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Cataract   Listen
noun
Cataract  n.  
1.
A great fall of water over a precipice; a large waterfall.
2.
(Surg.) An opacity of the crystalline lens, or of its capsule, which prevents the passage of the rays of light and impairs or destroys the sight.
3.
(Mach.) A kind of hydraulic brake for regulating the action of pumping engines and other machines; sometimes called dashpot.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cataract" Quotes from Famous Books



... muttered. He was still listening; he heard the frequent snorting of the horse, the rapid click of hoofs on the highroad—but he did not hear what was filling the driver's ears at that moment: the roar of an unseen cataract. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... admirably managed, and was attended by a large number of patients, half of whom were women. The disease moat prevalent in Kabul was ophthalmia, caused by dust, dirt, and exposure, while cataract and other affections of the eye were very common. Dr. Owen, amongst his other many qualifications, excelled as an oculist, and his marvellous cures attracted sufferers from all ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... cheap trip gave him the chance for the first time in his life to see Niagara. As he stood with his mother watching the racing flood, in the gorge below the cataract, he noticed straws, bubbles and froth, that seemed to be actually ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... pellucid; and the Traun pours out of it over ledges of rocks a large and magnificent river, beautifully clear and of the purest tint of the beryl. The fall of the Traun, about ten miles below Gmunden, was one of our favourite haunts. It is a cataract which, when the river is full, may be almost compared to that of Schaffhausen for magnitude, and possesses the same peculiar characters of grandeur in the precipitous rush of its awful and overpowering waters, and of beauty in the tints of its streams and foam, and in the forms of ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... open packed luggage vans with a swing, setting free a cataract of portmanteaus, boxes, hampers, baskets, which pours across the platform for yards, led by a frolicsome black leather valise, whose anxious owner has fought her adventurous way to the van for the purpose of explaining to a phlegmatic ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... a peculiar odor is observed in the patient's breath and exhales from his body. The skin becomes harsh, dry, and scurfy. There are dizziness, headache, dejection, lassitude, and not unfrequently blindness, caused by cataract, is developed in one or both eyes. The intellect is blunted, and, as the disease progresses, the emaciation and debility increase, and pulmonary diseases develop; or, perhaps, an uncontrollable diarrhea sets in, and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... waters pouring into my ears, cross over Suspension Bridge, spanning the rushing tides below still tossing and foaming as though an ocean had broken from its prison, and then pass up the other bank, in full view of the cataract, and not look upon it until my feet were planted on Table Rock. But from that hour to the present, I have never regretted the effort, for therein I learned the importance of position, when face to face with any great question. The position gained, ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... foot representing a year, and at the beginning and end of each reign I drove a three-foot white-pine stake in the turf by the roadside and wrote the name and dates on it. Abreast the middle of the porch-front stood a great granite flower-vase overflowing with a cataract of bright-yellow flowers—I can't think of their name. The vase of William the Conqueror. We put his name on it and his accession date, 1066. We started from that and measured off twenty-one feet of the road, and drove William Rufus's state; then thirteen feet and drove the first Henry's stake; then ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... round; And over were the solemn ridges strewn Of a dark rock, that, like the wizard throne Of some sea-monarch, stood, and from it hung Wild thorn and bramble, in confusion flung Amid the startling crevices—like sky, Through gloom of clouds, that sweep in thunder by. A cataract fell over, in a streak Of silver, playing many a wanton freak; Midway, and musical, with elfin glee It bounded in its beauty to the sea, Like dazzling angel vanishing away. In sooth, 'twas pleasant in the moonlight gray To see that fairy ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart

... great fall unto this rock, which is to the west of the river, the two brinks of it are so prodigious high, that it would make one tremble to look steadily upon the water, rolling along with a rapidity not to be imagined. Were it not for this vast cataract, which interrupts navigation, they might sail with barks or greater vessels, above four hundred and fifty leagues further, cross the Lake of Hurons, and up to the farther end of the Lake Illinois (Michigan); ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various

... this letter in the shade of a mimosa. The whole scene reminds me very much of Egypt; and you might easily believe that you were sitting on the banks of the Nile somewhere between the first and second cataract. There are the same white, sandy banks, the same narrow fringe of verdure on each side, the same bareness and treelessness of the surrounding landscape, the same sun-scorched, stony hillocks; in fact, the whole look of the place is almost identical. The river, slow and muddy, ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps

... fall her veil, moved from me, and seated herself on a crag above that cleft between mountain and creek, to which, when I had first discovered the gold that the land nourished, the rain from the clouds had given the rushing life of the cataract; but which now, in the drought and the hush of the skies, was but a ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... twelve feet broad, and twelve or fifteen inches deep. This is in latitude about 48 deg. north. From this it passes Cedar and several smaller lakes, and runs a winding course, 700 miles, to the falls of St. Anthony, where its waters are precipitated over a cataract of 16 or 17 feet perpendicular. It then continues a southeastern course to the Missouri, in N. lat, 38 deg. 38', receiving the St. Croix, Chippewa, Wisconsin, Rock and Illinois rivers, with many smaller streams from the east, ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... increases in its volume and its power, now rushing rapidly, now moving along in deep and tranquil water, until it swells into a bold stream, coursing its way over the shallows, dashing through the impeding rocks, descending in rapids swift as thought, or pouring its boiling water over the cataract. And thus does it vary its velocity, its appearance, and its course, until it swells into a broad expanse, gradually checking its career as it approaches, and at last mingles with the ocean of Eternity. I have been led into this somewhat trite metaphor, to account ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... over which our helpless barque was borne toward some unknown goal. Soon to our ears came the distant thunder of falling waters, and to our eyes appeared on the far horizon ahead the titanic spray of a monstrous cataract, wherein the oceans of the world drop down to abysmal nothingness. Then did the bearded man say to me with tears on his cheek, "We have rejected the beautiful Land of Sona-Nyl, which we may never behold again. The gods are greater ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... grew ever more frantic, ever more furious, and while the impassive hand on the great dial over the floor of the Board rose, resistless, till it stood at eighty-seven, he bought steadily, gathering in the wheat, calling for it, welcoming it, receiving full in the face and with opened arms the cataract that poured in upon the Pit from Iowa and Nebraska, Minnesota and Dakota, from the dwindling bins of Illinois and the fast-emptying elevators of ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... barrel-skirts and paniers. She made monstrous paper dickeys, and high black stocks, and great bundling neckcloths; the very pocket-handkerchiefs were as ridiculous as anything, from the waiter-napkin size of good stout cambric to a quarter-dollar bit of a middle with a cataract of "chandelier" lace about it. She could tell everybody how to do their hair, from "flat curls" and "scallops" down or up to frizzes and chignons; and after we had all filed in slowly, one by one, ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... loose articles fell with them from the upturned side of the car to the other; they were part of a cataract of falling bodies, involved as in a crushing avalanche. Wynne found himself in this falling shower crumpled up between two chairs, one of his feet evidently thrust through a broken window and the other still held by that convulsive clasp. Miss ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... cataract glancing brightly, Dashed and sparkled; and beside Lay a broken marble monster, Mouth ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... end of it a strange premonition took possession of him. He was still himself, but it seemed to him that the roar of some approaching cataract was in his ears. He mastered himself with difficulty, took a pencil from his pocket, and drew a wavering line beside a passage in the article contributed by the Herald's correspondent. The newspaper slid from his ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... there was a marvellous fascination in his voice—an Italian witch, or red Indian, or a gypsy would have at once recognised in him a sorcerer. Yet his manner was subdued, his voice monotonous, never loud, a running stream without babbling stones or rapids; but when it came to a climax cataract he cleared it with grandeur, leaving a stupendous impression. In the ordinary monotony of that deep voice there was soon felt an indescribable charm. In saying this I only repeat what I have heard in more or less different phrase from others. There ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... overhung it, as they were dimly seen through clouds of drizzle, as if they had been shaken by a tempest, although there was not a breath stirring elsewhere out of heaven; while little wavering spiral wreaths of mist rose up thick from the surface of the boiling pool at the bottom of the cataract, like miniature water spouts, until they were dispersed by the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... or the world of dreams he was not certain. Another clap of wind followed. It was accompanied by a sickening movement of the whole house, and in the subsequent lull Desprez could hear the tiles pouring like a cataract into the loft above his head. He plucked Anastasie bodily out ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... glorious; the golden sunlight streamed in through the windows in a shining cataract, betokening the advent of spring, and made pools of molten gold upon the floor. But the snow still lay in all its virgin whiteness over ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... latency of a fine brogue, was either Lysander or Demetrius; Mr. Davidge (also, I surmise, with a brogue) was Bottom the weaver and Madame Ponisi Oberon—Madame Ponisi whose range must have been wide, since I see her also as the white-veiled heroine of The Cataract of the Ganges, where, preferring death to dishonour, she dashes up the more or less perpendicular waterfall on a fiery black steed and with an effect only a little blighted by the chance flutter of a drapery out of which peeps the ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... sight of the cascade. Before you is the Morne itself; and against the burst of descending light you discern a precipice-verge. Over it, down one green furrow in its brow, tumbles the rolling foam of a cataract, like falling smoke, to be caught below in a succession of moss-covered basins. The first clear leap of the water is nearly seventy feet.... Did Josephine ever rest upon that shadowed bench near by?... She knew all these paths by heart: surely they ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... that when done, they are done with. They pass, as far as outward seeming goes, and their distinguishable consequences in the outward world, in the vast majority of cases, soon apparently pass. All seems evanescent and irrecoverable as last year's snows, or the water that flowed over the cataract a century ago. But there is nothing more certain than that all which we do leaves indelible traces on ourselves. The mightiest effect of a man's actions is on his own inward life. The recoil of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... across the Atlantic; but all these past recollections faded before the present of Quebec. Nature has ransacked all our grandest elements to form this astonishing panorama. There, frowns the cloud-capped mountain, and below, the cataract foams and thunders; woods and rock and river combine to lend their aid in making the picture perfect, and worthy of its Divine originator. The precipitous bank upon which the city lies piled, reflected in the still, deep waters at its base, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... is magnificent. Carramba! Senor de Arechiza, it is a perfect cataract of felicities to be lavished upon my head, it is a dream! it is a dream!" shouted the Senator, as he strode to and fro ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... not get away. I was helping the sick. It was a case of cataract,' said Miss Delacour. 'I had to hold her hand while the operation went on, otherwise she might have been blind for life. Would you take away a living, breathing person's sight because of ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade

... the earth in his agony, the victim is dashed into his destruction; nor is it the sluggish Lethe, nor the fiery lake, that bears the cursed vessel, but the oceans of the earth and the waters of the firmament gathered into one white, ghastly cataract; the river of the wrath of God, roaring down into the gulf where the world has melted with its fervent heat, choked with the ruins of nations, and the limbs of its corpses tossed out of its whirling, like water-wheels. Bat-like, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... shooting and blazing across the sky. Nor is this all. Wherever there is a nook between the rocks on the shore, where a man may build a house, and clear a field or two;—wherever there is a platform beside the cataract where the sawyer may plant his mill, and make a path from it to join some great road, there is a human habitation, and the sounds that belong to it. Thence, in winter nights, come music and laughter, and the tread of dancers, and the hum ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau

... River. — N. running water. jet, spirt[obs3], spurt, squirt, spout, spray, splash, rush, gush, jet d'eau[Fr]; sluice. water spout, water fall; cascade, force, foss[obs3]; lin[obs3], linn[obs3]; ghyll[obs3], Niagara; cataract, rapids, white water, catadupe|, cataclysm; debacle, inundation, deluge; chute, washout. rain, rainfall; serein[obs3]; shower, scud; downpour; driving rain, drenching rain, cloudburst; hyetology[obs3], hyetography[obs3]; predominance of Aquarius[obs3], reign of St. Swithin; mizzle[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... came the next day, at the same hour, took his piece of cake, and ran off. The shepherd followed him. He led the way to a cataract at some distance from the place where the ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen

... falling like the spray of a cataract, had extinguished the torches one after another; there was but one left. Ave Maria took it out of the place where it had been stuck, and holding it in his hand, came and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... and yet so distinct—as if it uttered the name of God. How the great river dances over the granite shores, how it scourges the rocky walls, bounds against the island altars, dives rattling into the whirlpool, pervades the cataract with harmony! ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... went out for her eighth, when in the face of that cataract she said yawning, 'I don't know how you feel, children, but ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... brigades, which generally consisted of five boats. Against the swiftest currents and rapids the men poled their way up; and when the resisting element was too much for their strength, they fastened a rope to the bow, and, plunging into the water, dragged her by main strength up the boiling cataract. From Lachine to Kingston, the average voyage was ten to twelve days, though it was occasionally made in seven; an average as long as a voyage across the Atlantic now. The Durham boat, also then doing duty on this route, was a flat-bottomed barge, but it differed from the batteaux in ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight

... subconscious thought. While laughing, and talking, and making the most successful efforts to be at ease with the dozens of people who came and spoke to Mrs. de la Vere and herself, she felt like some frail vessel dancing blithely in a swift, smooth current, yet hastening ever to the verge of a cataract. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... Hotel can sit on the front stoop and see the snow-filled ravines of the mountains to the south, and almost hear the thunder crashing round old Uncompahgre, even when the broad leaves above their heads are pulseless and the heat of the mid-day light is a cataract of molten metal. ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... terrified monk's journey might have ended, is uncertain. As she sung the last stanza, they arrived at, or rather in, a broad tranquil sheet of water, caused by a strong wear or damhead, running across the river, which dashed in a broad cataract over the barrier. The mule, whether from choice, or influenced by the suction of the current, made towards the cut intended to supply the convent mills, and entered it half swimming half wading, and pitching the unlucky monk to and fro in the saddle ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... after he had again sunk into it. Nor is this the worst. As soon as he ceases to write trifles, he begins to write lies; and such lies! A man who has never been within the tropics does not know what a thunderstorm means; a man who has never looked on Niagara has but a faint idea of a cataract; and he who has not read Barere's Memoirs may be said not to know what it is to lie. Among the numerous classes which make up the great genus Mendacium, the Mendacium Vasconicum, or Gascon lie, has, during some centuries, been highly esteemed as peculiarly circumstantial and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... DYNASTY.—Prof. Sayce reports that he has been finding evidences of the little-known X dynasty in the immediate neighborhood of the First Cataract. "Mr. Griffith and Prof. Maspero have shown that certain of the tombs at Sit belonged to the period when this dynasty ruled in Egypt. I have now discovered inscriptions which show that its rule was recognized on the frontiers ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various

... of Khartoum, on the morning of the 26th of January 1885, and the abandonment of the Soudan and its population—the Egyptian frontier being fixed by British Government order at Wady Halfa—the over-lordship of that immense region from the Second Cataract to the Equatorial Lakes was yielded to the so-called Mahdi Mohammed Achmed did not long enjoy his conquests. Success killed him as it has done many a lesser man. For a season he gave himself up to a life of indolence and the grossest ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... striker, aided by Wettstein and the doctor's man, were stamping and swearing and tearing things to bits in the effort to down other incipient blazes. Between them they had dragged Willett from the midst of the flames and drenched him with a cataract from the olla. The rush of the men from the barracks made short work of the fire, but when Mrs. Archer and Mrs. Stannard, with throbbing hearts, bent over the scorched and smoking ruin on the south porch, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... to the gulf must be two or three thousand feet, perhaps more. We can hardly fail to find rapids. I shouldn't be astonished by a cataract." ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... interior and abrupt slopes, the rivers of Africa are not suitable for navigation to any considerable extent; the channels are uncertain and the rivers are interrupted by rapids. The Nile has an occasional steamboat service as far as the "First Cataract," but in high water the service is sometimes extended farther. The Kongo has a long stretch of navigable water, but is interrupted by rapids below Stanley Pool. Similar conditions obtain in the Zambezi. The ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... a carriage, and as we wished to approach the fall of the Rhine by this road. We breakfasted at Adelfaigen, three leagues distant, and near the town were ferried over the Thar. About two hours afterwards, we heard the distant roar of the Cataract, and although I had heard so much previously of the grandeur of the scene, yet I was not disappointed with the sight. There are many falls much greater in point of height, and I had seen two previously which exceed the present one in that particular, but then the force ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard

... While pale lips tell the fears that swell, Lest she never should rise again. With a courser's pride she paws the tide, Unbridled by bit I trow, While the churlish sea she dashes with glee In a cataract from her prow. Then a ho and a ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... increased strength and velocity as it defined for itself a more distinct channel down the steeper grade of the Basin, began cutting in the soft soil a vertical fall that from the foot of the grade moved swiftly up-stream; a mighty cataract from fifty to sixty feet in height and a full quarter of a mile wide, moving at the rate of from one to three miles a day and leaving as it went a great gorge through which a new-made river flowed quietly to a new-born and ever-growing sea. The roar of the plunging waters, the ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... water remotely resembling the Charybdis of the poem. Observation, as he humbly confessed, had given him nothing more awesome than a mill-dam,—the rest was Homeric and imaginative; wherefore it no doubt gratified him when Goethe reported from Schaffhausen, after a visit to the cataract, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... sixteen-year-old hearts. After walking up and down the library for a few moments, he left it and started to return to his room. As he passed the drawing-room, loud music reached his ear; chromatic fireworks, scales running with the rapidity of the cataract of Niagara, extraordinary arpeggios, hammering in the bass with a petulance and frenzy which proved that the 'furie francaise' is not the exclusive right of the stronger sex. In this jumble of grave, wild, and sad notes, Gerfaut recognized, by the clearness of touch and brilliancy of some ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... larger ciliary processes of age, or the enlarged crystalline lens pressing on the ciliary processes; or by inflammatory adhesion of the iris to the filtration area; ballooning of the iris, or its displacement by traumatic cataract; or adhesion to the cornea after perforating ulcer in the secondary glaucomas; or whether the obstruction is due to the accumulation of experimental precipitates, as shown by Schreiber and Wengler, or possibly of pigment granules into Fontana's space; or a process of sclerosis ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various

... ought not to be charged with having created the spirit, which in fact created him; a spirit so powerful, and so extensively diffused, that in comparison with it, even his efforts might be said to be "dashing with his oar to hasten the cataract;" to be "waving with his fan to give speed to the wind." The favourite saying of Napoleon, "Every Frenchman is a soldier, and as such, at the disposal of the Emperor," expresses a principle which was not merely enforced ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... the falling of branches, cut from the trees by the furious missiles, seemed as if a tornado was in the height of its fury: every few minutes, a thunder heard above all other sounds, denoted the explosion of a caisson, sweeping into destruction, with a cataract of fire and iron, men and animals for hundreds of feet around it. The effect of such a fire of artillery is, however, much less deadly than any except those who have been subject to it can believe. The prevalent impression concerning the relative destructiveness ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... resolution to come back to us after the shock of grounding. On the weather side the seas struck and curled over the brig with a noise like thunder, and the force of countless tons. They came over the top of the deck-house in a cataract of solid water, and there was a crash, crash, crash of rending wood, as plank after plank gave way before that stern assault. We could feel the deck-house itself quiver, and shake again as we stood with our backs against it, and at last it moved so much that ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... bottom. And it is this prostration, this hopeless abandonment of its ponderous power to the air, which is always peculiarly expressed by Turner, and especially in the case before us; while our other artists, keeping to the parabolic line, where they do not lose themselves in smoke and foam, make their cataract look muscular and wiry, and may consider themselves fortunate if they can keep it from stopping. I believe the majesty of motion which Turner has given by these concentric catenary lines must be felt ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... waited for in Egypt," answered the Swallow. "To-morrow my friends will fly up to the Second Cataract. The river-horse couches there among the bulrushes, and on a great granite throne sits the God Memnon. All night long he watches the stars, and when the morning star shines he utters one cry of joy, and then he is silent. At noon the yellow lions come down to the water's edge to drink. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... sea overhead." Again, in the lovely Turneresque, or rather Shelleyan picture of morning, over "the rocks, and valleys, and old woods," with the high boughs swinging in the wind above the sun-brightened mists, and the golden-coloured spray of the cataract amid the broken rocks, whereover the wild hawks fly to and fro, there is at least a suggestion, an outline, of the truly magnificent burst of morning music in the ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... storm and the darkness the two boys paddled. It was hard work, but they gritted their teeth and would not give up. The rain had made the river, below the falls, higher, and the current was swift. They carried the boat around the cataract and led Mr. Roscoe through the woods. Frank offered his father food, but the rescued man said he had eaten at the sanitarium a ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman

... and then a new danger appeared. The first row of breakers, rolling like a cataract, was still far off shore, at least a hundred yards; and between it and the beach appeared a white yeast of raging waters, evidently ten or twelve feet deep, through which, weary as we all were, and benumbed ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... choking spray and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at last among the thick golden leaves, which toss to and fro in sympathy with the wild water, their dripping masses lifted at intervals, like sheaves of loaded corn, by some stronger gush from the cataract, and bowed again upon the mossy rocks as its roar dies away." "Satque superque satis"—we cannot go on. There is nothing like calling things by their contraries—it is truly startling. Whenever you speak of water, treat it as fire—of fire, vice versa, as water; and be sure to send ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... rapidity: the waters within, retained by the embankment, poured through its two points an impetuous cataract, curling and boiling in innumerable eddies, and making a tumultuous melody admirably in unison with the surrounding scene. The three philosophers looked on in silence; and at length unwillingly turned away, and proceeded to the little town of Tremadoc, which is built on land recovered in ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... that I returned from England, by the way of Quebec, the Great Lakes, and the Falls, having been induced by my friend Ducie to take that route, in consequence of his ship's being sent to the St. Lawrence. A desire for novelty, and particularly a desire to see the celebrated cataract, which is almost the lion of America, did ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... another crash even more tremendous than the first, and her masts simultaneously went over the side. The next wave moved her but a few feet; the one which followed, finding her immovable, piled itself higher over her, and swept in a cataract down her sloping deck. Her stern had swung round after the first shot, and she now lay broadside to the waves. The Dutch skipper and his crew behaved with the greatest calmness; the ship lay over at such an angle that it was impossible to stand on the deck; but the captain managed ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... don't suppose there will be much demand for the canoe on that day; in fact, it astonishes me that Americans, who appreciate the good things of our country better than we do ourselves, practically know nothing of this superb cataract right at their own doors. I suppose your new canoe is not finished yet, and as the others are up in the woods I write so that you will keep this particular craft for me. I do not wish to take any ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... splendour and extent; I think that the thirty-three States were represented by no fewer than 180 ornamental edifices full of special products and treasures. At Niagara I stayed twice for a week each, with the kindest of hosts, the Rev. Mr. Fessenden and his good wife, and saw the great cataract in all the magnificence of winter as well as autumn. Also at the pleasant homes, of Mr. Lister in Hamilton, at Toronto, Kingston, and above all Montreal, my new but old book friends were full of liberal greetings, and everywhere I had to exhibit ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... cloud the rearguard of their mysterious progress, the ark and the God of the ark piloting and defending them.... You are like a presumptuous and unskilful traveller, passing under the arch of the waters of Niagara. The falling cataract thundering above you; a slippery, slimy rock beneath your gliding feet; the smoking, roaring abyss yawning beside you; the imprisoned winds beating back your breath; the struggling daylight coming but mistily to the bewildered eyes,—what is the terror of your condition if your guide, in whose ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... Battled he with the dreadful ache at heart Which tempts, with devilish subtleties of doubt, The hermit, of that loneliest solitude, The silent desert of a great New Thought; Though loud Niagara were to-day struck dumb, Yet would this cataract of boiling life Rush plunging on and on to endless deeps, And utter thunder till the world shall cease,— A thunder worthy of the poet's song, 120 And which alone can fill it with true life. The high evangel to our country granted Could make apostles, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... ice which had outrun the flood came thicker and thicker, until at the end of about thirty seconds the steep front of the avalanche appeared like a swift-moving wall. Attaining the cliffs, it shot forth as a great cataract, which during the continuance of the flow—which lasted for several minutes—heaped a great mound of commingled stones and ice upon the surface of the glacier. The mass thus brought down the steep was estimated at about three thousand cubic yards, of which ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... river-god grew very angry. His green robe changed to the black of the sea in a storm, and his voice was as loud as a mountain cataract. Acheloues could be almost as powerful as ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... scanty, but dismal, and you have seen them anticipated; as the loss of the young Lord Montague(867) and Mr. Burdett,(868) drowned in a cataract in Switzerland by their own obstinate folly.(869) Mr. Tickell's death was a determined measure, and more shocking than the usual mode by a pistol. He threw himself from one of the uppermost windows of the palace ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... gradually faded out of the western sky, and the stars in their modest way, one by one, came out into conscious vision, until the whole heavens were lit up by their radiance. The only sounds were the roar of the distant cataract, the music of the running stream, the rippling of the waves at our feet, broken some nights by the occasional cry of a wild bird or beast, from among the trees of the encircling forest. The quiet, picturesquely garbed men in their statuesque attitudes added ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... elapsed before a word was spoken, or a breath drawn. The mother ran forward, and then stood gazing with fixed eyes at the foot of the cataract, as if her all depended upon what the next moment should reveal. Suddenly she gave the glad cry, (f.) "There they are! See! they are safe!—Great God, I thank thee!" And, sure enough, there was the youth still unharmed, and still buffeting the waters. He ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... cotton web; the spoils of jaguar, puma, and ape hang from their shoulders. Their ammunition is long since spent, their muskets, spoilt by the perpetual vapor-bath of the steaming woods, are left behind as useless in a cave by some cataract of the Orinoco: but their swords are bright and terrible as ever; and they carry bows of a strength which no Indian arm can bend, and arrows pointed with the remnants of their armor; many of them, too, are armed ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... written an Eastern book of considerable merit," Miss Clapperclaw says; but hang it, has not everybody written an Eastern book? I should like to meet anybody in society now who has not been up to the second cataract. An Eastern book forsooth! My Lord Castleroyal has done one—an honest one; my Lord Youngent another—an amusing one; my Lord Woolsey another—a pious one; there is "The Cutlet and the Cabob"—a sentimental one; "Timbuctoothen"—a humorous one, all ludicrously overrated, in my opinion: not including ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to get their feet crushed between them. There was not a dry thread on them. Juell, who lay asleep in the "Grand Hotel," as we called one of the long-boats, awoke to hear the sea roaring under him like a cataract. I met him at the cabin door as he came running down. It was no longer safe there, he thought; best to save one's rags—he had a bundle under his arm. Then he set off forward to secure his sea-chest, which was ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... schooner fell off and again came gradually to the wind, she shot across the hawse of the waterspout, which swept closely along under our stern, almost spattering the water in our very faces, and tearing and roaring like the cataract of Niagara! ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... and Captain C.F. Harding were seriously though not mortally wounded; several others received slight wounds; the twelve individuals who are missing, this deponent has no doubt, were either murdered upon the steamboat or found a watery grave in the cataract of the Falls; and this deponent further says that immediately after the Caroline was got into the current of the stream and abandoned, as before stated, beacon lights were discovered upon the Canada shore near Chippewa, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... answers than to make us capable of larger blessing, because delay deepens our longing. He is infinitely wishful to-day, as He was on that Resurrection evening, to draw near to every heart and pour upon it the whole sunlit cataract of the mighty fact that He lives to bless. But He cannot come to us unless we desire Him, and He cannot give to us more of Himself than we wish; and therefore He is obliged, as the first thing, to make our desires larger and fuller, and then He will answer them. 'He could ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... of heredity in the causation of congenital defects of the eye is strikingly illustrated by De Beck. In three generations twelve members of one family had either coloboma iridis or irideremia. He performed two operations for the cure of cataract in two brothers. The operations were attended with difficulty in all four eyes and followed by cyclitis. The result was good in one eye of each patient, the eye most recently blind. Posey had a case of coloboma in the macular region in a patient ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... free passage in the former and ten in the latter. A transept ninety feet broad crosses the main building into that for hydraulics, bringing up against a tank sixty by one hundred and sixty feet, whereinto the water-works are to precipitate, Versailles fashion, a cataract thirty-five feet high ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... a journey to Niagara. The adventures by the way and the sight of the stupendous cataract supply the theme of his longest and most ambitious poem, "The Foresters." It was published with illustrations in successive numbers of the Port Folio of 1809, Volumes I, II and III. The entire poem contained 2,000 lines. The Literary Magazine contains ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... Two nights from London to Naples; two nights at sea in one of the new, swift boats, the Heliopolis, perhaps; a few hours in the train, and he would be at Cairo. Five nights' travelling would bring him to the first cataract. And he would be in ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... at the sign upon his glittering chariot leaps, Instant Ganga the divine follows his majestic steps. From the high heaven burst she forth first on Siva's lofty crown, Headlong then, and prone to earth thundering rushed the cataract down, Swarms of bright-hued fish came dashing; turtles, dolphins in their mirth, Fallen or falling, glancing, flashing, to the many-gleaming earth. And all the host of heaven came down, spirits and genii, in amaze, And each forsook his heavenly ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... shouted the guide. "A cataract in an underground water course. These courses have cut channels all through the limestone ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin

... which may be supposed to have overtaken the first adventurous boatman who rowed from Erie to Ontario. Broad and smooth was the river on which he embarked; rapid and pleasant was his progress; and who was to stay him in his career? Alas for him! the cataract was nigh. He saw, when it was too late, that the tide which wafted him so joyously along was a tide of destruction; and when he endeavoured to retrace his way, he found that the current was too strong for his weak efforts to stem, and that he ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... had learned to love his wit and the gallant cataract of his mind that you could fully ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... Tachienlu, a distance of about twenty miles. There is a rise of thirty-five hundred feet on this stage, but so gradual is the ascent that one realizes it only in watching the stream, which is almost continuous rapid and cataract. For miles there was scarcely a square yard of smooth water. The only means of crossing from one bank to the other is by the rope bridges, of which I saw three. Several times I had a chance to watch some one making ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... holding eastward as nearly as I could guess, but not at all certain that I was not moving in an opposite direction. My mind was just reviving a little from its extreme terror, when, suddenly, a flash of lightning, or rather a cataract of successive flashes, behind me, seemed to throw on the ground in front of me, but far more faintly than before, from the extent of the source of the light, the shadow of the same horrible hand. I sprang forward, stung to yet wilder speed; but had not run many ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... set sail on the 5th of June, 1869, being at that time a few months past his seventieth year. He remained abroad for three years, visiting every country in Europe, ascending the Nile to the first cataract, passing through the Suez Canal, and across a portion of Asia Minor and Palestine. He made two trips to Northern Sweden to behold the spectacle of the midnight sun. Being a week too late on the first season, he tried it again ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... of the next operation, states also its character. "Finding that the passage of Langewachte Spruit (the scene of the fighting on the 23rd and 24th) was commanded by strong entrenchments, I reconnoitred for another passage of the Tugela. One was found for me below the cataract by Colonel Sandbach, Royal Engineers.... On the 26th, finding that I could make a practicable approach, I crossed the guns and baggage back to the south side of the Tugela, took up the pontoon bridge on the night of the 26th, and relaid it at the new site.... On the 27th General Barton, with ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan

... however, above the Abbe's waist, and when he rose his look of furious misery was too comical for any pity. The water streamed in a cataract from his wig over his elongated countenance and ruined clothes. He had screwed his face into the black slime of the bottom; it was now besides distorted with his efforts to breathe, and he unconsciously ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... In cataract the crystalline lens becomes opaque and loses its transparency, the power of refraction is lost—the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... high about his bare legs. He carried a staff, and tapped the ground carefully before planting his feet. It was the time of barley harvest, and a scorching afternoon. On the burnt plain below, the road to Megiddo shone and quivered in the heat. But he could not see it. Cataract veiled his eyes and blurred the ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... sir! He told Jed how he had seen Nella-Rose and how she had scorned him for being a coward, but how she would take her words back if he dared come out and show his head. And he 'lowed he was going to come out then and there, which he did, and he and Nella-Rose was going off to Cataract Falls where the Lawsons hailed from, on ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock

... ships rounded westward, and there burst to view against the high rocks of the north shore the white-plumed shimmering cataract of Montmorency leaping from precipice to river bed with ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... hour. During the night we never steamed, the Amasis lying up while we enjoyed quiet rest in the quietest of lands. Of course we visited all the famous temples and tombs, ruins and monuments, of ancient Egypt; and had many camel and donkey rides on the desert sands before reaching the first cataract. At Luxor, where we stayed for five days, we were pleasantly surprised at seeing Mr. Harrison and Mr. Warren Gillman come on board. The latter was Secretary of Messrs. Cook and Son's Egyptian business, and has, I believe, ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... people of the times. Moody and revengeful, he became an alien to his father's house, and with gun and dog passed months in the wildest regions of that wild country. With the savage he slept in his wigwam, he threaded the forest and stood upon the verge of the cataract; or penetrated up to the stormy regions of the White Mountains; and anon, hushed the tumultuous beatings of his heart in accordance with the stroke of his paddle, as he and his red companions glided over that loveliest of lakes, Winnepisoge, or "the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... they went to the new, landing at the eastern end of the great granite wall that bars the Nile at the head of the foaming first cataract. Natives pushed them in trollies along the top of the mile wall. Water roared in great white jets through the sluices, tempering the blistering heat of the midday hours. It was a wonderful work, this dam, a great peaceful desert lake above and a turbulent flood below. They ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... their say about Niagara. From Hennipin to Dilke, travellers have written much about this famous cataract, and yet, put all together, they have not said much about it; description depends so much on comparison, and comparison necessitates a something like. If there existed another Niagara on the earth, travellers ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... with a frightening thud. Red pieces of glass and streaming water poured in a cataract down across the broncho's eyes as if very doom itself had suddenly cracked. A cataclysm could not have been more horrible. An indescribable fright and awe overwhelmed the brutish mind as with a cloud ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... carefully studied effects would reach the first rows in the orchestra first, and ripple in laughter back to the standees against the wall, and then with a fine resurgence come again to the rear orchestra seats, and so rise from gallery to gallery till it fell back, a cataract of applause from the topmost rows of seats. He was such a practised speaker that he knew all the stops of that simple instrument man, and there is no doubt that these results were accurately intended from his unerring knowledge. He was ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... When he had stumbled for what seemed hours he sat down on a boulder and whistled dismally. The stream belonged to another watershed. If he followed it, assuming that he did not break his neck over a dry cataract, he would be through the mountains and near Taghati quicker than he intended. Meantime the miserable George would wait at Nazri, would rouse the Khautmi garrison on a false alarm, and would find himself irretrievably separated from his friend. The thought was so full of irritation, that he resolved ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... Kew should be at Baden is no wonder. If you heard of him at the Finish, or at Buckingham Palace ball, or in a watch-house, or at the Third Cataract, or at a Newmarket meeting, you would not be surprised. He goes everywhere; does everything with all his might; knows everybody. Last week he won who knows how many thousand louis from the bank (it appears Brown ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and men went warring—ere the siege of Troy begun. Where his wayward waters thundered, roaring o'er the rocky walls, Dusky hunters sat and wondered, listening to the spirits' calls. "Ha-ha!" [76] cried the warrior greeting from afar the cataract's roar; "Ha-ha!" rolled the answer, beating down the rock-ribbed leagues of shore. Now, alas, the bow and quiver and the dusky braves have fled, And the sullen, shackled river drives the droning ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... is said to have accompanied Arthur Gordon Pym (disguised in the published account of that voyage under the name and appearance of one Peters) upon his fearful South-Sea sail towards that vapory cataract at the world's end which was seen "rolling silently into the sea from some immense and far-distant rampart of the heaven," from the horrors of which he escaped in the same miraculous manner that Mr. Pym did. He must still have been young at the time, as this occurred in 1838. Unable ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... sound burst from the cave. Following it, Semitzin appeared at the entrance, dragging a heavy metal box, which she grasped by a handle at one end. Immediately in her steps broke forth a great volume of water, boiling up as if from a caldron. It filled the cave, and poured like a cataract into the gorge. The foundations of the great deep ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne

... confusion and bewilderment which the memory refuses to reproduce coherently. In his own throat already began a passionate rising of sound that he knew was the "note" he had to utter attempting to escape, summoned forth automatically by these terrible vibrating Letters in the air. A cataract of sound seemed to fill the building and made it shake to its ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood

... following morning the party resumed their march, still followed by their pursuer, who hoped to cut off some straggler during the retreat; but no such victim fell in his way. In the course of a day or two the roar of waters, and the ascending mist of the cataract, warned them of their approach to the mighty falls of Niagara; and soon the Oneida party had encamped among the gloomy pines and hemlocks opposite ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... unspeakably melancholy. Driven by the gale, the snowflakes had in five minutes covered the windward side of the train with a winding-sheet, inches deep, and when Gus Todd, from curiosity, opened the window to peer out into the night, the flakes, heavy, large, and soft, whirled into the carriage a very cataract of snow. ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... drawn into that strange domain where the overwrought imagination of Edgar Allan Poe was at home. Like his fabled Arthur Gordon Pym, I expected any moment to see that "shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men," thrown across the cataract that protects the outskirts ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... following definitions are from Bailey's Dictionary (1728):-" Pin and Web, a horny induration of the membranes of the eye, not much unlike a Cataract." "Pearl (among oculists), a web on the ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey

... was a risk, for the river had all the strength of a cataract, and he who slipped would infallibly be carried down by the strong current and dashed ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... waters is sometimes ten times greater, as I was assured—but can scarce believe it possible. The words "Hell of waters," used by Lord Byron, would not have occurred to me while looking at this cataract, which impresses the astonished mind with an overwhelming idea of power, might, magnificence, and impetuosity; but blends at the same time all that is most tremendous in sound and motion, with all that is most bright and lovely in forms, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... climber, and such Rudy was; he sometimes, indeed, climbed higher than the goats, for he was fond of seeking for birds'-nests at the top of high trees; he was bold and daring, but was seldom seen to smile, excepting when he stood by the roaring cataract, or heard the descending roll of the avalanche. He never played with the other children, and was not seen with them, unless his grandfather sent him down to sell his curious workmanship. Rudy did not ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... But the cataract fell in snowy sheet—the waves hissed round the sable rocks—and the rainbow played on the torrent's foam;—but these possessed not a charm, to rouse to a sense of their beauty, the sad ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... to think of such a piece of impertinence as to offer it to you as a gift! I only make free to beg you will take it as an advance on account of young Ishmael's wages, as he'll be sure to earn; for, bless you, miss, work is a-pouring in on top of me like the cataract of Niagara itself! And I shall want all his help. And as I mayn't have the money to pay him all at once, I would consider of it as a favor to a poor man if you would take this much of me in advance," said ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... the little yellow-lined mouths. It was an aerial feat that made our heads dizzy. This pair of birds did not fly up the face of the falls in ascending to the top, as did those at Rainbow Falls, but clambered up the wall of the cliff close to the side of the roaring cataract, aiding themselves with both claws and wings. When gathering food below the falls, they would usually, in going or returning, fly in a graceful curve over the heads of ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... with a tap Of my finger-nail on the sand, Small, but a work divine, Frail, but of force to withstand, Year upon year, the shock Of cataract seas that snap The three-decker's oaken spine Athwart the ledges of rock, Here on ...
— Beauties of Tennyson • Alfred Tennyson

... sanguine expectation of emulating, in some degree, its renown. In no one were these virtuous hopes more vivid than in the bosom of a young officer who stood on the table rock, contemplating the great cataract, on the evening of the 25th of July of that bloody year. The person of this youth was tall and finely molded, indicating a just proportion between strength and activity; his deep black eyes were of a searching and dazzling brightness. At times, as they gazed upon the flood ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... are an uninterrupted sheet of water fifteen rods wide, and one hundred and ten feet in perpendicular height. This natural curiosity is not exceeded by any thing of the kind in the western country, except the cataract at Niagara. ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver

... in the great reservoir, or to make an even mixture of the liquified manure, a hose is attached to the engine, and the other end dropped into the mass. Through this a constant volume of air is propelled with such force as to set the whole boiling and foaming like a little cataract. One man at the engine and two at the hose in the distant field perform the whole operation. The chapped and "baky" surface of the farm is thus softened and enriched at ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... impetuously at full speed along the banks to keep up with the boats, and cheer on their own men, and it will be necessary for our trio to make the best possible use of their legs, before the living cataract pours down upon them. Indeed, they would not have been on the towing-path at all, but among the rather questionable occupants of the grass plot before the inn on the other side of the river, were it not for their desire to run along ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... Blood, flame, a cataract Thrown upward from a desert place: Flame and blood, the one blind fact, Contained, or spouting from the face, Or coiling out of bellies, packed In a stinking spent embrace ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke

... streams of spray. This was a war of matter, a battle of the elements to thrill with pleasure the hearts of strong men. But with one's love in the seething gulf of the whirlpool, what would be to him the sublime cataract? What, to see amid the boiling foam the upturned face, and the dear, tender body of one's own and only poor dear love, all mangled? You might agonize on the brink; but Makakehau sprang into the dreadful ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... a clear September moon, and the stillness was only broken by a wild stream tumbling down the precipices which I looked up to as I crossed the bridge. It was indeed an impressive scene—cold, desolate, awful. I walked so near the freezing cataract that the icicles touched my face, and thinking that Dante, when he wrote his description of hell, might have been inspired by this very scene, I wrapped my cloak closer about me and went back to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... did was to squat on the pot just opposite my peep-hole, and as she held up her dress well, I could see that she had a most prominent mons Veneris, thickly covered with very fair ringlets. Her power of piss was something wonderful, it was like a cataract in force and quantity, and at once made my mutinous prick stand at the mighty rush of waters that could be so plainly heard. As she rose, and before she dropped her dress, I saw her splendid proportions of limb, the like of which had never before met my eyes. Alas! it was but a passing ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And their glad animal movements all gone by,) To me was all in all.—I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite: a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge

... my ears, almost splitting my ear-drums. It was as though I had been suddenly hurled into a magnified cave of the winds and a cataract mightier than Niagara was thundering at me. It was so painful that I cried out in surprise and involuntarily dropped ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... which at every turning of the rocks increased in depth and violence. The rills from above, and other mountain brooks, pouring from abrupt falls down the craigs, covered him with spray, and intercepted his passage. Finding it impracticable to proceed through the rushing torrent of a cataract, whose distant roarings might have intimidated even a younger adventurer, he turned from its tumbling waters which burst upon his sight, and crept on his hands and knees up the opposite acclivity, catching by the fern and other weeds to stay him from falling back into the flood ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... return within rational limits after a legitimate extravagance that is the really dangerous disorder. The modern world is like Niagara. It is magnificent, but it is not strong. It is as weak as water—like Niagara. The objection to a cataract is not that it is deafening or dangerous or even destructive; it is that it cannot stop. Now it is plain that this sort of chaos can possess the powers that rule a society as easily as the society ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton

... and cautiously. Now like the epileptic or the mad dog, he burst into a volcanic outpouring in which wild words tumbled upon themselves in a cataract of boiling abandon. His fists were clenched and veins ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... gasping heaps his panting steed! Nor vain the thought that fairer hence may rise New views of life, and wider charities. 100 Far from the bleak Riphean mountains hoar, From the cold Don, and Wolga's wandering shore, From many a shady forest's lengthening tract, From many a dark-descending cataract, Succeeding tribes shall come, and o'er the place, Where sleeps the general friend of human race, Instruct their children what a debt they owe; Speak of the man who trode the paths of woe; Then bid them to ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... that held the ring of my box in his beak), and then all on a sudden felt myself falling perpendicularly down, for above a minute, but with such incredible swiftness that I almost lost my breath. My fall was stopped by a terrible squash, that sounded louder to my ears than the cataract of Niagara; after which I was quite in the dark for another minute; and then my box began to rise so high that I could see light from the tops of the windows. I now perceived that I was fallen into the sea. My box, by the weight of my body, the goods that were in, and the broad plates of ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... custom and decency require. Nevertheless, some of its votaries perform extraordinary austerities on special occasions,—austerities which always include much cold-water bathing. It is not uncommon for the very fervent worshipper to invoke the gods as he stands naked under the ice-cold rush of a cataract in midwinter .... But the most curious phase of this Shinto asceticism is represented by a custom still prevalent in remote districts. According to this custom a community yearly appoints one of its citizens to devote himself wholly to the gods on behalf of the rest. ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... of the way which was visible in front had the appearance of a muddy cataract, through which we must force ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... cataract of ice was falling. Peter and Pearson took their places on each side of the bow of the canoe, with poles to push off the pieces as they drifted before the gale toward the shore. The work required the utmost strength and care. One touch ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty

... it for so long a time and seemed so ineradicable. When advanced in years he suffered from a dimness of sight, which soon became total blindness. He had done nothing to cause it, and had met with no accident, but the disease was congenital, and in time produced a cataract. Many of his relatives are said in a similar fashion to have lost their sight when advanced in years. But Athanis tells us that during the war with Hippo and Mamercus, at the camp at Mylae, his eyesight became affected, and that ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... off their champagne Peter Rolls sat still, his thoughts flashing on behind a face deprived of all expression, as a screen of motionless dark trees can hide the white rush and sparkle of a cataract. His vague contempt for Jim Logan had turned in the last few minutes to active loathing, even to hatred. He wanted the fellow punished, as he would have wanted a rattlesnake to have its poison fangs drawn. He wished to speak out and tell the now laughing ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... and on which he can trace the affinity of every part with every other part, he is assuredly frittering away a large percentage of his efforts. There are certain philosophical works which, once they are mastered, seem to have performed an operation for cataract, so that he who was blind, having read them, henceforward sees cause and effect working in and out everywhere. To use another figure, they leave stamped on the brain a chart of ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT

... descriptions were strewn about amidst dead fires and charred branches, and a general air of untidiness and discomfort pervaded everything. Mr. K—— left us soon after breakfast, and we set out to walk over our first portage. [Footnote: A "portage" is the shore of a cataract, rapid, or chute, along which the Indians carry their canoes and luggage. The Winnipeg River, in its course of 160 miles from the Lake of the Woods to Lake Winnipeg, makes a descent of 360 feet, ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... down. She positively refused to go down. She called the place Black Gang Sham, and hoped they were pouring enough water down the kitchen pipe of the hotel to make a foaming cataract. But she begged Mrs. Warrener and Amy, who had not seen the place, to go down, while she remained in the carriage with Mr. Drummond. So these two disappeared into ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... whatever was most fair. Just out of reach of her pony's hoofs he pressed his own pony forward, and she pointed out to him what in the tropic abundance about them she found most beautiful. Sometimes it was the tumbling waters of a cataract; sometimes, high in the topmost branches of a ceiba-tree, a gorgeous orchid; sometimes a shaft of sunshine as rigid as a search-light, piercing the shadow of the jungle. At first she would turn in ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... limbs, and tearing up the earth in his agony, the victim is dashed into his destruction; nor is it the sluggish Lethe, nor the fiery lake that bears the cursed vessel, but the oceans of the earth and the waters of the firmament gathered into one white, ghastly cataract, the river of the wrath of God, roaring down into the gulf where the world has melted with its fervent heat, choked with the ruin of nations, and the limbs of its corpses tossed out of its whirling, like water-wheels. ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... written, "He who does not wash his hands before eating, as the Rabbis of blessed memory have ordained, will be transmigrated into a cataract, where he will have no rest, even as a murderer, who is also ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... on in the starlit night, we heard ahead the sullen boom of waters in turmoil. For a half-hour, as we proceeded, the sound increased, until it seemed close under our prow. We knew there was no cataract in the entire lower portion of the river; and yet, only from a waterfall had I ever heard a sound like that. We pulled for the shore, and went to bed with the sinister booming ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... of English parents only, and of lawful issue." It was to be called "Turner's Gift," and for the next twenty years the artist pinched, and economized to increase the fund for his noble purpose. At this time he was entering upon his third manner—that of his highest excellence, when he "went to the cataract for its iris, and the conflagration for its flames; asked of the sky its intensest azure, of the sun its clearest gold." It is remarked by Ruskin, who has made most profound study of Turner's works, that he had an underlying ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement

... Oh, it doesnt matter: I'm only too glad to be rid of it. The shopman told me it was in the best taste; but when my poor old nurse Martha got cataract, Bunny said it was a merciful provision of Nature to ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw

... covered with nothing else. In one place, he almost thought he caught a gleam of golden buttercups. The verdure crept up the snow-clad slopes, hundreds and thousands of feet; and here and there, beside some foaming little cataract tumbling down from a glacier-fed stream, a rhododendron glowed like a rosy flame. They passed the last island, covered with a copse of willows as high as a tall man's head, and came into an open stretch of water bordered by rolling pasture lands, filled with daisies ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... of the direction he took. The sound of rushing waters finally struck upon his ear, and his heated, dirt-covered body turned instinctively in their direction. A few minutes brought him to the river at a point where it tore through a narrow ravine of rock, in dashing cataract and noisy rapid. Donald, with increasing lameness, made his way painfully along the craggy bank until it descended to the river's edge, and, kneeling beside the leaping waters, he plunged his bruised, aching hands ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... Place of shallow cataract, named Sault de Ste. Marie on the arrival of the French. This is the local form of the word, the substantive ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... clothed only in clumsy slippers with toe pieces, and neither heels nor uppers. Women carry burdens on their heads, and walk erect and posed as if for snap photographs. The young girls are fond of long hair, black as cannel coal, and streaming in a startling cataract to the hips. It seems that the crop of hair is unusually large, and it shines with vitality, as the breeze lifts it in the sunshine. The Philippine boys are still more lightly clad than the girls, who have an eye to queer combinations of colors, and the revelation ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... it a passion, Mr. Dodd," he replied. "And the tall cataract haunted me like a passion," he quoted. "I never weary of the sea, sir. This is my first ocean voyage. I find it a glorious experience." And once more my disbarred lawyer dropped into poetry: "Roll on, thou deep and ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... are the great gold bearing streams that caused the mining excitement of 1849. They all head near the Tahoe region, and include the Yuba, Feather, American, Mokelumne, Calaveras, Cataract, and Tuolumne. ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... been pronounced to resemble those of glaucoma. Milton himself, in "Paradise Lost," hesitates between amaurosis ("drop serene") and cataract ("suffusion"). Nothing is said of his having been recommended to use glasses or other precautionary contrivances. Cheselden was not yet, and the oculist's art was probably not well understood. The sufferer himself, while not repining or despairing of medical assistance, evidently has ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... behaving as if they had returned from the spirit-world. After this they are known by another name, peculiar to those who have 'died Ndembo.' . . . We hear of the custom far along on the upper river, as well as in the cataract region." ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... summer's festivities, and drive down the broad street and around the end of the park and so out through the curtain of rock into the road of the main valley. The slow ascent begins almost at once. We rise gradually along a wooded hill, stopping once to enjoy a cataract which, like a happy child, is noisy for its size and entirely lovable nevertheless. A long reach of valley is then entered, bottomed by the Gave, the road well up on the side. In an hour or more, we finally turn to cross the valley, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... not be understood and must not be talked about. Juanita could not be understood here; could Daisy? She felt hurt and troubled and sorry; she did not like to hear such talk, but Gary was about as easy to stop as a cataract. ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner



Words linked to "Cataract" :   waterfall, Cataract Canyon, posterior subcapsular cataract, eye disease, cataract surgery, nuclear cataract, cortical cataract



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