"Swampy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I left Tsavo I went (on March 11, 1899) on inspection duty to Voi, which, as I have already mentioned, is about thirty miles on the Mombasa side of Tsavo. At this time it was a miserable, swampy spot, where fever, guinea-worm, and all kinds of horrible diseases were rampant; but this state of affairs has now been completely altered by drainage and by clearing away the jungle. Dr. Rose was in medical charge of the place at ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... the Mediterranean. The canal was to run a straight southerly course to Suez. At Ismailia, the new city, it would connect with the railroad to Cairo; between Port Said and Ismailia it would pass through two swampy lakes. ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... who were left went on till they came to a swampy place, and there the Grasshopper stuck fast. In his struggles to get out of the bog he pulled both legs off, and so there were only three to ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... sweet-scented, showy, hothouse exotic has ever done. Royal in color as in lavish profusion, it blossoms everywhere - in woods, waysides, meadows, and marshes, but always in finer form in cool, shady dells; with longer flowering scapes in meadow bogs; and with longer leaves than wide in swampy woodlands. The heart-shaped, saw-edged leaves, folded toward the center when newly put forth, and the five-petalled, bluish-purple, golden-hearted blossom are too familiar for more detailed description. From the three-cornered stars ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... upon the advice thus given, and hastened to cast up intrenchments along the line of the canal from the Mississippi back to an impassable swamp two miles away. In building the redoubts the ground was found to be swampy and slimy, and the earth almost unavailable for any sort of fortification, whereupon a French engineer suggested the employment of cotton bales. The requisite cotton was at once taken from a barque already laden for Havana. The owner of the ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... Wherever there have been marshy lowlands, since plants first began to grow luxuriantly upon the earth, it has been possible for beds of coal to be formed. We all know how rankly plants grow where there is plenty of heat and moisture. Many of us have been in swampy forests and have seen the masses of rotting tree trunks, limbs, and leaves. Now, if we should form a picture in our minds of such a swamp slowly sinking until the water of some lake or ocean had flowed over it and killed the plants, and then washed sand and clay upon the buried forest ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... over this lava, our journey lay through a very swampy country, intersected with streams. I got completely wearied with stripping to wade through them, so that at length I plunged in clothes and all. At the close of a most fatiguing day's march, we arrived in sight of the bay, having travelled over an extent of about fifty miles ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... that the gentleman has quoted, that while there remained one acre of swamp land uncleared of South Carolina, I would raise my voice against restricting the importation of negroes. I am as thoroughly convinced as that gentleman is, that the nature of our climate, and the flat swampy situation of our country, obliges us to cultivate our land with negroes, and that without them South Carolina would ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the rock in every direction. Numerous springs oozed and trickled from the stratified conglomerate along the edges, sides, and bottoms of the ravines. The tops of some of these truncated knolls were quite swampy in the depressions, and covered with a thin-stemmed feathery grass. Here and there was a clump of scrub oaks; sparsely scattered about were small pines. We found great numbers of Opuntia Missouriensis, called by the ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... since leaving Cape Cuba, or Guajava, for it had acted upon them during a period of thirty hours. There can be no doubt as to the identity of these keys with those about Cayo Romano; for they are the only ones in the neighborhood of Cuba that are not of a low and swampy nature, but large and lofty. They inclose a free, open navigation, and abundance of fine harbors, in late years the resort of pirates, who found security and concealment for themselves and their prizes in the recesses of these lofty keys. ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... it surely is the tramp of horse And jolt of cannon downward from the hill Toward our right here, by the swampy lakes That face Davout? Thus, as I sketched, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the conclusion, Mr. Trent, that the making of the road is impracticable and useless. There is insufficient labour and poor tools, no satisfactory method of draining the swampy country, and further, I don't think any one would work with the constant fear of an attack from ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was not unalloyed. Russia injudiciously and ungratefully insisted on depriving Rumania of the portion of Rumanian Bessarabia of which Russia had been deprived after the Crimean war, and allotted the Dobrudja, a swampy region south of the Danube, to the principality as compensation. The indignation in Rumania was indescribable and has never entirely subsided. The Senate in the Chamber declared the resolve of the country to defend ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... assembled on the road-side to catch intelligence. They thought Caswell had taken the right of the Wilmington road, and gone toward the northwest (Cape Fear). Again was I skimming over the ground through a country thinly settled, and very poor and swampy; but neither my own spirit nor my beautiful nag's failed in the least. We followed the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... dormant in so many American breasts. Gloss it over as they will, no political entente can do away with the mutual dislike of Americans and Englishmen. It is a thing which cannot be eradicated in a day, but will die the sooner for exposure to the light, being an ugly growth of swampy prejudice and evil-smelling provincialism that needs the darkness and the ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... spiders, Frantz, nor do I either. But thank Heaven, there aren't any dangerous ones in this country. The spider crab which your tutor has in his box comes from French Guiana. It inhabits the great, swampy forests filled with warm vapors, with scalding exhalations; this temperature is necessary to its life. Its web, or rather its vast snare, envelops an entire thicket. In it it takes birds as our spiders take flies. But drive these disgusting images from your mind, and drink ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Babylon by turning the Euphrates out of its course, the ground had been ill drained, swampy, and unhealthy; and before setting out on further conquests, Alexander wished to put all this in order again, and went about in a boat on the canals to give directions. His broad-brimmed hat was blown off, and lodged among the weeping willows round some old Assyrian's tomb; ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wild and troubled past—that half a century of fierce passions and bloody warfare in which he had acted a conspicuous part. And perhaps it was sometimes even more in the future than the past—that glorious future when Calixto, lying far off in some mountain pass, or on some swampy plain with the trailing creepers covering his bones, should come back ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... the dark-green gloom ahead showed the hunter that he was approaching a large glade or open patch, where the sunlight fell strongly. It turned out to be a swale, or swampy place, some few acres in extent, and directly at the foot of a last steep, wooded slope. Here Fox put his nose ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... project of colonizing this new domain; but the baron's ship unluckily came from the Grand Banks to port on that circular bank of sand known as Sable Island—from twenty to thirty miles as the tide shifts the sand, with grass waist high and a swampy lake in the middle. The Baron de Lery unloads his stock on Sable island and roves the sea for a ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... covered for the most part with dense thorn, coming at last into a district that had probably never been previously entered by any white man and which was known only in the legends of the tribes whose country bordered it. Here were precipitous mountains, well-watered plateaus, wide plains, and vast swampy morasses, but neither the plains, nor the plateaus, nor the mountains were accessible to him until after weeks of arduous effort he succeeded in finding a spot where he might cross the morasses—a hideous stretch infested by venomous snakes and ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... red over the steppe, and as it grows dim the stars begin to twinkle. The monotonous ring of the bells and the shouts of the driver never cease, whether we are near the river or far off in the dreary steppe. The ground becomes soft and swampy. The wheels cut like knives into the mud. We move more and more slowly and heavily, and at last stick fast in the mire. The driver shouts and scolds, and cracks his whip over the team. The middle horse rears, one of the outside ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... me, I said, that the great additions which have been made by realism to the territory of literature consist largely in swampy, malarious, ill-smelling patches of soil which had previously been left to reptiles and vermin. It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste. The general consent ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... hollowed in the swampy thicket and wood, was here divided by the track, and a little farm-house, with a barn, granary, and a couple of cabins, lay on the left side. In a hut to the right General Thomas Francis Meagher made his head-quarters, and ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... gentleman has quoted—that, while there remained one acre of swampland uncleared of South Carolina, I would raise my voice against restricting the importation of negroes. I am so thoroughly convinced as that gentleman is, that the nature of our climate, and the flat, swampy situation of our country, obliges us to cultivate our lands with negroes, and that without them South Carolina would soon be ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... do much good there," Terence said, "for the country is so swampy that they cannot leave the road. Still, I suppose they want to reconnoitre our position, and draw the fire of the Spaniards to ascertain their whereabouts. They are getting very close to them and, when the Spaniards begin, they ought to ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... swampy meadow, chanced to set his foot among a parcel of young frogs, and crushed nearly the whole brood to death. One that escaped ran off to his mother with the dreadful news. "O mother," said he, "it was a beast—such a big four-footed beast, that did ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... lament His loss; and, oh, how he must pine for us! Heaven keep his soul from sinking to despair! No friend's consoling voice can penetrate His dreary dungeon walls. Should he fall sick! Ah! In the vapours of the murky vault He must fall sick. Even as the Alpine rose Grows pale and withers in the swampy air, There is no life for him, but in the sun, And in the breath of Heaven's fresh-blowing airs. Imprison'd! Liberty to him is breath; He cannot live in the rank ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... the country is low and swampy, with tosca-rock appearing at long intervals at the surface. On the banks, however, of the Tapalguen (sixty miles south of the Salado) there is a large extent of tosca-rock, some highly compact and even semi-crystalline, overlying pale Pampean mud with the usual concretions. Thirty ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... against peoples of the same race as themselves, as vigorous and as brave as they. Some who were not content to obey they exterminated. The rich plains of the Volscians became a swampy wilderness, uninhabitable even to the present time, the gloomy region of the ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... by land. The distance was nothing, only twelve miles south from Sandwich. He sent a sort of flying column against it. But this force went no farther than half-way, where the Americans were checked at the bridge over the swampy little Riviere aux Canards by the Indians under Tecumseh, the great War Chief of whom we shall soon ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... "it leads to nothing. This little farm is poorer to-day than it was when your dear father and I came here to live and labor. To be sure, the lower field still grows as good or better crops than ever; but I can remember when that field was so wet and swampy that it could not be cultivated, and it was in the work of ditching and tiling that field," she sobbed, "that your father took the sickness that ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... the soil and water and of the local vegetation is responsible for it. It is more prevalent some years than others, and is most common in old countries, where the soil is more or less depleted. Cattle pastured on low, swampy land become predisposed to it. It occasionally happens, however, that one individual in a herd suffers though all are fed alike; in such cases the disease must arise from the affected animal's imperfect assimilation ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... of the shores is much diversified: to the northeast lie low lands and swampy marshes; to the north and northeast extends a bold range of elevated grounds; southward the coast becomes again flat for some distance inland, till it rises into the ridge of heights that marks the position of Niagara. The country bordering the lake is generally rich and productive, and was originally ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... kind of swampy pond down the lower end of the bush—a likely place for Coons on a Frog-hunt," suggested ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... The swampy field was the most improvident part of an improvident purchase—a brown, tumbledown house, wind swept and cold, inconveniently far from the settlement at the Falls and the larger town, heavily mortgaged, ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... on to the field. There was no possible way of finding out anything else at once. The chance seemed favourable. Montcalm knew he had to fight or starve, as he was completely cut off by land and water, except for one bad, swampy road in the valley of the St Charles; and he ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... of the AEgean, from Mt. Athos, is the Bulgarian port, Dedeagatch, to which runs a branch of the main railway from Sofia to Constantinople. The country here is low and swampy, the port itself being little ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... terminating in the city and harbour of Panama. The country intersected by these lines is by no means so abundant in woods as in other parts, but has fine savannahs, and throughout the whole distance, as well as on each bank of the Trinidad, presents flat, and sometimes swampy country, with occasional detached sugar-loaf mountains, interspersed with streams that mostly empty themselves ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... which lies somewhat nearer to Luetzingen than to Blenheim. Eighty squadrons of cavalry and seven battalions of foot were ranged between Oberglau and Blenheim. Thus the French position was very strong at each extremity, but was comparatively weak in the centre. Tallard seems to have relied on the swampy state of the part of the valley that reaches from below Oberglau to Blenheim for preventing any serious attack on this part ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... white-spotted toadstools, in little companies, pushed through the light soil on either side the road. Trailing sprays of bramble glowed as flame. Rowan berries hung in heavy coral bunches, and the dogwood spread itself in sparse china-pink clusters. Only the undergrowth of crooked alders, in swampy, low-lying places, kept its dark, purplish green; and the light foliage of the ash waved in shadowy pallor against its knobbed and knotted branches; and the ranks of the encircling firs retained their solemn habit, as though in ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... who were conducting them to the coast, and some of these liberated slaves formed the nucleus of the Bishop's first settlement at Magomero. While descending the River Ruo to meet Dr Livingstone, Bishop Mackenzie's canoe was overturned and his quinine lost. A short sojourn on a swampy island brought on a fever, to which he succumbed on the 31st of January, 1862, without issue. His Life has been written by his friend, ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... me that this ramble must be brought to a close, even though only the leading characters in this chorus of forty songsters have been described, and only a small portion of the venerable old woods explored. In a secluded swampy corner of the old Barkpeeling, where I find the great purple orchis in bloom, and where the foot of man or beast seems never to have trod, I linger long, contemplating the wonderful display of lichens and mosses that overrun both ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... I do know, sir—away from the swampy exhalations and black fevers of the horrible district where we have been cruising, and out upon the ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... visit Frances made to the lake after her return, discovered to her, that it was sadly changed. It was no longer full to overflowing, but swampy and low; the water was constantly drained off to supply the manufactory and mills which were erected at a distance. Mr. Draper had found out that the little stream could much more than earn its own living, and it was made to work hard. One thing, ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... hour's ride through the swampy low grounds rising to gentle uplands, and beneath the festoons of the great vines trailing from tree to tree, brought us in front of a small house, half buried in a clump of bushes, like ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... and Grosvenor Place, as far as Sloane Street and Ebury Street, is known as Belgravia, after Belgrave Square, which occupies the centre. Up to 1825 it was named the Five Fields, and was bare, swampy ground on which were a few market gardens. Only one road, the King's Road (Eaton Square), crossed it, though there were numerous footpaths, rendered insecure by the highwaymen and footpads who infested them. It was also a favourite duelling-ground. In 1826 a special Act of Parliament empowered ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... headland, and soon entered the bay-like recess of water, which, sweeping round in a large wood-fringed circle, opened upon the view immediately beyond. After skirting along the sometimes bold and rocky, and sometimes low and swampy, thickly-wooded shore, with a sharp lookout for whatever might come within range of the eye, but without stopping for any special examination till they had reached the most secluded part of the cove, the hunter suspended his oar, and signified his intention of landing. Accordingly, running ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... of Bargh Chur, which includes several thousand acres, the greater portion being covered with enormous grass and dense thickets of tamarisk, which, in the hot season, is the cool and loved resort of tigers. There were also extensive jungles in swampy portions of the island, so intermixed with reeds and marsh grass of twelve or fourteen feet high, that it was difficult to penetrate, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... a swampy marsh; in fact it was very difficult to say precisely where the river and canal ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... of how pleasantly a summer lodge might be placed upon its shores were it not for the mosquitoes. The incessant leaping of fish, the occasional flight of fowl alone disturbed the perfect reflection of cliff and hill in its waters. At times we followed game trails along its margin; at times swampy ground made us seek ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... January, Before the break of day, Our raw and hasty levies Were brought into array. No cotton-bales before us— Some fool that falsehood told; Before us was an earthwork, Built from the swampy mould. And there we stood in silence, And waited with a frown, To greet with bloody welcome ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... cargoes, to recall the fact that he saw the infancy, if not the birth, of that teeming trade; for it is not to every man that it is given to behold the commencement of such a future as seems promised to gloomy, swampy Great Grimsby. ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... nod to the commander and walked among the soldiers. He seemed to have no particular object in view and his strollings brought him near to the edge of the swampy forest. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... at last some hours later. We were out of the forest now, and there was the moon rising, past her full but still very bright. Her light showed me that we were on a wild moorland, swampy, with scattered trees growing here and there, across which what seemed to be a game track ran down hill. That was all I could make out. Here the escort halted, and Simba the King said in ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... unridable piece of road through the low tuile swamps that border Suisun Bay. "Tuile" is the name given to a species of tall rank grass, or rather rush, that grows to the height of eight or ten feet, and so thick in places that it is difficult to pass through, in the low, swampy grounds in this part of California. These tuile swamps are traversed by a net-work of small, sluggish streams and sloughs, that fairly swarm with wild ducks and geese, and justly entitle them to their local title of "the duck-hunters' ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... not remember that we talked much of love, though we were very much in love. We kissed; sometimes greatly daring we walked hand in hand; once I took her in my arms and carried her over a swampy place beyond the Killing Wood, and held her closely to me; that was a great event between us; but we were shy of one another, shy even of very intimate words; and a thousand daring and beautiful things I dreamt of saying to her went unsaid. I do not remember any endearing names ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... canoe lying against the bank, he sprung from the water, coming upon the frail barken structure with such force that he perceptibly started the bottom. It thus appeared to have been deserted for its uselessness. Stepping off of this upon the swampy ground, he walked about twenty yards up the bank, when he turned to the left, and approached the water again. The trail which he left was so distinct that no one could fail to see, he having purposely made it thus. Instead of taking to the water again, as it would appear ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... they advanced inland without rest, save at the breakfast hour, and again at mid-day to dine. Towards evening they observed that the country through which they were passing had changed much in character and aspect. The low and swampy region had given place to hillocks and undulating ground, all covered with the beautiful virgin forest with its palms and creepers and noble fruit-trees and rich vegetation, conspicuous among which magnificent ferns of many kinds covered the ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... he had decided upon Pepper pursued his way, swerving now to the right and again to the left to avoid some all but impassable thicket or some swampy bit of ground, until he judged that he had gone at ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... join the chase, it was too late to join it. The fugitive, travelling a straight course, had crossed the field at its narrowest point and had bounded into the fringe of greenery bordering the little lake, heading apparently for the thick swampy place lying between the ball ground and the golf links. The two pursuers, legging along behind, did their best to keep him in sight, but, one thing sure, they were ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... getting rapidly wider, and the ground so swampy that it was impossible to proceed further. Seeing this, we agreed to return to the prairie, and to try if it were not cooler among the palmettos. But when we came to the place where we had crossed the creek, our horses refused ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... morning train from Empire left me at the lake-side city for a run over locks and dam which the working days had not allowed, and there being no other train for hours I set off along the railroad to walk the seven miles to Colon. On either side lay hot, rampant jungle, low and almost swampy. It was noon when I reached the broad railroad yards and Zone storehouses of Mt. Hope and turned aside to ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... follow him about all day with a pail of water, assuring her that one drop (a purely homoeopathic remedy, the section would observe), placed upon his tongue, after death, would restore him. What was the obvious inference? That Thorn, who was marching and countermarching in osier beds, and other swampy places, was impressed with a presentiment that he should be drowned; in which case, had his instructions been complied with, he could not fail to have been brought to life again instantly by his own prescription. As it was, if this woman, or any other person, had administered an infinitesimal ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... that day's march. The distance to the lake from our camp could not have been over six or seven miles; yet, traveling as we did, without path or guide, climbing up banks, plunging into ravines, making detours around swampy places, and forcing our way through woods choked up with much fallen and decayed timber, it seemed at least twice that distance, and the mid-afternoon sun was shining when we emerged into what is called the "Quaker Clearing," ground that I had been over nine years ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... Not until they reached God's presence could they stand side by side in any relation of equality. There was a Negro graveyard in Clarendon, where, as a matter of course the coloured dead were buried. It was not an ideal locality. The land was low and swampy, and graves must be used quickly, ere the water collected in them. The graveyard was unfenced, and vagrant cattle browsed upon its rank herbage. The embankment of the railroad encroached upon one side of it, and the passing engines sifted cinders and ashes over the graves. But no Negro had ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... with unfeign'd good will. No sparkling dew-drops hang upon the grass; Forth steps the mower with his glitt'ring scythe, In snowy shirt, and doublet all unbrac'd, White moves he o'er the ridge, with sideling bend, And lays the waving grass in many a heap. In ev'ry field, in ev'ry swampy mead, The cheerful voice of industry is heard; The hay-cock rises, and the frequent rake Sweeps on the yellow hay, in heavy wreaths, Leaving the smooth green meadow bare behind. The old and young, the ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... them now, hacking and stabbing with the short swords upon their heads and backs. There was no need to aim the blow, they were so many. Like a huddled mob of cattle they turned and fled down Nile. But my orders had reached the vanguard and these, hidden in the growing crops on the narrow neck of swampy land between the hills and the Nile, met them with arrows as they came, also raked them from the steep cliff side. Their chariot wheels sank into the mud till the horses were slain; their footmen were piled in ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... the Ayer Ikan stream twice we arrived at some hot springs, about three or four miles in the winding course we were obliged to take from dusun Tanjong, situated in a low swampy spot, about sixty yards in circumference. This is very hot in every part of it, excepting (which is very extraordinary) one place on its eastern side, where, although a hot spring is bubbling up within one yard of it, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... prettiness the country held. There were meadows of brilliant daisies, broken by clumps of silver poplars, white birches, and a solitary sentinel pine; and there was the roadside tangle with its constant surprises of meadowsweet and columbine, white violets—in the swampy places—and once in a while ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... difficulty of subduing the wilderness, the settled portions of the Commonwealth had begun to feel overpopulated. Twenty-five years before, the Secretary of the Colony had reported to the Home Government, that "in this mountainous, rocky and swampy province" most of the arable land was taken up, and the remainder was ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... command of Captain H. Smith of the Volage. As we approached the lofty headland of Cape Aden it looked like an island. Its position is very similar to that of Gibraltar, as it is connected with the mainland by a piece of low swampy ground. I was struck by its grand picturesque appearance, though it is barren and wild, and utterly destitute of vegetation. We ran in and anchored not far off the fortified island of Sirah, four or ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Bhreac, tarried and trembled. And Gilian, as he heard, forgetting all that ancient town below of unable elders and stagnant airs, illusion gone and glory past, its gossip at well and close, its rancours of clan and family, knew the message now of the bird that cried across the swampy meadow-land at Kilmalieu. Love, love, love—and death. It was the message of bird and flower, of wave and wind, the deep and constant note in Nan's song, whatever the words might be. No more for a moment the rustic, the abashed shepherd, ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... stone wall where Mr. Chippy made his home in a wild grapevine, Mr. Meadowlark flew to the swampy place where the rushes grew, just to find a Red-winged Blackbird that he knew, in order to learn whether he had seen or heard the friend everybody was ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... little swampy patch!" she said, stopping when they had rounded the curve in the road. "A week or two ago, that was all alive with redbud flowers. I dunno the right name on 'em, an' I don't care. Redbirds, I ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... was the only one of his band provided with a tent, or anything resembling one, and the boys shared the common bed of the rest of the party—which was the ground. A more unwholesome resting-place in Africa, particularly on the steamy, swampy banks of a river, could hardly be imagined. So indeed Muley-Hassan seemed to think, for after a short time, during which the boys vainly tried to secure some sleep, he ordered Diego to provide them with blankets to place between themselves ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the Effect of Air in Soils. Take two tomato cans; fill one with soil that is loose and warm, and the other with wet clay or muck from a swampy field. Plant a few seeds of the same kind in each and observe how much better the dry, warm, open soil is for ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... called pictorial art in textiles Mrs. Holmes was not alone, although her work probably incited to the same sort of experiment. Miss Weld of Boston sent a picture made up in the same way, of a background of material which lent itself to the representation of a field of swampy ground where the spotted leaves of the adder's tongue, the yellow water-lily, with its compact balls, and the flaming cardinal flower are growing, while swamp grasses are nodding above. This was as good in its way as any sketch of them could be, and affected one with the sentiment ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... strong as the tide, and they had to anchor against the ebb, or be swept out to sea quicker than they had come in. The next morning they went on again, and were fifty miles up the channel by nightfall. Away to right and left were masses of flat, swampy land, the intersecting waterways reddening and glistening ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... them to the latter place, which is on an island in the Atlantic Ocean, and has a mountain peak ten thousand feet high. This peak is wooded to the summit with fine timber, and altogether the island is a very attractive spot to the eye, in comparison with Bonny and the swampy region of the ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Tom had said; four miles for the horses, against a mile and a half for Hervey. Both routes were bad, Hervey's the worse of the two. All things considered, hills, muddy roads, trackless woodland, swampy areas, it should take the heavily loaded team a little over an hour to reach the bridge. By Tom's calculation it must take Hervey at least ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... matter of fact, however, it later proved that cholera was endemic in certain swampy regions near Manila, and in 1905 we found ourselves with a new epidemic on ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... most abiding recollection I have of our dear Doctor is the expression in her face in the middle of a heavy bombardment by German guns of our hospital at Krushevatz during the autumn of 1915. I was coming across some swampy ground which separated our building from the large barracks called after the good and gentle Czar Lazar of Kosovofanee, when a shell flew over our heads, and burst close by with a deafening roar. The Doctor was coming from the opposite direction; we ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... with his cousin Mary—the only unselfish member of the family, by the bye—and quarrels about this love affair with his grandfather, and so passes into the hard school of adversity. There he learns much. Specially valuable is the teaching which he gets as a settler in the swampy backwoods of the United States in company with Mark Tapley, jolliest and most helpful of men. On his return, he finds his grandfather seemingly under the influence of Pecksniff, the hypocrite, the English Tartuffe. But that, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... to a small farm, if it could be called such, owned by two brothers named Drew, having some work to look into for them. These Drews were the sons of a clergymen in England, and they had lately come to New Zealand with a little money and no experience, taken a small tract of land in this swampy wilderness, and settled down to farm it. The buildings consisted of a wretched mud hut, some twelve feet square, a small yard, and a few pigsties. What a habitation it was, and what filth and absence of management was apparent all over it! Failure was ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... the sombre firs in the hollow beneath him. Then two figures became visible, moving upwards along the strip of trail, and he drove the jaded horse forward as he recognized them. He lost sight of them for a few minutes as he turned aside to avoid a swampy spot, but when he had left it behind they were close ahead in the middle of the trail, and it was with a thrill of pleasure that he swung himself stiffly from ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... forest, over rocky, tangled spaces, across slopes of burnt barren, his progress was always upward, until, having traversed several swampy vales and shadowy ravines, toward evening he came out upon the empty summit of Ringwaak. On the topmost hillock he took his stand proudly, his massive head and broad, curled horns in splendid relief against the ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... not expect to go in a straight line, or as the crows fly. All sorts of obstacles interfered with such a scheme. Now it was a deep gully that barred their progress; a little further on they came to a stretch of swampy ground, where a runner would find himself bogged and placed in a desperate condition, if he attempted to push through. But wise Fred had early discovered what seemed to be a fairly well worn trail that seemed to lead in the direction they were intending to go. At times it was exceedingly difficult ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Lena River to Jakutsk. They then started on an overland journey to Sredne Kolymsk. They took fifty horses for transport. A large part of the way lay through virgin forest. Then came the formation called the Taiga, a sort of Arctic moorland, which becomes swampy ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... breach and down to the park; and so, thought I, 'Aha, Mistress Deb, if you are so ready to dance after my pipe and tabor, I will give you a couranto before you shall come up with me.' And so I went down Ivy-tod Dingle, where the copse is tangled, and the ground swampy, and round by Haxley-bottom, thinking all the while she was following, and laughing in my sleeve at the round I was ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... a piece of swampy land which was white with cotton-grass and softly smacked under ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... equipment. We made a very flourishing start out of Warsaw, but very soon plunged into an appalling mess of mud. One could really write an epic poem on Russian roads. At the best of times they are awful; on this particular occasion they were full of large holes made by shells and covered with thick swampy mud that had been snow the week before. It delayed us so much that we did not get to Skiernevice till ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... true. We had come out into a sort of marshy, swampy place like I think, a jungle is, that the stream ran through, and it was simply crammed with queer plants, and flowers we never saw before or since. And the stream was quite thin. It was torridly hot, and softish to walk on. There were rushes and reeds and small willows, and ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... being, unused to this dark world, seeking in vain for a ray of sun and a breath of fresh air. Sometimes we hear the grunt of an invisible pig, the breaking of branches and the rustling of leaves as it runs away. Moisture and lowering gloom brood over the swampy earth; one would not be surprised if suddenly the ground were to move and wriggle like slimy snakes tightly knotted around each other. Thorns catch the limbs, vines catch the feet, and the wanderer, stumbling along, almost fancies he can hear the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... the crashing of the feet of the snipe drivers and the shouts and laughter had died away, Ted left his hiding place and darted through the dark woods and swampy ground ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... ravines, and then jumped back again; he let himself down over ledges by branches; he crossed creeks and gorges by swinging himself into trees and climbing from one to another; he waded brooks where he found hard bottom, and avoided swampy, soft ground. ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... Thirteenth, and Fourteenth legions, besides auxiliary troops, both horse and foot,[521] who had long received their summons and came hurrying on the news of victory. Neither general was dilatory, but a vast plain lay between them. It was by nature swampy, and Civilis had built a dam projecting into the Rhine, which stemmed the current and flooded the adjacent fields. The treacherous nature of the ground, where the shallows were hard to find, told against our men, who were heavily armed and afraid of swimming. The Germans, on the other hand, ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... more Feminine Tact than I expected. Got entangled in swampy forest on Zambesi (I think), and Arabs declined to extricate us unless their pay was doubled! Also one of negresses—horrid woman!—has deserted me—come to place that she pretended to recognise as her native village, and said she meant to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... is very variable; we have great extremes of heat and cold. It is healthy as a rule, except in the swampy districts or during a very wet season, when a great many residents ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... except for a few cataracts, the waterway to England was unbroken. The Karuma Falls broke the monotony of the way, and here the party halted a while before plunging into the Kidi wilderness across which they intended to march to save a great bend of the river. Their path lay through swampy jungles and high grass, while great grassy plains, where buffaloes were seen and the roar of lions was heard, stretched away on ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... produced close by river banks, and which seems to be altogether useless as building material, has really excellent qualities. It is composed of a very large proportion of air and fire, not much of the earthy, and only a little moisture. Hence, in swampy places, alder piles driven close together beneath the foundations of buildings take in the water which their own consistence lacks and remain imperishable forever, supporting structures of enormous weight and keeping them from decay. Thus a material which cannot last even a little ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... thoughts of throwing up the trip; but under the influence of the hearty meal and the invigorating wine, his courage was renewed and he felt he could easily complete the journey. All that day he passed through lonely and miserable looking country. Swampy lands and rice fields bordered either side of the river. About five o'clock he saw two men on the bank and called out to them, asking how far ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... with pouches well stocked. Their large knapsacks contained blankets, moccasins, and various other necessaries of a camper's outfit, including heavy knitted jerseys for chill days and nights, and rubber boots reaching high on the legs for wear in wading and traversing swampy tracts. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... were now to be the scene of a bitter and determined conflict between the great adversaries, is a sluggish and winding stream, which, rising above Richmond, describes a curve around it, and empties its waters into the James, far below the city. Its banks are swampy, and thickly clothed with forest or underwood. From the nature of these banks, which scarcely rise in many places above the level of the water, the least freshet produces an overflow, and the stream, generally ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... Sunday morning there were only three or four, I think, beside Mr. Glennie and Ratsey and the half-dozen of us boys, who crossed the swampy meadows strewn with drowned shrew-mice and moles. Even my aunt was not at church, being prevented by a migraine, but a surprise waited those who did go, for there in a pew by himself sat Elzevir Block. The people stared ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... which awaited them was very inviting. At that time gunners received from seventy-five cents to one dollar and a quarter for the "scalp" of each bird, which ordinarily contained forty or more plume feathers. These birds were not confined to Florida, but in the breeding season were to be found in swampy regions of the Atlantic Coast as far north as New Jersey, some being discovered carrying sticks for ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... feet in height, with leaves resembling those of our common Alder, and bearing towards the end of July spikes of almost oppressively fragrant dull-white flowers at the tips of the branches. It is a valuable shrub, not only in an ornamental way, but on account of it thriving in damp, swampy ground, where few others could exist, while at the same time it will succeed and flower freely in almost any good ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... fleas are now generally included as a degenerated type, comprise more forms personally annoying to man than all the remaining insect orders put together. These hostile species are, further, incalculably numerous, and occur in every part of the globe. Mosquitoes swarm not merely in the swampy forests of the Orinoco or the Irrawaddy, but in the Tundras of Siberia, en the storm-beaten rocks of the Loffodens, and are even encountered by voyagers in quest of the North Pole. The common house fly was probably at one time peculiar ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... had entered the pilot house in the blackness of night. He came out in the full glare of day. Lord James had turned his back to the sun. He was staring at the bank of white mist that, less than two miles to westward, shrouded the swampy coast. Meggs had brought out two pairs of binoculars, one of which he handed ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... which the forest trees clambered as if in a race for the top—pines leading, with heather and scrubby junipers, oaks and hemlocks some way behind; alders, mostly by the waterside, with maples in swampy patches, and here and there a birch waving silver against the shadow. The pines kept their funereal plumes, like undertakers who had made a truce with death by making a business of it. But these deciduous trees, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... grown in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee. Cotton used for twist is grown in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas, and the length of the staple varies from one to one and three-sixteenths inches. In the swampy and bottom lands in some of the states (notably Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas), cotton is grown with staple ranging from one and one-eighth to one and one-fourth inches. In addition to these, there are especially long stapled growths, known as "Extras," "Allen Seed," ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... Coming up to the swampy spot, the old bull gave a grunt of satisfaction, and going down on one knee, plunged his short thick horns into the mud, tore it up, and cast it aside. Having repeated this several times, he plunged his head in, and brought it forth saturated with dirty water and bedaubed ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... descended, and the sea rolled in dolefully about the tall cliffs, melting far away into the bleak grayness of the sky. But more doleful than the bleak sea was sullen Picardy. Mike could not sleep, and his eyes fed upon the bleak black of swampy plains, utterly mournful, strangely different from green and gladsome England. And two margins of this doleful land remained impressed upon his mind; the first, a low grange, discoloured, crouching on the plain, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... protected by a suitable covering. It is said, and my own observation confirms the fact, that horses will leave grain, such as corn and oats, to feed on this grass; and its wonderful nutritious properties cannot be denied. Wild oats are often seen in the mountain valleys. Along the low swampy lands which skirt the rivers of the plains, there is yet another species of grass which grows oftentimes several feet high, and has a broad blade, similar almost to that of the flag plant. On approaching the mountains the blue grass is found, which is nearly the same as that ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... about two months supply of rations. On leaving the settled districts they at once found themselves in the barren country, that had so often stopped the outward march of the pioneers, and their first discovery was a swampy lake (fresh) on the edge of a small patch of better country, but this quickly passed, and they entered into the salt lake region, through which they pushed until they reached a range of granite hills, forming the watershed of the coast streams. Turning somewhat ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... the reservoir back of the house. There were, however, changes in the scene. Within a quarter of a mile of the beach tents were set and booths erected. Seemingly all the city had rushed to this place, and the plain, with its swampy surfaces, was dotted by masses of noisy men and women. Gerald, finding that approach to the house was impossible from the land side, made a wide detour, and on reaching the shore he was gratified to find it empty. The ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Mexico came about in this way. Napoleon III had no sooner entered upon his Mexican campaign than he found that his French troops died like flies in the piece of swampy country between the coast and the City of Mexico. Yet that fever-haunted track must be held, or communication would have been cut between the French troops on the Mexican plateau and the sea. In his difficulty Napoleon III appealed to his brother tyrant, the Khedive ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... in which the work was done, was very roughly equipped, supplied by a standpipe tap with water, and draining into a pipe that ran down into a swampy rush-bordered pool under an alder tree in a secluded corner of the common just outside the garden hedge. The pipe was cracked, and the residuum of the Food of the Gods escaped through the crack into a little puddle amidst clumps of rushes, just in ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... escapades together at the Vatican. Him Alessandro persuaded, by means of a heavy bribe and the promise of efficient protection, to undertake the removal of Ippolito. Whilst dallying with his former mistress, the Cardinal fell ill of malarial fever, common in the swampy plain of Garigliano, where ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... capital. The land on both sides was low and flat, and instead of hedge-rows, trenches were dug to mark the boundaries of property. A small proportion only was under cultivation. The greater part appeared to be sour swampy ground, covered with coarse grass, with bushes, and the common reed. There were few trees, except near the villages, which were of mean appearance, the houses generally consisting of mud walls, one story in height, and thatched with straw or rushes. Here and ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... of dollars a year per acre. Such exaggerations may be illustrated by the literature sent out by the New South Farm and Home Company, advertising ten-acre farms in Florida. The representations were that the farms were not swampy, were near direct water connections with New York; that every month in the year was a growing month; that the farms were surrounded by orange and citrous-fruit farms; that there were fine roads, wells, homes, schools, ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... tract full of willows, bulrushes, and odd, outlandish, swampy trees; and I had now come out upon the skirts of an open piece of undulating, sandy country, about a mile long, dotted with a few pines and a great number of contorted trees, not unlike the oak in growth, but pale in the foliage, like willows. On the far side of ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mountain had a hollow in its back where the ground was soft and swampy. Some gigantic ferns, which we passed through, came nearly to our shoulders. We passed also several patches of swamp ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... uncultivated and unhealthy. The lands were low and swampy, and mostly covered with a heavy growth of yellow pines. The few remaining inhabitants were mostly women, negresses and children; now and then a disabled specimen of poor white trash, or a farmer too infirm to be of service in the rebel army, was to be met with. All were alike destitute ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... of the country were not equally fertile: the fruitful and well-cultivated district in the neighbourhood of the Shatt-el-Hai gave place to impoverished lands ending to the eastward, finally in swampy marshes, which with great difficulty furnished means of sustenance to a poor and thinly ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... off together across the city toward the district where Celia lived. Though the quarter in question may have been improved out of existence since, a few years ago rows of low-rented shacks stood upon mounds of sweating sawdust which had been dumped into a swampy hollow. Leaky, frail and fissured, they were not the kind of places anyone who could help it would choose to live in; but Vane found the sick girl still installed in one of the worst of them. She looked pale and haggard; but she was busily at work upon some ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... course up the river, anchoring whenever the tide failed us, and frequently towing the vessel with the boat. The river is deep and muddy; the banks are covered with impenetrable thickets of mangrove; and the whole of the adjacent country appears to be flat and swampy. ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... country it ought to succeed. It has shown much adaptation for the volcanic soils of the Western mountain region, where it has been tried. On stiff clays it grows too slowly to be entirely satisfactory. It ought not to be sown on soils wet or swampy in character. ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... very tired and hungry; but she related all that had happened and said: "I'm sorry I couldn't go farther; for I believe the cows were just a short distance beyond the point where I turned back. But I did not dare to cross the swampy place and go into the woods ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... passage of the act of Secession, I accompanied him to the plantation spoken of. It involved a little steamboat journey, sundry rides in chaise or buggy, and the crossing of more than one of the many creeks or rivers intersecting the low, sandy, swampy coast. I purposely abstain from particularizing the locality. It was toward the close of a mild, humid day when we reached ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a horse after a hard day's work grazing in a swampy meadow. He has done his duty and is getting what he ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... the Jonesboro road is jest full of swampy land and on a rainy drizzly night Jack O'lanterns will lead you. One night my uncle started out ter see his girl end he had ter go through the woods and the swamps. When he got in der swamp land he had ter cross a branch and the night wuz dark ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... his eyes, and at last told me in broad Yorkshire, that he thought the place I was looking for must be what they called "the bishop's house," where Squire Dickinson lived. Set at last upon the right track, I walked across two swampy meadows that bordered the Idle River—pertinently named—till I came to a solitary farmhouse with a red-tiled roof. Some five or six slender poplar-trees stood at the back of it, and a ditch of water at one end, where there had been evidently ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... know the word in Rommanis for a Jack-o'-lantern—the light that runs, and stops, and dances by night, over the water, in the fields? Yes; some call them the Light Ghosts, and some the Little Ghosts. They're little men who lead you into the waste and swampy places, and show you a light until you have gone astray and are lost, and then they turn themselves around and laugh at you. I have seen their lights many a time, and nothing more; but my brother saw their faces close and opposite to him (directly ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... When the conquest was finished, but one district of the city was left standing, and in it were crowded a quarter of the population, miserable famished wretches, who had surrendered when their king was taken. All that was left besides was a patch of swampy ground strewed with fragments of walls, a few pyramids too large for present destruction, and such great heaps of dead bodies that it was impossible to get from place to place without ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... crossed the line of railway beyond it and swam the fresh-water canal, and then, guided by the glare of light over Alexandria, made their way across the fields. After half an hour's walking they found themselves on the shore of the lake. It was low and swampy, and they had to keep some distance from its edge. The reflection of the light on its smooth surface enabled them to follow its direction as well as if they had been walking close to it. They kept on until morning broke, by which time the ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... when it is gently sloping rather than absolutely flat, because on a flat farm water cannot run off and so forms swampy places. But it is a disadvantage to have the surface too rolling because that causes the water ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... notes prolong, Now a wild chorus swells the song: Oft have I listened, and stood still, As it came softened up the hill, And deemed it the lament of men Who languished for their native glen; And thought how sad would be such sound On Susquehana's swampy ground, Kentucky's wood-encumbered brake, Or wild Ontario's boundless lake, Where heart-sick exiles, in the strain, Recalled fair ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... of the maddening pests of bird study at the East is here almost unknown,—the mosquito. Until the third week in June I saw but one. That one was in the habit of lying in wait for me when I went to a piece of low, swampy ground overgrown with bushes. Think of the opportunity this combination offers to the Eastern mosquito, and consider my emotions when I found but a solitary individual, and even that one disposed ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... that I have mentioned in a former letter, still continues in this garden; and retired under ground about the twentieth of November, and came out again for one day on the thirtieth: it lies now buried in a wet swampy border under a wall facing to the south, and is enveloped at ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... red lobelia, or cardinal flower. There is no flower in the year so full of vivid color. Sometimes, but only very rarely, the purple torches of the exquisite little fringed orchis (habenaria psychodes) lights up a swampy place beneath the trees and sheds its delicate fragrance as ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... why you have failed to see it, as we always do with our little oversights, when humbly pointed out to us. It is the colour of the ground and the background too, and the grayness of the scanty growth that hides it. Nobody finds it out by walking across it, because of this swampy place on your side, and the shoot of flints down from the cliff on the other, all sharp as a knife, and as rough as a saw. And nobody comes down to this end of the warren, neither is it seen from the battery on the hill. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... interminable plain, which is only open at one end, towards the sea. Some of the plains and hills shone with tender green, and I fancied I beheld beautiful meadows. On a nearer inspection, however, they proved to be swampy places, and hundreds upon hundreds of little acclivities, sometimes resembling mole-hills, at others small graves, and ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... of her Lincolnshire Gaius, Jeanie resumed her solitary walk, and was somewhat alarmed when evening and twilight overtook her in the open ground which extends to the foot of Gunnerby Hill, and is intersected with patches of copse and with swampy spots. The extensive commons on the north road, most of which are now enclosed, and in general a relaxed state of police, exposed the traveller to a highway robbery in a degree which is now unknown, except in the immediate ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... per cent, was a broad hint which most men would have taken; and it did keep Andy ruefully quiet for a season or two. Then, however, having again saved up a trifle, he could not resist the temptation to drain the swampy corner of the farthest river-field, which was as kind a bit of land as you could wish, only for the water lying on it, and in which he afterward raised himself a remarkably fine crop of white oats. The sight of them 'done his heart ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... that, one after another, the camels sank exhausted; and, when they had all succumbed, Burke and Wills took their only horse to carry a small quantity of provisions, and, leaving Gray and King behind, set out by themselves on foot. They had to cross several patches of swampy ground; and the horse, becoming inextricably bogged, was unable to go farther. But still Burke and Wills hurried on by themselves till they reached a narrow inlet on the Gulf of Carpentaria, and found that the river they had been following was the Flinders, whose mouth had been discovered ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... listen then while I relate the reason for my presence, why for months I have searched country after country for one who ever seemed to be just beyond my reach, like a will-o'-the-wisp dancing over the swampy ground. ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... gone straight ahead," he said. "I went over the brow, and down the next hollow, and found their trail strong there, for the ground is swampy; they had certainly passed within an hour of the ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... occasion on which a Moor, who attended him, was somewhat, rudely disabused of his belief in the efficacy of charms upon bears:—"Desiring to change the position of a herd of deer, the Moorman (with his charm) was sent across some swampy land to disturb them. As he was proceeding, we saw him suddenly turn from an old tree and run back with all speed, his hair becoming unfastened and like his clothes streaming in the wind. It soon became evident that he was flying from some terrific object, for he ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... and Calhoun 60. The pods fall from October 15th to December 30th. Lespedeza sericea planted between the trees yields 2-1/2 tons per acre annually. This gives us courage to continue emphasizing their great value for pasture and rough land planting. The trees we planted in our swampy, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... curved bill. It has curiously sluggish habits, rising only when almost trodden upon, and going off in a wild sacred manner like a nocturnal species, then dropping again into hiding at a short distance. The natives call it dormilon—sleepy-head. On one side of the lagoon, where the ground was swampy and wet, there was always a breeding-colony of these quaint birds; at every few yards one would spring up close to the hoofs, and dismounting we would find the little nest on the wet ground under the grass, always with two ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... distinct hope of anything; but his pride and shame were holding him fast, while the home-sickness tugged at his heart, and made him almost forget the poverty that had spurred him to the adventure of coming to Boston. He could see the cows coming home through the swampy meadow as plain as if they were coming across the Common; his mother was calling them; she and his sister were going to milk in his absence, and he could see her now, how she looked going out to call the cows, in her bare, grey head, gaunt of neck and cheek, in the ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... sufficient number of reasons, the man I know went up to vote in Battersea in a drifting and even dubious frame of mind. As the train slid through swampy woods and sullen skies there came into his empty mind those idle and yet awful questions which come when the mind is empty. Fools make cosmic systems out of them; knaves make profane poems out of them; men try to crush them like an ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... some stunted evergreen bushes which border the dyke, and which the people call salt-water bush. My walks are rather circumscribed, inasmuch as the dykes are the only promenades. On all sides of these lie either the marshy rice-fields, the brimming river, or the swampy patches of yet unreclaimed forest, where the huge cypress trees and exquisite evergreen undergrowth spring up from a stagnant sweltering pool, that effectually forbids the ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... looked back. Through the darkness I saw my assailants scattering up and down along the dyke. The pursuit was evidently not ended, and again I had to choose my course. Beyond the dyke where I stood was a wild, swampy space very similar to that which I had crossed. I determined to shun such a place, and thought for a moment whether I would take up or down the dyke. I thought I heard a sound—the muffled sound of oars, so I listened, ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker |
