"Peak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... woman shaped like a pyramid. Even her head, on which the black coarse hair was bobbed high, finished in a peak—the unmistakable mark of the ancient Aztec blood in her veins. Her shoulders sloped away from her three chins and it seemed as though the greatest circumference of her body must be at her ankles, for her skirt flared. ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... of the prime virtues of a steel sailing-ship. Such a craft, heavily laden, does not strain her seams open in bad weather and big seas. Except for a tiny leak down in the fore-peak, with which we sailed from Baltimore and which is bailed out with a pail once in several weeks, the Elsinore is bone-dry. Mr. Pike tells me that had a wooden ship of her size and cargo gone through the buffeting we have ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... fame grow brighter as the years recede, and as we get away from the frailties and foibles which attach to the weakness of our common humanity, even in the person of the strongest. As we get away it is like moving from some grand mountain peak. As you go away you see its symmetrical form rise clear in the clouds, with the eternal blue around the summit, with all its harsh and rugged outlines obliterated by distance; it is there in its perfect grandeur, in its completeness and beauty, without any of the weaknesses or foibles ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... a small fortified house in the pass over the hills from Burnley to Todmorden. It stood within a short distance from the Eagle Crag; and the Lady Sibyl would often climb to the utmost verge of that overhanging peak, looking from its dizzy height until her soul expanded, and her thoughts took their flight through those dim regions where the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... horizontal bands of white (top), blue, and red, with the Slovenian seal (a shield with the image of Triglav, Slovenia's highest peak, in white against a blue background at the center; beneath it are two wavy blue lines depicting seas and rivers, and above it are three six-pointed stars arranged in an inverted triangle, which are taken from the coat of arms of the Counts ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... mountainous scenery with that of the plains. This district is a miniature Scotland, with its lowlands and highlands. Behind the hill, at the foot of which lies the village, rises, at a distance of about three miles, the first peak of the Correze mountains. The space between is covered by the great forest of Montegnac, which clothes the hill, extends over the valley, and along the slopes of the mountain (though these are bare in some places), continuing as far as the highway to Aubusson, where it diminishes ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... vulture-beak Of Northern ice may peel; The sunken rock and coral peak May grate along her keel; And know we well the painted shell We give to wind and wave, Must float, the sailor's citadel, Or-sink, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... romantic incidents in the lives of our pioneer women are also heightened by the extraordinary freshness and ever-changing scenery of the wilderness. Nature there spreads out like a mighty canvas: the forest, the mountains, and the prairies show clear and distinct through the crystal air so that peak and tree and even the tall blades of grass are outlined with a microscopic nearness. Over this vivid surface bison are browsing, and antelopes gambolling; plumed warriors flit by on their ponies, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... danger of death. It was not the terrible force with which the vessel was hurled up and down, entirely at the mercy of this sea monster, which appeared now as a fathomless abyss, now as a steep mountain peak, that filled me with mortal dread; my premonition of some terrible crisis was aroused by the despondency of the crew, whose malignant glances seemed superstitiously to point to us as the cause of the threatening disaster. Ignorant of the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... a minute later ran the crimson flag of Great Britain to the main peak, where it streamed out bravely ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... or road, which skirted Sombrero Peak, the mass of multicolored rock at Ted's back, over which he had come on his way from San Carlos to the Bubbly Well ranch house, which he was now facing in the distance. But where he was now standing the road branched off to ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... waves. Though it was quite a distance he did not hesitate to plunge after it. The salt water splashed over his head; sometimes he was completely under big waves, and once a high curling breaker caught and turned him over and over, while his legs stuck up from the peak of the wave, but Jan thought it all great sport. He shook his big head so that his long ears flapped, and his strong paws sent him into deeper water where the waves rolled in long lines but did not curl up and break so roughly ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker
... devotion itself to the families of the officers when sickness and trouble came, as come in the old days they too often did. It was she who took poor Ned Robinson's young widow and infant all the way to Cheyenne when the Sioux butchered the luckless little hunting party down by Laramie Peak. It was she who nursed Captain Forrest's wife and daughter through ten weeks of typhoid, and, with her own means, sent them to the seashore, while the husband and father was far up on the Yellowstone, cut off from all communication ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... in every state in the Union. Climate does not seem to make any difference so far as this trouble is concerned, with the exception that in high altitudes I have observed nervous people are inclined to be more restless than elsewhere. Some years ago I went up Pike's Peak, to the Summit House. I went to bed and spent the night there, but I do not say I slept, for in reality I slept only about half an hour. I was not at all sick at the stomach, as so many are who climb up there; I had prevented this by eating a very light breakfast ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... thee, she opens wide her snowy arms, And folds the Nations on her mother-breast. The brawny Sons of Earth have made their home Where her wide Ocean casts its ceaseless foam, Where lifts her white Sierras' orient peak The wild exultant love of all that makes The nobler life; the energy that shakes the Earth And gives new ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... dull day might have a rich ending. That rift grew broader and brighter—the only bit of light in the sky. On Parnes there were white strips of ragged mist, hanging very low; the same on Hymettus, and even the peak of Lycabettus was just hidden. Of a sudden, the sun's rays broke out. They showed themselves first in a strangely beautiful way, striking from behind the seaward hills through the pass that leads to Eleusis, ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... thy faint-hearted despotism ... Therefore, great heart, bear up! thou art but type Of what all lofty spirits endure that fain Would win men back to strength and peace through love: Each hath his lonely peak, and on each heart Envy, or scorn or hatred tears lifelong With vulture beak; yet the high soul is left; And faith, which is but hope grown wise, and love And patience, which at last ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... been a red-letter day from the beginning, from no assignable cause an exciting joyous day, and the thrill of the hard fast game, the shower, the rub, the walk, had brought her up to what engineers speak of as a "peak." ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... light; and Pink, looking now with clearer vision, saw that there was no living thing in sight save a coyote trotting home from his night's hunting. He turned short around and, getting his bearings from his memory of certain stars and from the sun that was peering at him from the top of a bare peak, and from that sense of direction which becomes second nature to a man who had lived long on the range, started for camp with ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... and lowered head, she walked along beside her awed and silent companion. They had entered a wood through which the road passed, and there seemed to be a hallowed stillness in the cool, grayish touch of the coming night that pervaded the boughs and foliage of the trees. Beyond the wood a mountain-peak rose in a blaze of molten gold from the oblique rays of the setting sun, but here the night-dews were beginning to fall and the chirping insects of the dark were waking. In the marshy spots frogs were croaking and snarling, ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... imagination already prepossessed and dazzled with Homeric visions. He told his story well and with detail, combining the recollections of the scholar with the impressions of an artist. The pediment of the Parthenon, the oleanders of the Ilissus, the stream "that runs in rain-time," the naked peak of Parnassus, the green slopes of Helicon, the blue gulf of Argus, the pine forest beside Alpheus, where the ancients worshipped "Death the Gentle"—all of them passed in recount upon his ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... the istvostchiks answered him. "Amerikanetz," they told him, "just out of prison!" They thronged round him, bubbling over with the story, while he stood, trim and armed, his hard, neat face arrogant under the sideways-tilted peak of his cap, hearing ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... see you've clapped Peak halliard blocks, all iron-capped. I would not christen that a crime, But 'twas not done in RODNEY'S time. It looks half-witted! Upon your maintop-stay, I see, You always clap a selvagee! Your stays, I see, are equalized - No vessel, such as ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... distant yelp of coyote disturbed the stillness of the night. Not a breath of air was stirring. A light film of cloud hung about the horizon and settled in a cumulus about the turrets of old Laramie Peak, but overhead the brilliant stars sparkled and the planets shone like little globes of ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... withheld. The Scratch Gravel Hills jutted impertinently into the middle distance; while on the far western side of the plain the Jefferson Range rose, tier on tier, the distances shading the climbing foothills, until the Bear's Tooth, a prominent, jagged peak, cleft the azure sky. A stretch of darker blue showed where the Missouri River, itself unseen, broke through the Gate of the Mountains. The view took one away from the affairs of men. On their side of the valley towered Mount Helena and Mount ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... Mr. Poole again crossed the hill he had ascended the day before, but at half-past one changed his course for a high peak on the same range, on the summit of which he arrived at 2 p.m.; but the day was unfavourable, and the bearings from it consequently uncertain. The following morning being clear he again ascended the hill, and took the following bearings:—To ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... see a narrow gorge where the river retired and was lost. I knew that there was a range still farther back; but except from one place near the very top of my own mountain, no part of it was visible: from this point, however, I saw, whenever there were no clouds, a single snow-clad peak, many miles away, and I should think about as high as any mountain in the world. Never shall I forget the utter loneliness of the prospect—only the little far-away homestead giving sign of human handiwork;—the vastness of mountain and plain, ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... The peak which Stobart was now looking at was certainly exactly like a man's nose, and he was also looking east. One direction was as good as another to him that morning, and, as his curiosity was aroused, he forgot about his breakfast and began ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... apart The blood that curdled to her heart, And light came to her eye, And colour dawned upon her cheek, A hectic and a fluttered streak, Like that left on the Cheviot peak, By autumn's stormy sky; And when her silence broke at length, Still as she spoke she gathered strength, And armed herself to bear. It was a fearful sight to see Such high resolve and constancy, In form so ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... the helper of Lance Outram, park-keeper at Sir Geoffrey Peveril's of the Peak.—Sir W. Scott, Peveril of the Peak (time, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... to a dazzling snowy peak which ran up like a roughly shaped, blunted spear head glistening ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... free. Taking five feet of strong line, I tied one end under a rib next the keelson and the other around the paddle. Stripping to shirt and drawers, I stowed everything in the knapsack and tied that safely in the fore peak. Then I swung out. Before I was a half mile out, I fervently wished myself back. But it was too late. How that little, corky, light canoe did bound and snap, with a constant tendency to come up in the wind'e eye, that kept me on the qui vive every instant. She shipped no mater; ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... mouth, and describing waving line gradually descending from right to left; left hand describing mountainous outline, one peak rising above the other. ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... had no opportunity for some time of speaking. Next morning I saw that the Portuguese flag was flying from the schooner's peak, while a pennant waved from her mast-head. Certainly the officers did their best to amuse their fair guests and us. Next day, after dinner, some of the men were called aft to dance their national dances, ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... achievement when he held a yard or so of certain scenes to the light and knew that he had done something which no other producer had ever done, and that he had created a film story that would stand up like a lone peak above the level of all other Western pictures. When those night scenes were tinted—and that scene which had for its sub-title Opening Exercises, and which showed the Happy Family mounting Applehead's snakiest bronks and riding ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... Smallbones to lament his hard fate in the fore peak of the vessel, and Mr Vanslyperken and his dog to walk the quarter-deck, while we make our readers a little better acquainted with the times in which the scenes passed which we are now describing, as well as with the history of ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Senor, for I have never before passed it at sea. And those are the Sierras de los Organos yonder, and the Sierras del Rosario farther on to the right. I recognise them, of course. And—yes, surely—just to the right of that isolated peak I can see what must certainly be the town of Pinar del Rio! We are not far from home now, Carlos, and if all goes well with us to-day we ought to- night to sleep in our own casa, and see dear little Isolda once more. The ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... Darien,'" quoted a penetrating voice that could only belong to Joan Mardle; "I say, can any one picture Mrs. Menteith- Mendlesohnn silent on any peak or ...
— When William Came • Saki
... this magnificent spirit besieged by contending forces. She stood like a mountain peak encircled with storm, like a beacon on a rock lashed by the fury of the maddening seas, like a ship in a valley of waves, rudderless, shroudless, with ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... Sunday morning, and all other isms pierced and lashed, you descend from your intellectual heights, eat a good dinner, take a nap, and live like the rest of us till the next Sabbath, when (if it is a fine day) you climb some other theological peak, far beyond the limits of perpetual snow, and there take another bird's-eye view of something that might be found very different if ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... my own brother, and, after all, he is your husband, Mrs Lawford—I'd sooner he was in his grave. It takes two to play at that game, that's what I say. To lay himself open! I can't stand it—honestly, I can't stand it. And yet,' he jerked his chin over the peak of his collar towards the ladies, 'and yet you say he's being fetched; comes creeping home, and is fetched at dark by a—a lady in a pony-carriage. God bless me! It's rank. What,' he broke out violently again, ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... in it and thickness. One saw the sky beyond the edge of the world getting purer as the vault rose. But right up—a belt in that empyrean—ran peak and field and needle of intense ice, remote, remote from the world. Sky beneath them and sky above them, a steadfast legion, they glittered as though with the armour of the immovable armies of Heaven. Two days' march, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... are feasting, I trow; The mead-cups are merrily clashing: Their locks are as white as the dawn-lighted snow On the peak of the mountain-top flashing: They talk of old times, of the days of their pride, And the fights where together ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... Tacking;" for such a staff, stuck on the taffrail with the boom touching it, was "an impossible object," and would have been instantly snapped off, while, moreover, the ensign should have been at the peak. In another admirable drawing Punch once showed a ship on the starboard tack while the helmsman is steering on the port tack, and the ship, by what appears a miracle, is lying over to the wind; and, again, Toby is actually shown in the Almanac for 1895 drawing a ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... 11; but different groups of events may present figures or surfaces in which the slopes of the curves are very different, namely, more or less steep; and if the curve is very steep, the figure runs into a peak; whereas, if the curve is gradual, the figure is comparatively flat. In the latter case, where the figure is flat, fewer events will closely cluster about the average, and ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the top of the mountain of Self-discovery," Esther pursued dreamily, "he becomes master not only of his own little peak, but commands a panorama of hundreds of other peaks. He not only conquers his own difficult trail, but wins, as reward for ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... than 'dear old Devonshire,'" declared her brother; "wait till you see Pike's Peak. Wait till I drive you through ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... till now without two heads—one to carry on with, while the other is being thumped to pieces. While the critics demolish one peak, the poet withdraws to the other, and assures himself that the general public, the larger voice of the nation, will salute him there. But alas, Frank Darling had just discovered that even that eminence was not his, except as a desert out of human sight. For he had in his pocket a letter from ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... feet since they had started on their voyage, and as they were passing by a high peak, which had been undermined by the rush of waters hurling themselves against its base, the boats were put into great danger by the whirl and commotion of the foam-flecked river. Just as they escaped from being submerged, the party ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... a place where hay had once been kept for the horse. There was a little door in the peak of the second story, to which the hay could be hoisted up from the wagon on the ground below. The hay was hoisted by a rope running around a wheel, or pulley, and this rope and pulley were still in place, though they had not been used in ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... as I gaze, From slumber soft doth come Some touch my stagnant sense to raise To its old earthly home; Fades then that sky serene; And peak of ageless snow; Fades to a paling dawn-lit green, My ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... the Shells of these are as large as a Man's Hand, but the lesser sort are the best Meat, and those not extraordinary. They are shap'd like the end of a Horses Yard. Of their Shells, the Peak or Wampum is made, which is the richest Commodity amongst the Indians. They breed like a long Thing shap'd like a Snake, but containing a sort of Joints, in the Hollowness whereof are thousands of small Coaks, no bigger then ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... during two decades of war, including the nearly 10-year Soviet military occupation (which ended 15 February 1989). During that conflict one-third of the population fled the country, with Pakistan and Iran sheltering a combined peak of more than 6 million refugees. In early 2000, 2 million Afghan refugees remained in Pakistan and about 1.4 million in Iran. Gross domestic product has fallen substantially over the past 20 years because of the loss of labor and capital ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Emma, listen. I—I'm sort of waked up. Even if things shouldn't turn out as I hope they will, I'll manage to go ahead, somehow. I'd get out, now, under any circumstances. Pike's Peak or bust!" ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... Sailors call a ship she, and often speak of her as the old girl. Our ship was built of wood, longer than most houses, and covered in by what we call a deck. At the fore end there was a place for the crew to live in, called the fore-peak, and at the after-end rooms or cabins for the captain and officers. All the rest of the ship was filled with cargo and stores. To the masts were hung across spars, or poles, as big as large larches, and on these were stretched the sails, made of stout ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... opportunity to land. I can't imagine where the light comes from unless it be from the people waiting for the arrival of the sun." Every instant the speed was lessening. Overhead the cables were beginning to creak and groan, and, now and then, the great globe swung perilously near some tall stony peak, or passed under a mighty stalactite. Slower and slower it got till, when within a few feet of the ground, it stopped its onward motion and only swung back ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... Filipino village, the farthest out, a half-way place between the people of the plains and those of the uplands. Here a ravine is crossed, a hill climbed, and the traveler stands on a plateau not more than half a mile wide but winding for miles toward the big peak Pinatubo and almost imperceptibly increasing in elevation. Low, barren ridges flank it on either side, at the base of each of which flows a good-sized stream. Seven miles of beaten winding path through the cogon grass bring the traveler to the first Negrito rancheria, Tagiltil, ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... this grey boulder, Each high snow-peak, each rocky shoulder: Charming, yet wild, the sight. Cherry-trees, with white blossom laden, And 'neath their shade a peasant maiden, Comely her costume bright. —Oh, how these impish ants ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... of a submarine mountain," was the reply, "perhaps part of the lost Atlantis—who knows? This stupendous peak rises almost fifteen thousand feet sheer from the ocean bed and its rugged top forms the basis of the islands. Think what a magnificent sight it would be if we could see its whole height rising from the darkness of the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Phoebe bird, the pioneer of the fly catchers. In the inland fanning districts, I used to notice her, on some bright morning about Easter Day, proclaiming her arrival with much variety of motion and attitude, from the peak of the barn or hay shed. As yet, you may have heard only the plaintive, homesick note of the bluebird, or the faint trill of the song sparrow; and Phoebe's clear, vivacious assurance of her veritable bodily presence among us again is welcomed by all ears. At agreeable intervals ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... one canvas, a foot high and two feet wide, tacked over a piece of board. It was a gaudy representation of an island wrought with pathetic lack of skill. There was a conical peak at the left end smeared with a slash of purple, and over it a very red and very round sun. The land sloped away from the peak to the other end of the island, and was lost in a white streak extending ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... the cabbage is taken from its stretcher and borne to the topmost peak of the house or barn. Whether it be a chimney, a gable, or a dove-cote that crowns the roof, the burden must, at any risk, be carried to the very highest point of the building. The "infidel" accompanies it as far as this, sets it down securely, and waters it with a great pitcher of wine, while ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... was called forth by a flag, which was run up at the peak, and which proved to be that of the Confederacy as soon as it was spread out to ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... ROUTE TO THE PACIFIC. Discovery of Gold near Pike's Peak—Exodus from Missouri—The Creation of the Overland Stage Route to the Pacific Coast—Messrs. Russell and Jones' Failure— Russell, Majors, & Waddell's Successful Establishment of a New Line— Hockaday and Liggett's “One-horse” Affair—Advent of the First Stage-coach into Denver—Financial ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... achieve the proudest triumphs and the greenest laurels. If we may believe the Longinuses and Aristotles of our newspapers, we have quite too many geniuses of the loftiest order to render a place among them at all desirable, whether for its hardness of attainment or its seclusion. The highest peak of our Parnassus is, according to these gentlemen, by far the most thickly settled portion of the country, a circumstance which must make it an uncomfortable residence for individuals of a poetical temperament, if love of solitude be, as immemorial tradition ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... window looked over the same view I had seen from the piazza. I took my post at this window while waiting for Mrs. Sandford. Cooler and crisper the lights, cooler and grayer the shadows had grown; the shoulder of the east mountain had lost its mantle of light; just a gleam rested on a peak higher up; and my single white sail was getting small in the distance, beating up the river. I was very happy. My school year, practically, was finished, and I was vaguely expecting some order or turn of affairs which would join me to my father and mother. I remember well what a flood of satisfied ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... walls of Edelweiss were sighted. For the first time he looked upon the distant housetops of the principal city of Graustark. Up in the clouds, on the summit of the mountain peak overlooking the city, stood the famed monastery of Saint Valentine. Stretching up the gradual incline were the homes of citizens, accessible only by footpaths and donkey roads. Beverly was awake and impatient to reach the journey's end. He had proved a most disappointing companion, ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... could n't get me back to New York alive, any more than you could take Victoria Peak ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... blank sheet of note paper, stamped with a gold peak, surmounted by a gold crown and three lavender ostrich plumes—the Azurian royal crest. These two things alone were strong pieces of evidence for the professor's sanguine expectation. There was nothing further of importance, so we turned ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... the nearest to the whale; the others, for fear of disturbing the unconscious monster, are now ordered to drop astern. One more spout is seen slowly curling forth,—it is his last; but the boat shoots rapidly alongside of the gigantic creature. "Peak your oars!" exclaims the mate, and directly they flourish in the air; the glistening harpoon is seen above the head of the harpooner. In an instant it is darted with unerring force and aim, and is buried deeply in the side of the huge animal. It is "socket up;" ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... the glorious mountains! There they were—before, behind, in front; range upon range—peak upon peak, like breakers on a restless sea! Mountains of every shade, of every shape, of every height. Already their mighty tops were flecked with the glow of the western sunbeams; already pink and ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... as he was. With her watching them, the young men vied with one another and never did log walls mount faster nor rafters span them than when they had reached their height. On a green maple branch being stuck in a gable peak to indicate progress, a wild huroo arose that woke the forest echoes. When the bee broke up all the rough work was done; what was left Archie could do himself with the aid of a carpenter and mason, for a regular fireplace ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... beauties of nature now and then. He called attention to the line of hills in the distance, and the sharp steep peak of a mountain piercing the sunlight. Then skillfully he led his speech around to his companion, and showed how lovelier than ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... stream of Eastern sportsmen. A mile beyond, they forded the river; a quarter-mile farther on, they forded it again, passed through a belt of cottonwoods into a level valley where the buttes receded, leaving a wide stretch of bottom-lands dominated by a solitary peak known as Chimney Butte, and drew up in front ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... cart. Pisolitic limestone cropped out in boulders and sheets, and we began to imagine ourselves approaching healthy highlands, and as if to give confirmation to the thought, to the north and north-west loomed the purple cones of Udoe, and topmost of all Dilima Peak, about 1,500 feet in height above the sea level. But soon after sinking into a bowl-like valley, green with tall corn, the road slightly deviated from north-west to west, the country still rolling before ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... land showed clear; the grim blackness of Sentinel's lone peak rose abruptly from the sand of the desert floor in darker silhouette against the velvet of a midnight sky. And the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... causes us to discover new qualities in literature, art, our surroundings, ourselves. How different does the scenery look—still familiar but delightfully strange—as we drive along the valleys or scramble in the hills with the new friend! there is a distant peak one never noticed, or a scented herb which has always grown upon those rocks, but might as well never have done so, but for the other pair of eyes which drew ours to it, or the other hand which crushing made us ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... musingly casting her eyes to the rafters, "I wish a man would just take me by the hand—so— and not listen to anything I said, nor let me go however I should struggle, and carry me off on the peak of his saddle and marry me. I think I would be willing to die for a man ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... mountainous, and some of its summits, as Captain Flinders observes, may probably rival the Peak of Teneriffe. The country slopes off towards the sea, and appears to be fertile and populous. The recesses of the mountains and the rivulets that derive their sources from them are said to be rich in gold and silver, and they are also ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... carefully combed; his features might have been cast in bronze; Talleyrand himself was not more impassive than this money-lender. A pair of little eyes, yellow as a ferret's, and with scarce an eyelash to them, peered out from under the sheltering peak of a shabby old cap, as if they feared the light. He had the thin lips that you see in Rembrandt's or Metsu's portraits of alchemists and shrunken old men, and a nose so sharp at the tip that it put you in mind of a gimlet. His voice was ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... As he raised his hat her quick vision took him in as it were in a complete picture—the thin yet well-made body, the slight stoop in the shoulders, the high forehead bordered with thick dark hair growing in such a shape that the brow seemed to rise almost to a peak, a long nose, a sensitive mouth, a pointed chin, dark eyes with downward lids. The young man—she would have guessed him at twenty-two or three—had a complete composure of manner; somehow she felt herself ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... snow with gleams of flying silver; the town came down the hill in a cascade of brown gables, bestridden by smooth white roofs, and sprangled here and there with lighted windows. At either end the snow stood high up in the darkness, on the peak of the Tolbooth and among the chimneys of the Castle. As the moon flashed a bull's-eye glitter across the town between the racing clouds, the white roofs leaped into relief over the gables and the ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... go sailing to the North Like birds of passage o'er the ocean waves; I feel an urging where I long to go, And willingly I heed the secret power, Which has its royal seat within the soul. I stand in Norway, am a hero's bride, And from the mountain peak watch eagle-like. O'er shining waves the vessel heaves in sight.— Oh, like the gull fly to your fatherland! I am a Southern child, I cannot wait; I tear the oaken wreath out of my hair,— Take this, my hero! 'Tis the second message I greet you ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... highest peak in the West of England; it rises above Exmoor black and bold above bog and heather, commanding a view from the Malvern Hills of Worcestershire on the north to the high lands of Plymouth on the south-west, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Conn of the 'Hundred Battles,' from thy throne Leaping long since, and crying, 'O'er the sea The Prophet cometh, princes in his train, Bearing for regal sceptres bended staffs, Which from the land's high places, cliff and peak, Shall drag the fair flowers down!'" Scoffing he heard: "Conn of the 'Hundred Battles!' Had he sent His hundred thousand kernes to yonder steep And rolled its boulders down, and built a mole To fence my laden ships from spring-tide surge, Far kinglier pattern had ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... was wont to sleep therein, of monstrous size, who shepherded his flocks alone and afar, and was not conversant with others, but dwelt apart in lawlessness of mind. Yea, for he was a monstrous thing and fashioned marvellously, nor was he like to any man that lives by bread, but like a wooded peak of the towering hills, which stands out ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... Who shall be left to weep? My kinsmen, Alas! what am I better than ye are, That I must live beyond ye? Where shall be The pleasant places where I thought of Anah While I had hope? or the more savage haunts, 20 Scarce less beloved, where I despaired for her? And can it be!—Shall yon exulting peak, Whose glittering top is like a distant star, Lie low beneath the boiling of the deep? No more to have the morning sun break forth, And scatter back the mists in floating folds From its tremendous brow? no more to have Day's broad orb drop behind its head at even, Leaving it with a crown of many ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... peak is so low that it can be touched by the hand of a man of ordinary height while standing, and the roof pitches until it comes to within two feet of the floor. Under the caves here are placed the beds of these old women, their heads close under the roof, and extending in a line down the length ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... the same beauty as many other islands already mentioned. Great wooded hills rise, peak upon peak, to the clouds, and between them lie deep gorges and fertile ravines. The margins of the sea are fringed with palms; Roseau itself lies glimmering upon the shore, with white walls and red and ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... "Fire!" rang his clear voice. The deck leaped under the boys' feet. The long, thunderous bellow of the battery jarred out over the sea. Even as they looked the enemy's maingaff, shot away at the jaws, dangled loose from the peak halyards, and her broad sail crumpled, puffing out ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... note: the Intelligence Community estimates that defense spending in Russia fell by about 10% in real terms in 1996, reducing Russian defense outlays to about one-sixth of peak Soviet levels in the late 1980s ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was well enough, too, that the weather was not clear. The mists that hung about the mountain-peaks below and around us; the roaring wind that shepherded the clouds, now driving them swiftly before it and leaving in clear view for a minute peak after peak and valley after valley, the next minute brushing great fog-masses over wall and landscape and concealing all from view—all this lent an element of mystery and majesty to the experience not out ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... it is so placed in the Servian basin, that the eye embraces the whole breadth from Bosnia to Bulgaria, and very nearly the whole length from Macedonia to Hungary. When at length I stood on the highest peak, the prospect was literally gorgeous. Servia lay rolled out at my feet. There lay the field of Kossovo, where Amurath defeated Lasar, and entombed the ancient empire of Servia. I mused an instant on this great landmark of European history, and following the finger of an old peasant who accompanied ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... promontory rises above the city, the wall, strengthened from distance to distance by large towers, follows the ridge of the mountains, descends into the ravines, and ascends the slopes to take root on some remote peak. If the natives were to be believed, this wall, which, however, no longer has any strategetical importance, had formerly its towers bristling upon the Caucasus chain from one sea to another; at least, this rampart did protect all the plains at the foot of the eastern Caucasus, since vestiges ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a fancy which moved her then. She saw the men like Dr. Parkman fighting darkness down in the valley, while from the mountain peak adjacent men like Karl turned on, as with mighty search-lights, more, and ever more, of the light. And what were the search-lights for if not to be turned down ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... Colombo stood a barefoot boy, his dark eyes gazing toward the tropically green mountains of the island. His attention was particularly riveted on one of the highest peaks, that one which is known to English-speaking people as "Adam's Peak," and which is reverenced by natives as being the traditional spot from which Buddha ascended ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... creatures entered a second compartment furnished with a large table upon which the silent machines deposited inanimate bodies. "Extraordinary!" said Eo, staring at Miss Betsy Tapp. "These things have reached a peak of ...
— Stopover Planet • Robert E. Gilbert
... with strength renew'd, For onward lay the gallant town, Whose name old custom hath clipp'd down, With more of music left than many, So handily to ABERGANY. And as the sidelong, sober light Left valleys darken'd, hills less bright, Great BLORENGE rose to tell his tale; And the dun peak of PEN-Y-VALE Stood like a centinel, whose brow Scowl'd on the sleeping world below; Yet even sleep itself outspread The mountain paths we meant to tread, 'Midst fresh'ning gales all unconfin'd, Where USK'S broad valley ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... countless others plainly show. The Englishmen Livermore, Gilroy and Mark West, those early settlers, Temple and Rice at Los Angeles, Yount and Pope of Napa Valley, Don Timoteo Murphy of San Rafael, and Lassen the Dane, for whom Lassen's Peak was named, were among those who came ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... illuminate with life." He is sketched for us addressing the college, in chapel, one September morning of 1876, on the supremacy of Greek literature, "urging in conclusion all who would venture upon Hadley's Grammar as the first thorny stretch toward that celestial mountain peak, to rise." It is Professor Katharine Lee Bates, writing in 1892, who gives us the picture: "My next neighbor, a valorous little mortal, now a member of the Smith faculty, was the first upon her feet, pulling ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... back and admire but which close the question considered, rather than open it. Participants are converted into spectators; active worship on the part of all drifts into passive reception of external instruction. To be sure, there are gathered meetings, which arise about a single towering mountain peak of a sermon. One kindled soul may be the agent whereby the slumbering embers within are quickened ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer
... of the Colorado River of the West is Green River which heads in the Wind River Mountains at Fremont Peak. From this range southward to the Uinta Mountains, on the southern boundary of Wyoming, the river flows through an open country celebrated in the early days of Western exploration and fur trading as "Green River Valley," and at that period the meeting ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... flag of true friendship flying at the peak, comes a gallant ship. In letters of gold the name Dwight Temple stands out from the bow. Many times we have asked aid from its owner and never once has it been refused, though in our great wreck his loss was heavy. ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... standing at the gate as I was. It was only at a distance that one could see their roofs above the enclosure. There was but one line of windows along the front, but there was an oriel just under the peak of the main building, and I could see a skylight here and there upon ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... form of a woman, and stood on a white slab of stone at the water's brink. It seemed that the heart of the earth must heave in joy under her bare white feet. Methought the vague veilings of her body should melt in ecstasy into air as the golden mist of dawn melts from off the snowy peak of the eastern hill. She bowed herself above the shining mirror of the lake and saw the reflection of her face. She started up in awe and stood still; then smiled, and with a careless sweep of her left arm unloosed her hair and let it trail on the earth ...
— Chitra - A Play in One Act • Rabindranath Tagore
... Shira-kami on Tsugaru straits, about 350 miles; and from its northern point, Cape Soya on the La Perouse straits to Yerimosaki, it measures about 270 miles. The centre of the island is an elevated peak, from which rivers flow in all directions to the ocean. Hakodate the principal port is situated on Tsugaru straits and possesses one of the most commodious harbors ...
— Japan • David Murray
... of noon, the windings of that long desert journey, now at last to close. But who shall enter into the thoughts of the High Priest, as his eye followed those paths of ancient pilgrimage; and, through the silence of the arid and endless hills, stretching even to the dim peak of Sinai, the whole history of those forty years was unfolded before him, and the mystery of his own ministries revealed to him; and that other Holy of Holies, of which the mountain peaks were the altars, and the mountain clouds the veil, the firmament of his Father's dwelling, opened ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... find her as amusing as the heroine of 'Peveril of the Peak.' Thoughtless as a Bohemian, she says everything that comes into her head; she thinks no more about the future than you do of the sous you fling to the poor. She says grand things sometimes. You couldn't ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... varied and remote things before these vanishing virtues can be seen suddenly for what they are; almost as one might fancy that a man would have to rise to the dizziest heights of the divine understanding before he saw, as from a peak far above a whirlpool, how precious ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... beautiful expanse of it. "The valley, it is glorious! Am I not right? Blame not the beautiful land, Senor, for the trouble that has come; for trouble will find a man out, though he climb the loneliest mountain peak and hide himself among the rocks there! And the valley—Senors, the valley will hold friends that ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... three-quarter miles to top of sandhill over flat stony plains with plenty of water and feed. From this point a perfect sea is before me. Came to camp on Myall Creek after passing two table-topped hills on left and a peak and table-topped hill on right; beyond the camp plenty of feed and water. Today passed a native camp, the fire still burning, and their tracks quite fresh; but did not see them. One of the bullocks did not arrive in camp; ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... his way they should all have been made to pay a heavy ransom first. The anchor was hove up, and we stood out to sea. We were becalmed during the day, while still at a distance from the stranger. As evening approached, a breeze springing up, she neared us, with a black flag flying from her peak. From the cut of her sail and the appearance of her hull, she was an English vessel, fully as large, if not larger, than the Dolphin; but there could be no doubt of her character—she was a pirate. The drum ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... plains, the winters are delightfully mild and salubrious. Owing to the great altitude the atmosphere is pure and dry and in the hot months the breezes which blow almost continuously from the snow-capped heights of Pike's Peak, make the air deliciously cool, with a temperature rarely rising above the eighties. For this reason Denver is almost as popular a summer resort with those who live in the Middle West, as Colorado Springs, Manitou, and ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... until we were all marched over the side at the point of ugly-looking revolvers. If it hadn't been for that little Chinese whom you've just seen we would have starved, for the island was little more than a reef of rock, rising to a sort of peak in its centre—worn-out volcano, I imagine—and with nothing eatable on it in the way of flesh or fruit. But Chuh was a God-send! He was clever at fishing, and he showed us an edible sea-weed out of which he made good ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... a telegram flashed over the wires, and thenceforth, on the great financial tide, the ship Day, Knight, and Company lowered its peak to none. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... I dropped in on you so unexpected-like? Let's say that I got tired of staring at the lonely grandeur of Pike's Peak, mon gars, or that the lady who gave me the pleasure of her society skipped for Denver with a younger man, or that the high altitude played Billy-be-damned with my nerves, and you'll have excuse enough. But the fact is, Pete, I was ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... in the hottest weather and almost with the suddenness of an explosion. A swiftly moving black cloud tipped with fiery streaks and growing rapidly appears above the crest of the mountains. Then it sinks like a monster balloon turned sidewise until it strikes a ridge or peak; the flood is then let loose and ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... Werribee Plains, where some friends, the Pinkertons from Glasgow, and Mr. James Sceales, late merchant and Chief Magistrate of Leith, had their respective stations. On those vast plains, extending westwards 30 to 40 miles, from Melbourne to the Anakies, or Station Peak, the slight and scattered squatting invasion had hardly disturbed anywhere the indigenous features. Thus over a vast solitude we revelled in much of specially Australian scenery, particularly that of tortuous and deeply excavated ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... to follow a desire that goes but a little way, and that on the level of familiar effort and within sight of familiar things. It is another thing to hear the call of the mountains and to feel the fascination of some far and glittering peak. That is a call to perilous and painful effort. And yet again, high desire sometimes leaves life where it found it because the heart attaches an intrinsic value to vision. It is something to have seen ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... London panoramas of Athens and the Himalaya mountains. In the latter, you see the Ganges glittering a hundred and fifty miles off; and far away the snowy peak of the mountain it rises from; that mountain 25,000 feet high. What's the use of coming to Exeter, when you can see all this for a shilling in London? . . . And now I am going to the Cathedral, where the Bishop has a cover to his seat sixty ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... dropped me at my hotel we touched hands and smiled formally for appearances before the gaping, peeping, peering crowd. And as he drove away, how they cheered him—the man risen high above eighty millions, alone on the mountain-peak, in the glorious sunshine ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... 4th of August, 1854, off Cape Corrientes. Morning was breaking over a heavy sea, and the closely-reefed topsails of a barque that ran before it bearing down upon the faint outline of the Mexican coast. Already the white peak of Colima showed, ghost-like, in the east; already the long sweep of the Pacific was gathering strength and volume as it swept uninterruptedly into the opening Gulf ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... lost his way and fell over a very steep precipice and waterfall, and was killed. His remains were found, eleven days after the accident, in a pool of clear water at the foot of the waterfall. They are now resting on the highest point of the mountain, and the spot is known as "Mitchell's Peak." Dr. Mitchell found, by measurement, that the Black Mountain was the highest point of land east of the Rocky Mountains. "Mitchell's Peak" is 6,672 feet above the level of the sea, and 244 feet higher than ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... that I thought were better lyrics than I or any of my fellows can ever hope to create. I have heard the moaning of rain winds among mountain pines that struck me as being equal, at least, to Adonais. I have seen the solemn rearing of a mountain peak into the pale dawn that gave me a deep religious appreciation of my significance in the Grand Scheme, as though I had heard and understood a parable from the holy lips of an Avatar. And the vast plains of my native country are as a mystic scroll unrolled, ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt |
