"Squatting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Measures continue to address Guatemalan land and maritime claims in Belize and the Caribbean Sea; the Line of Adjacency created under the 2002 Differendum serves in lieu of the contiguous international boundary to control squatting in the sparsely inhabited rain forests of Belize's border region; Mexico must deal with thousands of impoverished Guatemalans and other Central Americans who cross the porous border looking for work in ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... we don't. Fancy they're just beginning pool now, on that stunning table. Come along, Brown; don't miss your chance. We shall be sure to divide the pools, as we've missed the claret. Cool hands and cool heads, you know. Green on brown, pink your player in hand! That's a good deal pleasanter than squatting here all night ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... and a likely spot to make an easy kill. Cautioning the German to utter silence with a gesture the two approached the stream quietly. Down the game trail Tarzan saw some deer about to leave the water. He shoved Schneider into the brush at one side and, squatting next him, waited. The German watched the silent giant with puzzled, frightened eyes. In the new dawn he, for the first time, was able to obtain a good look at his captor, and, if he had been puzzled and frightened before, those sensations ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... doing, General, but O'Connor's. I was as much surprised as yourself when I saw Burke squatting over the fire frying three fine fish. I asked him where he had stolen them. He told me that Mr. O'Connor brought them in at ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... of Sura-kerta I recollect that once, when holding a private conference with the Susunan at the residency, it became necessary for the Radan adipati to be dispatched to the palace for the royal seal: the poor old man was, as usual, squatting, and as the Susunan happened to be seated with his face toward the door, it was fully ten minutes before his minister, after repeated ineffectual attempts, could obtain the opportunity of rising sufficiently ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... all dead and brown—over the decaying arbor which led up to the cracked front door. She did not seem conscious that time and poverty had wasted the beauties of that place; that shingles were gone from the outreaching eaves, torn away by March winds; that stones had fallen from the chimney, squatting broad-shouldered at the weathered gable; that panes were missing from the windows, their places supplied by boards and tacked-on cloth, or that pillows crowded into them, making it seem a house that stopped its ears against the unfriendly things which passengers upon the highway ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... little holes, painted a blueish black, whilst vivid red formed of chalk and oil, covered their cheeks. Like the natives of Dusky Bay, they had small legs and bodies, but thick knees, which proves that they take little exercise and sit cross-legged. The almost perpetual squatting in their pirogues no doubt ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... thenceforward claiming the jus dominii to the top of the atmosphere above it, and also the right of driving shafts to the centre of the earth below it; so that all people found after this warning either aloft in upper chambers of the atmosphere, or groping in subterraneous shafts, or squatting audaciously on the surface of the soil, will be treated as trespassers—kicked, that is to say, or decapitated, as circumstances may suggest, by their very faithful servant, the owner of the said pocket-handkerchief. In the present ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... thousand years' gains of man in his upward climb through creation were lost. Only the electric light remained, a milestone on the path of the great human adventure. Martin and Cheese- Face were two savages, of the stone age, of the squatting place and the tree refuge. They sank lower and lower into the muddy abyss, back into the dregs of the raw beginnings of life, striving blindly and chemically, as atoms strive, as the star-dust if the heavens strives, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... somewhere a curious passage; in which, looking on some wretched group of Indians, squatting stupidly round their fires, besmeared with grease and paint, and devouring ants and clay, he somewhat naively remarks, that were it not for science, which teaches us that such is the crude material of humanity, and this the state ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... was no particularly spectacular feat of arms. Mosby's party dismounted about 200 yards away from it and crept up on it, to find seven members of the Fifth New York squatting around a fire, smoking, drinking coffee and trying to keep warm. Their first intimation of the presence of any enemy nearer than the Rappahannock River came when Mosby and his men sprang to their feet, leveled revolvers and demanded their ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... and I'll show you how they made the dam and all—they began over there with—" The two pattered along the edge hand-in-hand, talking incessantly on a common topic at last, interrupting each other, squatting down, peering into the water, pointing, discussing, arguing, squeezing the deliciously soft mud up and down between their toes, their heads close together—they might for the moment have been brother and sister who ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... could hardly raise his eyes or speak above his breath, but stood with hands joined together and in a supplicating posture, enough to melt the heart of even the very ugliest of idols. The service (by particular desire) began by three of the most unctuous of the Lamas squatting down on some planked spaces before the divinities, and raising a not unmusical chaunt, accompanying themselves at the same time with a pair of cymbals, while two large double-sided tom-toms or drums gradually insinuated themselves into ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... things were cleared away from my camping-place and taken to the prahus, the kapala and three women, one of them his wife, came and seated themselves in a row close together in a squatting position. With the few words of Malay he knew he explained that the women wanted to say good-bye. No doubt it was their way, otherwise they have no greetings. At the landing float the "onder" and his Kahayan assistant were present to see us off. When leaving I was on the point of wishing ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... the door, squatting on the ground, or leaning indolently against the walls, were some half dozen men of very singular appearance. Their principal garment was a kind of blue gown, something resembling the blouse worn by the peasants of the north of France, but ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... flaming heat in her blood which gave her courage to undertake anything. In the orchard the strawberry-beds, the gooseberry and currant bushes, were gray and glittering with dew, and from the kitchen garden the pot-herbs sent over their powerful odors; on the gravel paths dreaming toads were squatting. The girls went to a currant bush and silently began to eat ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... with bronzed face, was squatting on his haunches playing a weird tune on a reedy instrument resembling a flute. Before him was upreared a monstrous specimen of the deadly cobra species, swaying gently to and fro and keeping time to the music. Its malignant eyes looking out from the broad head whose markings resembled a pair of ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... this, with that curious gypsy intonation that turns English into a foreign tongue if you forget the words and listen only to the voice. He was squatting in the sunshine, with his back against an oak sapling, a black cutty under his nose, and Meg, my small fox-terrier, between his thighs. In those days, being just fifteen, I had taken a sketch-book and put myself to school under Dick to learn the lore of Things As They Are: and, as part of the ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the adversaries were not of a nature to spill blood upon the turf, there was something warlike about their countenances which would have done honor to ancient paladins. Lambernier squatting upon his legs, according to the rules of pugilism, and with his fists on a level with his shoulders, resembled, somewhat, a cat ready to bound upon its prey. The artist stood with his body thrown backward, his legs on a tension, his chin buried up to his moustache in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... around on railings and steps and squatting on the grass. There was a little ripple of murmuring as he passed through the sprawling throng, but no one spoke to him. That was not because they did not appreciate, but because he was different and a stranger. Perhaps it was because they did not know just how to take him. He didn't exactly ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the sound of voices, little heads began to pop out of the other mounds—one here and one there—until the town was alive with the pretty creatures, all squatting near the edges of their holes and eyeing Chubbins and Twinkle ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... squatting on the stoops were slovenly and fat, (Lay me out in organdie, lay me out in lawn!) And everywhere I stepped there was a baby or a cat; (Lord God in Heaven, will ...
— A Few Figs from Thistles • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... for Bowles's Works while at Oxford. How was I shocked! Every omission and every alteration disgusted taste, and mangled sensibility. Surely some Oxford toad had been squatting at the poet's ear, and spitting into it the cold venom of dulness. It is not Bowles; he is still the same, (the added poems will prove it) descriptive, dignified, tender, sublime. The sonnets added are exquisite. Abba Thule has marked beauties, and the little poem ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... and a-far from myself, I stepped easily into the very centre of the half moon of squatting beasts, and made my speech ... at the end, there was hardly any applause till I was safely out of the cage ... Then there was a tumult. Shouts, cat-calls, whoops, and a ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... mostly amid the boughs of great trees during the daytime, he is very rarely seen squatting on a thick branch as other apes, and particularly the Gibbons, do. The Orang, on the contrary, confines himself to the slender leafy branches, so that he is seen right at the top of the trees, a mode of life which is closely related to ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... be fortunate—or unfortunate enough, as the case might be—to be squatting in a front-line trench this fine morning and looking through a periscope, you wouldn't see much. Just over the top, not more than twenty feet away, would be your barbed-wire entanglements, a thick network of wire stretched on iron posts nearly waist high, and ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... were encouraged to come into our hall and palaver. They availed themselves of the invitation to come, and sometimes palavered, but more frequently smoked, with owlish solemnity, squatting on the floor with their backs against ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... your hospitality, but not having been trained to trapeze work I'll play the Turk," I replied, squatting with legs crossed; and in this position I was able to look over the railing right and left and forward. The world ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... right here—facin' south," Casey told himself, squatting on his heels within the rock circle that marked the walls of the tepee. "He said, 'Got heap big gol' mine, me—' and he turned his hand that way." Casey squinted at the distant blue ridge that was an unnamed spur of the Tippipahs. ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... a sort were Elymas, the sorcerer whom Paul found squatting at the ear of the Roman Governor of Cyprus; the magicians at Ephesus; the vagabond Jews exorcists, who with profitable eclecticism, as they thought, tried to add the name of Jesus as one more spell to their conjurations; and, finally, this Simon the sorcerer. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... their end link, the other monkeys of the chain wound themselves up like a windlass over the branches, and squatting on the trees, set up ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... brilliant moon, I doubted the evidence of my sight), wearing a tweed overcoat and a soft felt hat with the brim turned down, sprang up, from nowhere as it seemed, swooped upon the horrible figure squatting, simianesque, between Smith's shoulder-blades, and grasped ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... literally hurled themselves into gorgeously caparisoned saddles. Instantly, the urging squatting podokos leaped ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... uneasy impression that a disturbed white figure had glanced pallidly through the curtains, had made a dim gesture, and had vanished again.... I had tried to concentrate on Marlow's narrative. The dear fellow looked more like a monkey than ever, squatting there, as he took the Soliloquy across the China Sea and up the coast of Surinam. Surinam must have a very long coast-line, I was thinking. But perhaps it was that typhoon that delayed us.... Really, he ought not to make his descriptions so graphic, for Mrs. Marlow, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... obliteration of some representations of birds,—so the mosque was once, evidently, a place where other gods had been worshipped,—I hesitated, wishing to look closer into this curiosity, but recollected myself, and was passing on. An Arab in the turban of one who had been to Mecca was squatting cross-legged on the old marble pavement outside the mosque, and I just took in that he was a fine venerable fellow with an important beard, with a look of wisdom and experience in his steady glance from under ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... that I had passed at the ford came to the bluff above the camp, and arranging themselves in a squatting posture, looked down upon Williamson's party with longing eyes, in expectation of a feast. They were a pitiable lot, almost naked, hungry and cadaverous. Indians are always hungry, but these poor creatures were particularly so, as their usual ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... Squatting on his knees, Brand awaited the first resolute crawlers. And, on his knees, whirling the now thrice weighty bar at heads that were conveniently low enough to be accessible, he began his ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... women, and children-standing, walking, or sitting in the sun, under the shadowing of the palms. Men squatting, with hands clasped over their black knees, are watching us from under their white turbans-very steadily, with a slight scowl. All these Indian faces have the same set, stern expression, the same knitting of the brows; and the keen gaze is not altogether pleasant. It borders upon hostility; ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... was a tight-packed line of men and women, youths and girls, with an excited child here and there squeezed in among them, or squatting at their feet under the barrier. Here were young Tyser and Buist and Wauchope of the Polytechnic, who had come to cheer. And here, by the winning-post, well in the front, having been there since the gates were open, were Maudie Hollis and Winny Dymond, in flower-wreathed ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... head of the dancing ground, and found Dingaan seated in his chair with two of his great indunas, Umhlela and Tambusa, squatting on either side of him. Behind him, standing in and about the entrance to the labyrinth through which the king had come, were other indunas and captains. On arriving in front of Dingaan we saluted him, and he acknowledged the salutation with pleasant words and smiles. Then Retief, two or three ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... her mouth was full of pins, "Now, deary, now, dovey, look at ooself in the glass; we could beat oo, and pinch oo, and stick pins into oo, dovey, but we won't. Dovey will be good, I know;" and a great patch of rouge came on the child's pale cheeks. The clown therewith, squatting before her with his hands on his knees, grinned lustily, and shrieked out, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... understanding and co-operation create for themselves a symphony with beauties and harmonies of its own, and such as to stand unrivalled in man's musical world. In the great chorus are voices from the lowest bass of the croaking bullfrog, squatting in the marshes, to the myriads of tiny green tree tenors, between which are millions of altos, contraltos, sopranos, coloraturas and other voices not yet in our musical vocabulary. These are accompanied by all the sounds of our orchestra and innumerable others of such ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... forget that first picture. It was a weird spectacle. Coming out of the darkness, we were almost convinced that we had entered a new world. Against the blackness of the night, grass-roofed houses stood outlined in the dim light of a bonfire; and squatting around that fire, unclad save for gay blankets wrapped about their shoulders, were brown-skinned men smoking long pipes, while women bedecked with bright beads were spinning cotton. As they worked in the flickering light, they stretched their distaffs ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... shaded by the broad piazza in the midday, the native jugglers and snake-charmers would come, and, squatting in the blazing sun, beg us to give heed to their tricks. They are singularly clever, these Indian mountebanks, especially in sleight of hand tricks. The serpents which they handle with such freedom are of the deadly cobra species, fatally ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... down into a squatting position, and held out his hands invitingly. There could be no mistaking his attitude. There could be no mistaking the appeal this lonely little creature made to his ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... stands good of to-day, but the wooden houses, instead of being on "strong piles," now stand on ricketty, round nibong palm posts. The description of the obeisance to the King is scarcely exaggerated, except that it is now performed squatting cross-legged—sila—the respectful attitude indoors, from the Sanskrit cil, to meditate, to worship (for an inferior never stands in the presence of his superior), and has been dispensed with in the case of Europeans, who shake hands. Though the nobles have now ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... coatless were the oafs who surrounded the object of his speculations, some lying flat, with elbows forward and chins to fist; some creeping and scrambling about her to get her notice, or fire her into a rage; some squatting at an easy distance with ribaldries to exchange. But there was one, sitting a little above her on the mound, who seemed to consider himself, in a sort, her proprietor. He was master of the pack, warily on the watch, able by position ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... see that anchor forward?" asked Frank, pointing from where they stood on the raised deck aft. "Well, that's got a good long stout chain attached and is placed where a kick will send it over. Notice old Quita squatting close by? Think he's taking a snooze, he seems so quiet? But all the time the old chap's on the alert, and ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... They drove stakes, one at the beginning, and so on for every five feet of extent. After leveling, two inches was measured from top of each stake down and a cord was strung along from stake to stake. Previously, to be sure that the stakes were at the same level, one of the boys, squatting down on the ground so that his eye was on a level with the stake nearest him, looked or "sighted" along the stakes. Where one stake seemed to rise up above the others it was hammered down a little ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... which threatened to shake the spars out of our smack. Half a gale blew; then a whole gale; then a semi-hurricane, and at last all the ships had to take in the fourth reef in the mainsail. The two Samaritans were squatting on the floor in the cabin (after they had nailed canvas strips across the sides of the berths to prevent the patients from falling out), for no muscular power on earth could have enabled its possessor to keep ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... when I pushed my way around to the rear of the house, within view of the stables and slave quarters, that I learned the place had not been abandoned. Half a dozen niggers, dressed in their holiday, church-going raiment, were squatting in a close circle on the grass, intent upon the progress of some game. Their interest in this was so deep that I had drawn near to them, and called a second time, before they became ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... fall than the huerta was left without a light, without a person upon the roads, as if death had taken possession of the dismal plain, so green and smiling under the sun. A single red spot, a tear of light, trembled in this obscurity. It was Caldera's cabin, where the women, squatting upon the floor, around the kitchen lamp, sighed with fright, anticipating the strident shriek of the sick youth,—the chattering of his teeth, the violent contortions of his body whenever he was seized with convulsions, struggling to repel the arms ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... accommodated among the dependents at the other end of the room. After the usual salaams had been made, the functionary continued his task, leaving me in ignorance as to what was to be the next part of the programme; Nazar squatting himself as far as possible from one of the attendants, who was armed with a cimeter, and whom he suspected of being ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... many doors in the underworld. Monstrous gatekeepers are squatting on their haunches with huge knives to slice him if he cannot remember their names or give the right password, or by spells the priests have taught him, convince the sentinels that he is Osiris himself. To further the illusion the name of Osiris is inscribed ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... the entrance to the castle. Here everything was bustle. Troops were filing out, laden with casks and cases. Others were squatting in the paved court, ready to receive their burdens. All were laughing and chatting merrily. There were even troops of young girls, of from ten to fifteen years old, who were to carry parcels of less weight ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... distressing I had to halt a day. In two more marches, however, I reached Kaze, and put up with Musa's eldest son, Abdalla, on the 2nd July, who now was transformed from a drunken slovenly boy into the appearance of a grand swell, squatting all day as his old father used to do. The house, however, did not feel the same—no men respected him as they had done his father. Sheikh Said was his clerk and constant companion, and the Tots were well fed on his goats—at my expense, however. On hearing my ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... occurred—the man was dead. I made my way back into the cave seeking to discover what had befallen the Puritan. I found him at the farther extremity of the great altar, calmly enjoying a quantity of cold meat he had discovered. He was squatting upon the floor, in close proximity to the motionless, extended figure of a savage arrayed in the black garments of the priesthood. They formed a picture so startlingly grotesque I could but stare ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... younger man so soon as his first virile activity declined. Over most of the great wildernesses of earth you would have sought him in vain; only in a few temperate and sub-tropical river valleys would you have found the squatting lairs of his little herds, a male, a few ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... sure enough, he was, squatting on the ground beside a spring, where grew a thicket of willows and wild roses; alone and silent, evidently watching, if not ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... chairs were covered with officers in every conceivable uniform, lounging, sprawling, chatting, and gesticulating, or pulling papers and maps over the floor. A general traced routes across the map at his feet with the point of a naked sword; an officer of dragoons, squatting on his haunches, followed the movement of the sword-point and chewed an unlighted cigarette. Officers were coming and going constantly, entering by the hallway and leaving through the door-like windows that swung open to the floor. The sinister face of ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... refuge of fever-stricken Europeans from malarial coast or inland swamp, but the hotel is now empty of invalids. The kind proprietor lavishes time and care on English guests, and the attentive Malay "room-boys," squatting on the verandah outside our doors, fear to lose sight of their charges for a moment, lest some need of native help should arise. They watch hand and eye like faithful dogs, for their language is unintelligible to us as ours ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... the time has been, when I have had more than one pacha strangled. Yes," continued she squatting down on the floor, and muttering, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the terrible hours of anxiety, during which he paced up and down his prison like some wild beast, his guards squatting outside, and watching him in the most imperturbable manner, as they chewed their betel, or varied ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... chewing betel-nut, looking through the mosquito-curtains to see if the Miss Sahib was awake and would like chota-hazri. She embarrasses me greatly slipping about with her bare feet, appearing when I least expect her or squatting on the floor staring at me fixedly. I know no Hindustani and she knows perhaps three English words, so our conversation is limited. The silence gets so on my nerves that I drop hairbrushes and things to make a ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... with gold and bright colours. I could see it was figured. The figure represented a cat, squatting on its haunches. The sacred inscription ran, in our own ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... Squatting on the cindered track, Mr. Trimm patted the crumpled sheet flat with his hands. His eyes dropped from the first of the glaring captions to the second, to the next—and then his heart gave a great bound inside of him and, clutching up the newspaper to his breast, he bounded ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... within sight of the cabin, squatting in the shadow of the grove at its back. He half expected to see a light, but the window was dark, the door closed as he had left it. He felt a faint, unreasoning disappointment that it was so. But he had heard her. That ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... squatting down on the mossy grass behind the paling. Something in his hands seemed angry, for his fingers kept tearing up the short turf, and the juice of the severed stems was red like blood. Then in the gathering darkness he heard the tip-tap of footsteps on the highway. But it never occurred to him ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... side of the squatters in their tussle with the Crown. He knew a bit, he'd make bold to say, about the acreage needed in certain districts per head of sheep; he could tell a tale of the risks and mischances squatting involved: "If t'aint fire it's flood, an' if the water passes you by it's the scab or the rot." To his thinking, the government's attempt to restrict the areas of sheep-runs, and to give effect to the "fourteen-year-clause" which limited the tenure, were acts of folly. ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... now saw. Notes were taken, however, to help them look up and catalogue the varieties, later, in camp. There were many other interesting living creatures, also; some half-hid under leaves or twigs, others squatting daringly in the open, with questioning eyes fixed on these ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... by turns, and accordingly lay down as soon as it became dark, the Malays, as usual, squatting at a distance of a couple of paces each side of them. It was about two o'clock in the morning when Dick, who was awake, saw, as he supposed, one of the crew standing up a few yards away; he was not sure, for just at that moment the ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... for the old sweet days, Poor old light women, two or three Squatting above the straw-fire's blaze, The bosom crushed against the knee, Like faggots on a heap we be, Round fires soon lit, soon quenched and done; And we were once so sweet, even we! Thus fareth many ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... however—very, very far—and he grew dizzy at the view, finding himself more and more unnerved by the height. At length he turned away and swept his eyes again over the horses, where he was glad to find the rangy sorrel. Then he turned back to the men, some of whom were standing, others squatting, but all in ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... in the afternoon, in a small Turkish vessel, and a fresh north wind carried us in four hours to the rocky promontory of Posidonium (today Bosburun, the point of ice), a distance of eight miles. Here the sea was running very high, and our reis, or helmsman, who was squatting on the high and delicately carved stern of the ship, was beginning to chant his Allah ekber—God is merciful—when the wind died down so completely toward dusk that we did not reach Mudania before eight o'clock ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... sat down to tell me about it. One morning when he came the young had just come off, and he found one squatting on the ground under the trees, looking stupefied. No doubt when it flew out it had struck against a trunk or branch and come ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... brow and stripped not only of his gown but everything else this side of his skin—well, draw your own conclusion. For after performing certain additional exercises—one hundred times up on your toes, one hundred times (if you could) squatting to your knees, one hundred times throwing your arms out straight before you from your chest or up from your shoulders or out at right angles, right and left from your body and back to your hips until your fingers touched and the sweat once more ran—you were then ready to be ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... Diana, squatting on one foot in the corner of the sofa, clapped her hands softly. She liked the Vicar, but she thought his antiquarian researches monopolized the conversation at meal-times. It was quite nice to hear him express appreciation for some other line than his own. Diana had a scheme in her ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... some few years ago, with his Ojibbeway Indians. Mr. Catlin was an energetic, earnest man, who had lived among more tribes of Indians than I need reckon up here, and who had written a picturesque and glowing book about them. With his party of Indians squatting and spitting on the table before him, or dancing their miserable jigs after their own dreary manner, he called, in all good faith, upon his civilised audience to take notice of their symmetry and grace, their ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... going to let the man who did that tramp about the country, looking for a day's work. Captain Wilson is going to marry my girl shortly, and of course he feels just the same about it. So the next question is, 'What is the best thing we can do for you?' Now, if you have a fancy for squatting, you can come with me up country and learn the business; and this day, twelve-month, I will hand you over the deeds of a range, with five thousand sheep upon it. ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... Kinderlen-Waechter and Churchill, squatting down by the fireplace and poking the burning papers with old-fashioned irons, not until then, when there began a conversation and other pairs conversed on certain points all around the room, did I gain a clear idea of just what had happened. ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... the shadows and avoided the moonlight and they moved like silhouettes without visible features. They struck no matches and conferred in low and guarded tones, squatting on their heels and haunches in the ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... within reach against the trunk of a tree overthrown by some hurricane of former years, and now mouldering away. A third was engaged with his tomahawk, lopping away the few dry boughs that remained on the trunk. Squatting at the fire, which the third was thus labouring to replenish with fuel, were the two remaining savages, who, holding their rifles in their hands, divided their attention betwixt a shoulder of venison roasting on a stick in the fire, and the ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... and the foundations of a centralised administration were laid. Severe fugitive laws were issued against those who attempted to change their domicile and against the proprietors who should harbour the runaways. Unless the peasant chose to face the difficulties of "squatting" in the inhospitable northern forests, or resolved to brave the dangers of the steppe, he could nowhere escape ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... was filled with obsequious throngs. Only a few courtiers and priests, with some of the queen's ladies-in-waiting, all clad in deep mourning, stood in groups near the throne. Opposite to Pharaoh, squatting in a circle on the floor, were the king's councillors and interpreters, each adorned with an ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rose deepening to a warm terra-cotta along the horizon, and the water reflects it upward to the gaze. Tiny Wilson petrels flit by like swallows; seals shove their dark forms above the placid surface; the shore is lined with penguins squatting in grotesque repose. The south is pallid with light—the circling sun. Adelie ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... inspiration Prothero would discourse through the tobacco smoke until that great world-state seemed imminent—and Part Two in the Tripos a thing relatively remote. He would talk until the dimly-lit room about him became impalpable, and the young men squatting about it in elaborately careless attitudes caught glimpses of cities that are still to be, bridges in wild places, deserts tamed and oceans conquered, mankind no longer wasted by bickerings, going forward to the conquest ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... behind clouds for a fortnight, shone out on the muddy streets. In a moment, as with the promptness of a military drill, scores of people rushed out of their houses and with faces westward, kneeling, squatting, began prayer and worship before the great luminary. Besides all the gods, supreme, subordinate and local, there is in nearly every house the Kami-dana or god-shelf. This is usually over the door inside. It contains images with little ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... upon the strange scene from the window above, of prisoners and warders amicably chatting together, others squatting in groups over a harmless game, a horrible voice disturbed the serenity of the picture. Then at a closely barred window a face appeared, with matted hair and long unkempt beard. It was the face of a madman; with terrible curses ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... the girls would be playing in a ring, the women would shout from gallery to gallery and the men would chat in their shirtsleeves; some fellow, squatting on the floor, would scrape away monotonously at ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... solving the problem squatting like a hunchback's hunch squarely on Malone's shoulders. He thought he could bear the weight for a while, if he could only think of some way of dislodging it. But the idea of its continuing to squat ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Covent Garden Market—its filthy gutters and broken pavements, it touched, indeed, a depth of sinister squalor beyond most of its fellows. The air was heavy with odours which, in this July heat, seemed to bear with them the inmost essences of things sickening and decaying; and the children, squatting or playing amid the garbage of the street, were further than most of their kind from ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hammered silver, enclosing a green stone, which are hung about the neck to avert the bad effect of the evil-eye. These things are all spread out on little dirty worm-eaten tables, in front of the squatting merchants, in the little dens ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... gray, was braided, and fell below his shoulders on either side. His costume was that of ordinary civilization, save for a pair of new, tight moccasins. Having apparently all the time there was, he had been a frequent spectator of operations, squatting by the hour watching the work. Occasionally his interest had been rewarded by a meal or a plug of tobacco. These things he had accepted without comment and without thanks. His taciturnity ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... family, for whose pride of birth an imaginary dinner-table was set every day in the parlor with the remains of the hereditary napery and plate, the numerous covers hiding nothing but the naked truth, while their common humanity, squatting on the floor in the kitchen, fished its scanty meal from an earthen pot with pewter spoons, is pathetically humorous and would have delighted Caleb Balderstone. In after-life, Leslie's profession made him acquainted with some of the best ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... Africans are unhappily following the example of the Creoles in this district, and buying land, on which they settle in contented idleness; and your Commissioners cannot view instances like these without the deepest alarm, for if this pernicious habit of squatting is allowed to extend to the immigrants also, there is ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... circumstances to smother my resentment. An hour later I was eating one of the crows; and, as Gunga Dass had said, thanking my God that I had a crow to eat. Never as long as I live shall I forget that evening meal. The whole population were squatting on the hard sand platform opposite their dens, huddled over tiny fires of refuse and dried rushes. Death, having once laid his hand upon these men and forborne to strike, seemed to stand aloof from them now; for most of our company were old men, bent and worn and twisted with years, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... cannot at all times be recognised with equal facility; but before midnight during the last four or five months in the year, the bear occupies positions favouring his recognition, being either upright on his feet, or as if descending a slope, or squatting on his great haunches. As a long-tailed animal the creature is more like one of those wooden toy-monkeys which used to be made for children, and may be now, in which the sliding motion of a ringed rod ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... effect it does the opposite. It provides that not more than five families may reside upon one farm, the 'family' being an adult male with or without women and children. Ostensibly the law purports to prevent the squatting together of natives in large numbers and in idleness. As a matter of fact however the law is not applied in the cases of Boer farmers. From the President downwards the Boers own farms on which hundreds of families are allowed to ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... hardly allayed when he saw that Angria was in company with Diggle. Both were squatting on the carpeted dais; no other person was in the room. Having ushered him in, the peon withdrew, and Desmond was alone with the two men he had most cause to fear. Diggle was smiling, Angria's eyes were gleaming, his mobile lips working as with ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... Like a little white panic Blown along the night— Away from the terror of oncoming feet... And drums rattling like curses in red roaring mouths... And torches spluttering silver fire And lights that nose out hiding-places... To the night— Squatting like a hunchback Under the curved stoop— The old mammy-night That has outlived beauty and knows the ways of fear— The night—wide-opening crooked and comforting arms, Hiding her as in a ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... with the statue of George I., who rides on horseback in the middle of the garden, the horse having his foot up to trot, as if he wanted to go out of town too. Small troops of dirty children (too poor and dirty to have lodgings at Kingstown) were squatting here and there upon the sunshiny steps, the only clients at the thresholds of the professional gentlemen whose names figure on brass-plates on the doors. A stand of lazy carmen, a policeman or two with clinking boot-heels, a couple of moaning ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... in full cry, and the tenors are rising on tiptoe in their efforts to compass a particularly high note, and the whole body of choristers are wagging their heads before approaching a climax, and this contrabasso alone is tucking his bearded chin into his collar, and sinking almost to a squatting posture on the floor, in order to produce a note which shall cause the windows to shiver and their panes to crack. Naturally, from a canine chorus of such executants it might reasonably be inferred that the establishment ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... them, whilst upon others they muster a greater force than they could before command. We hear also that the people have already in many instances exhibited that propensity common to the habits of common life, which we call squatting, and to which we have always looked forward as one of the evils likely to accompany their emancipation, and calling for the earliest and most serious attention of our Legislature. We must confess, however, that it is a subject ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... through stress of weather, makes use of the anchoring ground a mile and a half due north from you as you stand at the back door of the "Ship Inn" in Brenzett. A dilapidated windmill near by lifting its shattered arms from a mound no loftier than a rubbish heap, and a Martello tower squatting at the water's edge half a mile to the south of the Coastguard cottages, are familiar to the skippers of small craft. These are the official seamarks for the patch of trustworthy bottom represented on the Admiralty charts by an irregular oval of dots ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... Peering cautiously inside, he saw, within three feet of him, a woman of marvellous, imposing beauty, clothed in a splendid loose robe of leopard skins. The hut was packed close to the small space in which she stood with the squatting figures of Indians. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... chose a certain corner for his hiding-place. Here he could see without exposing himself to view; and squatting down he ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... Squatting upon his haunches on the table top in the cabin his father had built—his smooth, brown, naked little body bent over the book which rested in his strong slender hands, and his great shock of long, black ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the night by the Ranger's messengers, assembled at the ranch; every man armed and mounted with the best his possessions afforded. Tied to the trees in the yard, and along the fence in front, or standing with bridle-reins over their heads, the horses waited. Lying on the porch, or squatting on their heels, in unconscious picturesque attitudes, the mountain riders who had arrived first and had finished their breakfast were ready for the Ranger's word. In the ranch kitchen, the table was filled with the later ones; and these, as fast as they finished their meal, made ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... was dissolving, slowly revealing more islands and more boats. Some of them passed quite close to the steamer; and Geoffrey could see the fishermen, dwarfish figures straining at the oar or squatting at the bottom of the boat, looking like Nibelungen on the quest for the Rhinegold. He could hear their strange cries to each other and to the steamer, harsh like the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... Joyce, squatting in her place, blinked a little breathlessly to shift from her senses an oppression of alarm, and settled down to wait for her. At least it was true that nothing ever happened to Joan; even when she fell into a water-butt she suffered no damage; and the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... united in the national sentiment that travellers were meant to be eaten alive by Italians. Poor old cities! it is hard to conceive of their bygone animosities; still harder to believe that all the villages squatting on the long white roads, and waking up to beg of you as your diligence passes, were once embroiled in deadly and incessant wars. Municipal pride is a good thing, and discentralization is well; and we have to ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... turned over I had a dim vision of a clear light like the shine of dawn, and solid ground sloping away below me. Upon that slope was ranged a crowd of squatting people, and a staid-looking individual with his back turned stood nearer by. Afterwards I found he was lecturing all those sitters on the ethics of gravity and the inherent properties of falling bodies; at the moment I only knew he was ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... row; so, leaving the boobies to quiet down, I made my way toward the flocks of rabihorcados. Here and there in the thick growth of green weed were boobies squatting on isolated nests. No sooner had I gotten close to the rabihorcados than I made sure they were the far-famed frigate pelicans, or man-of-war birds. They were as tame as the boobies; as I walked among ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey |
