"Great circle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made a low whistle, and the stricken bird, fluttering its wings, gave out cries so painful that there was a movement in the whole swampy region. Clouds of geese, ducks, and storks rose in the air, and making a great circle above their dying comrade, dropped down to ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... easy when they discount their bills sometimes with one banker, and sometimes with another, and when the two same persons do not constantly draw and redraw upon one another, but occasionally run the round of a great circle of projectors, who find it for their interest to assist one another in this method of raising money and to render it, upon that account, as difficult as possible to distinguish between a real and a fictitious bill of exchange, between ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... must leave them to the mercy of Christ; but it is our business to assist them, encourage them, and instruct them; and if you will give me leave, and God his blessing, I do not doubt but the poor ignorant souls shall be brought home into the great circle of Christianity, if not into the particular faith that we all embrace; and that even while you stay here." Upon this I said, "I shall not only give you leave, but give you a thousand thanks for it." What followed on this account I shall mention also ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... the land of the Chaldaeans still afforded the same spacious level, the same unclouded horizon. In the plains of Sinaar, and a second time in those of Cufa, his mathematicians accurately measured a degree of the great circle of the earth, and determined at twenty-four thousand miles the entire circumference of our globe. [61] From the reign of the Abbassides to that of the grandchildren of Tamerlane, the stars, without the aid of glasses, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Nature, but more than all, on contemplating with philosophic prescience the coming period when those vast inland seas shall be shadowed with sails, when the St. Lawrence and Mississippi, shall stretch forth their arms to embrace the continent in a great circle of interior navigation: when the Pacific Ocean shall pour into the Atlantic; when man will become more precious than fine gold, and when his ambition will be to subdue the elements, not to subjugate his ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... publication of these letters had received the cordial approval of General Grant's son, the late General Frederick D. Grant, and it is only because of his sudden death, which has brought sorrow upon a great circle of friends and upon the community at large, that the publishers are prevented from including with the volume a letter from the General as the head of the Grant family, giving formal expression to his personal interest ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... notice at this time that the Charles wain or Ursa Major constellation appeared at night in the west, and was N.E. in the morning: He thence concluded that their whole nights course was only nine hours, or so many parts in twenty-four of a great circle; and this he observed to be the case regularly every night. It was likewise noticed that the compass varied a whole point to the N.W. at night-fall, and came due north every morning at day-break. As this unheard-of circumstance confounded ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... from a minimum of about a mile up to several miles, in one case over twenty. A great feature of the doubles is, that they are strictly parallel throughout their whole course, and that in almost all cases they are so truly straight as to form parts of a great circle of the planet's sphere. A few however follow a gradual but very distinct curve, and such of these as are double present the same strict parallelism as those ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... maximum acceleration is at the start. We are all tired of being stuck to this cosmical speck, with its monotonous ocean, leaden sky, and single moon that is useless more than half the time, while its size is so microscopic compared with the universe that we can traverse its great circle in four days. Its possibilities are exhausted; and just as Greece became too small for the civilization of the Greeks, and as reproduction is growth beyond the individual, so it seems to me that the future glory of ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... who were to sing, sat down on the ground in a group near the mat; but the multitude spread in a great circle around it. Men of importance before taking their seats on the short grass, each in turn lifted the calumet, which was filled, and blew a little smoke on the manitou. Then the dancer sprang out, and, with graceful curvings in time to the music, seized the pipe and offered it now to the sun ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... echo of this fact is found in the five hundred or more boats, equally available for trade or war, which Henry M. Stanley saw the Uganda prince muster on the shore of Victoria Nyanza Lake. Ocean, sea, bay, estuary, river, swamp, lake: here is Nature's great circle returning upon itself, a circle faintly notched into arcs, but one in itself ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... motor car was rushing along, sweeping a great circle on the prairie, and anew Baron Ungern with his sharp, nervous voice carried his thoughts round the whole circumference of ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... After pausing a moment to consider, he retraced his steps, having apparently had some scheme in mind when diverted by the sight of the rabbit. The latter, being young and properly harebrained, and aware of his present advantage, now came back by a great circle, and fell to browsing again on the birch-twigs. As he fed, however, he kept a sharp eye on ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... his axe in a great circle to right and left before him, he advanced upon the gate, and the ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... habitations and was making roads and streets on the green-brown plain, where herds of buffalo had stamped and streamed and thundered not long ago. The town was a mile and a half away, and these two were alone in a great circle of storm, one of them battling against a tempest which might yet overtake her, against which she had set her face ever since she could remember, though it had only come to violence since her father died two ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Cape Cod, President Roosevelt sent a congratulatory message to King Edward. The electric waves conveying this message traveled 3,000 miles over the Atlantic following round an arc of forty-five degrees of the earth on a great circle, and were received telephonically, by the ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... business call'd aloud for haste, 1340 Torn myself thence, yet never heard To utter one complaining word, And had, till thy great work was done, All appetites, as having none? Hard is it, this great plan pursued Of voluntary servitude; Pursued without or shame, or fear, Through the great circle of the year, Now to receive, in this grand hour, Commands which lie beyond my power, 1350 Commands which baffle all my skill, And leave me nothing but my will: Be that accepted; let my lord Indulgence to his ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... Each time the great circle they had marked for themselves was travelled they descended a little lower towards ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... facts to keep in mind about the earth itself. The earth is a spheroid slightly flattened at the poles. The axis of the earth is a line running through the center of the earth and intersecting the surface of the earth at the poles. The equator is the great circle, formed by the intersection of the earth's surface with a plane perpendicular to the earth's axis and equidistant from the poles. Every point on the equator is, therefore, 90 deg. ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... "Great Circle Sailing," which now guides the navigator to the Indian Ocean, must be studied in connection with this chapter. "For every degree the ship changes her longitude south of the Line she sails a shorter distance along the great circle than on any other curve; for on ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... recognition. Her attitude, both hands raised to hold the glass, displayed to perfection the virginal outline of her white-robed form. She wore a straw hat of the plain masculine fashion; her brown hair was plaited in a great circle behind her head, not one tendril loosed from the mass; a white collar closely circled her neck; her waist was bound with a red girdle. All was grace and purity; the very folds towards the bottom of her dress hung in sculpturesque smoothness; the form of her half-seen ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... the mad philosopher of the nineteenth century of the Christian Era, who caught wild glimpses of truth, but who, before he was done, reasoned himself around the great circle of human thought and ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... had but few settlers, and it was still full of wild beasts. When the men got tired of work and wanted a frolic, they had a grand wolf-hunt. First, a tall pole was set up in a clearing;[6] next, the hunters in the woods formed a great circle of perhaps ten miles in extent. Then they began to move nearer and nearer together, beating the bushes and yelling with all their might. The frightened wolves, deer, and other wild creatures inside of the circle of hunters were driven to ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... year. The sails flapped in the puffing breeze, and he began to calculate her tonnage, certain that if he had such a boat he would not be sailing her on a lake, but on the bright sea, out of sight of land, in the middle of a great circle of water. As if stung by a sudden sense of the sea, of its perfume and its freedom, he imagined the filling of the sails and the rattle of the ropes, and how a fair wind would carry him as far as the cove of ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... riseth is placed by Polomeus in 11. degree of the South latitud, but by latter & more exact geographers in the 14. degree of the Southern latitud, so that the distance betweene the founts & Ostia i.e. betweene (C) and (B) is 45. degrees of a great Circle, which after the vsuall account makes 2700. one eight part of the earths compasse. The quaestion now is, whether the runninge from (C) to (B) runne continually downward in a streight line; or circularly in a crooked ...
— A Briefe Introduction to Geography • William Pemble
... broad daylight when the robbers reached their cave. The bundles were laid in a great circle on the floor, and, at a given signal, they were opened. For a moment each robber gazed blankly at the contents of his bundle, and then they all began to fumble and search among the piles of articles upon the cloths; but after a few minutes, they ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... able to regard the geometry of their universe as being plane geometry and their rods withal as the realisation of " distance " ? They cannot do this. For if they attempt to realise a straight line, they will obtain a curve, which we " three-dimensional beings " designate as a great circle, i.e. a self-contained line of definite finite length, which can be measured up by means of a measuring-rod. Similarly, this universe has a finite area that can be compared with the area, of a square constructed with rods. The great charm resulting from this consideration lies in the recognition ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... monk had traced a great circle with his eye and doughty hand, a circle which had embraced as in a frame the mount, and the gardens fashioned and developed by ridgings of the rock, and the downy soil which had been beaten into those ridgings, and the silver streak of waterfall playing ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... numbers increased daily. Twilight was the favorite time for arriving. In the stillness I would hear Hukweem far away, so high that he was only a voice. Presently I would see him whirling over the lake in a great circle.—"Come down, O come down," cry all the loons. "I'm afraid, ooo-ho-ho-ho-ho-hoooo-eee, I'm afraid," says Hukweem, who is perhaps a little loon, all the way from Labrador on his first migration, and has never come down from ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... and they all wondered what he was thinking. Then a Duckling who stood near him exclaimed, "Look at his train! Oh, look at his train!" Everybody looked and saw all those beautiful long feathers rising into the air. Up and up they went, and spreading as they rose, until there was a wonderful great circle of them back of his body and reaching far above his head. The Gobbler's spread tail looked as small beside this as a Dove's egg would beside that ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... is a famous "Druidical circle," or a large amphitheatre, enclosed by high mounds of earth, where the ancient Druids used to meet for their heathen worship. As we stood in that great circle, beside a rude altar of stones, it made us shudder to think that hundreds of human beings had probably been cruelly sacrificed there as offerings to the gods of the Druids. What a happy, blessed thing it is to know that such dreadful crimes can never again be committed ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... pictured as cutting across the sky either by day or by night, and always at the same elevation—that is, as seen from any one place. But the Ecliptic (the other important great circle of the heavens) can only be thought of as a line traversing the constellations as they are seen at NIGHT. It is in fact the Sun's path among the fixed stars. For (really owing to the Earth's motion in its ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... any attempt to show the ethnical relations of these facts, the question naturally occurs whether any of these waifs ever found their way back from the American coast. On observing the course of the great circle of the Kuro-Shiwo and the course of the trade winds, one inclines to the belief that such a thing is not beyond the range of possibility. Indeed, several well-authenticated instances are mentioned ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... middle of which they placed the statue of Flora, ornamented with flowers, round which they performed their dances. First the youth, then those of riper years; and lastly, those of a more advanced age. After each of these divisions had danced separately, they all joined and formed one great circle. The most distinguished for excellence in the performing these dances, had for reward the privilege of taking a flower, with great solemnity, from the statue of the goddess. This was esteemed so high an honor, that it is scarce imaginable ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... about her in a great circle, some on the lower branches of the trees, some on the bushes, and some on the ground among the grass and flowers. And where each bird perched, there it was to build its nest. Then Mother Magpie found clay and bits of twigs and moss and grass—everything ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... subdued crash of irregular volleys fired in the distance was answered by faint yells far away. In the intervals the single shots rang feebly, and the low, long, white building blinded in every window seemed to be the centre of a turmoil widening in a great circle about its closed-up silence. But the cautious movements and whispers of a routed party seeking a momentary shelter behind the wall made the darkness of the room, striped by threads of quiet sunlight, alight with evil, stealthy sounds. The Violas had them in their ears as though ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... building a certain railroad, she might go, and carry peace, also, with her. The Government would scout the idea of running the Cunard line to Canada alone, and would not touch even at Halifax, except that the ships are compelled to go in sight of the place; as the "great circle" on which they sail nearly cuts the city. Great Britain runs that line because her trade with the United States requires it. That trade is worth to her every year twenty of her Canadas, as that of the ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... heart. They are united in soul, or 'with accordant souls' having, and knowing that they have them, akin, allied to one another, moving to a common end, and aware of their oneness. The unity which Christian people have hitherto reached is at its best but a small are of the great circle which the Apostle drew, and none of us can read these fervid words without shame. His ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... long they rode, and when it was near the end of the afternoon Florian found himself at the edge of a wild and desolate moor. Within the great circle of the horizon, under the pale sky, not a tree, not a house, not a shepherd's hut even was to be seen—nothing but the great barren waste rolling, rising and falling to the very edge of the world. Lower and lower sank the sun; it grew cold, and a blue mist fell. Twilight ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... Within this is a ditch, and close on the inner edge of this was a circle of about a hundred upright stones. Within this circle were two pairs of concentric circles with their centres slightly east of the north-and-south diameter of the great circle. The diameters of the outer circles of these two pairs are 350 and 325 feet respectively. In the centre of the northern pair was a cover-slab supported by three uprights, and in the centre of the southern ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... flag-signals with a man on the beach beyond the mouth of the Aguadores ravine, and it was perfectly evident that something was expected to happen. Under such circumstances, the thing for us to do was to get back, as speedily as possible, to Siboney. Turning in a great circle around the Iowa, we steamed swiftly eastward along the coast, passing the New York, the Suwanee, and the Gloucester, which were lying, cleared for action, close under the walls of the Aguadores fort; exchanging greetings with ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... freighter swung a great circle, its torsion jets blasting desperately in an effort to keep it on an even keel. This, thought Comets Carter, was it. This was the foul revenge that Rogue Rogan had planned, the evil death he had plotted with his ...
— Runaway • William Morrison
... back towards home he swung in a great circle and rode down the dry bed of the Alamo, where water-worn bowlders and ricks of mountain drift lay strewn for miles to mark the vanished stream. What a power it had been in its might, floating sycamores and ironwoods as if they were reeds, lapping high against the granite walls, ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... made of a crust of rye-bread transfixed by a twig, silently spinning on the cover of a school-book, will give a correct enough image of the earth, which retains unmoved its original impulse, and travels along a great circle, at the same time turning on itself. Gummed on its disc, scraps of paper properly coloured will tell us of white light, decomposable into ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... America is perhaps that near Newark, in the valley of the Scioto. It includes an octagonal ENCEINTE eighty acres in area, a square ENCEINTE of twenty acres, with two others, one twenty the other thirty acres in extent. The walls of the great circle are still twelve feet high by fifty feet wide at the base. They are protected by an interior fosse seven feet deep by thirty-five feet wide. According to measurements carefully made by Colonel Whittlesey,[235] the total area covered by these intrenchments is no less than twelve square miles, and ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... gentlemen," said the lecturer, standing by a great circle of light thrown on the wall, behind the pulpit, "I have now, with a feeling of awe befitting this sacred place, thus given you, in the first part of my lecture, a succinct view of the origin, rise, and growth ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... during the revolution of the great circle each large clock emits for a couple of minutes a species of chime, the nature of which my ignorance of music renders me unable to describe:—viz., when the line dividing the green and black semicircles is horizontal at noon and midnight, and an hour before, at average sunrise and sunset, it becomes ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... called themselves Avars. Small in numbers at first, they grew by vanquishing and amalgamating other tribes of Huns until they became the terror and threatened to become the masters of Europe. Hungary, the centre of Attila's great circle of power, was made their place of abode. Here was the palace and stronghold of their monarchs, the Chagans, and here they continued a threat to all the surrounding nations, while enjoying the vast spoils which they ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... but it is honest. From small elements which fancy offered as true, these myths arose and grew, without any contributor to their growth feeling that he had of himself added to them. Those only had any conscious intention in the matter, who touched up the oldest pure myths, and drew them into the great circle of their national history; and their intention, though conscious, was quite innocent and harmless, as De Wette describes it. Now De Wette sees the chief traces of that unity, or of that national epos which winds its way through the Mosaic history, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... centre of a great circle of remembrance. One of Constable's famous paintings represents the Cathedral of Salisbury outlined against a storm-swept sky, with a lovely rainbow arched beyond it. So stands the Church athwart the landscape of our lives. In ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... it. Ah, through some shameful knavery of the men, into whose hands he has fallen, he is drunk! Even the women can see that; and now he throws his arms wildly and raises his voice until the whole great circle ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... done, and many an innocent virgin has lifted her white arms, beseeching its aid in her extremity, and all in vain; so that, though Providence is infinitely good and wise, and perhaps for that very reason, it may be half an eternity before the great circle of its scheme shall bring us the superabundant recompense for all these sorrows! But what the lover asked was such prompt consolation as might consist with the brief span of mortal life; the assurance of Hilda's present safety, and her restoration ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the perception that perfect justice, equilibrium and adjustment are inherent in the universal system of Nature. Buddhists do not believe that one life—even though it were extended to one hundred or five hundred years—is long enough for the reward or punishment of a man's deeds. The great circle of rebirths will be more or less quickly run through according to the preponderating purity or impurity of the several lives of ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... his head. Up the track, sweeping in a great circle as it swung the curve, a headlight's glare cut through the night—and Toddles "shinned" the foot. He tugged and tore at the lamp, tugged and tore at it, loosened it, lifted it from its socket, sprawled and wriggled with it to the ground—and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... moon appears to us dichotomized it offers to our view a great circle (or actual meridian) of its circumference which divides the illuminated part from ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... wilderness, north of the great Circle, and amid conditions like these, one would scarcely hope to find white men penetrating. Probably not from choice would they enter; certainly by force of circumstances if at all; and these must have been the most desperate. Be that as it may, a small ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... cannon and ravaged fields stretched as far as the eye could reach on the Halle, Lindenthal and Doelitch roads. It was worse than at Lutzen. We saw the Prussians deploy, and advance their thousands over the battle-field. They were to join with the Russians and Austrians and close the great circle around us, and we could not prevent them, especially as Bernadotte and the Russian General Beningsen had come up with twenty thousand fresh troops. Thus, after fighting three battles in one day, were ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... as ordenarily as it vsed, for no ordenarie sea chart can describe those regions either in the partes Geographicall or Hydrographicall, where the Meridians doe so spedily gather themselues togeather, the parallels beeing a verye small proportion to a great circle, where quicke and vncertayne variation of the Compasse may greatly hinder or vtterly ouerthrow the attempt. So that for lack of Curious lyned globes to the right vse of Nauigation; with many other instruments either vnknowne or out of vse, and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... of Paul and his friends, the Roman principle was followed, at least in part. The wagons were drawn up in a great circle in an open space, where they could not be reached by a rifle shot from the trees, and then more than two hundred men, using pick and spade, speedily threw up an earthwork three feet high that inclosed the wagons. Henry Ware regarded it with the ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... all joined hands and made a great circle round the high grass. The pushmi-pullyu heard them coming; and he tried hard to break through the ring of monkeys. But he couldn't do it. When he saw that it was no use trying to escape, he sat down and waited ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... hundred, having a truly jolly time. The dwarf, who was dressed in white (to make him look larger), was seated on a high red velvet cushion at the end of the hall, and the company sat cross-legged on rugs, in a great circle before him. He was drinking out of a huge bottle nearly as big as himself, and eating little birds; and judging by the bones that were left, he must have eaten nearly a whole flock of them. When he saw ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... the matter is, that three men were born in this same city of Ujjayani, in the same lunar mansion, in the same division of the great circle described upon the ecliptic, and in the same period of time. You, the first, were born in the house of a king. The second was an oilman's son, who was slain by the third, a jogi, or anchorite, who kills all he can, wafting the sweet scent of human ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... had a flavor in them beyond any that I have heard elsewhere. His conversation dwelt upon persons or things within his own recollection, or it opened (with a startling doubt, or a question, or a piece of quaint humor) the great circle of thought. ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... local enumerations, it appears that the density of starlight (or the number of stars existing on an average of several such enumerations in any one immediate neighbourhood) is least in the pole of the Galactic circle [i.e., the great circle to which the course of the Milky Way most nearly conforms: gala milk], and increases on all sides down to the Milky Way itself, where it attains its maximum. The progressive rate of increase in proceeding from the pole is at first slow, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... the sky became hazy and slightly overcast. The boys were treated to one of the peculiar phenomena not unfrequently seen in those high latitudes. First, a great circle surrounded the sun, and at the east, west, and top and bottom in it were seen very vivid mock suns. Shortly after another ring appeared inside this first one, and then another one on the outside of all, and in each circle there appeared four mock suns, clear, distinct, and startling. In all there ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... me, if Carew an' his Dawn 'ave won past, the way we're sailin'! And the old man reckons seventy days, outside, afore 'e makes 'is landfall o' Fire Mountain. Coming 'ome, now, will be different. We'll sail the great circle, the course the mail-boats follow, an' we'll likely make the passage in 'alf the time. We'll run the easting down, up there in the 'igh latitudes with ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... dog-watch every night. We were a long way south; I cannot remember the exact latitude, but I know it was drawing close upon sixty degrees. There was a talk in the midshipmen's berth amongst us that the captain was trying his hand at the great Circle course, but none of us knew much about it down in that gloomy, 'tween-decks, slush-flavoured cavern in which we youngsters lived. I was fourteen years old, homeward bound on my first voyage; a little bit of a midshipman, burnt dry by Pacific suns, with a mortal hatred and terror ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... broadside toward us, and bringing her guns into play returned our fire, at the same time moving parallel to our front for a short distance and then turning back with the evident intention of completing a great circle which would bring her up to position once more opposite our firing line; the other vessels followed in her wake, each one opening upon us as she swung into position. Our own fire never diminished, and I doubt if twenty-five per cent of our shots went ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the night of the 10th instant, and that those who were about last night were in Serch of the ballance of our horses which they could not find as they had fortunately got into a Small Prarie Serounded with thick timber in the bottom. Labeech returned haveing taken a great Circle and informed me that he Saw the tracks of the horses makeing off into the open plains and were by the tracks going very fast. The Indians who took the horses bent their course reather down the river. the men finished both Canoes by 12 oClock to day, and I sent them to make Oars ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... twice even drives the cow through herds of other cows, and mingles her tracks in the wide confusion of theirs. He finally brings his cow home; the aboriginal is set at liberty, and at once moves around in a great circle, examining all cow-tracks until he finds the one he is after; then sets off and follows it throughout its erratic course, and ultimately tracks it to the stable where B. has hidden the cow. Now wherein does one cow-track ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... near the metal box, did so. But even the power of Cardite was of no avail against the awful suction of the whirlpool. The boat began to go around in a great circle, ever coming nearer and nearer to the black, ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... preacher. Two of the Wood family were teachers. Thomas W. was a prominent and successful educationalist. The Wood family were more than ordinarily gifted intellectually. Albert, the youngest son, became celebrated as a skilful and successful sea captain. He published a book, entitled "Great Circle Sailing," that quite changed the methods, in some particulars, from which ships had been navigated previously. Captain Wood finally settled in California, where he now lives, and is an enthusiastic temperance worker and writer. Joshua was musically ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... been his custom to give this interesting case a hearing one or two hours every afternoon, daily, after court. It was a relief from the heavy business of the day; for Goldfinch had heavy business, which came to him because he was a fat and pleasant fellow, with a large head, and a great circle of miscellaneous acquaintance. The real work of the office was done by a modest, unappreciated man named Mixer. On the occasion of these antimatrimonial audiences, Mixer sat in the back room, grubbing among ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... question, to ask whether you were ever Lord Chancellor, Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition, or even a member of the House of Commons. An author hopes to find readers far beyond that very egregious but very limited segment of the Great Circle. Were you ever a busy man in your vestry, active in a municipal corporation, one of a committee for furthering the interests of an enlightened candidate for your native burgh, town, or shire?—in a word, did you ever resign your private comforts as men in order to share the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... the least tangible, it is believed, is that which has been suggested with the Scandinavian mythology. That mythology is of so marked and peculiar a character that it has not been distinctly traced out of the great circle of tribes of the Indo-Germanic family. Odin and his terrific pantheon of war gods and social deities could only exist in the dreary latitudes of storms and fire which produce a Hecla and a Maelstrom. These latitudes have invariably produced nations whose influence has been felt in an ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... action was for the fleet to revolve in a great circle or ellipse before the delivering their fire from starboard and port batteries alternately. The first shot from the "Olympia" was a 250-pound shell, aimed at the Cavite fort, and discharged with a shout from all hands, "Remember ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... southward to Guinea, I carefully marked the course, according to the custom of skippers and mariners, and moreover I took the sun's altitude several times with a quadrant and other instruments, and in agreement with Alfragan I found that each degree [i. e. of longitude, measured on a great circle] answers to 56-2/3 miles. So that one may rely upon this measure. We may therefore say that the equatorial circumference of the earth is 20,400 miles. A similar result was obtained by Master Joseph, the physicist [or, perhaps, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... exhibited in these unexplored regions. The success of the Spaniards kindled a generous emulation in their Portuguese rivals, who soon after accomplished their long-sought passage into the Indian seas, and thus completed the great circle of maritime discovery. [28] It would seem as if Providence had postponed this grand event, until the possession of America, with its stores of precious metals, might supply such materials for a commerce with the east, as should bind together the most ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... machine of human construction, or into which the wit of man has entered, that can go of itself without supervision, without oiling; that there are no wheels which will revolve without our help, except the great wheel of the constellations or that great circle of the sun's which has its hand upon the dial plate, and which was made by a hand much less ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... myself whether what Goza had told me was true. So it proved, for about three hundred yards from the mouth of the valley, which at that distance looked like a black hole in the hills, I found soldiers stationed about ten paces apart in a great circle which ran right up the hillside and vanished over the crest. Strolling up to one of these, whose face I thought I knew, I asked him if he would let me pass to see my friend, the Opener ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... with his pink wreaths and his white robe, and watched the quickening pinkiness of the East. And slowly the great circle of the temple filled with white-robed folk, all carrying in their hands the faint pinkiness of the flowers which ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... estimate upon which it is calculated gave a result in all probability far inferior to the truth. At all events I undoubtedly beheld the whole of the earth's major diameter; the entire northern hemisphere lay beneath me like a chart orthographically projected: and the great circle of the equator itself formed the boundary line of my horizon. Your Excellencies may, however, readily imagine that the confined regions hitherto unexplored within the limits of the Arctic circle, although situated ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to be drawn through earth and moon and sun (not necessarily through their centres of course), and this is impossible unless some parts of the three bodies are in one plane, viz. the ecliptic, or something very near it. The ecliptic is a great circle of the sphere, and is usually drawn on both ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... favours me. There was plenty of meat and melocheea and bread; and then zikrs of different kinds, and a Gama el Fokara (assembly of the poor). Gama is the true word for Mosque—i.e., Meeting, which consists in a great circle of men seated thick on the ground, with two poets facing each other, who improvise religious verses. On this occasion the rule of the game was to end each stanza with a word having the sound of wahed (one), or el Had (the first). Thus one sung: 'Let a man take heed how he walks,' etc., etc.; ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... a great circle about the periphery of the circular platform. We were assigned seats with our backs toward a small platform in the exact centre of the larger one. This placed us facing the judges and the audience. Upon the smaller platform each ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... day (July 5) almost impossible. We relayed as usual, and managed to do eight hours' pulling, but we got forward only 11/2 miles. The temperature ranged between -55 deg. and -61 deg., and there was at one time a considerable breeze, the effect of which was paralysing. There was the great circle of a halo round the moon with a vertical shaft, and mock moons. We hoped that we were rising on to the long snow cape which marks the beginning of Mount Terror. That night the temperature was -75 deg.; at breakfast -70 deg.; at noon nearly -77 deg.. The day lives ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... he was enjoying himself hugely and had already formed a great circle of hysterical women who believed in his divinity and practised the ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... other projectiles are fired from mortars, such as carcasses, which are shells having three holes of similar dimensions to the fuze-hole, pierced at equal distances apart in the upper hemisphere, with their exterior openings touching the great circle which is perpendicular to the ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... itself, and contains, instead of a staircase, a wonderful inclined plane, so wide and gradual that a coach and four may be driven to the top. This colossal cylinder has to-day no visible use; but it corresponds, happily enough, with the great circle of the prospect. The gardens of Amboise, lifted high aloft, covering the irregular remnants of the platform on which the castle stands and making up in picturesqueness what they lack in extent, constitute of course but a scanty domain. But bathed, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... voice. And he struck left. The eddy seized him and they could see his head moving slowly about in the great circle which gradually grew smaller and smaller till he suddenly disappeared. A groan muffled with horror went up from the shore. But the man who held the chain lifted up his hand, and silence—more pregnant of anticipation than any sound—held that whole crowd rigid. The man played out the chain; ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... houses, half castle, half mansion, which every explorer of the bye-paths of the Fatherland has seen and admired so often. The curves became long, sweeping stretches of sandy bays, fringed with other curves of breaking rollers; and as the picture grew more distinct, one great circle embraced a whole perfect picture of land and seascape—land dusky and forest-covered in the southward half; and the misty sea, island-dotted, wind-whipped, ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... the Indians who looked with admiration upon the tall youth as he made his magnificent struggle for life and liberty. A deep hum ran through the great circle that had formed about the fighters. Excitement, the joy of a supreme sport, showed upon their savage faces. One or two started forward to help the six, but Timmendiquas waved them back. Then the circle pressed a little ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... five thousand level saw them plod slowly along, while faster and better-groomed ships slipped smoothly past; then the red hull rose to Level Twelve and swung out upon the great circle course that would bear them more nearly in the direction of the destination Chet had given. There were free levels higher up in which they could have laid a direct course, but the Irish pilot did not need Chet to tell him that the old hull would never stand it. ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... would perhaps be stretching truth too far to say that you are trying to undo some of Columbus's work, and to stop up the hole he made in Ireland when he found a channel into which so much of what was best in the Old Country war destined to flow; for you and he have each your places in the great circle of Time and Compensation, and though you may seem to oppose one another across the centuries you are really answering the same call and working in the same vineyard. For we all set out to discover new worlds; and they are wise who realise early that human nature has roots ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... the hosts of four of the five grand provinces of Erin, that they might not escape him nor get away before he would come on them to press a reprisal for the boys. And he went into the midst of the ranks and mowed down huge walls of the corpses of his foes [1]and enemies and opponents[1] in a great circle round about the host. And he made the onslaught of a foe amongst foes upon them, so that they fell sole to sole, neck to neck, [2]arm to arm, elbow to elbow, and rib to rib, [3]such was the closeness of their bodies,[3] and there were pools of ruddy blood where they moved.[2] Thrice again ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... came ashore, Donnacona made all his people stand back from the beach. He drew in the sand a huge ring, and into this he led the French. Then, selecting from the ranks of his followers, who stood in a great circle watching the ceremony, a little girl of ten years old, he led her into the ring and presented her to Cartier. After her, two little boys were handed over in the same fashion, the assembled Indians rending the air with shouts of exultation. Donnacona, in true Indian fashion, improved the ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... parallel planes, indefinitely extended every way, but at a given considerable distance from each other; and calling this a sidereal stratum, an eye placed somewhere within it will see all the stars in the direction of the planes of the stratum projected into a great circle, which will appear lucid on account of the accumulation of the stars, while the rest of the heavens, at the sides, will only seem to be scattered over with constellations, more or less crowded according to the distance of the planes, or number of ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western 15 pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigor, and industry which began long since in the East; they will finish the great circle. ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... windy, frozen night, and also out of his old life into the new. Above him the stars, written in their vast, vague characters upon the night-blue vault of sky, shone with a keen lustre. Below his feet, with scarce a break in the great circle, it seemed as if they drew together in denser clusters and set themselves in luminous tiers. These latter were the lights of the city. For the Hotel du Chancelier stands high upon one of the twin ridges which form the ravine of the river, and upon whose converging slopes Revonde is built. Rallywood ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... here a year or two ago, which prostrated in a night over a hundred thousand trees. You see the dentated gaps left by this disaster in the great circle of firs and birches on the surrounding hills, but they make hardly a serious break in the thoroughly sylvan character of the landscape. We visited the centre of the devastation, where I found myself in what seemed to ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... still struggling, but now wearily, and in a state of collapse. His headlong course had taken the inevitable turn. He had swung round in a great circle, and was heading again for the hillside where the dugout stood. Now he often fell as he went, for his feet lagged and caught in every unevenness of the ground. Once he lay where he fell, and remained so long motionless that it seemed as if he would rise no more. But as the afternoon waned and ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... these waters with the edge of its spur after doing nearly 10,000 leagues in three and a half months, a track longer than a great circle of the earth. Where were we heading now, and what did the future have in ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... obtained leave for their young sons to be admitted into the centre of Parisian refinement. The English cub, fresh from Eton, was introduced by his tutor into the red and yellow drawing-room, where the great circle of a dozen or more elderly important persons, glittering in jewels and orders, pompous in powder and rouge, ranged in rigid order round the fireplace, followed with the precision of a perfect orchestra the leading word or smile or ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... had heard so much and which has made the swordfish the most famous of all fish—he rose two-thirds out of the water, I suppose by reason of the enormous power of his tail, though it seemed like magic, and then he began to walk across the sea in a great circle of white foam, wagging his massive head, sword flying, jaws wide, dorsal fin savagely erect, like a lion's mane. He was magnificent. I have never seen fury so expressed or such an unquenchable spirit. Then he dropped ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... a person be said to draw education under his control, when he has the wisdom to bring forth in the youthful soul a great circle or body of ideas, well knit together in its inmost parts—a body of ideas which is able to outweigh what is unfavorable in environment and to absorb and combine with itself the favorable elements of the ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... the great circle, many triangles in area; and everywhere the unthinkable things smote the hearts of my men with a fear they had never known. Only one of the devices suffered; it was brought down by a chance fling of a poison shell. The rest, after loosing their burdens, returned to the ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... greatly surprised to notice at this time that Charles' Wain, or the Ursa Major constellation, appeared at night in the west, and was north-east in the morning. He thence concluded that their whole night's course was only nine hours, or so many parts in twenty four of a great circle; and this he observed to be the case regularly every night. It was likewise noticed that the compass varied a whole point to the northwest at nightfall, and came due north every morning at daybreak. As this unheard-of circumstance confounded and perplexed the pilots, who apprehended ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... was not much, but it was enough; and while our scientific staff were congratulating themselves that electric-wave telegraphy was not inhibited by long distance, or by the earth's curvature over an arc of a great circle, I was thinking of my dear one—that one way or another my message would reach her and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... lance in his hand, the iron point flashing against the declining sun, while the long scalp-locks of his enemies flutter from the shaft. Thus, gorgeous as a champion in his panoply, he rides round and round within the great circle of lodges, balancing with a graceful buoyancy to the free movements of his war horse, while with a sedate brow he sings his song to the Great Spirit. Young rival warriors look askance at him; vermilion-cheeked ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... time the Christian men of this Christian nation stand around in a great circle, weeping and calling on a Christian's God to hasten the day when this other god shall be ground to dust, meantime mocking their God by legalizing this monstrous thing with ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... festival amongst the lowest barbarians. In Tierra del Fuego we have beheld many curious scenes in savage life, but never, I think, one where the natives were in such high spirits, and so perfectly at their ease. After the dancing was over the whole party formed a great circle on the ground, and the boiled rice and sugar was distributed, to the delight ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... ways Eric was not altogether wrong in this statement, for his thorough knowledge of mathematics stood him in good stead in navigation. Questions such as "Great Circle Sailing" he ate alive, and a well known problem of "Equations of Equal Altitudes" was, to use his own expression, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... is not the immediate effect of differences of temperature, but a secondary effect induced by the friction of the earth's surface and the continual deflection of the air's eastward motion from a great circle, (in which the air tends to move,) into the small circle of the latitude, in which the air actually does move. The force of this deflection, measured by the centrifugal force of the air as it circulates around the pole, retards the movement from the equator, and finally wholly suspends it; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Parson' is one of those writers whose hap it generally is to be overpraised by friendly reviewers, and unduly castigated by those who appreciate their short-comings. Incurably limited to a certain range of ideas, totally incapable of mastering the great circle of thought, unpleasantly egotistical, jaunty, and priggish, he is any thing but attractive to the large-hearted cosmopolite and scholar of broad views, while even to many more general readers, he appears as a man whom one would rather read than be. On the other hand, the generous ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a bag of earth ... and there he lay, stretched at full length, like a man asleep. That scream of distress, that terrible shriek, that farewell cry of one who is going away for good had sent something like an electric shock through all around; work ceased and they scrambled down and stood in a great circle around that body ... looking. And a great silence followed, that silence which is so heavy and oppressive after the sudden stop of so much activity. People came rushing up, pushing to get closer ... and to see. They tore the poor devil's clothes open ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... that when, about eleven, Will came to the inn to say that he was just going out to the men, if Master Dick or Master Arthur would like to come, their father readily accepted the invitation for all three. So they were rowed out, to find the men very busy at work in boats beside the great circle of corks, shooting a smaller seine inside the big one; and this being at last completed, the small seine was drawn close, the lower rope contracted, and the fish huddled together so closely that a small boat was at work ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... type of human industry in the midst of the vague "diffusion of forces into the illimitable," and the visionary development of "wasted labour" in the sea, and the winds, and the clouds. No character was ever thrown into such strange relief as Gilliat. The great circle of sea-birds that come wanderingly around him on the night of his arrival, strikes at once the note of his pre-eminence and isolation. He fills the whole reef with his indefatigable toil; this solitary ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... here, and die of asphyxiation when our atmosphere tanks are empty," replied Perry, "or we may continue on with the slight hope that we may later sufficiently deflect the prospector from the vertical to carry us along the arc of a great circle which must eventually return us to the surface. If we succeed in so doing before we reach the higher internal temperature we may even yet survive. There would seem to me to be about one chance in several million that we shall succeed—otherwise ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... we made a great circle through the desert, swinging first north toward the Sierra Mojada, then south, and ultimately eastward toward Monclova. The trip proved to be one of great hardship and danger, but only from scarcity of water; for while at isolated springs we ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... where a house was built in a day; for "log-rollings," where tons of excellent timber were piled together and wastefully burned; for wolf-hunts, where a tall pole was erected in the midst of a prairie or clearing, and a great circle of hunters formed around it, sometimes of miles in diameter, which, gradually contracting with shouts and yells, drove all the game in the woods together at the pole for slaughter; and for horse-races, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... I am coming at length to my difficulty with Mr. Davidson's work. Oddly enough, this difficulty may be referred to the circumstance that Mr. Davidson's poetry touches Shakespeare's great circle at a second point. Wordsworth, it will be remembered, once said that Shakespeare could not have written an Epic (Wordsworth, by the way, was rather fond of pointing out the things that Shakespeare could not have done). ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... half moon that shone dimly through the scudding clouds lay on her back, with a great circle of light ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... better luck. There were two persons in the odd machine, which was slowly flying along, moving in a great circle, with the Swift ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... which disturbs the surface of a planet would leave behind it after its demise. You might think that the satellite revolving round and round the planet must simply describe a circle upon the spherical surface of the planet: a "great circle" as it is called; that is the greatest circle which can be described upon a sphere. This great circle can, however, only be struck, as you will see, when the planet is not turning upon its axis: a condition not likely to ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... subject, and justice is as free and as firm for the humblest suitor, as if his antagonist were his equal. Austria, indeed, but holds together the motley and inharmonious members of its vast domain on either side the Alps, by a general character of paternal mildness and forbearance in all that great circle of good government which lies without the one principle of constitutional liberty. It asks but of its subjects to submit to be well governed—without agitating the question "how and by what means that government is carried on." For every man, except the politician, the innovator, Austria ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... easterly of the row of great ring-plains, which, beginning on the W. with Autolycus, and followed by Archimedes, Timocharis, and Lambert, extends almost in a great circle from the N.W. to the S.E. side of the Mare Imbrium. It is about 19 miles in diameter, and is surrounded by terraced walls, which, though of no great height above the Mare, rise 6000 feet above the floor. There is a distinct little gap in the S. wall, easily glimpsed ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... circuitous trails and stiff climbing, one may gain the Saddle. Against the slope of the Dome the Saddle leans like a gigantic slab, and from the top of this slab, one thousand feet in length, curves the great circle to the summit of the Dome. A few degrees too steep for unaided climbing, these one thousand feet defied for years the adventurous spirits who fixed yearning eyes upon ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... independent of the apparent motion of the sun, was the number of miles marched. Indeed, with the Babylonians, the same word (kasbu) was used to indicate three distinct, but related measures. It was a measure of time—the double hour; of celestial arc—the twelfth part of a great circle, thirty degrees, that is to say the space traversed by the sun in two hours; and it was a measure of distance on the surface of the earth—six or seven miles, or a two ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... to the salon she found that the Abbe Gondrin had become the centre of a great circle formed by nearly the whole company, and as she approached, she ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... close to another fine relic of the past, though this cannot claim to have any Celtic or pre-Celtic foundation. The great circle of Maumbury Rings was the original stadium or coliseum of the Roman town; the tiers of seats when filled are estimated to have held over twelve thousand spectators. The gaps at each end are the obvious ways for entering and leaving the arena. ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... and then come to himself with a sense of fear, which started him working like a madman, so that he might not be behind with his business. The day seemed to be so long. It rolled on rusty hinges that could scarcely move. Each hour was like a great circle swollen with heavy air, and it droned and buzzed into an eternity. It seemed to the man that his hand in particular wanted to rest. It was luxury not to work with it. It was good to lay it down on a sheet of paper with the pen sloping ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... smoothly round a great circle, to see in all its length and breadth that strange, hidden, and fishy fairy-land of which Martigues is the door. Once the Phoenicians found their way here, looking for salt, which is exploited to this day; ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... approach it was seen that the herd was "milling," that is, revolving in a great circle, with a number of inner circles, half smothered in the dust they raised, without aim or knowledge of what they did, or why. About the herd at various points stood the half-dozen shepherds, their long crooks in their hands. Whenever a blatting animal made a dash ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... arranged height, the Air Service Boys found that it was a very animated region, though fully a thousand feet from the earth's surface. Almost a dozen planes in all were moving in a great circle, their motors lazily droning, and the pilots ready to enter into ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... with all her Goths and Franks behind her, and a train of baggage waggons groaning beneath the treasures of her dowry. She made her entry into Rouen on a towering car, set with plates of glittering silver, and all the Neustrian warriors stood in a great circle round her with drawn swords, crying aloud the oath of their allegiance. Before them all, the King swore constancy and faith to her, and on the morning following he publicly made present to her of the five southern cities ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... upon the jungle the apes commenced to bestir themselves, and soon they formed a great circle about the earthen drum. The females and young squatted in a thin line at the outer periphery of the circle, while just in front of them ranged the adult males. Before the drum sat three old females, each armed with a knotted branch fifteen ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... as has been the case in Christian countries, the advance was not made without resistance on the part of the defenders of revealed truth. Thus when Al-Mamun, having become acquainted with the globular form of the earth, gave orders to his mathematicians and astronomers to measure a degree of a great circle upon it, Takyuddin, one of the most celebrated doctors of divinity of that time, denounced the wicked khalif, declaring that God would assuredly punish him for presumptuously interrupting the devotions of the faithful by encouraging ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... ground he traces a great circle and commands his two companions to step inside it. Sille refuses. Gripped by a terror which he cannot explain, he begins to tremble all over. He goes to the window, opens it, and stands ready for flight, murmuring exorcisms under his breath. Gilles, bolder, stands in the ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... (1812-1891) was one of the leading members of the great circle of Russian writers who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, gathered around the Sovremmenik (Contemporary) under Nekrasov's editorship—a circle including Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Byelinsky, and Herzen. He had not the marked genius of the first ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... its use as an international zero awakens national susceptibilities. It is possible, however, to a great extent, to remove this objection by taking, for a zero of longitude and time, the meridian farthest distant from Greenwich. This being on the same great circle as Greenwich, it would not require the establishment of a new observatory; its adoption would produce no change in charts or nautical tables, beyond the notation of longitude. It would possess all the advantage claimed for the Greenwich ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... in less time than the telling, Maren Le Moyne, rescuer, leader of the long trail, was dragged, fast bound by a dozen gripping hands, into the firelit space in the great circle, a captive under the eyes of the man she had ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... rang out upon the midday air with startling suddenness, and immediately they were off on a fine start to the accompaniment of the cheering of the crowd which lined the whole track in a great circle. The first round ended with the runners much as they had started, the interval between each being fairly equally maintained. Semple, however, dropped out, not caring to overstrain himself as he had some heavy racing next day at another gathering, where a ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... the sand, which was like a circle, save that it was cut from north-west to south-east by two straight lines; and from north-east to south-west by two straight lines; and at each of the four small arcs, where the straight lines cut the circumference of the great circle, a part of a smaller circle outside the great one united the points over each other. And upon the east side, toward the altar, the great circle was not joined, but open for a ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... by design appeared for that end, if it had had more Latitude, and that consequently we might have seen it before Day break. He wishes also, that, if possible, it may be accurately observed, whether it will not a little decline from its great Circle towards the South; Judging, that some important truth may be thence deduced, as well as if its motion retarded more, than the place of its Perigee (which will be more exactly known when all the passed Observations ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... now ensued between the companions; for they had quitted Evil-budget, and arrived at the ninth great circle of hell, on the mound of which they passed along, looking quietly and steadily before them. Daylight had given place to twilight; and Dante was advancing his head a little, and endeavouring to discern objects in the distance, when his whole attention was called to one particular spot, by a blast ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... of navigation did not enable him to project a course on the great circle—the shortest track between two points on the earth's surface, and the route taken by steamers. But he possessed a fairly practical and ingenious mind, and with a flexible steel straight-edge rule, and a class-room globe in the skipper's ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... and ere we yet touched the beach, Borabolla declared, that we were already landed. Which paradoxical assertion implied, that the hospitality of Mondoldo was such, that in all directions it radiated far out upon the lagoon, embracing a great circle; so that no canoe could sail by the island, without its occupants being so long ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Luckily, he emerged from the flood with credit; nay, the examiner himself was obliged at times to assume a knowledge which he did not possess, for, if Stump knew how to con a ship from port to port, Royson could give reasons for great circle sailing which left Stump gasping. At last, the stout captain could no longer conceal his amazement when Royson had recited correctly the rules of the road for ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... activity of the witch and the wizard, were told in hushed voices at the Breton fireside when the winter wind blew cold from the cruel sea and the heaped faggots sent the red glow of fire-warmth athwart the thick shadows of the great farm kitchen, and old and young from grandsire to herd-boy made a great circle to hearken to the creepy tales so dear to ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... understandings," said Simek, with a bland smile, describing a great circle with his outspread arms; "do not fear ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... was only the year that was wrong. A somewhat remarkable experience in this direction is chronicled by the early reports of the visitors to Dunsink Observatory. I cannot find the date on which the great circle was ordered from Ramsden, but it is fixed with sufficient precision by an allusion in Ussher's paper to the Royal Irish Academy, which shows that by the 13th June, 1785, the order had been given, but that the abandonment of the 10-foot scale had ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... hard, pursuing the sun in its daily course through the sky, by the equation of time correcting its aberrations due to the earth's swinging around the great circle of its orbit, and charting Sumner lines innumerable, working assumed latitudes for position until his ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London |
