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Great Wall   /greɪt wɔl/   Listen
Great Wall

noun
1.
A fortification 1,500 miles long built across northern China in the 3rd century BC; it averages 6 meters in width.  Synonyms: Chinese Wall, Great Wall of China.






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"Great Wall" Quotes from Famous Books



... wind, Audrey, rushing over prairies infinite as the sea; I shall see the great wall of the Rockies rising sky-high. And England will seem like a little piece of patchwork, with a pattern of mole-hills for mountains, and brooks for rivers. And when I've set our Canadian farm going, I shall hunt big game. And when I've exterminated ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... off his horse with the quickness of thought. He had enough presence of mind to tether both his own and Bradby's mount, and then he cautiously parted the bushes. For the moment he could see nothing but a great wall of golden blossoms, and then out of the depths came Bradby's furious voice. He was cursing the horse and the slope and everything and everyone within hearing in the simple and forceful fashion ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh

... declared, "and the chances are in favor of this one, so here goes to discover it," and he plunged into the timber with Walter close at his heels. He had taken no more than twenty steps when he stopped with an exclamation of surprise and astonishment, his way was barred by a great wall of stone that towered several feet above his head. It had once been a fortification of considerable strength, but growing trees had made breaches in it here and there, their thrusting, up-growing trunks tumbling ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... who tells us some very good stories about the way in which two Chinese gentlemen contrive to keep up a long talk without saying a word which has any meaning in it. Something like this is occasionally heard on this side of the Great Wall. The best Chinese talkers I know are some pretty women whom I meet from time to time. Pleasant, airy, complimentary, the little flakes of flattery glimmering in their talk like the bits of gold-leaf in eau-de-vie de Dantzic; their accents flowing on in a soft ripple,—never ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious, Thothmes, and Buddha. Its emblems and symbols have been found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the Egyptian Pyramids—always ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... speed, and by degrees Tempered her motion to the tranquil seas, As if she knew the land not far ahead, The port not far: so forward piloted By that sweet spirit and strong, she held her way Unveering. And a little past midday, The wanderer lifted up his eyes, and right Before him saw what seemed a great wall, white As alabaster, builded o'er the sea, High as the heaven; but drawing nearer he Perceived it was a mighty mist that lay Upon the ocean, stretching far away Northward and southward, and the sun appeared Powerless to melt its mass. And while he neared This cloudy barrier stretching ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... English engineers, but which Mr. Lionel Vaughan Bennett regarded as a mere matter of daily routine, hardly worth more than a passing mention. There was nothing for it but to take another walk round Newport, and after further admiring the great wall holding up the embankment opposite the station—a colossal work executed under great difficulties—to look at the surrounding landscape. Those who are interested in engineering may like to know the dimensions of this wall, which is two hundred feet long, thirty-five feet high, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... profound compassion for Ruth as he regarded her, a poignant stab in his breast like pain. Sitting there without movement, with her hands idle upon her lap, with her face a little lifted and her eyes wistfully bent on the great wall opposite, she seemed so young and small to be dwelling at such a place, so helpless, so solitary, that her presence appeared a cruel irony of fate. Her homesteading was a desperate clutch at security; and her situation was utterly different ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... the great wall of forest-covered mountain, lifting its height before the open door, and the blood showed its deep ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... aloud, and the great wall with its ivy glistening silver in the light echoed back the name. At the time I was not surprised to hear the the three syllables so fully pronounced by the echo. I enjoyed the sound of the name, and called it again and again. "Ysidria! Ysidria!" each time called back the ruined ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison

... for Roman soldiers," said Cissie; "at least, not in Caesar, though I rather like them in stories. I love the one in Puck of Pook's Hill, who had to set out for the great wall; he was a perfect dear. If Rudyard Kipling could have written that wretched De Bello Gallico it would have been so different, and ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... few minutes they were rattling along the road, while Esteban Larralde and Julia sat side by side in the shade of the great wall that surrounded the fruit garden. And one at least of them was gathering that quick harvest of love which is like the grass of the field, inasmuch as to-day it is, and ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman

... next about the Grand Canal and the Great Wall; but I will defer it for half an hour for a recess, for I think you must be tired of the dry details I have been giving you," said the professor, as he stepped down ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... to a sudden halt. A couple of hundred yards on ahead lay an open glade. At the left of the trail stood a great wall tent. ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... tired, they pitched their huts by the river-bank, poor Wafer in torment from his knee, and the rest of them hungry and cold. They had hardly finished their huts, when the river came down in a great wall of water, some sudden flood, due to a cloud-burst higher up. The flood sucked away their huts, and forced them to run to higher ground. They passed that night "straggling in the Woods, some under one Tree, some under another," with the thunder roaring overhead, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... more effectively to combine their force against threatening foes. And it is a striking suggestion of history that to the frightful ravages of the Huns—swarthy, ill-shaped, ferocious, destroying—may have been due the Great Wall of China, for the protection of its remote towns, as to them, on the other hand, was certainly due the foundation of Venice. The first inhabitants of what has been since that queenly city—along whose liquid and level ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley

... Ho-am-ti, Emperor of China, the same who built the great wall between China and Tartary, destroyed all the books and learned ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... as means to a foothold in business—he regarded that as wise audacity. To use a firm-established foothold in business as a means to gambling—he regarded that as the acme of reckless folly. Besides, when he marked the cards or loaded the dice for a great Wall Street game of "high finance," he did it with skill and intelligence; ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... and I got out above one of them to walk. I climbed up the river wall to the high, sandy terrace above. This great wall of packed boulders is one of the most characteristic features of the lower river. It is thrown up by the action of ice in the spring floods, and varies all the way from twenty feet at its beginning to ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)

