"Human foot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was grassless, a flooring of grit and loose stone, on which no impression could well be made by human foot. But Copplestone, carefully prospecting around and going a little way up the bank which lay between the tower and the moorland road, suddenly saw something in the black, peat-like earth which attracted his attention and he called ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... up of children. I went where and when I pleased, as little challenged as my uncle himself. Like him, I took now and then a long ramble over the moor, fearing nothing, and knowing nothing to fear. I went sometimes where it seemed as if human foot could never have trod before, so wild and waste was the prospect, so unknown it somehow looked. The house was built on the more sloping side of a high hollow just within the moor, which stretched wide away from the very edge of the farm. If ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... a human foot could pass, Or a human heart would dare, On the quaking turf of the green morass He crouched in the rank and tangled grass, Like a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... accustomed for twenty years to reign sole sovereign of that unpeopled territory, was as much startled at the sight of Jesse's wild, ragged figure, and sunburnt face, as Robinson Crusoe when he first spied the track of a human foot upon his desert island. It was natural that old Daniel should feel his monarchy, or, more correctly speaking, his vice-royalty, invaded and endangered; and at least equally natural that he should communicate his alarm to his master, who sallied forth one November ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... every deduction, it was a singular structure to look upon, not the less so that its summit was inaccessible to human foot. A precipice fifty yards sheer fronted outward on all sides. No one had ever scaled this precipice—so alleged my companions, who were ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... it but the fountain head, Long lost, of some great river washing towns And towers, and seeing old woods which will live But by its banks untrod of human foot. Which, when the great sun sinks, lie quivering In light as some thing lieth half of life Before God's foot, waiting a wondrous change; Then girt with rocks which seek to turn or stay Its course ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... lonely walk to the other side of the island, when he stood petrified with fear before the print of a human foot in the sand! For eight years he had been alone, and now he found that there were other human beings, cannibals no doubt, in the neighbourhood. He stood, gazed, listened, hurried home, and prepared for defence. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... another linen cloth, and then a third; and so at last the Loculus was uncovered, and seen resting on a little tray of wood, that the bottom of it might not be injured by the stone. Over the breast of the Martyr, there lay, fixed to the surface of the Loculus, a Golden Angel about the length of a human foot; holding in one hand a golden sword, and in the other a banner: under this there was a hole in the lid of the Loculus, on which the ancient servants of the Martyr had been wont to lay their hands for touching the Sacred Body. And over the figure of the ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... the Wandering Cripples' art. It is a Montenegrin version of a legend which is common to all the Slavonic peoples, and contains, besides an interesting problem in ethics, an explanation of the present shape of the human foot. In some versions the emperor's crown is replaced, throughout, by "the bright sun," thus suggesting a mythological origin. It is called "The Emperor Diocletian and John ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... exclusive right of way around the rocky sides, without even a niche for human foot, so far as a stranger could perceive. At the furthermost end of the cave, however, the craggy basin had a lip of flinty pebbles and shelly sand. This was no more than a very narrow shelf, just enough for a bather to plunge from; but it ran across the broad end of the cavern, and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... bell ceased swaying, and the maiden stepped once more Firmly on the dark old ladder, where for hundred years before, Human foot had not been planted. The brave deed that she had done Should be told long ages after, as the rays of setting sun Should illume the sky with beauty; aged sires with heads of white, Long should tell the little children, Curfew did not ring ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... studious of Japanese art—are swift memoranda of the human machine as it dispenses its normal muscular motions. Rodin, draughtsman, is as surprising and original as Rodin, sculptor. He will study a human foot for months, not to copy it, but to possess the secret of its rhythms. His drawings are the swift notations of a sculptor whose eye is never satisfied, whose desire to pin on paper the most evanescent movements of the human ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... knows the feet of children, or that leads to the spring, or to the garden, or to the barn, how kindly one comes to look upon it! Examine it with a pocket glass and see how wonderfully beautiful and exquisite are its tiny blossoms. It loves the human foot, and when the path or the place is long disused, other plants ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... but presently the creak of unoiled axles heralded the approach of a wagon, and soon the old woman, bundled in shawls, was sitting by the fire. She wore heavy woollen socks over her shoes as protection against the snow. The incompatibility of the shape of the hose with the human foot was rather marked, and as they were somewhat inelastic as well, there was a muscular struggle to get them off only exceeded by the effort which had been required to get them on. She shook her head again and again, with a red face, as she bent over the socks, but plainly more ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... time the branches rustled, and the sounds proceeded from a lower part of the precipice as if the foot that caused the disturbance was in the act of descending. Though no one was visible the nature of the noise could no longer be mistaken. It was evidently the tread of a human foot, for no beast of a weight sufficient to produce so great an impression, would have chosen to rove across a spot where the support of hands was nearly as necessary as ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... a lofty mass of rock rising above the bed of the Plym, on the southern edge of Dartmoor. During a deep snow, the traces of a naked human foot and of a cloven hoof were found ascending to the highest point. The valley below is haunted by a black headless dog. Query, is it Dewerstone, Tiwes-tun, or Tiwes-stan?—(Kemble's Saxons, ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... surely worthy of divine complacency. It forms a portion of that universe which the Supreme Architect at first pronounced to be "very good." The most retired places of this terrestrial globe, those extensive deserts which were never printed by the human foot, those dens and caves, deep valleys and cloud-encircled mountains, where silence and solitude have reigned from the beginning of time, contain innumerable manifestations of wisdom, power, and goodness. Wisdom might rejoice in a thousand wonders that lie concealed within the bowels ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... almost reconciled to the fate which so many of my ancestors had met. Much of my time was now occupied in the exploration of the ruined and abandoned halls and towers of the old chateau, which in youth fear had caused me to shun, and some of which old Pierre had once told me had not been trodden by human foot for over four centuries. Strange and awsome were many of the objects I encountered. Furniture, covered by the dust of ages and crumbling with the rot of long dampness met my eyes. Cobwebs in a profusion never before seen by me were spun everywhere, and huge bats flapped their ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... of the old sea, just where the so-called Bay of Rainbows separates itself from the abyss of the Sea of Showers, there were found some stratified rocks in which the fascinated eyes of the explorer beheld the clear imprint of a gigantic human foot, measuring five feet in length ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... roses overgrown and choked with weeds, the sad and general decay. Jason smote his breast in a paroxysm of despair, while the doves fluttered out from the porch of the cottage in amazement at the approach of a human foot to their domains. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... sidewalk, amid the dapper, swiftly moving, high-heeled boots and gaiters, I catch a glimpse of the naked human foot. Nimbly it scuffs along, the toes spread, the sides flatten, the heel protrudes; it grasps the curbing, or bends to the form of the uneven surfaces,—a thing sensuous and alive, that seems to take cognizance of whatever it touches or passes. How primitive ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... riding skirt and tossed it aside—it was a heavy handicap to successful travel in the trees. Her boots and stockings followed the skirt, for the bare sole of the human foot does not slip upon dry or even wet bark as does the hard leather of a boot. She would have liked to discard her riding breeches also, but the motherly admonitions of My Dear had convinced Meriem that it was not good form to ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... hemlock—round her neck a corslet of deadly nightshade. On her left arm coiled a living snake, and it rested its head upon her bosom. In her right hand she held a wand dipped in the poison of all things venomous. Whatsoever it touched died—whatsoever it waved over was transformed. No human foot approached her cave—no mortal dared. The warrior, who feared not a hundred foes, quailed at the sight of Elgiva, the enchantress, the worker of wonders. Unclean reptiles crawled around her cave—the asp, the loathsome toad, and the hissing adder. Two owls ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... swept the entire ravine with it to ascertain whether there were any indications that the island was inhabited, for I felt convinced that were it so this lovely spot would be the first selected as a place of abode. But for all that I could see no human foot had ever pressed the soil, and I felt encouraged to go close in and anchor; though, before doing anything else, I determined to make a voyage of discovery inland, and settle the question as to the existence ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... burning images found in them. Undoubtedly, however, the great sanctuary of a district was frequently, as he represents, in the recesses of a wood. Under a mighty tree a tribe would hold its meetings and sit in judgment and in council; and there were sacred groves in which no human foot might stray, where the god was supposed to dwell, where great sacrifices both of animal and of human victims took place, where the boughs were hung with the bones of former sacrifices which in ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... Beauxchamps," cried Cosmo, as the adventurer scrambled aboard. "You have stood where no human foot has ever been before, and I see that you have secured your souvenir ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... Jacopo spoke, as they returned by the intricate passages through which they had ascended to the attic, until they were again on the Bridge of Sighs. It was seldom that human foot trod this gallery, and the former, with female quickness, selected it as a place ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the other side; and so, with a few slips, I contrived to land in safety among the long, tangled grass, and broken branches of apple-trees, richly clothed with lichens, mosses, and fungi, in a spot which looked as if untrodden by human foot for years. But that could not really have been so, for no doubt the old trees had borne their usual crop of ruddy apples, which had been duly housed. The value of an apple-orchard in Devonshire—that land of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... make answer: "So, too, the sign that Robinson Crusoe found on the beach was only a human foot-mark. Do ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... attentively, when the noise was repeated. It came from the orchard, and resembled the sound produced by the faint crash of rotten sticks and leaves under the cautious but unavoidably rending tread of a human foot. At intervals it ceased, as if the person treading, alarmed at his own noise, was apprehensive of betraying his approach; and then recommenced, only to be checked in the same ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... times when my heart sickens within me. I feel, I know that there is oppression and wrong in our world, and that millions of my fellow creatures are interested in perpetuating those wrongs. I know that wherever the human foot has trodden the soil, that might triumphs over right, that the strong oppress the weak, that the poor and dependent too often become the servants of the rich; that the man of quick discernment, too often overreaches and takes advantage of his simple, less gifted, ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... thought inexhaustible. It has come to an end already, and collectors no longer visit the spot. Cliffs and ravines which men still young can recollect ablaze with colour, are as bare now as a stone-quarry. Nature had done much to protect her treasures; they flourished mostly in places which the human foot cannot reach—Loelia elegans and Cattleya g. Leopoldi inextricably entwined, clinging to the face of lofty rocks. The blooms of the former are white and mauve, of the latter chocolate-brown, spotted ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... favourable specimen of that peculiar race, the Arab caravan-merchants. The Arab trader travels with his merchandise over the greater part of a continent; his home is wherever the human foot can wander; he is exposed to the inhospitable desert and the burning sky. He must be prepared to defend his property against the roving bands of plunderers, and proceed at the head of a detachment of troops. Confiding in the strength of his forces, and in reprisal of attacks, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... solitudes; and their fellows, in cities far away, that slumber now, perhaps, beneath the rolling sea, will read in language strange to any ears in being now, but very old to them, of primeval forests where the axe was never heard, and where the jungled ground was never trodden by a human foot. ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... he had of Georgie, a sweet thing without which life would have been emptier, even if it settled no problems and left untouched the lonely spaces which no human foot can range in their entirety, though in youth some one step may make them tremble throughout their shining floors.... It was good, though it was not the whole of life, and as he took it he gave thanks for the varied relationships in the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... named to him on the frontier, and he was desired to find the nearest path to a particular station, and to plant a stake in the place. [Footnote: Lafitau] They can, accordingly, trace a wild beast, or the human foot, over many leagues of a pathless forest, and find their way across a woody and uninhabited continent, by means of refined observations, which escape the traveller who has been accustomed to different aids. They steer in slender canoes, across stormy seas, with a dexterity equal to that of the most ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... exaggerate nothing, that our interest herein is of the most considerable. The discovery of a sign of true intellect outside ourselves procures us something of the emotion Robinson Crusoe felt when he saw the imprint of a human foot on the sandy beach of his island. We seem less solitary than we had believed. And indeed, in our endeavour to understand the intellect of the bees, we are studying in them that which is most precious in our own substance: an atom of the extraordinary matter which possesses, ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... hurricane, and watered by the wintry surf, so luxuriantly did it spring from the sands and the salt waves. The stately manchineel overhung the tide; the mangroves sprang out of the waters; the sea-side grape overspread the sands with a thick green carpet, and kept them cool, so that as the human foot sought the spot, the glittering lizards forsook it, and darted away to seek the hot face of the rock. For full half a mile this patch of verdure spread; and over this space were dispersed Margot and her household, when ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... These characteristic differences between the fore and hind extremities are found in man as well as the ape. There can be no doubt, therefore, that the ape's foot deserves that name just as much as the human foot does, and that all true apes are just as "bimanous" as man. The common distinction of the apes as "quadrumanous" is ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... a foot, and what is it determined by? It is an arbitrary measure. The human foot is the basis of the measurement. But what is the length of a man's foot? It varied in different countries ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... together, the larger ones in ascending rows. At last, alas! a gun fired into their midst caused death and dismay. A few fell dead, and the rest fled to some happier shore, where no destroying man could mar their happiness. And there are many such spots in Borneo where no human foot ever trod, and where trees, flowers, and insects flourish exceedingly; where the birds sing songs of praise which are only heard by their Maker, and where the wild animals of the forest live and die unmolested. There is always something ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... the road which we had formed on landing should be continued to the very margin of the lake; whilst appearances seemed to indicate the total impracticability of the scheme. From firm ground to the water's edge was here a distance of many miles, through the very centre of a morass where human foot had never before trodden. Yet it was desirable at least to make the attempt; for if it failed we should only be reduced to our former alternative of gaining a battle or ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... where his own kind rarely made its way. Beyond, the cove looked dark, forbidding, mysterious, and what was beyond he did not know. So down there he would go. As he bent his head forward to rise, his eye caught the spot of sunlight, and he leaned over it with a smile. In the black earth was a human foot-print—too small and slender for the foot of a man, a boy or a woman. Beyond, the same prints were visible—wider apart—and he smiled again. A girl had been there. She was the crimson flash that he saw as he ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... loss concerning 'the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.' He had desired to recommend the cultivation of such a grace in the most forcible manner, yet he found himself wondering why fashionable women wore pink shoes much smaller than the natural size of the human foot? To be 'meek and quiet' was surely an excellent thing, but then it was impossible for any man with blood in his veins to feel otherwise than honestly indignant at the extravagance displayed by certain modern ladies in the selection ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... footmark, the left, with five toes, and the shape of the foot correctly drawn. Evidently the artist or a friend had stood on his right foot while applying the left to the side of the rock. When they attempted to draw a human foot on a scale smaller than nature, they limited themselves to carving two lines at a wide angle, to form the heel, and five dots to ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Frown idly, green with moss, and temples stand Unroofed, forsaken by the worshipper. There lie memorial stones, whence time has gnawed The graven legends, thrones of kings o'erturned, The broken altars of forgotten gods, Foundations of old cities and long streets Where never fall of human foot is heard, On all the desolate pavement. I behold Dim glimmerings of lost jewels, far within The sleeping waters, diamond, sardonyx, Ruby and topaz, pearl and chrysolite, Once glittering at the banquet on fair brows ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... to camp. The party of Mr. H.B. Renwick, proceeding until the Rimouski was seen, turned to the south and finally reached the southeasterly source of that river, a point probably never before pressed by human foot, for it was found to consist in a series of beaver ponds, in which that animal was residing in communities and without any appearance of having been ever disturbed. The low state of provisions in this instance also called the party back, but not before every anticipated result ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... use a machine to press the grapes, but many think it should be done, as it was in old Bible times, with the human foot. It seems that the feet know how to avoid crushing the seeds and the skins, as a ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... their perturbation was imprinted deeply in the mud of the pathway—the irregular outlines of an enormous, naked, human foot—a great, uncouth foot that bespoke a monster of another world. While, still more uncanny, in view of what they had heard in the farm house during the previous night, there lay, sometimes partially obliterated by the footprints of the THING, the impress of a small, ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I could live with thee in the wild wood Where human foot hath never worn a way; With thee, my city, and my solitude, Light of my night, sweet ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... memorized the location of the device he was to sabotage, and accepted, from Montano, a pair of dark contact lenses. "The light's hellish out there," Montano warned. "I know you're half Mentorian, but they don't even take their Mentorians out there. They're proud of saying no human foot has ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... not return again, from this inferred cause, to infer new additions to the effect, and conclude, that the building would soon be finished, and receive all the further improvements, which art could bestow upon it? If you saw upon the sea-shore the print of one human foot, you would conclude, that a man had passed that way, and that he had also left the traces of the other foot, though effaced by the rolling of the sands or inundation of the waters. Why then do you refuse to admit the same method of reasoning ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... association of the linen garment and the linen embroidery with the priestly office and the furniture of the tabernacle, and consider how the rush has been to all time the first natural carpet thrown under the human foot. Then next observe the three virtues definitely set forth by the three families of plants—not arbitrarily or fancifully associated with them, but in all the three cases marked for us by Scriptural words: 1st. Cheerfulness, or joyful serenity; in the grass for food and beauty—"Consider ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... smiled. "There's food for mirth In every nook of the sun-circling earth That human foot hath trodden. Man, the great mime, must move the Momus vein, Whether he follow fashion or the wain, In ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... The finest grapes are those which grow upon the sunny side of a wall. At the season of vintage, the grapes are placed in a kind of canoe, where they are first crushed by men's feet (all wines, even the richest and purest, having this original tincture of the human foot), and then pressed ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... seems good to me, and, therefore, it behooves us to be mighty careful. What do you take this imprint to be, Tayoga? Is it that of a human foot?" ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... being carried to the Duke's army. The next alternative, and indeed the only one, was to attempt a way along the foot of a ridge of mountains which fronted the sea, but had scarcely ever been trod by human foot, and was known by the name of the Moor-road. It would have brought us in upon that part of the enemy's camp from which they could apprehend no danger. It lengthened indeed the road, which, in the sequel, and from the shortness of ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... his promise, took pains to make them perceive that an enemy had passed along the places through which he was leading them. Here, he showed them that the moss on the road had been trodden down by the weight of a human foot; there, that it had been torn and dragged forward from its place. Again, he would point out to them, that pebbles, or small stones on the rocks, had been removed from their beds by the foot hitting ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... letter referred to. That the girl had something of the feral nature, her wild, lawless rambles in forbidden and blasted regions of The Mountain at all hours, her familiarity with the lonely haunts where any other human foot was so rarely seen, proved clearly enough. But the more he thought of all her strange instincts and modes of being, the more he became convinced that whatever alien impulse swayed her will and modulated or diverted or displaced ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the rising sun, this bit of beach looked like a monster honeycomb, each shapen place the broken track of a human foot. It was here the day before, Jesus of Nazareth had talked to a vast concourse of people. So insistent were they in getting close to him, he took to a boat, and even then men crowded knee-deep into the quiet water to ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... forty-five volcanos on this island of terror and beauty are still moderately active, sometimes displaying sudden outbursts of energy. The green lawns and towering camphor trees of Tjibodas suggest the spellbound beauty of some enchanted spot, unprofaned by human foot. A glassy lake mirrors the tall bamboos and feathery tamarinds, their slender and sensitive foliage motionless in the still air of the dewy dawn. Huge coleas accentuate the spring verdure with heavy masses of bronze and crimson, and magnolias exhale intoxicating odours from snowy ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... inspection, it was unlike a human foot and seemed more like the track of a bear. Several other prints of a similar nature became visible now that they examined the spongy ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the ground with great force, as the wear of our boots and shoes in that part shows us. But the projecting heel of the human foot is the arm of a lever, haying the ankle-joint as its fulcrum, and, as it strikes the ground, brings the sole of the foot down flat upon it, as shown in figure 1. At the same time the weight of the limb and body is thrown upon the foot, by the joint effect ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... journey from Weber's Creek. On surveying the country we found ourselves in a perfect solitude. Not an Indian, far less a white man, was to be seen. The fertile valley of the Bear River—with its luxuriant grass, in which nestled coveys of the Californian quail—seemed almost untrodden by human foot, and sloped in great beauty between the ridges of rocky hills and peaks of granite, with dark ravines and canones between, which hemmed it in. Our first care was of course to try the capabilities of the country in the way of gold. We therefore separated ourselves, ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... and reaches into Honduras. The ruins known as Copan and Palenque are in this forest, not far from its southern edge. Its vast depths have never been much explored. There are ruins in it which none but wandering natives have ever seen, and some, perhaps, which no human foot has approached for ages. It is believed that ruins exist in nearly every part ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... first point with advantage we must consider with some attention, and compare together, the structure of the human hand and that of the human foot, so that we may have distinct and clear ideas of what constitutes a hand ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... repellent upon earth, must always retain something of its glamour. Standing on the confines of known geography I have shot the southward flying ducks, and have taken from their gizzards pebbles which they have swallowed in some land whose shores no human foot has trod. The memory of that inexpressible air, of the great ice-girt lakes of deep blue water, of the cloudless sky shading away into a light green and then into a cold yellow at the horizon, of the noisy companionable birds, of the huge, greasy-backed water animals, of the slug-like ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a moment, but there were no suspicious sounds about. The mountain lay as silent under the moon as if no human foot had ever pressed its surface. There were lights far down in the valley, but none on the slopes ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... time I had discovered a winding foot path, formed by droves of wild cattle; but in vain did I search for the impression of a human foot step. This path I followed until it lead to a fording place in the river, where I paused, dreading the effect of fresh water on my sores, some of which had begun to scab over. But my situation would ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... alleys to the terminus of the Edinburgh trams (one saved twopence by not taking the Leith trams and had a sense of recovering the cost of the expedition), and were half-way down a silent street when they heard behind them flippety-flop, flippety-flop, stealthy and wicked as the human foot may be. They turned and saw a great black figure, humped but still high, keeping step with them a yard or so behind. Several times they turned, terrified by that tread, and could make nothing more of it, till the rays of a lamp showed them a tall Chinaman ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... every hue of gold and bronze, and hoary white, and soft gray; and here and there a black rock, with livid shades of purple, and a bloom upon it like a raven's wing. Rocky islets, never trodden by human foot, over which the foam poured ceaselessly, were dotted all about the changeful surface of the water. And just beneath the level of my eyes was Olivia's face—the loveliest thing there, though there was so much beauty lying ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... suppliant kisses, a cross, so that he who humbles himself to this ceremony may consider, if he pleases, that it is that sacred symbol of the divine Redeemer's sufferings and death that he so reverently kisses, and not the human foot by which it ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... two walls of rock, following a path worn by a torrent, and which, in all human probability, human foot had never before trod, Dantes approached the spot where he supposed the grottos must have existed. Keeping along the shore, and examining the smallest object with serious attention, he thought he could trace, on certain rocks, marks made by ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... trouble after all," I said to myself, "to return to the fray once more, even if I were a thousand times certain of victory? What is this victory worth? Even if I succeed in being the first to mount some height untrod hitherto by any human foot, yet the next generation will climb on my shoulders and hurl me down into the abysm of oblivion. There I could lie, lonely and helpless, until the six boards are needed again to help me to my happiness. And so let me be content and wait until that thing in my breast which has ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... outline a philosopher may catch a glimpse of the general economy of nature; and like the mariner cast upon an unknown shore, who rejoiced when he saw the print of a human foot upon the sand, he may cry out with rapture, "A GOD ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... observations our means afforded, we proceeded to descend. We had accomplished an object of laudable ambition, and beyond the strict order of our instructions. We had climbed the loftiest peak of the Rocky mountains, and looked down upon the snow a thousand feet below; and, standing where never human foot had stood before, felt the exultation of first explorers. It was about two o'clock when we left the summit, and when we reached the bottom, the sun had already sunk behind the wall, and the day was drawing to a close. It would have ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... and Dan was soon busy preparing food, while as far as they could make out they were where human foot had never ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... finding a small platform from which a narrow runway led downward into Stygian darkness. Thick dust covered the floor within the doorway, indicating that a great period of time had elapsed since human foot had trod it—a secret way, doubtless, unknown to living Manatorians. Here they dragged the corpse of E-Med, leaving it upon the platform, and as they left the dark and forbidden closet Lan-O would have slammed to the panel had not ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not being sufficient boats to embark more than a third of the force at a time—it was decided to make a road from the firm ground to the water's edge, a distance of many miles, through the very centre of a morass, where human foot had never before trodden. The difficulties experienced in making this road were immense. Sometimes for miles together no firm soil could be found, nor trees to furnish brushwood, and all that could be done was to lay down bundles of reeds on the morass. Nor were the enemy idle; there ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... It was a human foot which walked along over the ground, and pressed the downy seed into the earth. When the foot was withdrawn, the earth fell, and filled the ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... there came a day when its inexplicable lure drew him to it again irresistibly. It was a warm, windy evening and the air was sweet and resinous, the lake misty and blue. There was no sign of life about Four Winds and the shore seemed as lonely and virgin as if human foot had never trodden it. The Captain's yacht was gone from the little harbour where it was generally anchored and, though every flutter of wind in the scrub firs made Alan's heart beat expectantly, he saw nothing of Lynde Oliver. He was on the point of turning ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hundreds of miles I made a path where no human foot had ever trod. I swam rivers and made harbors where no boat had ever landed. At last I reached Texas. For many days I travelled without seeing any house. At night I was afraid of being destroyed by some wild beast, so I would climb ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... wide stretches of smooth sand that fringe its shores a fleeting air of life and sober gaiety; but in late September—the season of the year in which I made its acquaintance—its pasture-lands lie desolate, the rugged paths along the cliffs are seldom trodden by human foot, and the sands are a desert waste on which, for days together, no footprint appears save that ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... somewhat averse to the adventure, having some acquaintance with Atuona and its notorious chieftain, Moipu. He had once landed there, he told me, about dusk, and found the remains of a man and woman partly eaten. On his starting and sickening at the sight, one of Moipu's young men picked up a human foot, and provocatively staring at the stranger, grinned and nibbled at the heel. None need be surprised if Mr. Stewart fled incontinently to the bush, lay there all night in a great horror of mind, and got off to sea again by daylight on the morrow. 'It was always a bad place, Atuona,' ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a modern book of travels, relating the particulars of his being cast away, thus concludes: "After having walked eleven hours without having traced the print of human foot, to my great comfort and delight, I saw a man hanging upon a gibbet; my pleasure at the cheering prospect was inexpressible; for it convinced me that I was in a ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... something from which the fierce beast is tearing away the covering with rapid movements. As he leaps down into the cellar, Clifford Heath sees what it is that has so terrified the two men. From under the leaves and earth, Prince has brought to light a human foot and leg! ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... it. Hardly breathing, and bending low, the better to catch every sound that came, they listened with beating hearts until it ceased. Once they had detected the click of stones striking together as if moved by a human foot and twice caught the faint plash of a bush or limb of tree dropping into the water. Then the sounds ceased, and only the faint murmur of that slow-running ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... was in December 1878 that we got orders for a preliminary survey of the reef for the purpose of choosing a lighthouse site. After a dozen or more attempts, the engineer returned baffled. In the following June, six months later, the rock was still unviolated. No human foot ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... plants, which looked tropical, and which were as green during the rigors of winter as during the doubtful blessings of summer, stood on the slopes, their thousand bayonets guarding against trespass where only pressing necessity could drive a human foot. Sheep-sage, which grew low upon the ground, and unostentatious and dun, was found here, where no flocks came to graze; this was the one life-giving thing which sprang ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... shape lit up by the flaring torches seemed more vague, unearthly, and awkward in its dying throes, yet the small shut eyes, the feeble nose, the ponderous shoulders, and half-human foot armed with powerful claws were unmistakable. The men turned by a common impulse and peered into the remote recesses ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... distinguishing the various persons by dress, ornament, and attribute. They had their canon of measurement, of which the length of the nose was probably the unit.[17] The Greeks, who often took the length of the human foot as unit, were long enslaved by their canon. Convention made them adhere to a traditional face after they had made themselves masters of the human form. The early figures of successful athletes were conventional; but, according to Pliny, when somebody was winner three times ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... Cree trapper, had called this his domain. It had come down to him, as was the law of the forests, through generations of forefathers. But Tusoo had been the last of his worn-out family; he had died of smallpox, and his wife and his children had died with him. Since then no human foot had taken up his trails. The lynx had multiplied. The moose and caribou had gone unhunted by man. The beaver had built their homes—undisturbed. The tracks of the black bear were as thick as the tracks of the ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... to be excavated, to yield a profusion of the metallic treasure. From the northern part of Africa, impediments of almost an insuperable nature presented themselves, to the attainment of these great advantages; immense deserts, as yet unexplored by human foot, and the knowledge of the existence of tribes of barbarous people on the borders of them, were in themselves sufficient to daunt the spirit of adventure in those quarters, and ultimately drew the attention to the discovery of another channel, by which the golden ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... I in woods could rest, Where never human foot the ground has pressed; Thou from all shades the darkness canst exclude, And from a desert ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... escape from that lonely spot? What prospect was before us of ever being able to leave it? No human beings might come to our relief. Perhaps no human foot except our own had ever made its track in that remote valley! This was not at all improbable; and indeed a party of hunters or Indians, on their journey across the Desert, might visit the mountain without discovering the valley,—so ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid |
