"Cliff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inland from Calais is flat and marshy—more like Holland, as we conceive it, than like England or France. Of course, the railroad avoids the higher ground, but I did not see a cliff nor steep acclivity until darkness closed us in, though some moderate hills were visible from time to time, mainly on the right. Here, too, as across the Channel, Grass largely predominated, but I think ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... rock much overgrown with brambles glistening with blackberries and briars decked with coral-red hips. Before descending to the road and beginning the day's journey I indulged for a little while the musing mood of the solitary wanderer in the grassy burying-ground on the edge of the cliff. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... medal of the Edinburgh Society of Arts for a paper on a suggested improvement in lighthouse apparatus. The outdoor and seafaring parts of an engineer's life were in fact wholly to his taste. But he looked instinctively at the powers and phenomena of waves and tide, of storm and current, reef, cliff, and rock, with the eye of the poet and artist, and not those of the practician and calculator. For desk work and office routine he had an unconquerable aversion; and his physical powers, had they remained at their best, must have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lonely one. No habitation other than an isolated fisher's cottage was to be seen between the little fishing-port at the northern curve away to the south, where beyond a waste of sandhills and strand another tiny fishing-village nestled under a high cliff, sheltering it from northerly wind. For centuries the lords of Lannoy had kept their magnificent prospect to themselves; and though they had treated their farmers and cottagers well, none had ever been allowed to settle in the great park ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... did their delicacy of outlines mingle with the dark blue softness beyond. In places the coast ran up to a height of two or three hundred feet, in others it sloped down to twenty feet. For some miles it was like the face of a cliff, a sheer abrupt, with scarce a scar upon its front, staring with a wild bald look over the frosty beautiful blue of that afternoon sea. Here and there it projected a forefoot, some white and massive rock, upon which the swell of the ocean burst in thunder, and flew to almost ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... above us. Here Karl suddenly refused to allow us, and to shake him out of his effeminacy I had to send back the guide for him, who, at our request, succeeded in bringing him along, half by force. But now that we had to clamber from stone to stone along the precipitous cliff, I soon began to realise how foolish I had been in compelling Karl to share our perilous adventure. His dizziness evidently stupefied him, for he stared in front of him as though he could not see, and we had ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... all: he was one of those 'longshore dog-foxes,' and got away home on the cliff." Stephen thumped his knee. "It's my belief the smell o' sea gives 'em ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... packed my trunk fast and came up here. I thought I'd better see my bridges in flames behind me before I finished writing to you. They are entirely reduced to ashes now. Here I am at Cliff Top (the name of Mrs. Paterson's cottage) with my trunk unpacked and Florence (the little one) already struggling with first declension nouns. And it bids fair to be a struggle! She is a most uncommonly spoiled child; I shall have to teach her first how ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... hand toward the cliff behind us. His eyes narrowed incredulously; he glanced at its drop, upon which even a mountain goat could not have ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... being invited to Rhinebeck to preach, met Catherine Livingston while there, and in 1793 they were married. Six years later they purchased a place on the banks of the Hudson, calling it Wildercliff—Wilder Klipp, a Dutch word meaning wild man's cliff, from the fact that early settlers found on a smooth rock on the river shore a rough tracing of two Indians with tomahawk and calumet. Garrettson was educated in the Church of England, but left it to become ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... the walls of the old Castle of Weissenstein, and then in steep curves up the cliff which blocks the head of the valley, and along a cut in the face of the rock, into the steep, narrow Tauernthal, which divides the Glockner group from the Venediger. How entirely different it was ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... of thy devising were his deeds: and this his inborn valour hath trodden in the footsteps of his father twice victor at Olympia in panoply of war-affronting arms[3]: moreover the games in the deep meadow beneath Kirrha's cliff gave victory to ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... would impress upon the youth that in all arts and crafts, the dream fades and the spirit of the product dies away, when many are made in the original likeness. Nature does not make duplicates; her creative hallmark is upon every leaf and bee; upon every cliff and ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... was an infant in the cradle you killed my father and stole my mother; my father was the more fortunate. You did not kill him fairly, as I am going to kill you. You and my wicked mother took him driving to a lonely pass in Sicily, flung him down a cliff, and went on your way. I could imitate you if I chose, but imitating you is too vile. I have followed you all over the world, and you have always fled from me. But this is the end of the world—and of you. I have you now, and ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... came to the sea-shore he stood for a while looking out to sea with his knees knocking together. Then he went where he had gone the day before. He climbed into a cave in the face of the cliff and he drew the bush to the entrance of it so ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... toward the outskirts of the village, where, on a hill, known locally as "The Heights" there was a grove of trees. Below the hill, at one place cutting deep into it and making a precipitous cliff, was a little river. At the point where the stream had bitten into the hill it had washed for itself a defile, the bottom rock-covered, so that the waters swirled over it ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... a splendid idea!" cried Bertha, jumping up, looking very pleased, but serious. "Have you got it there, Cliff?" ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... Meg'ara and Corinth. So called because the bones of Sciron, the robber of Attica, were changed into these rocks when Theseus (2 syl.) hurled him from a cliff into the sea. It was from these rocks that Ino cast herself ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... sooner determined on this plan, than, anxious to carry it out, we set off. We followed a narrow mountain path on the face of the cliff which rose up to our right; to our ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... walked silently through the town, and up the steep lane in which Mme. de Maufant had taken up her abode. It was on a hill over-looking the town, still known by the name of "The King's Cliff." At the back were woods ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... everywhere in this country. We ain't out of danger a minute. Ha! ha! ha!" and he laughed so loudly, that the rocks above us caught the sound and hurled it against the opposite side of the canon, where it seemed to be detained for a moment by some overhanging cliff, and then sent back, reverberating and re-echoing, now faint and indistinct, then clear and well-defined, to again die away in the distance, to once more approach nearer and nearer, louder and louder, until finally catching upon the sharp edge of some ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... the volcanoes Mount Eoa and Mount Kea, was supposed to guard all the passes to the extensive valleys lying round their base. There are legends of her having chased with streams of fire several impious adventurers. Near Hilo, a jet-black cliff is shown, with the vitreous torrent apparently pouring over into the sea: just as it cooled after one of these ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... the hills, to where he could walk on a ledge and leave no tracks," said the Major. "Then I went on. I rounded up this bunch of saddle horses and brought them back. He went up on Little Thumb Butte. It's all bluffs and bowlders there. Up on the highest big cliff, at the very top, is a deep crack that winds up in a cave like a tunnel. You know the ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... ten columns before it, but one is now out of place. The Temple Der el Bahri bore an English name, signifying "most splendid of all," and it may not have been misnamed. It is situated at the base of a lofty barren cliff of a yellowish cast, and ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... of it is that when—and if— It begins its work of slaughter It will possibly harm the Kentish cliff, But it's perfectly certain to go and biff The French ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... to a cliff fully two hundred yards distant, and of half that height. On this projecting ledge stood a noble buck, with antlers and head raised, while he seemed to be gazing over the wild expanse of country below him. They knew he was a fine ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... the silence with their cooing and the flutter of their wings. Even the grim old eagle perched on the pinnacle of the peak was pruning himself, contentedly happy in the knowledge that his mate had laid an egg in that dark corner of the cliff. All things rejoiced and cried aloud that summer was at hand and that it was time to bloom and love and nest. Soon it would be winter again, when things died, and next summer other things would live under the sun, and ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... Kettleness is on the top of the huge cliffs, and to reach the shore one must climb down a zigzag path. It is a broad and solid pathway until half-way down, where it assumes the character of a goat-track, being a mere treading down of the loose shale of which the enormous cliff is formed. The sliding down of the crumbling rock constantly carries away the path, but a little spade-work soon makes the track firm again. This portion of the cliff has something of a history, for one night in ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... a vessel bound to some place in Europe. The vessel was driven in a storm against a rocky coast, and struck under a steep, perpendicular cliff perfectly inaccessible. It was evident that if relief was not soon given, the vessel must go to pieces, and the men ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... and I visited the little green churchyard on a cliff near the sea where Tocqueville is buried. The tomb is a plain grey stone slab—on it a cross is cut in bas-relief, with these ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... often do it, and it is magnificent to see Dionea, in her short white skirt and tight white bodice, mixing the smoking lime with her beautiful strong arms; or, an empty sack drawn over her head and shoulders, walking majestically up the cliff, up the scaffoldings with her load of bricks.... I am, however, very anxious to get Dionea out of the neighborhood, because I cannot help dreading the annoyances to which her reputation for the evil eye exposes her, and even some explosion of rage if ever she should lose the indifferent ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... John Lytton were successively called to testify that they had all been present and witnessed the marriage of the accused, Alden Lytton and Emma Angela Cavendish, on the fifteenth of the last February, at Blue Cliff Hall, in ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the morning, and when the canto was over, Vernon took a great stone and rolled it for amusement over the cliff's edge. It thundered over the side, bounding down till it reached the strand, and a large black cormorant, startled by the reverberating echoes, rose up suddenly, and flapped its way with protruded neck to a rock on the farther side of ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... and away they ran to join their brother, who was already some little distance ahead of them. They turned as the path rounded the great cliff where the echoes lived, and the Twins waved their hands, while Fritz played his merry little tune on the horn. Then the rocks hid them from view, and the long climb ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... But we must seek a roof to shelter us when the Why Not? is shut, and 'tis best we leave this Moonfleet of ours for a season, till Maskew finds a rope's end long enough to hang himself withal. So, when our work is done tomorrow night, we will walk out along the cliff to Worth, and take a look at a cottage there that Damen spoke about, with a walled orchard at the back, and fuchsia hedge in front—'tis near the Lobster Inn, and has a fine prospect of the sea; and if we live there, we will leave the vault alone awhile and use this Pyegrove's Hole for storehouse, ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... was found which took the field at . . . There the hounds pressed her, and on the hunt arriving at the edge of the cliff the hare could be seen crossing the beach and going right out to sea. A boat was procured, and the master and some others rowed out to her just as she drowned, and, bringing the body in, gave it to the hounds. A hare swimming out ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... this particular afternoon, and she set forth light-footed upon the adventure, leaving Cinders to his monotonous but all-engrossing pastime. A wide line of rocks stretched between her and her goal, which was dimly discernible in the deep shadow of the cliff—a mysterious opening that had the appearance of a ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... Moors, and thereafter, as governor of the conquered territory and of the southern province of Portugal, settled at Saigres near Cape St. Vincent. On this promontory, almost at the western verge of the known world, Henry founded a city, Villa do Iffante, erected an observatory on the cliff, and gathered round him the best sailors, geographers and astronomers of ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... a shallow pool lying in a sort of bowl. On the farther side the path runs up seven or eight feet above the water along the broken edge of a cliff. A few steps beyond the pool the path diverges sharply to the left and opens into the little gallery of the ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... had found the man with the two burros. There could be no mistake about that, for the canyon ended in a sheer cliff that towered two hundred feet above him, and in this horrible cul de sac lay the bleached bones of ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... dropt their dark spears as she spoke. Lochallen was firm in his strength, and unmov'd in the battle of heroes; Like a rock-fenced isle of the ocean, that shews its dark head thro' the storm. His brow was like a cliff on the shore, that fore-warneth the hunters of Ithona; For there gleams the first ray of morning, and there broods the mist ere the storm: It shone, and it darken'd by turns, as the strength of his passions arose. He was terrible as a gathering storm, ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... word that the great pleasure resort and show place of the city, which stood upon a foundation of solid rock, had been swept into the sea. This report proved to be unfounded, but it was not until three days later that any one got close enough to the Cliff House to discover that ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... sovereign placed his nephew Bati in command, and ordered him to bring into subjection all the nations on the northern shores of the Caspian Sea, and then to continue his conquests throughout all the expanse of northern Russia. A bloody strife of three years planted his banners upon every cliff and through all the defiles of the Ural mountains, and then the victor plunging down the western declivities of this great natural barrier between Europe and Asia, established his troops, for winter quarters, in the valley of the Volga. To strike the region with ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... to the path that ran along the edge of the steep cliff, hollowed out in many places by the sea. Beneath them thundered the surf, water and air and sand in one yellow ferment, and over it seagulls and other sea birds, shrieking and whipping the air with their wings. When a wave broke they would swoop ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... argued, and communed, and doubted, and tried to believe. And all through it—whether he paced up and down by the sea in the blustering weather, or strolled away through the town and up the face of the tall white cliff, or lay awake in the dark night, listening to the rush and moan of the waves—all through these doubts and questions there was another and sweeter and clearer sound, that seemed ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... could have sawn through the thickest bar, and with the gold coin I could have exchanged my soldier's cloak for civilian garb at the nearest shop. You may fancy that a man who has often taken the eaglets out of their nests in our cliff would have found no difficulty in getting down to the street out of a window less than thirty feet above it. But I didn't choose to escape. I still had a soldier's code of honour, and desertion appeared to me in the light of a heinous crime. Yet this proof of remembrance touched me. When ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... the Hidden. Before sunset, indeed, the river was clean again, save that on the bank where we made fast for the night the stones and rushes were all stained, and the dead fish lay in thousands polluting the air. To escape the stench we climbed a cliff that here rose quite close to Nile, in which we saw the mouths of ancient tombs that long ago had been robbed and left empty, purposing to sleep in ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... passed between them—of which he, the deponent, only heard "Thurston?" "Yes, Thurston!" and then the prisoner raised his arm and struck, and the lady fell. His father was a cautious man, and when he saw the prisoner rush up the cliff and disappear, when he saw that the lady was dead, and that the storm was beginning to rage violently and the tide was coming in, and fearing, besides, that he should get into trouble, he hurried into ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Isaac talk enough for one night," said Colonel Zane. "He is tired out. Major, tell Isaac and Betty, and Mr. Clarke, too, of your jump over the cliff." ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... the grand views off the edge of the high mountain so strange. But she loved to look out on those views as she stood by Sister Helen Vincula on the gray cliff; Sister Helen Vincula holding her hand very fast while they both looked down into the valleys and coves. As the shadows of evening crept up to the cliff whereon they stood, and as those shadows folded round ...
— Somebody's Little Girl • Martha Young
... day of early Autumn when I stood knee-deep in the heather of Glengyle, and looked wistfully over the grey sea. 'Twas but a month later when, homeless and friendless, I stood on the beach by the Cliff House of San Francisco, and gazed over the fretful waters of another ocean. Such ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... river; and Brock led the one hundred British straight at the American centre, which gave way before him. Still he pressed on, waving his sword as an encouragement for the rush that was to drive the enemy down the cliff. The spiked eighteen-pounder was recaptured and success seemed certain. But, just as his men were closing in, an American stepped out of the trees, only thirty yards away, took deliberate aim, and shot him dead. The nearest ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... Shark's Bay led them over country that offered them no temptation to linger on the way. On the 21st September they found a cave in the face of a cliff, in which were drawings similar to those seen by Gray near the Prince Regent's River. Near this cave was a spring, and, while resting at this camp, one of the party, a young man named Charles Farmer, accidentally ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... persistent dip. From this peculiarity it comes about that each stratum extends for miles with an unbroken sameness which is extremely monotonous to the traveler; but finally its dip carries it under the next succeeding stratum, whose edge appears as an escarpment or cliff, and this in turn stretches out flat and uninteresting to the horizon. To the eye it appears an ideal country for traveling, but only a very slight experience is necessary to reveal its deceptiveness. Everywhere the flat mesas are cut and seamed by gorges and narrow ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... horse, had dashed into the bushes. A warrior had seized his rein; but Stedman had struck him down and galloped free for Fort Schlosser. A drummer-boy, in terror of his life, had leapt over the cliff. By good fortune his drum-strap caught on the branch of a dense tree; here he remained suspended until the Indians left the spot, when he extricated himself. One of the teamsters also escaped. He was ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... the base of the ice cliff, and stood on a narrow ledge between the cliff and the churning sea. He saw no one. He extended the detector's range to maximum, and worked the scanners up the sheer face of the ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... engineering works of a country are dependent on this source for their success, and for overcoming obstacles where other forces fail. With positive certainty the engineer can remove a portion of a cliff or rock without breaking it into many parts, and can displace masses to convenient distances, under all the varying demands which arise in the process of mining, tunnelling, or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... time so near, that I no longer doubted as to its proceeding from some human agency. In fact, the moment after, a man's form appeared ascending from below, along the narrow pathway that zigzagged up the face of the cliff. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... of the nocturnal frosts upon the foliage of the trees. It seemed to Leigh, looking from his eyrie, that Nature had never before painted a panorama of such wondrous beauty. Here a solitary elm in the meadow below the cliff, in the region which the collegians called "over the rock," stood forth all crimson against the green sward; further on, the woods began, masses of yellow and red maples, with scattered pines and oaks of more sombre ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... 480,000 cubic yards of stone were removed; that the earth excavated in the construction of English railways up to that date amounted to a hundred and fifty million cubic yards, and that at the Round Down Cliff, near Dover, a single blast of nineteen thousand pounds of powder blew down a thousand million tons of chalk, and covered fifteen acres of ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... presence, ye monarchs.' Having said this, the chief of the Yadus, that slayer of all foes, in anger, instantly cut off the head of the ruler of Chedi by means of his discus. And the mighty-armed one fell down like a cliff struck with thunder. And, O monarch, the assembled kings then beheld a fierce energy, like unto the sun in the sky, issue out of the body of the king of Chedi, and O king, that energy then adored Krishna, possessed of eyes like lotus leaves and worshipped by all ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... stood. His face composed itself. He was about to roar when, lying among the black sticks and straw under the cliff, he saw a whole skull—perhaps a cow's skull, a skull, perhaps, with the teeth in it. Sobbing, but absent-mindedly, he ran farther and farther away until he held the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... fire, and we talked for many hours. He told me that he had known Petrie and Sir William Wilde, and many living antiquarians, and had taught Irish to Dr. Finck and Dr. Pedersen, and given stories to Mr. Curtin of America. A little after middle age he had fallen over a cliff, and since then he had had little eyesight, and a trembling ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... again unseen for months or years together. The Indians called it "The Eye of Gluskap," and believed that to meddle with it at all would bring down swiftly the vengeance of the demigod. Fixed high on the steepest face of the cliff, the gem had long defied the search of the most daring climbers. It lurked, probably, under some over-hanging brow of ancient rock, as in a fit and inviolable setting. At length, some years before the date of the events I have been ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... bird, poised for its prey, or beating slowly over the desolate waste, broke the heavy dulness that lay upon the breast of the deep. The sky stooped down and blackened the still waters; and anear, beneath the cliff on which we were standing, a faint fringe of foam alone was proof that the sea still lived, though its face was rigid and its voice was stilled, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Skalaholt across the heaths. It was heavy weather, and grey overhead; the horses sweated and neighed, and the men went silent, for it was nowhere in their minds that the dead wife was canny. Only Aud talked by the way, like a silly sea-gull piping on a cliff, and the rest held their peace. The sun went down before they were across Whitewater; and the black night fell on them this side of Netherness. At Netherness they beat upon the door. The goodman was not abed nor any of his folk, but sat ...
— The Waif Woman • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ravines right and left. To the right he climbed, not up the bed of the stream, but to the top of a little spur, along which he went slowly and noiselessly, stooping low. A little farther on he dropped on his knees and crawled to the edge of a cliff, where he lay flat on his belly and peeked over. Below him one Jeb Mullins, a stooping, gray old man, was stirring something in a great brass kettle. A tin cup was going the round of three men squatting near. On a log two men were ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... men turned around from where they had been gazing up at the mountain. "What is that great cliff of bare rock called?" ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... could save themselves—and they had no intelligence to appreciate, no desire to impel. If their miseries—miseries to which they had fallen heir at birth—had made them what they were, it was also true that they were what they were—hopeless, down to the babies playing in the filth. An unscalable cliff; at the top, in pleasant lands, lived the comfortable classes; at the bottom lived the masses—and while many came whirling down from the top, how few found their ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... farmhouse to return to the city, she came upon him, alone. She had wandered off to the Brandywine, to gather ferns at a rocky point where some choice varieties were to be found. There were a few charming clumps, half-way up a slaty cliff, which it did not seem possible to scale, and she was standing at the base, looking up in vain longing, when a voice, almost at ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... were all strangers, and seeing some breakers and broken ground a-head, I tacked in twenty-five fathom water, and stood out to sea with the wind at N.W. This bay lies on the S.E. side of Cape West, and may be known by a white cliff on one of the isles which lies in the entrance of the bay. This part of the coast I did not see, but at a great distance, in my former voyage; and we now saw it under so many disadvantageous circumstances, that the less I ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... the Normans charged against the barricade, the duke himself at their head, his eyes shining like balls of living fire and his voice like a trumpet; but they were driven back like waves breaking around the base of a cliff. ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... seldom admits another into real intimacy, and makes him acquainted with his private life, was down now. Hillyard had won. Jose Medina's house and his chattels were in earnest at Martin Hillyard's disposal. The two men went back through the house into a veranda above the steep fall of garden and cliff, where there were chairs in which a man could sit ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... the fact that he had written a new poem or whether, in his new government position, he had performed some notable act. The apartment where he lived at that time was on a street perched along the top of a cliff far out at the edge of the city and from his bedroom window he could look down over trees and factory roofs to a river. As he could not sleep and as the fancies that kept crowding in upon him only made him more excited, he got out of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... beacon cliff—to which we eagerly toil through the snow, and up and down the slippery hill-sides—we behold the sea as still and smiling as in summer, and as clearly reflecting the exquisite blue of the vault above; but each ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... battery, and they had held it. The position taken by the battery had been chosen with a soldier's eye. A better place could not have been selected to hold the pass. It was its highest point, just where the road crawled over the shoulder of the mountain along the limestone cliff, a hundred feet sheer above the deep river, where its waters had cut their way in ages past, and now lay deep and silent, as if resting after their arduous toil before they began to boil over the great bowlders which filled the bed a hundred ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... unusually long in proportion to his height, presented a remarkable development of muscle, while it was evident, from the manner in which he handled his oar, that he was the more practised rower of the two. The boat, urged by their powerful strokes, appeared to fly through the water, while cliff and headland (we were rowing along shore about half a mile from the beach) came in view and disappeared again like scenes in some moving panorama. We must now have proceeded some miles, yet still the rival champions continued their exertions with ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... being disposed of, we very gladly went off to the station beneath the great cliff to catch ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... the stubborn unreasoning of the time. It was useless to argue with her. Arguments have no chance against petrified training; they wear it as little as the waves wear a cliff. And her training was everybody's. The brightest intellect in the land would not have been able to see that her position ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... smothered accents to Lovel; for with the sort of freemasonry by which bold and ready spirits correspond in moments of danger, and become almost instinctively known to each other, they had established a mutual confidence."I'll climb up the cliff again," said Lovelthere's daylight enough left to see my footing; I'll climb up, and call ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... thought it was best Now to steer a new course; so went down to the West. On a high Cliff, in Cornwall, they found out the CHOUGH; [p 29] But how shou'd he learn what was passing below? Thro' Devon, so fam'd for its picturesque views, They pass'd with a haste one can scarcely excuse; From thence got to Somerset, almost ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... all we descended the precipice, three hundred feet in depth, forming the wall of the old crater, but now thickly covered with vegetation. It is so steep in many places that flights of zigzag wooden steps have been inserted in the face of the cliff in some places, in order to render the ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... Into this chaos of cliff and peak and slanting canyon, midway to the westward, is let King Phillip Sound, a sheet of water dotted with islands and framed by forests. It reaches inland with long, crooked tentacles which end like talons, in living ice. Hidden ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... Falls. Midway between both is a wooden hut, the residence of the guide to the Cave of the Winds, and from the hut a winding staircase, called Biddle's Stair, descends to the base of the precipice. On the evening of my arrival I went down this stair, and wandered along the bottom of the cliff. One well-known factor in the formation and retreat of the cataract was immediately observed. A thick layer of limestone formed the upper portion of the cliff. This rested upon a bed of soft shale, which extended round the base of the cataract. The violent ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... and the cuts indicating the line along which ran the early cars on stones in which grooves were cut for the guidance of the wheels instead of the steel rail and the flange wheel of the present day. These early cars were drawn by mules, after they had been pulled by a windlass up the cliff from the boat landing at Frankfort. The mules and the rock rails were soon replaced by two locomotives and iron rails. One engine brought the train from Frankfort to a point half way, by noon, and after the passengers had eaten dinner at Midway, the other engine ...
— The story of Kentucky • Rice S. Eubank
... harbour and on the morrow with great joyance came Alexander to the sandy shore; and with him his comrades who were fain of the journey. The emperor convoys him and the empress who was sad at heart. In the harbour they find the mariners in the ships beside the cliff. The sea was peaceful and smooth the wind gentle and the air serene. Alexander first of all, when he had parted from his father and on taking leave of the empress whose heart was sad within her, enters from the boat into the ship and his comrades with him. Four, three, and two, they simultaneously ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... cliff, that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm; Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... themselves facing an almost perpendicular cliff of loose sandstone, covered with thick shrubbery, and somewhere half way up the enemy had a second trench strongly held, from which they poured a terrible fire on the troops below and the boats pulling back to the destroyers for the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... pleasant; But over its terrible edge there had slipped A duke and full many a peasant. So the people said something would have to be done, But their projects did not at all tally; Some said, "Put a fence around the edge of the cliff," Some, "An ambulance ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... hollow and beyond a cliff of rocks all of twenty to thirty feet high. On the top of the cliff grew a number of large trees and several of these had, in times past, been blown over, their tops resting in the hollow below while the roots still clung fast near the ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... flood of moonlight poured out upon land and sea. All that God had made was as beautiful as if sin had never spoiled it. Just a little to the right of our cottage the ground rose up suddenly, and sloped up about a quarter of a mile to the top of a high cliff, from the edge of which was a sheer descent, almost unbroken, to the beach, of several hundred feet. It was a favourite spot of observation, for vessels could be seen ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... to arouse the echoes of the mountains. He was still speaking when the gun was fired, its muzzle being turned eastward. The sound first reached the side of the Vision, abreast of the village, whence the reverberations reissued, and rolled along the range, from cave to cave, and cliff to cliff, and wood to wood, until they were lost, like distant thunder, two or three leagues to the northward. The experiment was thrice repeated, and always with the same magnificent effect, the western hills actually echoing ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... wake up? Would he never realise her presence? Oh! then he could care nothing about her. Probably he was thinking of the girl he had pulled up a cliff in the Alps. But why did he come to this place to ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... his scouts, and crawled up a long slope of brush and gravel to the crest of the rock pile, that he might peer over. He saw the Annawan camp. There were three companies of Wampanoags, down in front of the rock pile, gathered about their fires. And right below, at the foot of the cliff, he saw ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... berg was evidently in a very rotten and dangerous state, and the captain ran the brig as close to the pack on the other side as possible, in order to keep out of its way. Just as this was done, some great rents occurred, and suddenly a mass of ice larger than the brig fell from the top of a cliff into the sea. No danger flowed from this, but the mass thus thrown off was so large as to destroy the balance of the berg, and, to the horror of the sailors, the huge mountain began to roll over. Fortunately it fell in a direction away from the brig. Had it rolled toward her, ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... long demurring maid, Whose lonely unappropriated sweets Smiled, like yon knot of cowslips on the cliff, Not to be come at ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... fleet collected, and said a few encouraging words to them; he then moved up the coast with the tide, apparently as far as Walmer or Deal. Here the beach was open and the water deep near the land. The Britons had followed by the brow of the cliff, scrambling along with their cars and horses. The shore was covered with them, and they evidently meant to fight. The transports anchored where the water was still up to the men's shoulders. They were encumbered with their arms, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... kingcraft which Shelley hated, now made harmless by the reign of Reason and Love in a regenerated universe. How different is the feeling which the empty cathedral inspires in Lowell; once thronged with worshippers, now pathetically lonely—a cliff, far inland, from which the sea of faith has forever withdrawn! At the time when "Queen Mab" was written, Coleridge, Southey, and Landor's "Gebir" were Shelley's favourite reading. "He was a lover of the wonderful and wild in literature," says Mrs. Shelley, in her notes on the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Pacific, ruffled by a breeze whose icy freshness chilled us where we stood. Narrow streaks on the landscape, every now and then disappearing behind intervening hills, indicated bridle tracks connected with a frightfully steep and rough zigzag path cut out of the face of the cliff on our right. I could not go down this on foot without a sense of insecurity, but mounted natives driving loaded horses descended with perfect impunity ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... O king, cased his body with armour made of gold, and put on a beautiful head-gear adorned with pure gold. Clad in bright armour of gold, he put on that head-gear. Indeed, O king, thy son then looked resplendent like a golden cliff. Clad in mail, armed with mace, and accoutred with other equipments, thy son Duryodhana then, O king, standing on the field of battle, addressed all the Pandavas, saying, "Amongst you (five) brothers, let any one fight me, armed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Staggering through the wind and snow of the ever-increasing storm, he ran unexpectedly upon a lofty wall of rock looking to him like a high cliff. He had evidently lost the path, for here was an insurmountable obstacle. Clinging to the rough surface, he cautiously felt his way along the rock for some yards. He was still ascending, but the ground ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... and steeper, until it abutted in an almost precipitous cliff coated with snow and glistening ice. There was no escape from it, for all around the snow-beds were too steep and slippery to venture an ascent upon them. Cutting steps with our ice-picks, and half-crawling, half-dragging ourselves, with the alpenstocks ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... beside their nectar on 'Lympus and peeping over the edge of the cliff, perceive a difference in cities. Although it would seem that to their vision towns must appear as large or small ant-hills without special characteristics, yet it is not so. Studying the habits of ants from so great ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... considerable difficulty to set up a line of telegraph over that portion of this road which passes through the great canon, as in many places the road has a perpendicular wall of rock upon one side and a perpendicular precipice on the other, and in one place is carried around the face of a cliff in this manner, at an elevation of some two thousand feet, directly over the river, being in some places blasted out of the solid rock, and in others supported by a sort ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... Horatio and Marcellus would have dissuaded the young prince from following it, for they feared lest it should be some evil spirit, who would tempt him to the neighbouring sea, or to the top of some dreadful cliff, and there put on some horrible shape which might deprive the prince of his reason. But their counsels and entreaties could not alter Hamlet's determination, who cared too little about life to fear the losing of it; and as to his soul, he said, what could the ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... right and left, inclosing us in a small space of barren, waste earth. The elements had crumbled the rocks down for ages, until what perhaps had been once a deep canyon was now a narrow flat, a mass of debris, terminating at the top of the steep, ragged cliff that pitched downward before us. The high, rocky ridges on both sides were wholly impassable, at least for the teams. A search finally disclosed, at the base of the ridge on our right, a single possible passage. It was narrow, ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... overlooking the chateau where he could show her the whole estate of Roche Craie. It was a beautiful sight. The gentle hills sloped to the Seine with here and there a sharp cleft showing a cliff of chalk, standing out very white against the green ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... promoters' flotations, auspicious ventures and forlorn hopes—he had been associated with them all, and from each one he emerged with untroubled calm while the unhappy machine, its steering gear usually crippled by his hand alone, went plunging downhill over the cliff into the soundless ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... guitar, good horses, a beautiful country, splendid residences inhabited by friends who loved us, and plenty of hairbreadth 'scapes from the roving bands of Federals who were continually visiting that Debatable Land. . . . Cliff and I never cease to talk of the beautiful women, the serenades, the moonlight dashes on the beach of fair Burwell's Bay, and the spirited brushes of our little ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... his rifle, took a quick, steady aim, and pulled the trigger. Howard, who was keenly watching the antelope, saw it spring up, and as it came down it missed the cliff and fell almost at their very feet with a violence and crash which must have broken half the bones ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... A limestone cliff whose foot is washed by the Baram river and which contains a number of caves (known as Batu Gading, or the ivory rock) is said by a Kayan legend to have been formed by a Kayan house being turned into Stone owing to ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... evidence. There was an undertone in the essay which was in keeping with the mode of life of the solitary stranger. It might be disappointment, melancholy, or only the dreamy sadness of a young person who sees the future he is to climb, not as a smooth ascent, but as overhanging him like a cliff, ready to crush him, with all his hopes and prospects. This interpretation may have been too imaginative, but here is the paper, and the reader ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and when hundreds of tall buildings, as high as the fall of the waters of Niagara, grew up like a range of magical cliffs upon the precious rock of Manhattan. Here the work of the telephone engineer has been so well done that although every room in these cliff-buildings has its telephone, there is not a pole in sight, not a cross-arm, not a wire. Nothing but the tip-ends of an immense system are visible. No sooner is a new skyscraper walled and roofed, than the telephones are in place, at once ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... Finns from Aland, Letts who still offered in the forests of Rugen, human victims to the four-headed Swantowit; foul hordes in sheep-skins and primeval filth, who might have been scented from Hunstanton Cliff ever since their ships ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... Zealand and other authors) awakened an intense enthusiasm, and he writes: "It then first dawned on me that I might perhaps write a book on the geology of the various countries visited, and this made me thrill with delight. That was a memorable hour to me, and how distinctly I can call to mind the low cliff of lava beneath which I rested, with the sun glaring hot, a few strange desert plants growing near, and with living corals in the tidal pools at my ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... top of a high bluff where they built up a huge fire visible for many miles up and down the river. Daylight found them once more in the saddle, exploring the mouths of coulees and scouring every foot of the scrub-bordered bank. It was nearly noon when, from the edge of a high cliff that overlooked the river, they caught sight of the abandoned ferry-boat. The crest of the rise of water had passed in the night and the boat lay with one corner fast aground. Putting spurs to the horses they raced back from the river until they reached a point that gave ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... to see in how few minutes a large herd of elephants descending a steep place will form a road. I have frequently seen them break down an alluvial cliff in the manner described, where at first sight I should have thought it impossible for an elephant to descend. Once within the river the fun began in earnest. After a march in the hot sun, it was delightful to bathe ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the red and green sides of the precipitous serpentine cliffs could now be distinguished, assuming various fantastic shapes: one shaped into a complete arch, another the form of a gigantic steeple, with several caves penetrating deep into the cliff, on a level with the narrow belt of ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... hotel on Bush Street, where we remained and gave satisfaction for some time; but one afternoon we were foolish enough to yield to the persuasions of some of our girl companions to take a car ride to the Park and Cliff House. I suppose we were enjoying ourselves so much that we did not realize how quickly the time was slipping away until some one remarked, "O girls, look at the clock!" It was within fifteen minutes of the hour when dinner must be served. We all ran for our ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... the winds from the sea, and remains there to-day, all seamed, and frothed and rippled a petrified Niagara. It is very picturesque, and withal so natural that one might almost imagine it still flowed. A smaller stream trickled over the cliff and built up an isolated pyramid about thirty feet high, which has the semblance of a mass of large gnarled and knotted vines and roots and stems intricately twisted and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mountains still I dream, And mouldering vestiges of war; By time-worn cliff or classic stream Would rove,—but prudence holds a bar. Conic then, O Health, I'll strive to bound My wishes to this airy stand; 'Tis not for me to trace around The wonders ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... mountains, till we arrived at the foot of a lofty and perfectly perpendicular precipice, along the foot of which we moved for some distance. As I looked up, I saw that stones hurled from the summit would completely have annihilated us. Almost at right angles from the cliff arose another hill, up which we now began to climb. On reaching the summit, we turned once more in the direction of the cliffs, which we found were connected with the hill by a natural bridge of ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Madame, what Pierrot's teeth have done for me? Traveler. Torn a gaunt wolf, I'll warrant. Shepherd. Do you see On that high ledge a cross of wood that stands Against the sky? Traveler. Just where the cliff goes down A hundred fathoms sheer, a wall of rock To where the river foams along its bed? I've often wondered who was brave to plant A cross on such an edge. Shepherd. Myself, madame, That the good God might know I gave him thanks. One night, it was November, ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... is making a noise, exactly like the sea, against the side of the mountain. I saw the side a little while ago, like a great black cliff, but it's too misty to see it now. Hope it'll clear up soon, or I may be late getting down to Wastdale. By the way, I wonder if they call this heap of stones I'm sitting on one of the cairns? Good idea! ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... partly a mulatto; but two such mongrels with such detestable expressions, I never saw before. At night, when they were sitting round the fire, and playing at cards, I retired to view such a Salvator Rosa scene. They were seated under a low cliff, so that I could look down upon them; around the party were lying dogs, arms, remnants of deer and ostriches; and their long spears were stuck in the turf. Further in the dark background, their horses were tied up, ready for any sudden danger. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Sacred Majesty, and Defender of the Faith, Charles Second), I reckon that we have pretty well exhausted what of 'firm earth' there was for us to march on;—and are now, very ominously, shuddering, reeling, and let us hope trying to recoil, on the cliff's edge!— ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... the more elevated region the majesty of the cedar is wanting, yet forests of fir and pine abound, and creep up the mountain-side, in places almost to the summit, while here and there bare masses of rock protrude themselves, and crag and cliff rise into the clouds that hang about the highest summits. Water abounds throughout the region, which is the parent of numerous streams, as the northern Nahr-el-Kebir, which flows into the sea by Latakia, the Nahr-el-Melk, the Nahr Amrith, the ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... it depends entirely on the tide," said Beatrice Wynne. "I was talking to Miss Latimer, and she says she knows of a splendid pool under the cliff, which is always quite deep enough to swim in at low water. She's going to tell Miss Lincoln ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the meditations which this magnificent and varied scenery excited in my mind, I approached the edge of a tremendous perpendicular cliff, with which the down terminates. I dismounted from my horse, and tied it to a bush. The breaking of the waves against the foot of the cliff at so great a distance beneath me, produced an incessant and pleasing murmur. The sea-gulls were flying between ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... said the lieutenant in a low voice; and he led his men by a narrow path which wound down the cliff to the west of the village of Barton, while the rest of the party, by a wide circuit, made their way to ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... and mental standpoint, but absolutely barren of pleasure, and, so far, barren of result. I looked at them with little satisfaction or pride. They were as immaculate, as bare, as denuded, as irritating, and as painful to contemplate as a chalk cliff. The character that is summed up in the line "video meliora proboque, detiora sequor" is supposed to be very common, and meets with universal comprehension and commiseration. Mine, perhaps, would find neither. I ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... I saw a great cliff of stone near me; it had yellow-lighted openings, high up in the air. And big stone fences hemmed me in. Then I realized I was in an open space between a lot of stone houses. One towered like a cliff, or the ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... a morning cloud With a grim old mountain to stay, But your love would soften its ruggedness, And melt its roughness away. I have seen a delicate rosy cloud, A rough, gray cliff enfold, Till his heart was warmed by its loveliness, And his brow was ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley |
