"Precipitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nothing, employed by Aladdin). Seeing only the roof of that palace boldly breaking the sky-line, how serene your contemplations! Perhaps a star twinkles over it, and you muse on soft eyes far away; while below at the threshold—No, phantoms! we see you not from our attic. Note, yonder, that precipitous fall,—how ragged and jagged the roof-scene descends in a gorge! He who would travel on foot through the pass of that defile, of which we see but the picturesque summits, stops his nose, averts his eyes, guards his pockets, and hurries along through the squalor ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a little hunting gate which led out of the lane into the field opposite. Between the lane and the field there was a fence which was not "rideable!" As is the custom with lanes, the roadway had been so cut down that there was a bank altogether precipitous about three feet high, and on that a hedge of trees and stakes and roots which had also been cut almost into the consistency of a wall. The gate was the only place,—into which these enemies had thrust themselves, and in the possession of which ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... intervals, producing, however, rather a cumbrous effect. These streets are quite level, and are well paved, in which respect they differ from all the others in Lisbon. The most singular street, however, of all is that of the Alemcrin, or Rosemary, which debouches on the Caesodre. It is very precipitous, and is occupied on either side by the palaces of the principal Portuguese nobility, massive and frowning, but grand and picturesque, edifices, with here and there a hanging garden, overlooking the streets at ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... who have actually made the ascent of high and precipitous Mountains, have any idea of the dangers and difficulties of the undertaking. The adventurers are obliged to wear shoes studded with strong iron spikes to prevent slipping; they carry long poles with iron points by which they assist themselves up the steep inclines; they are ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... right loomed the high and precipitous shores of Long Island, hardly visible in the cloudy darkness. On the left, far across the waving waters, was the unseen ragged coast of the mainland, broken by a hundred irregular indentations, studded with numberless ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... Captain Hill stood in contemplation on the edge of a precipitous bluff, looking seaward. His hands were folded, and he looked thoughtful. His back was turned, so he could not, therefore, see a figure stealthily approaching, the face distorted by murderous hate, the hand holding a long, slender knife. Fate was approaching him in the person ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... to the western edge of the flat, where the cliff was most high and precipitous, and then made ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... down the hill now, descending the last precipitous slope, and the countless odors of the Indian village rose to his nostrils. There was a dull murmurous commotion afar off, such as bees make when they are hiving. He listened, without curiosity, as he pressed forward. Suddenly ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... at this point, the great walls of the canyon were too precipitous to scale. Daw and Linday had to keep on; and they kept on till the disaster happened. With a loud explosion, the ice broke asunder midway under the team. The two animals in the middle of the string went into the fissure, ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... San Luis Obispo, and on the way we struck the Coast Range Mountains. The tortuous upclimbing and downsliding of the train disclosed scenery imposing and grand. You looked down the precipitous rock-ribbed sides thousands of feet to the narrow, beautiful valleys, made productive by the irrigation from many foaming waterfalls. We circle the mountains many times before reaching the valleys, traveling many hours ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... in the "transcendental" mood do beyond question sometimes irresistibly suggest the close neighborhood of the sublime to the ridiculous. But very near that precipitous border line there is a charmed region where, if the statelier growths of philosophy die out and disappear, the flowers of poetry next the very edge of the chasm have a peculiar and mysterious beauty. "Uriel" is a poem which finds itself ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... be made at a snail's pace, the precipitous slopes close under our horses' hoofs being frightful to contemplate. This drive is an excellent preparation for an exploration of the Lozere. We are always, metaphorically, going up or coming down ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... is a military cantonment, where some troops are stationed for the active duty of protecting Her Majesty's northern Indian boundaries. The officers' residences and the barracks are situated on the top and upon the precipitous sides of a small hill, and bridle-paths wind between, and flower-gardens and ornamental trees are to be seen grouped about each dwelling. Darjeeling is distant about three hundred and fifty miles almost due north from Calcutta, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... the cone. The huge monolith rose some eight hundred feet above the tableland on which the village was built. Its symmetrical slopes were smooth and steep. A goat could not have found footing anywhere upon its precipitous sides. ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... were afraid to move lest they should run into danger. The Angrognians, emboldened by this interposition of Providence, issued forth from their retreats, and by means of their knowledge of the locality cut off the escape of their enemies, and forced them over the precipitous rocks into the foaming torrent, where large numbers perished, including a man of gigantic size named Saquet, whose eventful death has caused the pool in which he fell ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... From this spot I had a fine view of the ground. Immediately before me, rose the hill from which the elk had barked; beneath my feet, the river stretched into a wide pool on its entrance to the jungle. This jungle clothed the precipitous cliffs of a deep ravine, down which the river fell in two cataracts; these were concealed from view by the forest. I waited in breathless expectation of 'the find.' A few minutes passed, when the sudden burst of the pack in full cry came sweeping ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... a certain gusto of appreciation; and some of the rest were master-talkers. From their long tales, their traits of character and unpremeditated landscape, there began to piece itself together in my head some image of the islands and the island life; precipitous shores, spired mountain-tops, the deep shade of hanging forests, the unresting surf upon the reef, and the unending peace of the lagoon; sun, moon, and stars of an imperial brightness; man moving in these scenes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Here the sierras impinged upon the river, forming a canon. It was a grim gap, similar to that we had passed on entering from the west, but still more fearful in its features. Unlike the former, there was no road over the mountains on either side. The valley was headed in by precipitous cliffs, and the trail lay through the canon, up the bed of the stream. The latter was shallow. During freshets it became a torrent; and then the valley was inaccessible from the east, but that was a rare ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... matter to my own satisfaction and relief, I acknowledged a feeling of shame for having been so precipitous. I shudder to think of the look she would have given me if I had burst in upon her while in the throes of that extraordinary seizure. Obviously I had lost my wits. Now I had them once more, I knew what to do with ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... the edge of a broad shelf of the mountain,—a shelf covered with huge boulders of rock tumbled there by storm and tempest, riven by lightning-stroke or the slow disintegration of nature from the bare, glaring, precipitous ledge he had marked from below. East and west it seemed to stretch, forbidding and inaccessible. Turning to the sergeant, Mr. Billings directed him to make his way off to the right and see if there were any possibility of ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... prevented by their approach to the village, which was built at the foot of a precipitous kopje, the spot having been chosen originally for its fertility consequent upon the fact that a copious spring of fresh water rose high up among the rocks to form the little stream and gully at whose mouth the young officers had ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... and the distant Valaisian Alps, for example, which we saw from the shoulder of the mountain above the Gemmi, and the early summer dawn breaking over Italy as we moved from our night's crouching and munched bread and chocolate and stretched our stiff limbs among the tumbled and precipitous rocks that hung over Lake Cingolo, and surveyed the winding tiring rocky track going down and down ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... against him while he read, one arm about her, her head upon his shoulder. Sometimes they pored together over the printed pages of beauty. Then, too, she loved nature, and with generous imagination he changed the scene of their reading—sometimes they read in closed-in valleys with precipitous walls, or in high mountain meadows, and, again, down by the gray sand-dunes with a wreath of billows at their feet, or afar on some volcanic tropic isle where waterfalls descended and became mist, reaching the sea in vapor veils ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... face of the crags behind him. They hunted where the starlight made deep pits of gloom in the twisting edge of the mountains. They went from rock to rock and from tree to tree until at last they rested upon a giant spruce which hung out over the precipitous wall of the ridge, its thick top beckoning and sighing to the black rocks that shot up out of the snow five hundred ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... had not ridden far into the debatable land when the path lay between two sloping, almost precipitous banks, crowned with underwood. All at once a ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... chapel stands (O'er Rubaconte, looking lordly down On the well-guided city,) up the right Th' impetuous rise is broken by the steps Carv'd in that old and simple age, when still The registry and label rested safe; Thus is th' acclivity reliev'd, which here Precipitous from the other circuit falls: But on each hand the tall ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... important mines in the State of San Luis Potosi are those near Cuatorce. In the midst of bleak and precipitous mountain ridges is the village of Cuatorce, from which a circuitous mountain road leads to the entrance of the mining shafts, in which more wonderful things have occurred than in the wildest of the "romances." The story of Padre Flores is a familiar ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... is a smooth dark sheet of water, so deep in the centre that it cannot be sounded. There is a pretty pebbly beach at one end, and all around the other shores the waves make a peculiar musical sound against the precipitous rocks. It is a charming little lake for boating, and in fine weather, Sir Philip Crampton always gives his guests the pleasure of a trip in his pretty row-boat. There are great numbers of duck and other water-fowl about the lake, ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... and only about twenty-five miles intervened between him and the great fortress of Adoni, which is situated on a precipitous range of hills about that distance from the river. The Tungabhadra at this portion of its course may be considered as forming the arc, west to north, of a quarter circle having Adoni for its centre, the radius roughly measuring about twenty-five miles. The river is fordable ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... grant of it, and resided there for some time with the view of forming a settlement, but abandoned it afterwards.[1] On approaching its northern side from the east, it appears a large congeries of lofty peaked mountains, the shore in most places being composed of high precipitous rocks, presenting three several bays, East bay, Cumberland bay, and West bay, the second only being of any extent, and is by far the best, in which we moored. The island itself is of an irregular triangular figure; one side of which, facing the N.E. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... other explorations, in a general way, confirm these. Mr. Dawkins explored a group of caverns in Derbyshire, England. These caverns and fissures are situated in what is known as Cresswell Crags, the precipitous sides of a ravine through which flows a stream of water dividing the counties of ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... considerable village of Northern Daghestan, the young Tartars were assembled for their national exercise called "djigitering;" that is, the horse-race accompanied by various trials of boldness and strength. Bouinaki is situated upon two ledges of the precipitous rocks of the mountain: on the left of the road leading from Derbend to Tarki, rises, soaring above the town, the crest of Caucasus, feathered with wood; on the right, the shore, sinking imperceptibly, spreads itself out into meadows, on which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... activities and forces. On the sea this sense of remoteness and strangeness comes oftener than in the presence of any other natural form; even the mountains make sheltered places for our thought at their feet, or along their precipitous ledges; but the sea makes no concessions to our human weakness, and leaves the message which it intones with the voice of tempest and the roar of surge without an interpreter. Men have come to it in all ages, full of a passionate desire to catch its meaning and enter into its secret, but the ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... ledges of rock, at the very extremity of the little platform; and, making use of them as a staircase, he clambered by their means around the projecting shoulder of the crag on which the cavern opened, and, descending with some difficulty on the other side, he gained the wild and precipitous shores of a Highland loch, about four miles in length and a mile and a half across, surrounded by heathy and savage mountains, on the crests of which the morning mist was ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... boats up stream was varied at times by what Swiftwater described as "canal work." At stretch where the banks of the stream were reasonably high and precipitous, and the water of considerable depth close to the shore, the three Indians in each boat fastened themselves tandem to a long cable stretched from the bow of the boat to the shore, and towed the craft for miles at a time, while one of the ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... as Castle Ratch, a remarkable earthwork of problematical origin, 7 m. S. of Taunton. It crowns the edge of a precipitous hillside, over which runs the main road to Chard. The camp is of quite exceptional strength, and occupies a position of great strategic importance. Recent excavations have proved it to have been occupied and strengthened, if not originally made, ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... which we were mounting would become too precipitous higher up, I turned off to the left, and crossed a long, narrow snow-slope that descended between this ridge and another line of rocks more to the west. It was firm, and just steep enough to make steps cut in the snow comfortable, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... poison, and precipitates Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud, 230 Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight O'er the wide aery wilderness: thus driven By the bright shadow of that lovely dream, Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night, Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells, 235 Startling with careless step the moonlight snake, He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight, Shedding the mockery of its vital hues Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on Till vast Aornos seen ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... that will amuse me,'" ruminated Francois on his high seat next to the coachman, repeating the marquis' words, as they drove home after the nobleman's precipitous retreat from the theater. "Well, he didn't look as though he had been particularly amused. But no wonder he was startled! It even"—reviewing the impression first made upon him at sight of the actress—"sent ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... needs go with him." Mary did not answer, but her head was reclined upon his bosom, and the Familist knew that she resigned herself wholly to his direction. He folded the shawl more carefully around her, and supported her down the precipitous and ragged bank of the river, followed closely ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... invariably twenty-eight inches. No fracture whatever appeared in the mass first presented; but in a few seconds a shelving pile appeared, of five or six columns' width, which showed their figure to be hexagonal, and their articulations similar to those of the basaltic formation at Staffa. This precipitous cliff was profusely covered with a dark red flower, precisely similar, says Dr. Grant, to the Papaver Rhoeus, or Rose Poppy, of our sublunary cornfields; and this was the first organic production of nature in a foreign world ever revealed to the ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Canadian term 'toboggan,' the excitement becomes far greater. The hand-sledge is about three feet long, fifteen inches wide, and half a foot above the ground, on runners shod with iron. Seated firmly at the back, and guiding with the feet in front, the rider skims down precipitous slopes and round perilous corners with a rapidity that beats a horse's pace. Winding through sombre pine-forests, where the torrent roars fitfully among caverns of barbed ice, and the glistening mountains tower above in their glory of sun-smitten snow, darting round ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... to apostacy is, indeed, usually gradual, though rapid, resembling the irresistible haste of persons travelling down a precipitous path, or the descent of a heavy body towards the earth, whose velocity is accelerated in proportion as it approaches its destination. The first compliance with temptation is accompanied with misgivings—trembling— restlessness—the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... then be drained as the tide fell back, leaving the poor little crabs left high and dry ashore to repeat their scrambling attempts at escape, only to tumble over on top of each other as they tried to climb the precipitous sides of Bob's reservoir. ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... peace, before the coming of the Greeks); in one of those beautiful valleys, on a bold round-surfaced lawn, spotted with juniper, that opened itself in the bosom of an old wood, which rose with a steep, but not precipitous ascent, from the river to the summit of the hill, stood the castellated villa of a retired citizen. Ebenezer Mac Crotchet, Esquire, was the London-born offspring of a worthy native of the "north countrie," who had walked up to London on a commercial ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... command to which he was not called by the senate, while he was under condemnation for an offence of which he did not feel guilty. The senate was shut up in the capitol, and hard to get at, but an ambitious youth offered to climb the precipitous hill, in spite of the besieging barbarians, and obtain the requisite order. The daring man crossed the Tiber, and scaled the hill by the help of shrubs and projecting stones. After obtaining for Camillus the appointment of dictator, he successfully returned to ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... in modern art—we will not demand that it should be equal—but in any way analogous to what Titian has effected, in that wonderful bringing together of two times in the Ariadne, in the National Gallery? Precipitous, with his reeling Satyr rout about him, repeopling and re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk with a new fury beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, fire-like flings himself at the Cretan. This is the time present. With this telling of the story an artist, and no ordinary ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... wandered unusually far afield, and at nightfall found myself still several miles from home, on a rocky path overhanging the sea. The coast-line had been gradually mounting in a series of precipitous headlands, at the foot of which the sea made a low booming that suggested hidden caves. Looking over the edge in places, one could see that it had hollowed out the porous rock well under the base of the cliffs, and here and there fallen masses of boulder told of ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... impossible f'r to carry th' war to a successful con-clusion unless I was free, so I sint th' ar-rmy home an' attackted San Juon hill. Ar-rmed on'y with a small thirty-two which I used in th' West to shoot th' fleet prairie dog, I climbed that precipitous ascent in th' face iv th' most gallin' fire I iver knew or heerd iv. But I had a few r-rounds iv gall mesilf an' what cared I? I dashed madly on cheerin' as I wint. Th' Spanish throops was dhrawn up in a long line in th' formation known among military men as a long line. I fired ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... weep for joy, as he looked up the precipitous hill-side on which the terraced vineyard hung, and saw there the head and hands of his son glancing quickly from place to place among the vine plants. Thus there is joy in heaven—deep in the heart of heaven's Lord—over one ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... my friend informed me, made the whole mountains in the summer season one rich bed of bloom. About six miles from the point where we had entered them we scaled the highest ridge of the hills, by three almost precipitous zigzags, the topmost ledge paved by a stratum of broken shaley limestone; and, passing at once from the forest into well cultivated fields, came on a new and lovelier prospect—a narrow deep vale ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... they passed a succession of islands, known by scarcely more than name to the English navigator. They all seem to be volcanic, though their volcanoes may sleep; and rapid as the glance of the voyagers was, they all, even in the wildness of precipitous shores and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... brushwood and underwood, over rolling stones, always upwards higher and higher in the dark night. Waters roared beneath them, or fell in cascades from above. Humid clouds were driving through the air as the hunters reached the precipitous ledge of the rock. It was even darker here, for the sides of the rocks almost met, and the light penetrated only through a small opening at the top. At a little distance from the edge could be heard the sound of ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... questions he plunged into a glowing description of Ajedrez Mountain; the marvelous scope of country to be seen from the summit; the beauty of its steep and precipitous canons; the Indian pottery; the mysterious deposit of oyster shells, high on the mountain-side, proving conclusively that Ajedrez Mountain had risen from the depths of some prehistoric sea; ending with a vivid description ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... the southwest for fifteen days at the foot of the mountains, and following the course of their range. The way was difficult and rugged, running along a bank exceedingly precipitous, which rose up there, a hill-like wall of rock, ten thousand cubits from the base. When one approached the edge of it, his eyes became unsteady; and if he wished to go forward in the same direction, there was no place on which he could place his foot; and beneath were the waters of the river ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... when they saw what the trouble was. Sam had kicked Trip down the precipitous side of the hill, where there was a fearful plunge of thirty or forty feet; and there he lay motionless upon his side. Although they stood so far above the dog, it was very evident that he was dead. Frank burst into ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... places where nature had upheaved into a turmoil. Huge naked black crags; buttes; hills with precipitous black sides of sleek metal; narrow canyons with tumultuous water ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... was so high it vanquished sight, And the hillside precipitous far more Than line from ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... had made for St. Mena's Island, a small rocky piece of land lying about a mile off shore, and nearly five miles from Killigwent Cove. The island was roughly three-quarters of a mile in length, and four hundred yards wide in the broadest part. The north and west sides were precipitous, but on the side nearest to the mainland the ground sloped gradually, and was indented ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... that name, around which are many tiny islands. From Caorano, near the mouth of the canal of the Arsa, the land begins to rise, and with Punta Nera, an outlying spur of the chain of Monte Maggiore, the coast becomes rocky and precipitous, from 950 ft. to 3,200 ft. high, furrowed by valleys running down to the sea. The villages are high above the water, and there is little green except in the lower parts, the grey of the rock being varied only with brushwood. Albona may be taken as a typical example of ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... bottom of a shallow basin. Twenty miles to the north the first rims of the hills rose out of the low country and through the breaks in them she could see long sloping valleys of lodgepole, the dark green relieved by the pale silvery sheen of aspen clumps; dense spruce jungles of the more precipitous slopes topped by rugged peaks covered with perpetual snow; certainly no soft or homelike scene. One must be filled with a vast love of it—or die of it—for without that love of the open life would be a deadly thing to bear ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... a surprise in store for her. He led her to the rear of the house and raised a shade. Instead of the expectable back yard, Marie Louise was startled to see a noble landscape leap into view. The house loomed over a precipitous descent into a great valley. A stream ran far below, and then the cliffs rose again opposite in a succession of uplifting terraces that reminded her somehow of Richmond Hill superbly built up above ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... as the mysterious letter had bid me. It was bitterly cold, and the air full of fog and sleet; not a shop open, not a window unshuttered, not a creature visible; the narrow black streets, precipitous between their, high walls and under their lofty archways, were only the blacker for the dull light of an oil-lamp here and there, with its flickering yellow reflection on the wet flags. San Giovanni Decollato is a little church, or rather oratory, which I have always ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... positions. As soon as we passed the point above designated (about three miles from the top of the mountains), we dismounted and formed a line of battle on a ridge circling to the rear. Our right rested on a precipitous ravine and the left was protected by a marshy run that was easily held against the enemy. The mules were sent into a ravine to the rear of our right, where they were protected from the enemy's bullets. I also deployed a line of skirmishers, resting on our right ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... near: the horses had walked three miles from their stable. They were by far the best team that had drawn the coach that day. Four tall greys, nearly white with age; but they looked well and went well, checking the coach stoutly as they went down the precipitous descents, and ascending the opposite hills at a tearing gallop. No doubt you could see various things amiss. They were blowing a little; one or two were rather blind; and all four a little stiff at starting. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... descended the precipitous side of the amphitheatre with rapid steps, vaulting from tier to tier, and bounding with wonderful agility from one mass of ruin to another. At length she reached the level; and then, foaming and panting, she rushed to Alroy, threw herself upon the ground, embraced ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... himself of a mediocrity of mind which was thwarting the noble desires of his consort, and, full of uncertainty, he would sometimes exhort her to taste with moderation the good things of this world, while at others he roused himself to pursue fortune along the verge of precipitous heights. He was prudent, but conjugal affection bore him beyond the reach of prudence. Gigonne thought of nothing but cutting a figure in the world, being received at Court, and becoming the King's mistress. ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... was more or less anxious, himself. Frank, eagerly listening, could tell this from the way in which the fellow spoke. But Nick did not mean to fall into a panic. To try and rush down the precipitous side of that mountain in the dark would be madness. And with all his faults Nick was at least smart enough to understand what it meant by "jumping from the frying pan ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... lay a low range of country, adorned with vineyards; beyond which, the mountains rose in a precipitous ridge, and ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... on her sturdy animal, Uncle took the bridle to lead her down the steep mountain path; she begged him not to come far with her, but he insisted on seeing her safely as far as Dorfli, for the way was precipitous and not without danger for ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... Sumner with the Mounted Rifles under Major W.W. Loring, and the Second Dragoons under Captain Henry Hastings Sibley, to his support. The attack of the Americans being persistently pressed on all sides, the Mexicans gave way and made a precipitous retreat, pursued by ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... all tattered and wayworn, to the summit of a steep descent, and looked below me on the sea. About all the coast, the surf, roused by the tornado of the night, beat with a particular fury and made a fringe of snow. Close at my feet, I saw a haven, set in precipitous and palm- crowned bluffs of rock. Just outside, a ship was heaving on the surge, so trimly sparred, so glossily painted, so elegant and point-device in every feature, that my heart was seized with admiration. The ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... feet on the beach below. She straightened and turned to face the ocean. The waters were sewn with jagged rocks and long-running reefs. Sleek-haired seals bobbed up to look humanly at her. A thin, high-rising jet of water afar out bespoke the presence of a whale. Back of her loomed the precipitous wall of the cliff. She gasped at her own daring as her eye followed the rough stairway down which she had descended. A moment she wondered, with dismay, if she could possibly climb back again; a moment she pictured her plight should she be caught here when ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... that this Fourth Dimension terrain co-existing within in the space of New York City, must be a tumbled, mountainous region of crags and spires, and yawning pits, ravines and valley depths. Jagged and precipitous indeed, for there were apparitions encamped in the air above Manhattan and harbor—higher in altitude than the Chrysler or the Empire State towers. Other wraiths showed in a dozen places lower down—some within the city buildings ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... the beryl. The fall of the Traun, about ten miles below Gmunden, was one of our favourite haunts. It is a cataract which, when the river is full, may be almost compared to that of Schaffhausen for magnitude, and possesses the same peculiar characters of grandeur in the precipitous rush of its awful and overpowering waters, and of beauty in the tints of its streams and foam, and in the forms of the rocks over which it falls, and the cliffs and woods by which it is overhung. In this spot an accident, which had nearly been fatal ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... passed the tall groves that stretch a mile above Mirror Lake, and scrambled around the Tenaya Fall, which is just at the head of the lake groves, I crept through the dense and spiny chaparral that plushes the roots of the mountains here for miles in warm green, and was ascending a precipitous rock front, smoothed by glacial action, when I suddenly fell—for the first time since I touched foot to Sierra rocks. After several somersaults, I became insensible from the shock, and when consciousness returned I found myself wedged among short, stiff bushes, trembling ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... most elegant, that Nature wears Beneath Columbia's skies, are here combin'd. The wide extended landscape glows with more Than common beauty. Hills rise on hills— An amphitheater, whose lofty top, The spreading oak, or stately poplar crowns— Whose ever-varying sides present such scenes Smooth or precipitous—harmonious still— Mild or sublime,—as wake the poet's lay; Nor aught is wanting to delight the sense; The gifts of Ceres, or Diana's shades. The eye enraptur'd roves o'er woods and dells, Or dwells complacent on the ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... The ascent was steep; precipitous in places. There were little gullies, which expanded as we climbed up them. It seemed as if we would never reach the top, but at last we were there. I was aware that the drug had ceased its action. The yellow, rocky ground ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... "Pie-island," from its fancied resemblance to a pumpkin pie, and the name, like all bad names, sticks. McKay's Mountain on the mainland, a perpendicular rock more than a thousand feet high, upheaved by the throes of some vast volcano, and numerous other bold and precipitous headlands, and rock-built islands, around which roll the sapphire-blue waters of the fathomless bay, present some of the most magnificent views to ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate, its capacity for sorrowful impression; and acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... separating it from the dust and traffic of the road. There was the Old School with its Fourth Form Room, of which one had heard so much that the actual sight of it made one half inclined to laugh and half to cry with surprise and disappointment. There was the twisting High Street, with its precipitous causeway; there was the faithful presentment of the fashionable "tuck-shop," with two boys standing in the road, and the leg of a third caught by the camera as he hurried past; and, wandering through all these scenes in the ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... of their way was uninteresting. Then they entered a little valley with precipitous sides, their path running by the side of a beautiful little stream, which they had to cross again and again; but their progress was not rapid, for Mr Burne always stopped to examine the pools and talk about how fond he had been of fishing ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... here and St. Paul that can give the Hudson points. You'll have the Queen's Bluff—seven hundred feet high, and just as imposing a spectacle as you can find anywheres; and Trempeleau Island, which isn't like any other island in America, I believe, for it is a gigantic mountain, with precipitous sides, and is full of Indian traditions, and used to be full of rattlesnakes; if you catch the sun just right there, you will have a picture that will stay with you. And above Winona you'll have lovely prairies; and then ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... strong men, when they saw Bruce thus protecting the retreat of his followers, made a vow that they would either kill this redoubted champion, or make him prisoner. The whole three rushed on the king at once. Bruce was on horseback, in the strait pass we have described, between a precipitous rock and a deep lake. He struck the first man who came up and seized his horse's rein such a blow with his sword, as cut off his hand and freed the bridle. The man bled to death. The other brother had grasped Bruce in the meantime by the leg, and was attempting to throw him from horseback. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... slumbers, from generation to generation, that it might puzzle the most curious to think why a village should be built there at all. There is no ford through the river, and, though a leaky ferryboat makes occasional journeys from one side to the other, the path which leads to the bank is too precipitous for any horse to tread. The only route by which a cart can enter Birchmead branches off from the Dorminster Road, across a quarter of a mile of meadows: and when the gate of the first meadow is closed, the village is completely shut in on every side. The world ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... very few are still in repair and are inhabited by their owners. The name of Greifenstein will not be found on any map of the district, but those who know that wild and unfrequented country will recognise the spot. The tumbling stream turns upon itself at a sharp angle, swirling round the base of a precipitous and wedge-like cliff. So steep are the sides that they who chose the summit for a fortress saw no need of building any protection, save one gigantic wall which bestrides the wedge of rock, thus cutting off a triangular platform, between the massive bulwark ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... jungle—that is, on the western aspect. Just above the splash of the Pacific surges on the weather or eastern side, low-growing scrub and restricted areas of forest, with expansive patches of jungle, plentifully intermixed with palms and bananas, creep up the precipitous ascent to the summit of the range—870 feet above the sea. So steep is the Pacific slope that, standing on the top of the ridge and looking down, you catch mosaic gleams of the sea among the brown and grey tree-trunks. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... away, when the trains of emigrants next in the rear appeared, less than half a mile distant. This caused the Indian band to retreat. They crossed the river, and then placing themselves behind the willows, hurried away, making their escape into the mountain fastnesses. Owing to their precipitous departure, much of the plunder they were preparing to take was left behind them. Among the articles thus dropped by them was the scalp of Mrs. Holloway, and the rescuing party found and took possession ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... the ravine in the Hills of Glorm lying precipitous and smooth before us, into which we were carried by the leaps of Yann. And now we left the steamy jungle and breathed the mountain air; the sailors stood up and took deep breaths of it, and thought of their own far-off Acroctian hills on which ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... mile's distance, is the rock of Espailly, formed in the same way, and almost equally precipitous. On its summit is a castle, having its own legend, and professing to have been the residence of Charles VII., when little of France belonged to its kings but the provinces of Berry, Auvergne, and Le Velay. Some three miles farther up ...
— The Chateau of Prince Polignac • Anthony Trollope
... by huge and precipitous mountains, round whose bases lay vast forests and impenetrable swamps and jungles, from whose deadly areas the boldest pioneers had turned aside as being too hopelessly inhospitable to repay the cost and toil of exploration, it had remained undiscovered and unknown save by two men, who had reached ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... Testament, also, the word "hell" has not in every place the same meaning. It represents two different nouns in the original Greek—Gehenna and Hades. Gehenna was the name of a deep, narrow valley, bordered by precipitous rocks, in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, which had been desecrated by human sacrifices in the time of idolatrous kings, and afterwards became the depository of city refuse and of the offal of the temple sacrifices. ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... path finally landed Garth on a precipitous incline of broken rock at the water's edge; and there, across the stream, so close he could have tossed a pebble into their midst, sat those he had tracked so far, all unsuspicious of his nearness. They were having their evening meal. Natalie was among them, ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the southernmost coast of Sardinia. Beneath it, on the other side and almost surrounding it, is a cleft in the cliff like an immense corridor which serves as a harbor, and along it the little Italian and Sardinian fishing boats come by a circuitous route between precipitous cliffs as far as the first houses, and every two weeks the old, wheezy steamer which makes the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the ill-conducted engagement at Ball's Bluff. On October 21 nearly 2000 troops were sent across the Potomac by the local commander, with the foolish expectation of achieving something brilliant.[146] The actual result was that they were corralled in an open field; in their rear the precipitous bank dropped sharply to the river, upon which floated only the two or three little boats which had ferried them across in small parties; in front and flank from the shelter of thick woods an outnumbering ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... following this the journey was resumed, and day after day the travelers with eager eyes witnessed a prospect of continual change. The bluffs, bolder and more gigantic, towered more precipitous than the banks of the gentler streams which they had left behind. Forests ranged down to the shores, and wide, green-decked islands crept into view, and little timbered valleys of lesser streams came marching down to the imposing flood ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... at low water, Mr. Isbister, a young artist lodging at Boscastle, walked from that place to the picturesque cove of Pentargen, desiring to examine the caves there. Halfway down the precipitous path to the Pentargen beach he came suddenly upon a man sitting in an attitude of profound distress beneath a projecting mass of rock. The hands of this man hung limply over his knees, his eyes were red and staring before him, and his ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... of high hills strewn with boulders and dotted with trees rise abruptly from the water, forming a mighty rampart for the enemy. Before this the river, a broad torrent with few and narrow fords and often precipitous banks, flows rapidly—a great moat. And before the river again, on our side stretches a smooth, undulating, grassy country—a regular glacis. To defend the rampart and sweep the glacis are gathered, according to my information derived in Pretoria, twelve thousand, according to the Intelligence ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... 12th of October. The Ghilzies were posted behind a breastwork near the middle of the pass; and as the assailing body approached, the enemy withdrew from this position, and occupied the steep and precipitous ridges of the mountains on either side, from whence they opened a well-directed fire. General Sale was wounded in the ankle and obliged to leave the field; and Lieutenant-colonel Dennie then took ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... not long before he had diverged from the beaten track and was trudging on over the short grass and among the heather. Then great corners of crags and loose stones rose in his way, forcing him to turn to right or left to get by. Then he would come close up to some precipitous, unclimbable face of the hill, and strike away again, to find his course perhaps stopped by a patch of pale green moss dotted with cotton rushes, among which his feet sank, and the water splashed with suggestions of his sinking ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... himself at the edge of a village of black tents, pitched in a grassy hollow between two heights. The nearer and lower was a detached cone of rock, crowned by a rude castle. The other peak, not quite so precipitous, afforded foothold for scattered scrub oaks and for a host of slowly moving sheep and goats. Between them the plateau looked down on two sides into two converging valleys. And the clear air was full of the noise of a brook that cascaded between the scrub oaks of the higher ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... your soldiers and utilize the natural advantages of the ground. 14. When, in consequence of heavy rains up-country, a river which you wish to ford is swollen and flecked with foam, you must wait until it subsides. 15. Country in which there are precipitous cliffs with torrents running between, ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... earlier in the season, a number of pines had been felled out on the ice, cut in logs, and left in expectation of ice thick enough to bear the travoy "dray." Owing to the fact that the shores of Pike Lake were extremely precipitous, it had been impossible to travoy the logs up ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... fortalice had perched his eyrie. The pale moon, which had hitherto been contending with flitting clouds, now shone out, and gave them a view of the solitary and naked tower, situated on a projecting cliff that beetled on the German Ocean. On three sides the rock was precipitous; on the fourth, which was that towards the land, it had been originally fenced by an artificial ditch and drawbridge, but the latter was broken down and ruinous, and the former had been in part filled up, so as to allow passage for a horseman ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... increasingly precipitous edge till he reached a sort of cornice that formed a jutting circle of stone around it. There he leaned far over and saw, about ten feet below him, a round opening like a big port-hole. From it were streaming waves of warm, foul air, ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... let it act independently of the will's control—in which case it is sure to become the slave of the senses. Separated from the intelligence, from which it receives light, and from the will, which points out its course of action, the imagination is a blind instinct, precipitous in its movements, impetuous and inconstant in its flights, violent and capricious in its pursuits. It is in constant agitation and torment, passing from one object to another, jumping with a single bound from one extreme ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... civil and religious capital of these rude Islands—is called Tai-o-hae, and lies strung along the beach of a precipitous green bay in Nuka-hiva. It was midwinter when we came thither, and the weather was sultry, boisterous, and inconstant. Now the wind blew squally from the land down gaps of splintered precipice; now, between ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... declivities of the mountains, to roll down upon the heads of their enemies. By these and every other means they attempted to stop Alexander's passage. But he had contrived to send detachments around by circuitous and precipitous paths, which even the mountaineers had deemed impracticable, and thus attack his enemies suddenly and unexpectedly from above their own positions. As usual, his plan succeeded. The mountaineers were driven away, and the conqueror advanced toward ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... qualms, I stretch myself out upon a strip of short turf sprinkled with the flowers of the white rock-rose and bordered with candy-tuft, and try to drive out of mind the only disagreeable thought I have at this moment—that of getting down to the path, where I was safe. The worst part of climbing precipitous places is not the going up, but the coming down. Not a human being or dwelling is in sight, so that I can contemplate the wildness of the scene to my mind's content. But a very hoarse voice not far above tells me that I am not alone. A raven perched upon a jutting piece of rock, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... and stole silently away. Fifteen yards up the hill he went and then paused. He stood on the crest of the hill and before him was a steep, almost precipitous slope. He made his way along the edge for a few yards and then paused. Faintly he could detect a murmur of voices. Inch by inch he crept forward, going over the ground under foot. He paused and listened intently and decided that the sound must come from the slope ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... timorous, more coy, and secret love of the Spaniards and Italians pleases me. I know not who of old wished his throat as long as that of a crane, that he might the longer taste what he swallowed; it had been better wished as to this quick and precipitous pleasure, especially in such natures as mine that have the fault of being too prompt. To stay its flight and delay it with preambles: all things —a glance, a bow, a word, a sign, stand for favour and recompense betwixt them. Were it not ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... through the unsurveyed lands north of Lake Simcoe, to the shores of Lake Huron. This granite formation is supposed to have an average breadth of ten or twelve miles, being intersected with small lakes, deep ravines and precipitous rocks. The woods of this region being composed principally of pine, hemlock, and cedar, are of a peculiarly gloomy character. In such a difficult country as this, it was no wonder that our inexperienced trapper ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... of level land from the foot of the cliffs to the shore, but top, sides, and bottom are covered with well-grown wood and grass, except where the bare rocks protrude. The scenery is extremely beautiful. The "Aeasy," a stream of 15 yards broad and thigh deep, came down alongside our precipitous path, and formed cascades by leaping 300 feet at a time. These, with the bright red of the clay schists among the greenwood-trees, made the dullest of my attendants pause and remark with wonder. Antelopes, buffaloes, and elephants abound on the steep slopes; and hippopotami, crocodiles, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... expressed this belief, it might have passed for a coincidence merely. But the Athapascas (Chepewyans) also told of a great water, which the soul must cross in a stone canoe; the Algonkins and Dakotas, of a stream bridged by an enormous snake, or a narrow and precipitous rock, and the Araucanians of Chili of a sea in the west, in crossing which the soul was required to pay toll to a malicious old woman. Were it unluckily impecunious, she deprived it of an eye.[248-2] With the Aztecs this water was called ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... of them. Ascending a sloping, ancient path that was never precipitous, they came to the place, a flat tableland that perhaps measured an acre and a half, which by some freak of nature had been scooped out of the side of the koppie, and was backed by a precipitous cliff in which were caves. The front part ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... expectations. Nothing could be much more provoking. And yet we came back very merrily for disappointed people to Florence, getting up at three in the morning, and rolling or sliding (as it might happen) down the precipitous path, and seeing round us a morning glory of mountains, clouds, and rising sun, such as we never can forget—back to Florence and our old lodgings, and an eatable breakfast of coffee and bread, and a confession one to another that ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... bivouac the river entered a gorge formed by the river cutting through the south end of a flat-topped sandstone range of about 1,200 feet elevation above the sea, presenting many bold and picturesque outlines and detached summits, terminating in abrupt and almost precipitous faces; to this we gave the name of the Kennedy Range, in ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... possible among the trees. Further on, we came upon a gorge—one of the noted canons through which the Huerfano runs. Here the river sweeps down a narrow channel, with rocky banks that rise on each side into precipitous cliffs of stupendous height. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... 17 inhabited islands and one uninhabited island, and a few uninhabited islets; strategically located along important sea lanes in northeastern Atlantic; precipitous terrain limits habitation to small ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... country for the romancer! Here is the dense wilderness, the Tennessee and Chickamauga, the precipitous Lookout with his foot-hills, spurs, coves, and water-falls. Here are cosy little valleys from which the world, with its noise, bustle, confusions, and cares, is excluded. Here have congregated the bloody villains and sneaking thieves; the plumed knights, dashing horsemen, and stubborn ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... were in the water all day long, for four days, swimming, wading, digging. Perhaps the first plow furrow west of the Kaw was cast when some plows eased down the precipitous bank which fronted one of the fording places. Beyond that lay no mark of any plow for more than a ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... close, to save him the discomfort of hobbling to it, and waited until Jack was in the saddle before he vaulted upon the tricky-eyed buckskin. He led the way down into a shallow depression which wound aimlessly towards the ocean; and later, when trees and bushes and precipitous bluffs threatened to bar their way, he swung abruptly ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... they bent their steps as soon as the little basket had been well filled with strawberries; and descending the precipitous bank, fringed with young saplings; birch, ash, and poplars, they quickly found themselves beside the bright waters of the lake. A flint was soon found among the water-worn stones that lay thickly strewn upon the shore, and a handful of dry sedge, almost ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... the next train. He seems to like it, and you do certainly get a good dinner, but, not being commis-voyageurs, merely automobilists, we were charged three prices for everything, and accordingly every one is advised to risk the dangerous and precipitous road to the upper town rather than be ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... and coal strata, which are nearly horizontal at the mouth of this burn, or on the coast, become inclined as we go up the course of the rivulet; and of this we have fine sections in the bank. The Dean of Dunglass is formed of precipitous and perpendicular rocks, through which the running water has worn its way more than a hundred feet deep; above this Dean the banks are steep and very high, but covered with soil, which here is a deep gravel. The burn runs all the way up to Oldhamstocks upon the sand-stone strata; ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... soon came to a gap or opening on the left-hand side of the road through which they passed, the priest leading. Next they found themselves in a wild gully or ravine that was both deep and narrow. This they crossed, and arrived at a ledge of precipitous rocks, most of which were overhung to the very ground with long luxuriant heather. The priest went along this until he came to one particular spot, when he stooped, and observed a particular round stone bedded naturally in ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... had just come out of his den on the lower floor and was standing chatting with a good-looking young man in the hall. Suddenly they heard the noise of shouting upstairs and almost immediately a succession of bumping sounds, followed by the precipitous appearance at the foot of the stairway of a large brown beast who seemed to be going ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... to a more gradual and less precipitous descent, he fixes his eye on some distant point in the earth beneath him, and thither bends his course. He is still almost meteoric in his speed and boldness. You see his path down the heavens, straight as a ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... howls, and the storms of rain volley against the windows of the cosy little smoke house on deck. Wednesday is an improvement in that the gale has blown itself out. But the rain it rains on, though now in a soft drizzle instead of driving sheets. The sides of precipitous mountain crags are silvered with cascades, and as we penetrate further into the fiord the scenery develops grandly, and the old snow patches on the dark and lofty summits and picturesque saddles look ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... minute; very minute &c., very time, very hour; present time, right time, true time, exact correct time. V. be instantaneous &c. adj.; twinkle, flash. Adj. instantaneous, momentary, sudden, immediate, instant, abrupt, discontinuous, precipitous, precipitant, precipitate; subitaneous[obs3], hasty;quick as thought, quick as lightning, quick as a flash; rapid as electricity. speedy, quick, fast, fleet, swift ,lively, blitz; rapid (velocity) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and Crook's corps, though then in single line, impetuously dashed forward, while Merritt and Averell's cavalry divisions under Torbert, somewhat closely massed, overthrew the Confederate cavalry and swept mercilessly along the Martinsburg pike and the foot of the precipitous ridge. The enemy's artillery was ridden over or forced to fly from the field. Torbert reached the left flank of the Confederate infantry at the moment it was hard pressed by the advancing troops of Wright and Crook. Our cavalry, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... once more in need of water, and having sighted an island, we made for it, but could find no means to get near the land, owing to the heavy surf. We found the coast very precipitous, without any foreland or inlets. In short, it seemed to us a barren, accursed place, without leaf or grass. The coast here was steep, consisting of red rocks of the same height almost everywhere, and impossible to touch at owing ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... traveller to loiter and explore the country in the neighbourhood. A little later we enter the Fiksensund, a narrow branch fjord, and a wonder of wonders. For a distance of seven miles it wends its way amongst the mountains. In places the precipitous hillsides are within a hundred yards of each other, and in no part is this extraordinary fjord-arm a third of a mile in width. For thousands of feet sheer out of the water rise the bold walls of granite, with here and there a ledge thickly wooded with ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... of no sense of fear now, and the dangers only made her pulse beat faster and stirred her blood. But it was no easy task riding a mule along precipitous paths and keeping her seat while slithering down slopes, clad as she was in only a filmy evening frock and a fur coat, and she cried out ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... colour, formed a contrast to the ruddy precipice to which they lay opposed. A natural road of beautiful sand was formed by a beach, which, extending all the way around the lake, separated its waters from the precipitous rock on the one hand, and on the other from the steep and broken hill; and being no where less than five or six yards in breadth, and in most places greatly more, offered around its whole circuit a tempting opportunity to the rider, who desired to exercise and breathe the horse on which he was ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of London Yeomanry. At half-past twelve the Bucks Hussars less one squadron and the Berks battery, which were in the rear of the brigade, advanced via Beshshit to the wadi Janus, a deep watercourse with precipitous banks running across the plain east of Yebnah and joining the wadi Rubin. One squadron of the Bucks Hussars had entered Yebnah from the east, co-operating with the 8th Brigade. General Godwin was told over the telephone that ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... edge of the embankment, a look of immense relief coming to her soft, brown eyes as she saw her rescuer scrambling up the precipitous side of the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... it now. He saw himself again looking up at the bristling cliffs that were to be rushed, whence the Afridis were pouring their deadly fire. He saw himself measuring with his eye the saddle of precipitous slope that had to be crossed, devoid of cover and strewn with the bodies of dead Ghurkas. Of the actual crossing, with sixty Rangers behind him, he had little or no recollection. He had passed under the hail of bullets as through perils in a dream. As in a dream, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... on the east by the precipitous side of the gorgeous-colored Funeral Range, and on the west by the Panamint Mountains, which rise to the height of ten thousand feet. The climate is cool and salubrious in winter, but is a fiery furnace in summer, when the mercury in the thermometer ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... the bandage about his throbbing head. After each climb he was forced to rest. A walk of three or four miles in high-heeled riding boots assumes the proportions of a real journey, even under the most favourable circumstances, but with the precipitous descents, the steep climbs, and the alkali flats between the coulees, which in dry weather are dazzling white, and hard and level as a floor, now merely grey greasy beds of slime into which he sank to the ankles at each step, the trip proved ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... Patriotism, so effulgent to its own eyes in Orthodoxy, in Love of glorious Liberty, confederated at Bar, and got into that extraordinary whirlpool, or cesspool, of miseries and deliriums we have been looking at; and now it has issued on a broad highway of progress,—broad and precipitous,—and will rapidly arrive at the goal set before it. All was so rapid, on the Polish and on the Turkish part. The blind Turks, out of mere fanaticism and heat of humor, have rushed into this adventure;—and go rushing forward into a series ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... though it was dim and far away by then. Koppy and his immediate friends lifted guilty heads and questioned each other. Werner, nerves jangling, thoughtlessly pleaded the superior advantages of next Tuesday; and then bethought himself and advised more precipitous action. Nothing within a day's hard ride could stop Koppy now—one hundred rifles against four ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... roar of water. For a moment or two his head was driven under, but when he got it clear, another dazzling flash revealed a high bank only a few yards away, and when thick darkness followed he felt the horse rise to its feet. Then he touched soft bottom, and a little later scrambled up an almost precipitous slope with the bridle in his hand and the horse floundering behind him. They reached the summit, and, stopping among thin timber, it was with strong relief that he heard Edgar's shout. Shortly afterward the lad appeared, ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... deserved. But he turned suddenly sick, and, although he afterwards recalled a wrestle, knee to knee, the first thing he was aware of was the cold waters of the river closing over him. The shock restored him. When he rose to the surface he swam down the stream, for the banks were precipitous in the neighbourhood of the bridge. At length he succeeded in landing, and set out for home. He had not gone far, however, before he grew very faint, and had to sit down on a door-step. Then he discovered that his arm was bleeding, and knew that Beauchamp had stabbed him. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... point in the journey, there would be visible "the long purple wall of the Moab mountains, rising out of its unfathomable depths; these mountains would then have almost the effect of a distant view of the sea, the hues constantly changing; this or that precipitous rock coming out clear in the evening shade—there the form of what may possibly be Pisgah, dimly shadowed out by surrounding valleys—here the point of Kerak, the capital of Moab, and future fortress of the Crusaders—and then, at times all wrapt in deep haze, the mountains overhanging ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... I was too unwell to move yesterday, but, feeling a little better this morning, I rode down the creek. For three miles it takes a south-east course, then east-south-east through table land, with rocky and precipitous hills on each side. I then went on a south-east course for nine miles, through a splendidly-grassed country, with numerous small creeks running into the Stevenson. During my ride I found plenty of water, and splendid ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... we made the land of Vau Vau, a picturesque, densely wooded, and in many places precipitous, group of islands, the approach being singularly free from dangers in the shape of partly hidden reefs. Long and intricate were the passages we threaded, until we finally came to anchor in a lovely little bay perfectly sheltered from all winds. We moored, within ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... sweetest mountain manner gave me a diamond hilted poniard, and then with a Fra Diavolo chorus, we were waved off down the precipitous crags with a special guide on the main ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... three, as above enumerated (q.v.); one, the most precipitous and bold, we have called Cape Providence (q.v.) for reasons which appear above; the second, Cape Mercy, in recognition of the great mercy shown us in finding this place without running on it as has been the fate of many a noble vessel. The third we called Point Liberty from the ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... in my diary that in the afternoon we had seven islands in sight. They were higher than those we had seen before, and consisted of precipitous hills. There were also small glaciers or snow-fields, and the rock formation showed clear traces of erosion by ice or snow, this being especially the case on the largest island, where there were even small valleys, partially filled ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... to a state of hopeless perfection. No envious bird need try to excel the exquisite finish of its workmanship. Happily, it has wit enough to build its pensile nest high above the reach of small boys, usually suspending it from a branch overhanging running water that threatens too precipitous a bath ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... of mountainous Formosa, that rich island off the coast of China, between Shanghai and Manila. It looks like some fairly island with its coves and caves, into which pours the purple sea, visible through the faint mists of morning and noontime. Its precipitous sides shoot down to the sea in great bare cliffs, save where, here and there, a beautiful bay runs in from the southern sea to kiss the green lips ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... day is warm, and the bees are very busy there in that neglected corner of the field, rich in asters, fleabane, and goldenrod. The corn has been cut, and upon a stout but a few rods from the woods, which here drop quickly down from the precipitous heights, we set up our bee-box, touched again with the pungent oil. In a few moments a bee has found it; she comes up to leeward, following the scent. On leaving the box, she goes straight toward the woods. More bees quickly come, and it is not long before the line is well established. ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... mile away to the north-east of the site of old Camp Almy a ridge of rock and shale stretches down from the foothills of the Black Mesa and shuts off all view of the rugged, and ofttimes jagged, landscape beyond—all save the peaks and precipitous cliffs of the Mogollon, and some of the pine-crested heights that hem the East Fork. Time was, toward the fag end of the Civil War, when the volunteers from the "Coast" kept a lookout on the point, a practice that yielded more scalps ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King |
