"Cliff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... having overhead—touching us even—a rock which had fallen there in unknown ages and was only held in equilibrium by some inexplicable cause. Then all at once the path became so narrow that it was impossible to walk straight forward; we had to turn and put our backs against the cliff and advance with both arms spread out and fingers holding on to the few asperities ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... thirty degrees below zero. When this happens the headlong waters of Montmorenci are arrested in their course, and their ice-bound appearance is that of a white lace veil thrown over the brow of the cliff, and hanging there immoveably. Before the freezing process is completed, however, another singular phenomenon is produced. At the foot of the Falls, where the water seethes and mounts, both in the form of vapor and liquid globules, ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... crossed by a picturesque stone bridge of 21 arches. St Andrew's church, originally Norman of the 12th century, has been enlarged in different styles. A paved causeway running for about 4 m. between Chippenham Cliff and Wick Hill is named after Maud Heath, said to have been a market-woman, who built it in the 15th century, and bequeathed an estate for its maintenance. After the decline of its woollen and silk trades, Chippenham became celebrated for grain and cheese markets. There are also ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Meru and stretching on all sides. And knowing that Pandu's sons were intent upon asking (him), Lomasa versed in speech said, 'Hear, O sons of Pandu! O best of men, what ye see before you, of vast proportions like unto a mountain and beautiful as the Kailasa cliff, is a collection of the bones of the mighty Daitya Naraka. Being placed on a mountain, it looketh like one. The Daitya was slain by that Supreme Soul, the eternal God Vishnu, for the good of the lord of celestials. Aiming at the possession ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... and was driven along the dull, flat road which leads to Gorleston. Odour of the brine made amends for miles of lodgings, for breaks laden with boisterous trippers, for tram cars and piano-organs. Here at length was Sunrise Terrace, a little row of plain houses on the top of the cliff, with sea-horizon vast before it, and soft green meadow-land far as one could see behind. Bidding his driver wait, Lashmar knocked at the door, and stood tremulous. It was half-past twelve; Iris might or ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... was a Psyche with the lamp in her hand. Here was Lucy on the limit of a world unknown. Here she stood, at her feet the tufted grasses and field herbs, dusty, homely, friendly things, which she knew. Beyond her, beyond the cliff's edge were the dim leagues of a land and sea unknown. What lay out there beyond her in the mist? What mountain and forest land lay there, what quiet islands, ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... grows everywhere. In the dry, buoyant climate west of the coast range, and in the steamy coastal tract, on cliff-like hill-sides, on sandy beaches a few feet above high-water mark, among rocks with but a few inches of soil, and where the decayed vegetation of generations has made fat mould many feet deep, the papaw flourishes. It asks foothold, heat, light and moisture, and ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the waters of the Derwent were held up by ice in the remote centuries of the Ice Age. Sometimes in the evening, too, a pleasing impression may be obtained when the church bells of the villages are ringing for evening service. At the top of Wrelton Cliff, the sound of several peals of bells in the neighbouring villages floats upwards across the broad pastures, and it seems almost as though the whole plain beneath one's feet were joining in the evening song. Along the deep ravine of Newton Dale, ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... over the eastern cliff on the other side of the globe, and the stars of midnight shining over the heads of Dante and his friends, when they seated themselves for rest on the mountain's side. The Florentine, being still in the flesh, lay down for weariness, and was overcome with sleep. In his sleep he dreamt that a golden ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... it as an old inhabitant of a Cheshire knows his cheese. Why, it was I who, in the course of these rambles, discovered that remarkable avenue called Myrtle Street, stretching in one long line from east of the Reservoir to a precipitous and rudely paved cliff which looks down on the grim abode of Science, and beyond it to the far hills; a promenade so delicious in its repose, so cheerfully varied with glimpses down the northern slope into busy Cambridge Street ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... often got together for good times during their school years, and, in successive volumes, we meet them in winter adventures in the Northern woods at Snow Camp; in the summer at Lighthouse Point; in Wyoming at Silver Ranch; in lakeside and woodsy adventures on Cliff Island; enjoying most exciting weeks at Sunrise Farm, where Ruth wins a reward of five thousand dollars in aiding in the recovery of a pearl necklace stolen by the Gypsies. There are volumes, too, telling of the serious ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... married John Penaluna. They spent their honeymoon at home, as sober folks did in those days. John could spare no time for holiday-making. He had entered on his duties as master of Hall, and set with vigour about improving his inheritance. His first step was to clear the long cliff-garden, which had been allowed to drop out of cultivation from the day when he had cast down his mattock there and run away to sea. It was a mere wilderness now. But he fell to work ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... lane a forest all my own, for I spy no human thing in it but myself. It is a little chaos of mountains and precipices; mountains, it is true, that do not ascend much above the clouds, nor are the declivities quite so amazing as Dover cliff; but just such hills as people who love their necks as well as I do may venture to climb, and crags that give the eye as much pleasure as if they were more dangerous. Both vale and hill are covered with most venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... ballast, and properly slung, was now made fast to the middle timber of the boom, and let go, when the weight of it sunk it to the bottom, and we passed on. We pulled on for about half a mile further, when I noticed, high up on a sunny cliff, that shot boldly out into the clear blue heavens, a small red flag suddenly run up to the top of a tall, scathed, branchless palm tree, where it flared for a moment in the breeze like the flame of a torch, and then as ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... low, pebbly ledge, just outside the black maw of the passage—an entrance hidden in a curtain-like fold in the face of the cliff that towered above them, casting an ink-black shadow. But beyond it the emblazoned firmament glowed irradiant, and at their feet the encircling waters ran, a broad ribbon of black silk purling between the cliff and ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... her own sandwiches, and no one taking hardly any notice whether she'd had some of the hot coffee or whether she hadn't. And the looks she got throughout the afternoon! Say, I wouldn't of trusted that girl at the edge of a cliff with a single pair of ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the Twins, and away they ran to join their brother, who was already some little distance ahead of them. They turned as the path rounded the great cliff where the echoes lived, and the Twins waved their hands, while Fritz played his merry little tune on the horn. Then the rocks hid them from view, and the ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... to the distant snow peaks which seemed to be in another world than theirs, the children found a greater attraction in the fascinating depths of a mysterious gulf, or "canon," as it was called, whose very name filled their ears with a weird music. To creep to the edge of the cliff, to sit upon the brown branches of some fallen pine, and putting aside the dried tassels to look down upon the backs of wheeling hawks that seemed to hang in mid-air was a never failing delight. Here Polly would try to trace the winding red ribbon of road that was continually losing ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... had brought us there. I sat down upon the mossy turf to breathe the moist air which rises from the gulf, and at that very moment I espied below me a magnificent goat, reaching up to crop the wild cresses that grow on the edge of the cliff. ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... in this locality, arrests your attention by his sweet, pathetic cry. There is room for it also in the deep woods, as well as for the more prolonged and elevated strains. His mate builds an exquisite nest of moss on the side of some shelving cliff or overhanging rock. The other day, passing by a ledge near the top of a mountain in a singularly desolate locality, my eye rested upon one of these structures, looking precisely as if it grew there, so in keeping ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... the misty Mine of human thoughts, we see Soon abandoned when the Master Crowns life's Cliff for such as we. ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... to condemn him. But brought to trial a second time, and now in a grove whence the citadel could not be seen, he was sentenced to death, and was thrown from the Tarpeian Rock. [Footnote: The Tarpeian Rock was the name given to the cliff which the Capitoline Hill formed on the side towards the Tiber (or towards the Palatine, according to some). It received its name from Tarpeia, daughter of one of the legendary keepers of the citadel. State criminals were ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... please all who like to see much told with little labour. Prout fully sustains his reputation. Amidst much detail he is always broad and large. There is a most true effect of haze in Copley Fielding's fine drawing of "Folkstone Cliff." There is an affected absence of effect in his "Arundel Castle"—the blues and yellows are not in harmony—and all has an uncomfortable, unsubstantial look. Eliza Sharpe's "Little Dunce" is a delightful drawing. It is only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... winds from the sea, and remains there to-day, all seamed, and frothed and rippled a petrified Niagara. It is very picturesque, and withal so natural that one might almost imagine it still flowed. A smaller stream trickled over the cliff and built up an isolated pyramid about thirty feet high, which has the semblance of a mass of large gnarled and knotted vines and roots and stems ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on the highest ground in the city, a kind of cliff at the north-west angle rising abruptly about sixty feet above the river Eden. An area of nearly three acres has been enclosed with walls, the longest side from north-west to south-east being about 256 yards long, the west side 143 yards, and the south side 200 yards. Two sides are very steep, and ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... a hundred feet above that camp and going over mountain brow, going to the north again. Gone were Caonabo and his Indians; gone the view of the plain and the mountains of Cibao. Again we met low cliff, long stony ledges sunk in the forest, invisible from below. I began to see that they would not know how to follow. Caonabo might know well the mountains of Cibao, but this sierra that was straight behind Guarico, Guarico ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... of Lake Superior (under which head are included the following bands: Fond du Lac, Boise Forte, Grand Portage, Red Cliff, Bad River, Lac de Flambeau, and Lac Court D'Oreille) number about five thousand one hundred and fifty. They constitute a part of the Ojibways (anglicized in the term Chippewas), formerly one of the most powerful and warlike nations in ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... splashed through channels of water which filled the spongy ruts, smoking, and toiling, and plunging on; while the whoops and yells of the postilion urging them forward, together with the loud smacks of his whip, made a savage din. This was farther increased as we crashed along a ledge road, cut in a cliff overhanging the sea;—the waves tearing up from beneath with a whelming roar; the rocks jutting forth in points, every one of which was a streaming water-spout; the rain pelting, the wind rushing, the side-currents pouring ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... the phantasmic effect of a great swampy desert; old pools of water overgrown with a green scum, lay in the hollows between its rotting timbers, and the upper planks were baking and cracking in the sun. Near where they lay a steep path ascended the cliff, whence through grass and ploughed land, it led across the promontory to the fishing village of Scaurnose, which lay on the other side of it. There the mad laird, or Mad Humpy, as he was called by the baser sort, often received shelter, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... command—filling her hand, and impelling the crystal water into the air, as before. A roaring was heard, like the course of a hurricane sweeping through a forest. The air grew black. Then the moon broke through night and mist, and lit up a hilly region, surrounded by wood and cliff. Out of the wood issued a carriage and four, making at full speed for a solitary open space, that looked dismal and deserted. The form of a maiden floated before the carriage, her painfully smiling countenance ever turned towards it until she evaporated, like ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... merely that sometimes we get greater reality from books than we get from life. Leslie Stephen liked the real country, also. In his holidays he climbed the Swiss mountains—wrote a book about them—it's on that top shelf. Don't you remember how he loved to roll stones off a cliff? And as a pedestrian he was almost as famous as George Borrow—walked the shirt off his back before his college trustees and all that sort of thing. But he got an even sharper reality from books. He liked the city, too, but in many a mood, ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... their heads, Lamented they their toil each night o'erthrown. And now the largest orbit of the year, Leaning o'er black Mocattam's rubied brow, Proceeded slow, majestic, and serene, Now seemed not further than the nearest cliff, And crimson light struck soft the phosphor wave. Then Gebir spake to Tamar in these words: "Tamar! I am thy elder and thy king, But am thy brother too, nor ever said, 'Give me thy secret and become my slave:' But haste thee not away; I will myself Await the nymph, ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... his probable captor, one peculiarly unattractive-looking horseman, whose crimson sheepskin coat and long horsetail plume were streaming in the wind, and just as he had braced himself to meet the onset against the great "loess," or dirt-cliff, he felt a twitch at his black upper robe, and a low voice—a girl's, he ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... Fifteen feet from this end of the lake the water swept into a narrow channel, a ridge running down from each side. Here was the spot to deflect the waters before they sped on down over the steep fall. Upon the south side there was a jagged cut in the saw-toothed cliff line. Even now the lowest part of that cut, when once the free soil was scooped out, was not ten feet above ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... we manage finally to print one of our pages on the crow-scalp of that solitary majestic outsider? We may get him into the Book; yet the knowledge we want will not be more present with us than it was when the chapters hung their end over the cliff you ken of at Dover, where sits our great lord and master contemplating the seas without upon the reflex of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... principal valley and no end of small cover and gullies running off from it, and winding about in all directions. Even the sandstone walls, by which the whole affair, great and small, was hemmed in, were just like the cliff about South Head; there were lines, too, on the face of them, Jim and I made out, just like where the waves had washed marks and levels on the sea-rock. We didn't trouble ourselves much about that part of it. Whatever ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... close ahead now—a bold line of cliff, reddish brown in colour, but with patches of green vivid in the luminous haze; the summit of the cliff-line hidden everywhere in folds of fog; the dove-coloured sea running tranquilly at its base, with here and there the thinnest edge of ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and true comrades of camp and trail are in the saddle, bent on seeing with their own eyes some of the wonderful sights to be found in that section of the Far Southwest, where the singular cave homes of the ancient Cliff Dwellers dot the walls of the Great Canyon of the Colorado. In the strangest possible way they are drawn into a series of happenings among the Zuni Indians, while trying to assist a newly made friend: all of which makes interesting ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... said that one of my blossoms has been found on that cliff not far away. Will you come with me ...
— Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens • Margaret White Eggleston
... away to a handful of desperate politicians, who still clung to Edinburgh Castle. But Elizabeth's 'peace-makers,' as the big English cannon were called, came round, at the Regent's request, from Berwick; David's tower, as Knox had long ago foretold, 'ran down over the cliff like a sandy brae;' and the cause of Mary Stuart in Scotland was extinguished for ever. Poor Grange, who deserved a better end, was hanged at the Market Cross. Secretary Maitland, the cause of all the mischief—the cleverest man, as far as intellect went, in all Britain—died ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... wind was in the east, and the weather set fair, and but for the sea-mist the power of the sun would have been enough to dazzle all beholders. Already this vapour was beginning to clear off, coiling up in fleecy wisps above the glistening water, but clinging still to any bluff or cliff it could ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... details of ethnic type or costume enable us to detect a slight difference between their works and those of pure Egyptian art. At the other extremity of Napata, on the western side of the Holy Mountain, Taharqa excavated in the cliff a rock-hewn shrine, which he dedicated to Hathor and Bisu (Bes), the patron of jollity and happiness, and the god of music and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... now he felt more than half ashamed of those early letters to his mother, pouring out his misery of loneliness and longing; of frantic threats to run away or jump off the cliff, that had so strangely failed to soften his father's heart. It seemed, he knew all about it. He had been through it himself. But Mummy did not know; so she got upset. And Mummy must not be upset, whatever happened ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... smile a parent's warmth expressed; Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed; To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven: As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm; Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... leaning against a gate which gave egress from the moor into an adjacent pasture field towards which her steps were bent. His arms, loosely folded, rested upon the top of the gate, and he was looking away from her towards the distant vista of sea and cliff. Evidently he had not heard her light footsteps on the springy turf, for he made no movement, but remained absorbed in his thoughts, ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... the road, although there were men who showed themselves now and then on inaccessible-looking crags, who eyed us suspiciously and made no answer to the shouted challenge of Anazeh's men. When the track passed over a spur, or swung round the shoulder of a cliff, we could sometimes catch sight of other parties—always, though of three, before and behind us, proceeding in ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... a great poet and artist in his dreams, and a child in his ways. I gave him myself and all I had that he might grow to his full height with plenty of sunshine. If I lost faith in him, it would mean the wreck and failure of my life. I should go back to Cornwall and die. I could show you the very cliff I should jump off. You must cure him: you must make him quite well again for me. I know that you can do it and that nobody else can. I implore you not to refuse what I am going to ask you to do. Take Louis yourself; and let ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... with God and he was not; for God took him.' This verse is like some little spring with trees and flowers on a cliff. The dry genealogical table—and here this bit of human life in it! How unlike the others—they lived and they died; this man's life was walking with God and his departure was a fading away, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... New York and I am going to clear his name!" she resolved, and just then she saw a young man dashing along, close to the edge of a cliff. Over he went, and Helen, with no thought of the danger to herself, ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... long hours at home. For my soul sinks with terror at the tales The servants tell about your wild adventures. Whene'er we part my trembling heart forebodes That you will ne'er come back to me again. I see you on the frozen mountain steeps, Missing, perchance, your leap from cliff to cliff; I see the chamois, with a wild rebound, Drag you down with him o'er the precipice. I see the avalanche close o'er your head, The treacherous ice give way, and you sink down Entombed alive within ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... limestone cliff whose foot is washed by the Baram river and which contains a number of caves (known as Batu Gading, or the ivory rock) is said by a Kayan legend to have been formed by a Kayan house being turned into Stone owing to incestuous ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... with British blood he waves his sword and shouts to his legions. Now you may see him fighting in that cannon's glare, and the next moment he is away off yonder, leading the forlorn hope up that steep cliff. Is it not a magnificent sight, to see that strange soldier and that noble black horse dashing, like a meteor, down ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... a great calm in them, and cares and sorrows, and all the external sources of anxiety, far away, down there beneath your feet, will 'show scarce so gross as beetles,' whilst you stand upon the high cliff and look down upon them all. 'From henceforth no man shall trouble me.' 'I bear in my body the marks ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in the South of France had ceased to be easily accessible to the 'most hard-worked member of the Government.' Though for many years he retained his little villa of 'La Sainte Campagne' near Toulon, nestling in its olive groves with, from windows and cliff, the view of the red porphyry rocks across the deep blue of the bay, he had for some time been negotiating for the purchase of strips of land by the riverside near Shepperton, and ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Timoteo stood still and looked at Herbert. Then the Spanish boy turned and flew over the rocks. Leaping from one slippery foothold to another, he rushed toward the cliffs, up the cliff road, on to the clusters of Chinese huts that made a little fishing-village by itself on the edge of the bay. Whatever Spanish or English vocabulary Timoteo used, he aroused two or three Chinamen to forsake their frames of drying fish and cease ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... as in a sieve; the chill of the wind and the snow turned me giddy, but I scrambled on and upwards. Hobhouse went to the highest pinnacle. ... The whole of the Mountain superb. A Shepherd on a very steep and high cliff playing upon his pipe; very different from Arcadia, (where I saw the pastors with a long Musquet instead of a Crook, and pistols in their Girdles).... The music of the Cows' bells (for their wealth, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... many requests for aid. Tiberius consequently conceived a contempt for those still left in the fortress and thinking that he could conquer them without loss paid no further heed to the nature of the country but proceeded straight up the cliff. Since there was no level ground and the enemy would not come down against them, he himself took his seat on a platform in full view in order to watch the engagement (for this would cause his soldiers to contend more vigorously), and to render opportune assistance, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... time," she said. "Another second and I was lost. Suddenly a giddiness came over me, as if someone seized me and was pulling me over the cliff. Take me away ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... leagues lower down. This river runs but about fifty leagues, and will hardly admit of a boat for a great way: it has taken its name from the nation of the Yasous, and some others dwelling on its banks. Twenty-eight leagues below the river of the Yasous, is a great cliff of a reddish free-stone: over-against this cliff are ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... not pursued very far when the trail went down a drain, where the ridge on one side was very steep, with a ledge of rocks for a considerable distance. On the top of the cliff, two Indians lay in ambush, and when the company got opposite to them, they made a noise, which caused the whites to stop; that instant two of the company were mortally wounded, and before the rangers could get round to the top of the cliff, the Indians made their escape ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... bonny brave lads!" he would murmur aloud, with just a touch of his parents' accent, and press a button which discharged an ancient brass cannon mounted at the edge of the cliff. Whenever he saw one of his ships in the offing—and he could identify his ships as far as he could see them—he ordered the gardener to load ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... the horse bolting with me without me being paid,' said Flash Jack. 'I know that horse; he's got a mouth like iron. I might be at the bottom of the cliff on Crown Ridge road in twenty minutes with my head caved in, and then what chance ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... the Athenians from the Circle proceeded to fortify the cliff above the marsh which on this side of Epipolae looks towards the great harbour; this being also the shortest line for their work to go down across the plain and the marsh to the harbour. Meanwhile the Syracusans marched out and ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... pressed on up the ascent, at length coming into open light upon a small plateau marked by huge, rugged, weather-chipped stones. On the eastern side was a rocky promontory, and close to the edge of this cliff, an hundred feet in sheer descent, rose a gnarled, time and tempest-twisted chestnut tree. Here the borderman laid down his rifle and knapsack, and, half-reclining against the tree, settled himself to ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... hundred feet sheer down into the gloomy depths of the canyon below. Just beyond them yawned the black opening of their shaft-hole, the rude windlass outlined against the gray background of rock, while somewhat to the left, seemingly overhanging the edge of the cliff, perched a single-roomed cabin of logs representing home. This was the "Little Yankee" claim, owners William Hicks and "Stutter" Brown. The two partners were sitting silent and idle, a single rifle lying ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... beneath an overhanging cliff, where they have erected a miserable booth, whose broken thatch has to be supplemented by the dense foliage of the ginkgo tree overshadowing it. In front of this hut runs a brawling stream, while the rocks all around are hung with heavy curtains of ivy, which add to the gloom ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... followed. I interfered, furious at heart, but making a show of civility, knowing that would madden him. He was soon up in arms. He tried to drive me off, struck me. I used my stick, and we fought there and then—fought like madmen on the cliff edge, two hundred feet above the sea. The girl, frightened almost to death, ran away. Done got my stick from me, and we fought with our hands. He could beat me at that game, and at length struck me a blow that ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... man lies or defiles himself, or blasphemes, or murders, God does not dash him from a cliff or cast him into a furnace of fire. There would be no connection ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... pleasures and occupations and thoughts during a day spent by the sea-shore: among them, that of sitting on the top of a cliff, and throwing stones at his own ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hurried towards the Great Eastern Railway station, I felt like a horse drawn by a Gypsy whisperer to do something against his own will, and yet in the street I stopped to buy the tools. Reaching Dullingham in the afternoon, I lunched there; and as I walked thence along the cliff, towards Raxton, I became more calm and collected. I determined not to go near the Hall, lest my movements should be watched by the servants. The old churchyard was full of workmen of the navvy kind, and I learned that for the safety of the public it had now become necessary to hurl down upon the ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... of that steep road cut out of the cliff appeared to be the worst. It began to widen, with descents less precipitous. Tips of trees rose level with her gaze, obstructing sight of the blue depths. Then brush appeared on each side of the road. Gradually Carley's strain ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... delay, or eager for new adventures, you can leave your companions lingering about the shore, and cross the Styx by a dangerous bridge of precipices overhead. In order to do this, you must ascend a steep cliff, and enter a cave above, 300 yards long, from an egress of which, you find yourself on the bank of the river, eighty feet above its surface, commanding a view of those in the boat, and those waiting on the shore. Seen from this height, the lamps in the canoe glare like fiery ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... very much afraid of these explosions, and she wished to go back. Mr. George himself was also afraid at first to stand very near the edge of the crater; but it was not on account of the explosions, but for fear that the cliff might cave in. Indeed, the cliffs all around were cracked off, and in some places leaning over, apparently ready to fall; and even at the spot where the spectators stood looking into the crater, there was a fissure running along parallel to the cliff, ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... silent, on seeing how correct the admiral's judgment had been; and the rest of the journey, as far as the little port of Wimereux, was made without hindrance from him. Arriving there, he climbed upon the cliff to encourage the cannoneers, spoke to all of them, patted them on the shoulder, and urged them to aim well. "Courage, my friends," said he, "remember you are not fighting fellows who will hold out a long time. Drive them back with the honors of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of Upper Teesdale; Bertram's clamber on the cliff, with its reminiscences of the 'Kittle Nine Steps,'—these lead on to many other things as good, ending with that altogether admirable bit of workmanship, Bertram's revenge on Oswald and his own death. Matilda is one of the best of Scott's verse-heroines, except Constance—that is to say, the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... his hand against the cliff. The road from Antium, the events at the wall, the search for Lygia amidst burning houses, sleeplessness, and his terrible alarm had exhausted him; and the news that the dearest person in the world was near by, and that soon he would see her, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... a point, where the cliff was rather high, although it was clothed in dense forest here as elsewhere, and when he reached the crest he heard a sound like the swishing of waters. Alert and suspicious he sank down among the trees and peered over the bank. Two men in a ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... earth I'd let go. But the others will make an end of you if they catch you. Ride on and I'll chase you. Turn to the left there and ride to the bluff. I'll follow you. There's a gully through the top. Ride down it as far as you can and jump your horse over the cliff. It's nearly fifty feet high, and may kill you, but it's the only way. The other warriors are coming up and they'll kill you sure if you don't jump. Jump, and I'll tell 'em I chased ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... toward the cliff behind us. His eyes narrowed incredulously; he glanced at its drop, upon which even a mountain goat could not have made its way, ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... which began where the rails slipped downward toward the east and, dropping from sight, followed for a quarter of a mile around the long face of the mountain. It was very still up here on the Pass, so still that when the Western Slope Limited, two hours and more late at Eagle Cliff, whistled for the tunnel four miles below the sound came echoing about ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... valley, the fragrant woodroof, and the silvery wild garlick, were just peeping from the earth in the most sheltered nooks. Charmed to find myself surrounded by so much beauty, I had scrambled, with much ado, to the top of the woody cliff, (no other word can convey an idea of its precipitous abruptness,) and was vainly attempting to trace by my eye the actual course of the spring, which was, by the clearest evidence of sound, gushing ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... Blancandrins and Guene Till each by each a covenant had made And sought a plan, how Rollant might be slain. Cantered so far by valley and by plain To Sarraguce beneath a cliff they came. There a fald-stool stood in a pine-tree's shade, Enveloped all in Alexandrin veils; There was the King that held the whole of Espain, Twenty thousand of Sarrazins his train; Nor was there one but did his speech contain, Eager for news, till they might hear ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... beside the Lord of life and death, which is the point of view of the author of this narrative, 'great death' dwindles to a very little thing. We need to revise our notions if we would understand how trivial it really is. To us it frowns like a black cliff blocking the upper end of our valley, but there is a path round its base, and though the throat of the pass be narrow, it has room for us to get through and up to the sunny uplands beyond. From a mountain top the country ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... had I been at the seaside before, and then I had gone by excursion to places on the Welsh coast whose great cliffs of rock and mountain backgrounds made the effect of the horizon very different from what it is upon the East Anglian seaboard. Here what they call a cliff was a crumbling bank of whitey-brown earth not ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... of tall buildings, as high as the fall of the waters of Niagara, grew up like a range of magical cliffs upon the precious rock of Manhattan. Here the work of the telephone engineer has been so well done that although every room in these cliff-buildings has its telephone, there is not a pole in sight, not a cross-arm, not a wire. Nothing but the tip-ends of an immense system are visible. No sooner is a new skyscraper walled and roofed, than the telephones are in place, at once putting the tenants in touch with the rest ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... said the Man's Wife merrily, as the horses drew near to Fagoo. She was riding on the cliff-side. ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... is sufficient to account for the formation of the mighty sandbank, for the water is laden with the detritus of cliff and beach which it has taken up in its course round England, and, just as if you give a circular motion to a basin of muddy water, you will soon find the earthy deposit centralised at the bottom of the basin, so ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... and the golden clouds of evening were gathered round him as he hastened to his rest. And Kephalos said, "Here must I rest, also, for my journey is done, and Prokris is waiting for me in the brighter land." There on the white cliff he stood, and just as the sun touched the waters, the strength of Kephalos failed him, and he sank gently into ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... climbed the long flights of steps that lead straight through the village, which hangs on the cliff like a cluster of sea-birds' nests. The gardens were bare and brown now, the trees ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... Baraboo, was called, and he probed for the ball, but could not find it, and neither could he get the bar of railroad iron out of the Frenchman, and so they were buried on the spot where now stands the Cliff House. The squaw looked around for another fellow, but they all had other engagements, the excursion train having arrived from La Crosse, and so she went up on a crag and said, "Big Injun me," and jumped off and was dashed into 1,347 pieces, and the wedding was broke up. Pieces of ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... interesting exhibits of house-building for protection is found in the cliff dwellings, whose ruins are to be seen in Arizona and New Mexico. Tradition and other evidences point to the conclusion that certain tribes had developed a state of civilization as high as a middle period of barbarism, on the plains, where they had made a beginning of systematic ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... Of tidal forces, no fierce rush Of storm deep-grasping scarcely spent 'Twixt continent and continent. 60 Such quiet souls have never known Thy truer inspiration, thou Who lov'st to feel upon thy brow Spray from the plunging vessel thrown Grazing the tusked lee shore, the cliff That o'er the abrupt gorge holds its breath, Where the frail hair-breadth of an if Is all that sunders life and death: These, too, are cared for, and round these Bends her mild crook thy sister Peace; 70 These in unvexed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the cold and wind making their eyes run, and the water collecting the sand. Unable to proceed farther, we were obliged to encamp about 2 P.M., close by the sea-shore, under the shadow of a great cliff, the spray of the waves washing our feet and resting-place, and the noise of their chafing and roaring stunning our ears, whilst the sand-storm worked its way of desolation over our heads. The slaves surprised ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... honeymoon at Stebbing Park, a friend's country house in Essex, about three miles from the village of Stebbing. It was there that they stumbled upon Rose Cottage, where Stacpoole lived for several years before he moved to Cliff Dene on the Isle of ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... of animals is none too humane, a fisher-boy threw a visitor's Pomeranian over the Malakoff saying, "You shall fly! You shall remain in the air;" whilst at Bath a girl of ten, snatching her baby brother from the perambulator, leaped over Beechen Cliff, calling out, "We will fly together! We ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... only romantic spot on the coast. The country here for several miles is high table-land, running boldly to the shore, and breaking off in a steep cliff, at the foot of which the waters of the Pacific are constantly dashing. For several miles the water washes the very base of the hill, or breaks upon ledges and fragments of rocks which run out into the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... capital is consistent with its having been the centre of a very considerable empire, and hardly consistent with its having been anything less. The greatest of these, the tomb of a king Midas (son not of Gordius but of Atys), has for facade a cliff about a hundred feet high, cut back to a smooth face on which an elaborate geometric pattern has been left in relief. At the foot is a false door, while above the immense stone curtain the rock has been carved into a triangular pediment worthy of a Greek temple and engraved ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... upon which the town was originally situated; and that such were the prevailing considerations that led to this settlement, is evident from the very position which was subsequently selected for it on the mainland—the steep but well-protected cliff, which still bears to the present day the venerable name of the Anatolian mother-city. Nowhere in Italy, accordingly, were the scenes of the legends of Asia Minor so vividly and tenaciously localized as in the district of Cumae, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... stood, they found that Arthur had penned them upon a little bluff of land that ended steeply over a deep river, and that no way was open for them to escape from the death of swords, unless they chose to leap on the rocks below the cliff. ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... when they had passed it they would find themselves face to face with the sea. In their eagerness they broke into a run, notwithstanding their terrible state of fatigue, and soon rounded the bend—to find themselves in a cul-de-sac, with a perpendicular wall of cliff in front of them nearly two hundred feet high. With a groan of bitter anguish and disappointment they deposited Walford in his hammock on the ground, and turned to ask each other what should be done in the face of this new difficulty. As they did so, the ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... harmonizes with all situations, rude and cultivated, level and abrupt. On the side of the mountain it adds grandeur to the declivity, and gives a look of sweeter tranquillity to the green pastoral meadow. It yields a darker frown to the projecting cliff, and a more awful uncertainty to the mountain-pass or the hollow ravine. Amid desolate scenery it spreads a cheerfulness that detracts nothing from its power over the imagination, while it relieves it of its terrors by presenting a green bulwark to defend us from the elements. Nothing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... clouds of cold fog had settled down, so that there was no distinction of sky and sea. Over the white shoulders of the headlands, or in the opening of bays, there was nothing but a great vacancy and blackness; and the road as it drew near the edge of the cliff seemed to skirt the shores of creation ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up-to-date, and there is the most beautiful park; only you have to get at it by going through the lowest slums of the town, which must rather put one off on a summer day, and it is dominated by a cemetery on a high cliff above it, so that as you drive you see the evidences of death always in front of you; and one of the reporters who came to interview us said it made "a cunning place to take your best girl on Sunday to do a bit of a spoon!!" Are they not an ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... are usually the direct result of their own mental and moral deficiencies. The Eskimo is an exception, because his home and its location are dictated by the hard and fierce circumstances which dictate to him what he must do. Often he is compelled to move as his food supply moves. The Cliff-Dweller Indian of the arid regions of the Southwest was forced to cliff- dwell, in order to stave off extermination by his enemies. Under that spur he became a wonderful architect ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... came shrieks of terror and delight. The carriages were driving along a road hollowed in a literally overhanging precipitous cliff, and it seemed to every one that they were galloping along a shelf on a steep wall, and that in a moment the carriages would drop into the abyss. On the right stretched the sea; on the left was a rough brown wall with black blotches and red veins and ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... they walked on, then came suddenly out from under a line of trees and stood at the edge of a low cliff, gazing down in astonishment at the gully ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... confusion lost,— A world of waters, and without a coast. A mountain of tremendous height there stands Betwixt the Athenian and Boeotian lands: Parnassus is its name, whose forky rise Mounts through the clouds, and mates the lofty skies. High on the summit of this dubious cliff, Deucalion, wafting, moored his little skiff: He, with his wife, were only left behind Of perished man; they two were human kind: The most upright of mortal men was he,— The most serene and holy ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... instead of answering directly, invited us to follow him. We did so, winding round the corner of a huge column; but no cataract met our inquiring gaze. "Wait you here," said the boy, "or rather go on into that recess, while I run up the face of the cliff, and lift the sluice." The idea of a sluice, as connected with one of the most sublime of nature's productions, was too ludicrous. It reminded us of a miserable little affair, not far from Schandau, on the road to the Kuhstall, which the delighted Saxons exhibit to you as one of the wonders of ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... dead on the beach, under a high cliff, and the body of the Commodore was in his arms; indeed, they were both grappled together. It is supposed, that in his walk up to the top of the hill, which he used to take every day, to see if any vessels might be in the Straits, he fell ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... with the perfume of apple blossoms, the water from the old wheel fell with silvery echo and ran rippling over the stones into the river. Somewhere above the cliff a negro was playing a banjo and far down the river, beside a little cottage torn with shot and shell, but still standing, a mocking-bird was ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... we had first seen each other, then met and walked; where we had sat, and talked, and loved, during the long and heavenly intercourse between ourselves and lonely Nature. We began by the lovely hill of Tresserves which rises like a verdant cliff between the valley of Aix and the lake; its sides, that rise almost perpendicularly from the water's edge, are covered with chestnut-trees, rivalling those of Sicily, through their branches, which overhang the water, ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Hampton Dibrell is down on the front porch ready to gallivant you, honey-bunch, and I seen Miss Letitia and her Mister Cliff Gray coming in one direction and Miss Jessie in another, so I reckon Sallie had better hurry with that New York twilight she's fixing on you," Mammy announced as she stood in my doorway and beamed upon me. "An' I expects the parson will ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess |
