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Estuary   /ˈɛstʃuˌɛri/   Listen
Estuary

noun
(pl. estuaries)  (Written also aestuary)
1.
The wide part of a river where it nears the sea; fresh and salt water mix.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Estuary" Quotes from Famous Books



... (between Newfoundland and Cape Breton) was not yet realized. Once past Anticosti Island, the two Huron interpreters began to recognize the scenery.[4] They now explained to Cartier that he had entered the estuary of a vast river. This they said he had only to pursue in ships and boats and he would reach "Canada" (which was the name they gave to the district round about Quebec), and that beyond "Canada" no man had ever been known to reach the end of this ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... direct route to Holyhead and Ireland. Telford, the engineer, daringly resolved to span the strait with a suspension bridge 100 feet above the water. He began it in 1818, and on the last day of January 1826 the London mail coach passed over the estuary. The bridge remains to this day a vast and beautiful monument of engineering skill. But when railways began to play, something more ponderous and powerful became necessary. A bridge with arches was talked of, but this was considered ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... must have seemed one greatly for the worse. In 1884 he was sent to the school for the sons of Congregational ministers at Caterham; and the Cotswolds, with their wide outlook over the Severn estuary to May Hill and the wooded heights beyond, were exchanged for the bald sweep and the white chalk-pits of the North Downs. These too have their unique beauty; but I never remember to have heard Moorman say anything which showed that he felt it as those who have ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman

... Transformation Combat.[419] But the mythical fragments are also mingled with traditions regarding the sixth century poet Taliesin. The older saga was perhaps developed in a district south of the Dyfi estuary.[420] In Lake Tegid dwell Tegid Voel, Cerridwen, and their children—the fair maiden Creirwy, Morvran, and the ugly Avagddu. To give Avagddu knowledge, his mother prepares a cauldron of inspiration from which three drops of inspiration will be produced. ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... temporary fort. Daniel considered this an intrusion upon French soil. He accordingly made a bloodless capture of the fortress at Baleine, demolished it, and, sailing to the north and sweeping round to the west, entered an estuary which he says the savages called Grand Cibou? [108] where he erected a fort and left a garrison of forty men, with provisions and all necessary means of defence. Having set up the arms of the King of France and those ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... The Estuary of the river, St. John, at the back of this Cape, is now entirely destitute of verdure, and humidity, and salt ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard

... at the approach to the entrance or mouth of the river Hudson, which is formed by an arm of the estuary, we turned the promontory, leaving Jersey on the left, the battery as we entered the harbour being in the foreground. The guns-bristled from this fortress with menacing aspect, and the sentinels, in light blue uniforms and Kosciusko caps, silently paced the ramparts with automatic regularity. ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... mariner folk and the dimpling waters of the harbour, and I thought somewhat sadly of the few ships that floated on that splendid basin now, and of the few evidences of business that showed themselves on the quays. Time was when the ships were berthed so close that many had to wait in the estuary outside the walls, and memorials had been sent to the King that the port should be doubled in size to hold the glut of trade. And that, too, in the old days of oar and sail, when machines drawing power from our Lord the Sun ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... many attacks were made with no result whatever. Some few days before the war broke out I was sent to examine the Danube from a professional point of view, and it was soon made clear to me that much could be done, in the way of defending that great estuary, had nautical experience and the splendid material of which the Turkish sailor is made of been properly utilised. But alas! I found that, contrary to the views of His Majesty the Sultan, a line of action was followed showing that pig-headed obstinacy ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... he could not remember a time when Patsy had not tyrannized over him, trampled him under foot, and variously abused him, even from the time of their infantile plays with sand castles and sea-shells built, architected, and ornamented on the seashore between the Black Head and the estuary of the Mays Water. ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... by, and the sun began to sink just as they glided into a narrow sheltered estuary, which, as far as they could make out, ran like a jagged gash inland; and an hour later the schooner was at anchor behind a headland which completely bid them ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... hands of the invaders. A chain of war-balloons between Barking and Shooter's Hill closed the Thames. The forts at Tilbury had been destroyed by an aerial bombardment. A flotilla of submarine torpedo-vessels had blown up the defences of the estuary of the Thames and Medway, and led to the fall of Sheerness and Chatham, and had then been docked at Sheerness, there being no ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... of her course, and after narrowly escaping being dashed to pieces on the Florida reefs, Lat. 24-1/2 deg. N., Long. 82 deg. W., we ran ashore with the loss of only two lives—the second mate and cabin boy—on the Isthmus of Yucatan, close to the estuary of a river.[1] Here we were forced to spend nearly a year, during which time I made several journeys of exploration into the interior of the continent. In the course of one of my rambles amid a dense mass of tropical foliage, I suddenly found myself face to face with ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... British design, and the firm largely responsible for the success achieved was Messrs John J. Thornycroft & Company Limited. There were bases for these sea-gnats at Portsmouth, Dover, Dunkirk, and in the Thames Estuary at Osea Island. From all of these points mid-Channel could be reached in less than thirty minutes. Although useless in rough weather, a trip in a C.M.B., even on a calm day, was sufficiently exciting. The roar of the engines made speech impossible, and vision when sitting in the little glass-screened ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... with his little fleet had sighted the Breton coast near Cancale; they had rounded the Point du Grouin, and finally had sailed past the port of St. Malo and down the long narrow estuary of the Rance until they were close to the old walled city of Dinan, which was held by that Montfort faction whose cause the English had espoused. Here the horses had been disembarked, the stores were unloaded, ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... a river that emptied into a great ocean. The narrow strip of land that lay between him and the estuary was covered at high tide by a shining film of water, at low tide with the cast-up offerings of sea and shore. Logs yet green, and saplings washed away from inland banks, battered fragments of wrecks and orange crates of bamboo, broken into tiny rafts yet odorous with their lost freight, lay in long ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... stammered Beautrelet, excitedly. "The old Norman estuary, one of the essential points, one of the original centres around which our French nationality was formed, is completed by those two forces, one in full view, alive, known to all, the new port commanding ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc

... boat with ropes round the points, and others with boat-hooks and spars, to keep her off the rocks. Two or three times she stuck fast on sunken rocks, but by God's mercy always got off again without damage. At length we discovered three narrow inlets, the middlemost forming a bay, being the estuary of a river, which runs W.S.W. about eight or ten miles up the country, and is called Nullatartok. Into this we pushed, when shortly after our entrance, the ice entirely filled up the passage, and we were compelled ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch

... special scientific works is going on under the auspices of different European governments. The Batavian Society of Rotterdam have just issued an elaborate illustrated Report on the best method of improving permanently the estuary of Goedereede—a question of considerable moment to the merchants of Rotterdam. The French government have had a new fount of Ethiopic types cast, to enable M. d'Abbadie to prepare a catalogue of African manuscripts. And our Secretary of State for the Home Department has ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various

... the estuary and into the spreading bay slid the big steamer; abreast the curving coast-line she drove her way for leagues and leagues, and then swept boldly into ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... during the same Barmouth summer, he was pressed into the service of "the science"—as my father called collecting beetles. They took their daily walks together among the hills behind Barmouth, or boated in the Mawddach estuary, or sailed to Sarn Badrig to land there at low water, or went fly-fishing in the Cors-y-gedol lakes. "On these occasions Darwin entomologized most industriously, picking up creatures as he walked along, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... business of the town and the country mingles with the business of the river and the sea. An afternoon in December, the month of months to know London in, is the time to be there. Up stream from the Nore on an east wind rides the damp of salt and of estuary fogs; about you are the steam of sweating horses and the pungent clinging scents of malt and hops and brewing; up on a yellow tide under the arches of the bridge swings a string of barges, piled with bales of hay. A flock of pigeons sways and wheels ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... among these was the expedition to Mesopotamia. In 1914, when Turkey came into the war against us, a British Indian Brigade was landed at the mouth of the Shatt-el-Arab, the common estuary by which the Tigris and the Euphrates reach the Persian Gulf. The objects of this expedition were to secure the oil-fields of Persia in which Britain was largely interested; to neutralize German ascendancy, ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock

... household stuff could be moved. Slowly ferrying the Brazos, and as slowly making its way down the left bank, picking up as it went the rest of the homesteads and some more fighting-men, it turned to the right at the head of the estuary. Then the little column, strengthened with some sea-borne supplies and relieved of its wards, turned to face its pursuers. These were twice its numbers, with four or five thousand reserves some days behind. Generalship was given the go-by on both sides, the cul-de-sac ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... on the left, across the water, Southsea Castle stood boldly forward upon its low projecting point, a watchful sentinel over the magnificent anchorage of Spithead. Inland from the castle lay the little straggling town of Southsea; and beyond it again, still higher up the estuary, appeared the spires and roofs of Portsmouth, its harbour crowded with a perfect forest of masts. Some half a dozen men-o'-war lay at anchor at Spithead; and the waters of the Solent were dotted with the sails of craft of all sizes, from the ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... estuary of the mountain stream which had once rushed down between the hills, forming a narrow gorge; but now all was changed: the waters had ceased to flow, the granite bed was overgrown and carpeted with deer-grass and flowers of many hues, wild fruits and bushes, below, while majestic ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill

... excitement, the emigrant armies were repulsed and beaten. The monarchy came to an end; and France became a Republic, in which the National Convention, which followed the Legislative Assembly, was supreme. The more moderate members of this were called Girondins from the Gironde, the estuary of the Garonne, from the neighbourhood of which many of them came. They were able men, scholars and philosophers, full of schemes for reviving classical times, but wishing to stop short of the plans of the Jacobins, of whom the chief was Robespierre, a lawyer from Artois, filled with fanatical ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge

... former times the whole system of rivers bore the name of the great Dakota nation the Sioux River and the title of Red River was only borne by that portion of the stream which flows from Red Lake to the forks of the Assineboine. Now, however, the whole stream, from its source in Elbow Lake to its estuary in Lake Winnipeg fully 900 miles by water, is called the Red River: people say that the name is derived from a bloody Indian battle which once took place upon its banks, tinging the waters with crimson dye. It certainly cannot be called red from the hue of the water, ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... very clear, because I remember that near Itchinstow Hall I looked back and saw the estuary of the Thames, that river that has since played so large a part in my life. But at the time I did not know it was the Thames, I thought this great expanse of mud flats and water was the sea, which I had never ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... stretch away from beyond Higham towards the estuary of the Thames are more akin to the characteristics of Essex than of Kent. The hop gardens are dwarfed and stunted, and presently hops, corn, and pasture give place to fields of turnips, which show up like masses of jade on the chocolate-coloured ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... Suffolk coast. The King's Channel, mentioned below, was the chief entrance into the estuary of the Thames from ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... could return at once to the brig, with the understanding that both vessels were to send up studding sails and use every possible speed now to get within touch of the shore, before making south and keeping a bright look-out for some estuary or ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... on to Treguier. At Lezardrieux we passed the estuary of the Trieux, over a magnificent suspension-bridge, at a considerable elevation above the water, vessels sail under it. It was built 1840, and is 833 feet long, that is, 167 longer than the famed bridge of La ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... shore, partly by a long narrow strip of Sand-beach, which continues from it and takes a north-westerly direction until it passes the promontory of Otchakov, where it terminates, and from which it is separated by the channel, whereby the waters of the estuary empty into the ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... awaited the death that we expected with each passing moment, but it failed to come and the ship still floated. With earliest daylight I was on deck, and, to my amazement, saw land on both sides. We had been driven into the mouth of a broad estuary, up which wind and tide were ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe

... of Mr. Russell was that he was rather fat, but I never could trace this impression to its origin. He had not exactly a double chin, but rather a chin and a half, and the rest of him followed this moderate example. His grey hair retired in a pronounced estuary over each temple, leaving a beautifully brushed peninsula between. He had no sense of humour, but hid this deformity skillfully. Hardly anybody knew that he was a poet, except presumably his dog. He often ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson

... flooded by a brave daylight blue; the water was changing from a sad silver width to a sheet of white silk, creased with blue lines; the low hills on the southern bank and the flat spit between the estuary and the Medway were at first steamy shapes that might have drowned seamen's dreams of land, but they took on earthly colours as he watched; and to the north Kerith Island, that had been a blackness running weedy fingers out into the flood, showed its farms ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... of cottages and villas round about the estuary of a little river flowing down from the Caucasus to the Black Sea. On the north a long cliff road leads to Novorossisk a hundred miles, and southward the same road goes on to Tuapse, some fifty miles from Maikop and ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... 29th September, 1886, at 7.30, by steam ferry to Oakland, 4 miles across the harbour; left Oakland by train at 8.10 a.m.; 32 miles from Oakland we reached Port Costa, where the train was ferried across an estuary of the sea to Benicia; for 20 miles from there the line (the Central Pacific division of the Southern Pacific Railway Company) runs, across a flat, marshy country, then into a cultivated country with the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada rising around it, the ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... considered finest for the table is one called the Trumpeter, found commonly in the estuary of the Derwent and Storm Bay, but which is rarely caught on the northern coast. Flounders, gar-fish, gurnett (Sebastes maculatus), and several other species of sea-fish, a bare list of which would convey ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... her here. Nobody would interrupt her either, because the route of navigation lay far outside, to the north. All around were woods; the place was almost landlocked, save where, far away through the estuary, a blue and hazy horizon glimmered in the ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers

... call this branch of our solitary estuary, which runs westward, the river Lea, and this, to the east, the river Medway. Is ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... a small Siberian village. Happy would it have been had DeLong and his men discovered the same pathway to safety, but the Lena is like our own Mississippi, a river with a broad delta and a multiplicity of mouths. Into an estuary, the banks of which were untrodden by man, and which itself was too shallow for navigation for any great distance, remorseless fate led DeLong. Forced soon to take to their sleds again, his companions toiled painfully along the river bank, with no known destination, but bearing ever ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... for a moment have occurred to anybody. As well expect to find a palaeolithic man quietly chipping flints on a Pacific atoll, or to discover the ancestor of all horses on the isolated and crag-encircled summit of Roraima, as to unearth a real live Ceratodus from a modern estuary. In 1870, however, Mr. Krefft took away the breath of scientific Europe by informing it that he had found the extinct ganoid swimming about as large as life, and six feet long, without the faintest ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... to the bank of the River Pocomoke, where a ferry was still maintained to the opposite shore and the Virginia land of Accomac, and the cold tide, without a sail, went winding to an oystery estuary of the bay, where the mud at the bottom was so soft that vessels aground in it could still continue sailing, as on the muggy globe that Noah came ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... had passed the comparatively calm waters in the estuary, and were rounding the cliffs, poor Angel forgot his sport, and sat as one paralyzed, gazing at the sight of the waves beating against the shore line. George went up to him, and spoke encouragingly, and it was fully a half ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay

... the tides. In addition to the mere friction between the particles of water, there are also many other ways in which the tides proclaim to us that there is some great hoard of energy which is continually accessible to their wants. Stand on the bank of an estuary or river up and down which a great tidal current ebbs and flows; you will see the water copiously charged with sediment which the tide is bearing along. Engineers are well aware of the potency of the tide as a vehicle for transporting stupendous quantities of sand or mud. A sand-bank ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball

... church of Santa Maria dos Anjos at Caminha is in plan very like the Matriz at Villa do Conde. Caminha lies on the Portuguese side of the estuary of the Minho, close to its mouth, and the church was begun in 1488, but was not finished till the next century, the tower indeed not being built till 1556. Like the others, the plan shows a nave and rather narrow aisles of five bays, and two square vaulted chapels ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... as the Woolwich and Reading beds) dip under that vast bed of London clay, four hundred and more feet thick, which (as I said in my last chapter) was certainly laid down by the estuary of some great tropic river, among palm-trees and ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley

... the ferry-boat which took them across to the town on the other side of the shallow estuary or lake on which ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston

... Cill-mor-uachtair-Muaidh is. He went afterwards to the north, to Lec-Balbeni, where he found and blessed the sons of Amhalgaidh; and he went out of the country from [the western] Bertlacha to the eastern Bertlacha, and passed it eastwards to the estuary of the Muaidh, towards the mouth of the sea. A young woman was drowned there before him; and he blessed the place, and said that no person should be drowned there for evermore. Patrick prophesied that the eastern Bertlacha ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... herds descended from the few horses introduced by the Spanish colonists. These and other strange facts in the distribution of mammalian animals in America led Darwin to make some pregnant comments. The enormous number of large bones embedded in the estuary deposits became continually more evident, until he came to the conclusion that the whole area of the Pampas was ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... and view of it have been given in the first volume. We remained there five days, in order to rate the chronometers, and to examine the head of Halifax Bay, where a large estuary had been reported by Captain King; but of this we could see nothing, and came to the conclusion that he must have been deceived by mirage. The land certainly was low in that direction, and trending in to the southward appeared afterwards ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... and there has been a corresponding increase in prosperity. The Rio Grande, jaundiced, erratic as an invalid, wrings its saffron blood from the clay bluffs and gravel canons of the hill country, but near its estuary winds quietly through a low coastal plain which the very impurities of that blood have richened. Here the river's banks are smothered in thickets of huisache, ebony, mesquite, ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... been found here were once part of his palace. Bosham claims to be the scene of Canute's encounter with the encroaching tide; which may be the case, although one has always thought of the king rebuking his flatterers rather by the margin of the ocean itself than inland at an estuary's edge. But beyond question Canute had a palace here, and his daughter was ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... they anchored in the wide estuary of the Kalvik River, the noisy rumble of their chains breaking the silence that for months had lain like a smother upon the port. The Indian village gave sign of life only in thin, azure wisps of smoke that rose from the dirt roofs; the cannery ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... anything else. We soon discovered we had a pleasant company of fellow voyagers, and as we steamed out of the Mersey and headed southward we settled down to have a good time. Boreas was friendly, and away we sped across the Bay of Biscay, rapidly neared the mouth of the Garonne, on an estuary of which is situated the old city of Bordeaux. Arriving there, the ship lay at anchor for some hours, taking in and discharging freight, and receiving emigrants for various parts of South America. When the steamer was about to leave, ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... one time a seaport of renown, when Liverpool was still unimportant, and later a seaside health resort to which came the fashion and beauty of England, had fallen, through the silting of the estuary and the broadening of the "Sands of Dee," to the level of a hamlet in the time of Dr. Grenfell's boyhood. The broad stretch of seaward trending sand, with its interlacing rivulets of fresh and brackish water, made a tempting though treacherous ...
— Adrift on an Ice-Pan • Wilfred T. Grenfell

... on the island of Anticosti, where the estuary of the St Lawrence joins the Gulf. No lives were lost, and the Carletons reached Perce in Gaspe quite safely in a little coasting vessel. Then a ship came round from Halifax and sailed the family over to England at the end ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... its alternate fits of sunshine and shower. We passed gaily along the green banks of the Clyde, with their rich flat fields glittering in moisture, and their lines of stately trees, that, as the light flashed out, threw their shadows over the grass. The river expanded into the estuary, the estuary into the open sea; we left behind us beacon, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... Sea near Scotland. Ten leagues, or thirty geographical miles, north of the ancient castle of Dunglass (once the head-quarters of Oliver Cromwell) lies the Bell Rock: you can see it in the map, just off the mouth of the Tay, and close to the northern side of the great estuary called the Firth of Forth. Up to the commencement of the present century, this rock was justly considered one of the most formidable dangers that the navigators of the North Sea had to encounter. Its head, merged under the surface ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... the tiller to bring the Blanche more into mid-channel, and headed for the sea. Wider and wider grew the estuary and farther and farther away the shores as the Blanche scudded on beneath her small sails with the weight of the gale behind her, till at last there ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard

... tree. They are shot from a stage fixed in the water, with branches of their favourite food hanging from it; one of twenty-two cwt. was killed not long ago. High up the river, where the alluvium of the estuary is changed for white sandstone, with occasionally black oxide of manganese, the fish are of delicious flavour; among others, the pacoo, near the Falls or Rapids, which is flat, twenty inches long, and weighs four pounds; it feeds on the seed of the arum arborescens, in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various

... and Blackwall ransacked the Thames below bridge as far as Blackstakes in the river Medway, the Nore and the Swin channel. Tenders from Margate, Ramsgate, Deal and Dover watched the lower Thames estuary, swept the Downs, and kept a sharp lookout along the coasts of Kent and Sussex, of Essex and of Norfolk. To these tenders from Lynn dipped their colours off Wells-on-Sea or Cromer, whence they bore away for the mouth of Humber, where ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... upon the fen, and here run two great Levels, as straight as a line for many miles, up which the tide pulsates day by day; between them lies a wide tract of pasture called the Wash, which in summer is a vast grazing-ground for herds, in rainy weather a waste of waters, like a great estuary—north and south it runs, crossed by a few roads or black-timbered bridges, the fen-water pouring down to the sea. It is a great place for birds this. The other day I disturbed a brood of redshanks here, the parent birds flying round and round, piping mournfully, almost within ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Dovey, which cleaves the circle of mountains, flows in a broad estuary along the base of the northward hills, under which, at the mouths of the estuary, lies the little port of Aberdovey. At the other end of the arc formed by the coastline, close under the slopes of the promontory which closes ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine

... day of Mercury, immediately following the Feast of Our Blessed Lord's Ascension, that I found myself upon the south bank of the river Thames, at the point where it opens into a wide estuary. There is an island there named Thanet, which was the spot chosen for the landfall of our visitors. Sure enough, I had no sooner ridden up than there was a great red ship, the first as it seems of three, coming in under full sail. The white horse, which ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... fitting point of departure for a pilgrimage round these coasts we have to step into Devonshire. In some sense Plymouth is the gateway of Cornwall, and a very appropriate gateway it is. Of the three rivers that give Plymouth its noble estuary the Lynher is purely Cornish, and the Tamar is as much Cornish as it is Devonian, except that it rises just over the Devon border. The population of Plymouth, Stonehouse, and Devonport is so largely Cornish that the three towns, which we conveniently ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... name given in Victoria and Tasmania to the Rock-Whiting, Odax richardsoni, Gunth., family Labridae. The Stranger, which is a marine fish, is caught occasionally in the fresher water of the upper estuary of the Derwent; hence its ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... proceeding one hundred leagues, we found a very pleasant situation among some steep hills, through which a very large river, deep at its mouth, forced its way to the sea. From the sea to the estuary of the river, any ship heavily laden might pass, with the help of the tide, which rises eight feet. But as we were riding at anchor, in a good berth, we would not venture up in our vessel without a knowledge ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott

... extending thirty miles to Mobile City, while to the south of it spread the Gulf of Mexico, bounded only by the dim horizon of the heavens. To the east, and inside the narrow beach territory of the eastern side of the inlet, was Bon Secours Bay, a sort of estuary of Mobile Bay, of sixteen miles in length. The passage of the exposed inlet could be made in a small boat only during calm weather, otherwise the voyager might be blown out to sea, or be forced, at random, into the great sound inside the inlet. In either case the rough waves would be likely ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... the tidal pool was simply another of his defenses, for it concealed the only entrance he ever used. He went in after adjusting his scuba mask and began swimming toward the opening that led to the estuary of the sea, his eight strong limbs working in unison in a way that would have been the ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... England to a tidal wave rushing up a river or estuary on the top of another, called ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... their spell ere morning, when the sailors were needed aboard for the handling of the canvas. At last, however, with the early dawn the river broadened out and each bank trended away, leaving a long funnel-shaped estuary between. Ephraim Savage snuffed the air and paced the deck briskly with a twinkle in his keen gray eyes. The wind had fallen away, but there was still enough to drive them slowly upon ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... confined to the piece of river he happens to own, the gossip he hears at his club, and the ideas of the particular poacher he employs as his gillie. His suggested remedy is the abolition of all netting. But I have to tell him that only the day before I had a deputation from the net fishermen in the estuary of this very river, whose bitter complaint was that this 'poor man's industry' was being destroyed by the mackerel and herring nets round the coast, and—I thought my friend would have a fit—by the way in which the gentlemen on the upper ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett

... Near taples the wide estuary of the Canche showed clear, lake-like sheets of water amid the brilliant greenery; later are passed sandy downs with few trees or breaks in the landscape. This part of France should be seen during the budding season; of itself unpicturesque, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... which himself most probably never guessed, in the little landscape of lilac and bluish tiles with which he filled up the arch behind the taps. Some Tuscan scene, think you? Hills and a few cypresses, such as his contemporaries used for background? Not a bit. A great lake, an estuary, almost a sea, with sailing ships, a flooded country, such as no Florentine had ever seen with mortal eyes; but such as, in his longing for water, he must have dreamed about. Thus the landscape sums up ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... the rapids where Connery River empties into its estuary, and the ice four feet above water-line. It was with considerable difficulty that a safe passage was found for the sledges, but once on the salt-water ice we moved along rapidly. The prospect of reaching home the next day was very exhilarating, and the dogs seemed to catch the infection from ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... of M'lle New York (since gathered to her forefathers). The "cry" of the picture is supposed to be the "infinite cry of nature" as felt by an odd-looking individual who stands on a long bridge traversing an estuary in some Norwegian harbour. The sky is barred by flaming clouds, two enigmatic men move in the middle distance. To-day the human with the distorted skull who holds hands to his ears and with staring eyes opens wide a foolish mouth looks more like a man overtaken ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... of the estuary of the Seine, lies Honfleur with its extraordinary church tower that stands in the market-place quite detached from the church of St Catherine to which it belongs. It is entirely constructed of timber and has great struts supporting ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home

... and chooses, probably, the eastward of two huge tentacles of the sea between which lies the city's long but narrow peninsula. To the steersman it shows a skyline serrated by steeples, fronted by sea, flanked southward by sea, backgrounded by an estuary, and looped about by a sickle of wooded islands. This same scene, so far as city and nature go, was beheld by the crowds that swarmed East Battery, a flagstone marine parade along the seaward side of the boulevard that faces Sumter; that filled the windows and even the ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... the water from San Francisco. One day, while scouting among the Chinese shrimp-catchers of Point Pedro, he received word that his wife was very ill; and within the hour the Reindeer was bowling along for Oakland, with a stiff northwest breeze astern. We ran up the Oakland Estuary and came to anchor, and in the days that followed, while Neil was ashore, we tightened up the Reindeer's rigging, overhauled the ballast, scraped down, and put the ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London

... feature of the Kaipara tidal estuary is the quantity of mangroves. Immense tracts are covered with water at high tide, and are left bare at low tide. These mud-banks are covered with mangroves in many places, forming great stretches ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... Fishes are the most homogeneous of the vertebrata. Later and more heterogeneous are Reptiles. Later still, and more heterogeneous still, are Mammals and Birds. If it be said, as it may fairly be said, that the Palaeozoic deposits, not being estuary deposits, are not likely to contain the remains of terrestrial vertebrata, which may nevertheless have existed at that era, we reply that we are merely pointing to the leading facts, such as ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... divided the Atlantic surge, that same wind was furiously driving vast waters up the English Channel and round the Forelands, and also vast waters up the west coast of Britain. The twin surges had met again in the outer estuary of the Thames and joined their terrific impulses to defy the very wind which had given them strength, and the mighty flux swept with unregarding power through the mushroom city whose existence on its banks was a transient episode in the everlasting ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... the finest bays in the world and by far the best in the Far East. It will accommodate all the fleets of the world. Its greatest dimensions are from Tubutubu Island in the estuary of Orani, bay of Pampanga, in the northwest angle of the shore of the greater bay, to Las Pinas, thirty-five miles, near the boundary between Cavite and Rizal; and from the delta of the river Grande Pampanga, on the shores of Bulacan in the northeast, to Corregidor Island, southwest, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various

... six miles to the northward without reaching the river, although he saw the valley through which he thought it flowed; and where the river seemed likely to resume a course to the southward of west. Upon the whole I think that the estuary of the Wimmera will most probably be found either between Cape Bernouilli and Cape Jaffa, or at some of the sandy inlets laid down by Captain Flinders to the northward of the first of these capes. The country which Mr. Stapylton crossed assumed the barren character of the lower parts ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... estuary near the mouth of the main artery that penetrates the heart of China, it has become a leading emporium of the world's commerce. The native city still hides its squalor behind low walls of brick, but outside the North Gate lies a tract of land known as the "Foreign Concessions." There a beautiful ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... real harbour on the true sea. In both towns are citizens not averse to bribes. Do not fail to go out in a boat on the last of the ebb as far as the Long Nose. There you will see the astonishing phenomenon of the tide racing down the North Foreland three hours before it has turned in the estuary of the Thames, which you at Margate foolishly believe to be the sea. Item no ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... last few months he had been receiving mysterious messages from Sambir urging him to decisive action. He had found the river a couple of years ago, and had been anchored more than once off that estuary where the, till then, rapid Pantai, spreading slowly over the lowlands, seems to hesitate, before it flows gently through twenty outlets; over a maze of mudflats, sandbanks and reefs, into the expectant sea. He had never ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... as the mouth of the Forth; and seeing that the Spaniards made no effort to enter the estuary, and his provisions being now well-nigh exhausted, he hove the fleet about and made back for the Channel, leaving two small vessels only to follow the Armada and watch its course, believing that it would make for Denmark, refit there, and then return ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... woke the air was no longer a trembling furnace, but everything about me was wrapped round as in a cloak of southern afternoon, and was still. The sun had fallen midway, and shone in steady glory through a haze that overhung Lake Major, and the wide luxuriant estuary of the vale. There lay before me a long straight road for miles at the base of high hills; then, far off, this road seemed to end at the foot of a mountain called, I believe, Ash Mount or Cinder Hill. But my imperfect map ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... the Rio de Nuno, close by this cape, the estuary of which is not less than seven or eight miles wide, should be here omitted; but the present voyage ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... he and his two companions set out, rowing up the estuary of the Salmon until the current became too swift to stem in that manner. Then landing, they rigged a "bridle" for the skiff, fitted their shoulders to loops in a ninety-foot tow rope, and began to "track" their craft up against ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... river in Kent, which rises in Surrey and Sussex, and which after a NE. course of 58 m. falls into an estuary at Sheerness. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... conquered Caithness and Sutherland as far south as Ekkjals-bakki,[7] which is believed by some to be in Moray, and by others, with more truth, to be the ranges of hills in Sutherland and Ross lying to the north and to the south of the River Oykel and its estuary, the Dornoch Firth; and the second part of the name still happens to survive in the place-name of Backies in Dunrobin Glen and elsewhere in Cat where the Norse settled. About the year 890,[8] after challenging Malbrigde of the Buck-tooth to a fight with forty a side, to ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray

... as they advanced, until near, its mouth it had become a broad estuary. They followed its right shore now and soon were out in ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... seen Ghirlandaio's Adoration of the Shepherds at the Accademia: this is its own brother. It has the sweetest, mildest little Mother, and in addition to the elderly Magi two tiny little saintlings adore too. In the distance is an enchanted landscape about a fairy estuary. ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... grey old castle that looked seawards over the estuary, past the little white town of Llangarmon, with its ancient walls and fortified gates, past the quay where the fishing smacks were lying idly at anchor and a pleasure-steamer was unloading its human cargo, past the long stretch of sandy common, where the white tents of the Territorials ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... following very much the same channel that steamers follow to-day as they ply between Victoria and Vancouver. East of a high island, where holiday folk now have their summer camps, Pilot Narvaez came on the estuary of a great river, which he called Boca de Florida Blanca. This could not be Bruno Heceta's river, for this was farther north and inland. It was a new river, with wonderful purple water—the purple of river silt blending with ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut

... extending to Lytchett Bay and Poole, lies immediately at your feet. The gloomy fir trees wave in solemnity, and form in their darkness, a striking contrast with the dwellings that are scattered over the scene, and appear like specks of dazzling white; the estuary of Poole Harbour stretches along the distance like a mirror, and its molten silver-like appearance is broken here and there by small islands, among which Brownsea is conspicuous. Here we stood leaning ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various

... operated subsequently to the Cretaceous epoch; and that the mountains themselves are largely made up of the materials deposited in the sea which once occupied their place. As we go back in time, we meet with constant alternations of sea and land, of estuary and open ocean; and, in correspondence with these alternations, we observe the changes in the fauna and flora to which ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... luggage in their cabin, when Everard came in to tell them that the vessel was getting under way, and they all rushed on deck to witness the start. Out from the dock they steamed into the wide estuary of the Mersey, where ships of many nations might be seen, and the pale February sunshine was gleaming upon the gray tidal waters that lay in front, and on the roofs and chimneys of the great ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... irregularity) which I propose to visit to-morrow. Also a ruin which looks like an abbey, but the people call it a castle. There is a good deal of low land about it, and the part between the town and the sea reminded me a good deal of the estuary above Cardigan, flat ill-looking bogs (generally islands) among the water. I walked to the mouth of the river (more than two miles) passing a nice little place called Sandford, with a hotel and a lot of lodgings for summer sea-people. At the entrance of the river is a coastguard ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... this interesting subject to its conclusion, the part actually played by General Smith in McClellan's Peninsular Campaign should be briefly recounted. After the Army of the Potomac had been transferred to the lower Chesapeake, by water, instead of landing at Urbana or on the estuary of the Rappahannock, as was at first intended, out of fear of the Merrimac, which had played such havoc with the wooden frigates of Goldborough's fleet, in Hampton Roads, it was disembarked at Fortress Monroe. It necessarily lost some time here ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson

... than I thought," he said, "for I suppose we may call it sea out here, Nat, this being the estuary of the Thames, so I think I'll make that ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn

... bight, frith, estuary, fiord, bayou; recess, alcove, sinus, oriel (bay window); bay-tree, sweet laurel; last resort, desperation; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... blue waters of the Atlantic the Ethiopia ran, on Saturday, September 11, into the mud-coloured estuary of the Cross and Calabar Rivers. On the left lay the flat delta of the Niger, ahead stretched the landscape of mangrove as far as the eye could range; to the south- east rose the vast bulk of the Cameroon Mountains. ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... the sea in a clear copper-coloured sky, but a fresh breeze was blowing in from the estuary to temper the heat ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman

... the search of some more reflective and painstaking person. Of course, one and another of the narrator's auditors thought himself such a person, and hied him away to the conical hill that rises so conspicuously at the entrance to the estuary of the Forth. What success attended them there we have not the means of knowing, but we have seen it stated in a local newspaper, that a specimen of the shining substance found in that place had been sent ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various

... August the Vega was off again, and soon she had entered the Kara Sea, known in the days of the Dutch explorers as the "ice-cellar." Then past White Island and the estuary of the great Obi River, past the mouth of the Yenisei to Dickson Island, lately discovered, she sailed. Here in this "best-known haven on the whole north coast of Asia they anchored and spent time in bear ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... down the River Thames on an ebb-tide. She was slipping out from the river into the estuary when suddenly a challenge rang out across ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews

... connection only came later, in August 1867, when the six miles of line from Aberdovey to the Junction was carried along the estuary shore and through the four tunnels which, until the Mid-Wales Railway was absorbed in 1904, remained the only ones on the whole system. For a considerable time after the coast line was opened passengers were carried from Aberdovey ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... finally, the refuse of the nut is employed as fuel and manure.... It grows alike on low alluvial plains and on granite hills, on the rich mould at the margin of canals, and on the sandy sea-beach. The sandy estuary of Hangchan yields little else; some of the trees at this place are known to be several hundred years old, and though prostrated, still send forth branches and bear fruit.... They are seldom planted where anything else can be conveniently cultivated—but ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various

... Killigrew and Shovel and the Plymouth division by getting to the westward. If he found this course impossible without fighting an action, his plan was to retire before Tourville "even to the Gunfleet," where amidst the shoals of the Thames estuary he felt he would have a good chance of repelling an attack with success. There, too, he counted on being reinforced not only by the ships still at Chatham, but also possibly by ships from the westward which might steal along the coast and ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett



Words linked to "Estuary" :   La Plata, water, Para River, estuarial, river, Rio de la Plata, Humber, body of water, Plata River, para, firth



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