... however kept on their way north-east for more than "one thousand days," three years and a half, till they stood in the presence of Kublai Khan; beyond Gobi and the Great Wall and the mountain barriers of China, in Cambaluc or Pekin, "princess ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... upward at as stiff a slant as he felt would be safe for them in that high wind. At nine thousand feet they emerged above the first layer; but eastward the clouds appeared to terrace up gradually, and in the distance there extended another great wall, towering several ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... known as Thapatkari (tapper or chiseller), Telenga Kunbi and Munurwar. They occupy a higher position than the ordinary Beldar, and Kunbis will take water from them and sometimes food. They say that they came into Chanda from the Telugu country along the Godavari and Pranhita rivers to build the great wall of Chanda and the palaces and tombs of the Gond kings. There is no reason to doubt that the Munurwars are a branch of the Kapu cultivating caste of the Telugu country. Mr. A. K. Smith states that they refuse ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... it out—by digging it out! With the irrational cunning of his mad brain, that had put the money even beyond his own reach, old Doyle had built his fireplace with a hollow some eighteen inches square in a great wall of solid stonework, and from it had run a two-inch pipe up somewhere to the story above; and down this pipe he had dropped his little string-tied cylinders of banknotes, satisfied that his hoard was safe! There seemed something ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... beside it, of the same date and architecture as the house, had long ceased to be inhabited. The gate was a substantial iron affair, and carried a placard, peremptorily directing the person entering to close it behind him. And on either side of it, the great wall stretched away with which, some ten years before this date, Melrose, at incredible cost, had surrounded the greater part of his property, in consequence of a quarrel with the local hunt, and to prevent its members ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... had passed the strange rock-shape known as the Chapeau de Gendarme, and the line of mountains which is like the great wall of China, Maieddine defied the danger he had never quite ceased to fear during the five long days since the adventure on the other side of Bou-Saada. He ordered the carriage curtains to be rolled up as tightly as they would go, and Victoria saw a place so beautiful ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... same direction, one approaches a great wall, with gateway sentry-guarded; it is the new Arsenal, the pride of Taranto, and the source of its prosperity. On special as well as on general grounds, I have a grudge against this mass of ugly masonry. I had ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... chief officer. The fifth line is on the north of Malpanagudi, and here the great gateway still stands, though the wall is much damaged and destroyed. The sixth line is passed just to the south of the Kamalapur tank. The seventh or inner line is the great wall still to be seen in fairly good repair north of that village. This last surrounded the palace and the government buildings, the space enclosed measuring roughly a mile from north to south, and two miles and a quarter from east to ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... for the sago produced by the natives of the Fly River Delta. It is a picturesque sight to see the large lakatois, or trading canoes, creeping along in the shadow of the palm-fringed shores under the great wall of the mountains, the lakatoi consisting of a raft composed of six or more canoes lashed together side by side, and covered by a platform which bears a thatched hut serving to house the sailors and their wares. The craft ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... curiosity of visitors than a set of tall-backed, elaborately carved chairs, exceedingly like those which were used in our own country two centuries ago, and which Cowper so exquisitely describes. For thousands of miles in the wide tract that spreads out between European Christendom and the great wall, the inhabitants squat upon mats or carpets, or loll on divans; and the contrivance of the chair is unknown: it reappears in China, however, and reappears, not as a mere seat or stool, but as, in every bar and limb, the identical chair of Europe arrested ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... of the first king suggested the plan of giving the sun diurnal movement and the changing light. The moon and stars were a later development. They found, too, that the light could not be made to reach certain recesses in the cavern where the roof approached the earth, so they finally built a great wall to keep the inhabitants within proscribed boundaries, and to prevent them from understanding the ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... taken, 'si qua fata aspera rupissent.' Among these still-born Chesters, Newcastle-upon-Tyne may fairly rank first. It stands on the Roman site, called, from its bridge across the Tyne, Pons Aelii, and known later on, from its position on the great wall, as Ad Murum. Under the early English, after their conversion to Christianity, the monks became the accepted inheritors of Roman ruins; and the small monastery which was established here procured it the English name of Muneca-ceaster, or, as we should now say, Monk-chester, though no doubt ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... may be, it stands to-day the most prominent landmark in all this district of the Tigris valley; though broken, tumbledown mounds represent the great wall towards the Euphrates, for many miles near the Tigris it stands without a break, with strong projecting bastions to give flank defence every forty or fifty yards, and at wider intervals the wall rises so as to form some sort of keep ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous

... with which the rocky sides of the nearest hills are defaced. But there is nothing new in this, for, as far back as 1887, the name of a well-known American pill and ointment vendor met my astonished gaze on the Great Wall of China. The North Pole will soon be the only virgin field left open to the up-to-date advertiser. Skagway is now a quiet, orderly township, and a favourite resort of tourists, but shortly after it was founded, in 1898, a band of swindlers and cut-throats ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... of Allah, at Meccah, which has already been accurately described by the traveller Burckhardt, stands in an oblong square, enclosed by a great wall, 257 paces long, and 210 broad. The open space is surrounded by colonnades united by pointed arches and surmounted by domes. The Kaabah itself is an oblong, flat-roofed structure, 22 paces long and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... possessing oracles, and the gods living in these towns he brought to save them to Dur-Iakin, fortifying its walls. He summoned the tribes of Gambul, Pukud, Tamun, Ruhua, and Khindar, put them in this place, and prepared for battle. He calculated the extent of a plethrum[30] in front of the great wall. He constructed a ditch 200 spans[31] wide, and deep one fathom and a half.[32] The conduits of water, coming from the Euphrates, flowed out into this ditch; he had cut off the course of the river, and divided it into canals, he had surrounded the town, the place of ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... were very wet and cold. It rained again the next day and most of the following one. Still, they spent the two days crawling along the farther side of the range, for when they had struggled through the snow in a rift between two peaks, a great wall of rock that fell almost sheer cut them off from the next valley. Somewhat to Weston's astonishment, Grenfell now showed little sign of flagging. He seemed intent and eager; and when they stopped, gasping, where the ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... another invention. They stopped working at the large building in front of the mound, and starting at either end of it inside from the old low wall, built a new one in the form of a crescent running in towards the town; in order that in the event of the great wall being taken this might remain, and the enemy have to throw up a fresh mound against it, and as they advanced within might not only have their trouble over again, but also be exposed to missiles on their flanks. While raising ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... Affghanistan; to tribes of India speaking thirty-two different languages or dialects; to the inhabitants of Burmah, Assam, and Siam; to the islanders of Madagascar and Ceylon; to the Malays and Javanese of the Eastern seas; to the millions of China, and the wandering Kalmuck beyond her great wall; to the brave New Zealander; to the teeming inhabitants of the island groups which are scattered over the Southern Pacific; to the African races, from the Cape to Sierra Leone; to the Esquimaux ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... moments she read a paper-covered volume, and Edmund determined to creep away at once, when she suddenly got up and began walking again with long, quick steps, her train sweeping the grass as she came towards the great wall; and he drew back a little, although it was almost impossible that she should see him. Her gown, of a dark dove colour, floated softly; it had much lace about the throat on which shone a string of enormous pearls; and ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... negotiate. And as they proceeded the darkness closed in upon them, until they appeared to be making an almost precipitate descent into a vast black pit. There was no light here at all except for the stars above, for the last glow of twilight was completely shut off by the great wall they ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... too is truth, O Hadji; that in Daybyday, even now, you may find ruins of the many temples, and here and there a little of the many gods. Even now you may see where the Great Wall was. But of the Crown, in ...
— The Uncrowned King • Harold Bell Wright

... stream. At first it appears rather surprising that the trade-wind along the northern parts of Chile and on the coast of Peru should blow in so very southerly a direction as it does; but when we reflect that the Cordillera, running in a north and south line, intercepts, like a great wall, the entire depth of the lower atmospheric current, we can easily see that the trade-wind must be drawn northward, following the line of mountains, towards the equatorial regions, and thus lose part of that easterly movement which it otherwise would have gained from the earth's rotation. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... have entered into an eternal agreement, pledged their faith one to another, and have been calling upon Heaven for help; therefore they declare that no flag will be lowered, and no gun will be silent until the great wall around the city of their foes shall fall, either at a long blast of the horn or a continuous volley ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris

... was not so terribly destructive. But it was effective enough, and that of the Russian rear ships was hopelessly bad. The Japanese cruisers drove the transports and their escort, in a huddled crowd, north-eastwards towards the main Russian fleet. The great wall sides of the German liner, now the auxiliary cruiser "Ural," were riddled, and the giant began to settle down in the water. The cruiser "Svietlana," hit badly in the forepart, was dangerously down by the head. The transports "Kamschatka" and "Irtish" were both set on fire, and the latter ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... brickmaking travelled eastwards from Babylonia across the whole of Asia. It is believed that the art of making glazed bricks, so highly developed afterwards by the Chinese, found its way across Asia from the west, through Persia and northern India, to China. The great wall of China was constructed partly of brick, both burnt and unburnt; but this was built at a comparatively late period (c. 210 B.C.), and there is nothing to show that the Chinese had any knowledge of burnt bricks when the art flourished ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... engineer officer left behind, and he remained till the spring of 1862, performing the ordinary engineer duties of providing accommodation for men and horses. During his stay at Tientsin there is little of any interest to record. He wisely relieved the monotony of camp life by making a journey to the Great Wall of China, which has been visited by very few of our countrymen. He was doubtless prompted by curiosity to undertake this expedition, but other motives were also at work. He was a born soldier, he was good at surveying, and doubtless he was anxious to ascertain ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... thought a host of bold navigators who steered their way through fog and ice into the great Sea of Hudson, giving those names to strait and bay and island, which we read in our school-days upon great wall-hung maps and never think or care about again. Nor were these anticipations of reaching the East held ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... thirteenth century by the Emperor Kublai Khan, extended to about six hundred and fifty miles in length, and completed an almost unbroken water communication between Peking and Canton. As a wonderful engineering feat it is indeed more than matched by the famous Great Wall, which dates back to a couple of hundred years before Christ, and which has been glorified as the last trace of man's handiwork on the globe to fade from the view of an imaginary person receding into space. Recent exploration shows that this wall is about ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... a great wall of rock towering before them, in which was a low arched entrance, and on either side of this entrance stood a guard, armed with a sword and a spear. The guards of the mines were not so fierce as the warriors of King Gos, their duty being to make the slaves work at their ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum

... have all heard talked about so much in the past, have been gradually merging into one, and Heaven knows I hope there may never be but one again. In the nature of things it was impossible at first that there could be only one, but of late the one great wall that divided them has passed away, and, standing here facing you to-night, I feel precisely as I should if I were standing facing an audience of my own dear Virginians. There is no longer division ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... of shore which circled about him, like a great wall thrown up between the lagoon and the Pacific, that steadily broke on the outside. But turn his keen eyes wheresoever he chose, he could detect not the slightest sign of the mutineers. He thought it likely they would ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... to the Jerusalem mob. The steps, hewn partly in the solid rock, are still visible; but the site of the castle is occupied by the Turkish barracks, beside which the tallest minaret of the Haram lifts its covered gallery high above the corner of the great wall. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... of which Venice was the chief city, was enlarged in all its maritime coasts, from the town of Aquila as far as Adria. The decree ordered, moreover, that the port should be repaired, the canals deepened and cleaned, the great wall of Palestrina of which I have spoken above, and the jetties in front of it, extended and maintained; that a canal of communication between the arsenal of Venice and the Pass of Mala-Mocco should be dug; and finally that this passage itself should be cleared and deepened sufficiently for vessels ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... till the time of the conquest by the Spaniards, and for a long time the only city in the Peruvian empire, deserves a paragraph under the head archeology. Its wonderful fortress has already been referred to, and there are other Cyclopean remains, such as the great wall which contains the "stone of twelve corners." Some monuments of the Inca period also attract much attention, such as the Curi-cancha temple, 296 feet long, the palace of Amaru-cancha (i. e., "place of serpents"), so called from the serpents sculptured ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... dark, and the great wall made it seem blacker as I stole on over the soft green path meaning to make sure that Ike had gone over quite safely, and ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... the open window; the clusters of cultivated shrub on the sweep of velvet lawn extending to the great wall that inclosed the place, then the bend of the river and beyond the distant mountains, blue and mysterious, blending indiscernibly into the sky. A soft sun, clouded with the haze of autumn, shone ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... less strong against Mr. F——'s. But before long the delight of dancing over the waves made Mr. M—— and Carriere work to such purpose that we regained the lead, Mr. M—— shouting, "Here comes another, Carriere! Head her up!" as a great wall of white-capped water rushing down upon us seemed to threaten destruction to our tiny boat; then, with a splash, struck it, dashing the spray over us as we rose above it and were ready for another. As ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... him Febrer recalled his visit to the elevated city, the Royal Fortress of Iviza, a dead town, separated from the district of Marina by a great wall, built in the time of Philip II, with its cracks now filled with waving green caper bushes. Headless Roman statues, set in three niches, decorated the gate, which opened from the city to the suburb. Beyond this the streets wound upward toward the hill occupied by the Cathedral and the ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... will laugh at me, no doubt, for an arrant dreamer, but this is the place whereto in dreams I have been many a time. Now we shall come to yon turn of the road among the houses, and beyond that we shall surely see a stone-arched gate in a great wall, and spearmen on ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler

... Amoritic king was Sumu-abum, but little is known regarding him except that he reigned at Sippar. He was succeeded by Sumu-la-ilu, a deified monarch, who moved from Sippar to Babylon, the great wall of which he either repaired or entirely reconstructed in his fifth year. With these two monarchs began the brilliant Hammurabi, or First Dynasty of Babylonia, which endured for three centuries. Except Sumu-abum, who seems to stand ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... interview with Juda was extremely painful. She hid her head, her great wall eyes rolling fearfully, and cried bitterly, "Oh! I am forever undone. Why did I not listen to your entreaties, and heed the kind advice of my good master, to lay up treasures in heaven as well as in the savings' bank!" ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... lost to sight in the fog. The last thing the boy saw was the men trying to get out from under the mass of sails. Thereupon the vessel disappeared as completely as if it had slipped in behind a great wall. "It has already gone down," thought the lad. And now he ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof

... occupation by any settlers who know how to make better use of the soil. This explains the easy intrusion of the English colonists into the sparsely tenanted territory of the Indians, of the agricultural Chinese into the pasture lands of the Mongols beyond the Great Wall, of the American pioneers into the hunting grounds of the Hudson Bay Company in the disputed Oregon country.[106] The frail bonds which unite these lower societies to their soil are easily ruptured and the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... vouchsafed a sight such as no man may see and live. A great wall of white flung itself upon the island. Trees, dogs, men, were blotted out, as though the hand of God had wiped the face of nature clean. This much he saw, then swayed an instant longer in his lofty perch and hurtled far out ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... the pilgrims sit up in their hovels. A dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the manager's hut, vanished, then, a second or so after, the doorway itself vanished, too. We stopped, and the silence driven away by the stamping of our feet flowed back again from the recesses of the land. The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... was easy, but at length they came to a great wall of rock, a hundred fathoms high, on which no fox might find a foothold, nor ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard

... steadily to the pole, was discovered by this ingenious people; and who may say what other progress may have been made in science and literature up to B. C. 220, when the cruel and ambitious Che-Hwang-te, who, having finished the Great Wall, and wishing to date the foundation of his empire from his reign, collected and burned all such records as he could obtain, and destroyed by a cruel death the wise ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... and two days before the wedding went to Harleston, where the king was, and urged him to have forces along the great wall we ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... an end of it, and immediately began, on no other foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man the Great Wall of China. He went away in high spirits. Ada and I, prepared to miss him very much, commenced ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... close to this great wall of ice, for two weeks, without seeing any evidence of a current of any kind, until there came on a storm from the northwest that drove a great deal of ice around the great ring; but it seemed to keep rather clear of the great wall of ice ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... may cry, "but it is more than two moments that I give Him; I give Him hours, and yet I cannot find Him." If that is really so, then the second reason is the one which would explain why He has not been found. A great wall divides us from the consciousness of the Presence of God. In this wall there is one Door, and one only, Jesus Christ. We have not found God because we have not found Him first as Jesus Christ in our own heart. Now whether we take our heart to church, whether we take ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley

... of Serica.—That is, the silk originally derived from the mountainous country where the great wall terminates, and which appears to have been the cradle of the Chinese empire. The tissues of Cassimere.— The shawls which Ezekiel seems to have described under the appellation of Choud-choud. The gold of Ophir.—This ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... the explosion and seeing the great wall of flames approaching the steamer, those on deck sought shelter wherever it was possible, jumping into the cabin, the forecastle and even into the hold. I was in the chart room, but the burning embers were borne by so swift a movement of the air ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... high; the walls of the Canaanites were terrible upon this account, and did even sink the hearts of those that beheld them (Deu 1:28). Wherefore this city shall be most certainly in safety, she hath a wall about her, a great wall: a wall about her, an high wall. It is great for compass, it incloseth every saint; it is great for thickness, it is compacted of all the grace and goodness of God, both spiritual and temporal; and for height, if you count from the utmost side to the utmost, then it is higher than ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... that Nicanor left his home in the gray northlands, up by the rolling hills and the barren moors which lay under the great Wall of Hadrian; and journeyed down the long road which led ever southward to Londinium. Past Eboracum, on the Urus, that "other Rome," where the Governor of Britain dwelt, famous as the station of the Sixth Legion, called the Victorious, the flower of the Roman army, which men ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... with dull red gleams, like the glow of a carbuncle; past the sleeping palace of Stanislas, into the old "nursery garden" of the Pepiniere, to the sombre Porte de la Craffe whose two huge, pointed towers and great wall guard the old town of Duke ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... earliest worship of the Roman community new rites were gradually added. The most important of these worships had reference to the city as newly united and virtually founded afresh by the construction of the great wall and stronghold. In it the highest and best lovis of the Capitol—that is, the genius of the Roman people—was placed at the head of all the Roman divinities, and his "kindler" thenceforth appointed, the -flamen Dialis-, formed ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... Hell in the Campo Santo, which is described by Dante, and which was afterwards spoilt in the year 1530 and restored by Sollazzino, a painter of our own times; and he returned to Florence, where, in the middle of the Church of S. Croce, on a very great wall on the right, he painted in fresco the same subjects that he painted in the Campo Santo of Pisa, in three similar pictures, excepting, however, the scene where S. Macarius is showing to three Kings the misery of man, and the life of the hermits who are serving God on that mountain. ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari

... after long journeying they came in sight of the great wall and at last reached the place from which they had started. They had been away twelve months in all, and the people were heartily glad to see them, especially when they heard that Hormuz had been killed and saw his body. They had worked hard on the carcass of the huge ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa

... tower two hundred and fifty-six feet high entirely of porcelain. Ages ago they dug the longest and in some respects the greatest canal ever dug on earth, the Grand Canal of China, which was a thousand miles long and some of which is in use to this day. They built the Great Wall of China which was fifteen hundred miles in length and which was a greater undertaking than the building of the ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols

... out, they found that they were near a great wall. It was built of very old stones and was as wide as a road on top. Several horses could ride ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson

... The relations went to fetch the fire. As it was barely alight, some oil was poured on it, and suddenly a flame arose lighting up the great wall of rock from summit to base. An Indian who was leaning over the brazier rose upright, his two hands in the air, his elbows bent, and all at once we saw arising, all black on the immense white cliff, a colossal shadow, the shadow of Buddha in his hieratic posture. And the little pointed toque that ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... task exalted enough to quicken the most sluggish zeal, the most retrograde "patriotism"? For without such mediation, misunderstanding, envy, hate, mistrust still erect barriers between the races of mankind more impassable than continents or seas or the great wall of Ch'in Chi. This is a part not for the future merely, it is one to which Britain is already by her past committed. The task is great, for between civilization and barbarism, the vanguard and the rearguard ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... a mile on a side, the area was surrounded by a wall that had been designed after the Great Wall of China. It stood twenty-five feet high and looked very ...
— What The Left Hand Was Doing • Gordon Randall Garrett

... apt to arrive, as it were, a little out of breath. But even this drawback can scarcely be permanent. Science must presently achieve the storage of motive-power in some less bulky form than that of crude coal. Then the Atlantic will be as extinct, politically, as the Great Wall of China; or, rather, it will retain for America the abiding significance which the "silver streak" possesses for England—an effectual bulwark against aggression, but a highway ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... strait, the old delusion about the collapse of Federal finance occasionally came up for hopeful discussion; and, from time to time, Mr. Benjamin would put out a feeler about recognition from governments that remembered us less than had we really been behind the great wall of China. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... spreadeth. Go to now, hereafter when the flowing-haired Achaians be departed upon their ships to their dear native land, then burst thou this wall asunder and scatter it all into the sea, and cover the great sea-beach over with sand again, that the great wall of the Achaians ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... and horse-drawn pleasure vehicles, mostly bound up-town, their occupants seeking the cooler airs and wider spaces to be found beyond the Harlem River and along the Speedway. A few blocks to the west Cathedral Heights bulked like a great wall, wrapped in purple shadows, its jagged contour stark against an evening sky of ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... then have the honor of being permitted to accompany him to Vienna. His Imperial Majesty is a strict and punctilious lord, and has calculated to the very day and hour when I may again reach the imperial palace. For our interview here he allowed me one hour; and, lo! the cock of your great wall clock had just stepped out and crowed eleven as I entered your room, and is already here, crowing twelve as loud as he can. It is therefore time for me to depart. I have briefly made you acquainted with the Emperor's intentions ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... she flamed at the recollection. Yes, it did take the whole valley to hold her, the valley which was as much a part of her as her eyes which beheld it. There were moments when she stood under the hazy autumn sky, so acutely conscious of every line and color of the great wall of mountains surrounding her that she grew in very fact to be an indivisible portion of the whole—felt herself as actually rooted to that soil and as permanent under that sky as the great elm ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... persons are generally closely guarded when they approach a desirable condition of body, and the hound Hercules would not prove an attractive dish to those who had known him in life. Nevertheless, it is well said, "The Great Wall is unsurmountable, but there are many gaps through," and that same evening I was able to carry the first part of ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they have God's right to come; though they bring all Ireland and her miseries with them. For the whole world is the patrimony of the whole world; there is no telling who does not own a stone in the Great Wall of China. But we waive all this; and will only consider, how best the emigrants can come hither, since come they do, and ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... Nagger snorted a welcome. Evidently they had passed an uneasy night. Slone found lion tracks at the spring and in sandy places. Presently he was on his way up to the notch between the great wall and the plateau. A growth of thick scrub-oak made travel difficult. It had not appeared far up to that saddle, but it was far. There were straggling pine-trees and huge rocks that obstructed his gaze. But once up he saw that the saddle was only a ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... works of utility, such as roads, canals—one of which is nearly 700 miles in length—and boldly designed bridges, the Chinese seem to have shown a more enlightened mind; and the Great Wall, which was built to protect the northern boundary of the kingdom, about 200 B.C., is a wonderful example of engineering skill. This wall, which varies from 15 to 30 ft. in height, is about 25 ft. thick at the base, and ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... Russian diplomacy rested not till it had secured the right to extend the Trans-Siberian Railway southward from Sungari through Manchuria to Tachi-chao near Mukden. From there one branch runs southward to Port Arthur and Dalny and another southwestward to Shan-hai Kwan, where the great Wall of China touches the sea. As connection is made at that point with the Imperial Railway to Taku, Tien-tsin and Peking, Moscow 5,746 miles away, is brought within seventeen days of Peking. Thus, Russian influence had an almost unrestricted entrance to China on the North, while ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... turned. In the lanes about that curious old mansion, with its windows reaching from floor to roof, that stands at the base of Wolstanbury Hill, they grow early, and ferns linger in sheltered overhung banks. The South Down range, like a great wall, shuts off the sea, and has a different climate on either hand; south by the sea—hard, harsh, flowerless, almost grassless, bitter, and cold; on the north side, just over the hill—warm, soft, with primroses and fern, willows ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... heard the tale of the Chinese King named Shin-no-Shiko. He was one of the most able and powerful rulers in Chinese history. He built all the large palaces, and also the famous great wall of China. He had everything in the world he could wish for, but in spite of all his happiness, and the luxury and splendor of his court, the wisdom of his councilors and the glory of his reign, he was miserable ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... but marched westward, overrunning most of Russia and stopping only when they were on the frontiers of Italy. For a long time southern Russia remained under their rule. Their capital was just north of the Great Wall of China. ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton

... like encompassing yourselves with the great wall of China," said Corinne, smiling. "There are certainly many rare beauties in your tragic authors; and perhaps they would admit of new ones, could you bring yourselves to tolerate anything not exactly French on your stage. But as for us Italians, our dramatic genius would be greatly ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... through the islands of the Indian Ocean, to China and to Timor. Before the end of 1827, it had traversed the Molucca islands, and the island of Timor, and continuing for several years to ravage the interior of China, it had, by 1827, passed to the north of the great wall, and had desolated some places in Mongolia. In the meantime, also, it extended to the west. Bombay, Persia, Asiatic Turkey, Russia, Poland, Austria, and Prussia, all experienced the dreadful visitation, from 1818 to 1831. Precautions had been taken in England, by enforcing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... of horse attached to the Sixth Legion—'the Victorious and Faithful,' that had come over to Britain with the Emperor Hadrian. He was sitting one August afternoon by the fountain in the Forum of Corstopitum, engaged upon improving a system of fire signals for use on the great wall, which Hadrian was building from the Tyne estuary to the ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease

... of the farmer are getting attention. The enemy of the San Jose scale was found near the Great Wall of China, and is now cleaning up all our orchards. The fig-fertilizing insect imported from Turkey has helped to establish an industry in California that amounts to from fifty to one hundred tons of dried figs annually, and is extending over the Pacific coast. A parasitic fly from South ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... lake is strangely overflown, and we are desperate about turf, being forced to buy it three miles off: and Mrs. Johnson (God help her!) gives you many a curse. Your mason is come, but cannot yet work upon your garden. Neither can I agree with him about the great wall. For the rest, vide the letter you will have on Monday, if Mr. Tickell ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... India, we can grow wheat in Russia. We can put up a high tariff wall and grow rice in Russia, if we grow it in a hothouse; but it would not be so profitable as raising wheat. Tariff walls are trade restrictions. They are as obsolete as the great wall of China." ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... reservoirs in which the early kings had caught and stored the superfluous waters of the Euphrates during the annual inundation. Upon these works his prisoners of war, Syrians and Egyptians, Jews and Arabs, were employed in vast numbers. The great wall of Babylon was set up anew; so was the temple of Nebo at Borsippa; the reservoir at Sippara, the royal canal, and a part at least of Lake Pallacopas, were excavated; Kouti, Sippara, Borsippa, Babel, rose upon their own ruins. Nebuchadnezzar was ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... went with loosened rein, while the young Roman's eyes raised to the great wall towering over him had more of admiration and a generous foe's appreciation of his enemy's strength than of the note-making search of a ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... the stones had been, little pools of water formed, while round them grew masses of beautiful flowers, among which was a new crop of the little blue flax, stronger and better grown than any that had been there before. Gradually there grew up a great wall of rock around the plain where the boulders were drawn by the children, for each was taken to its nearest boundary, as Eline told them this would be the simplest ...
— The Strange Little Girl - A Story for Children • V. M.

... China as the greatest peace-loving nation on earth, we are in some danger of forgetting that her experience of war in all its phases has also been such as no modern State can parallel. Her long military annals stretch back to a point at which they are lost in the mists of time. She had built the Great Wall and was maintaining a huge standing army along her frontier centuries before the first Roman legionary was seen on the Danube. What with the perpetual collisions of the ancient feudal States, the grim conflicts with Huns, Turks and other ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... one has a view of the great wall of mountains that form the western and older—older geologically—end of the island, in which lies the famous Iao Valley, which I have already described. We judge, from the much deeper marks of rain erosion, that this end of the island is vastly older than the butt end upon ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... he would say, casting longing eyes aloft. Or, patting the taffrail with his great sailor hands, "Up tae it, ye bitch! Up!! Up!!!" as, raising her head, streaming in cascade from a sail-pressed plunge, she turned to meet the next great wall of water that set against her. "She'll stand it, Mister," to the Mate at his side. "She'll stand it, an' the head gear holds. If she starts that!"—he turned his palms out—"If she starts th' ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... frontier against the incursions of nomadic tribes three methods are possible: the construction of a great wall, the establishment of a strong military cordon, and the permanent subjugation of the marauders. The first of these expedients, adopted by the Romans in Britain and by the Chinese on their northwestern frontier, is enormously expensive, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... a great river of ice! They could see where it came out of a hollow place between two hills. It looked just like a river, only it was frozen solid, and the end of it, where it came into the sea, was broken off like a great wall of ice, and there were cakes of ice floating about ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... not the question that it was fifteen or twenty or thirty years ago. It used to be said by the advocates of the tariff that it made no difference even if there were a great wall separating us from the commerce of the world, because inside the United States there was so enormous an area of absolute free trade that competition within the country kept prices down to a normal level; that so long as ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson

... up with the leper promontory: lowland, quite bare and bleak and harsh, a little town of wooden houses, two churches, a landing-stair, all unsightly, sour, northerly, lying athwart the sunrise, with the great wall of the pali cutting the world out on the south. Our lepers were sent on the first boat, about a dozen, one poor child very horrid, one white man, leaving a large grown family behind him in Honolulu, and then into the second stepped the sisters and myself. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Palms and extend to the Exposition enclosure along the south boundary line, where a wall fifty feet high and ten feet wide has been erected of a solid green moss-like growth, studded with myriads of tiny pink star-like blossoms. This great wall is perforated by simple arched masonry entrances, leading rough the richly planted foreground formed ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt

... to St. Paul's Outside-the-Walls there stood—more free and visible than now—that pyramid of Cestius, close to whose shadow lie the graves of the English Shelley and Keats. There was no gate at this spot in the days of Nero, for the great wall, of which so many portions—more or less restored—are still conspicuous, had no existence till a much later date, when the empire was already tottering to its fall, and when Aurelian was driven to recognise that the heart of the empire, after remaining secure for centuries, must at ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... Mowgli, Fear came, and the fear seemed to them to come from a malignant something from which they must make all haste to flee, did they value safety of mind and of body. Was it for this reason that the Roman legionaries on the Great Wall so often reared altars in that lonely land of moor and mountain where so many of them ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... the Peruginos are now ranged side by side along a great wall of the National Gallery. I am able more clearly than ever to realise how much more the early master appeals to me than his greater pupil. I well remember how, as a boy of fifteen, in the old National Gallery, I would linger long before Raphael's ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... with shadows of stones, and Death is in it, like a leopard lying in the sun. To the south they are bounded by magic, to the west by a mountain, and to the north by the voice and anger of the Polar wind. Like a great wall is the mountain to the west. It comes up out of the distance and goes down into the distance again, and it is named Poltarnees, Beholder of Ocean. To the northward red rocks, smooth and bare of soil, and without any speck of moss or herbage, slope up to the ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... an operator, controlling an electric switchboard provided with one button for each floor member. When one of these buttons is pressed a flap swings down on the great wall blackboards and a white number flashes into sight. It stands for a while, then twinkles again into blackness, but in the meantime it has summoned its man to telephone communication with his office. In periods of stress these ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... stretching, without visible gap, for nearly three hundred miles, it is easy to see why France not only is, but must be, a different world from Spain. Even human thought cannot, to any useful extent, fly over that great wall of homeless rock and snow. On the other side there must needs be another folk, with another tongue, other manners, other polities, and if not another creed, yet surely with other, and utterly different, conceptions of the universe, and of man's business ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... country is waging the greatest war in history. When you walk the crowded streets it is impossible to believe that within forty miles of you millions of men are facing each other in a death grip. This is so, first, because a great wall of silence has been built between Paris and the front, and, second, because the spirit of France is too alive, too resilient, occupied with too many interests, to allow any one thing, even war, to obsess it. The people of France have accepted the war as they ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... princes went riding through the streets on great occasions, these people used to hang out beautiful pieces of cloth of many colours—red and blue and gold—so that the curious narrow streets looked like fairyland. The great wall was a protection to all the people who lived inside, and made the palace and houses like a ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... Empire, the seat of government where ruled the Great Khan, a very mighty potentate, Kublai Khan, grandson of the famous conqueror, Ghenghis Khan. Kublai Khan resided at the wonderful city of Cambuluc, which we now know as Pekin. North of the Great Wall, and some one hundred and eighty miles from Cambuluc, was the Great Khan's summer palace, one of the wonders of the world, reading of which in Purchas' account of Marco Polo's travels, it is said that Coleridge fell asleep and dreamed the famous ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... Chinese customs, such as the compressed feet of the women, and fishing with cormorants (both of which are described by Ordoric of Pordenone after him); he travelled through the tea districts of Fo-kien, but he never mentions tea-drinking, and he has no word to say even of the Great Wall.[22] And how typical a European he is, in some ways, for all his keen interest in new and strange things. 'They are,' he says of the peaceful merchants and scholars of Suchow, 'a pusillanimous race and solely occupied with their trade and manufactures. In these indeed they display ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... embrace and make part of herself. It was a more natural world, a more rational world. She could understand it—understand the green crabs with white-bleached claws that scuttled before her and which she could see pasturing on green-weeded rocks when the tide was low. Here, hopelessly man-made as the great wall was, nothing seemed artificial. There were no men here, no laws nor conflicts of men. The tide flowed and ebbed; the sun rose and set; regularly each afternoon the brave west wind came romping in through the Golden Gate, darkening the water, cresting ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... actual brickwork, you would say, "I am going to enclose this square garden with a wall." Angles clearly do not affect the question, for we may have a zigzag wall just as well as a straight one, and the Great Wall of China is a good example of a wall with plenty of angles. Now, if you look at Diagrams 1, 2, and 3, you may be puzzled to declare whether there are in each case two or four new walls; but you cannot call them three, as required in our ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... truth of this view. Bevelling, he thinks, may have begun with the Phoenicians; but it became a general feature of Palestinian and Syrian architecture, being employed in Syria as late as the middle ages. The enclosure of the mosque at Hebron and the great wall of Baalbek are bevelled, but are ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... the depot and received our tickets, and were waiting at the rear of a great crowd at the railway gate, till it should be opened to let us pass to our train. I was standing on the right of my grandfather, and Rose on my right. Suddenly a man looked around. He was a great Wall Street broker who had dealings with your firm. Seeing grandfather, he spoke to him heartily, and then begged to introduce the gentleman who was with him. And then and there he presented the Dean of Olivet to Mr. Rockharrt, who, after a few words of polite greeting, presented the dean to ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... strength and courage, learning everything thoroughly, till at the end of three months, they had laid a foundation upon which whatever followed could securely rest; and, when the mid-winter examination came on (which had all along seemed like a great wall that was insurmountable), they were able to scale it ...
— Silver Links • Various

... and one by one every cell was entered and each terrace explored, till, as they looked over the front, they made out that only three more terraces remained, one of which was that below which the great wall of rock went sheer down to the river at the spot where they had cast the line ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... from leaping after his child. There was terrible suspense for a few minutes. At one moment our hero, with his burden held high aloft, was far down in the hollow of the watery turmoil, with the black hull like a great wall rising above him, while the skipper in the main-chains, pale as death but sternly silent held on with his left hand and reached down with his right—every finger rigid and ready! Next moment a water-spout, so to speak, bore the rescuer upward ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... flowers—the more beautiful because doomed to a brief life; with the Gothic steeple, asleep in the still, blue air, and the bell in whose deep iron throat dwelt a note that was hollow and ghostly; with the great wall around the Manor House grounds and with the mighty gate that swung upon hinges in which the voice of a soul in torment seemed to be imprisoned, and with other things which filled him with ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... I draw out of my basket a cake of cheese, a few olives, an onion, and three paper-like loaves, rather leaves, of bread, and fall to. With what relish, I need not say. But let it be recorded here, that under the karob tree, on the bank of the River Adonis, in the shadow of the great wall surrounding the ruins of the temple of Tammuz, I Khalid, in the thirty-fourth year of the reign of Abd'ul-Hamid, gave a banquet to the gods—who, however, were content in being present and applauding ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... any closeness. Her new-born Thought had promised everything, even as Pan, and it had given—she could not say that it had given her nothing or anything. Its limits were too quickly divinable. She had found the Tree of Knowledge, but about on every side a great wall soared blackly enclosing her in from the Tree of Life—a wall which her thought was unable to surmount even while instinct urged that it must topple before her advance; but instinct may not advance when thought has schooled it in the science of unbelief; and this ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... Sirdar, with a party of Maxwell's brigade, passed along by the side of the great wall enclosing the buildings, and square mile of ground, in which were the Khalifa's house, the tomb of the Mahdi, the arsenal, storehouses, and the homes of the ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty

... him through the palace, where all was as still as the grave, and so came out by a postern door into a garden. Beside the postern a torch burned in a bracket. The queen took it down, and then led the prince up a path and under the silent trees until they came to a great wall of rough stone. She pressed her hand upon one of the great stones, and it opened like a door, and there was a flight of steps that led downward. The queen descended these steps, and the prince followed closely behind her. At the bottom was ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle

... fingering the pages of his book. The hit bounded off him like a rubber ball thrown against the Great Wall ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... stirred the sluggishness of my blood, I sat me down again; but in such position that I could see every part of the horizon without difficulty. Ahead of us, that is to the South, I saw now that the great wall of cloud had risen some further degrees, and there was something less of the redness; though, indeed, what there was left of it was sufficiently terrifying; for it appeared to crest the black cloud like ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson

... so, and having had his chains removed, the first thing he asked was to be allowed to see the city (which was called Mildendo). He found that it was surrounded by a great wall about two and a half feet high, broad enough for one of their coaches and four to be driven along, and at every ten feet there were ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... kindling wood, enforced his words. Canoes were at once beached and tarpaulins drawn over the bales of provisions. The men struggled to hoist a tent; but gusts of wind tossed the canvas above their heads, and before the pegs were driven a great wall of rain-drift drenched every one to the skin. By sundown the storm had gone southeast and we unrighteously consoled ourselves that it would probably disorganize the Hudson's Bay brigade as much as it had ours. Plainly, we were there for the night. Point a la Croix is too dangerous ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... dull, red glow hung around, like the reflection of a conflagration. Suddenly, a tremendous peal of thunder, accompanied by a terrific downfall of rain, rattled along the sky. The arch of light disappeared, as though some invisible hand had shut the slide of a giant lantern. A great wall of water rushed roaring over the level plain of the sea, and with an indescribable medley of sounds, in which tones of horror, triumph, and torture were blended, the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... near the great wall of rock. Woods made denser shade on the background of night. The cautious murmur of the ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... with the motive of making isolation more complete, and of securing the perfect safety which that isolation was expected to bring. For, having built, not indeed with brick and mortar, but by means of edict and law, both open and secret, a great wall of exclusion more powerful than that of China's, it was necessary that there should be a port-hole, for both sally and exit, and a slit for vigilant scrutiny of any attempt to force seclusion or violate the frontier. Hence, the Hollanders were allowed to have ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... Isle of Muck, with its one low hill; saw the pyramidal mountains of Rum looming tall in the offing; and then, running along the Isle of Eigg, with its colossal Scuir rising between us and the sky, as if it were a piece of Babylonian wall, or of the great wall of China, only vastly larger, set down on the ridge of a mountain, we entered the channel which separates the island from one of its dependencies, Eilean Chaisteil, and cast anchor in the tideway, about fifty yards from the rocks. We were now at home,—the only home ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... Scavaig and the 'Dream'—and I leaned out, looking longingly over the wide expanse of glittering water just now broken into little crests of foam by a rising breeze. Then I saw that my room was a kind of turret chamber, projecting itself sheer over a great wall of rock which evidently had its base in the bed of the ocean. There was no escape for me that way, even if I had sought it. I drew back from the window and paced round and round my room like a trapped animal— angry with myself for having ventured into such a ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... not whence, arose a frightful roaring, a hollow bellowing, a pent-up rumbling. Seized by a vague terror, she clung to the parapet and trembled. But even the great wall beneath her, solid as the earth itself, seemed to tremble under her feet, as with some inward commotion or dismay. The next moment the water in the moat appeared to rush swiftly upwards, in wild uproar, fiercely confused, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... a great village in huts that were built of stone and surrounded by a great wall. They were very fierce, rushing out and falling upon our warriors before ever they learned that their errand was a peaceful one. Our men were few in number, but they held their own at the top of a little rocky hill, until the fierce people went back at sunset into ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... That same year saw the death of her youthful acquaintance, Attila the Hun, that fierce barbarian whom men had called the "Scourge of God." His mighty empire stretched from the great wall of China to the Western Alps; but, though he ravaged the lands of both eastern and western Rome, he seems to have been so managed or controlled by the wise and peaceful measures of the girl regent, that his destroying hordes never troubled the splendid city by the Golden Horn which ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... two hundred years before our era, constructed that great wall which was not able to save them from the invasion of the Tartars. The Egyptians, three thousand years before, had overloaded the earth with their astonishing pyramids, which had a base of about ninety thousand square feet. Nobody doubts that, if one wished to undertake ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... if a great wall could be built around it the Gods would not have to spend all their time defending their City, Asgard, from the Giants, and he knew that if Asgard were protected, he himself could go amongst men and teach ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum

... the Chinese, for certain supposed beneficial effects upon the nerves, and for other presumed virtues; but our physicians have not discovered any proofs of its efficacy in Europe. The plant is an herbaceous perennial, growing upon the confines of Tartary and China, near the great wall. It is found wild, flourishing in moist situations, and attains the height of from two to three feet; it is also now produced largely in the northern, middle, and western States of the Union, particularly Virginia, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania, and ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... John near the great wall of China, to the north of Chan-si, in Teudich, a populous region full of cities ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... avenue of trees on either side has ceased. The road is seen simply as a white streak stretching towards the mountains. It is traversed in a sweltering heat and choking dust. All around the country is red, sterile and burnt up. In front the great wall of hills rises dark and ominous. At length Dargai at the foot of the pass is reached. It is another mud fort, swelled during the operations into an entrenched camp, and surrounded by a network of barbed wire entanglement. The Malakand Pass can now be seen—a great cleft in the line ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... as he could hardly have stayed in the village as a gentleman without exciting remark or suspicion. He had, however, brought other clothes with him, so that if necessary he could resume them, and appear either as a naval officer or as a civilian. His first step was to make a tour of the great wall which enclosed the castle and the huts in which the prisoners were confined. He saw at once that any attempt to scale the wall would be useless. At the inn he gave out that by the death of a relative he had just come into a few pounds ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... Kouan of the handsomest boy in the world. Each family was ignorant of the happy event which had brought joy into the home of the other, for although their houses were so near together the families were as far apart as if they had been separated by the great wall of the empire, or the ocean itself. What mutual friends they still possessed, never alluded to the affairs of one in the house of the other; even the servants had been forbidden to exchange words with each other, under ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... themselves the foremost nation of the earth. Their civilisation, however, has exercised no influence on the world outside of China, nor has it advanced to the higher achievements of the human mind. As their great wall secludes them from other nations, so do their mental habits prevent them from a free interchange of ideas with foreigners. The Mongolian race, indeed, from which, like the Hungarians and the Finns, they are descended, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... round the town looked soft and green, from the hill in the middle of the town where the Parliament Houses stood. The town itself was small and very pretty, like one of the towns in old illuminated books, and it had a great wall all round it, and orange trees growing on the wall. Billy wondered whether it was ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit

... that time were occupying the canal defences. After some confusion which arose through the orders which had been given to us not having been issued to the 31st Division, relief was carried out and we saw the "Great Wall of China." This was a trench revetted by sand bags, running some miles to the east of and running parallel to the Canal. Its tactical uses we never could understand. Days were spent trying to clean up Ballah East; had Hercules ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... with watch-towers at the corners and a moat below it. Some of the prisoners helped to build this wall, and when it was finished they were allowed to take part in a celebration. One of them, an Irishman, gave this toast at the feast: "May the great wall be like the wall of Jericho and tumble down at the sound of a ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton

... brought us to the Blue Ridge where the railroad tunnel pierces its foundations. We toiled up and on in time to see the sun rise. An ocean of fog lay around us. Never shall we forget how royally the King of Day scaled the great wall that seemed to hem in on every side the wide valley, and how the sea of mist and cloud visibly fled before the inrolling flood of light, unveiling green and yellow fields, flocks and herds, dark woodlands, dwellings yet ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague

... comparatively deep water of the lagoon, she would assuredly have gone down, taking us with her. As it was, there was a space of only about a fathom between our forefoot and the inner edge of the reef, as I ascertained later. The great wall of surf, fifty feet high, breaking perpetually upon the outer face of the reef, and stretching mile after mile to north and south of us, was a wonderful sight, especially in the early morning, when the sun's rays struck the great cloud of spray, creating ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... frontier to serve as a defence against the troublesome Hiongnou tribes, who are identified with the Huns of Attila. This wall, which he began in the first years of his reign—about the close of the third century B.C.—was finished before his death. It still exists, known as the Great Wall of China, and has long been considered one of the wonders of the world. Every third man of the whole empire was employed on this work. It is said that five hundred thousand of them died of starvation. The contents of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... A great wall of fog advanced across San Pablo Bay to meet us, and in a few minutes the Reindeer was running blindly through the damp obscurity. Charley, who was steering, seemed to have an instinct for that kind of work. How he did it, he himself ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London



Words linked to "Great Wall" :   Great Wall of China, Red China, wall, Communist China, PRC, china, mainland China, Cathay, rampart, bulwark, People's Republic of China



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