"Swamp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... given the world for the tears that flowed so easily a short time before; but they would not now come. Running, leaping, bounding madly over the rough hill-side—that gave him some relief; so he held on, through bush and brake, over heathery knoll and peat swamp, until the hut was ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... fins, enormously enlarged, and these give the fish its great size, rather than does the body itself. It is the whipping spike-armed tail of the devil fish that is to be feared, aside from the fact that the rush of a monster might swamp a small boat. ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... absolutely half unconscious of the whole scene before him; nor was it till some kind mediator had seized his arm, while another drew him back by the skirts of the coat, that he desisted from the deluge of hot water, with which, having filled the tea-pot, he proceeded to swamp every thing else upon the tray, in his unfortunate abstraction. Mrs. Clanfrizzle screamed—the old ladies accompanied her —the young ones tittered—the men laughed—and, in a word, poor Cudmore, perfectly unconscious of any thing extraordinary, felt ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... can never return to us. Another drama had in it as one of the characters "a certain cowardly English traveller named Luckless Tramp," a name, I should have thought, quite sufficient in itself to swamp every possible chance of success; yet our forefathers seem to have had no difficulty ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... scarlet or yellow with black trimmings was the uniform of many a gay troop that careered in splendor through the vine-hung aisles of the hot, damp woods. But clinging to the gray bark of some tree, or lying concealed among the damp leaves in a swamp, was the gayest and fairest of them all, ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... danger at this place which the horse can see, but which the rider fails to detect. They are in the midst of a swamp where one false step would mean a horrible death in the quagmire on the verge of which the horse has pulled up. The man uses whip and spur, but the horse refuses to move. Finally the rider leaves the horse to himself to find a way round which brings ...
— A Horse Book • Mary Tourtel
... Uncle Nathan. "I will go into the swamp back of the city, afore I will look upon the iniquities of that ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... road to Salvatierra, and the army, leaving the town of Vittoria on its left, moved off in a compact mass towards the indicated road. This, however, like the other, was choked with carriages. It led through a swamp, and had deep ditches on each side; the artillery, therefore, had to cut their traces and leave their guns behind them, the infantry and cavalry thrust aside the encumbrances and continued their march. Reille, who had defended the upper bridges nobly until the last moment, now came up, and his division ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... still a great wide moor-heath, about which we can read in the official description of districts. It is said that in old times there was here a sea, whose bottom was upheaved; now the moorland extends for miles on all sides, surrounded by damp meadows, and unsteady shaking swamp, and turfy moor, with blueberries and stunted trees. Mists are almost always hovering over this region, which seventy years ago was still inhabited by wolves. It is certainly rightly called the "wild moor;" and one can easily think how dreary and lonely it must have been, and how much marsh ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... with Jerry to look after some colts on the black swamp, and was gone all the afternoon; and so Dad missed me; and when I got home didn't I CATCH IT! Oh lord, I'm all over blue wales; but that ain't ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... as a stack of black cats, but I knew every path and byway by heart. I followed the fields as far as I could, and later, taking into the timber, I had to go around a long swamp. An old beaver dam had once crossed the outlet of this marsh, and once I gained it, I gave a long yell to let the dog know that some one was coming. He answered me, and quite a little while before day broke I reached him. Did he know me? Why, he knew me as easy as the little boy knew his pap. Right ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... development of its "primordial germs"—those everywhere implanted in the earth, to await the necessary conditions for their development and growth. The natural seeds of this balsam fir were not present in either the first, second, or third tamarack swamp in which this alternation of growth originally took place. The change commenced as soon as conditions favored, and not before. It is safe to say that, in none of these tamarack swamps, was there a single balsam fir cone, or a single chit to a cone, nor had there probably been for thousands of years, ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... he squandered his millions on Parisian ballet- dancers, dreamt strange dreams of glory and empire. Those dim tracts of swamp and forest in Central Africa were— so he declared— to be 'opened up'; they were to receive the blessings of civilisation, they were to become a source of eternal honour to himself and Egypt. The slave-trade, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Frankfort as guide on the march a blacksmith who was a native of Landsberg, and this man had informed him of a postern gate into the town which would not be likely to be defended, as to reach it it would be necessary to cross a swamp flanked by the advanced redoubt and ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... river," replied Jeems Henry, badgered at last into revealing his plan. Then, after a cautious look around,—"to Chickahominy Swamp," he added ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... family, the starboard side. All ma's folks was port side, 'cordin' to his tell. He'd worked aboard vessels, pa had; that is, as much as he ever worked anywheres. Well, anyhow, his grandmother she had eight sisters and three brothers, so I had great-aunts thicker'n miskeeters in a swamp hole—my savin' soul, yes! Well, anyhow, one of ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... ledge without channel or choice, and whichever way we went we soon wished we had gone another. The rocks were too many for evasion, and the swift current caught our keels upon their half-sunken heads, which held us fast in imminent peril of a swamp or a capsize, our only safety lying in open eyes, quick and skilful use of the paddle or a sudden leap overboard at a critical instant. Added to these difficulties, a gusty head wind and lively showers obscured the boulders ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... "We crossed that swamp," said Gaudylock, "with the canes rattling above our heads, and a panther screaming in a cypress tree, and we came to a ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... whereof mention was made above. If care is taken, the inundation may be pretty equally distrib uted on either side of the stream; but if the river banks are neglected, it is sure to flow mainly to the west, rendering the whole country on that side the river a swamp, and leaving the territory on the left bank almost without water. This state of things may be traced historically from the age of Alexander to the present day, and has probably prevailed more or less since the time when Chaldaea received ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... and placed the double fare in silver in my palm. Then he gave a whistle and from behind the corners came trooping enough swashbuckler students to swamp my gondola. I let in just enough to fill the seats and pushed off, leaving several standing on the stone steps cursing ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... above the level of the sea. This lofty headland, when viewed at a distance, appears like an island, in consequence of its being connected with the interior by low ground, which, in the vicinity of Khora Muckse, is quite a swamp. Its summits assume the aspect of turretted peaks, having ruined forts and watch-towers on the highest elevations. The hills are naked and barren, and the valley little better; the whole, however, presenting a grand, picturesque, and imposing appearance. ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... Samms, but some things have come up that you will have to handle. Knobos is calling from out near Mars. He has caught the Endymion, and has killed about half her crew doing it. Milton has finally reported from Venus, after being out of touch for five days. He trailed the Wintons into Thalleron swamp. They crashed him there, but he won out and has what he went after. And just now I got a flash from Fletcher, in the asteroid belt. I think that he has finally traced that dope line. But Knobos is on now—what do you want him to ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... three-mile swamp after white violets. Sarah Rowe, she got her two hands full, and then she just fell splash into the water, full length, and lost 'em—Oh, dear me, how I laughed! ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... went down through the beaver-swamp to the Wagai river to spear carp-fish for dinner, and Taffy went too. Tegumai's spear was made of wood with shark's teeth at the end, and before he had caught any fish at all he accidentally broke it clean across by jabbing it down too hard on the bottom of the river. They were miles ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... his arm to the south. "Road winds through a swamp, then climbs to high ground. Ends in a ...
— Collectivum • Mike Lewis
... crossing the great and wide-stretching fens of Sedgemoor and Stanmoor and the rest that lie on either bank of the rivers. Paths there are that the fenmen know, winding through mere and peat bog and swamp, but no host can win through them; and perhaps those marches are safer borders ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... sparkling water. Although more especially esteemed by pretty dears of a different character at the present day, the liquid-eyed fawn, who grace Congress Park, are among those who take their daily rations. At the time of discovery, the low ground about the spring was a mere swamp, and the country in the immediate vicinity a wilderness. The mineral water issued in a small stream from an aperture in the side of the rock, which formed the margin of a small brook, and was caught by pressing a glass to the side of the rock. ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... be a three-foot seam of coal originally laid down as a mass of vegetable matter on the level area of an extensive swamp, having an under- clay, f-g, through which the Stigmariae or roots of the trees penetrate as usual. One portion, B-C, of this seam of coal is now inclined; the area of the swamp having subsided as much as 25 feet at E-C, and become for a time submerged under salt, fresh, ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... tasted like a very sweet hot lolly pop, we all scrambled around in the old man's cabin getting ready to go home. If it had been in the summer-time, we would have gone home the long way round, following the old wagon trail, and then we'd have taken a short cut through the swamp, and if it had been summer-time maybe stopped at the big mulberry tree and climbed up into it and helped ourselves to the biggest, ripest mulberries that grew anywhere along Sugar Creek. But it wasn't summer, so we ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... jerkily: "We're coming very near to war, sir; this country, our country, against those sickening anti-Christs who bayonet children, rape women, and wantonly torture unto death defenseless men—and boast of it, sir; gloat over it! It'll be our country against that polluted swamp of slimy creatures, sir; and in our country there shall be neither Democrats nor Republicans! Politics be damned, sir! Until those breeders of paresis—those Hohenzollern upstarts who, as God is my witness, are the vomit of hell—shall be stripped ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... lonely road, the mighty hills that shut her in, swathed in forest, shouldering the clouds, the gray mist creeping through the gorge. An eagle swept across the opening overhead, frogs croaked in the swamp yonder: there were no other living things to see her. She sprang from the wagon, ran across the meadow, put her foot in the deep print: her bosom heaved, the tears came to her eyes. Isabel was not a sentimental, silly girl, but a shrewd, hard-working woman. She had not seen her lover for a long ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... smaller size, its densely pubescent pileus, and its habitat. It grows on mossy logs or in mossy swamps. The base of one of the plants in Figure 138 is covered with the moss in which they grew. These plants were found in Purgatory Swamp, near Boston, by Mrs. Blackford. They grow from ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... was sewing swiftly, and seemed provokingly mistress of the situation. When a conversation has taken a wrong turn for us, we only get farther and farther into the swamp of awkwardness. This was what ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... reined in and waited while the girl leisurely returned the fowling-piece to its holster. Then, together, they walked their horses forward, wading the "branch" which flowed clear as a trout stream out of the swamp on their right. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... The hills, about two hundred feet high, begin about two or three miles above that, and they looked invitingly green and cool. My companion and I went from the dhow inland, to see if the mangroves gave way, to a more walkable country, but the swamp covered over thickly with mangroves only became worse the farther we receded from the river. The whole is flooded at high tides, and had we landed all the men we should have been laid up with fever ere we could have attained the higher land, which on the right bank ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... superstitious legend, yet shows him to have been one of the greatest and noblest of the ecclesiastics who controlled the Early Church in England. He founded the monastery at Beverley about the year 700, on what appears to have been an isolated spot surrounded by forest and swamp, and after holding the See of York for some twelve years, he retired here for the rest of his life. When he died, in 721, his memory became more and more sacred, and his powers of intercession were constantly invoked. The splendid shrine provided for his ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... dollar alone rules, and all diplomacy is a pestilential swamp; decency is an infrequent guest, with scorn grinning ever over its shoulder; the entrepreneur is a rogue, the official a purchasable puppet, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of our triangle was a dry swamp, covered with a dense growth of willow bushes. By order of the colonel, these bushes were cut down for a distance of sixty or eighty yards, so that no foe could approach unseen. By four o'clock in the afternoon, the labor of establishing ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... gave the site a feeling of coziness. It was surrounded and much shaded, by beautiful breadfruit trees, and very large cocoa-nut trees; too largely beautiful, indeed, for they shut out many a healthy breeze that we sorely needed! There was a long swamp at the head of the bay, and, the ground at the other end on which our house stood being scarcely raised perceptibly higher, the malaria almost constantly enveloped us. Once, after a smart attack of the fever, an intelligent Chief said to me, "Missi, if you stay here, you will soon die! No Tanna man ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... of swamp that kept us on the corduroy road behind the jolting wagon I remember well; this was near Crawfordsville, Indiana. It is now gone, the corduroy and the timber as well. In their places great barns and comfortable houses dot the landscape as far as ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... this to the police. Unless you leave $5000 in gold in the old stump in the swamp across from the cemetery, you will have reason to regret it. If you respect the memory of the dead, do this, and ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... also by a number of other names, as swamp fever, American surra, malarial fever, typhoid fever of horses, the unknown disease, no-name disease, plains paralysis, and pernicious anemia, has recently been the subject of much investigation. The cause of the disease has now been definitely determined as an invisible virus, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... may be, and I rather think is, a knave, but he is no fool; and if I mistake not he is minded to kick the ultra-radical stool down now that he has mounted by it. Make friends of that Mammon of unrighteousness and swamp the sentimentalists. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... outer edge of the whirlpool of Charybdis, which is a great eddy caused by a jutting point of land on which a fort is built, and on the ebb tide strong enough to swamp a boat, Paul worked for one hour without advancing a single yard; the people all the while expecting to see him swallowed up. He held out, however, and at last landed safely at Messina. The American ships laying there dipped their flags in salute, and the entire population ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... proportion. Every party that starts from the Sound should have their own supplies to last them three or four months, and they should bring the largest size chinook canoes, as small ones are very liable to swamp in the rapids. Each canoe should be provided with thirty fathoms of strong line for towing over swift water, and every man well armed. The Indians here can beat anything alive stealing. They will soon be able to steal a man's food ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... got it good here. There are not many of the beasts on this island. But there's a swamp not far behind our camp, and it's a shame to call the things that come from that swamp, mosquitoes—they are more ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... sea-urchins, and the children tried to catch the flakes of foam which the wind blew away. The sleepy waves lapping the sand unfurled themselves along the shore that extended as far as the eye could see, but where land began, it was limited by the downs which separated it from the "Swamp," a large meadow shaped like a hippodrome. When they went home that way, Trouville, on the slope of a hill below, grew larger and larger as they advanced, and, with all its houses of unequal height, seemed to spread out before them in a sort of ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... as she saw Ormond's bare head, and knew he was all right, she ran up to her room and shut herself in. But she couldn't hold out against him when he came to her door with an armful of wild flowers that he had gathered for her, and boughs from some young maples that he had found all red in a swamp. She showed herself so interested that he asked her to come with him after their midday dinner and see them, and she said perhaps she would, if he would promise not to keep talking about the things that made her so miserable. ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... was very slow, for it was through the thick woods, where fallen trees and bushes obstructed them as well as deep snow, but towards noon they came out on a more open country—in summer a swamp; at that time a frozen plain—and the travelling improved, for a slight breeze had already begun to make an impression on the ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... and lady-like of trees, Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, And hints at her foregone gentilities With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves The swamp-oak, with his royal purple on, Glares red as blood across the sinking sun, As one who proudlier to a ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... by misfortune, he risked another battle near Nanci, in 1477, at the head of an inferior force, composed partly of treacherous mercenaries, and was vanquished and slain. He had intended to make Nanci his capital; but his body was found near by in a swamp, stripped of its clothing, frozen, and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... still Grendel came. From the fen-fastnesses, by marshy tracts, through mists and swamp-born fogs, the hideous monster made his way to the house he hated so bitterly. Grendel strode fiercely to the door of Heorot, and would fain have opened it as usual, but it was locked and bolted. Then the fiend's wrath was ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... the other, hemming to clear his throat; for he felt oppressed by a responsibility that weighed all the heavier on his shoulders on account of his ignorance. "Do so, Eau-douce, since, to be frank with you, I can see nothing better to be done. We must beach or swamp." ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... river." On the 24th he came to a creek which joined "the bed of a river rising in a North 30 East direction, now dry except in hollow places. It is fully 70 feet wide, having a pebbly bottom; on each side grow large swamp-oaks." ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... that patch of timber is Nixon's Swamp, as it is called—as boggy and treacherous a spot as can be found for miles around. If he don't look out he'll get stuck there and never ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... and so giving himself up, he shut himself up in his palace, and setting fire to it, burnt himself with all his wives, slaves, and treasures, rather than be taken by the enemy. So ended Nineveh, in the year 612. No one ever lived there again; the river made part a swamp, and the rest was covered with sand brought by the desert winds. It was all ruin and desolation; but of late years many of its mighty remains have been brought to our country, as witnesses of the dealings of ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... no hint of mistrust: he drinks them in with unfaltering confidence; and opens his breast to this total stranger as freely as if he were his sworn and long-tried counsellor; the offered bribe of the man's money so falling in with the other baits of greed as to swamp his discretion utterly. After being cheated through the adventures of the buck-basket, where he was "stopped in with stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease," he appears indeed to have some smell of the gross trickery played upon him; and ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... miles in safety soon they passed, And reach the edge of a most dismal swamp Stretched out before them in dimensions vast; A huge receptacle of gloom and damp. There savage wolves and beasts of such a stamp Might lodge secure and plan most daring deeds. Gloomy the prospect, though the solar Lamp Was full two hours from setting, and the steeds Restive become ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... river, swamp, and forest, they visited in turn the villages of five petty chiefs, whom they called kings, feasting everywhere on hominy, beans, and game, and loaded with gifts. One of these chiefs, named Audusta, invited them to the grand religious festival of his tribe. When they ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... have that deep, black soil and we just call it plain gumbo. It's all filled-in soil, and I never have reached the bottom. It's at least 20 feet thick. And these swamp hickories—I think Reed was the one that called them swamp hickories—thrive there. They can be two months under water six foot deep, and still bear wonderful crops. You can get a wagon load of them ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... point," bellowed the skipper. Harriet instantly obeyed the command. Then the gale was upon them with a screech and a roar. A volume of water that threatened to swamp them rolled toward the stern, but before it had done so Harriet, acting upon a sharply uttered command, had swung the sloop about until its nose met the oncoming rush of wind and water. She gasped for breath as the flood of ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... the day of trouble than this. When I left that place I started with bolder courage. The next night I put up at a tavern, and continued stopping at public houses until my means were about gone. When I got to the Black Swamp in the county of Wood, Ohio, I stopped one night at a hotel, after travelling all day through mud and snow; but I soon found that I should not be able to pay my bill. This was about the time that the "wild-cat banks" were in a flourishing state, and "shin plasters"[3] in abundance; ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... long before you come to Buda-Pesth, the Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and across it may be seen in large straggling letters ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... surprised General Wiley Thompson at Fort King. Thompson had wantonly laid Osceola in chains some time before. Now Osceola scalped his enemy with his own hands. On the same day, Major Dade, leading a relief expedition from Tampa Bay, was ambushed and overwhelmed near Wahoo Swamp. Only four of his men escaped death. Within forty-eight hours, on the last day of the year, General Clinch, commanding the troops in Florida, won a bloody fight on the banks ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... pushed on as far as Riddle's Shop, but late that evening the Confederate infantry forced him to withdraw to St. Mary's Church; for early in the morning General Lee had discovered the movement of our army, and promptly threw this column of infantry south of the Chickahominy to White Oak Swamp, with the design of covering Richmond. From St. Mary's Church Wilson guarded all the roads toward White Oak Swamp and Riddle's Shop, McIntosh's brigade joining him on the 14th, by way of Long Bridge, as the rear of the Army of the Potomac passed ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... old boy?" asked Wade, with low voice, as he peered ahead. The wind was in the wrong direction for him to approach close to game without being detected. Fox wagged his stumpy tail and looked up with knowing eyes. Wade proceeded cautiously. The swamp was a rank growth of long, weedy grasses and ferns, with here and there a green-mossed bog half hidden and a number of dwarf oak-trees. Wade's horse sank up to his knees in the mire. On the other side showed fresh tracks along the wet ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... Persian, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Sclav and Teutonic form the other six, descending from the mid-Asian plateau, settled the Punjab in Northwest India. They drove the dark-skinned aborigines before them and reclaimed forest and swamp to civilization, making the land of the seven rivers bright with agriculture and brilliant with cities. This was the glorious heroic age of joyous life and conquest, when men who believed in a Heavenly Father[4] made the first ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... opponent, who met him with a heavy blow from the tiller, which the other received on his left arm, and both men closed in a deadly struggle. The little boat swayed about violently, and the curling seas came over her edge so frequently that Billy began to fear they would swamp in a few moments. He therefore seized the baling-dish, and began to bale for his life while ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... women may be trusted to take every available inch. I'm not sure there isn't a grain of wisdom in the Eastern plan; keeping them, so to speak, in a separate compartment. Once you open a chink, they flow in and swamp everything." ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... out below, and there seemed to be no safe spot whereon to land. The foul, deep swamp that reached for miles on every side, the towering trees that sprouted their spiny trunks and limbs from it, the interlaced razor-edged vines and creeper-growths—all was a stirring welter of tropic life, life varied and voracious and untamed. From the tiny poisonous bansi insects ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... alias Sykes, unfolded his plan as follows: Banderah was to entice De Vere and his friend some miles into the interior, where there was a large swamp covered with wild-fowl. Here they were to be clubbed by Banderah and his people, and the bodies thrown into the swamp. Then Bilker, accompanied by Schwartzkoff and Burrowes, were to go on board the schooner and settle the ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke
... a retcon. 2. /vt./ To write such a story about a character or fictitious object. "Byrne has retconned Superman's cape so that it is no longer unbreakable." "Marvelman's old adventures were retconned into synthetic dreams." "Swamp Thing was retconned from a transformed person into a sentient vegetable." "Darth Vader was retconned into Luke Skywalker's father in ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... disastrous consequences. In attempting to explore Chiccahomini river to its source, Smith was discovered and attacked by a numerous body of Indians; and in endeavouring, after a gallant defence, to make his escape, he sank up to his neck in a swamp, and was obliged to surrender. The wonder and veneration which he excited by the exhibition of a mariner's compass, saved him from immediate death. He was conducted in triumph, through several towns, to the palace of Powhatan, the most ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... genuine stupidity lies hid beneath their specialism. They know their business, but are ignorant of everything which is outside it. So that to preserve their self-conceit they question everything, are crudely and crookedly critical. They appear to be sceptics and are in reality simpletons; they swamp their wits in interminable arguments. Almost all conveniently adopt social, literary, or political prejudices, to do away with the need of having opinions, just as they adapt their conscience to the ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... such a miracle, and how much time the prosecution of the plan would require was not asked. Would not our returned soldiers, who already are matured men, be in their graves before their desert and swamp farms gave a living to their cultivators? Still more strange was the common notion that all soldiers, even the crippled, were eager to settle on land—that all wanted land and all ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... in truth there was not much to see. The hut itself was hidden away in a little clump of swamp willows that grew upon a mound in the midst of a marshy plain, broken here and there by patches of reed and bulrushes. Walking across this plain for a hundred yards or so, they came to more reeds, and in them a boat hidden cunningly, for here was the water of the ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... habits laid them open to a certain amount of criticism. Not many years ago Mr. Bamberger, the famous violinist, in the course of a triumphal tour in the Southern Pacific, was captured by the inhabitants of Kulambranga, detained for several weeks in captivity in a mangrove swamp, where he suffered great inconvenience from the gigantic frogs (Rana Guppyi) which infest this region, and was only rescued with great difficulty by a punitive expedition—conducted by Sir Pompey Boldero—when on the eve of being sacrificed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... first to be unwilling to leave us; but at length they suddenly changed their mind, and, though not without a manifest struggle, and some tears, they took their leave: When they were gone, we proceeded along a swamp, with a design to shoot some ducks, of which we saw great plenty, and four of the marines attended us, walking abreast of us upon a bank that overlooked the country. After we had advanced about a mile, these men called out to us and told us, that a large body of the Indians ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... magnanimous man. He sentenced his brother to be confined for life in one of the Royal Castles. In the beginning of his imprisonment, he was allowed to ride out, guarded; but he one day broke away from his guard and galloped of. He had the evil fortune to ride into a swamp, where his horse stuck fast and he was taken. When the King heard of it he ordered him to be blinded, which was done by putting a red-hot metal ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... fairly started now, and we have Lake Menzaleh on one side, and a low sandy plain, once covered with water, on the other," continued the commander. "It is difficult to believe that the swamp and lagoon on the starboard were once covered with fertile fields, watered by two of the branches of the Nile, where wheat was raised in abundance, from which Rome and other countries ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... encumbering us farther, like a circumambient Bedlam, as it has hitherto done. Courage, reader! Let us give, in a glance or two, some notion of the course things took, and what moment it was when Friedrich struck in;—whom alone, or almost alone, we hope to follow thenceforth; "Dismal Swamp" (so gracious was Heaven to us) lying now mostly to rearward, little as ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... found missing; she wandered in spirit through the familiar pastures, beneath the green trees, beside the pond at the foot of the hill. Suddenly a strange suggestion intruded itself upon her thoughts. Must it not be "kind o' damp" with all that swamp land so near by, and the great elm-trees so close about the house? Her house no longer, however. It had passed into the hands of strangers—city people, whom she did not know. She wondered where she ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... Edgewood, Milliken's Mills, Spruce Swamp, Duck Pond, and Moderation was "haying." There was a perfect frenzy of haying, for it was the Monday after the "Fourth," the precise date in July when the Maine farmer said good-bye to repose, and "hayed" desperately and unceasingly, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... with the data!" exclaimed the judge. "I'm for getting him back into the Amidon state and respectability, data or no data, before some one else tolls him off into the poisonous swamp of popularity. Why, I tell you, Professor—hark! There they come! ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... an attack that they forced the enemy to retire very quickly. Eager for victory, our men went pressing on after them, so that, when they saw the trickery of the enemy's retreat and wished to do the same, they were unable to—on the one hand, because they had entered a swamp, and were up to their knees in the bog; and on the other, because the enemy had surrounded them, and they were unable to use their arquebuses and other weapons. Thus they were all killed with clubs and cutlasses, and only four escaped, who had retreated when ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... his napkin. With a wave of his hand he would speak of a certain bazaar in Hyderabad. Whiff! He would have you on skis in Lapland. Zip! Now you rode the breakers with the Kanakas at Kealaikahiki. Presto! He dragged you through an Arkansas post-oak swamp, let you dry for a moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho ranch, then whirled you into the society of Viennese archdukes. Anon he would be telling you of a cold he acquired in a Chicago lake breeze and how old Escamila cured it in Buenos Ayres with ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... water's edge. I determined to see if it was possible to get through the marsh with any degree of safety, but gave up the idea when some of the old decayed reeds on which I was standing suddenly gave way and let me through into the water up to my waist. No matter how good a swimmer, a reedy swamp is more than one can contend with, therefore I gave up the idea. Crawling out and walking a little way along the bank, something loomed up in front of me out of the darkness, which turned out to be a long iron bridge. Looking cautiously along it, I saw a couple of dim lights burning near the ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... to be used so continuously, and sometimes so meaninglessly that they bid fair to crowd out the sweet, strong words, "man" and "woman," and a revulsion of taste has swept in that goes nigh in some "sets" to utterly swamp the "lady" and "gentleman." Either extreme is ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... place where he was tolling was low and swampy, and my legs not having quite recovered from the effects of the sun, I sent the Indian to shoot the campanero. He got up to the tree, which he described as very high, with a naked top, and situated in a swamp. He fired at the bird, but either missed it or did not wound it sufficiently to bring it down. This was the only opportunity I had of getting a campanero during this expedition. We had never heard one toll before this morning, and ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... darkening river quaileth, Like a swamp by giant trod, And the broad commotion waileth, Stricken with the hand of ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... The free-thinker who found himself outside the Victorian city, found himself also in the fork of two very different naturalistic paths. One of them went upwards through a tangled but living forest to lonely but healthy hills: the other went down to a swamp. Hardy went down to botanise in the swamp, while Meredith climbed towards the sun. Meredith became, at his best, a sort of daintily dressed Walt Whitman: Hardy became a sort of village atheist brooding and blaspheming ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... Mather's [Footnote: Cotton Mather: an American clergyman, author, and scholar. Born in 1663, died in 1728. He took an active part in the persecutions for witchcraft.] direful tales, until the gathering dusk of the evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then as he wended his way by swamp and stream and awful woodland, to the farm-house where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination,—the moan of the whippoorwill from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree-toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... thousand francs. As they lived quietly, this income would have been amply sufficient for them, if their lavish generosity had not constantly exhausted their supplies. It drained their money from them as the sun draws water from a swamp. The gold melted, vanished, disappeared. How? No one knew. One of them was always saying: "I don't know how it is, but I have spent a hundred francs to-day, and I haven't anything ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... had his mother set such a pace for him. Usually, when startled, she stopped after going a short distance and looked back to try to get a glimpse of whoever or whatever had alarmed her. To be sure, she always stopped in a good place, like the edge of Cedar Swamp, where she could duck out ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... terrible inroad of the sea which broke the western forest of Amounderness. For many a day the land lay in salt swamp till the sands were blown over it and buried the fallen timber; and afterwards the very name of Forest was forgotten, and the people called all ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... returned to Jacksonville we settled up and had cleared eleven hundred dollars each on the trip. That beat ranching all hollow. Now Mr. Miller proposed to me that we go into horse raising. He said he knew where there was a large tract of swamp- land near Klamath Lake. Swamp and overflown land belonged to the state, and this swamp-land could be bought for a dollar an acre by paying twenty cents an acre down and twenty per cent yearly thereafter until ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... of confetti) started half an hour before the twenty-seven hunters. I was one of the twenty-seven; eight dropped by the wayside; we ended nineteen. The trail led over a hill, through a cornfield, and into a swamp where we had to leap lightly from hummock to hummock. of course half of us went in ankle deep. We kept losing the trail, and we wasted twenty-five minutes over that swamp. Then up a hill through some woods and in at a barn window! The barn doors were all ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... after day echoing with the steady fusillade from marsh to covert, from valley to ridge. Guns flashed at dawn and dusk along the flat tidal reaches haunted of black mallard and teal; the smokeless powder cracked through alder swamp and tangled windfall where the brown grouse burst away into noisy blundering flight; where the woodcock, wilder now, shrilled skyward like feathered rockets, and the big northern hares, not yet flecked with snowy patches of fur, loped off into swamps to the sad undoing of ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... starlings. This year (1916) both birds were noticed just after the scene-shifter had swept the hills of mists, and now other birds seem to have awakened to the conditions which the starlings and the nutmegs brought with them from hotter lands. The swamp pheasants are whooping and gurgling, and that semi-migratory fellow, the spangled drongo—a flattering name, for he jangles but does not spangle—sits on the slim branch of the Moreton Bay ash which held last year's nest ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the year 2582, an' had ben takin' what he called a historical trip into the past ages. He went on at a great rate like that, an' I thought he was jest wanderin' in his mind with the fever, so I humored him. But he saw through me, an' he wouldn't take no but I should go down into Burnham's swamp with him to see ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... of about eighteen hundred acres; and they have besides a farm in Michigan, and another in Massachusetts. Their living is made almost entirely by farming; and they have drained very thoroughly a considerable piece of swamp, which yields them large crops of hay. They make brooms, have a nursery, and press and put up herbs; and employ ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... twenty miles wide, and twelve of these miles are occupied by broad lakes which extend inland from either shore. Of the remaining distance, about half is made up of swamps which are almost or quite impassable, while dense and difficult thickets occupy the rest of the line. Behind this stretch of lake, swamp, and thicket there extends from sea to sea a ridge from four hundred to seven hundred feet in height, the whole forming a most admirable position for defence. This ridge had been fortified by the Turks with redoubts, trenches, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris |
