was a brook crossed by an antique bridge of a single arch. I directed ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the road, I saw just before me a negro standing, with a hoe and a watering-pot in his hand. He had evidently just gotten over the "worm-fence" into the road, out of the path which led zigzag across the "old field" and was lost to sight in the dense growth of sassafras. When I rode up, he was looking anxiously back down this path for his dog. So engrossed was he that he did not even hear my horse, and I reined in to wait until he should turn around and ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... detached himself from the window-sill, and set the lawnmower on another zigzag journey. His hat, his coat, and his trousers hung limper than ever. He moved wearily, and at the end of the garden he sat down under a cherry-tree to muse on the strange, sad fact that his new employer promised to be not one whit more ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... still in the moonlight, slackened speed, half-turned as if in hesitation, then ran on more slowly, with zigzag steps, as if desperately looking for a way out. But he said to me in a ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... paces from one another; everything depended upon the lie of the ground, and the means at the enemy's disposal; a greater distance than a thousand paces was exceptional. They were always so placed that each of them could be seen by its neighbours on both sides, the line which they followed being a zigzag. ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... occurs in sickness as well as in health, and all the more because its determination is so difficult and the evil effects so indisputable. The dividing line in medicine, even between use and abuse, is so zigzag and invisible that common mortals, in groping for it, generally stumble beyond it, and the delicate perception of medical art too often fails ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... practised eye of the camel-driver to find his way through these regions, and yet, for my life, I could not see that the people experienced any difficulty. They seemed as much at home in this intricate waste of creation as in their own dark zigzag streets of Ghadames. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... for its forts, which present an imposing appearance from a wide spreading plain, as they are perched at the top of a rocky hill three hundred feet high, with almost perpendicular sides. The only way to reach it is by a zigzag road chiseled out of the cliff, which leads to a massive gateway. The walls are twenty-eight feet high, twenty-eight feet thick, and are crowned with picturesque towers. During ascent you are shown the impressions of the hands of the fifteen wives of one of the rajahs who were ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... uncertain cliff path between us and it: for the path, like a true mountain trail, had the passion for climbing developed into a mania, and could never rest content with the river's bed whenever it spied a chance to rise. It had just managed an ascent up a zigzag stairway of its own invention, and had stepped out in the dark upon a patch of tall mountain grass, as dry as straw, when Yejiro conceived the brilliant idea of torches. He had learned the trick in the ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... fro in zigzag line, and emitting those peculiar doleful notes invented for them, automobiles were mixed up in apparently inextricable confusion with all this hurly-burly of vehicles, while the trams clanged their bells, and passengers stood waiting on the edge of the sidewalks, desirous of boarding ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... have been wading through.... I have never seen a blacker night nor a heavier rain than we have just come through... We were constantly in fear of the falling of those gigantic boulders that overhung our path behind the swishing trees that clung along the precipice.... The zigzag road that runs down this slope is like a spiral stair in crookedness and bumps.... We could catch a glimpse now and again of a light from the little bungalows that clung to the mountain sides.... But we dare not ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... are so called from their terraced ledges, rising one above another from the shores of the ocean like the stairs leading up from a pool. In achieving the ascent of these gigantic stairs all the expedients of road-makers have been resorted to: the zigzag, the trestle, the tunnel, the curve, have been pushed to their utmost applications; for five continuous miles on the Thull Ghat Incline there is a grade of one in thirty-seven, involving many trying curves, and on nineteen miles of the Bhore Ghat ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... that they were with him, and followed him out upon the frozen river on the direct path he took for Tra-Lee. At seven in the morning he led his stampeding cohort up the zigzag trail, across the face of the slide, that led to Dwight Sanderson's cabin. The light of a candle showed through the parchment-paper window, and smoke curled from the chimney. Shorty ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... Merrilies had attained these groves, through which the wintry sea-wind was now whistling hoarse and shrill, she seemed to pause a moment as if to recollect the way. 'We maun go the precise track,' she said, and continued to go forward, but rather in a zigzag and involved course than according to her former steady and direct line of motion. At length she guided them through the mazes of the wood to a little open glade of about a quarter of an acre, surrounded by trees and bushes, which made a wild and irregular ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... altar. The walls of Norman buildings are thick and massive, and are often faced with cut stone. String-courses or mouldings projecting from the walls, run horizontally along them, and are often adorned with the zigzag or other Norman patterns of ornament. The tower often stands between the nave and the chancel, and is usually low and massive. In the eastern counties are found many round towers made of flint masonry. Flat buttresses are a sure sign of Norman work, as they were not used in any of the ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... trenches, beginning with what is called the first parallel, which should be so laid out as to envelop those parts of the fort which are to be made the special objects of attack. From this first parallel a number of zigzag trenches are started toward the fort and at proper intervals other parallels, batteries, and magazines are built; this method of approach being continued until the besieged fort is reached, or until such batteries can be brought to bear upon it as to breech the walls and allow the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... point he appeared to have intended to return and, by the zigzag course he took, that he had either been travelling in the dark, or looking for his own track, that he might retrace it. In this manner his steps actually approached within a mile of our route, but in such a manner that he appeared to have ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... the path be long, and thorny, the cycle is closing, and many have reached the goal through its zigzag course. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... and in length of internodes. They vary also in size, in number and in color, while the shape in some species is quite distinctive, being in some round, in others angular and in still others flattened. The direction of growth in canes, whether sinuous, straight or zigzag, is an important character. Nodes and internodes are indicative characters in some species, being more or less prominent, angular or flattened, while the ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... the wild animals use old Ski tracks as highways now, even finding it worth while to follow the zigzag of an uphill traverse. Foxes, hares and roe deer all use them, the roe deers' feet showing so much tinier than the chamois, who leaves a deep rough track as they usually run in each other's footsteps. The hare's track when running is two holes abreast and then two single ones. The fox runs rather ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... be a better path for you up the hill," he said; "I must speak to Sam Wright about it." And carefully he flung the noiseless zigzag of light back and forth in front of her, and told some more stories that he might ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... hit one at the very moment when it was beginning its zigzag movements, and the snipe fell in a heap into the mud. Oblonsky aimed deliberately at another, still flying low in the reeds, and together with the report of the shot, that snipe too fell, and it could be seen fluttering out where the sedge had ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... barrier to the people of the State. Now the train toiled over a stile-like way connecting east and west, and Noonoon and Kangaroo, divided by a mile and the river, nestled immediately at the foot of the zigzag climb. ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... were covered with shell holes, a little cemetery flanked one side of the zigzag way, and the big dugouts of the reserves were everywhere in this backyard of the trench area. Out of narrow, crooked side avenues soldiers poured into the communication trench which the wire carriers were following, falling in ahead ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... meanwhile, though trembling for her husband's safety, was occupied in wetting blankets, and carrying them to the roof of the house, for the dry shingles would have been ignited by a spark. On our return, it was necessary to climb over some "snake" or zigzag fences about six feet high. These are fences peculiar to new countries, and though very cheap, requiring neither tools nor nails, have a peculiarly untidy appearance. It is not thought wise to buy a farm which has not enough bush or growing timber ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... trying to get this crooked wake straight, and consequently went round and round exactly like the whirligig beetle. Those who knew used to let the leeway proceed a good way and then alter it, so as to act in the other direction like an elongated zigzag. These sculls the old fellow would bring you as if they were great treasures, and watch you off in the punt as if he was parting with his dearest. At that date it was no little matter to coax him round to unchain his vessel. You had to take an interest in the garden, in ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... return, there was "no place of repentance" for him, and fled from it, it still pursued him, "holloaing after him, 'Return, return!'" And return he did, but not all at once, or without many a fresh struggle. With his usual graphic power he describes the zigzag path by which he made his way. His hot and cold fits alternated with fearful suddenness. "As Esau beat him down, Christ raised him up." "His life hung in doubt, not knowing which way he should tip." More sensible evidence came. "One ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... appearing plain before us. We had no difficulty in following it up the lesser heights, around the base. It wound on over rock and bog, among the heather and broom with which the mountain is covered, sometimes running up a steep acclivity and then winding zigzag round a rocky ascent. The rains two days before had made the bogs damp and muddy; but, with this exception, we had little ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... the effects of her long sleep and the cold endured—it is a wonder how she had stood the latter at all—and when, with a subdued inward sort of hum, she finally launched herself in flight, she nearly fell to the ground before righting herself and flying in a zigzag heavily across ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... angularness^; aduncity^; angle, cusp, bend; fold &c 258; notch &c 257; fork, bifurcation. elbow, knee, knuckle, ankle, groin, crotch, crutch, crane, fluke, scythe, sickle, zigzag, kimbo^, akimbo. corner, nook, recess, niche, oriel [Arch.], coign^. right angle &c (perpendicular) 216.1, 212; obliquity &c 217; angle of 45 degrees, miter; acute angle, obtuse angle, salient angle, reentering angle, spherical angle. angular measurement, angular elevation, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... above Martinhoe and the farm lands adjoining, spring had fallen that year as gently as the warm rain of April. Tallente, conscious of an unexpected lassitude, paused as he reached the top of the zigzag climb from the Manor and rested for a moment upon a block of stone. Below him, the forests of dwarf oaks which stretched down to the sea were tipped with delicate green. The meadows were like deep soft patches of emerald verdure; the fruit trees in his small walled garden were pink ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... according to the locality which it frequents, and therefore is the less easily observed. The colour is always some shade of brown, from a dull yellow to an olive tint; but it may be specially known by the zigzag, black markings along the back, and its broad head, with V-shaped mark in the centre. Its length is from a foot to a foot-and-a-half, although specimens have been killed as long as four feet. (“Naturalist,” 1895, p. 206.) The female is larger than the male. Its bite is made with great rapidity, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... we descend the precipice, 300 feet in depth, which forms the wall of the original crater, but now blooming with a prodigal vegetation. In many places the incline is so steep that zigzag flights of wooden steps have been inserted here and there in the face of the cliff in order to facilitate the descent. At the bottom we step on to a surface of cold boiled lava, and even here, in every chink where ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... and then recover their eastern or western course by bursting through the ranges at those points where the strata have been least inclined and the height consequently is less. Hence the valleys, along which the roads run, are generally zigzag; and, in drawing an east and west section, it is necessary to contract greatly that which is actually ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... is mainly occupied with cedar and chestnut, with an undergrowth, in many place, of heath and bramble. The chief feature, however, is a dense growth in the centre, consisting of dogwood, water-beech, swamp-ash, alder, spice-bush, hazel, etc., with a network of smilax and frost-grape. A little zigzag stream, the draining of a swam beyond, which passes through this tanglewood, accounts for many of its features and productions, if not for its entire existence. Birds that are not attracted by the heath, or the cedar and chestnut, are sure to find some excuse for visiting this miscellaneous ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... across Holborn, down Endell Street, and so through a zigzag of slums to Covent Garden Market. One of the largest stalls bore the name of Breckinridge upon it, and the proprietor a horsey-looking man, with a sharp face and trim side-whiskers was helping a boy to put ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Brown School, writes: "Our library contains the usual school reference-books. Recently we have added quite a number of books especially adapted to interest and instruct children, such as The Boy Travellers, Miss Yonge's Histories, Butterworth's Zigzag Journeys, Forbes's Fairy Geography, etc. The children are not permitted to take these books away from the building. Pupils are invited to bring such additional facts in geography, or history, as they may obtain by reading. Topics ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... wild rose—song-birds filling the air with melody, and stately castles, towering o'er the peasant's lowly home, while far as the eye can reach 'twill rest but on some fair village dome or farm. Here the worm or zigzag fence runs round the irregularly-shaped clearings, in the same rustic garb it wore when a denizen of the forest. The wild flowers here have no perfume, but the raspberries, which grow luxuriantly ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... which Ahulah had shrunk a man issued. He was sturdy as a bludgeon, and he had a growth of thick black hair that curled about an honest face. In his hand was a basket. At the sight of Mary his steps hesitated, and his eyes followed hers to where the palace lay. Then he crossed the zigzag of the intervening space, but he had to touch her outstretched arm ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... towing-disks are dropped astern. These are white and enable the rearward vessels to keep their distance with relation to those steaming ahead. The destroyers circle in and about the convoyed craft, which, in the meantime, are describing zigzag courses in order that submarines may not be able to calculate their gun or torpedo fire with any ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... searching analysis of Greek and German mythology, Dr. Schwarz, of Berlin, has shown that the meaning which is paramount to all others in this emblem is the lightning; a meaning drawn from the close analogy which the serpent in its motion, its quick spring, and mortal bite, has to the zigzag course, the rapid flash, and sudden stroke of the electric discharge. He even goes so far as to imagine that by this resemblance the serpent first acquired the veneration of men. But this is an extravagance ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... passed the Barnard house the Pembroke woman partly drew rein again; the old horse meandered in a zigzag curve, with his head lopping. "That's where Charlotte Barnard lives," she said. Suddenly she lowered her voice. "There she is now, out in the ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... abruptly, the hawk flew on over the tops of the hillocks, making unexpected zigzag rushes to right and left. But wherever he went, there the villagers had vanished, almost as if the wind of his approach had whisked them away. Baffled and indignant, he at last gave up the hope of a dinner of prairie dog, and dropped on a small rattler which was ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... up the mountain ridge that walls in the town towards the east. The road is cut zigzag, the mountain being generally as steep as the roof of a house; yet the stage to Greenfield passes over this road two or three times a week. Graylock rose up behind me, appearing, with its two summits and a long ridge between, like a huge monster crouching down ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ammonites, taken as a group, is simple and clear; they arose as a branch of the nautiloids in the lower Devonian, the shells known as goniatites having zigzag, angulated sutures. Late in the succeeding Carboniferous period appear shells with a truly ammonoid complexity of sutures, and in the Permian their number and variety cause them to form a striking element of the marine faunas. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... lime-washed, showed that once cottonwoods had flourished before the devouring desert had claimed the territory. The cactus was all prickly pear, the gray-green flesh of the flat leaves starred with brilliant blossom. Along one side of the canyon, mounting zigzag, showed the remains of a road, broken down by landslip and the ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... Perhaps he did not hear. The road now mounted in a zigzag. The fugitive was already at the angle. In a few moments he would be back again at a higher level. Lory knew he could never overtake the fresher horse. There was but one chance—the chance perhaps of two shots as his father passed along the road above him. Should the gendarmes of Cauro, where ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... is to say, sunken trees, presenting a jagged or pointed end above the surface of the water. As the channel of the river frequently shifted from side to side according to the bends and sand-banks, the boat had, in the same way, to advance in a zigzag course. Often a part of the crew would have to leap into the water at the shallows, and wade along with the towing line, while their comrades on board toilfully assisted with oar and setting pole. Sometimes the boat would seem to be retained ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... destined to be a long one. A narrow, paved footway leads down from the old monastery to the shore, in zigzag, between low whitewashed walls, passing at last under some houses which are built ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... know the rest," Saunders said, under his breath. "I congratulate you. I congratulate you with all my heart." He held out his hand, but Mostyn warded it off, his cigar cutting red zigzag lines in ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... journey, it is not picked up without some hesitation. For observe that the caterpillars when on the march never turn completely; to wheel round on their tight-rope is a method utterly unknown to them. In order therefore to regain the road already covered, they have to describe a zigzag whose windings and extent are determined by the leader's fancy. Hence come gropings and roamings which are sometimes prolonged to the point of causing the herd to spend the night out of doors. It is not a serious matter. They collect into a motionless cluster. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... than from Yavapai Point, and an excellent outlook over the narrow break in the great wall, where the shattering of the strata and the deposition of talus and vegetable matter made possible the building of the zigzag portion of the trail near the top. The faulting of the strata is clearly seen, and the observer will not fail to note that the strata of the left arm of El Tovar Amphitheatre are thrust up some one hundred to two hundred feet above the level of the same strata ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... the ground as it ruffled into low foothills. Although he laid a zigzag course as his searchlight brought cactus clumps and thorn bushes into view, in the main he succeeded in dodging obstacles, and yet held to a fairly direct route. A mound of rocks, stark and almost shapeless in the gloom, guided him like a ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish |
