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Embankment   Listen
noun
Embankment  n.  
1.
The act of surrounding or defending with a bank.
2.
A structure of earth, gravel, etc., raised to prevent water from overflowing a level tract of country, to retain water in a reservoir, or to carry a roadway, etc.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Embankment" Quotes from Famous Books



... sharp as applied to a blade or a point; six as applied to a pain or to grief; four as applied to a remark or reply; ten as applied to one's mind or intellect; three as applied to temper or disposition; three as applied to an embankment; three as applied to the seasoning of food; three as applied ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... hanged, and his accomplices were sent over to France, where they expiated their crime at the galleys. Having thus promptly suppressed the first insurrection within his dominions, Champlain prepared himself for the rigours of a Canadian winter. An embankment was formed above the reach of the tide, and a stock of provisions was laid in sufficient for the support of the settlement until spring. The colony, inclusive of Champlain himself, consisted of twenty-nine persons. ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... us children were to go on a little fishing-excursion to the meadows on the Delaware, among the ditches which run all round the inside of the great embankment that has been thrown up to keep out the river. There was a vast expanse of beautiful green meadow inclosed by this embankment, on which great numbers of cattle were annually fatted. As viewed from the bank, it was luxuriant in the extreme; in fact, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... dabbler really knows nothing of how they do it. He mumbles something about Buetschli and Grenfell. Imagine the thing on a larger scale, Cleopatra's Needle, for instance, travelling on its side up the Thames Embankment, and all unchaperoned, at the rate of four or five ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... upon a part— A deep embankment on a slope, And joy o'erflowed his chilly heart While lingering ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... a great loss to all of us, and particularly to me; he gave me the overflow of his strength and life; he stopped, as it were, with an embankment, the part of my character that is irresolute and undecided. From him it is that I have learned not to dread the approaching storm, and to know how to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... he looked down from a high embankment on to the little house his aunt had taken, and where it might be said she had died through her desire to do him a kindness. There were the two well-known bow windows, out of which he had often stepped to ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... of all social circles. Mr. Eyton's massive bulk and warm heart, and rugged humour and sturdy common sense, produce the effect of a clerical Dr. Johnson. But perhaps we must turn our back on the Abbey and pursue our walk along the Thames Embankment as far as St. Paul's if we want to discover the very finest flower of canonical culture and charm, for it blushes unseen in the shady recesses of Amen Court. Henry Scott Holland, Canon of St. Paul's, is beyond all question ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... Charlecote Hall, and almost hidden by the trees between it and the roadside, is an old brick archway and porter's lodge. In connection with this entrance there appears to have been a wall and an ancient moat, the latter of which is still visible, a shallow, grassy scoop along the base of an embankment of the lawn. About fifty yards within the gateway stands the house, forming three sides of a square, with three gables in a row on the front, and on each of the two wings; and there are several towers and turrets at the angles, together with projecting ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... come a bump, a crash, a cry, and then all the mail bags rolled one over the other with the car down an embankment into ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... asked a very intelligent English contractor why he used no wheelbarrows in his work. He had some hundreds of stalwart navvies employed carrying dirt in small wicker baskets to an embankment. He said the men would not use them. Some said it broke their backs. Others discovered a capital way of amusing themselves by putting the barrow on their heads and whirling the wheel as rapidly as possible with their hands. This was a game which never grew stale. The contractor ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... the train, emerging from the broken hilly country on the outskirts of the forest, roared along the embankment which carries the line across the rich converging valleys of the Wilner and the Arne. Tom ceased to think either of possible advantage accruing to his own fortunes, or these defects of the family humour which had combined to dictate his present excursion, his attention ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... pitched head-foremost down a rocky declivity into a mass of prickly pear bushes and other tropical brambles is by no means pleasant; and as a result Billie was not in the best of humor when he picked himself up and looked to the top of the 60-foot embankment ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler

... trap the possible purchaser into thinking the place "improved." But the cement walks were crumbling, the trees had died, and rank thorny weeds choked about their roots. The cross streets were merely lined out, a deep ditch on either side of an embankment. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... speed on the road, it is a variable thing, and a thing difficult to estimate correctly. Electric cars run at a speed of from ten to twenty-two miles an hour in England, even in the towns, and no one says them nay. Hansoms, on the Thames Embankment in London, do their regular fifteen miles an hour, but automobiles are still held down ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... guns of the Diana, moving freely around the bends, to contribute to the defence, while the obstructions placed below the works hindered the ascent of the bayou by the Union gunboats. The Confederate right was also somewhat strengthened by the embankment of the unfinished railroad to Opelousas. On the other hand, from the nature of the ground, low and flat as it was, the works were in part rather commanded than commanding; yet the difference of level was inconsiderable, and for a force as small ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... photographs and plans of the crossing he had obtained two days after the accident, requesting them to note the facts that the public highway, approaching through a dense forest and underbrush at an angle of thirty-three degrees, climbed the railroad embankment at that point, and a train could not be seen until the horse ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... strong embankment, as though originally used as a fortification, and the village itself was located on the side of ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay

... the direction in which Rollo pointed, the dike could be traced for a long distance in its course, like an immense railroad embankment, winding in and out in a most remarkable manner, in conformity to the indentations of the shore. In one respect it differed from a railroad embankment, namely, in being bordered and overshadowed by avenues of immense trees, which showed how many ages ago the dike had been built. There ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott

... after their retirement from the east bank of the river, continually harassed the Italian advance guard holding the bridgeheads. The Austrians aided the work of the mountain floods by breaking down the high embankment used to carry off the snow water, and thereby inundated the plain. Working under a plunging fire from the enemy's batteries on the foothills, the Italian sappers built light pontoon bridges over the floods upon which the first ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... village, we rattled on till we came to the railway embankment, across which we trespassed, not without some difficulty, as it was steep and railed off on either side by high palisades. Once over this, we turned at right angles, and ran for half a mile close alongside the line, and past Wincot station. Here it was ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... these things written in the chronicles of Chelsea, adown whose Embankment I still, Achilles-like, do drag the body ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... great military works surrounded by walls and ditches, with artificial lakes in the centre to supply water. One work, Fort Ancient, on the Little Miami River, Ohio, has a circuit of between four and five miles; the embankment was twenty feet high; the fort could have held a garrison of sixty thousand men with their ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... thirteen white horses. The girl who smashed my knee-cap is to be Joan of Arc and ride at the head of 'em. In armour. Fact. There's to be a banquet for 'em at the Imperial at nine. We can't stop that. And they'll process down the Embankment and down Pall Mall and Piccadilly at eleven; but they won't process here. We've let 'em out ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... self-adjudged sufferings are never inflicted in the hope of shortening the lives they embitter or purify; and the hours of dream or meditation, on mountain or in cave, appear seldom to have dragged so heavily as those which, without either vision or reflection, we pass ourselves, on the embankment and ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... south-east having lofty rugged hills to the north-east, east, and south of us, with the usual high sand accumulations upon their sides. To the south-east we could just discern the distant mountains near Kerman. The track itself, on the sandy embankment at the foot of the hillside to the south-west, is rather high up and tortuous, owing to a very long salt marsh which fills the lower portion of the valley during the rainy weather and makes progress in a straight line impossible. But now, owing to the absolute absence of ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... had unclouded ten million stars. It was a wind unlike any other wind that ever blew, at once caressing and roughly challenging. The two, putting it behind them, faced eastward, and began to pass one by one the innumerable ornate gas-lamps of Chelsea Embankment, which stretched absolutely rectilinear in front of them for a clear mile. No soul but themselves was afoot. But on the left rose gigantic and splendid houses, palaces designed by modern architects, vying with almost any houses in London, some dark, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... Baron's private room finishing one of the renowned Hotel Mayonaise breakfasts. Out of the windows they could see the bright curving river, the bare tops of the Embankment trees, a file of barges drifting with the tide, and cold-looking clouds hurrying over the chaos of brick on the opposite shore. It was a bright breezy morning, and the Baron felt in high good-humour with his surroundings. ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston

... in the vicinity—it has been correctly said is surrounded by precipices more awful than anything to be found nearer home than the Alps or Pyrenees—clinging to the mountain side, at a height of several hundred feet above the sea, with here a cutting or embankment, and there a mountain gorge, in which a lovely waterfall is almost lost to sight in a ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger

... the mountain, we came across one of our guns which, by bad driving, had fallen over an embankment some forty feet. Two horses still hitched to it lay on their backs, one of which I recognized as Gregory's one-eyed dun which I had ridden foraging at Bridgewater. After my arrival on top of the mountain I was sent with a detail which recovered the gun and the two horses, both ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore

... Delaware state would build it and carry it off to Newcastle instead of to Elkton, where Meshach meant to unite with a projected Baltimore system. Prudently estimating the sparseness of his fortune to execute a hundred miles of embankment and railroad, Milburn yet kept up a display of surveyors and graders in several counties, and his local patriotism had at least the appreciation ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... of March, 1874, and a crowd of fully 2000 spectators attended. The Hampden Park of to-day, with its splendid pavilion and accessories, and beautifully laid-off turf, was not then conceived in the minds of the Match Committee. It was the Hampden Park of yore, now cut up to form a railway embankment. Mr. Hon. Secy. Rae and his companions in office never for a moment imagined that in sixteen years afterwards the new ground, which is crowded nearly every Saturday afternoon with excited spectators, would be made ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone

... approached on the south side by an embankment 1500 feet in length, extending from the level of the water-way in the canal until its perpendicular height at the "tip" is 97 feet; thence it is carried to the opposite side of the valley, over the river Dee, upon piers supporting nineteen arches, extending to the length ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... muddy tramp of four miles, we are assembled at the two-hundred-yards firing point upon Number Three Range. The range itself is little more than a drive cut through, a pine-wood. It is nearly half a mile long. Across the far end runs a high sandy embankment, decorated just below the ridge with, a row of number-boards—one for each target. Of the targets themselves nothing as yet is ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... winding along near the railway embankment, ended at a bridge, where Zibeline awaited the three visitors. A significant pressure of her hand showed Henri how little cause he had had for ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa

... state that Portillon is down the Loire, on the same side as St. Cyr, about as far from the bridge which leads to the cathedral of Tours as said bridge is distant from Marmoustier, since the bridge is in the centre of the embankment between Portillon and Marmoustier. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... missed him as he sprang out of the way. A northbound passenger train roared past. From the other train two sharp whistles, the screeching of brakes, and a shout. For a moment he stood on the slight embankment, his ears thrown defiantly back. Then he turned, and with great lung-filling leaps bounded toward the glow in ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux

... As long as they kept low, there was no danger from Spanish fire, for the bank of the road was sufficiently high to afford security. Curiosity occasionally got the better of a man, and he would poke his head above the embankment and peer in the direction from which the bullets were coming. In the company was a large, muscular German, who had early become restless and curious to see what was transpiring. He would occasionally break out and swear because ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves

... point, cuts off the highest point, and at once turns eastward, so that his position on the hill is just the northern slope and a narrow line of crest. It is as though an army holding Fleet Street against an army on the Embankment and in Cheapside should have seized Ludgate Hill to the top of the steps of St. Paul's and left the body of the cathedral to its opponent. The lines securing this important salient are of immense strength and intricacy, with many great avenues of approach. The front ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield

... the night was passing. Here and there were great black spaces. On the Thames a sky-sign or two remained. The blue, opalescent glare from the Gaiety dome still shone. The curving lights which spanned the bridges and fringed the Embankment still glittered. The air, even here, high up as they were on the seventh story of the ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... also collapsed, permitting the water to wash out a railroad embankment and pour into all the low districts between the river and Sandusky Street. With water to the hubs, a horse-drawn wagon galloped out West Broad Street filled with police, who shouted as they went a warning to all ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... the Confederate skirmishers occupied the railroad-cutting and embankment, while Hays and two regiments of Barksdale were on Lee's and adjacent hills, as soon as the firing on his right was heard, moved to the assault with the bayonet; Neill and Grant pressing straight for Cemetery hill, which, though warmly received, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... Aurunca (Sessa) on the road from Rome to Capua. Garrisons moreover were sent to Caiatia (Cajazzo), Sora, and other stations of military importance. The great military road from Rome to Capua, which with the necessary embankment for it across the Pomptine marshes the censor Appius Claudius caused to be constructed in 442, completed the securing of Campania. The designs of the Romans were more and more fully developed; their object was the subjugation of Italy, which was enveloped ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... arteries of Holborn and Fleet Street, the river soothed his nerves and lent tranquillity to his mind. Following the Embankment, which was shrouded in heavy darkness, he reached the spot where Cleopatra's Needle, which once looked on the majesty of ancient Egypt, stands, a sentinel of incongruity, on the edge of London's river. Giving way to a momentary whim, ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... short but sharp encounter with tramps described in the preceding chapter, he was as bewildered by its sudden termination as he had been, on awaking from a sound sleep, to find himself engaged in it. He knew what had become of two of the tramps, for one of them he had sent staggering backward down the embankment, and Brakeman Joe was at that moment pursuing the second; but the disappearance of the others was a mystery. What could have become of them? They must have slipped away unnoticed, and taken advantage of the darkness to make good their escape. "Yes, that must be it; for ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... gallows dress whenever a cart passed by the gallows, which stands hard by the road to Wolgast, and jumped up behind the people, who in horror and dismay flogged on their horses, and thereby made a great rattling on the log embankment which leads beside the gallows into a little wood called the Kraulin. And it was a strange thing that on the same night the travellers were almost always robbed or murdered on Strellin heath. Hereupon the magistrates had the man taken ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... on his horses' shoulder point Let fall the lash, and loudly through the ranks Call'd on the Trojans; they, with answ'ring shout And noise unspeakable, urg'd on with him Their harness'd steeds; Apollo, in the van, Trod down with ease th' embankment of the ditch, And fill'd it in; and o'er it bridg'd a way Level and wide, far as a jav'lin's flight Hurl'd by an arm that proves its utmost strength. O'er this their columns pass'd; Apollo bore His AEgis o'er them, and cast down the wall; Easy, ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... example of the antiquity of the regulation of the Thames we have the embankment round the Isle of Dogs, which is Roman or pre-Roman in its origin, like the sea-wall of the Wash, which defends the Fenland; and at Ealing, Staines, Abingdon, and twenty other places we have sites probably pre-historic, ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc

... rivers, flowers, birds, stars—are, and have been for many centuries Nature—so are ploughed fields—really the most artificial of all things—and all the apparatus of the agriculturist, cattle, vermin, weeds, weed-fires, and all the rest of it. A grassy old embankment to protect low-lying fields is Nature, and so is all the mass of apparatus about a water-mill; a new embankment to store an urban water supply, though it may be one mass of splendid weeds, is artificial, and ugly. A wooden windmill is Nature and beautiful, a sky-sign atrocious. ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... years after my marriage my husband and I lived on the plantation, he managing the estate until he was called to Washington on business, and, in returning, the train was thrown down an embankment, and ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... London Charivari and The Queen, the Lady's Newspaper. Excavation, which in the East has been productive of rich material for the archaeologist, was indeed suggested to me. I was told that, just before Cleopatra's Needle was set upon the Embankment, an iron box, containing a photograph of Mrs. Langtry, some current coins and other trifles of the time, was dropped into the foundation. I am sure much might be done with a spade, here and there, in the ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... Cambrian line from Moat Lane Junction to Llanidloes, may notice, at Llandinam, the roadway which runs below the church, and crosses the river on an embankment to the station. The construction of that highway was the first contract which David Davies held, and it stands to-day, hard by the statue of him which has since been erected, as a monument of his self-reliant zeal and sound workmanship. Other contracts followed, including that for ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... the Incas lay through the level country between the Andes and the ocean. It was constructed in a different manner, as demanded by the nature of the ground, which was for the most part low, and much of it sandy. The causeway was raised on a high embankment of earth, and defended on either side by a parapet or wall of clay; and trees and odoriferous shrubs were planted along the margin, regaling the sense of the traveller with their perfumes, and ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... on the engine, with which the wire was soon severed. While this was being done, another party took up a rail, and put it into the car to carry off with us. This did not long check our pursuers, but we had the satisfaction of learning that it threw them down an embankment, as will be narrated more fully in ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger

... swung along the flaring Lambeth streets, across Westminster Bridge, and along the Embankment in the direction of that part of Fleet Street which contained Tanner's Court. The erect, black figure of Major Brown, seen from behind, was a quaint contrast to the hound-like stoop and flapping mantle of young Rupert ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton

... capital of the country, the river which, of all its waters, the imagination of our ancestors had made most sacred, and the bounty of nature most useful. Of all architectural features of the metropolis, that embankment will be, in future, the most conspicuous; and in its position and purpose it was the most capable of ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... coming force rolled away, and lay lagging behind the march of the host, there rode forth from the van two riders. Fast and far from the rest they rode, and behind them, fast as they could, spurred two others, who bore on high, one the pennon of Mercia, one the red lion of North Wales. Right to the embankment and palisade which begirt Mortar's camp rode the riders; and the head of the foremost was bare, and the guards knew the face of Edwin the Comely, Mortar's brother. Morcar stepped down from the mound on which he stood, and the brothers ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... dwell upon the journey. There is nothing very exciting in a railway trip, even of a hundred miles, nowadays, unless, indeed, the cars run off the track, or over the embankment, and then it is altogether too exciting to be agreeable. For the sake of my young hero, whom I really begin to like, though he was "only an Irish boy," I am glad to say that nothing of that sort took place; but in good time—about the time when the clock on the Old ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... floundered over the ruins of the track, and, scrambling down an embankment, crossed the Potomac by a pontoon-bridge, a thousand feet in length, over the narrow line of which—level with the river, and rising and subsiding with it—General Banks had recently led his whole army, with its ponderous artillery and heavy laden wagons. Yet our own tread made it vibrate. ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... first seemed to hesitate, but shouting to each other they again advanced towards the embankment. "You will take the consequences of your folly," said Captain Rymer, and Pierre interpreted what he said. Several shots were fired, and two or three of the Frenchmen were apparently hit. The discharge had the effect of making them retreat. ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston

... object. He made a thorough inspection of the great lines of defence between the Danube and the Rhine, and framed, and partly carried out, a vast scheme for strengthening and securing them. The policy of opposing uncivilized tribes by the construction of the limes, a raised embankment of earth or other material, intersected here and there by fortifications, was not his invention, but it owed in great measure its development to him. This grand work, which would have excited the envy of Augustus, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... the ice with my weight, proved it firm, crossed without so much as cracking it, and breasted a bare grassy slope, too little to be called a down, where a few naked hawthorns chafed and creaked in the wind. Above it was an embankment rounded like a bastion, up the left side of which I crept—or, you might almost say, crawled—and, reaching the top, found myself close under the front of ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... in his office in Scotland Yard. Outside, the Embankment, the river, even the bulk of the Houses of Parliament were blotted out by the dense fog. For two days London had lain under the pall, and if the weather experts might be relied upon, yet another two days of fog ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace

... in finding the wall of the Gaulish town. It is broken down completely in places, but the almost circular line is plainly marked. The site of the oppidum is a little tableland raised above the surrounding soil by a natural embankment. ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... onsweeping throng. He was borne swiftly with it down a broad avenue lined with grand old trees and decked with flying flags and streamers, to the margin of a noble river, as still as liquid amber in the wide sheen and heat of the noonday sun. A splendid marble embankment, adorned with colossal statues, girdled it on both sides,—and here, under silken awnings of every color, pattern and design, an enormous multitude was assembled,—its white attired, closely packed ranks stretching far away into the blue ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... through. This confidence proved their ruin. The Egyptians were thoroughly accustomed to mining operations, and were fully aware that were they to pierce the wall the Rebu could at once overwhelm the small working parties; they, therefore, after penetrating a considerable distance into the embankment, drove right and left, making an excavation of considerable size, the roof being supported by beams and planks hauled up ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty

... they could lay the wounded man, however. He stooped over the big mangled body, joking with him,—it was the best comfort to Pat to give him a chance to show how little he cared for the surgeon's knife,—glancing now and then at the pearly embankment of clouds in the south, or at the delicate locust-boughs in black and shivering tracery against the moonlight, trying to shut his ears to the unceasing under-current of moans that reached ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... then. You will tell him that trains will be waiting below Surbiton, at precisely ten o'clock to-night. Runways will be built to let the men climb the embankment, and they can entrain there. ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske

... be sure that the poor fellow imagined a thousand and one good fortunes and lucky adventures, and what is more, almost believed them true. Oh! The good times! One evening Jacques de Beaune (he kept the name although he was not lord of Beaune) was walking along the embankment, occupied in cursing his star and everything, for his last doubloon was with scant respect upon the point of quitting him; when at the corner of a little street, he nearly ran against a veiled lady, whose sweet odour ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... scorching heaps of broken wall as one of the Martian giants returned. He saw this one pursue a man, catch him up in one of its steely tentacles, and knock his head against the trunk of a pine tree. At last, after nightfall, the artilleryman made a rush for it and got over the railway embankment. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... clouds ahead and filling the spaces with lakes of gold. The dykes turned to gold, and a golden film lay over the pastures and the reeds. The sun wheeled slowly north, and a huge, shadowy horse and trap began to run beside them along the embankment of the White Kemp Sewer. They turned up Ansdore's drive, now neatly gravelled and gated, and a flood of light burst over the gables of the house, pouring on Joanna as she climbed down over the wheel. She required ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... all your talents to slip out of my clutches this night.' At this point there is a blank in my souvenirs. I only remember sparks flying and the sensation of falling down from my seat on to a steep embankment. On recovering consciousness, I found myself lying on a crofter's bed, with aching limbs. I told him the story of my escape, and he said, after hearing it: 'We live in troublous times, John, and the Arch-deceiver ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... From the embankment, to the right, they could now see narrow lanes, sunk almost below the level of the river. On the other bank a new, white edifice towered ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... Marshal that the Emperor would receive me at the palace in Berlin on the morning of August tenth. I drove in a motor into the courtyard of the palace and was there escorted to the door which opened on a flight of steps leading to a little garden about fifty yards square, directly on the embankment of the River Spree, which flows past the Royal Palace. As I went down the steps, the Empress and her only daughter, the Duchess of Brunswick, came up. Both stopped and shook hands with me, speaking a few words. I found the Emperor seated at a green ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... back to his rooms. He wandered aimlessly through the darkening streets, impatient of the slow hours. At last he came out on the Embankment. The sun was setting redly, frostily, in a gray world of sky-mist and river-mist and spectral bridge and spire. A shaking path-way of pale flame came across the gray of the hidden ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... that we get nothing much but scrap-iron out of what's left," growled McCloskey, climbing out of the tangle of crushed cars and bent and twisted iron-work to stand beside Lidgerwood on the main-line embankment. Then to the men who were making the snatch-hitch for the next pull: "A little farther back, boys; farther yet, so she won't overbalance on you; that's about ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... a hole in the ground, about two feet deep, and a little more in diameter—just large enough to admit one of the feet, which was nearly two feet diameter at the base. The earth which came out of this hole Swartboy placed in the form of a loose embankment around the edge. ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... silence followed. Sounds of traffic from the Embankment penetrated dimly to the room of the Assistant Commissioner; ringing of tram bells and that vague sustained noise which is created by the whirring of countless ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... the embankment, and climbed the fence on the swamp side of the tracks; and then, as soon as they had penetrated a short distance into the wood, Handsome stopped again, and, drawing a huge bandanna from his pocket, proceeded to bind it around the ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter

... increases while the fire of the fort diminishes. Coolness, determination, energy, perseverance, and power win the day. The Rebel flag comes down, and the white flag goes up. They surrender. Cheers ring through the fleet. A boat puts out from the St. Louis. An officer jumps ashore, climbs the torn embankment, stands upon the parapet and waves the Stars and Stripes. "Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" You hear it ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... bravery served them till they reached the fringe of the incoming tide; not until their knees went under water did they forego their venture. A higher wave came in, deluging the ones farthest out; and then ensued a scampering toward the dike and a climbing up of the stone embankment. The old route across the sands, that had been the only one known to kings and barons, was not good enough for a modern Norman peasant. The religion of personal comfort has spread even as far as ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... ally inspired the queen at this time nerved her to bear her part in the festival with which the Assembly had decided on celebrating the demolition of the Bastile. The arrangements for it were of a gigantic character. Round the sides of the Champ de Mars a vast embankment was raised, so as to give the plain the appearance of an amphitheatre, and to afford accommodation to three hundred thousand spectators. At the entrance a magnificent arch of triumph was erected. The ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... easy walk up the Strand will bring you to the starting point, Charing Cross Embankment Station, where you can take the train again; but if you are fit and between the ages of forty-one and fifty, you can continue the walk till you reach the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various

... even still more lonesome and desolate part. Wounded (stage) spirits fly from the haunts of men and, leaving the hard, cold world far, far behind them, go and die in peace on the Thames Embankment. And other wanderers, finding their skeletons afterward, bury them there and put up rude crosses over the graves ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome

... of the Bavarians Silesian regiments stormed the heights of Sekowa and Sakol. Young regiments tore from the enemy the desperately defended cemetery height of Gorlise and the persistently held railway embankment at Kennenitza. Among the Austrian troops Galician battalions had stormed the steep heights of the Pustki Hill, Hungarian troops having taken in fierce fighting the Wiatrowka heights. Prussian guard regiments threw the enemy out of his elevated positions ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... morning we resumed our journey, and after a long day of toiling through treacherous marshes and tangled brushwood came at sunset upon an object whose presence there was a wonder, and its past a puzzle,—a ridge or embankment of ten or twelve feet elevation, which, to our astonishment, ran high and dry through the swampy lowlands. In the heart of an interminable forest it stretches along one side of the tangled trail, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... almost immediately, and taking her by the arm, led her to the embankment, where he stripped off his overcoat and wrapped it about her. But she was hardly conscious of what he was doing, for suddenly everything seemed to be spinning round her. The lights of the torches bobbed up and down in a confused blur ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... Paris behind him, and he was almost in the country; he was in the pleasant suburb of Auteuil. He stopped at last, looked around him without seeing or caring for its pleasantness, and then slowly turned and at a slower pace retraced his steps. When he came abreast of the fantastic embankment known as the Trocadero, he reflected, through his throbbing pain, that he was near Mrs. Tristram's dwelling, and that Mrs. Tristram, on particular occasions, had much of a woman's kindness in her utterance. He felt that he needed to pour out his ire and he took the ...
— The American • Henry James

... way out of Paris, past the great embankment and the fortifications, and goes rocking along among green trees whose branches sweep its sides, and trim villas with stone walls around quaint gardens. At every moment it passes little inns and suburban restaurants with cool arbours in front of them, and waiters ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock

... former issues for just such occasions as this, when it would be of inestimable value. I had been driving all day and had the greatest difficulty in keeping awake. Twice I dozed off. Once I awakened just as the car started over the edge of an embankment; the other time a large rock in the road brought me back to the world. It was two o'clock in the morning when we wearily ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... police-station at Las Palmas and daily had seen Aintree as, on his way down the hill from the barracks to the railroad, the hero of Batangas passed the door of the station-house. Also, on the morning Aintree had jumped his horse over the embankment, Standish had seen him carried up the hill on a stretcher. At the sight the lieutenant of police had taken from his pocket a notebook, and on a flyleaf made a cross. On the flyleaf were many other dates and opposite each a cross. It was Aintree's record ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... the Germans would torpedo a passenger steamer known to be full of women and children, carrying many Americans, and completely unarmed. The ship at once took a list to starboard (tilt to the right) so that the deck soon became as steep as a railway embankment. This made it impossible to lower boats on the up side, as they would have swung inboard, slithered across the steeply sloping deck, and upset. The captain, cool and ready as British captains always are, gave his orders from the up end of the bridge, while the other officers were helping ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... these ingenious dams the beavers, by the aid of their powerful teeth, gnaw down trees sometimes of large size, and after cutting them into smaller pieces float them on the water to the spot selected for the embankment. In swift streams this embankment is built so as to arch against the current, thus securing additional strength, and evincing an instinct on the part of the animal which amounts almost to reason. In cutting down the trees the beaver ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... yds. per day per man from flat bottom cars. When the cars can be unloaded through a trestle, hopper bottom cars should by all means be secured for delivering the stone. If the amount of work will justify the expense, a trestle may be built; often there is a railway embankment which can be dug away for a short distance and the track carried on stringers to make a dumping place, from which ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... were spent in the parsonage of Steventon, some description of that place ought to be given. Steventon is a small rural village upon the chalk hills of north Hants, situated in a winding valley about seven miles from Basingstoke. The South-Western railway crosses it by a short embankment, and, as it curves round, presents a good view of it on the left hand to those who are travelling down the line, about three miles before entering the tunnel under Popham Beacon. It may be known to some sportsmen, as lying in one ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh

... began again. Jeffreys, as he trudged back to the city, felt that he was embarked on a forlorn hope. Yet a man must live, and a sovereign cannot last for ever. He passed a railway embankment where a gang of navvies were hard at work. As he watched them he felt half envious. They had work to do, they had homes to return to at night, they had characters, perhaps. Most of them were big strong fellows like himself. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... and the United States foriver!" shouted Terrence, leaping on the embankment, and dancing a jig. But the Xenophon had not given up the contest yet. She continued to fire her balls and shells with murderous intent until the balls from St. Mark's direction had cut her mainmast down. It fell over on the lee side dragging with it the fore mainstay and crippling ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... Dalton were glad to dismount and to get behind both the trees and the curve of the embankment. Harry, despite a pretty full experience now, could not repress involuntary shivers as the deadly steel flew by. He and Dalton had nothing to do but hold their horses and watch the combat, which they did with the ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler

... to follow, he was to be disappointed She stayed on watching the disappearing figures, without attempting to rise, and waiting until they were out of sight, she walked out on to the Embankment and hailed a passing taxi. She seemed quite satisfied in her mind that the plan she had evolved for the trapping of Stafford King ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... Something scraped alongside—a yacht, moored in the channel. He turned to the right and presently was gratified to find himself in quieter water. A moment later he was safely within the inner channel that followed the park embankment and led east ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... of the day, to be taken to the front by carrying parties. Company commanders made a last reconnaissance of their positions. For Private Cowan it was a moment of double waiting. Waiting for battle was now secondary. In a tiny slit trench on the forward edge of a railway embankment Private Brennon remarked upon the ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... of the embankment waved along the laughing water, and in scores the sparrows flitted across the sleek green sward. The porter in his bright uniform, cocked hat, and brass buttons, explained the way out to a woman. Her child wore a red sash and stooped to play with a cat that came along the railings, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... lodgings were wonderfully snug and comfortable for the second floor of a second-rate house in a small retired side street near the Embankment at Chelsea. He had made the most of the four modest little rooms, with his quick taste and his deft, cunning fingers:—four rooms, or rather boxes, one might almost call them; a bedroom each for himself and the Progenitor; a wee sitting-room for meals and music—the ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... opposite each other. The fabric of the chimney remained secure. Needless to say, this eye was put into the needle of the chimney because it had been used as a Belgian observation- post. We soon got out of our car and walked across the fields to the old railway embankment, which was now being used as the bank of the inundation. On the land side of it the ground was marshy, but it was terra firma. On the other side there are two thousand yards of grey-brown water ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... to show you," he said; and he pointed out a gang of men repairing a slip in the levee embankment below the town landing. It was a squad of prisoners in chains. The figures of the convicts were struck out sharply against the dark background of undergrowth, and the reflection of the sunset glow on the river lighted up their sullen faces and burnished ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... the name she had given to a long flight of wooden steps with a railing on each side, leading from the sidewalk up a steep embankment to the bungalow on top. It was a wide-spreading bungalow with as many windows looking out to sea as a lighthouse, and had had an especial interest for Georgina, since she heard someone say that its owner, ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... Nile Hilton flanked the older, Victorian bulk of the Semiramis, where they would stay. They sped across a bridge, entered a plaza full of honking horns and speeding cars, then moved to the comparative quiet of a street along the Nile embankment to ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... picket out on the high embankment east of the freight depot, where every man, woman and child must pass to reach the bridge. Colonel Perchment detailed Captain Hamilton, of G Company, there with an ample guard, and all who came without General Hastings' pass in the morning were turned aside. This ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... Paul's is slipping softly into greasy shadows. Look downward and the river throws back its innumerable hues—all the coal tar dyes plus all the duns and drabs of Thames mud. The tide is out and along the south bank a score of squat barges are high and dry upon the flats. Opposite, on the embankment, the lights are beginning to blink, and from the little hollow behind Charing Cross comes the faint, far-away braying of ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... this: Head the machine straight down the road, lash the wheel fast and start her off. If I am not mistaken, it will run along the road at least to the next curve. Even from here you can see the steep embankment at the curve. When the machine hits that ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes

... upon the encircling ridge behind Sorrento, which commands both bays. From there I can look down upon the Isles of the Sirens. The top is a broad, windy strip of pasture, which falls off abruptly to the Bay of Salerno on the south: a regular embankment of earth runs along the side of the precipitous steeps, towards Sorrento. It appears to be a line of defence for musketry, such as our armies used to throw up: whether the French, who conducted siege operations from this promontory ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... turned down one of the narrow streets that lead from Fleet Street to the Thames Embankment, and then ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... the air is quivering with the sound and light. The ships in the bay are ablaze with flags, and the sides of the Apollo Bundar (the landing place of the Prince) are a mass of decorations and flags. Below our windows in the shadow of our hotel on the embankment, the crowd of natives in their best behaviour and best clothes move to and fro making holiday, watching the ships and any ceremony that may come off in their neighbourhood, for like our own natives ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... passed his lips we had shot around the projecting rock, where the road had been cut from the mountain-side. We were near our journey's end then, for at the foot of the embankment that sheered down at our left we heard the swish of a mountain-stream. The horse went down. There was a cry from Tip—a sound of splintering wood—something seemed to strike me a brutal blow. Then I lay back, careless, fearless, and ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... undertaker. These elderly pupils follow their kind preceptor (for, although he is called Burch, there is not the slightest suggestion of the rod about him, and, moreover, his charges are really too elderly to receive chastisement) to the Royal Exchange, the Thames Embankment, and, lastly, to the Empire. During their travels, they meet Mr. Rapless, known as "the Oofless Swell," (a part amusingly played by Mr. W. WARDE), and John Brough, a carpenter with a taste for ballet costumes ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various

... several abandoned fishing huts and houses with carved poles in front, what appeared to be the remains of an earth and stone work fortification. It occupied an elevated situation about a mile from the sea shore, and consisted of an excavation about 100 feet square, surrounded by an embankment of earth and stones, which could hardly have been made except by ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden

... the crowd laughed, others looked over the embankment to see how Case had fared, and others remarked that for some reason he had gotten off better ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... prophecy—arisen with the night, brought up to him the voices of the boat's crew from the jetty below him. His friend Jack Mannix was coxswain of her. He would give Jack a drink. Leaving the gate, he advanced unsteadily to the edge of the embankment, and, putting his head over, called out to his friend. The breeze, however, which was momentarily freshening, carried his voice away; and Jack Mannix, hearing nothing, continued his conversation. Gimblett was just drunk enough to be virtuously indignant at this incivility, and ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... incomplete. At last he was to grasp his song in all its entity. But suddenly there was an interruption. Presley had climbed the fence at the limit of the Quien Sabe ranch. Beyond was Los Muertos, but between the two ran the railroad. He had only time to jump back upon the embankment when, with a quivering of all the earth, a locomotive, single, unattached, shot by him with a roar, filling the air with the reek of hot oil, vomiting smoke and sparks; its enormous eye, cyclopean, red, throwing a glare far in advance, shooting by in a sudden crash ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... as if about to part. But, at that moment, they heard a sound of horses' feet, accompanied by a clinking of steel. It was the gendarmes. The two men were obliged to draw back against the embankment, amongst the brushes, to avoid the horses. The gendarmes passed by, but, as they followed each other at a considerable distance, they were several minutes in doing ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... in the deep-sea cod-fishery on the great banks of Newfoundland. Also, a man who works on the sides of a canal, or on an embankment; a navvy. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... line of shade in his climb up the embankment and the scorching afternoon sun beat down on him mercilessly. But he did not cease his exertions to reach the top as quickly as possible. He knew that a train for the city would be along very soon now; he remembered the curve just ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.

... yards away from the end of the street), and for a long, long time they would remain in view, ascending imperceptibly the flight of wooden steps that led to the top of the sea-wall. It ran on from east to west, shutting out the Channel like a neglected railway embankment, on which no train had ever rolled within memory of man. Groups of sturdy fishermen would emerge upon the sky, walk along for a bit, and sink without haste. Their brown nets, like the cobwebs of gigantic spiders, lay on the shabby grass of the slope; and, looking up from the ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad



Words linked to "Embankment" :   embank, protective embankment, wall, rampart, bulwark, stone facing, revetement, levee, hill, mound, revetment



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