"Sea-level" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the temple was placed on the akron of the promontory; that is, the summit of Mount San Costanzo where we are now standing. (He elsewhere describes it as being "on the straits.") This summit is nearly 500 metres above the sea-level, and here no antique building seems ever to have been erected. No traces of old life are visible save some fragments of Roman pottery which may have found their way up in early Byzantine days, even as modern worshippers carry up the ephemeral vessels popularly called "caccavelle" [18] ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... a bold basaltic rock, and is thirty feet above the sea-level It is supposed to have been built by the Lancaster family, in the year 1315, and the Yorkists destroyed it after the battle of Hexham. It has never been rebuilt, and nothing is left of it but its ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... caverns with a sound like distant thunder, tended to make us feel quite bewildered. We retired to the highest elevation we could find, and there, 600 miles from home, and perhaps as many feet above sea-level, was solitude in earnest. We were the only human beings on the island, and the enchanting effect of the wild scenery, the vast expanse of sea, the distant moaning of the waters, the great rocks worn by the wind and the waves into all kinds of fantastic shapes and caverns, the blue sky above with ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... are thy works, O father, these thy crown; Whether on high the air be pure, they shine Along the yellowing sunset, and all night Among the unnumbered stars of God they shine; Or whether fogs arise and far and wide The low sea-level drown—each finds a tongue And all night long the tolling bell resounds: So shine, so toll, till night be overpast, Till the stars vanish, till the sun return, And in the haven ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Cochuta we turned in a southerly direction, ascending a hilly plateau 3,200 feet above sea-level. Here we observed the first orchids, yellow in colour and deliciously fragrant, and in the canon below we met the first palms. The rocks continued to show volcanic and ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... are in a state of intermittent activity, as in the case of Tofua (lat. 20 deg. 30' S.), Metis Island, and Amargura; the others are dormant or extinct. The whole group appears to have been elevated at a recent period, as some of the beds of coral have been raised 1272 feet and upward above the sea-level, as in the case of Eua Island.[6] The greater number of the Pacific volcanoes appear to be basaltic; such as those of the Hawaiian Group, which have been so fully described by Professor J. D. Dana.[7] Here fifteen volcanoes of the first class have been in brilliant action; all of which, ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... any time, but usually November to March; occasional tornadoes; low-level of some of the islands make them very sensitive to sea-level rise ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Tarascon?" you ask. No; but the Alpines, that chain of mountainettes, redolent of thyme and lavender, not very dangerous, nor yet very high (five to six hundred feet above sea-level), which make an horizon of blue waves along the Provencal roads and are decorated by the local imagination with the fabulous and characteristic names of: Mount Terrible; The End of the World; The Peak of the ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... which grows a dense bush of wattles, cockatoo apple-trees, pandanus palms, Moreton Bay ash and other eucalypts, and the shapely melaleuca. This flat, here about 150 yards in breadth, ends abruptly at a steep bank which gives access to a plateau 60 feet above sea-level. The regularity of the outline of this bank is remarkable. Running in a more or less correct curve for a mile and a half, it indicates a clear-cut difference between the flat and the plateau. The toe of the bank rests upon sand, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... venture. The experiment aroused immense excitement all over France, and a large concourse of people were gathered together on the outskirts of Paris to witness the risky feat. The balloon made a perfect ascent, and quickly reached a height of about half a mile above sea-level. A strong current of air in the upper regions caused the balloon to take an opposite direction from that intended, and the aeronauts drifted right over Paris. It would have gone hard with them if they had been forced to descend in the city, but the craft was driven by the wind to some distance ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... engravings and old plates after the modern fashion, where a white-spread table stood decorated with wild-flowers, candle-sticks with little red-shaded tapers, and a pyramid of plums and apricots. There was the usual succession of soup and fish and roast and salad which one looks for at a dinner on the sea-level, winding up with ice-cream of a highly civilized description, but Clover could scarcely eat for wondering how all these things had come there so soon, so very soon. It seemed like magic,—one minute the solemn peaks and passes, the prairie-dogs and the thorny plain, the next ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... be interesting to mention that Gad's Hill Place ("the title of my estate, sir, my place down in Kent"), which is in the parish of Higham, and about twenty-six miles from London, stands on an elevation two hundred and fifty feet above mean sea-level. The house itself is built on a bed of the Thanet sands. The well is bored right through these sands, which Mr. W. H. Whitaker, F.R.S., of H. M. Geological Survey (who has kindly given me some valuable information on the subject), states "may be about forty feet thick, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... sight the rock looms up large like a frowning inhospitable islet, the stretch of the Neutral Ground being so low that one cannot detect it above the sea-level until almost right upon it. We left the Vinuesa and entered a boat with a couple of sturdy rowers, who offered to pull us across the Bay for five dollars. As I dipped a hand in the brine one of them raised ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... slanting gradually downward. His eyes went to the dial that showed descent at somewhere between two and three hundred feet a minute. That was for his benefit. The cabin was pressurized, though it did not attempt to simulate sea-level pressure. It was a good deal better than the outside air, however, and yet too quick a descent meant discomfort. Two to three hundred feet ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... from outside. Lake Kirdall, however, has no connection with any other waters. If this lake were situated near any of the oceans, there might be subterranean canals; but in the center of America, and at the height of some thousands of feet above sea-level, this is not possible. In short, here is another riddle not easy to solve, and it is much easier to point out the impossibility of false explanations, than to discover the ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... breakfast, which seemed a little flat at first after the excitement of last night. But they soon lost that feeling in hunger. It was a very windy day, with showers now and then; but it was bracing too, especially on this very high road, hundreds of feet above the sea-level. ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... much mind what her threadbare fellow-passengers thought of her. These dark-hulled, ocean-going vessels, these alien flags, widened her horizon—deepened her sense of the earth's wonder and the wide-flung nerves of national interest. From this sea-level she looked up in fancy to her brother's ranch near Sibley as at a cabin on a mountain-side. How still and faint and far it ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... is rather puzzled to know where all the water could have come from, for such a tremendous additional amount. Besides, in some places remains of sea-animals are found in mountain heights, as much as two or three thousand feet above the sea-level—as, for instance, in Corsica. This very much increases the difficulty of the ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... the coast, there are traces of sea-action at the height of about twenty feet above its present level; there are also, in many parts, remnants of beds of sandstone and conglomerate with numerous recent shells, raised a little above the sea-level. I may add, that at the head of Bahia Bay there is a formation, about forty feet in thickness, containing tertiary shells apparently of fresh-water origin, now washed by the sea and encrusted with Balini; ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... literally at Kenosha summit, where we return, afternoon, and take a long rest, 10,000 feet above sea-level. At this immense height the South Park stretches fifty miles before me. Mountainous chains and peaks in every variety of perspective, every hue of vista, fringe the view, in nearer, or middle, or far-dim distance, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... detachment three balloons, and a staff consisting of fifteen non-commissioned officers and men. There was no fighting. At Mafeking, which was then a native village, it was found that owing to the elevation above sea-level neither of the two smaller balloons had lift enough to raise a man into the air, and that the largest balloon could take up only one observer. A native chief, Montsiou by name, went up a short distance in the balloon. The remark that he made serves to show ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... size of a magic-lantern slide. At this moment I can recall the scene as if I saw it again. It was a seaside piece. The moon was shining upon the water, which rippled slowly on to the beach. Right before me a long mole ran into the water. On either side of the mole irregular rocks stood up above the sea-level. On the shore stood several houses, square and rude, which resembled nothing that I had ever seen in house architecture. No one was stirring, but the moon was there and the sea and the gleam of the moonlight ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... he fights his way toward the top. He could have stopped down there in the valley, where everything was snug and comfortable, but he chose to climb so as to have a look around. I thought of him one day at Scheidegg. There we were, nearly a mile and a half above sea-level, shivering in the midst of ice and snow in mid-July, but we had a look around that made us glad in spite of the cold. As Virgil says: "It will be pleasing to remember these things hereafter." I have often noticed that the ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... bed, wide enough to hold the upper Connecticut, entirely taken up by mule and donkey paths and set with the cloth booths of fruit sellers. As one moves south it grows cooler, and Monterey, fifteen hundred feet above sea-level, was not so weighty in its heat as Laredo and southern Texas. But, on the other hand, being surrounded on most sides by mountains, it had less breeze, and the coatless freedom of Texas was here looked down upon. During the hours about noonday the sun seemed to strike physically on the ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... queer thrill. There was something uncanny in the thought that they were spinning along, sixty feet below the sea-level, cut off ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... attacked by insects, and both the soil and climate of Masindi were perfection for agricultural experiments. The thermometer generally stood at 62 degrees F at six a.m., and at 78 degrees F at noon. The air was always fresh and invigorating, as the altitude above the sea-level ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... of all was the battle with the ocean. Holland, as a whole, lies lower than the sea-level; consequently, wherever the coast is not defended by downs it had to be protected by embankments. If these huge bulwarks of earth, wood, and granite were not standing like monuments to witness to the courage and perseverance of the Dutch, it would be impossible ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... with water, we marched on, and after a short ascent, found ourselves on the great plain, 650 metres above sea-level, about 12 kilometres in diameter, and shaped like a huge dinner-plate, a chain of hills forming the rim. It would seem that the whole plain was formerly one gigantic crater; now only two openings are left, two craters 500 and 700 metres high, in the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... was far from hopeful. The site was but a few feet above the sea-level and was subject to constant inundation. Most unfavorable reports went back to Mobile, which for five years longer remained the seat of government. The population, too, was rude and lawless, being made up of trappers, redemptioners having a period of years to serve, transported {284} females, ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... first great shock on the 5th of February, persuaded many of his vassals to quit the dangerous shore, and take refuge in the fishing boats—he himself showing the example. That same night, however, while many of the people were asleep in the boats, and others on a flat plain a little above the sea-level, another powerful shock threw down from the neighboring Mount Jaci a great mass, which fell with a dreadful crash, partly into the sea, and partly upon the plain beneath. Immediately the sea rose to a height of twenty feet above the level ground on ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... irrigation and drainage scheme. Willcock's scheme I believe is only for irrigation. I don't know how much the extreme flatness of the country would hamper such a scheme. Here we are 200 miles by river from the sea and only 28ft. above sea-level. It follows (2) that we must control the country and the nomad tribes from the highest barrage continuously down to the sea. (3) We must have security that the Turks don't interfere with the rivers above our barrage, or even ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... deg. round each pole, we may say) to the extent of something more than a foot thick, enough to give 1.1 foot of water over those areas, or 0.006 of a foot of water if spread over the whole globe, which would, in reality, raise the sea-level by only some such undiscoverable difference as three-fourths of an inch or an inch. This, or the reverse, which we believe might happen any year, and could certainly not be detected without far ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... far advanced and the skies are uncertain, a few hours should be given to that massive Down which fronts the traveller from London, Ditchling Beacon, the highest above the sea-level. It is easy of access, the train carries you to Hassock's Gate—the station is almost in a copse—and an omnibus runs from it to a comfortable inn in the centre of Ditchling village. Thence to the Down itself the road is straight and the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... of Desolation stretching its tawny tumbled desert hills away to the left, he moved onward, down and down until the road came out a thousand feet below sea-level among the huts and sheepfolds of Jericho, where he slept ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... the climate makes very strongly for its salubrity. It is the absence of moisture no less than the elevation above sea-level that gives to the air its fresh, keen, bracing quality, the quality which enables one to support the sun-heat, which keeps the physical frame in vigour, which helps children to grow up active and healthy, which confines ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... to me, he was cast forth out of his sepulchre". In May, 1854, the labourers employed in widening the bed of the Canale Corsini (now the only navigable water-way between Ravenna and the sea) came, at the depth of about five feet beneath the sea-level, on some tumuli, evidently sepulchral in their character, made of bricks laid edgeways. Near one of these tumuli, but lying apart by itself, was a golden cuirass adorned with precious stones. The rascally labourers, when they caught sight of ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... had spoiled the view, and we were to bring it down when more views had been taken. After a strong, steep climb we found ourselves on a peak or pinnacle about 3000 feet above the river, and therefore 7940 above sea-level. ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... them to take the loads at reduced prices; but even with this help, it is enormously expensive to move a small house fifty miles, the last fifteen over bad roads; it is collar-work for the poor horses all the way, Christchurch being only nine feet above the sea-level, while our future home in the Malvern Hills is ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... procure,' said the brown-haired soldier, 'and the woman would not sell her plates.' The pies were rapidly divided into quarters, and the hungry party began to eat. 'It is true,' said the Exceptional Pedestrian, 'that the character of the apple indicates the elevation above sea-level of the soil in which it grew. The people who grew these apples would have done much better if they had devoted themselves to the cultivation of the huckleberry. These they could have sold, and then have bought much better apples grown ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... Pacific end of the canal. On the Atlantic side but five locks, or four intermediate levels, are proposed. These locks would in practice no more limit the number of vessels passing through the canal than would the single tide lock on the Pacific end, which is necessary to any even or sea-level route. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... the most beautiful lakes in the world is Lake Tahoe. It is six thousand feet above sea-level, and the mountains around it rise four thousand feet higher. * * * The first thing one would notice, perhaps, is the wonderful clearness of the lake water. As one stands on the wharf the steamer Tahoe seems to be ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... sir. According to my calculation, as we came down, we are about sea-level, and the ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... west; a large forest tract in the centre; the rest has a semi-arid character, short, scattering grass all over it; to the eye of a stranger a dreary and desolate region! The east central part, where we were, has a general elevation of 4000 to 6000 feet above sea-level, so that the fierce summer heat is tempered to some extent, especially after sundown. In winter there were snowstorms and severe cold, but the snow did not lie long, except in the mountains, where it reached a ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... it's easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after a good spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of decent cigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight that would make the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to pick our way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and every irremediable ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... like those of the Colorado, peculiar and unusual conditions are necessary. There must exist a vast region lying high above sea-level. This region must be arid. Out of it must rise separated mountain masses to such heights that they shall be well watered. These most elevated regions alone having abundant rain and snowfall, torrential streams are generated and poured down upon the arid wastes, where they persistently ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... turreted, and some almost pillars, except that their thickness is rather out of proportion to their height. The highest point of the whole, as given before, is 1500 feet above the ground, while it is 2800 feet above the sea-level. Could I be buried at Mount Olga, I should certainly borrow Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph, Circumspice si monumentum requiris. To the eastward from here, as mentioned in my first expedition, and not very far off, lay another strange and ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... tract is the bed of what, ages ago, was an inland sea; anyhow it had all the appearance of it, and I was later told geologists thought so too. It is, to say the least, very likely, for Yuma, I heard, is several hundred feet below sea-level. The latitude is 32 1/2 deg. north, a warm latitude in any case, but with desert for hundreds of miles all round, with perhaps as low an elevation as exists on earth, shut in on all sides so that not a breath of air can get at it, what wonder that Yuma and all about there is hot? I have experienced ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... growing in all altitudes, from sea-level up to the frost-line, which is about 6,000 feet in the tropics. Robusta and liberica varieties of coffee do best in regions from sea-level up to 3,000 feet, while arabica flourishes better ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the Polar ice, among which we have been knocking about, is field ice, and—except when packed one ledge above the other, by great pressure—is comparatively flat. I do not think I saw any pieces that were piled up higher than thirty or thirty-five feet above the sea-level, although at a little distance through the mist they may have loomed ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... evergreen woods. Southward innumerable smaller craters and cones are distributed along the axis of the range and on each flank. Of these, Lassen's Butte is the highest, being nearly 11,000 feet above sea-level. Miles of its flanks are reeking and bubbling with hot springs, many of them so boisterous and sulphurous they seem over ready to become spouting geysers like those ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... few attractions to settlers. It is said there is no spot of land in the State three hundred feet above the sea-level. Men born with fins and webbed feet might enjoy themselves in the lakes and swamps, which form a considerable portion of Florida. Those whose tastes are favorable to timber-cutting, can find a profitable employment in preparing live-oak and other timbers for market. The climate ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... more from the shore the hills rise steeply from sea-level to a few hundred feet, and over these hills are scattered the attractive bungalows of the white residents. There is also here a handsome stone church, overlooking the bay, with a school for native boys in connection with it. The hills farther from the town are ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... became absorbed in following downward the foliage of a bush which grew up from below. As he stretched his neck farther and farther down, I saw that he was bending his forelegs. His shoulders sank more and more. There was nothing between me and the sea-level except the mule's ears. By frantic exertions I worked myself backward, and was sliding down behind—too late. The bush broke, causing the mule to fall back forcibly against the inner bank, with myself sandwiched between the adamantine wall of the mountain and the well-shod ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... day. He then sat down to form the regular siege of the citadel, called Taragarh (a fastness strong by nature, and strengthened still more by art, and situated on an eminence some 3,000 feet above sea-level). Bijai Singh, in Rajput fashion, was ready to try negotiation, and thought that he might succeed in practicing upon one whom he would naturally regard in the light of a mercenary leader. He accordingly sent a message to de Boigne offering him the fort, with the ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... render wreck upon it possible. But the land upon which he gazed with wondering eyes measured fully three miles from one extremity to the other—with a promise of considerably more beyond the points in sight. And instead of being only a few feet in height above the sea-level, it rose in a gentle slope for about half a mile from the beach of dazzlingly white sand that fringed its margin immediately opposite where the brig lay, and then towered aloft to a bare truncated peak ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood |
