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Rivulet

noun
1.
A small stream.  Synonyms: rill, run, runnel, streamlet.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Rivulet" Quotes from Famous Books



... the water lapped softly over the moss and trickled down the northern slope of the hill in a little rivulet, which had in the course of time shaped itself a deep, well-defined bed a yard or two across. Following this, the boy soon came out upon the grassy slope beside the sheep-pen. He looked in at the placid flock, ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... the Allee de Longchamp as far as the road going from Madrid to the lakes. Then they took their way under the trees, alongside the little Longchamp rivulet. They wished to reach the lakes, pass round them, and return home by way of the Maillot gate. But so charming and peaceful was the deserted plantation through which they passed, that they yielded to a desire to sit down and taste ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... away from its marble hall and guardian gods, arose, from their beds of moss and drosera and darkest grass, the sisterhood of oleanders, fond of tantalizing with their bosomed flowers and their moist and pouting blossoms the little shy rivulet, and of covering its face with all the colours of the dawn. My dream expanded and moved forward. I trod again the dust of Posilipo, soft as the feathers in the wings of Sleep. I emerged on Baia; I crossed her innumerable arches; I ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... a while to let our horses rest and eat grass. [Footnote: Dr Johnson, in his Journey, thus beautifully describes his situation here: 'I sat down on a bank, such as a writer of romance might have delighted to feign. I had, indeed, no trees to whisper over my head; but a clear rivulet streamed at my feet. The day was calm, the air soft, and all was rudeness, silence, and solitude. Before me, and on either side, were high hills, which, by hindering the eye from ranging, forced the mind to find ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... as ours can the heart pour forth its effusions like a strong spring discharging ever so many gallons in a minute, either into pipes that conduct it through some great Metropolitan city, or into a water-course that soon becomes a rivulet, then a stream, then a river, then a lake, and then a sea. Would Fancy luxuriate? Then let her expand wings of prose. In verse, however irregular, her flight is lime-twigged, and she soon takes to hopping on the ground. Would Imagination dive? Let the bell in which ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... homes in comfortable farmhouses, and cultivated the rich soil on the gentle slopes or level surfaces of the valley. Others, again, were congregated into populous villages, where some wild, highland rivulet, tumbling down from its birthplace in the upper mountain region, had been caught and tamed by human cunning, and compelled to turn the machinery of cotton-factories. The inhabitants of this valley, in short, were numerous, and of many modes of life. But all of ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... in Alencon, the invisible manipulator of elections, and did immense harm to the Restoration by the cleverness of his underhand proceedings and the perfidy of his outward behavior. Du Bousquier, like all those who live by their heads only, carried on his hatreds with the quiet tranquillity of a rivulet, feeble apparently, but inexhaustible. His hatred was that of a negro, so peaceful that it deceived the enemy. His vengeance, brooded over for fifteen years, was as yet satisfied by no victory, not ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... quicksands, a feeling of delicious uneasiness for the first time possessed me. Some owls hooted in the depth of the woods, and wild pigs, darting across the road, went crashing into the bushes. The phosphorescent bark of a blasted tree glimmered on a neighboring knoll, and as I halted at a rivulet to water my beast, I saw a solitary star floating down the ripples. Directly I came upon a clearing where the moonlight shone through the rents of a crumbling dwelling, and from the far distance broke the faint howl of farm dogs. A sense of insecurity ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... Peggy, after the first terrified "Ow!" as the hot chocolate deluged her, sat still, apparently afraid of making matters worse if she stirred. Margaret, after ringing the bell violently to call Elizabeth, promptly checked the threatening rivulet on the table with her napkin, and then, seizing Peggy's, proceeded to sop up the pool as ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards

... stood upon a hill or gentle eminence, the guns from which commanded the whole plain by which alone it could be approached; and this plain was low, and intersected on the right, in front of Blenheim, by a rivulet which flows down by a gentle descent to the Danube, and in front of Oberglau by another rivulet, which runs in two branches till within a few paces of the Danube; into which it also empties itself. These rivulets had bridges over them at the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... or more of the streets there runs a swift, clear little stream, which, being close to the pavement, and bordered with stone, may be called, I suppose, a kennel, though possessing the transparent purity of a rustic rivulet. It is a brook in city garb. We passed under the pointed arch of a gateway, which stands in one of the principal streets, and soon ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... dried up 'after a while'; and Elijah, no doubt, would wonder what was to be done next, as he saw it daily sending a thinner thread to Jordan. But he was not told till the channel was dry, and the pebbles in its bed bleaching in the sun. God makes us sometimes wait on beside a diminishing rivulet, and keeps us ignorant of the next step, till it is dry. Patience is an element in strength. It was a far cry from Cherith to Zarephath, right across the kingdom of Ahab; and to run for refuge to a dependency of Zidon, Jezebel's country, looked like putting his head ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... at furious pace all during the summer and fall. The water, then not more than a rivulet, was deflected through flumes from the river bed, so that all the sand of the bars could ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill

... the leaf of the buri palm-tree (corypha sp.), manufacture pandanus mats, and carry on a profitable trade at Mauban with the placer miners of North Camarines. The entire breadth of the road is covered with cement, and along its center flows, in an open channel, a sparkling rivulet. ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... or other of sister Alice," at last he grunted, "putting off her time in Edinburgh. They ought to have been here by two o'clock, and here it is eight, and not a sound of their wheels. That cursed rivulet, to be sure, drowns everything else; 'tis worse than our hundred-horse engine. I wish they were here, for being a Highland chieftain is lonely work after all—no coffee-house—no club—no newspaper. Hobbins was right enough in saying, 'I should soon tire;' but ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... the coldest mornings of January, that this little army bivouacked on the banks of a small rivulet, distant, little more than a league from the position which had been taken up by the Americans. So unexpected and rapid had been the advance of the expedition, that not the slightest suspicion appeared to have been entertained by the Americans ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... the NE. corner of Kent, from the mainland of which it is separated by the Stour and the rivulet Nethergong; on its shores, washed by the North Sea, stand the popular watering-places, Ramsgate, Margate, and Broadstairs; the north-eastern extremity, the North Foreland, is crowned ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... kindly voice, but heard The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, The league-long roller thundering on the reef, The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, As down the shore he ranged, or all day long Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail: No sail from day to day, but every day The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts Among ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... deep voice came again over the water towards us: "Pull ashore, lads, and fill your water casks." The men obeyed in silence, and it seemed to me as if even their hard hearts were shocked by the ruthless deed. On gaining the mouth of the rivulet at which we intended to take in water, we found it flowing with blood, for the greater part of those who were slain had been standing on the banks of the stream, a short way above its mouth. Many of the wretched creatures had fallen into it, and we found one body, which had ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... storm seemed gathering on the Jura. The rain dashed against the panes of the berime, as we rode past the grim-faced monarch of the "misty shroud." A cold wind went sweeping by, and the Rhone was rushing far below, discernible only in the distance as a rivulet of flashing foam. It was night as we drove into Geneva, and stopped at the Messagerie. I heard with joy a voice demanding if this were Monsieur Besshare. I replied, not without some scruples of conscience, "Oui, monsieur, c'est moi," though the name did not sound exactly like the one to which ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... he says, "when I was thinking of 'Marmion.'" His two chief powers in verse are his narrative and his pictorial power. His boyhood was passed in the Borderland of Scotland— "a district in which every field has its battle and every rivulet its song;" and he was at home in every part of the Highlands and the Lowlands, the Islands and the Borders, of his native country. But, both in his novels and his poems, he was a painter of action ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... by the absorption of small states that the Chinese people grew to greatness. The present work will trace their history as they emerge, like a rivulet, from the highlands of central Asia and, increasing in volume, flow, like a stately river, toward the eastern ocean. Revolutions many and startling are to be recorded: some, like that in the epoch of the Great Wall, which stamped the impress of unity upon ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... fetch water from the brook which flows through the Vale of Thorns. Slowly and feebly he tottered onward, but not far: his strength failed and he fell to the ground. Soon Roland recovered from his swoon and looked about him. On the green grass this side of the rivulet, he saw the archbishop lying. The good ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin

... part by a vineyard, and on the other by a wood, remarkable for the projection of its rocks, and the height of its hazel trees. On the right hand of the promontory, between the castle and the church, near the site of a very large lake and mill, a rivulet of never-failing water flows through a valley, rendered sandy by the violence of the winds. Towards the west, the Severn sea, bending its course to Ireland, enters a hollow bay at some distance from the castle; and the southern rocks, if extended ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis

... creek yonder," said Jack, and Tom hastened up the road to where, beneath the small wooden bridge, there flowed a rivulet ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner

... rest. This lonely yew-tree stands Far from all human dwelling: what if here No sparkling rivulet spread the verdant herb; What if these barren boughs the bee not loves; Yet, if the wind breathe soft, the curling waves, That break against the shore, shall lull thy mind By one soft ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge

... the abominable city of Goride, where we had suffered so many vexations, and continued, our journey through forests and over mountains, occasionally falling in with villages where we purchased provisions. We had always to pass the nights on the ground near some spring or rivulet, during most part of our journey through Mingrelia ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... from this town there is a small country place of singular beauty. The house stands on the brow of a green hill, the front looking over a magnificent neighbouring park, varied with grove, and lake, and rivulet. At the back is a trimly kept garden of tufts of flowers, like enormous bouquets thrown on the green velvet sward, with here and there a sombre cypress or cedar in pleasant contrast. A succession of small terraces, with steep grassy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... thoroughly en rapport with my surroundings, I took up my abode in a palace, as I have said. It was on one of the side streets, to be sure, but it was yet a palace, and a beautiful one. And that street! It was a rivulet of beauty, in which could be seen myriads of golden-hued fish at play, which as the gondola passed to and fro would flirt into hiding until the intruder had passed out of sight in the Grand Canal, after which they would come slowly back again to render the silver ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... lone pile with ivy overspread, Fast by the rivulet's sleep-persuading sound, Where 'sleeps the moonlight' on yon verdant bed— O ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... protesting against having been born into so sulphurous an existence. Here and there a well, with its huge lumbering wheel and patient bullocks, went creaking and groaning night and day, as if earth grudged the tiny rivulet coming so toilfully from her dry breast, and gave it up with sighs of pain. The sky was cloudless, pitiless, brazen. The sun rose into it without a single fleck of vapour to mitigate its fierceness ... all day it shone and glistened and blazed, until the very ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... sedately watering a well-barbered terrace. Still farther away, somebody, in one of the deep-shadowed porches, is tinkling a ukelele, and somebody that I can't see is somewhere beating a rug. I can see a little rivulet of water that flows sparkling down the asphalted runnel of the curb. Then the clump of bamboos back by Peter's bedroom window rustles crisply again and is quiet and the silence is broken by a nurse-maid calling to a child sitting ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... they could rally, however, Romero led off his arquebusiers, every one of whom had at least killed his man. Six hundred of the Prince's troops had been put to the sword, while many others were burned in their beds, or drowned in the little rivulet which flowed outside their camp. Only sixty Spaniards ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the kettle against a chair-back, and the seething, bubbling mess of sticky brown syrup poured in a flood over furniture, girl and floor, and trickled in a rivulet around the brim of her father's hat carelessly laid on the table while he wrestled with a refractory buckle on his grip, packed ready for his departure. A gasp of dismay escaped her lips, and Tabitha stood aghast in the midst ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown

... small in quantity, doubtless, just at this moment and just at this spot. But what of that little going on week after week, and century after century, throughout the whole course of the river, and throughout the whole course of every river and rivulet in our whole country and in every other country. A vast amount of material must every year be thus torn from the land and given to the ocean. For the land's loss here is the ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... the rivulet of Vaucluse. Its course is through the town of Avignon; where we remained for three hours, and then continued our journey; but the day was far advanced, and by the evening we only arrived at a wretched, little ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... valley came a little wimpling rivulet like the remains of the river that had once been. They drank from it and rested and had some food, then they started with light hearts, taking the easy ascent to the high ground, treading a moss dark and springy ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... the hills, which are here broken into a circular valley, cut off, to all appearance, from the rest of the habitable world; behind them rose a towering crag, as perpendicular as the drop of a plummet, from the top of which a little rivulet came tumbling down, giving to the scene an appearance of the most delightful coolness, and amusing the ear with the unceasing roar of a waterfall. From the very face of the cliff, where there seemed to be scarcely ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... implying a kind of hollow or ravine through which a rivulet runs, the banks on either side being ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... that this value will depend much upon the spirit and skill of the general. The great leader who crossed the Saint-Bernard and ordered the passage of the Splugen was far from believing in the impregnability of these chains; but he was also far from thinking that a muddy rivulet and a walled inclosure could change ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... know not if a St. Ower is to be found in the calendar; if there is, it will, by adding "wijk," or "wych," a district or boundary, be no great stretch of invention to account for a transition from "St. Ower wijch" to Stirbitch; or perhaps from a rivulet which empties itself into the Cam at Quy-water, small streams, in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various

... parish of Aston, on our left. Before we come to the Floodgates, near Vaughton's Hole, we pass by the Longmores, a small part of King's-norton. Crossing the river Rea, we enter the vestiges of a small rivulet, yet visible, though the stream hath been turned, perhaps, a thousand years, to supply the moat. We now bear rather west, nearly in a straight line for three miles, to Shirland brook, with Edgbaston on the left. At the top of the first meadow from the river Rea, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... not chang'd their Friendship—'What ails you, Agnes? (said the Princess to her, in a soft Tone, and with her ordinary Sweetness) And what new Misfortune causes that sadness in thy Looks? Madam (reply'd Agnes, shedding a Rivulet of Tears) the Obligations and Ties I have to you, put me upon a cruel Tryal; I had bounded the Felicity of my Life in hope of passing it near your Highness, yet I must carry to some other part of the World this unlucky Face of mine, which ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... is well provided with water, and its fountains stand in fine open squares: a pretty rivulet runs through the greatest part, and turns several mills for corn, oil, cotton and tan; it is called the Ante, and gives name to the valley it embellishes as it runs glittering along amongst the rugged stones which impede its way with a gentle murmur, making a chorus to the ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... overhead, Where the rivulet loiters and stops, The bittersweet hangs from the tops Of the alders and cherries Its bunches of ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman

... glanced at the rivulet, And that pause than speech was worse, For his roving eye a saw-mill met, And, near it, the word which should be set At the end of ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl

... filled up from flank to flank with the ghiara or pebbly bottom of the Taro. The Taro is not less wasteful than any other of the brotherhood of streams that pour from Alp or Apennine to swell the Po. It wanders, an impatient rivulet, through a wilderness of boulders, uncertain of its aim, shifting its course with the season of the year, unless the jaws of some deep-cloven gully hold it tight and show how insignificant it is. As we advance, the hills approach again; between their skirts there is nothing ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... extremely desirous of fighting; and of Scipio's absence, who, by reason of his wound, could not be present in the battle. Mago was therefore ordered to lie in ambush with two thousand men, consisting of horse and foot, on the steep banks of a small rivulet which ran between the two camps, and to conceal himself among the bushes that were very thick there. An ambuscade is often safer in a smooth open country, but full of thickets, as this was, than in woods, because such a spot is less apt to be suspected. He afterwards caused a detachment ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... little rivulet, gently rippling over pebbles, soon mingled with the sand, and was lost in the waters of the mighty ocean. The murmuring of the waves, as the tide ebbed or flowed, on the sand; their dashing against some more ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... Street. On its farther side, straight in front of him, the narrowest street he had ever seen, a rivulet of a street, with leaning houses which nearly formed an arcade, stretched to a wonderful gray gateway, immensely massive, with towers at its corners, and rows of shields ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... find The only two of mankind, but in them The whole included race, his purposed prey. In bower and field he sought, where any tuft Of grove or garden-plot more pleasant lay, Their tendance, or plantation for delight; By fountain or by shady rivulet He sought them both, but wished his hap might find Eve separate; he wished, but not with hope Of what so seldom chanced; when to his wish, Beyond his hope, Eve separate he spies, Veiled in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood, Half spied, so thick the roses blushing round About her glowed, oft stooping ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... "The rivulet, late unseen, Where bickering through the shrubs its waters run, Shines with the image of its golden screen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... end of the village, which runs from south-east to north-west, arises a small rivulet: that at the north-west end frequently fails; but the other is a fine perennial spring, little influenced by drought or wet seasons, called Well-head. This breaks out of some high grounds joining to Nore Hill, a noble chalk promontory, remarkable for sending ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... to some tracks in the selvedge of sand that lined the bank of the rivulet. There, sure enough, were the foot-prints of a large animal; and, upon inspecting them closely, they could easily be distinguished as those of a creature of the cat tribe. There were the pads or cushions smoothly imprinted in the sand, and the slight impression of the claws—for ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... road gave one a good idea of the cause of this disaster. Every creek was a rushing river and every rivulet a raging torrent. The ground was water soaked, and when the immense mountain district that drains into the Conemaugh above South Fork is taken into consideration the terrible volume of water that must have accumulated can be realized. Gathering, as it did, within a few minutes, it ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... space, called Maka Paka, which, although of small extent, and uneven, afforded abundance of wood and water; while at Bhimphedi the supply of the latter is scanty, and it is practicable from Maka Paka to go over the hill of Chisapani, and in one day to reach the fine rivulet called Panauni, which is on its north side. Between Maka Paka and Hethaura are a few cleared spots, like it cultivated by rude tribes, who shun all communication with travellers, and dwell in the recesses of forests which protect ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... county had a county town, and it was always on a river. Mr. Sandsome never allowed us a town without that colophon. I remember in my early manhood going to Guildford on the Wey, and trying to find that unobtrusive rivulet. I went over the downs for miles. It is not only the Wey I have had a difficulty in finding. There are certain verses—Heaven help me, but I have forgotten them!—about "i vel e dat" (was it ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... fruit trees of all kinds, and trees and flowering shrubs and vines around the pretty cottage. There wuz a little pasture where he wuz to keep his cow and a horse, that she could take him with to his work mornings and drive round where she wanted to, and there wuz a meadow lot with a little rivulet running through it, and they had already planned a rustic bridge over the dancing stream, and a trout pond, and she had set out on its borders some water lilies, pink and white, and Showy Ladies and other ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... delighted the eye with the gay livery of a thousand bright colors, and intoxicated the senses with its perfumes. Everywhere the natural capacities of the soil were stimulated by a minute system of irrigation, which drew the fertilizing moisture from every stream and rivulet that rolled down the declivities of the Andes; while the terraced sides of the mountains were clothed with gardens and orchards that teemed with fruits of various latitudes. The Spaniards could not sufficiently admire the industry with which the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... man, and silent. Other folk, younger or older, married or single, had come hither of a morning, and he spoke the name of none. He welcomed these two after his fashion. Under the shade of a great tree, which flung an arm out to the rivulet, he pulled out a little table spread in white and departed to tell his wife of the company. She, busy and smiling, came out presently with her best in old china and linen and wherewith to ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough

... five days, this party of forty or fifty warriors, with their captives, approached their destined village. It was far away in the northern wilderness, east of the Mississippi, which majestic stream had there dwindled into a rivulet. They were near the head waters of a river, since called the St. Francis. It was indeed a dreary and savage wild which they had penetrated, and from whose glooms the captives could not expect ever to emerge. In some way the inhabitants of the village ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... be as much enraged as I am hadst thou seen what I have just beheld. I have been to comfort the young widow Cosrou, who, within these two days, hath raised a tomb to her young husband, near the rivulet that washes the skirts of this meadow. She vowed to heaven, in the bitterness of her grief, to remain at this tomb while the water of the rivulet should continue to run near it."—"Well," said Zadig, "she is an excellent woman, and loved her husband ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... a grassy dell or convenient shady tree with a clear spring or dancing rivulet near by, invokes the tiffin coolie, and if a duly watchful eye has been kept upon that incorrigible sluggard, in short space the contents of the basket deck the sward. What have we here? Yes, of course, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... would dare come." The young woman's voice came cool and aloof as the splash of a mountain rivulet. ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... cradles, and ascending from the valley to the high level plain, I came upon a small lake, whose waters glittered peacefully in the warm sunshine of a bright spring day. A tiny streamlet was still running from the lake, and trickling down the small semi-precipice towards the main rivulet, now sadly muddy, which I had just left. So near was this edge to the lake that I increased the stream by deepening its bed with my foot; but I repented of this waste, and restored the block, because the approaching summer must be thought for, and this natural reservoir ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... he was, her voice may not always have been meaningless for one who knew her haunts so well; deep recesses where, veiled in foliage, some wild shy rivulet steals with timid music through breathless caves of verdure; gulfs where feathered crags rise like castle walls, where the noonday sun pierces with keen rays athwart the torrent, and the mossed arms of fallen pines cast wavering shadows ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... is polluted in the fountain, and its waters are tainted through all its wanderings; and sometimes the traveller throws into a pure rivulet some unclean thing, which floats awhile, and is then rejected from its bosom. Eudora is the pure rivulet. A foreign stain floated on the surface, but ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... erected on the side of a narrow lonely valley, or rather glen, secluded from observation by the steepness of its banks, upon a projection of which stood the tall, shapeless, solitary rock, frowning, like a shrouded giant, over the brawling of the small rivulet which watered the ravine. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... by the combined forces of the Visigoths, Alans, Franks and Romans, and was defeated, with the loss of one hundred and seventy thousand of his men. This was one of the most gigantic as well as one of the most important battles of history. A rivulet flowing through the field of battle is said to have been colored and swollen by the blood of the slain. The next year, however, with a greater force at his command, he fell with headlong fury upon ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... Macquarrie river; this he knew to be to the north-west of the Lachlan. In crossing from the banks of the latter in search of the former, they reached a beautiful valley; in the centre of which flowed a clear and strong rivulet. This they traced till it joined a large river, which they ascertained to be the Macquarrie. From this point to Bathurst Plains, the country was rich ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... young trees, irregularly scattered over fine pasturage, and affording a hundred intricacies so delicious to the eye and the imagination. But some misjudging friend had cut down and cleared away without mercy, and divided the varied and sylvan scene, which was divided by a little rivulet, into the two most formal things in nature—a thriving plantation, many-angled as usual, and a park laid down in grass; wanting therefore the rich graminivorous variety which Nature gives its carpet, and having instead ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... the sky and season in which Egremont emerged on this scene a few days after the incidents recorded in our last chapter. He had been fishing in the park of Mowbray, and had followed the rivulet through many windings until, quitting the enclosed domain it had forced its way through some craggy underwood at the bottom of the hilly moors we have noticed, and finally entering the plain, lost itself in the waters of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... pencil." This score contains various corrections in pencil. Two of these appear to be by Beethoven, but unluckily the pencil marks are so much effaced that it is difficult to decide as to the writing. In the scene "By the Rivulet," where the 12/8 time begins (in B flat major), these words are written, "Violoncelli tutti con Basso." The B especially recalls his mode of writing. Moreover the tempo at the beginning of "The Shepherd's Song," ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace

... on the extreme right, had vigorously resisted the first attack of the columns of Rosenberg, and obliged the Austrians to repass the rivulet of Russbach, and fall back upon Neusiedel. The marshal threw all his forces immediately against them. It was to him that was confided the honor of ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... Wurtemberg they saw "a little rivulet" which began the mighty Danube stream on its way to the Black Sea, and drove up to the inn at Tuttlingen, of which point Cooper wrote: "This is the Black Forest,—The wood was chiefly of larches, whence I presume ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips

... appears to have been cut far more rapidly than the outer one, and at a much later period; were this not the case there would be no inner gorge. It is a singular fact that some side canyons, the Kanab, for example, while now possessing no running water, or at best a puny rivulet, and depending for their corrasion on intermittent floods, meet on equal terms the great Colorado, the giant that never for a second ceases its ferocious attack. Admitting that the sharper declivity of the Kanab would enhance its power of ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... they say, is a little rivulet here in our country in Chaeronea, running into the Cephisus. But we know of none that is so called at the present time; and can only conjecture that the streamlet which is now called Haemon, and runs by the Temple of Hercules, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... girls went over to the rivulet and washed. There was not much water to be had, but it made up in coldness what it lacked in quantity and freshened them greatly. Harriet started to prepare the breakfast as soon as she had washed and dried her face ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge

... in the midst of usurpation, where law is suspended and individual license is the standard authority; where criminals and suspected criminals are turned over to the rude mercy of mobs, masked and irresponsible; where caste corrupts every rivulet that issues from the fountain of aspiration or of chastity;[13] where no man is allowed to think or act for himself who does not conform his thoughts and shape his actions to suit the censorious and haughty ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... out of a great valley. On all sides of them, as far as a man's eye could have reached, there were blue and black patches of forest, the shimmer of lakes still partly frozen, the sunlit sparkle of rivulet and stream, and the greening open spaces out of which rose the perfumes of the earth. These smells drifted up like tonic and food to the nostrils of Noozak the big bear. Down there the earth was already swelling with life. The buds on the poplars were growing fat and near the bursting point; the ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... Theocritus. I wonder the Writers of Pastoral should be so fond of showing their Shepherds Beating Their Ronts, or Scolding With each other, or the like; when they might describe 'em sleeping upon Violets; plaiting rosy Chaplets by a lovely Rivulet; getting Strawberries for a ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney

... books, will you?" asked Ned eagerly. He tossed a coin across and Jerry caught it deftly and dropped it into his pocket with a nod. Ned slammed the door behind him and went clattering downstairs. Jerry watched him emerge below, jump a miniature rivulet flowing beside the board walk and disappear around the corner of the dormitory. Then he got into his sweater, put his cap on, and in turn ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour

... arrived within two miles of the little town in which Mat Kavanagh was fixed, they turned off into a deep glen, a little to the left; and, after having seated themselves under a white-thorn which grew on the banks of a rivulet, they began to devise the best immediate measures to ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... walls which surround those beautiful remains. A clear stream, flowing over a bed of granite, murmured around the enormous blocks of stone, fallen from the top of the wall which obstructed its course. Beautiful sculptures were half concealed in the limpid stream. We passed the rivulet by an arch formed by these fallen remains, and mounting a narrow breach, were soon lost in admiration of the scene which surrounded us. At every step a fresh exclamation of surprise broke from our lips. Every one of the stones of which that wall was composed was from eight to ten feet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... woods were at first open and easy. After a short march they came to a small stream, bright and silvery. But what was the surprise of Rolfe to find that the path here gave out, and on the opposite bank of the rivulet the trees grew closer together, and the woods were almost woven into a solid mass, by the lianas and other creeping plants. These were covered with blossoms. In some places a wall of snow-white flowers rose up before you. Pyramidal forms of foliage, green and yellow, over which hung ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... the highest mountain of the whole ridge, and is bounded by a small rivulet stocked with trouts. This was formerly called Fiends' Fell, from evil spirits, which are said to have haunted its summit, "and to have continued their haunts and nocturnal vagaries upon it, until ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various

... miles boulders of lava on the eastern side; at two and three-quarter miles crossed large creek with plenty of water, which I have called Frank's Creek after F. Marchant, Esquire, of Arkaba north of Adelaide. It comes from southward. At four and a half miles crossed small running rivulet from south; at five miles crossed a larger one from same direction; at six and three-quarter miles crossed a running creek in a swamp from south also; at seven and three-quarter miles crossed a splendid creek ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay

... not my first visit there, so that I may now venture to take my reader with me. To reach the door, I had to cross a hollow by a bridge, built, for the sake of the road, over what had once been the course of a rivulet from the heights above. Now it was a kind of little glen, or what would in Scotland be called a den, I think, grown with grass and wild flowers and ferns, some of them, rare and fine. The roof of the cottage came down to the road, and, until you came quite near, you ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... shrieks and lamentations to the sky. They obliged Kishen Roy to head them and advanced resolutely in astonishing numbers. Upon which the sultan formed his disposition. He laid aside his umbrella, and with one of his arms-bearers, an Afghaun named Mhamood, crossed a small rivulet to observe the numbers and motions of the infidels. A Hindoo, who knew the sultan from the horse he rode, resolved, by revenging the destruction of his gods and country, to gain immortal reputation for himself. ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... find its way through the crack and filter down into the deeper mass; but the dust and sand carried along with it will be caught there, and form a deposit at the bottom of the hole. As day after day, throughout the summer, the rivulet is renewed, it carries with it an additional supply of these light materials, until the opening is gradually filled and the sand is brought to a level with the surface of the ice. We have already seen, that, in consequence of evaporation, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... the first shot. After going about a score of yards, I saw him dash into some bushes and brambles, and following, slipped and rolled down the side of a gully till I found myself scratched and torn sitting in a small rivulet at the bottom with my pipe still in my mouth and my rifle, the barrel of which was half choked with mud, in my hand. Looking round I saw two of our fellows who had led their horses down from the other side. The place could not have been improved on for cover, and ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross

... God in the rolling thunder, and his messengers in the swift-winged lightnings; to mark the forms of beauty and grandeur in every thing, from the humble lichen of the logs and rocks, to the high and towering pine of the plain and the mountain,—from the low murmurings of the quiet rivulet, to the loud thunderings of the headlong cataract,—and from the soft whisperings of the gentle breeze, to the angry roar of the desolating tornado; and, finally, it was here that our first and most enduring lessons of devotion were learned, here that our first and truest conceptions ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... on the slope of a hill stretching east towards the sea-coast, with a broad street about a cannon shot of 800 feet long, leading down the hill; with a [street] crossing in the middle, northwards to the rivulet and southwards to the land. The houses are constructed of hewn planks, with gardens also enclosed behind and at the sides with hewn planks, so that their houses and court-yards are arranged in very good order, with a stockade against a sudden attack; ...
— Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 • Various

... middle of the afternoon I reached the summit of the two watersheds, where a horse's hoof might so dam a balancing stream as to send it southward into the Tay or northward into the Moray Firth. Soon a rivulet welled out in the latter direction with a decided current. It was the Spey. A few miles brought me suddenly into a little, glorious world of beauty. The change of theatrical sceneries could hardly have ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... bird's-eye view or a map of a region shows the significant fact that the valleys of a system unite with one another in a branch work, as twigs meet their stems and the branches of a tree its trunk. Each valley, from that of the smallest rivulet to that of the master stream, is proportionate to the size of the stream which occupies it. With a few explainable exceptions the valleys of tributaries join that of the trunk stream at a level; there is no sudden descent or break in the bed at the point ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... every broad, drooping leaf of that beautiful fern the hart's tongue (Scolopendrium vulgare), was coated with hoar-frost, and sparkling in the rosy sunbeams like the flowers in a magic garden. At Sherbrook Lake, where a rivulet of clear water usually flows along the bottom of the ravine down to the sea, there was now a hard mass of ice, on which our boys rushed for a passing slide; and above, where the deeper water lies under ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various

... impatient to be gone, would not object to his father's desire. They walked forward between a shady grove and a purling rivulet, snuffed in odours from the jessamine banks, and listened to the melody of ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... long familiar with the genus Printer's Devil, small white faces, tangled hair, dirty hands, and greasy caps were common objects in the neighbourhood of that buried rivulet, the Fleet. But this was a new species. Peter Hope sought his spectacles, found them after some trouble under a heap of newspapers, adjusted them upon his high, arched nose, leant forward, and looked long and ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... the force of a balloon, happening to occur exactly at the moment Mr. Brown was stooping with such wistful anxiety over the pavement, that gentleman, to his inexpressible dismay, was absolutely lifted, as it were, from his present footing, and immersed in a running rivulet of liquid mire, which flowed immediately below the pavement. Nor was this all: for the wind, finding itself somewhat imprisoned in the narrow receptacle it had thus abruptly entered, made so strenuous ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... trail twisted and dived down a steep slope. It twisted again and ran across a rushing, frothing stream. Coburn drove into the rivulet. Water reared up in wing-like sheets on either side. The staff car climbed out, rocking, on the farther side. Coburn put it to the ascent beyond. The trail turned and climbed and descended as the stony masses of the ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... had traveled three days he came to the place; and there he found that a dam had been raised across the rivulet, so that no water could pass, for it was all kept in a pond. Then asking them why they had made this mischief, since the dam was of no use to them, they bade him go and see their chief, by whose order this ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... struck with the exotic appearance of this sequestered family, that, crossing a rivulet, I clambered up to their cottage and begged some refreshment. Immediately there was a contention amongst the children, who should be the first to oblige me. A little black- eyed girl succeeded, and brought ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... company be assembled?" he asked. "Strange it is that I know not this spot. Yet I should recognise each tree by conning it, and of every rivulet in Galloway I should be able to tell the name. Yet with shame do I confess that I know not ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... at present there was nothing to be had but a cottage, literally a cotter's home, and this would not do. He brought photographs, and Alma went into raptures over the lovely little bay, with its grassy cliffs, its rivulet, its smooth sand, and the dark-peaked mountains sweeping nobly to a sheer buttress above the waves. 'There must be a house! There shall be a house!' Of course, said Harvey, one could build, and cheaply enough; but that meant a long delay. Regarding the date of the ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... attempt to describe the delicacy of this banquet, where imagination had been racked for novel luxury? Through the centre of each table ran a rivulet of rose-water, and gold and silver fish glanced in its unrivalled course. The bouquets were exchanged every half-hour, and music soft and subdued, but constant and thrilling, wound them up by exquisite ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... collect together the scattered herd of swine, which, answering his call with notes equally melodious, made, however, no haste to remove themselves from the luxurious banquet of beech-mast and acorns on which they had fattened, or to forsake the marshy banks of the rivulet, where several of them, half plunged in mud, lay stretched at their ease, altogether regardless of the voice of their keeper. "The curse of St Withold upon them and upon me!" said Gurth; "if the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... soft as moss; open to the river on the right, with a glimpse of the lovely scenery beyond; and on the left, the clustering trees of the wood. Yet further, through a break in the trees, might be seen a view of the houses of Calne. A little stream, or rivulet, trickled from the wood, and a rustic bridge—more for ornament than use, for a man with long legs could stride the stream well—was thrown over it. Val had reached thus far, when he saw someone standing on the bridge, his arms on the ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... he continued on his way, noting that here beneath the trees the afternoon seemed several hours advanced beyond the time of the sunny open, for the shadows were like twilight. Below the path, crossed and recrossed by rustic bridges, ran a small rivulet. The gurgling of its miniature falls, like the sound of water coming from the neck of a jug, the occasional cawing of a crow, and the snapping of twigs beneath his feet were the only interruptions to the silence. Here was a sudden hushed restfulness, as ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... rivulet, to the sea, Thy tribute wave deliver: No more by thee my steps shall be, ...
— Beauties of Tennyson • Alfred Tennyson

... years, judge then of the pleasure I felt in all(a)ying my thirst with this pure and ice-cold water which issues from the base of a low mountain or hill of a gentle ascent for 1/2 a mile. the mountains are high on either hand leave this gap at the head of this rivulet through which the ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough

... some recollection of it," I answered coldly. "But I think that rumour exaggerates. When tongues wag, a little rivulet is often described as a ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... still do these hamlets seem, so sheltered from the passions of the world,—as if the passions were not like winds, only felt where they breathe, and invisible save by their effects! Leaping into the broad bosom of the Rhine come many a stream and rivulet upon either side. Spire upon spire rises and sinks as you sail on. Mountain and city, the solitary island, the castled steep, like the dreams of ambition, suddenly appear, proudly swell, and dimly ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton



Words linked to "Rivulet" :   runnel, rill, streamlet, run, watercourse, stream



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