"Cliff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a voice that rang from cliff to plain; and springing forward, he seized Houseman with a ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seventh year the host at Ochsenfeld in Upper Alsace may be seen by night exercising on their horses. On certain days the Carpathian robber issues from his cavern in the Czornahora. Grimm mentions the story of a blacksmith who found a gap he had never noticed before in the face of a cliff on the Odenberg, and entering, stood in the presence of mighty men, playing there at bowls with balls of iron, as Rip van Winkle's friends were playing at ninepins. So a Wallachian saga connects the Wild Hunt with a mysterious forest castle built by the Knight Sigmirian, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... be free from these terrors. You don't know what an adventurous life is. I will tell you. It is a life of sordid unquiet, pursued without plan, like the life of an animal. Have you seen a dog trying to cross a busy street? There is the adventurer. Or the rabbit on the cliff, in his state of continual panic; he, too, lives the adventurous life. What does the world owe to the adventurer? But there. I become impatient. One patient hero in his garret is worth all these silly fireworks ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... hark, O hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying: Blow, bugle; ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... sumptuous public library is now being built—Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street. I arrived in New York with two or three dollars in pocket change and a ten-dollar bank-bill concealed in the lining of my coat. I got work at villainous wages in the establishment of John A. Gray and Green in Cliff Street, and I found board in a sufficiently villainous mechanics' boarding-house in Duane Street. The firm paid my wages in wildcat money at its face value, and my week's wage merely sufficed to pay board and lodging. By and by I went to Philadelphia and worked there some months as ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... 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 there was a greater breadth of Wheat. I saw very few Fruit-trees, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... bottom, the wasting process would be materially assisted by this depression" (loc. cit., page 327).) believe that the main part of his great denudation was effected during a vast (almost gratuitously assumed) slow Tertiary subsidence and subsequent Tertiary oscillating slow elevation. So our high cliff argument is inapplicable. He seems to think his great subsidence only FAVOURABLE for great denudation. I believe from the general nature of the off-shore sea's bottoms that it is almost necessary; do look at two pages—page 25 of my S. American ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... were, a pilgrimage of love to all the spots where we had first seen each other, then met and walked; where we had sat, and talked, and loved, during the long and heavenly intercourse between ourselves and lonely Nature. We began by the lovely hill of Tresserves which rises like a verdant cliff between the valley of Aix and the lake; its sides, that rise almost perpendicularly from the water's edge, are covered with chestnut-trees, rivalling those of Sicily, through their branches, which overhang the water, one sees snatches of ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... O hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O sweet and far, from cliff and scar, The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow! let us hear the purple glens replying; Blow, bugle; answer, echoes—dying, ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... out more than once on the shores of Lake Winnebago, and Arthur had deftly managed the commissariat. They had had good times together and had needed no other company. How had it been on Green Bay—at Eagle Cliff and Apron Bluff and all the other places lately celebrated in lithographed "folders" and lately popularized by motorists? And who was the particular "fellow" who ran ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... of the hill was a rocky cliff, and between the vegetable garden at the back of the house and the edge of the precipice were a few stumps, well-nigh covered with moss. From her vantage point, she could see the woods which began at the base of the hill, on the north side, and seemed to end at the ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... When sickness weigh'd thee down, and strength declin'd; When dread eternity absorb'd thy mind, Flow'd the predicting verse, by gloom o'erspread, That 'Cambrian mountains' thou should'st never tread, That 'time-worn cliff, and classic stream to see,' Was wealth's prerogative, despair for thee. Come to the proof; with us the breeze inhale, Renounce despair, and come to Severn's vale; And where the COTSWOLD HILLS are stretch'd along, Seek our green dell, as yet unknown ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... moments we reached the shadow of the cliff, and I threw myself upon the turf, chin ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... the spot seemed to fascinate her. Then the thought that perhaps poor, wilful Tavia had fallen down such a place; that perhaps at that very moment, she lay alone, helpless, at the bottom of a cliff! ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... white collar, but the bird is also known as cushat, queest, or even culver. The last-named, however, which will be familiar to readers of Tennyson, probably alludes specifically to the rock-dove, as it undoubtedly gave its name to Culver Cliff, a prominent landmark in the Isle of Wight, where these birds have at all times been sparingly ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... at the entrance of the harbor was planted a battery of thirty cannon, carrying twenty-eight pound shot; and at the bottom of the harbor was a grand, or royal battery, of twenty-eight cannon, forty-two pounders, and two eighteen-pounders. On a high cliff, opposite to the island-battery, stood a light house, and within this point, at the north-east part of the harbor, was a careening wharf, secure from all winds, and a magazine of naval stores. The town was regularly laid out in squares; the streets were broad and commodious, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... lifted up a corve, or basket, it was emptied into the wagon till they were filled, and then away they started, some of them without engines, down an inclined plane towards the river. Away they went at a rapid rate, and it seemed as if they would be carried furiously over the cliff, or rather the end of a long, high stage into the river. On a sudden, however, they began to go slower; then they stopped, and one wagon went off by itself from the rest till it got to the end ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... be found only in the fact that our first hasty view was incorrectly inducted, and hence, led to illusions like those of the theatre. Thus, it is possible to take a board fence covered at points with green moss, for a moss-covered rock, and then to be led by this to see a steep cliff. Certain shadows may so magnify the size of the small window of an inn that we may take it to be as large as that of a sitting room. And if we have seen just one window we think all are of the same form and are convinced that the inn is a mansion. Or again, we see, half-covered, through the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... to his cell, which was in a rocky cliff on the side of a mountain, and having uttered the word of power which unlocked the massive door, he entered and prepared to begin ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... door. And he had with him black bottles, from which we drank and made merry. You see, I was only a stripling, and had lived all my days on the edge of the world. So my blood became as fire, and my heart as light as the froth that flies from the surf to the cliff. Unga sat silent among the skins in the corner, her eyes wide, for she seemed to fear. And he with the mane of the sea lion looked upon her straight and long. Then his men came in with bundles of goods, and he piled before me wealth such ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... the seaward hill your first thought is one of some compassion for sailors, inasmuch as they see but little of their sea. A child on a mere Channel cliff looks upon spaces and sizes that they cannot see in the Pacific, on the ocean side of the world. Never in the solitude of the blue water, never between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, never between the Islands and the West, has the seaman seen anything ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... toiling 'neath meridian sun The boatman plies the lab'ring oar, And sportive nymphs the margin shun Of ocean's pebble-parched shore; Then when beneath some shadowy cliff, O'er-hanging wood, or leafy vale, The trav'ller rests, haul'd up the skiff, Then lovers breathe their am'rous tale. When Nature, languid, seems to rest, Nor moves a leaf, or heaves a wave, And Zephyrs sleep, by Sol caress'd, And sportive swallows ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, Maj. J. W. Powell, geologist in charge, have furnished a large amount of additional information concerning the ruins on the San Juan and its tributaries, the Cliff Houses on the Mancos River and elsewhere, and the Moki Pueblos. Valuable as this information is to us, it falls short of a full exposition ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... the coast of Maine, whither he had gone to see Pilchard about some final arrangements for their journey to Mexico—Pilchard had introduced him to the girl he was going to marry, and it had somehow happened that he and she had taken a short walk together along a cliff where some pines were growing, and which looked forlornly enough across the solitary ocean. Nothing but the most commonplace words had passed between them; they had talked of Pilchard and his enterprise, and had stopped to look at the view, and had gazed out over the rolling waves. He ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... and the warm rays, rounding the edge of the eastward rock, poured straight into the little temple. Below and around on the cliff-sides, the rich foliage of holly and dwarf oak, ivy, and rowan with its burning berries, was transformed into a mass of warm ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... began to return and the cough to diminish in frequency and violence. And then came to the ranch where he lodged and boarded an expedition from an eastern museum. It was an expedition sent to explore the near-by canyon for trace of the ancient "cliff dwellers," to find and, if need be, excavate the villages of this strange people and to do research work among them. The expedition was in charge of an eminent scientist. Galusha met and talked with the scientist and liked him ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the steps of the building, he paused a moment, fascinated by the brisk spectacle afforded by lower Broadway at the hour when the cave-like offices in its cliff-like walls begin to empty themselves, when the overlords and their lieutenants close their desks and turn their faces homewards, leaving the details of the day's routine to be wound up by underlings. In the clear light of the late spring afternoon ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... of Croisic on the Lower-Loire, time of Louis Philippe, who, for the honor of a jeopardized name, had cast his only son into the sea and afterwards remained desolate and a widower on a cliff near by, in expiation of his crime induced by paternal ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... and she felt perturbed beneath his glance. They would have liked to go down again at once, and thus escape the uneasiness of a longer walk. But, in spite of themselves, as though impelled by some stronger power, they skirted a rocky cliff and reached a table-land, where once more they found the intoxication of the full sunlight. They no longer inhaled the soft languid perfumes of aromatic plants, the musky scent of thyme, and the incense of lavender. Now they were treading a ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... well, people very slightly. But, down there, the places themselves seem to me just like people, rare and wonderful people, of a delicate quality which would have been corrupted and ruined by the gift of life. Perhaps it is a castle which you encounter upon the cliff's edge; standing there by the roadside, where it has halted to contemplate its sorrows before an evening sky, still rosy, through which a golden moon is climbing; while the fishing-boats, homeward bound, creasing the ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... time much swollen by the late rains, the first difficulty was arrived at, in the shape of a precipice about three hundred feet high. It seemed that there would be no difficulty in crossing the glacier if the cliff could be descended, but higher up and lower down the ice appeared, to my inexperienced eyes, to be impassable ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... also assembled upon the open plain at the head of the pass. As the Spaniards were almost dragging their horses up the gorge, suddenly the storm of war burst upon them. Showers of stone descended from the cliff from thousands of unseen hands. Huge boulders were pried over and went thundering down, crashing all opposition before them. It seems now incomprehensible why the whole squadron of horsemen was not ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... on and won the well-known haven, sheltered from wind by two headlands of sheer cliff. There she sailed straight in, till the leaves of the broad olive tree at the head of the inlet were tangled in her cordage. Then the Wanderer, without once looking back, or saying one word of farewell to his crew, caught ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... are the violet-hued Alban hills. Then, as now, the road led by the Casa dei Spirite, with its haunting associations, and its strange mural decorations of specters and wraiths. Past that overhanging cliff, with its tragic legend, they drove, encountering the long procession of wine carts, with their tinkling bells, and the dogs guarding the sleeping padrones. Passing the night in Albano, the next day they mounted donkeys for their ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... the south of Syria, amid that tumbled wilderness of cliff and chasm, shale and boulder, which surges all around the Sea of Lot, we had been riding since the dawn without encountering a human being, and with relief at last espied a village, having some trace of cultivated land about ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... or east end of the second narrow, lies Cope Gregory, which is a white cliff of a moderate height, and a little to the northward of it is a sandy bay, in which you may ride in eight fathoms water, with very good anchorage." "At the west end of the second narrow on the south shore, is a white headland, called ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... of the Ganges there is a cliff called Vulture-Crag, and thereupon grew a great fig-tree. It was hollow, and within its shelter lived an old Vulture, named Grey-pate, whose hard fortune it was to have lost both eyes and talons. The birds that roosted in the tree made ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... helicopter lifted. It rushed over the village, bellowing. Tree-branches thrashed violently in the down draught. It swept splendidly away down a valley leading to another valley and under a precipitous cliff and down more valleys. There was a place where eight silvery spacecraft floated composedly above the Earth, with the few survivors of a great civilization peering out, waiting for dawn so they could see a new world, a fresh world ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... on some sharp cliff, I see him strain, O'er the white waste, his keen, sagacious eye, Or scan the signs of the snow-muffled sky, In hope of quick deliverance—but in vain; Then, faring to his icy tent again, To cheer his mates with a familiar smile, And talk of home and kinsfolk to beguile Slow hours which freeze ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... firm-set, The hot, straight glance, and the throat-line, Held like a stag's on the cliff, Shall be swept by the ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... slumbering fathers lie, From her blue rivers and her welling fountains, And clear cold sky— From her rough coast, and isles, which hungry Ocean Gnaws with his surges—from the fisher's skiff, With white sails swaying to the billow's motion Round rock and cliff— From the free fireside of her unbought farmer, From her free laborer at his loom and wheel. From the brown smithy where, beneath the hammer, Rings the red steel— From each and all, if God hath not forsaken Our land and left us to ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... sunrise was near at hand as Quonab, the last of the Myanos Sinawa, stepped from his sheltered wigwam under the cliff that borders the Asamuk easterly, and, mounting to the lofty brow of the great rock that is its highest pinnacle, he stood in silence, awaiting the first ray of the sun over the sea water that stretches ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... day he saw some women standing on the Hurricane Cliff, and as he approached he heard them say to each other that they would roll rocks down upon his head and kill him as he passed; and drawing near he pretended to be eating something, and enjoying it with great gusto; so they asked him what it was, and he ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... said to have been written after the author, during a suburban walk, had been forced to shelter himself from a thunder shower, under a cliff. This is, however, but one of several stories about the ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... did be a great comfort to me to think that, because we to go upward and not downward, we be not like to fall over any hid cliff in the night; for I to have now some little knowing of the Slope, from mine outward journey; yet to remember upon that monstrous pit that I then to escape, and so ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... summits of the Pyrenees, which often burst boldly on the eye through the glades below. Sometimes the shattered face of a rock only was seen, crowned with wild shrubs; or a shepherd's cabin seated on a cliff, overshadowed by dark cypress, or waving ash. Emerging from the deep recesses of the woods, the glade opened to the distant landscape, where the rich pastures and vine-covered slopes of Gascony gradually declined to the plains; and there, on the winding shores of the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... neighbourhood of the town is rich in objects of interest. Of these the chief are Poole's Hole, a vast stalactite cave, about half a mile distant; Diamond Hill, which owes its name to the quartz crystals which are not uncommon in its rocks; and Chee Tor, a remarkable cliff, on the banks of the Wye, 300 ft. high. Ornaments are manufactured by the inhabitants from alabaster and spar; and excellent lime is burned at the quarries near Poole's Hole. Buxton is an important centre for horse-breeding, and a large horse-fair is held annually. Although ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... about fifty-six miles across, and its interior falls to a depth of 8,000 feet below the Mare Imbrium. Its broad wall, composed of circle within circle of ridges, terraces, and precipices, rises on the east about 12,000 feet above the floor. On the inner side the slopes are very steep, cliff falling below cliff, until the bottom of the fearful abyss is attained. To descend those precipices and reach the depressed floor of Copernicus would be a memorable feat for a mountaineer. In the center of the floor rises a complicated mountain mass about 2,400 feet high. All around Copernicus ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... sitting in a close circle, face to face, waving their long antennae; and as we watched, from the shadowy caves above another merrow appeared. How he ever got his cumbersome coat of mail, his stiff legs, and long spines safely down the face of the cliff is a mystery. But he scrambled down ledge by ledge, bravely, and in some haste. He knew what the meeting was about, though we did not, and soon took his place, arranged his tail, his scales, his elbows, his cocked-hat, ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... day with no definite plan, came to the lower lake and the old fort on the cliff, and, taking a great liking to the place, lingered in the neighborhood from day to day. They happened one evening upon a queer, secluded public-house across the lake, where they fell in with a long, lean, leathery young native, who appeared to be a guide and waterman, and told them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... of Walter Scott, Raeburn not being allowed to have anything but light literature, and caring too little for "society" novels to listen to them even now. There was the prettiest part of all down below, the bit of sandy cliff riddled with nest holes by the sand martins; here they discovered a little spring, the natural basin scooped out in the rock, festooned with ivy and thickly coated with the pretty green liverwort. Never surely was water so cold and clear as ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... am also a prisoner," replied Paul. "At this moment my wife is sorrowing alone in our cottage on the cliff, and she is looking vainly upon the sea expecting my return. How can I help you? Believe me, if it were possible, I would." At the recollection of Polly's situation Paul hastily brushed a tear from his eye with the back of his rough hand, which instantly awoke ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... decided to return to the Nautilus. We went along a steep, narrow path that ran over the cliff's summit. By 11:30 we had arrived at our landing place. The beached skiff had brought the captain ashore. I spotted him standing on a chunk of basalt. His instruments were beside him. His eyes were focused on the northern horizon, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... up this morning along the slope from the east to the top of Sybil Head, where one comes out suddenly on the brow of a cliff with a straight fall of many hundred feet into the sea. It is a place of indescribable grandeur, where one can see Carrantuohill and the Skelligs and Loop Head and the full sweep of the Atlantic, ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... perfect security, they fired down upon Braddock's men. The only exposure of the French and Indians, resulted from the circumstance of their having to raise their heads to peep over the verge of the cliff, in order to shoot with more deadly precision. In consequence, all of them who were killed in the early part of the action, were shot ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... a big house, in a row of other big houses, in a side street leading from the East Cliff at Brighton right up to the edge of the bare rolling downs. It was exactly like almost every other house in that part of Brighton—stucco fronted, with four stories and a basement, three windows in front on each of the upper stories, and two windows and a door on the ground floor ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... in action and had poured forth lava. "It then," he says, "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 ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... returns transfigured: Foam and surging, strong-walled cities, Rocks and castles, quiet cloisters, Smiling vineyards on the hillside; From the tower calls the watchman, And the pennon gaily flutters, And from yonder cliff is ringing Wondrously the Lurley's song. But, alas! the good time passes; Nought but grief is then my portion; I devote myself to drinking, Pray at Coeln in the Cathedral, And become a beast of burden. Shabby tradesmen must I serve ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... popped out of sight again behind the fall, and Jean, following closely in his wake, was just in time to catch sight of his legs as he dived into a hole opening into the rocky wall. The cliff from which the water plunged overhung the rocks below in such a way that she could pass behind the veil of water without ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... lost. In vain we searched for a way by which we might reach the bottom of the gorge; we were soon convinced that the cliff was utterly impracticable. ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... two decades, but no systematic examination of the region was made and the accounts are hardly more than a mention. In 1878 Dr. W. J. Hoffman, at that time connected with the Hayden Survey, published descriptions of the so-called Montezuma well and of a large cliff ruin on Beaver creek, the latter accompanied by an illustration.[1] The descriptions are slight and do not ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... boy. She is alone in the house. A steamer, probably bound for Cardiff, now crosses the horizon, while near at hand one bell of a foxglove swings to and fro with a bumble-bee for clapper. These white Cornish cottages are built on the edge of the cliff; the garden grows gorse more readily than cabbages; and for hedge, some primeval man has piled granite boulders. In one of these, to hold, an historian conjectures, the victim's blood, a basin has been hollowed, but ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... through armour and shirts of mail. Again and again 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
... the Dnieper. Since it (p. 043) was made of wood, it soon came to the surface, which was looked upon as a miracle by the people who rushed down to worship it. But Vladimir's soldiers gave it another bath, and this time it was caught by the current and drifted away. The cliff where it stood is still known at Kief as "the devil's leap," and the spot where Perun floated ashore, is ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... ahead, was the Stand like a cliff, Grey wood, packed with faces, under banners blown stiff, Where, in two minutes more, they would cheer for him—if— If he came to those horses still twelve lengths ahead. "O Royal, you do it, ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... by the time he had done his chores and breakfasted. The only benefit the storm had brought him was that it did away with the necessity of carrying water for his washing. He had acquired the agility of a cliff-dweller from scaling the embankment by means of the "toe-holts"; yet, at that, it was no easy matter to transport a bucket of water ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... sand near the cliff walls is annoying, but it's sandless (shower-wise) near the stream, so we're following the footprints along the bank. Also, the air's better down here. Still thin, but not so bad as on the surface. ...
— The Dope on Mars • John Michael Sharkey
... as he perceived Anne's gaze on the inaccessible cliff and the whole scene, the wild beauty of which was lost to ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... invitation, glad to visit this favourite seaside resort of the Roman emperors. Even before we landed we could see the ruins of their villas deep in the clear waters of the bay, fish gliding through arches and the seaweed waving its pennons from the walls. The cliff at the back of the town presented a most impressive appearance, being pierced by great arched openings like the portals of a Roman bath. And such, indeed, they were, for on the promontory above had been the gardens of the imperial villa, and from them staircases carven in the rock ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... are able to obtain a good deal of game even with such primitive weapons for they depend largely upon dogs which bring gorals and serows to bay against a cliff and hold them until the men arrive. The dogs are a mongrel breed which appears to be largely hound, and some are really excellent hunters. White is the usual color but a few are mixed black and brown, or fox red. Hotenfa, one of our Mosos, owned a good ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... America are the cliff-houses and "pueblos." The former peculiarity is explained by the deep canyons of the dry table-land of Colorado. Imagine a narrow deep cutting or narrow trench worn by water-courses out of solid rock, deep enough to afford a channel to the stream from 500 to 1,500 feet below the plateau ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... greater, and it is not necessary to extinguish the fire, the lime being drawn out as it is burned and fresh stone put in. At several of the lime kilns at the Narrows, above Indiantown, the facilities are unrivalled. The stone is quarried from the cliff a few rods from the kiln, dumped in at the top by cart or wheelbarrow, drawn out at the bottom at the water's level and loaded on scows. The wood for the kiln grows on the surrounding hillsides or may be obtained from the saw-mills in the vicinity at nominal cost. At the time ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... they reached the cliff that hung over the shattered shore. It was a clear, cold night. Snow, the remnants of the last storm, which frost had preserved in every shadowy spot, lay all about them. The sky was clear, and full of stars, for the wind that blew cold from the northwest had dispelled the snowy clouds. The ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... been recreant to her former lover, so too she will be untrue to him. He decides to leave her; for if he should remain, her penalty would be eternal death. As his mysterious vessel sails away Senta rushes to a cliff, and crying out that her life will be the price of his release, hurls herself into the sea, vowing to be constant to him even in death. The phantom vessel sinks, the sea grows calm, and in the distance the two figures are seen rising in the sunlight ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... is not so easily described. The mouth and chin were relatively small, overshadowed by that broad cliff of forehead, but they were firm, the chin well moulded, the lips thin and compressed. The nose was unusual when seen in profile. There was no sign of a bony bridge, but it was markedly curved and ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... give me body and soul to thee, Who hast my soul for ever: cliff and sand Recede, and heart to heart once ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Follow the enclosing ridge to the left, to where its slope cuts athwart plain and sea and sky; there close upon the coast lies the island rock of Nisida, meeting-place of Cicero and Brutus after Caesar's death. Turn to the opposite quarter of the plain. First rises the cliff of Camaldoli, where from their oak-shadowed lawn the monks look forth upon as fair a prospect as is beheld by man. Lower hills succeed, hiding Pozzuoli and the inner curve of its bay; behind them, too, is the nook which shelters Lake Avernus; ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... fingers in mere notches. At such times one's whole body is eye, and common skill and fortitude are replaced by power beyond our call or knowledge. Never before had I been so long under deadly strain. How I got up that cliff I never could tell. The thing seemed to have been done by somebody else. I never have held death in contempt, though in the course of my explorations I have oftentimes felt that to meet one's fate on a noble mountain, or in the heart of a glacier, would ...
— Stickeen • John Muir
... with its crew of half-crazed Arabs. Suffocated, stunned, scalded, petrified with fear, they lay among the mullet while the falukah raced along in its wild dance with death. Mohammed recalls seeing what he thought to be a great cliff rush by close beside them. The falukah plunged over a waterfall and was almost submerged, was caught again in a maelstrom, and went twirling on in the blackness. They all were deathly sick, but were too ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... uniforms were like those of football players on a rainy day at the end of the first half. We were entering what had been the village of Ablain, and before us rose the famous heights of Mont de Lorette. To scale these heights seemed a feat as incredible as scaling our Palisades or the sheer cliff of Gibraltar. But they had been scaled, and the side toward us was crawling with French soldiers, climbing to the trenches, descending from the trenches, carrying to the trenches food, ammunition, and fuel ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... the thought of that constant process! It goes on for ever, like the sea fog creeping up from the wide ocean and burying life and sunshine in its fatal folds, or like the ever-flowing river, or like the fall plunging over the edge of the cliff, or like the motions of the midnight sky. Each moment in its turn passes into the colourless stony past, and the shadow ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... manners, snatched the papers from his father's hand, turning them about and about, not able to believe his senses. A man hurled over a cliff, plunging in one moment from flowery lawns into a turbulent sea, ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... the first to the middle of April. They come twittering along in the way so familiar to every New England boy. The barn swallow is heard first, followed in a day or two by the squeaking of the cliff swallow. The chimney swallows, or swifts, are not far behind, and remain here in large numbers, the whole season. The purple martins appear in April, as they pass north, and again in July and August on their ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... the banks of the Atbara, on a plateau of about twenty acres, bordered on either side by two deep ravines, while below the steep cliff in front of the village ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... were deep in the shadow of the Blessington lower road and the 'rickshaw came to a dead stop under a pine-clad, overhanging shale cliff. Instinctively I halted too, giving my reason. ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... If I were a dancing master I would refuse to play the monkey tricks of Marcel, which are only fit for the stage where they are performed; but instead of keeping my pupil busy with fancy steps, I would take him to the foot of a cliff. There I would show him how to hold himself, how to carry his body and head, how to place first a foot then a hand, to follow lightly the steep, toilsome, and rugged paths, to leap from point to point, either up or down. He should ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... utilized several of these vertebrae for stools, but seeing them for the first time, the little fellow looked down at them respectfully, hushed into silence by vague, sea-born feelings. Far down the beach to the southward rose the cliff's where thousands of sea-birds swarmed in the sunshine. Their screaming, softened by the distance, came to his ears with an eerie wildness. All at once he felt very small and alone among alien creatures. Kobuk had turned back without him and was bounding out of sight around Skeleton ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... the great cascade rushes down over the rocks. There, where it touches the nether rocks, rests the end of the enormous rainbow which, when the sun shines, is always suspended across it. Noufflard told me that Niagara itself impressed one less. We scrambled along the cliff until we stood above the great waterfall, and could see nothing but the roaring, foaming white water, leaping and dashing down; it looked as though the seething and spraying masses of water were springing ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... Island Lake stretched before us, when we felt a southwest wind that threatened trouble; but by making a long detour about the bays of the southwestern shore the danger vanished. Arriving at the foot of the portage trail at Bear Rock Rapids, we carried our outfit to a cliff above, which afforded an excellent camping ground; and there arose the smoke of our evening fire. The cloudless sky giving no sign of rain, we contented ourselves with laying mattresses of balsam brush upon which to sleep. ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... wander'd by each cliff and dell, Once the lov'd haunts of Scotia's royal train;[72] Or mus'd where limpid streams once hallow'd well,[73] Or mould'ring ruins ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Here, the large, smooth roots of trees half undermined, presented seats and footholds, where the pleasant shade invited them to rest, and shelter from the sultry summer sun. Anon, an open prairie, with no cliff or bluff beyond, extended undulating from the river, until the eye, in straining to measure its extent, was wearied by the effort, and the plain became a waving sea of rainbow colors; of green and yellow, gold and purple. Again, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... walk: though tired and stiff, To climb the heights I madly agree; And, after a tumble or so from the cliff, They kindly suggest ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... stopped on the edge of the snow, and stood peering and hesitating, like one who shivers on the plank at a bathing-place, nor could the jeering cries of the Cossack induce him to venture on the treacherous surface. Meanwhile, we who had crossed were examining the broken cliff which rose above us. It looked not exactly dangerous, but a little troublesome, as if it might want some care to get over or through. So after a short rest I stood up, touched my Cossack's arm, and pointed upward. He reconnoitred the cliff with ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... curious circumstances of all connected with it is, that there is a subterranean passage from the grounds leading right away down to the sea-coast. A most curious place, sir, partly cut out of the cliff, with cellars in it for wine, and other matters, that in the height of summer are kept as cool as in the deep winter time. It's more for curiosity than use, such a place; and the old couple, that now take care of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... was not exactly so snug as it has been described in itself and its interior; for it was situated on a hill which terminated at a short distance in a precipitous cliff, beetling over that portion of the Atlantic which lashes the shores of Cumberland under the sub-denomination of the Irish Sea. But Forster had been all his early life a sailor, and still felt the same pleasure in listening to ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... held his glasses fixed on the barren guano- whitened ledges of the headland. But though he could discern with quickly increasing distinctness the seabirds that soared about the cliff crest and nested in its crevices, he perceived no sign of any signal such as castaways might be expected to place ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... 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 ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... the right bank of the Meuse, in an angle of territory between Luxembourg and Belgium, and is surrounded by meadows, gardens, ravines, ditches and cultivated fields; the castle rising on a cliff-like eminence to the southwest of the place. MacMahon had stopped here to give his weary men a rest, not to fight, but von Moltke decided, on observing the situation, that Sedan should be the grave-yard of the French army. "The trap is now ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... the excitement a strong pulse began to beat in the hollow of her throat, as if her heart were rising. She had won, she had kept him in the room, she had brought him to a keen thought of her. A Pyrrhic victory, for she was poised on the very edge of a cliff of hysteria. She began to feel a tremor of the hand which supported her cheek. If that should become visible to him he would instantly know that all her apparent unconsciousness was a sham, and then she ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... before he recovered consciousness. As soon as he did so, he crawled on his hands and knees to the edge of the cliff, and looked down. The Swan had disappeared. Not a sign of her remained, not so much as a floating timber showed on the ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... at the wind with a sailor's eye, and glances at Nell. He does not speak, but she understands, and she steers the Annie Laurie for the little piece of smooth beach which leads to the cave under the cliff. It is to this point they nearly always make; for was it not here that Drake Vernon told Nell Lorton of his love, and drew the confession of hers from her lips? To this place they always come ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... and boating accidents that travelled along the coast of Cornwall and Devon in early May was due to this cause—was a retired tea-dealer of the name of Fison, who was stopping at a Sidmouth boarding-house. It was in the afternoon, and he was walking along the cliff path between Sidmouth and Ladram Bay. The cliffs in this direction are very high, but down the red face of them in one place a kind of ladder staircase has been made. He was near this when his attention was attracted by what at first he thought to be a cluster of birds struggling over ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... air would have been enough to carry them over it. They seem, however, to have been confident in their own powers of management. They threw out ballast, and rose to a height of 1,500 feet, and thence came down again only just in time, touching the ground at a distance of about 150 yards from the cliff. The balloon here dragged for a few feet, and Captain Templer, who had been letting off the gas, rolled out of the car, still holding the valve line in his hand. This was the last chance of a safe escape for anybody. The balloon, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... that one holding the channel could touch the rock with a pike pole as he passed in. There was a mud bottom, twenty-foot depth at low tide, and a little stream of cold fresh water brawling in at the head. A cliff walled it on the south. A low, grassy hill dotted with solitary firs, red-barked arbutus, and clumps of wild cherry formed its northern boundary. And all around the mouth, in every nook and crevice, driftwood of every size and shape lay ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... The few soldiers remaining busied themselves over their mess fires. Jacques looked down a cove not quite as steep as the rest of the cliff, yet as nearly perpendicular as any surface on which trees and bushes can take hold. It was clothed with a thick growth of sere weeds, cut by one hint of a diagonal line. Perhaps laborers at a fulling mill ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... in several directions. First there was the development of the Country. The soldiers did not stand well on an ordinary carpet, the Encyclopedia made clumsy cliff-like "cover", and more particularly the room in which the game had its beginnings was subject to the invasion of callers, alien souls, trampling skirt-swishers, chatterers, creatures unfavourably impressed by the spectacle of two middle-aged men playing with "toy soldiers" on the floor, and ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... himself enveloped in a fog. It must have been sufficiently dense to shut out even the nearest objects; for, without any warning, Willance found himself on the verge of the scar, and before he could check his horse both were precipitated over the cliff. We have no detailed account of whether the fall was broken in any way; but, although his horse was killed instantly, Willance, by some almost miraculous good fortune, found himself alive at the bottom with nothing worse ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... upon his crucifix, And racked in anguish on his either side Hang Buddha and Mohammed crucified. Their heavy blood falls in a monotone Like deep well-water dropping on a stone. None moves, none breaks the silence; on those roods Eternal suffering triumphant broods. Prometheus from his cliff of wild unrest Mocks them and draws the vulture to his breast. Each year upon a darker Calvary Are hung the pallid victims of the tree, And none will watch with them, for none can see As I once saw, unending agony, Save where Prometheus from his dizzy place Regards those sufferers ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... discoveries made during the previous summer by the French Expedition under Dumont D'Urville and the United States Expedition under Charles Wilkes. The former had coasted along Adelie Land, and for sixty miles of ice cliff to the west of it. He brought back an egg now at Drayton which Scott's Discovery Expedition definitely proved to be ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... craggy ledges hid all the ground but this, a mere sediment of sand in a tiny hollow in the rock from which the water had evaporated. It was a key' to the mystery. Instantly the rugged edges of the cliff took on the similitude of a path. Once furnished with this idea, he could perceive adequate footing all adown the precipitous way. He was not young; his habits had been inactive, and were older even than his age. He could not account for it afterward, but he followed for a few paces ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... far then Blancandrins and Guene Till each by each a covenant had made And sought a plan, how Rollant might be slain. Cantered so far by valley and by plain To Sarraguce beneath a cliff they came. There a fald-stool stood in a pine-tree's shade, Enveloped all in Alexandrin veils; There was the King that held the whole of Espain, Twenty thousand of Sarrazins his train; Nor was there one but did his speech contain, Eager for news, ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... ensure a certain amount of privacy, it had been arranged that Eve should go to an opening some halfway up Talland lane and there await Adam's approach, which he would make by scrambling up from under the cliff and so across to where she could see and come ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Hamlet, that he should go with him to some more removed place, where they might be alone; and 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; ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Dis aliter visum. We see the innocent girl, and ten years after what the world has made of her. But the heart of the girl lies beneath the woman of the world. And she recalls to the man the hour when they lingered near the church on the cliff; when he loved her, when he might have claimed her, and did not. He feared they might repent of it; sacrificing to the present their chance of the eternities of love. "Fool! who ruined four lives—mine and your opera-dancer's, your own and my husband's!" Whether her outburst ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Captain Bill Broom and his crew had been keeping watch upon their intended victims from the top of the cliff above the pool. They could see every move from the time the Frontier Boys had arrived until they lay down ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... parallel in the world. In front, beyond the clear mirror of motionless water, were the ruins of Alba Longa; on the left rose Monte Cavo with Rocca di Papa and Palazzuolo; whilst on the right Castel Gandolfo overlooked the lake as from the summit of a cliff. Down below in the extinct crater, as in the depths of a gigantic cup of verdure, the lake slept heavy and lifeless: a sheet of molten metal, which the sun on one side streaked with gold, whilst the other was black with shade. And the road then ascended ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Brent made his way, and across the cellar floor, pausing at the rocky wall of the foundation of the house blasted and hewn out of the cliff on which it towered above the river. A heavy steel door in the ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... 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
... a wise young fellow, you are. Go in for the real thing and don't bother with imitations. What's the use of jumping off a cliff made of pasteboard when you've got real roofs to climb over? What's the use of doing stunts in a studio when you can go on a bee-line hike across the country? You're a wise young fellow, you are. You stick to the boy scouts; they'll ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... had an eighty-mile pony run when only seventeen years of age, but, like Brink, young Cliff gained his greatest reputation as a fighter,—in his case fighting Indians. It seems that while Cliff was once freighting with a small train of nine wagons, it was attacked by a party of one hundred Sioux ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... safe. Minnie, however, made no remark of any kind, good or bad, but remained quite silent, occupied with her own thoughts. At length Tozer stopped and put her down. It was a place upon the edge of a cliff on the shore of the lake, and as much as a mile from the house. The cliff was almost fifty feet high, and was perpendicular. All around was the thick forest, and it was unlikely that such a place could ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... looked wonderingly at him, Tom Jeffs said in a whisper: "Climb up yonder on the cliff, where Cap'n can see you, and no one else, and go down on your knees, my lad—you knows ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn
... and the rocks rose higher, the clear bright green Fiumera foamed and tumbled in its rocky bed, and we passed a picturesque mill astride of it, backed up with trees. Soon the driver called our attention to a great rock hanging from the cliff which seemed as if its fall from the height was merely a matter of moments, but which had looked so, he said, for years. The continuous climb was interrupted by a wooded depression through which ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... the bay was Kennedy's favourite haunt. It was a place where the top of a low cliff was sheltered by a clump of trees which formed a natural bower, from whence he would gaze untired for hours on the rising and falling of the tide. A little orphan cousin whom Mr Kennedy had adopted, used to ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... sent thunder bolts upon castles and keeps where his pilgrims were maltreated, his spirit was somewhat of that Boanerges type which is flatly snubbed in the Gospel. From Vienne Hugh went to his own Grenoble among those mountains which have, as Ruskin says, "the high crest or wall of cliff on the top of their slopes, rising from the plain first in mounds of meadow-land and bosses of rock and studded softness of forest; the brown cottages peeping through grove above grove, until just where the deep shade of the pines becomes blue or purple in the haze of height, a red wall ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... being very wroth, slew the man. For the King came to the land of Tiryns, looking for certain horses, and Hercules caught him unawares, having his thoughts one way and his eyes another, and cast him down from the cliff that he died. Then Zeus was very wroth because he had slain him by craft, as he had never slain any man before, and caused that he should be sold for a year as a bond-slave to Queen Omphale. And when the year was ended, and Hercules ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... might die there, took hurried steps to remove him to his palace at Bangkok. He was bound in a sedan, and lowered from his high chamber in the castle into his barge on the canal at the foot of the cliff; and so, with all his household in train, transported to the palace of Krom Hluang Wongse, physician to the king, and one of his half-brothers. Now miserably unnerved, the prince, once so patient, brave, and proud, threw his arms round his kinsman's neck, and, weeping bitterly, implored him to save ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip. When the Berton excursionists were taken by the Californians to the Cliff House, Mr. RICE brought out a bottle. Of course the Californians were wide awake for the drawing of the cork. "Whiskey, perhaps!" they murmured, "Brandy, possibly!" they sweetly sighed. "Rum, maybe!" they conjectured. "Schnapps, possibly," they surmised. But when ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... the upheaval at Trovus. The ocean rushed in and beat against the cliff with such ferocity that its spray was tossed hundreds of feet in the air. The earth shook and the group of people around the fire made a hasty retreat to the mouth of the cave. The sky darkened and the winds howled with demoniac fury. Quake after quake rent the rugged cliffs: huge sections ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... to Becky that as the long low island rose from the sea, the burdens which she had carried for so long dropped from her. There were the houses on the cliff, the glint of a gilded dome, and then, gray and blue and green the old town showed against the skyline, resolving itself presently into roofs, and church towers, and patches of trees, with long piers stretching out through shallow waters, boat-houses, fishing smacks, ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... of this Manitou is still shown. It is a rock or cliff on the loneliest port of the mountains, and, from the flowering vines which clamber about it, and the wild flowers which abound in its neighborhood, is known by the name of the Garden Rock. Near the foot of it is a small lake, the haunt of the solitary bittern, with water-snakes basking ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... in one of those caverns which honey-comb the cliff under Sorrento, and afford a natural and admirable shelter for such small craft as may be dragged up out of reach of the waves, and here I bargained with him before finally agreeing to go with him to Capri. In Italy it is customary for a public carrier when engaged ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... her voice was a mere guttural growl. "A little more sass from you, you double-j'inted jumpin'-jack dancer, and I'll jerk you to the edge of that cliff yonder and throw you down. I'm feelin' particularly good right now," rolling up her sleeves and showing the great knots of swelling muscles on her arms. "Get out of ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... atmosphere of the more elevated regions. These dreary solitudes seemed to be nearly abandoned by the brute creation as well as by man. The light-looted vicuna, roaming in its native state, might be sometimes seen looking down from some airy cliff, where the foot of the hunter dared not venture. But instead of the feathered tribes whose gay plumage sparkled in the deep glooms of the tropical forests, the adventurers now beheld only the great bird of the Andes, the loathsome condor, who, sailing high ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... cunning thief agrees to leave unmolested the cache of the Red man. While this bargain still holds, since the day when ammunition first came into the country no Indian has passed this rocky replica of the carcajou without firing a shot at the face of the cliff. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... the silken reptiles will he fly, To the bold cliff in bounding transports run, And stretch'd o'er many a wave his ardent eye, Embrace the enduring Sea-Boy ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... (and they were anxious ones) he reached the point for which he had been steering, a platform of rock and thin turf from which a limestone cliff, parting the woods, descended almost sheer to the valley. The White Rock it was called, and as a child Walter a Cleeve had climbed about it a score of times in search of madrepores; for a gully ran down beside it, half choked with fern and scree, and ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... impressions of natural objects according to the impulses of imagination, produces a genius and a taste for poetry. According to Dr. Johnson, a mountain is sublime, or a rose is beautiful; for that their name and definition imply. But he would no more be able to give the description of Dover cliff in Lear, or the description of flowers in The Winter's Tale, than to describe the objects of a sixth sense; nor do we think he would have any very profound feeling of the beauty of the passages here referred to. A stately common-place, such as Congreve's ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... is morning light; The hills are verdured pasture-wise; The angel hosts with freshness go, And seek with laughter what to brave;— And binding all is the hushed snow Of the far-distant breaking wave. And from a cliff-top is proclaimed The gathering of the souls for birth, The trial by existence named, The obscuration upon earth. And the slant spirits trooping by In streams and cross- and counter-streams Can but give ear to that sweet cry For its suggestion of what dreams! And the more loitering ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... found that a great change had silently taken place. The mist continued to veil the sky, and it clung to the tops of the hills; but, like the rising curtain of a stage, it had rolled half-way up from their bases, revealing a great part of the sea and shore, and half of a cliff on the opposite side of the valley: this, in itself of a deep red, was now smitten by the rays of the setting sun, and glowed over the waters a splendour of carmine. As we gazed, the vaporous curtain sank upon the shore, and the sun sank under the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... plain, the eastern side of which is bounded by grassy hills of limestone, the other sides by a forest. The hill nearest to the plain terminates in a cliff, in the face of which, nearly at the level of the ground, are four caves, with low, narrow entrances. Before the caves, and distant from them less than one hundred feet, is a broad, flat rock, on which are laid several sharp slivers of flint, which, like the rock, are blood-stained. ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... overhanging the boulevard which dips steeply down from Monte Carlo to the low intermediate quarter along the quay. From the window in which they presently found themselves installed, they overlooked the intense blue curve of the harbour, set between the verdure of twin promontories: to the right, the cliff of Monaco, topped by the mediaeval silhouette of its church and castle, to the left the terraces and pinnacles of the gambling-house. Between the two, the waters of the bay were furrowed by a light coming and going of pleasure-craft, through which, just at the culminating moment of luncheon, ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... darkness. At last the bell ceased, and he stood resting on his long pike, enjoying the stillness, and peering into the blackness surrounding him, when suddenly he became aware of a grating, rasping sound below, as if some one were attempting to climb the precipitous beetling cliff of castle wall and slipping against the stones. His heart stood still with fear, for he knew it could be nothing human. An instant later something appeared over the parapet that could be seen only because it was blacker ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... little public carriages, mounting to the Berigo Road, through a street of the older San Remo, and issuing on a bare little piazza looking towards the walls and roofs of the mediaeval city, clustered together like cliff-dwellings, and down on the gardens that fell from the villas and the hotels. A parapet kept the path on the roadside nearest the declivities, and from point to point benches were put for the convenient enjoyment of the prospect. Mr. Gerald preferred to take his pleasure ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... not! Standeth, instead of the troop of young warriors, Stained with the bodies of dragons, a wall— The men were cut down in their pride by the spearpoints— Blood-greedy weapons—but noble their fall. Earth is enwrapped in the lowering tempest, Fierce on the stone-cliff the storm rushes forth, Cold winter-terror, the night shade is dark'ning, Hail-storms are laden with death from the north. All full of hardships is earthly existence— Here the decrees of the Fates have their sway— Fleeting ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... they heard them slowly merge into the inaudible. At length, after an interval of silence, on the westerly air came one quiver of laughter, by which Malcolm knew his friends were winding up the red path to the top of the cliff. And now the shore was bare of presence, bare of sound save the soft fitful rush of the rising tide. But behind the long sandhill, for all they could see of the sea, they might have been in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... reply; and they trudged on together for about a hundred yards, and then climbed over the loose stone-wall, and then up a rugged slope dotted with gigantic fragments of granite. A stone's throw or so on their left was the edge of the uneven cliff, which went down sheer to the sea; and all about them the great masses towered up, and their path lay anywhere in and out among tall rocks wreathed with bramble and made ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... (yes, there was one), I stepped out of my diggings in an obscure Cornish fishing-village to find a gentleman busily engaged strangling a lady on the cliff side. He had her by the throat and was gradually forcing her over the edge. Once in Bristol I interposed in a slogging contest between husband and wife and was very properly chastised for my interference, not only by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... bending horns the sounding main. Yet insecure the spot, unsafe in storm, Were it not sheltered by an isle on which The Adriatic billows dash and fall, And tempests lose their strength: on either hand A craggy cliff opposing breaks the gale That beats upon them, while the ships within Held by their trembling cables ride secure. Hence to the mariner the boundless deep Lies open, whether for Corcyra's port He shapes his sails, or for Illyria's shore, And Epidamnus facing to the main Ionian. ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... of it, far as the eye can reach, run the bordering cliffs, stepping from one level to the other, by a thousand feet sheer, and only passable at certain points. There is a width of ten miles from cliff to cliff; and these, of equal height, seem the counterparts of each other. Their grim savage fronts, overhanging the soft bright landscape of the valley, suggest the idea of a beautiful picture framed in ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... draught usually anchor off the village of Boxholm, a picturesque gathering of red cottages, with high peaked roofs, situated at the entrance of the river. Above the village, on the summit of a rocky cliff, stands the fort of Abohus, ready at a moment's notice to pour a broadside into any enemy of Imperial Russia that may undertake to ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... a splendid idea!" cried Bertha, jumping up, looking very pleased, but serious. "Have you got it there, Cliff?" ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... sloping precipice, several hundred feet in height, covered with stunted bushes, overlooks Wilhelm's Plains, nearly all under cultivation and studded with sugar plantations. The soil, when newly turned up, appeared of a dull red colour. Numbers of tropic birds were flying along the face of the cliff where they probably breed. Eight species of land shells were picked up here, either creeping up the grass or under stones and logs; they were of the genera ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... seemed pleased with his music, although it was but the grunt of a brazen unrest. Alongside the beasts walked Derba carrying Barbara—their refuge the mountains, should the cause of the king be lost; as soon as they were over the river they turned aside to ascend the Cliff, and there awaited the forging of the day's history. Then first Curdie saw that the housemaid, whom they had all forgotten, was following, mounted on the great red horse, and seated in the ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... qualities and because we seldom get it without too great an admixture of water. We made no use of this lovely day, except to walk to an Arboretum and Pinetum on the outskirts of the town. U—— and Mrs. Shepard made an excursion to Guy's Cliff. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wide lagoon, which narrowed towards the southern end, where a perpendicular cliff of some extent rose directly out of the water, its summit covered with trees. Both Owen and Dan were of opinion that this formed one end of the channel leading to the sea. No boats or canoes could be discovered on the beach. Further ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... Pennel, who murdered his captain and sunk his ship near to the place. He was tried and executed in London for the crimes, and his body, bound round with iron hoops, was sent to Hornsea, in a case marked "glass." The corpse, in 1770, was hung in chains on the north cliff. Long ago the cliff with its gibbet has been washed away by ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... moral 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 followed ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... am a foolish old man. I forget how old I am. Perhaps, when thou wert a child in thy mother's arms, the graves stood up out of the greensward at the foot of the high cliff which faces to the south. Tell me, is there not a high wall of rock a little way back from the landing beach?... Aye!... that is the place ... and the bones of the men are there, though now great trees may grow over the place. They were both good men—good to look at, tall and strong; and they ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... Vallery to put on their drags to prevent the carriages going down faster than would have been pleasant, they found themselves by the side of a narrow loch enclosed by mountains. They soon after, rounding a lofty cliff, arrived at the entrance of the glen which they had ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... he knew that if it were a cave it was doubtless the lair of some other beast. Before the entrance lay many large fragments of rock of different sizes, similar to others scattered along the entire base of the cliff, and it was in Tarzan's mind that if he found the cave unoccupied he would barricade the door and insure himself a quiet and peaceful night's repose within the sheltered interior. Let the storm rage without-Tarzan would remain within until it ceased, comfortable ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in the dark ravines or thick timber; among the bushes just below timber-line on the southern acclivity of the peak; everywhere around the village of Buena Vista; about four miles below Leadville; and, lastly, beyond the range at Red Cliff and Glenwood.[1] ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... highly educated woman has fallen into the water." Nobody would say, "There are the remains of a clear thinker in your back garden." Nobody would say, "Unless you hurry up and stop him, a man with a very fine ear for music will have jumped off that cliff." But this emotion, which all of us have in connection with such things as birth and death, is to some people native and constant at all ordinary times and in all ordinary places. It was native to St. Francis of Assisi. It was native to Walt Whitman. In this strange and ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... from my island home. If you will carry me to the cliff near the Place of Breaking Light, I can then reach my burrow ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... the perfume of apple blossoms, the water from the old wheel fell with silvery echo and ran rippling over the stones into the river. Somewhere above the cliff a negro was playing a banjo and far down the river, beside a little cottage torn with shot and shell, but still standing, a mocking-bird was singing in ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... make an end of you if they catch you. Ride on and I'll chase you. Turn to the left there and ride to the bluff. I'll follow you. There's a gully through the top. Ride down it as far as you can and jump your horse over the cliff. It's nearly fifty feet high, and may kill you, but it's the only way. The other warriors are coming up and they'll kill you sure if you don't jump. Jump, and I'll tell ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston |
