"Equinoctial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the fall of 1807 I was on board of the ship Canton, belonging to my uncle, the late Hugh Thompson, of Baltimore, when we fell in, at sea, near the termination of a very heavy equinoctial gale, with an English brig in a sinking condition, and took off the crew. The brig was loaded with codfish, and was bound to Poole, in England, from Newfoundland. I boarded her, in command of a boat from the Canton, which was sent ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... express by them, that yet, taken literally, are not scientifically true. The words, "Sun rises," and "Sun sets," and "Moon rises," and "Moon sets," occur in every page; there are two pages—those devoted to the months of March and September—in which the phrase occurs, "Sun crosses the equinoctial line;" and further, in the other pages, such phrases as "Sun enters Aries," "Sun enters Taurus," "Sun enters Gemini," &c., &c., are not unfrequent. The phrase, "new moon," is also of common occurrence. And these phrases, interpreted after the manner of Turrettine, and according to ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... of the natives made it unsafe to land on this coast, he continued his voyage to the north-west, and fell in with the mighty river Amazon, which is nearly under the equinoctial line. ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... Night he fled, and at Midnight return'd From compassing the Earth, cautious of day, Since Uriel Regent of the Sun descri'd 60 His entrance, and forewarnd the Cherubim That kept thir watch; thence full of anguish driv'n, The space of seven continu'd Nights he rode With darkness, thrice the Equinoctial Line He circl'd, four times cross'd the Carr of Night From Pole to Pole, traversing each Colure; On the eighth return'd, and on the Coast averse From entrance or Cherubic Watch, by stealth Found unsuspected way. There was a place, Now not, though Sin, not Time, first wraught the change, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... are now relating is distinguished, above all the rest, by the extent and importance of its discoveries. Besides several smaller islands in the Southern Pacific, he discovered, to the north of the equinoctial line, the group called the Sandwich Islands; which, from their situation and productions, bid fairer for becoming an object of consequence, in the system of European navigation, than any other discovery in the South ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... emerged and gone seven hundred or eight hundred leagues; and if I had here an astrolabe to take the altitude of the pole, I could tell thee how many we have traveled, though either I know little, or we have already crossed or shall shortly cross the equinoctial line which parts the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Holland old and Holland new One wondrous sheet of paper grew, And could I sing but half the grace Of half a freckle in thy face, Each syllable I wrote would reach From Inverness to Bognor's beach, Each hair-stroke be a river Rhine, Each verse an equinoctial line!" ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and engaged under the frozen Serpent of the South. Falkland Islands, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and pursue their ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... the Chaldeans may have made spheres, like the armillary sphere, for representing the poles of the heavens; and with rings to show the ecliptic and zodiac, as well as the equinoctial and solstitial colures; but we have no record. We only know that the tower of Belus, on an eminence, was their observatory. We have, however, distinct records of two such spheres used by the Chinese about 2500 B.C. Gnomons, or some kind of sundial, ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... into the chilly equinoctial darkness as the clock struck ten, for her fifteen miles' walk under the steely stars. In lonely districts night is a protection rather than a danger to a noiseless pedestrian, and knowing this, Tess pursued the nearest course along by-lanes that she would almost ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... followed by the resurrection, or renewal of life. Then the God rises into heaven, to sit upon the throne at the summer solstice, to bless his people. We read, that, the Savior of mankind was crucified between two thieves. Very good. The equinoctial point is the dividing line between light and darkness, winter and summer. In other words, the Sun is resuming his northern arc, to replenish the Earth with his solar force and preserve his people from ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... all the nocturnal noise of the equinoctial storm, of the rain, of the groaning branches, twisted and broken, he perceived that a grand silence had come. Straining his ear, he could hear no longer the immense breath of the western wind, no longer the motion of all those things ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... words like that. She thought in French, too, for one thing. And, in any case, Rogers could not have heard her, for he was listening now to the uproar of the children as they criticised Daddy's ridiculous effusion. A haystack, courted in vain by zephyrs, but finally taken captive by an equinoctial gale, strained nonsense too finely for their sense of what was right and funny. It was the pictures he now drew in the book that woke their laughter. He gave the stack a physiognomy ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... to show how little we yet know of the ancient epochs of the country, and the field of inquiry is about to be occupied at various points under the highest advantages. Some of the figures and devices on the antique walls and temples of equinoctial America, appear to contain information for a future Young or Champollion to reveal. Time and scrutiny will do much to lift the veil of mystery from these ancient ruins, and to form and regulate sound opinion upon the ancient inhabitants of that quarter, and their state of arts. ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... far out and ebbing still, but the wind had shifted, and was blowing from the east rather stiffly, and with increasing force. Mary knew that the strong equinoctial tides were running at their height; but she had timed her visit carefully, as she thought, with no less than an hour and a half to spare. And even without any thought of tide, she was bound to be back in less time ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... have not navigated the rivers of equinoctial America can scarcely conceive how, at every instant, without intermission, you may be tormented by insects flying in the air, and how the multitudes of these little animals may render vast regions almost uninhabitable. Whatever fortitude be exercised to endure pain without ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... reached midstream, and Don Quixote, much to Sancho's perplexity, began to talk about cosmography, the three hundred and sixty degrees of the globe, and the equinoctial line, which, the knight said, they were just then passing. A sure sign by which all seafaring Spaniards determined the passing of this latitude, Don Quixote went on, was that all lice died on everybody on board ship. So, in accordance ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... ended, and one or two equinoctial gales had whipped the waters of Loch Beg into wild "white horses," yet still Lord Cairnforth did not return. At last, one Monday night, when Helen and her father were returning from a three days' absence at the "preachings'—that ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... may imagine that I praised his generosity and gave him grateful thanks, nor did I fail to present myself daily in his audience chamber, and for the rest of my time I amused myself in seeing all that was most worthy of attention in the city. The island of Serendib being situated on the equinoctial line, the days and nights there are of equal length. The chief city is placed at the end of a beautiful valley, formed by the highest mountain in the world, which is in the middle of the island. I had the curiosity ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... to their commanders, that he was going to the Cape Verde islands, and thence, "in the name of the Sacred Trinity," intended to navigate to the south of those islands, until he should arrive under the equinoctial line, in the hope of being "guided by God to discover something which may be to His service, and to that of our Lords, the King and Queen, and to the honour of Christendom;" "for, I believe," he adds, "that no one has ever traversed this way, ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... that the Newfoundland might be the more subject to cold, by how much it lieth high and near unto the middle region. I grant that not in Newfoundland alone, but in Germany, Italy and Afric, even under the equinoctial line, the mountains are extreme cold, and seldom uncovered of snow, in their culm and highest tops, which cometh to pass by the same reason that they are extended towards the middle region: yet in the countries lying beneath them, it is found quite contrary. ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... Siege of a Place one intends to retain after taking it."... Will never take it in that way, however, by attacking from the River or south shore; only ruins us, but does not enrich himself. Not an inch nearer his object than he was three months ago; and in one month more the equinoctial storms will blow his Fleet and him away.—Quebec, then, and the preservation of the Colony, you think, must be as good as safe?" Alas, the fact is far otherwise. The capture of Quebec depends on what we call a stroke-of-hand—[But let us take ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... be merely faint replicas and copies of the older creeds. Robertson maintains (1) that a he-lamb was sacrificed in the Mithraic mysteries, and he quotes Porphyry as saying (2) that "a place near the equinoctial circle was assigned to Mithra as an appropriate seat; and on this account he bears the sword of the Ram (Aries) which is a sign of Mars (Ares)." Similarly among the early Christians, it is said, a ram or lamb was sacrificed ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... short, though we had no longer any fear of not getting round to the Isle of Wight before the equinoctial gales commenced. We sailed early in the morning, papa being anxious to get across the mouth of the Thames, either as far as Ramsgate or Deal, to avoid the risk of being run down by vessels standing up or down the river ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... The next day found him alive and humming, exploring the room and pictures, perching now here and now there; but, as the weather was chilly, he sat for the most part of the time in a humped-up state on the tip of a pair of stag's horns. We moved him to a more sunny apartment; but, alas! the equinoctial storm came on, and there was no sun to be had for days. Hum was blue; the pleasant seaside days were over; his room was lonely, the pleasant three that had enlivened the apartment at Rye no longer came ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... drinking more toddy after his dinner, and it was fast ruining his temper: his wife, who had from the first excited his indignation against Malcolm, was now reaping her reward. To complete the troubles of the fisher folk, the harbour at Portlossie had, by a severe equinoctial storm, been so filled with sand as to be now inaccessible at lower than half tide, nobody as yet having made it his business to see it ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... next day, that of the religious marriage, it rained at Saint Cloud, but the weather in Paris was magnificent, so that nothing was lost of the magnificence of the procession or of the brilliancy of the illuminations. The Emperor's good fortune, it was said, had twice triumphed over the equinoctial storms. In the ever-flattering Moniteur it was said: "April 2 had been chosen for Their Majesties' entrance into the capital and the wedding rites. One strange circumstance aroused universal attention and called forth much favorable ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... southern part of Brazil, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In all there were twenty-five young men, full of frolic and fun, who made things rather lively about the ship. They went in for everything from which any fun could be extracted. At the equinoctial line they roped in the "greenhorns" to look through the field glasses at the line, and having fastened a hair across the field of view, of course, we could all see it plainly. Father Neptune came on board and those of the crew who had never crossed the Equator were hunted ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... equinoctial gale," said Sara, shyly. "I used to hear so much of its horrors from a friend ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... occasion of his first publications, a book on the nature of basalt. His work in the administration of mines in the principalities of Bayreuth and Anspach furnished materials for a treatise on fossil flora; and in 1827, when he was residing in Paris, he gave to the world his "Voyage to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent," which embodies the results of his investigations in South America. Two years later he organised an expedition to Asiatic Russia, charging himself with all the scientific observations. But his principal ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... to Mrs. Dubois, on seeing her glance anxiously at the windows, as the wild, equinoctial gale caused them to clatter violently, "do you fear that your husband is exposed to any particular ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... furious gale, we found ourselves in warm weather, having entered the edge of the Gulf Stream. We proceeded in a south-east direction, crossing the trade winds on our way to the equinoctial line. Were it not for the monotony, which always fatigues, there would be few undertakings more interesting than a sail through the latitudes of "the trades," where we meet with a balmy atmosphere, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... a representation of a scene which often transpired on board of vessels in passing the line. This time-honored custom of introducing to old Neptune and his suite the persons who, for the first time in their lives, cross the equinoctial line, is now nearly abolished. But until within a quarter of a century, the occasion of crossing the line was one of no little importance. It was a jubilee on board ship which was looked forward to with eagerness by the jolly tars ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... the dainty little Chalet, surrounded by the choice flowers which Dumay cultivated; the family customs, as regular as clock-work, the provincial decorum, the games at whist while the mother knitted and the daughter sewed, the silence, broken only by the roar of the sea in the equinoctial storms,—all this monastic tranquillity did in fact hide an inner and tumultuous life, the life of ideas, the life of the spiritual being. We sometimes wonder how it is possible for young girls to do wrong; but such ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... we had a fair wind at north-east, sailing always before the wind, till the 13th May, when we came within eight degrees of the line, where we met a contrary wind. We lay off and on from that time till the 6th June, when we crossed the equinoctial line. While thus laying off and on, we captured a Portuguese caravel, laden by some merchants of Lisbon for Brasil, in which vessel we got about 60 tons of wine, 1200 jars of oil, 100 jars of olives, some barrels of capers, three vats of pease, and various other necessaries fit for ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... it would be found, if an investigation of the subject were instituted, that a foreknowledge of this inevitable result, derived from intuition or experience, is the agent which breaks up the clouds of her sorrow: so that, while the grief of a man stricken down by misfortune is an equinoctial storm, dark and dismal, which lasts for weeks and months, the grief of woman is a succession of refreshing April showers, each of brief duration, and the spaces between them filled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... through Berlin, Dresden, and the like, Until he reach'd the castellated Rhine:— Ye glorious Gothic scenes! how much ye strike All phantasies, not even excepting mine; A grey wall, a green ruin, rusty pike, Make my soul pass the equinoctial line Between the present and past worlds, and hover ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... under the Equinoctial line; its night is still twelve hours and its day the like. Its length is fourscore parasangs and its breadth thirty, and it is a great island, stretching between a lofty mountain and a deep valley. This ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... and its successive stages marked by those twelve constellations which are still called the Signs of the Zodiac. In time even these observations were excelled, and it now appears certain that the Chaldaeans recognized the annual displacement of the equinoctial point upon the ecliptic, a discovery that is generally attributed to the Greek astronomers. But, like Hipparchus, they made faults of calculation in consequence of the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... our galley as far as the Start, when the appearance of the weather became very threatening. It was just about the time of the equinoctial gales, and there was a consultation among us whether we should run into ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... it's too late in the year for thunder. We shall have the equinoctial gales soon, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... summer calms were past. On as we drove, the equinoctial deep Ran mountains—high before the howling blaft. We gazed with terror on the gloomy sleep Of them that perished in the whirlwind's sweep, Untaught that soon such anguish must ensue, Our hopes such harvest of affliction ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... her early warmth returneth, Now doth Zephyrus, health benignly breathing, Still the boisterous equinoctial heaven. ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... on reaching it, plunged beneath it and disappeared. The river wound through a valley, which appeared like a huge garden. Apple-trees were there, which reminded one of Eve, and willows, which made one think of Galatea. It was, as I have said, in one of those equinoctial months when may be felt the peculiar charm of a season drawing to a close. If it be winter which is passing away, you hear the song of approaching spring; if it be summer which is vanishing, you see glimmering on the horizon the undefinable smile of autumn. The wind lulled and harmonized ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... situated just under the equinoctial line; so that the days and nights there are always of twelve hours each, and the island is eighty parasangs in length, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... there as well as here. I do not deny but we are more ingenious than they are, but they exceed us much in industry and application. They knew little concerning us before our arrival among them. They call us all by a general name of 'The nations that lie beyond the equinoctial line;' for their chronicle mentions a shipwreck that was made on their coast twelve hundred years ago, and that some Romans and Egyptians that were in the ship, getting safe ashore, spent the rest of their days amongst them; and such was their ingenuity that from this single opportunity they drew ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... the vast and trackless deep to rove. Alternate change of climates has he known, And felt the fierce extremes of either zone, Where polar skies congeal th' eternal snow, Or equinoctial suns for ever glow; Smote by the freezing or the scorching blast, A ship-boy on the high and giddy ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... marrowy choice of language. It was a pair of very colourless urchins that fled down the lane from this remarkable experience! But I recall with a more doubtful sentiment, compounded out of fear and exultation, the coil of equinoctial tempests; trumpeting squalls, scouring flaws of rain; the boats with their reefed lugsails scudding for the harbour mouth, where danger lay, for it was hard to make when the wind had any east in it; the wives clustered with blowing shawls ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... expected, should not, together with a strong and favorable wind, come immediately to their relief, it would be in pain to attempt anything further, and that the expedition would, of necessity, be abandoned. The tempest came to their relief. A violent equinoctial gale, on the night of the 1st and 2nd of October, came storming from the north-west, shifting after a few hours full eight points, and then blowing still more violently from the south-west. The waters of the North Sea were piled in vast masses upon the southern coast of Holland, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... reigning. It was as though you were to sojourn for three days at the park-gates before you were entertained at the mansion. Therefore they stayed at Boulogne, and Mrs. Mountjoy tried the bathing, cold as the water was with equinoctial gales, in order that there might be the appearance of a reason for her being at Boulogne. And for company's sake, in the hope of maintaining some fellowship with her mother, Florence bathed also. "Mamma, he has not written again," ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... the long ship in which Danaus came into Greece: and this was the first long ship built by the Greeks. Chiron, who was born in the Golden Age, forms the Constellations for the use of the Argonauts; and places the Solstitial and Equinoctial Points in the fifteenth degrees or middles of the Constellations of Cancer, Chelae, Capricorn, and Aries. Meton in the year of Nabonassar 316, observed the Summer Solstice in the eighth degree of Cancer, and therefore the Solstice had then gone back seven ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... hundred before Plato and Aristotle, and just a little previous to the lunar eclipses observed at Babylon, as recorded by Ptolemy.... The Hebrew word [for this dial] is said by Colonel White of the Bengal army to signify a staircase, which much strengthens the inference that it was like the equinoctial dial of the Indian nations and of Mesopotamia, from whence its pattern is assumed to have ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... sun rises from a point on the horizon, where the four great circles, namely, the horizon, the zodiac, theequator, and the equinoctial colure, meet, and, cutting each other, form three crosses. The sun is in the sign of Aries, "a better star," because the influence of this constellation was supposed to be benignant, and under it the earth ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... own sake. As an instance: instead of taking his ugly cutter down coast by the inner passages, he must needs get out into the open water, which is at this time of year exceptionally unquiet, from sheer delight at getting kicked about. Indeed, when we picked up an equinoctial gale half-way across, and had our hands exceedingly full to keep the boat afloat, the man fairly revelled in the scene and the work; and what's more, that sleepy, straggling person Haigh did too. It wasn't in my line at all. I've not the smallest objection to getting cold and wet when there is ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... Bracamoros," and says, "This prodigious extension of red sandstone in the low grounds stretching along the east of the Andes is one of the most striking phenomena I observed during my examination of rocks in the equinoctial regions."[A] When the great natural philosopher wrote these lines, he had no idea how much these deposits extended beyond the field of his observations. Indeed, they are not limited to the main bed of the Amazons; they have been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... at the narrow door of the little shed off the Ailesworth pavilion; with one hand, shoulder-high, she steadied herself against the door frame, with the other she continually pushed forward the rusty bonnet which had been loosened during her walk by the equinoctial gale that now tore at the door of the shed, and necessitated the employment of a wary foot to keep the door from slamming. With all these distractions she still made good her case, though she had to raise her voice above ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... equinoctial storm swept the city, banging shutters and signs, and a steeple on 122d Street was struck ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... a rough beginning, but many had promised to remember us in constant prayer. No small comfort was this; for we had scarcely left the Mersey when a violent equinoctial gale caught us, and for twelve days we were beating backwards and forwards in the Irish Channel, unable to get out to sea. The gale steadily increased, and after almost a week we lay to for a time; but drifting on a lee coast, we were compelled again ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... Knowing that we were in an enemy's country and among suspicious persons, on sending the boat ashore to get provision of victuals, we charged the seamen to say to the Portuguese that we had sprung our foremast under the equinoctial line—although this misfortune had happened at the Cape of Good Hope—and that our ship was alone, because while we tried to repair it our captain-general had gone with the other two ships to Spain. With these good words, and giving our merchandise in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... I forget, one balmy March morning, sauntering along the green uplands of Sillery, towards the city, while the "sun god" was pouring overhead, waves of soft, purple light. The day previous, one of our annual, equinoctial storms had careered over the country; first, wind and snow; then wind and sleet, the latter dissolving into icy tears, encircling captive Nature in thousands of weird, glossy crystals; every tree of the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Neptune, of His Majesty's ship Doris, commanded by Captain T.G., return their most grateful thanks for his kind condescension for granting them the favour that has been allowed to them from time immemorial, in crossing the Equinoctial, on our Old Father Neptune's dominions, when we hope the characters will meet your Honour's approbation, which will appear ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... is a star called Alpheratz and another called Zaph, which are in direct line with the polar star. The two first stars named are exactly on what is called the equinoctial line. But the southern hemisphere of the heavens does not have a polar star to indicate the south, so that if you will now look directly above us you will notice two very bright stars. One of them is the fixed star Sirius, the most brilliant in the heavens; the other is Canopus, and a line ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... storm, which came, as an equinoctial storm should, exactly at the equinox, and for a day and a night heaped the sea upon the shore in thundering surges twenty and thirty feet high. I watched these at their awfulest, from the wide windows of a cottage that crouched in the very ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... rather swift current through the submarine tunnel. It is pretty certain therefore that a floating object thrown into the lagoon when the top of the orifice is uncovered would be carried out by the receding tide. It is just possible that during the lowest equinoctial tides the top of the orifice is uncovered. This I shall be able to ascertain, as this is precisely the time they occur. To-day, September 19, I could almost distinguish the summit of the hole under the water. The day after to-morrow, if ever, it ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... melting ground, the brimming watercourse, The wak'ning air, the birds' returning flight, The longer sunshine, and the shorter night, Arcturus' beams, and Corvus' glitt'ring rays, Diffuse a promise of the genial days. Yon muddy remnant of the winter snow Shrinks humbly in the equinoctial glow, Whilst in the fields precocious grass-blades peep Above the earth so lately wrapt in sleep. What sweet, elusive odor fills the soil, To rouse the farmer to his yearly toil! Though thick the clouds, and bare the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... made by Humboldt in equinoctial America, the impulse his explorations would doubtless otherwise have given to geographical science was strangely checked by the struggle of the Spanish colonies with the mother country. As soon, however, as the native governments attained to at least a semblance of stability, intrepid ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... its original outline. All rivers have altered their channels; many are altering them for ever.[16] Longitude and latitude might be assigned, at the most, if even those are not substantially defeated by the Miltonic "pushing askance" of the poles with regard to the equinoctial. But, finally, we remark, that whereas human nature has ever been prone to the superstition of local consecrations and personal idolatries, by means of memorial relics, apparently it is the usage of God ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... But to drowning people it would be no comfort that they were shipwrecked only by equinoctial gales. There! there! what do you think of that blast?" cried Rosamond; "is not there ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... parallels of latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales! I scratch my head with the lightning, and purr myself to sleep with the thunder! When I'm cold, I bile the Gulf of Mexico and bathe in it; when I'm hot I fan myself with an equinoctial storm; when I'm thirsty I reach up and suck a cloud dry like a sponge; when I range the earth hungry, famine follows in my tracks! Whoo-oop! Bow your neck and spread! I put my hand on the sun's face and make it night in the earth; I bite a piece out of the moon and hurry the seasons; I shake ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the last point or corner of the Isle of Sumatra, on the south, side of the equinoctial line, lyeth the island called JAUA MAIOR, or Great Java, where there is a strait or narrow passage, called the strait of Sunda, of a place so called, lying not far from thence within the Isle of Java. The island beginneth under ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... the middle of Aquarius, the Man bearing the waterpot. The fourth point, that held by the sun at the autumnal equinox, would appear to have been already assigned to the foot of the Serpent-holder as he crushes down the Scorpion's head; but a flying eagle, Aquila, is placed as near the equinoctial point as seems to have been consistent with the ample space that it was desired to give to the emblems of the great conflict between the Deliverer and the Serpent. Thus, as in the vision of Ezekiel, so in the constellation figures, the Lion, the Ox, the Man, and the Eagle, ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... prove that all the five zones are habitable by the experience of navigation, he thus writes: "In February 1467, I sailed an hundred leagues beyond Thule, or Iceland, the northern part of which is 73 degrees distant from the equinoctial, and not 63 degrees as some suppose; neither does it lie upon the line where Ptolemy begins the West, but considerably more to the westwards. To this island, which is as large as England, the English carry on trade, especially from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... admirable chapel of Vincennes, in order to make, with its stones, some fortification, which Daumesnil did not need, however. While the Palais Bourbon, that wretched edifice, is being repaired at great expense, gusts of wind and equinoctial storms are allowed to destroy the magnificent painted windows of the Sainte-Chapelle. For the last few days there has been a scaffolding on the tower of Saint Jacques de la Boucherie; and one of these mornings the pick will be laid to it. A mason has been found to build ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Meanwhile the gloom seemed to gather around them, until even stout-hearted Jack shuddered a little as he surveyed the wide stretch of waters that had begun to tumble in the freshening wind, and thought what might happen if they could find no harbor, with a fierce late equinoctial gale sweeping across the ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... storm prevailing, and the winds roared and the rain fell in torrents and the sea looked as if it had gone mad. Before the storm there was a report of a big battle, but no details of it had reached them. For the Pentland Firth had been in its worst equinoctial temper and the proviso added to all Orkney sailing notices, "weather permitting," had been in full force ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... has but to withdraw for buds to burst. 'Jam ver egelidos refert tepores.' The equinoctial fury departs. I will leave you for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... happy. Grow up in the way you are bent, and when you get old, you'll be there." It sees a gigantic future for the country. It sees the Polar sea running with warm water, the North Pole maintaining a magnificent perpendicularity, and the Equinoctial Line extended all around the earth, including Hoboken and Hull. It sees its millions of people happy in their golden (greenback and currency) prosperity, and also happy in a full supply of PUNCHINELLO to every family. It sees its favorite Bird of Freedom spread ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... which he looked forward was not to be reached without passing through a season of more than equinoctial storms and tempests. His career had reached its highest point only to be threatened with a speedy close. He himself did not exceed more than two or three years' longer lease of life, and went by easy stages to Venice, where he spent eight days.] "No place," [he writes,] "could be better fitted ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become ingrained. And there is another side to this, for the parent begins with an imperfect notion of the child's character, formed in early years or during the equinoctial gales of youth; to this he adheres, noting only the facts which suit with his preconception; and wherever a person fancies himself unjustly judged, he at once and finally gives up the effort to speak truth. With our chosen friends, on the other hand, and still ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... several of them on board to repeat the tale to his commander, and also to learn Castilian, that they might serve as interpreters. Without touching at any other port, Ruiz then sailed southward as far as Punta de Pasado, being the first European who, sailing in this direction, had crossed the equinoctial line, after which he returned to the place ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... of the keel: in the neighborhood of the Balearic Isles the sides had been strained and had opened; and, as the plating in those days was not of sheet iron, the vessel had sprung a leak. A violent equinoctial gale had come up, which had first staved in a grating and a porthole on the larboard side, and damaged the foretop-gallant-shrouds; in consequence of these injuries, the Orion had run back ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... private situations, are not to be governed by their relation to the great Governor of the Universe, or by their relation to mankind, but by climates, degrees of longitude, parallels, not of life, but of latitudes: as if, when you have crossed the equinoctial, all the virtues die, as they say some insects die when they cross the line; as if there were a kind of baptism, like that practised by seamen, by which they unbaptize themselves of all that they learned in Europe, ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Pytheas is further confirmed by the astronomical observations which he records. He notices, for example, that the longest day in Britain contains "nineteen equinoctial hours." Amongst the ancients, it must be remembered, an "hour," in common parlance, signified merely the twelfth part, on any given day, of the time between sunrise and sunset, and thus varied according to the season. But the standard hour for astronomical ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... Sinnodit.[4] They sailed in one gulf; or stretch of sea, at least 4000 leagues, and made their longitude, by estimation or reckoning, 120 deg. W. from the place of their original departure. By this time they drew near the equinoctial line, and having got beyond that into 13 deg. N. latitude, they made for the cape called Cottigare by old geographers; but missing it in that old account of its latitude, they understood afterwards that it is in the latitude of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... the 5th, we sailed, from Madeira. On the 2Oth the Industry store-ship parted company, and on Friday the 28th, by account, we crossed the equinoctial. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... Schoolmen, in his View of Astronomy, repeats Adelard upon the question of Arim, "where there is no latitude," while (4) Roger Bacon discusses not only the true and the traditional East and West, but even a twofold Arim, one "under the solstice, the other under the equinoctial zone." Arim he finds not to be in the centre of the real world, but only of the traditional. In another passage of the Opus Majus, Bacon, our first English worker in the exact sciences, allows the world-summit not to be exactly ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... material change, the daily record of wind, weather, and the ship's general course—the repetition of which would be both useless and wearisome —continued through the month and until the vessel was near half the seas over. Fine warm weather and the "harvest-moon." The usual equinoctial weather deferred. ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... hang us. But every tyrant has his master, so before long we began to see the halter on old Scroggs. And his daughter held the leading rope. She let him rave about so long and then she retired into her pocket-handkerchief and turned on a regular equinoctial. Scroggs looked more uncomfortable than we felt. He took her in his arms and there was a family reconciliation. Every little while Martha would look over his shoulder at us four hopefuls sitting up against the wall as lively as wooden Indians, and then she would bury her face in her handkerchief ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... fifteen miles northward from Rio de Angra, and eight miles northward from Cape de Lope Gonsalves (Cape Lopez), and is right under the Equinoctial line, about fifteene miles from St. Thomas, and is a great land, well and easily to be knowne. At the mouth of the river there lieth a sand, three or foure fathoms deepe, whereon it beateth mightily with the streame which runneth out of the river into the sea. This ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... the old instruments having stood the wear of long past years, had become almost useless, and six new instruments were made by imperial authority. These were the T'ien-t'ee 'Celestial Globe' (6); Chih-taoue 'Equinoctial Sphere' (2); Hwang-taoue 'Zodiacal Sphere' (1); Te-p'ing kinge 'Azimuthal Horizon' (3); Te-p'ing weie 'Altitude Instrument' (4); Ke-yene 'Sextant' (5). These were placed in the Observatory, and to the present day are respectfully used. The old instruments were at ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... On the right-hand side.—Ver. 45. The "right hand" here refers to the northern part of the globe, and the "left hand" to the southern. He here speaks of the zones. Astronomers have divided the heavens into five parallel circles. First, the equinoctial, which lies in the middle, between the poles of the earth, and obtains its name from the equality of days and nights on the earth while the sun is in its plane. On each side are the two tropics, at the distance of 23 deg. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... situated. If we were to follow the description given by the astrologers themselves, not much insight would be thrown upon the meaning of the zodiacal signs. For instance, astrologers say that Aries is a vernal, dry, fiery, masculine, cardinal, equinoctial, diurnal, movable, commanding, eastern, choleric, violent, and quadrupedalian sign. We may, however, infer generally from their accounts the influences which they ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... haddock were more numerous on all the fishing-grounds than sculpins in the surf; when the deepwater cod swain close in shore, and the dogfish, with his poisonous horn, had not learned to take the hook. I can number every equinoctial storm, in which the sea has overwhelmed the street, flooded the cellars of the village, and hissed upon our kitchen hearth. I give the history of the great whale that was landed on Whale Beach, and whose jaws, being now my gateway, will last ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ordered straight away for patrol work," said Sefton. "It's more than likely that we may be pushed off to the Norwegian coast without having so much as a sniff at Rosyth. We'll just about hit the equinoctial gales, and in those latitudes they get ice and snow pretty early in the autumn. But, by the by, I heard the doctor tell the Commander that your pal, von Hauptwald, is in a pretty state ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... in the case of the two stars previously scrutinized, that the apparent difference of declination from the maximum positions was nearly proportional to the sun's distance from the equinoctial points; and he reallzed the necessity for more observations before any generalization could be attempted. For this purpose he repaired to the Rectory, Wanstead, then the residence of Mrs Pound, the widow of his uncle James Pound, with whom he had ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... any offered in the "Isle of Pines" and of immeasurable value on the earliest years of recorded history in our New England. Even this summary, thus definitely dated, offers problems. The location of the island is given in general terms in the half-title as "below the equinoctial line," and in the text as in "xxviii or xxix degrees of Antartique latitude." Nowhere in the first London part is either location used, and in the second London part, which bears nearly the same date as the Cramoisy summary—July 22—twenty degrees of latitude is given. The writer of ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... word to Philip that Hawkins was again going out, and preparations had been made to receive him. Suspecting nothing, Hawkins with his four consorts sailed, as before, in October 1567. The start was ominous. He was caught and badly knocked about by an equinoctial in the Bay of Biscay. He lost his boats. The Jesus strained her timbers and leaked, and he so little liked the look of things that he even thought of turning back and giving up the expedition for the season. However, the weather mended. They put themselves to rights at the Canaries, ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... equinoctial, with a fine fresh gale at N.E. on Friday, the 28th November, at four in the morning, being thus, by estimation, in long. 27 deg. 59' W. from London. In the morning of the 2d December, we saw a sail in the N.W. and made the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... modern hours are called equinoctial, because they are fixed at the length of the natural hour at the equinoxes. This system does not seem to have come in until late in ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... The equinoctial blow returned the next day, and the lake became really fine, in a new point of view; for, aided by the mountains, it succeeded in getting up a very respectable appearance of fury. The sail-boats vanished, and even the steamers went through ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the seasons, and the lengthening and shortening of the day, are natural phenomena, which occur as a consequence of the Earth's annual revolution round the Sun. Precession is a retrograde or westerly motion of the equinoctial points, caused by the attraction of the Sun, Moon, and planets on the spheroidal figure of the Earth. By this movement the poles of the Earth are made to describe a circular path in that part of the heavens to which they point; so that, after the lapse of many years, the star which is known as ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... tell you, 'less you would be pleased to hear 'bout what de cyclone did to my old missus and de old Sterling house. Somewhere 'bout 1880's one of them super knockshal (equinoctial) storms come 'long, commencin' over in Alabama or Georgia, crossed de Savannah River, sweep through South Carolina, layin' trees to de ground, cuttin' a path a quarter of a mile wide, as it traveled from west to east. Every house it tech, ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... this morning it has continued to blow a perfect equinoctial storm. We were in constant dread that some of the branches of the trees which surrounded us would fall on the tent. Proceeding on our course to the east-north-east, we did not advance above a mile and a half before a small stream running to the north-east through a ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... a punctual equinoctial gale, gathering up its energies to keep inoffensive persons awake all night and, if possible, knock some chimney-stacks down, blew Uncle Mo's pipelight out, and caused him to make use of an expression. And Aunt M'riar reproved that expression, saying:—"Not with ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... ambushed in the lurid August skies, and circled ominously round the horizon during the first weeks of September, broke at last in an equinoctial which was long remembered in the mill-house. It took its place in the family calendar of momentous dates with the hard winter of 1800; with the late frost, which coated the incipient apples with ice, and froze the new potatoes in the ground; and with the year the typhus ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... The Equinoctial storm, this spring, commenced on the 16th of March, and raged for three days with unusual violence. It was severely felt along the Atlantic coast, and did much damage to the shipping. Amin Bey, the Turkish Envoy to the United ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... they had had a slight shower only, with shifting winds; while at Sioux City not a particle of rain had fallen, the roads being not only dry but quite dusty. This was not a merely local storm, but was the only great easterly one covering any extent of territory and time, answering to the equinoctial, which visited the United States ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... they were designed. The roofs were turned into arches of massive stone, joined by a cement that grew harder by time, and the building stood from century to century, deriding the solstitial rains and equinoctial hurricanes, without ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... due north and south. Nothing of the great bend to the west, shown in all the previous maps, could be detected by either compass or chronometer, and the watch we used was an excellent one. The season of the year was very unfavourable. The "smokes" filled the air with an impenetrable haze, and the equinoctial gales made it impossible for us to cross to the eastern side. When we caught a glimpse of the sun rising from behind the mountains to the east, we made sketches and bearings of them at different latitudes, which enabled us to secure approximate ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... bodies. And if any one fixes a post upright in the ground, or sees a man or a tree standing erect, he will perceive that their shadow is consumed at the extremities of their outlines. This also happens at Meroe, which is the spot in Ethiopia nearest to the equinoctial circle, and where for ninety days the shadows fall in a way just opposite to ours, on account of which the natives of that district ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus |
