Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Rapids   Listen
noun
Rapids, Rapid  n.  The part of a river where the current moves with great swiftness, but without actual waterfall or cascade; sometimes called whitewater; usually used in the plural; as, the Lachine rapids in the St. Lawrence. For boaters on the river, it is a place that can be hazardous, with danger of capsizing or crashing into large rocks. "Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast, The rapids are near, and the daylight's past."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Rapids" Quotes from Famous Books



... timber there for Canadian shipbuilders, and later when she had moved to within less than a mile of its northern boundary, she met a man who was buying curly maple, black walnut, golden oak, wild cherry, and other wood extremely valuable for a big furniture factory in Grand Rapids. There was one particular woman, of all those the author worked among, who exercised herself most concerning her. She never failed to come out if she saw her driving down the lane to the woods, and caution her to be ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter

... and the Royal Scouts, who were out in front, came back and took the French in the rear. Only about 50 of these escaped, 148 were captured, and the rest killed or drowned in endeavouring to cross the rapids. ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... canoe is an exceedingly light and graceful little craft, and well adapted for travelling in through a wild country, where the rivers are obstructed by long rapids, waterfalls, and shallows. It is so light that one man can easily carry it on his shoulders over the land, when a waterfall obstructs his progress; and as it only sinks about four or six inches in the water, few places are too shallow ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... up the Beaver River suffice it to say that we met with many adventures, but proceeded without serious accident until one day our canoe was submerged in heavy rapids, the lashings gave way, and to our consternation the precious tablet, together with the flag and pennant, was lost in the flood. After two days' vain effort to recover the tablet and flags we continued on the river until at length further ascent seemed unpractical. From this point, with packs ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... the driving rods of an engine, his long, black hair flying wild, his eyes starting out, the sweat rolling in rivers down his face. When he had shoveled the mold full of sand, and reached for the pounder to pound it with, it was after the manner of a canoeist running rapids and seizing a pole at sight of a submerged rock. All day long this man would toil thus, his whole being centered upon the purpose of making twenty-three instead of twenty-two and a half cents an hour; and then his product would be reckoned up by the census taker, and jubilant captains ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... at hand, was, as far as they could make out, the lovely shore of a beautiful island, bathed in sunshine and glorious in rich verdure and purple shade, while they could now clearly see the sparkling surface of the stream, which tumbled in rapids and falls down to the vivid blue ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... the few Canadian troops cooped up in Kingston would dare to pursue such a strong American force, but history is made up of impossibles. Feeling perfectly secure, Wilkinson's troops scattered on the river. By November 10, at nine in the morning, half the Americans had run down the rapids of the Long Sault, and were in the region of Cornwall, pressing forward to unite with Hampton, where Chateauguay River came into Lake St. Louis, just above Montreal. The other half of Wilkinson's army was above the Long Sault, near Chrysler's Farm. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... came on, the snow gradually disappeared, the ice was carried down the rapids, and once more left the blue lake clear; the cattle were turned out to feed off the grass the year before left on the prairie, and all the men were busy in preparing to put in the seed. As soon as the snow was gone, ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... native land, Our love for thee grows day by day; Our fathers left the olden strand, O'er sea and rapids made their way, And by their energy and skill They laid thy firm foundation deep, And sowed the seed o'er vale and hill Which we, their sons, ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... party of soldiers from the Indians by steering them in a bateau safely down the dangerous rapids of the Hudson; he saved Fort Edward from destruction by fire at the imminent risk of his life, working undaunted although the flames were threatening, every moment, to explode the magazine; a year later, captured by the Indians, who feared and hated him, he ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... the night sky; the riverbanks gazed at the flowing water, at the heavy timber floating slowly over its surface. "Let it come!" cried the long stretch of wild rapids below. ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski

... right in my supposition. It was a wide gallery. The dim light could not show us both its walls at once. The fall of the waters which were carrying us away exceeded that of the swiftest rapids in American rivers. Its surface seemed composed of a sheaf of arrows hurled with inconceivable force; I cannot convey my impressions by a better comparison. The raft, occasionally seized by an eddy, ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... of the Missouri, you will take observations of latitude and longitude, at all remarkable points on the river, and especially at the mouths of rivers, at rapids, at islands, and other places and objects distinguished by such natural marks and characters, of a durable kind, as that they may with certainty be recognised hereafter. The courses of the river between these points of observation may be supplied by the compass, the ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... Black mesa, and locally as "the rim." Here the river is sharply deflected southward, and flows thence in a direction almost due south to its mouth. This part of the river is hemmed in on both sides by high mountain chains and broken every few hundred yards by rapids and "riffles." ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... should have credible information of the assembling of bodies of troops to march against you, it may become necessary to destroy the fort at Sandusky, and the road which runs through it from Cleveland to the foot of the rapids: the road from the river Raisin to Detroit is perhaps in too bad a state to offer any aid to the approach of an enemy, except in the winter; and if a winter campaign should be contemplated against you, it is probable that magazines would be formed ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... the former identified themselves by marriage and mode of life with the Indians, developed their traits of hardihood and acquired their knowledge of woodcraft and skill in navigating the streams. In pursuit of the fur-bearing animals in their native haunts, they shot the raging rapids, ventured out upon the broad expanse of the treacherous lakes, and endured without complaint the severity of winter and the exposure of ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway

... mode of traction to take the place of these teams of men. A still revolution is in prospect, namely a ship canal or railway. The latter, perhaps, might be made to lift the junks bodily out of the water and transport them beyond the rapids. Two cities, however, would suffer somewhat by this change in the mode of navigation, namely, Ichang at the foot and Chungking at the head of the rapids. The latter is the chief river port of Szechuen, a province having four ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... afar, distinguishable on the horizon as a dark band. It sent forth cold waves, spreading nearer, nearer, and finally seeming to embrace half the entire surface of the earth. This was that section of its course where the river, hitherto confined by the rapids, finally makes its own away and, roaring like the sea, rushes on at will; where the islands, flung into its midst, have pressed it farther from their shores, and its waves have spread widely over the earth, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... utility of flowing water. Early projects under George Washington and others to assure the navigability of the main river above the Fall Line, which they saw as an artery for eastward and westward currents of trade, left only some quaint ruined locks and flowing bypass canals around falls and rapids. The later C. & O. Canal, which ran alongside the river and was replenished by its water above occasional low dams, required over two decades of toil and death and heavy expense to complete upriver to Cumberland, Maryland, which it reached in 1850. There had been some public opposition to the project ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... the tireless putter-right of men, Our roaring ROOSEVELT, swims into our ken. With clash of cymbals and with roll of drums, Reduced in weight, from far Brazil he comes. What risks were his! The rapids caught his form, Upset his bark and tossed him in the storm. Clutching his trumpet in a fearless hand, The damp explorer struggled to the land; Then set the trumpet to his lips and blew A blast that echoed all the wide world through, And in a tone ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... own comfort, he had but a speaking acquaintance with politics. He was not a blue Federalist, and he never d'd the Democrats. With unconscious skill he shot the angry rapids of discussion, and swept, by a sure instinct, toward the quiet water on which he liked to ride. In the counting-room or the meeting of directors, when his neighbors waxed furious upon raking over some outrage of that old French infidel, Tom Jefferson, as they called ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... occasionally. The women do their best to spoil 'em, as they do the poets; you find it very pleasant to be spoiled, no doubt; so do they. Now and then one of 'em goes over the dam; no wonder, they're always in the rapids. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... convicts. They rowed with a will, and soon took the boat down the river beyond its junction with the Lachlan. The stream then became narrow, a thick growth of overhanging trees shut out the light from above, while, beneath, the rushing waters bore them swiftly over dangerous snags and through whirling rapids, until they were suddenly shot out into the broad surface of a noble stream which flowed gently over its smooth bed of sand and pebbles. This river they called the Murray; but it was afterwards found to be only the lower portion of the stream ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... now; he seemed ready enough with information to-day, and Yan knew enough to "run the rapids on the freshet." ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... so deeply. Lead me whither and as far as you will, into the mountain, under the hill, to the grassy meadow, where song and refrain echo sweetly in the evening, on the bottom of the river, down under the rapids, where there are harps for powerful plaintive lays; wherever your home is, there I am ready ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... increased in the piazza until the triangular space looked like the rapids of a swollen river, and the noise that came up from it was like the noise of falling cliffs and ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... thirteen arches. And what Polo says of the navigation of the river is almost conclusive proof that Magaillans is right, and that our traveller's memory confounded the two bridges. For the navigation of the Hwan Ho, even when its channel is full, is said to be impracticable on account of rapids, whilst the Lieu-li Ho, or "Glass River," is, as its name implies, smooth, and navigable, and it is largely navigated by boats from the coal-mines of Fang-shan. The road crosses the latter about two leagues from Cho-chau. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... missionaries' time is taken up in visiting and recovering the sick. Collison and I went together one morning to visit a young woman, a Kitsalass (the people of the Rapids on Skeena river), dying of consumption; her husband, an affectionate nurse for four months, and most patient, seldom leaving her. I read Ps. xxv. 18, "Look upon my affliction and my pain, and forgive me all my sins;" then a short prayer, all ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock

... below the rapids and search; the sooner the better, for in the strong current there is no telling ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... current of nearly four miles an hour to carry him to his destination, and no rapids in the three hundred ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... at Grand Rapids — Welcome from women's organizations — Miss Anthony's response; counting negro men and refusing them representation no worse than counting all women and refusing them representation, not discouraged, help of the press — The Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer on Our Duty to Our New Possessions; ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... Afognak are extremely dangerous, for the great tides from Cook Inlet draw through this narrow passage. My nerve was tested a bit as the baidarka swept by the shore, for had it once got well started we should have been drawn into the rapids and then into a long line of angry breakers beyond. At one point it seemed as if we were heading right into these dangerous waters, and then abruptly turning at a sharp angle, we glided around a point into a shallow bay. Circling this shore we successfully passed ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... story says, it was broad and beautiful at first, and so they sailed away down towards its mouth. Then they came to great cliffs, which gathered round and closed over them. But the river ran on beneath these, and ever on far underground, deeper and deeper in the earth, till it dashed headlong into rapids, among rocks and ravines, and under cataracts which were so horrible that death seemed to come and go with every plunge of the canoe. And the water grew narrower and the current more dreadful, and fear came upon Marten and the woman, so that they died. But the Master sat with silent soul, though ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... own age alone as affected by its immediate calamities that lay with such weight upon Joanna's mind, but her own age as one section in a vast mysterious drama, unweaving through a century back, and drawing nearer continually to some dreadful crisis. Cataracts and rapids were heard roaring ahead; and signs were seen far back, by help of old men's memories, which answered secretly to signs now coming forward on the eye, even as locks answer to keys. It was not wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, with such a haunted heart, Joanna should ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... was more than that. I apologize for my suspicions. You have admirable skill. I only wish that on my voyage down the River of Life I could have such a sure eye and hand to guide me through the dangerous reefs and rapids." ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... Death I walked when Love appeared, And made them on each side a shadow seem. Through wooded vales the land of dawn we neared, Where down smooth rapids whirls the helmless dream To fall on daylight; and night puts away Her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... this reminded him of an old acquaintance of his, "Jack" Chase, a lumberman on the Illinois, a steady, sober man, and the best raftsman on the river. It was quite a trick to take the logs over the rapids; but he was skilful with a raft, and always kept her straight in the channel. Finally a steamer was put on, and "Jack" was made captain of her. He always used to take the wheel, going through the rapids. One day ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... of many assault Had safely steered his bark canoe, Knew how to pass each raging chute, Though boiling like the wild Culbute The wilds of nature were his home, His paddle beat the fleecy foam Of surging rapids' yeasty spray. And bore him often far away Beyond the pinefringed Allumette, He saw the sun in glory set, His boat song roused the lurking fox From den beside the Oiseau rock Upward upon the river's breast, The highway to the wild Nor-west, Past the long lake Temiscamingue, Where wild ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... any mistake about the Oise, as a matter of fact. In these upper reaches it was still in a prodigious hurry for the sea. It ran so fast and merrily, through all the windings of its channel, that I strained my thumb, fighting with the rapids, and had to paddle all the rest of the way with one hand turned up. Sometimes it had to serve mills; and being still a little river, ran very dry and shallow in the meanwhile. We had to put our legs out of the boat, and shove ourselves off the sand of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the evening fires were kindled and every teepee transformed into an immense Chinese lantern. There was a glowing ring two miles in circumference, with the wooded river bottom on one side and the vast prairie on the other. The Black Hills loomed up in the distance, and the rapids of the wild Cheyenne sent forth a varying peal of music on the wind. The people enjoyed their evening meal, and in the pauses of their talk and laughter the ponies could be heard munching at the bundles of green grass just outside ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... in my vision, in flannel shirt and knickerbockers, on a log by a little river, putting together fishing tackle and casting an eye, off and on, where rapids broke cold over rocks and whirled into foam-flecked, shadowy pools. There should be trout in ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... night, instead of "Tullochgorum" or "Roy's Wife" or "The March of the McNeils," or any merry strathspey, he crept into an unusual movement, and from a distance came the notes of an exceeding strange strain blent with the meditative murmur of the Rataplan Rapids. ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson

... Cunningham had been over three years with the savages, when she was taken to a great Indian conference held at the foot of the Maumee rapids, "at or near the site of the present Perrysburgh, Ohio," in the autumn of 1788. Girty brought the attention of McKee, then a British Indian agent, to the matter, and McKee furnished the trinkets which constituted the ransom.—R. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... best man shifts his place from the stern to the bow, and stands ready with his long-handled paddle to twist the frail boat out of reach of hidden rocks. The men's faces glow with excitement. Quicker and quicker flows the stream, breaking into little rapids, foaming round rocks, and rising in tumbling waves over the shallows. At a word from the bowman the crew redouble their efforts, the paddle shafts crash against the gunwale, the spray flies beneath the bending blades. The canoe shakes and ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... water, the breadth of the current is considerably less. The sand and fine gravel were smoothly and evenly distributed over the bed to a width of fifty-five or sixty feet, and, for a distance of about two miles, except at two or three intervening rapids, filled up all the interstices between the stones, covering them to the depth of nine or ten inches, so as to present a regularly formed concave channel, lined with sand, and reducing the depth of water, in some places, from five or six feet to fifteen ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... 20, we camped just above Grand Rapids—Preble and I alone, for the first time, under canvas, and glad indeed to get away from the noisy rabble of the boatmen, though now they were but a quarter mile off. At first I had found them amusing and picturesque, but their many unpleasant habits, their distinct aversion to strangers, ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... her own not a chance must be missed. A sentence addressed to her must be as a piccolo, each word of it a stop, which she must be prepared to seize upon and play. And she must always be quicker than a Micmac Indian to paddle the light canoe of conversation away from the rocks in the rapids that flow from the Pierian spring. For, plodding reader, the handwriting on the wall in the banquet hall of Bohemia is "Laisser faire." The gray ghost that sometimes peeps through the rings of smoke is that of slain old King Convention. Freedom ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... nineteen million dollars. It provided not merely for the dredging of great rivers like the Mississippi and Ohio, but also for the Lamprey River in New Hampshire, the Waccemaw in North Carolina, together with Goose Rapids and Cheesequake Creek. Some of these, the opposition declared, might better be paved than dredged.[7] It might seem that a bill against which such obvious objections could be raised would be doomed to failure. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... river to Khent-hen-nefer, to put down the rebellion in Khet land, and to put an end to the incursions of the people of Asemt. I fought with great bravery in his presence in the troubled water during the towing (?) of the fighting barges over the rapids(?), and the king made me the "Captain of the Transport." His Majesty, life, strength, health [be to him!] ... raged like a panther, he shot his first arrow, [which] remained in the neck of the vanquished foe ... [the enemies] were helpless before the flaming serpent on his crown; ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge

... Nisqually, then the Hudson's Bay Company's chief station on the Pacific. Here Captain McNeil (now commander of the Enterprise), took command of the Beaver, and Captain Home, retiring to one of the Company's forts on Columbia River, perished in 1837 in Death's Rapids by the upsetting of a boat. From that period until the steamer passed into the hands of the Imperial hydrographers, the history of the Beaver was that of most of the Company's trading vessels. She ran ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... falls as rain. It then finds its way through streams back to the ocean. All water above the sea level is in such a position that gravity can act on it to cause motion, and it possesses, on this account, potential or stored-up energy. It is because of this energy that rapids and waterfalls are ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... seven years on the journey, climbing mountains that seemed to have no top, and scrambling through forests full of thorn-bushes, and wading through swamps where the mosquitoes tried to eat them up, and sailing down rivers where the rapids broke up their ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... Moses and I can easily take the canoe up the river. There are no rapids, and it is not far to the Rajah's village; so you are welcome ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... that there is such a possibility. But he has to confess that he sees few signs of any such breadth of understanding and steadfastness of will as an effectual effort to turn the rush of human affairs demands. The inertia of dead ideas and old institutions carries us on towards the rapids. Only in one direction is there any plain recognition of the idea of a human commonweal as something overriding any national and patriotic consideration, and that is in the working class movement throughout the world. And labour internationalism is closely bound up with conceptions ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... understand, to charter twenty-five steamboats for the Red River trip. The Mississippi River, though low for the season, is free of ice and in good boating order; but I understand that Red River is still low. I had a man in from Alexandria yesterday, who reported the falls or rapids at that place impassable save by the smallest boats. My inland expedition is now moving, and I will be off for Jackson and Meridian to-morrow. The only fear I have is in the weather. All the other combinations are good. I want to keep ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... anything but jumping into the Lachine Rapids would solve the difficulty," returned he, lightly; "and even that must be deferred till ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... of tons per day for 240 days, and the quantity after the thaw begins being 25,560 millions per day for 125 days, the depths and velocity when in and out of flood being duly considered."—Martin's British Colonies.] in the world of waters, embracing in its wide-spread dominion, rapids and cataracts, and tributary streams, with vast lakes like seas, and a little world of islands like fairy realms, [Footnote: Among others, the Thousand Islands, happily described as "picturesque combinations ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... was the saving of them from the public: she had thrown up a screen. The saving of them from themselves was another matter—hopeless, to her thinking. How preach at a creature on the bend of passion's rapids! One might as well read a chapter from the Bible to delirious patients. When once a woman is taken with the love-passion, we must treat her as bitten; hide her antics from the public: that is the principal business. If she recovers, she resumes her place, and horrid old Nature, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... made on a very good system, and I recommend it to the riparian owners of the Upper Wye, which needs it. They take the water from the Moselle (which is here broad and torrential and falls in steps, running over a stony bed with little swirls and rapids), and they lead it along at an even gradient, averaging, as it were, the uneven descent of the river. In this way they have a continuous stream running through fields that would otherwise be bare and dry, but that are thus nourished ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... voyage, the greater portion of which was performed by the men shoving on the champan with their long poles, sometimes among trunks of trees, at others amid rocks; but occasionally they had to go on shore and tow the boat along through the whirlpools and rapids which we met with. The scenery was often very beautiful, consisting of magnificent ranges of mountains, their bases rising abruptly out of the river, covered with umbrageous trees and flowering ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... new moon just touching the peak of the opposite mountain. A whippoorwill sang in the great chestnut-tree at the farther corner of the yard; tree-toads trilled, and frogs peeped, and through all could just be heard the rapids up the river. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... scene confronted her. The green crescent of the Horseshoe blanched to foam, as it leaped to the stony gulf below, the wreaths of mist floating up, gilded by the sunshine; the maddened rush of the tossing, frothing, whirling rapids seething like melted gold as the western radiance smote the bubbling surface; the scarlet flakes of foliage clinging to the trees on Goat Island, and far above, on the wooded height beyond, the picturesque outlines ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... marvellously is this country watered that, from end to end of the Peninsula, no two hills are found, but there is a stream of some sort in the gut which divides them. Far up-country, the rivers run riot through long successions of falls and rapids, but as they near the coast, they settle down into broad imposing looking streams, miles wide in places, but for the most part uniformly shallow, the surfaces of which are studded with green islands and ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... not try some other stream?" Harry questioned. "I've heard that the Madeira is full of falls and rapids." ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson

... sickness, of lurking enemies, and pining famine. Stormy lakes, those great inland seas, are no obstacles to his wanderings; in his light canoe of bark he sports like a feather on their waves, and darts with the swiftness of an arrow down the roaring rapids of the rivers. His very subsistence is snatched from the midst of toil and peril. He gains his food by the hardships and dangers of the chase; he wraps himself in the spoils of the bear, the panther, and the buffalo, and sleeps among ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... and a garden private and closed only for a day or a couple of days a week, and at other times open to the well-behaved public. Who, in a really civilised community, would grudge that measure of invasion? Walls could be taxed by height and length, and the enclosure of really natural beauties, of rapids, cascades, gorges, viewpoints, and so forth made impossible. So a reasonable compromise between the vital and conflicting claims of the freedom of movement and the freedom of ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... of our journey through the wilderness is clear in my mind. At that time the railroad terminated at Grand Rapids, Michigan, and we covered the remaining distance—about one hundred miles—by wagon, riding through a dense and often trackless forest. My brother James met us at Grand Rapids with what, in those days, was called a lumber-wagon, but which had ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... transport being at least four hundred and fifty miles, and many go much farther, through an open and ever agitated fresh water sea, and amongst the intricate channels of The Thousand Islands, and down the tremendous rapids of the Longue Sault, the Gallope, ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... in a sailing vessel to Montreal, and from thence Kingston was reached by stage waggons, which conveyed them along the banks of the river where the navigation was impeded by rapids, though the greater part of the journey was performed in large boats up the St Lawrence and through the beautiful lake of the ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston

... the carcase of the huge she-bear, when it and the surrounding mass of snow began perceptibly to glide onwards over the edge of the terrific precipice. I have seen a poor fellow sitting in a boat, utterly beyond his control, gliding rapidly down the rapids towards the falls of Niagara. Quicker and quicker it has moved, till, reaching the edge, it has seemed to hover for a moment, as if unwilling to make the fatal plunge, and then over it has leaped with the rapidity of lightning, and it and its hapless occupant have been for ever hid from human ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston

... rapids in their course, Like madden'd, living things rush on, With wild, unhesitating force, To where ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young

... There is room for that sort of thing between Vancouver and Halifax. They had been in some "tough scraps" which they saw clear-eyed, as they would see a boxing- match or a spill from a canoe into a Canadian rapids. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... This has not arisen from any defect in the river, which above the falls is smooth and of sufficient depth for large vessels; but from the habits of the French settlers, who are partial to canoes, which they set through the rapids with poles at a great rate, and with which they shoot the cataracts and rapids with ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher

... Edward become familiar with a degree of physical excitement which touches the very verge of intoxication; yet, strong in self-confidence, and deluded by the customs of society, he dreamed not of danger. The traveller who has passed above the rapids of Niagara may have noticed the spot where the first white sparkling ripple announces the downward tendency of the waters. All here is brilliancy and beauty; and as the waters ripple and dance in the sunbeam, they seem only as if inspired by a spirit ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... envy; the risk of the one-talent man is his hopelessness. Why should this insignificant bubble on the great stream of life inflate itself with self-importance? Why should it not just drift along with the current and be lost in the first rapids of the stream? Now Christ's first appeal to this sense of insignificance is {134} this,—that in the sight of God there is no such thing as an insignificant life. Taken by itself, looked at in its own independent personality, ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... and commerce. Wilmington has ever since profited by its excellent situation, with the level moorland for industry, the river for traffic, and the first terraces or hills of the Piedmont for residence; and, for scenery, the Brandywine tumbling through rocks and bowlders in a long series of rapids. ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher

... character of the stream, throughout its whole course for several miles, was to present a constant succession of changes, from deep and almost still water, to shallow and rapid currents, rippling over beds of sand and gravel. One of these rapids, or rips, as they were called, the boys had just passed; it being in one of them, though one more broad and less rapid than many of the others, that they had pursued and overtaken the boat. In the smooth and still water below, therefore, ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott

... He had fitted into the camp partly by changing it to fit himself, and he no longer felt that his stay there was a temporary shift. When it was to end, he neither knew nor cared. He realized only that he was enjoying life as he never had done before. His canoe had passed a lot of rapids and was now in a steady, unbroken stream—but it was the swift shoot before the fall. A lull in the clamour does not mean the end of war, but a new onset preparing; and, of course, it came in ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... Wagons are stranded everywhere where the tide could carry them. As I wipe the moistened glass, I see nothing but water, pattering on the deck from the lowering clouds, dashing against the window, dripping from the willows, hissing by the wheels, everywhere washing, coiling, sapping, hurrying in rapids, or swelling at last into deeper and vaster lakes, awful in their ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... of a lofty precipice, and descending into a lakelet bordered with red, blue, and yellow lilies. Again it was a natural bridge, spanning a deep chasm or tunnel in the rock, through which a river boiled and roared in a series of cascades and rapids. Ever and anon we passed over glades and prairies, carpeted with orchids, and dotted with clumps of shrubbery, a mass of golden bloom, or tremendous blocks of basalt hung with crimson creepers. Butterflies with azure wings of a surprising spread and lustre, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... here; but two companies of riflemen were landed and drove it back into the woods, without loss. The boats discharged the British unopposed, who now set forward afoot through the forest to follow the left bank of the stream, which, leaving the lake tranquilly, is broken presently by stony rapids and grows smooth again only as it nears its new reservoir. Smooth, rapid, and smooth again, it sweeps round a long bend; and this bend the British prepared to follow, leaving a force to ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Incas, and was there urged by the Peruvian authorities to visit some newly re-discovered Inca ruins. As readers of "Across South America" will remember, these ruins were at Choqquequirau, an interesting place on top of a jungle-covered ridge several thousand feet above the roaring rapids of the great Apurimac. There was some doubt as to who had originally lived here. The prefect insisted that the ruins represented the residence of the Inca Manco and his sons, who had sought refuge from Pizarro and the Spanish ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... love is never without its rapids, and it was not long before Orca's visits to Sipelie began to be talked about among the nobles. So at last the news came to the ears of the Lady Ildea, the prime minister's daughter, who hoped to win Prince Orca herself. The Lady Ildea's temper ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... till it flowed through a canon four and a half miles across. Though they knew from the wide discoloration of Cortlandt Bay that the volume of water discharged was tremendous, the stream seldom moved at a rate of more than five miles an hour, and for a time was free from rocks and rapids, from which they concluded that it must be very deep. Half an hour later they saw a cloud of steam or mist, which expanded, and almost obscured the sky as they approached. Next they heard a sound like distant thunder, which they took for the prolonged eruption of some giant crater, though they ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... entitled "An act providing for the sale of the tract of land at the lower rapids of Sandusky River," passed on the 27th day of April, 1816, it was enacted that all the lands in the said tract, except the reservations made in the said act, should be offered for sale to the highest bidder at Wooster, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson

... turned out some work worthy of the Pioneer-book. Ted joined in too, and began a black-and-white series of his own, parodying the acts of the distinguished sportsman: Vincent attacked by a skunk; Vincent swarming up a pine tree with a bear hanging on to his trousers' legs; Vincent shooting the rapids in his canoe—canoe uppermost; and so on. Ted was so much entertained with his own performances that he was actually heard to laugh. And when the boy laughed, the man laughed too. As for Katherine, she could have cried, knowing that ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... through it I thought more than once that the day of drowning was upon us also, for in places there were deep rapids which nearly swept us away. But Leo, who waded, leading the Khan's horse by the bridle, felt his path and supported himself with the spear shaft, so that in the end we ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... All these, and the rapids above, and the whirlpool below, and the four-and-a-half million horse-power of the Falls, have been so often described by abler pens and more fertile imaginations, that the effort would be a failure and the result ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... same effect when a stone was thrown into a boil of river-rapids; an enhancement and marvellous entanglement of swiftness and fury, and spread of broken circles, which confused the sight at the ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... the spur. Shore-lines blurred to a green streak. The frosty air met our faces in wind. Gurgling waters curled from the prow in corrugated runnels. And we were running a swift race with a tumult of waves, mounting the swell, dipping, rising buoyant, forward in bounds, with a roar of the nearing rapids, and spray dashing athwart in drifts. M. Radisson braced back. The prow lifted, shot into mid-air, touched water again, and went whirling through the mill-race that boiled below a waterfall. Once the canoe aimed straight as an arrow for rocks in mid-current. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... the canoe was brought to a stop, and our voyageurs remained listening. The noise made by the water was not very distant, and sounded like the roaring of "rapids," or the rush of a "fall." It was evidently one or the other; but, after listening to it for a considerable time, all came to the conclusion that the sound did not proceed from the Red River itself, but from some stream that emptied into ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... feet, which would seem to give a descent of nine or ten feet a mile, yet, as the course of the river throughout this part of its career is tortuous in the extreme, the fall is really not greater than above indicated. Still it is sufficient to produce as many as twenty-seven rapids, or at the rate of one to every seven miles. In this part of its course the Jordan receives two important tributaries, each of which seems ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson

... neared the rapids and narrow places where the water dashed over its rocky bed, it looked as if he would be unable to keep his seat upon the raft; but as this was the very section, where, above all others, he wished to keep his feet ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... me as quickly as you can!' said Prevost as he stepped on board his vessel. There were 210 miles to go. A day was lost in collecting boats enough for this sudden emergency. Another day was lost en route by a gale so terrific that even the French-Canadian voyageurs were unable to face it. The rapids, where so many of Amherst's men had been drowned in 1760, were at their very worst; and the final forty miles had to be made overland by marching all night through dense forest and along a particularly difficult trail. Yet Macdonell ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood

... far the rapids roar, Fretting their margin for evermore. Dash, dash, With a mighty crash, They seethe, and boil, ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... growing stronger, growing presently, in the great multitude of cases, to passionate preferences and powerful desires. This flow of sex comes like a great river athwart the plain of our personal and egoistic schemes, a great river with its rapids, with its deep and silent places, a river of uncertain droughts, a river of overwhelming floods, a river no one who would escape drowning may afford to ignore. Moreover, it is the very axis and creator of our world valley, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... hundred stalwart sons of the Maple Land. Great, strong fellows they were, all with the iron muscles and steady, clear eyes of the expert riverman. For these were the famous voyageurs, trained from childhood on the rapids and cataracts of Canadian streams and summoned now to the help of the mother country on the ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... trees crack in the keen morning blast, And see how the rapids are cover'd with steam; Thaw your axes, my lads, the sun rises fast, And gilds the pine tops with his ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... The only body of water with which she had been familiar hitherto was Lake Michigan. Now she drew stones out of the bank and made dams and waterfalls. She sailed boats of chips and watched them shoot the tiny rapids. She lay down on the bank beside Anna Belle and gazed up through the leafy treetops. Many times this programme had been varied, when at last equipages began to pass on the road above. She could see twinkling wheels and ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... very happy till noon then come very high winds, and much rough water, after long time men begin loud shoutings, and take down high covers from overhead. "What matter, What matter?" every body cry out, all fear some trouble come, boatmen say - "Now come to rapids, very swift, ...
— Seven Maids of Far Cathay • Bing Ding, Ed.

... of the amusing anomalies of the British constitution, that the great city from whose political fame these names are inseparable should have had no representation in Parliament from Cromwell's time to Victoria's. Fancy Akron, Ohio, or Grand Rapids, Michigan, without ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells

... last partner is up there with it, moving it along by himself down the other side. His name's Liverpool, and he's a sailor. So, when the boat's built, he's the boss of the outfit to navigate the lakes and rapids to Klondike. ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... a larger scale, has been adopted by I. B. Gilbert, principal of the Union High School, Grand Rapids, Michigan, which houses twelve ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... and went lengthwise into the rapids. He ran down the bank and I after him. The pole was speeding through the swift water. We scrambled over logs and through bushes, but the pole went faster than we. Presently it stopped and swung around. Uncle Eb went splashing into the brook. Almost within reach of the pole he dashed his foot upon ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... much to be doubted. Whilst General Montgomery lay before Quebec, and expected to obtain possession of the place, he extended his views to its preservation. His plan required a permanent army of ten thousand men; strong fortifications at Jacques Cartier, and the rapids of Richelieu; and armed vessels in the river, above the last place. With this army and these precautions, he thought the country might be defended; but ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... ulster, ornamented with big buttons of mother-of-pearl, a pair of Turkish slippers, a bathing-towel over his shoulder, and for head-covering just his uncombed native thatch) he had gone for a swim, some half a mile upstream, to a place he knew where the Rampio—the madcap Rampio, all shallows and rapids—rests for a moment in a pool, wide and deep, translucent, inviting, and, as you perceive when you have made your plunge, of a most assertive chill. Now he was on his leisurely way home, to the presbytery and what passed ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland

... and Paganel just then came out of the wagon on purpose to examine the state of the river. They found it still so swollen by the heavy rain that the water was a foot above the level. It formed an impetuous current, like the American rapids. To venture over that foaming current and that rushing flood, broken into a thousand eddies and hollows ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... be avoided by their arrest," he said, sadly; "but the evil would only be postponed, not eradicated. The conspirators have entered the rapids: they will be allowed to go over ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... rise, there was a roaring sound; Kyla swung up and balanced on a rock-wedged tree root, cupped her mouth to her hands and called, "Rapids!" ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... lowland brooks coiled smoothly through the fields, And softly spread themselves in glistening lakes Whose ripples merrily danced among the reeds. The standing waves that ever keep their place In the swift rapids, curled upon themselves, And seemed about to break and never broke; And all the wandering waves that fill the sea Came buffeting in along the stony shore, Or plunging in along the level sands, Or creeping in along the winding creeks And inlets. Yet from all the ceaseless flow And turmoil of ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... without incident. I played bridge with a furniture dealer from Grand Rapids, a sales agent for a Pittsburg iron firm and a young professor from an eastern college. I won three rubbers out of four, finished what cigarettes McKnight had left me, and went to bed at one o'clock. It was growing cooler, and the rain had ceased. Once, toward morning, I wakened with a start, ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago, an extension of the Pennsylvania road, was completed to Chicago in 1858. At the beginning of 1859 the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad reached the Missouri River, and eight years later the Cedar Rapids and Missouri was completed to the ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... drowsily happy. She had got through. She was conscious of rustling sagebrush, of the rapids of the Yellowstone beside her, of open sky and sweet air and a scorn for people in stuffy rooms, and comfortably ever conscious of Milt, ten feet away. She had in him the interest that a young physician ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... that Jan did and hurried off to the brook, a basket on her arm, and carrying in a little tin box the worms to bait her hooks. Thus equipped, she went off to the brook, which came gushing down the rocky steep in numerous falls and rapids, between which were short stretches of dark still water and places where the stream ran, clear and transparent, over a bed of ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof

... Mohawk River rises in Lewis County (northwestern N.Y.), flows south to Rome, then east to the Hudson River which it enters at Cohoes. It is 160 miles long. There are rapids and falls at Little Falls and Oriskany which have been utilized to develop electric power. The Mohawk valley is noted for its beauty and the fertility of its soil. The name Mohawk is probably derived from an Indian word meaning ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous

... should be posted at Quebec; that M. de Bourlemaque should hasten to Ticonderoga, blow up the works at the approach of the English, retire by the Lake to Isle-aux-Noix, and there stubbornly resist. With 800 regulars and militia, the Chevalier de la Corne was directed to hold the rapids above Montreal, to entrench himself in a strong position, and hold out to the last. It is, therefore, obvious, that the evacuation of Ticonderoga was determined upon; and that the retention of Niagara was not much desired. The intended march upon Quebec, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... if he sees that his child makes no account of some precious gift that he has bestowed upon him, and leaves it lying about anywhere. A loving friend, standing on the margin of the stream, and calling to his friends in a boat when they are drifting to the rapids, turns away sad if they do not attend to his voice. That Divine Spirit pleads with us, and proffers its gifts to us, and turns away—I was going to use too strong a word, perhaps—sick at heart, not because of wounded authority, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... will remain with me while life shall last:—The purple and gold of a glorious sunset over Etna, the Greek theatre of Taormina in front of me, with the sea below—a shimmering opal that melted away in the haze beyond Syracuse; the awful rapids raging furiously below Niagara, a very ocean tortured and maddened to blind fury, pouring its irresistible torrents through the chasm above the whirlpool; and again, a cloudless October morning, with just the keen zest of early autumn ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... early at the ground where the king promised game; but here the character of the country had altered, and in place of the swift, smoothly-flowing river, they had entered upon a part where it was broken up with rapids, long ranges of rocks stretching across the river like weirs and keeping the waters back, but making a series of rapids, down which the river rushed ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn

... looked after the tackle. Beresford's Naval Brigade used to tramp fifteen miles a day along the river, sometimes work as many hours with no spell off for dinner, haul the whaleboats up-stream to where the rapids made a big loop, and then, avoiding the loop, portage them across the neck of land into the river again. Handling these boats in the killing heat would have been hard enough in any case; but it was ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... man after man had tried to split it, but lost his wedges for his pains—which wedges yet rusted in their holes; on, where, ages past, in step-like ledges of a cascade, skull-hollow pots had been churned out by ceaseless whirling of a flintstone—ever wearing, but itself unworn; on, by wild rapids pouring into a secret pool, but soothed by circling there awhile, issued forth serenely; on, to less broken ground, and by a little ring, where, truly, fairies must have danced, or else some wheel-tire been heated—for all was bare; still ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com