"Flat-bottomed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... similar heaps, but these were of bleached bones on which the moonlight shone brightly—mementoes of former sacrifices. Quite close to the first pile of dead was a mooring-place where at least a dozen flat-bottomed boats had been secured, for their impress could yet be seen in the sand. Now they were gone with the exception of the canoe, which was kept there, evidently to facilitate the loading and launching of ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... at Runiroi were Jim, the head carpenter, Austin, and Bill, who were all good workmen. Frank, "Boat Frank," as he was called, from having formerly served as captain of the old flat-bottomed scow which carried the sale crop to Plymouth, was also in the shop and did beautiful work. I was fond of visiting Jim's shop and ordering all sorts of wooden ware, pails, piggins, trays, etc.; these last, dug out ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... the enemy was so great that I could not hire a crew. I pled therefore with Nowar and Manuman, and a few leading men, to take one of their best canoes, and themselves to accompany me. I had a large flat-bottomed pot with a close fitting lid, and that I pressed full of flour; and, tying the lid firmly down, I fastened it right in the center of the canoe, and as far above water-mark as possible. All else that was required we tied around our ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... is vuissiers, and denotes a kind of vessel, flat-bottomed, with large ports, specially constructed for the transport of horses. T. Smith translates "palanders," but I don't know that " palander" conveys any very clear ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... Commodore Preble's plan to make a carefully concerted attack upon this stronghold as soon as summer weather conditions permitted. For this purpose he had strengthened his squadron at Syracuse by purchasing a number of flat-bottomed gunboats with which he hoped to engage the enemy in the shallow waters about Tripoli while his larger vessels shelled the town and batteries. He arrived off the African coast about the middle of July ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... yet slept, but their sister called them, and after the accustomed cup of coffee and rusks they went out to fish on the Gudenaa. Of late Hardy had hired a flat-bottomed boat, and a man called Nils Nilsen rowed or punted it with a pole, as on the Thames, or he went ashore on the towing-path and pulled it up the river with a towing rope, while a minnow was cast from ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... the Tumbuddra, and of its suburb Annegundi on the northern bank, is occupied by great bare piles and bosses of granite and granitoidal gneiss, separated by rocky defiles and narrow rugged valleys encumbered by precipitated masses of rock. Some of the larger flat-bottomed valleys are irrigated by aqueducts from the river.... The peaks, tors, and logging-stones of Bijanugger and Annegundi indent the horizon in picturesque confusion, and are scarcely to be distinguished from the more artificial ruins ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... is very poor, being little more than an open roadstead. Into this harbor empties a small stream called the Arecibo. Goods are transported on this river, to and from the town, in flat-bottomed boats, with the aid of long poles and ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... put their shoulders to the bows of the old, flat-bottomed rowboat, with incredible exertions uprooting it from its ancient bed, and at length ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... substantial petticoats, gold buckles in her shoes, and a great white cap with a kind of gold band round her head, sat knitting there; or sometimes a Dutchman in trunk hose was fishing there. We saw them all, for we had entered a barge or trekschuyt, towed by horses on the bank, a great flat-bottomed thing, that perfectly held our carriage. Thus we were to go by the canals to the Hague, and no words can describe the strange silence and tranquillity of our ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Pottawattamie tribe, whose wigwams, or tepees, were scattered here and there upon the prairie and along the banks of the river that then, as now, was not navigable for anything much larger than a flat-bottomed scow. ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... remaining force. It consisted of twenty elephants, three thousand horse, and twenty thousand foot, with two thousand archers, and twenty thousand slingers. When all was ready, Pyrrhus put these troops on board a large fleet of galleys, transports, and flat-bottomed boats, which had been sent over to him from Tarentum by Cineas for the purpose, and at length set sail. He left Ptolemy, his eldest son, then about fifteen years old, regent of the kingdom, and took two younger sons, Alexander and Helenus, with him. The expedition was destined, it ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... engineers, as well as doctors, are apt to differ. Some suggested that each particular stone should be floated to the rock, with a cork buoy attached to it; while others proposed an air-tank, instead of the cork buoy. Others, again, proposed to sail over the rock at high water in a flat-bottomed vessel, and drop the stones one after another when over the spot they were intended to occupy. A few, still more eccentric and daring in their views, suggested that a huge cofferdam or vessel should be built on shore, and as much of ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... lonely Li and Sing invited rich people of the neighbourhood to come and dine with them, and after they had eaten, sometimes they would go out upon the little lake in the centre of their estate, rowing in an awkward flat-bottomed boat that had been built by the ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... mouth of the great Saskatchewan river—which, by countless portages and interlinking lakes, is connected with all the vast water systems of the North—would have seen the fur traders sweeping down in huge flotillas of canoes and flat-bottomed Mackinaw boats—exultant after running the Grand Rapids, where the waters of the Great Plains converge to a width of some hundred rods and rush nine miles over rocks the size of a house in a ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... no sooner aweigh, than the deck became a scene of activity. The breeze was stiff, and it enabled me to show the Wallingford off to advantage among the dull, flat-bottomed craft of that day. There were reaches in which the wind favoured us, too; and, by the time the ladies reappeared, we were up among the islands, worming our way through the narrow channels with rapidity and skill. To me, and to Marble also, the scene was entirely ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... marsh. That marsh was the best shooting ground I ever saw. It was my cousin's chief care, and he kept it as a preserve. Through the rushes that covered it, and made it rustling and rough, narrow passages had been cut, through which the flat-bottomed boats, impelled and steered by poles, passed along silently over dead water, brushing up against the reeds and making the swift fish take refuge in the weeds, and the wild fowl, with their pointed, black ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... Pencroft set to work. He did not mean to build a boat with boards and planking, but simply a flat-bottomed canoe, which would be well suited for navigating the Mercy—above all, for approaching its source, where the water would naturally be shallow. Pieces of bark, fastened one to the other, would form a light boat; and in case of natural obstacles, which ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... coffins resist much longer the weight of the superincumbent earth; but there can be no doubt that it is a very ancient shape. Many years ago I heard that in some parish in this county the coffin was shaped like a flat-bottomed boat; the boat shape is known to have been an ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... turn around a corner and make a short cut through a whole plantation of lily-pads and spatterdocks,—or things like them,—and she would scrape over a sunken log as easily as a wagon-wheel rolls over a stone. She drew only two feet of water, and was flat-bottomed. When she made a very short turn, the men had to push her stern around with poles. Indeed, there was a man with a pole at the bow a good deal of the time, and sometimes he had more pushing off to do than he ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... belonged to the late Celtic race before the advent of the Romans. These lake dwellers used a canoe in order to reach the mainland, and this primitive boat has been discovered. It is evidently cut out of the stem of an oak, is flat-bottomed, and its dimensions are 17 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 1 foot deep. The prow is pointed, and has a hole, through which doubtless a rope was passed, in order to fasten it to the little harbour of ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... for the invasion of England. An army, the finest that he ever led to victory, which, even after it had been transferred to another scene of action, he still saw fit to call the "army of England," was encamped near Boulogne. It was constantly exercised in the process of embarking on board flat-bottomed boats or rafts, which were to be convoyed by Villeneuve, admiral of the Toulon fleet, and Gantheaume, admiral of the Brest fleet, for whose appearance the French signalmen vainly scanned the horizon. In the meantime, Nelson had been ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... kept her house and brooded. Then one day she sallied forth all dressed in deepest mourning and attended by a train of servants, and, embarking upon a flat-bottomed barge, was borne up the river Scheldt towards Antwerp. Bruges was her ultimate destination, of which she left no word behind her, and took the longest way round to reach it. From Antwerp her barge voyaged on to Ghent, and thence by canal, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... according to the quantities of merchandise they possess, and either build or buy a boat to carry themselves and their goods down the Euphrates to Babylon[121], under the care of a master and mariners hired to conduct the boat. These boats are almost flat-bottomed and very strong, yet serve only for one voyage, as it is impossible to navigate them upwards. They are fitted for the shallowness of the river, which in many places is full of great stones which greatly obstruct the navigation. At Feluchia a small city on the Euphrates, the merchants pull ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... eight feet of the ground. In general, pedestals of this kind are supported on some projecting portion of the basement; but at Lyons, owing to other arrangements of the architecture into which I have no time to enter, they are merely projecting tablets, or flat-bottomed brackets of stone, projecting from the wall. Each bracket is about a foot and a half square, and is shaped thus (fig. 13), showing to the spectator, as he walks beneath, the flat bottom of each bracket, quite in the shade, but within a couple ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... and rats, down to the bamboo wharf where the force was to embark. Several barges, equipped with large, square sails made of matting, could be dimly made out by the starlight riding in mid-stream, and in these the cargo had been placed, while two large flat-bottomed boats were moored alongside the landing, ready for the conveyance of ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... subdued, and in some cases their people were sold wholesale into slavery. In 56 B.C. the Veneti threw off the yoke and retained two of Caesar's officers as hostages. Caesar advanced upon Brittany in person, but found that he could make no headway while he was opposed by the powerful fleet of flat-bottomed boats, like floating castles, which the Veneti were so skilful in manoeuvring. Ships were hastily constructed upon the waters of the Loire, and a desperate naval engagement ensued, probably in the Gulf of Morbihan, which resulted in the decisive ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... the road before me, three of them, and tailless, brown, speckled birds, with dark-blue necks and ragged crests. They stepped archly over the filigree snow, and their bodies moved with slow motion, like small, light, flat-bottomed boats. I admired them, they were curious. Then a gust of wind caught them, heeled them over as if they were three frail boats opening their feathers like ragged sails. They hopped and skipped with discomfort, to get out of the draught of the wind. And then, ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... overhauling the nets at the mouth of the river, and these were so prolific that the small flat-bottomed boat used by the fishermen was soon half filled with glittering salmon, varying from ten to fifteen pounds in weight. In order to avoid having his mocassins and nether garments soiled, Jack, who pulled the ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... sea that is lacking," interrupted the Jew; "Memphis trades only with Egypt, and we with the whole world. The merchant who sends his goods here only load camels, and wretched asses, and flat-bottomed Nile-boats, while we in our harbors freight fine seagoing vessels. When the winter-storms are past our house alone sends twenty triremes with Egyptian wheat to Ostia and to Pontus; and your Indian and Arabian goods, your imports from the newly opened Ethiopian provinces, take up less room, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... R.E. corporal. Looking up the Canal the fatigue party, already late for their dinners, perceive a P. & O. liner about four miles away majestically crawling south. Their only hope is now the horse-ferry, an aged flat-bottomed contrivance wound across by a squad of natives and a chain. With the assistance of a friendly military policeman, the headman of this gang is discovered some hundred of yards away lying asleep with his feet in the Sweet-Water Canal, Bilharziosis doubtless entering at every pore. When aroused he breaks ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... usual, very industrious and having erected the iron magazines, they were now engaged in building a flat-bottomed barge to assist in transporting corn from the islands south of Regiaf. They had not been in the best health, but they nevertheless continued to work with an energy and spirit that were a delightful contrast to the sluggishness and apathy of ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... night's rest, and I never can sleep with anything on my mind. So I came over here to talk business. By-the-by, I should have come over here long ago, if any one had had the sense to give me a hint that I had only to cross a muddy stream, in a flat-bottomed boat, in order to see a face like that—" She nodded towards ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... Pak. During this day the party had to cross a river which was too deep to ford, and over which there was no sort of bridge. For the assistance of travellers a ferry-boat had been provided. This boat was a broad, flat-bottomed, clumsy affair. It could carry but three ponies at a time, with several men. The men in charge of the boat were slow and obstinate, and consequently it took a long time for all ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... greatest length E. and W. 144 m.; is traversed by the Blue Mountains (7400 ft.), whose slopes are clad with luxuriant forests of mahogany, cedar, satin-wood, palm, and other trees; of the numerous rivers, only one, the Black River, is navigable and that for only flat-bottomed boats and canoes; there are many harbours (Kingston finest), while good roads intersect the island; the climate is oppressively warm and somewhat unhealthy on the coast, but delightful in the interior highlands; for ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... convenient bundles or "packs" for handling, and obviating the necessity of transporting the heavy material of the cases. Bundled together the entire freight was transported by teams to the water front, where were tied up two commodious shallow flat-bottomed boats into which it was loaded. To this was added provisions sufficient for two months, which Swiftwater had contracted for on his previous visit to the town, and ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... the rolling ship into some huge flat-bottomed boats, like coal-barges, and even so, were grated and ground several times by the churning waves on the ragged reefs beneath us: and, just as I was enjoying the see-saw, and trying to comfort two poor drenched women-kind who were terribly afraid of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... over an old, lichened and weather-stained stone wall, dropping their fruit into the highway for thirsty pedestrians. There should be a little path running athwart it, down toward the lake and the old flat-bottomed boat, whose bilge is scattered with the black and shriveled remains of angleworms used for bait. In warm August afternoons the sweet savor of ripening drifts warmly on the air, and there rises the drowsy hum of wasps exploring the windfalls that are already rotting on the grass. There you may ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... to the harbour, and seeing some flat-bottomed boats constructing, asked a French gentleman who accompanied me, perhaps a little triumphantly, if they were intended for a descent on the English coast. He replied, with great composure, that ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... wishing to spoil our appetite we kept out of sight till breakfast was ready, and the ceremony of eating was performed as rapidly as possible. We were very hungry, and ate with our eyes nearly closed, and conversation was anything but hilarious. For years the huge flat-bottomed scow plied back and forth to the steamers, and the skipper enjoyed a monopoly of the business, and ruled his motley crew with an iron hand. Gradually old age began to weaken his power, and the sons overthrew his authority and pushed him aside. All hands became captain and crew ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... families, and eight thousand sailors. In addition there was assembled in the coast districts of the Netherlands an army of thirty-four thousand men, for whose transportation to England a great number of flat-bottomed vessels had been procured. These were to venture upon the sea as soon as the Armada was in position for ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... is launched, but when we search for a passage to take her over the reef, none is to be found. In vain we make the attempt. Everywhere we are baffled. Some of our people almost go mad with despair. I propose building a large flat-bottomed punt from the deck of the ship, which can pass over ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... When Charlie came back, there was going to be a change. She repeated that to herself with determination. Between whiles she rambled about in the littered clearing, prowled along the beaches, and paddled now and then far outside the bay in a flat-bottomed skiff, restless, full of plans. So far as she saw, she would have to face some city alone, but she viewed that prospect with a total absence of the helpless feeling which harassed her so when she first took train for her brother's camp. She had passed ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... with all speed. A large, flat-bottomed boat, the Willing, was fitted out with four guns and was sent down the Mississippi with forty men to ascend the Ohio and the Wabash to a place of rendezvous not far from the coveted post. By early February the depleted companies were recruited to their full ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... summer the journey from Lyons to Marseilles in one of the many flat-bottomed steamers would be very enjoyable, and a pleasant break ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... grows hollyhocks beside the house, and sweet peas on her wire fence. But at the lane's end, where the water of the Salt Pond laps the pier, you may see another old boat put to humbler uses, now that its seafaring days are over, and uses sometimes no less romantic than the Cap'n's garden. It is a flat-bottomed boat, and lies bottom side up just above the little beach made by the lap of the waves, for the tide does not affect the Salt Pond back here three miles from the outlet. The paint has nearly gone from this aged craft, though a few flakes of green still cling ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... generally east and west, and consists of a flat-bottomed depression of width varying from half a mile to two miles, down which the river follows a winding course to the west, at some points near the southern slopes of the valley and at others near the northern. The high ground both on the north ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... was no longer visible. The swelling tide had circled round through some unseen channel, and was creeping now into the land by many creeks and narrow ways. She herself was upon an island, cut off from the dry land by a smoothly flowing tidal way more than twenty yards across. Along it a man in a flat-bottomed boat was punting his way towards her. She stood and waited for him, admiring his height, and the long powerful strokes with which he propelled his clumsy craft. He was very tall, and against the flat background his height seemed almost abnormal. As soon as he had attracted her attention ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in a flat-bottomed boat, enjoying the soft melancholy Italian evening. Not a human did I see; nor had I encountered one on my slow voyage from the Middle Seas. In meditation I pondered the ultimate wisdom of Confucius and smiled at the folly of the white barbarians who had tried ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... two large flat-bottomed boats of light enough draft to run the rapids in the flood-tide of spring. Carpenters worked hidden in an attic; but when the timbers were mortised together, the boats had to be brought downstairs, where one of the ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... seen from below hung in a flat-bottomed lantern just beyond the head of the stairs, and outside the entrance to one of two passages which appeared to lead to the back part of the house. Suspecting that M. de Bruhl's business had lain with mademoiselle, I guessed that the light had been placed ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... like any other guide and coolie, and having much to think out, and sure thinking being anything but a rapid process with him, also because he did not wish to draw too much attention to his movements, he chose as a means of conveyance the ugly flat-bottomed public paddle-boat which floats unconcernedly down the Hoogli from Calcutta, through the bigger creeks of the Sunderbunds, and up the ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... ships were described vnto them to be so huge, they relied partly vpon the shallow and dangerous seas all along their costs. Wherfore they stood most in doubt of the duke of Parma his small and flat-bottomed ships. Howbeit they had all their ships of warre to the number of 90. and aboue, in a readinesse for all assayes: the greater part whereof were of a small burthen, as being more meete to saile vpon ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... sailin' in the daytime—it struck me that as the tide was runnin' out we might as well let it take us to Simpson's Bar, which, if ye don't know this bay, is a big shallow place, where there is always water enough for us, bein' a good deal on the flat-bottomed order, but where almost any steamin' craft at low tide would stick in the mud before they could run into us. So thinks I, If we want to get on in the direction of Widder Kinley's (whose is the ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... as I afterwards learnt, Napoleon's troops and flat-bottomed boats were gathered at Boulogne and waiting their opportunity to invade us. But of this scarcely an echo penetrated to our courtyard, although the streets outside were filled daily with the tramping of troops and rolling of store-wagons. We knew that our country—whatever ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I ever saw, was my cousin's chief care, who kept it like a park. Among the number of rushes that covered it, and made it living, rustling and rough, narrow passages had been made, through which the flat-bottomed boats, which were impelled and steered by poles, passed along silently over the dead water, brushed up against the reeds and made the swift fish take refuge among the weeds, and the wild fowl dive, whose pointed, black ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... heard among the rushes, and they started up as from sleep. The next moment a flat-bottomed boat appeared, heavy, hollowed out with no skill and with oars as small as sticks. A young girl, who had been picking water-lilies, rowed it. She had dark-brown hair, gathered in great braids, and big dark eyes; otherwise she was strangely pale. But her paleness toned to pink ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... at hand towered the tall, heather-crowned crag of Cwm Dinas, while the rugged peaks of Penllwyd and Penglaslyn frowned in majesty of clouds beyond. The ferry itself was one of those delightful survivals of mediaevalism which linger here and there in a few fortunate corners of our isles. A large flat-bottomed boat was slung on chains which spanned the river, and could be worked slowly across the water by means of a small windlass. Though it was perfectly possible, and often even more convenient, to drive ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... many Moorish merchants, some of whom were so rich as to be owners of fifty ships. These ships are made without nails, their planks being sewed together with ropes of cayro, made of the fibres of the cocoa-nut husk, pitched all over, and are flat-bottomed, without keels. Every winter there are at least six hundred ships in this harbour, and the shore is such, that their ships can be easily drawn up ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... that is their gain. Sometimes, however, they have an interest in the voyage the same as whalers, but usually, I understand, are paid from $40 to $75 for a season, which means three months unless sooner filled. The men do not fish from the deck of the vessel, but from little flat-bottomed dories, each man paddling his own boat and changing its location to suit his whim. When brought on board the vessel the fish are immediately cleaned, split open and salted right down in the hold, without the formality of putting them in barrels or casks. After they are landed ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... safe journey with his boats through the rapids; and Captain Lenfant, in 1901, carried 500,000 pounds of supplies up the river and through the rapids to the French stations between Bussa and Timbuktu. He had a small, flat-bottomed steamboat and a number of little boats propelled by fifty black paddlers. He says that by the land route he would have required 12,000 porters, and they would have been one hundred and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... half-way between Maros and the falls, and thence had a good bridle-road to our destination, which we reached. in another hour. The hills had closed in around us as we advanced; and when we reached a ruinous shed which had been erected for the accommodation of visitors, we found ourselves in a flat-bottomed valley about a quarter of a mile wide, bounded by precipitous and often overhanging limestone rocks. So far the ground had been cultivated, but it now became covered with bushes ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of Boston. During the first week in September, orders came to draft men for Quebec. For the purpose of carrying the troops up the Kennebec River, a force of carpenters was sent ahead to build two hundred bateaux, or flat-bottomed boats. To Arnold, as colonel, was given the command of the expedition. For the sake of avoiding any ill feeling, the officers were allowed to draw lots. So eager were the troops to share in the possible glories of the campaign that several ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... him to make the journey in the cheapest manner possible. He therefore went down the Vistula in a barge, one of the picturesque flat-bottomed craft that still ply on Poland's greatest river—the river which flows through two of her capitals and was, it is well said, partitioned with the land it waters from the Carpathians to the Baltic, On his way down the river he would, observes ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... my boy, I'm used to this sort of thing. Sometimes it's cattle, sometimes it's pigs and sheep. Well, they don't like going down into a flat-bottomed boat; but," he added, with a chuckle and a nudge, "they have to go, and if they won't go decently like passengers, we just shoves them overboard and lets them swim ashore. But with horses like these it would be spoiling them to ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... examined for the last time, restowed, and consigned to the muleteers again. In six days they reach Honda, on the Magdalena River, where, until lately, they were embarked on rafts for a voyage of fourteen days to Savanilla. At the present time, an American company has established a service of flat-bottomed steamers which cover the distance in seven days, thus reducing the risks of the journey by one-half. But they are still terrible. Not a breath of wind stirs the air at that season, for the collector cannot choose his time. The boxes are piled ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... "In company with several others, I purchased the now famous Story farm, on Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, where a well had been bored and natural-oil struck the year before. This proved a very profitable investment. When I first visited this famous well, the oil was running into the creek where a few flat-bottomed scows lay filled with it, ready to be floated down the Allegheny River on an agreed upon day each week, when the creek was flooded by means of a temporary dam. This was the beginning of the natural-oil business. We purchased the farm for forty thousand dollars, and so small was our faith in the ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... stationed upon the low grounds, they persevered in the blockade. But there was another purpose to be served by the inundation of the country beside that of washing away the Spaniards, and the Prince of Orange made preparations for effecting it. He had caused two hundred flat-bottomed boats to be built, and loaded with provisions; these now began to row toward the famished city. The inhabitants saw them coming; they watched them eagerly advancing across the waters, fighting their way past the Spanish forts, and bringing bread to them. But ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... "I see the villain's game; it is all clear now," he shouted, as he slammed his spy-glass. "He means to run in where we dare not follow: and he knows that Carroway is out of hail. The hull may go smash for the sake of the cargo; and his flat-bottomed tub can run where we can not. I dare not carry after him—court-martial if I do: that is where those fellows beat us always. But, by the Lord Harry, he shall not prevail! Guns are no good—the rogue knows that. We will land round the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... State-Government was compelled to conclude with France, led to heavy demands. The Republic was required to provide for the quartering and support of 18,000 French troops and 16,000 Batavians under a French general. Further, a fleet of ten ships of war was to be maintained, and 350 flat-bottomed transports built for the conveyance of an invading army to England. These demands were perforce complied with. Nevertheless Napoleon was far from satisfied with the State-Government, which he regarded as inefficient ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... the yokes; the drivers wading alongside cracked their whips and uttered strange cries; the carts rocked and swayed as the huge wheels churned through the mud and water. As the last light faded we reached the small patches of dry land at the landing, where the flat-bottomed side-wheel steamboat was moored to the bank. The tired horses and oxen were turned loose to graze. Water stood in the corrals, but the open shed was on dry ground. Under it the half-clad, wild-looking ox-drivers ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... All we need is a flat-bottomed boat; and it ought not to be hard to put one together. Uncle Gerald promised to give me some boards for my chicken-coops; perhaps he would add a few more if he knew what we wanted them for. Let's go over and see if he is at ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... Johnson continued, resenting the interruption. "It was during a boat race on Point Judith Pond in Rhode Island. My pal, who was a surfman, had been assigned to duty there. Naturally, he was watching the races. On the other side of the pond a small flat-bottomed skiff, carrying one sail, capsized. There were three men in her. Streeter, that's the fellow I know, saw the boat capsize, but he knew that the water was shallow and noted that it was near shore. Just the same, he kept an eye on the boat. As soon as he saw two men clinging to the sides of ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... quarters, while, with but three companions, he traversed the wilderness on foot, amidst the snows of winter, to Fort Frontenac, a distance of fifteen hundred miles. After an absence of several weeks, he returned with additional men and the means of building a large and substantial flat-bottomed boat, with which to descend the Illinois river to the Mississippi, and the latter ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... their midst. Here, after some months devoted to recuperation and being joined by reinforcements from Cuba, he prepared to lay siege once more to the Aztec capital. Part of this preparation consisted in building a number of small, flat-bottomed boats in pieces, so that they could be transported over a mountainous district, and put together on the shore of Lake Texcoco, thus enabling him to complete the investment of the water-begirt city. ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... Flat-bottomed, and using lee-boards, they draw very little water, while a single mast and sail of the light and convenient Chinese pattern render them extremely handy. Hand-lines are looped round the sides in the customary manner, but ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... time came for school to begin, there were many closed cottages, for the happy careless freedom of the beach was gone; there is no happiness in floating across a placid lake in a flat-bottomed boat if you find yourself continually turning your head toward the shore, thinking that you hear some one ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... flat-bottomed Far West made slow progress. The dead and broken snags, the "sawyers" of river parlance, fast in the sand-bars, seemed waiting to impale the steamboat. The lead-man called unceasingly from his position. One bluff yielded to another, a flat succeeded ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... led to a deep hollow chamber, shaped like a bell, and echoing like one. A pool of intensely black water filled it, reflecting the lights on its surface, that only enhanced its darkness, while there moved on a mysterious flat-bottomed boat, breaking them into shimmering sparks, and John Eyre intimated that the visitors must lie down flat in it to be ferried one by one over a space of about ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sweeping away the besiegers on the waves of the ocean: the inhabitants of Leyden were apprised of this intention by means of letters intrusted to the safe carriage of pigeons trained for the purpose. The inundation was no sooner effected than hundreds of flat-bottomed boats brought abundance of supplies to the half-famished town; while a violent storm carried the sea across the country for twenty leagues around, and destroyed the Spanish camp, with above one thousand soldiers, who were overtaken by the flood. This ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... all its traders; with monks' cowls and golden croziers and white-robed acolytes in its streets; with the subtle smoke of incense coming out from the cathedral door to mingle with the odours of the fruits and flowers in the market-place; with great flat-bottomed boats drifting down the river under the leaning eaves of its dwellings; and with the galleries of its opposing houses touching so nearly that a girl leaning in one could stretch a Provence rose or toss an Easter egg across to her neighbour in ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... indentation—a spot where the flat-bottomed boat lay moored— Scarlett felt certain that they had found the entrance; but when they lay flat on the overhanging bank and peered down below, there was nothing to be seen but black leaves and dead branches ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... under way evening closed in, and brought with it very dirty weather. A keen breeze sprung up off land, and a kind of aggravated Scotch mist soon drove everybody from the deck. As for the Dunkeld, she is a flat-bottomed punt, and going up light as she was, she rolled very heavily. It almost seemed as though she would go right over, but she never did. It was quite impossible to walk about, so I stood near the engines where it was warm, ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... rapids, "the men leaped into the water without the least hesitation to save the canoes from being dashed against the obstructions or caught in eddies. They must never be allowed to come broadside to the stream, for being flat-bottomed they would at once be capsized and everything in them lost." When free from fever he was delighted to note the numbers of birds, several of them unknown, which swarmed on the river and its banks, all carefully noted in his journal. One extract must suffice here: ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... to pieces; and some, who were made prisoners, gave information that the fleet, with their king, Cleonymus, was but three miles distant. Sending the captives into the nearest canton, to be kept under a guard, some soldiers got on board the flat-bottomed vessels, so constructed for the purpose of passing the shoals with ease; others embarked in those which had been lately taken from the enemy, and proceeding down the river, surrounded their unwieldy ships, which dreaded the unknown sands and flats ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... adventures. Trelawny gives the following account of how he passed his days: he "was up at six or seven, reading Plato, Sophocles, or Spinoza, with the accompaniment of a hunch of dry bread; then he joined Williams in a sail on the Arno, in a flat-bottomed skiff, book in hand, and from thence he went to the pine-forest, or some out-of-the-way place. When the birds went to roost he returned home, and talked and read until midnight." The great wood of stone pines on the Pisan Maremma was his favourite study. Trelawny tells us how he found ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... provincial work. The Cornwall Canal was also undertaken, but work was stopped when it was certain that Lower Canada would not respond to the aspirations of the West and improve that portion of the St. Lawrence within its direct control. Flat-bottomed bateaux and Durham boats were generally in use for the carriage of goods on the inland waters, and it was not until the completion of a canal system between the lakes and Montreal, after the Union, that steamers came ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... between them. Of course we shared our rations, and were thus saved from hunger during our day of peril. It was dark when we entered Tangier Bay, but all round us was a sea of foaming breakers. A huge flat-bottomed barge was with great difficulty brought out to the side of the steamer, and we were bidden to jump into it at once. At the risk of broken limbs or necks, we succeeded in reaching it, and then, to my dismay, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... England and Scotland. He assured me that the intentions of the King and his Ministers were unalterable as to their fixed resolution to serve you, but that they met with difficulties in regard to the transports and flat-bottomed boats which retarded the affair longer than they imagined, and that though they had already spent twenty four million every thing was not ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... the country where the tree producing the gum-Arabic grows, and can assist the English in that trade. He further says, that he has been up in the country, as far as the mountains from whence the gold-dust is wafted down; and that if the English would build flat-bottomed boats to go up the river, and send persons well skilled in separating the gold from the ore, they might gain vastly more than at present they do by the dust trade; and that he should be always ready and willing to use the utmost of his power, (which is very considerable in that country,) ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... Turnbull's colony of 1767. He was a cousin of our pilot, by name Pecetti—a stout, well-built man forty years old, with keen black eyes and curling dark hair and beard, and a great fisherman with line and net. He lived near the inlet, and had the kind of boat commonly used in these shallow waters—flat-bottomed, broad in the beam, with centre-board and one mast set well forward. He had dug a peck or two of the large round clams, and two or three throws of his cast-net as we came through the creek ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... this enterprise. Conferring with the warlike Sviatoslaf and other ambitious princes, a large army was collected at the head waters of the Volga. They floated down the wild stream, in capacious flat-bottomed barges, till they came to the mouth of the Kama. Thus far their expedition had been like the jaunt of a gala day. Summer warmth and sunny skies had cheered them as they floated down the romantic stream, through forests, between mountains and along flowery savannas, with pennants ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... ye cannot be a Christian from your lingo, that's one thing poz; and I would wager tippence you're a Frenchy. Who kens, keep us all, but ye may be Buonaparte himself in disguise, come over in a flat-bottomed boat to spy the nakedness of the land. So ye may just rest content, and keep your quarters good till the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... of the long war with France there was here, as well as everywhere else around the coast, fear of a landing of the French. The flat-bottomed boats to bring the French over were actually ready at Boulogne, and the troops mustered to come across in them. On our side, volunteers were in training in case of need, and preparations were made for sending off the women and children inland on the first news of the enemy landing. Not very ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... last long enough to serve our turn as we hoped. The Governor trusted it would have destroyed the whole fleet; but from what I can learn, nothing was really lost except a few of the flat-bottomed landing boats used in the disembarkation of the troops. The English are certainly notable sailors; but it is with her soldiers that we shall have more directly to deal. Still, I wish we could have sunk her ships; it would have placed her on ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... from other districts by its intricate surrounding network of pools and streams—holding its communications and carrying its produce by water instead of by land—began to present themselves in closer and closer succession. Nets appeared on cottage pailings; little flat-bottomed boats lay strangely at rest among the flowers in cottage gardens; farmers' men passed to and fro clad in composite costume of the coast and the field, in sailors' hats, and fishermen's boots, and plowmen's smocks; and even yet the low-lying labyrinth of waters, embosomed in its mystery of solitude, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... stacks of cured hay, and the fields of corn and tobacco gave vigorous promise of a noble harvest. The water also teemed with life and a shiftless out-at-elbow energy. Shabby looking fishing smacks, with dirty white wings, like birds too indolent to plume themselves, passed constantly, and flat-bottomed canoes, manned by good-humored negro oystermen, plied a lazy, thievish trade, with ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... glistening, yellowish brown, with its fins all spread, and looking very strange and startling, darting out so lifelike from the black water, throwing itself fully into the bright sunshine, and then lost to sight and to pursuit. I saw also a long, flat-bottomed boat go up the river, with a brisk wind, and against a strong stream. Its sails were of curious construction: a long mast, with two sails below, one on each side of the boat, and a broader one surmounting them. The sails were colored brown, and appeared ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and streets. The Yaque del Sur, or Neiba River, receives several copious affluents, the largest one being the San Juan River. Much of the lumber exported at Barahona is floated down the Yaque and the river is navigable about 20 miles for flat-bottomed boats, though rapids ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... A short flat-bottomed float, such as that known as the Fabre, is good at getting off from smooth water, but is frequently damaged when the sea is rough. A long and narrow float is preferable for rough water, as it is able to cut through the waves; but comparatively ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... water transportation, the lashing of two canoes together, had practically disappeared on the upland waters by 1800, being replaced by a small open flat-bottomed boat called the bateau, which carried a load of from five to eight hogsheads. Two planters, N. C. Dawson and A. Rucker, both of Amherst County, patented a bateau, in the early 1800's, which was a great improvement ...
— Tobacco in Colonial Virginia - "The Sovereign Remedy" • Melvin Herndon
... latter part of April, 1784, one Mr. Rowan, with his own and five other families, set out from Louisville, in two flat-bottomed boats, for the Long Falls of Green River. Their intention was to descend the Ohio to the mouth of Green River, then ascend that stream to their place of destination. At that time there were no settlements in Kentucky within one hundred miles of Long ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... fetch the land one of these days, and then, if he can't sail over it, like the Yankee flat-bottomed crafts, which draw so little water that they can go across the country, when the dew is on the grass in the morning, we shall come up with him," replied ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... importance of the possession of this vessel, which was the only armed vessel the English government then had in that water, he armed a little schooner, put some of the guns he had captured upon large flat-bottomed boats, embarked his men, and surprised and captured the sloop. Having begun his career with such success, Arnold projected more extensive operations. In the month of June he urged on congress the advantages of an expedition to Canada, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... perpetual ice. Fortunately, it was now frozen hard, and the surface was fit to bear the horses. But for this the party must have halted and waited for a severe frost. The rivers were not frozen when large in volume, and the Aldana had to be crossed in the usual flat-bottomed boat kept for travelers. At night they halted, and with a bush and some deer-skins made a tent. Kolina cooked the supper, and the men searched for some fields of stunted half-frozen grass to let the horses graze. This was the last ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... river "Sutlej," and exchanged our horse for four fat and humpy bullocks, who managed, with very great labour and difficulty, to drag us through the heavy sands of the river-bed down to the edge of the water. Here we were shipped on board a flat-bottomed boat, with a high peaked bow; and, after an immensity of hauling and grunting, we were fairly launched into the stream, and poled across to the opposite shore. The water appeared quite shallow, and the coolies were most of the time in the water; but its width, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... another fleet at Cairo, and we were informed that we were just in time to see the first essay made at testing the utility of this armada. It consisted of no less than thirty-eight mortar-boats, each of which had cost 1700l. These mortar-boats were broad, flat-bottomed rafts, each constructed with a deck raised three feet above the bottom. They were protected by high iron sides supposed to be proof against rifle-balls, and, when supplied, had been furnished each with a little boat, a ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... moyela, now covered with pink plums as large as cherries. The rapids, having comparatively little water in them, rendered our passage difficult. The canoes must never be allowed to come broadside on to the stream, for, being flat-bottomed, they would, in that case, be at once capsized, and every thing in them be lost. The men work admirably, and are always in good humor; they leap into the water without the least hesitation, to save the canoe from being caught by eddies ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... shore anywhere in the world has been so often painted as that of Scheveningen—ever since the painting of landscape seemed a worthy pursuit. James Maris' pictures of Scheveningen's wet sand, grey sea, and huge flat-bottomed ships must run into scores; Mesdag's too. Perhaps it was the artists that prevailed on the fishermen to wear crimson knickerbockers—the note of warm colour ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... Bengo) which it traverses. Here was once a busy settlement much frequented by shipping, which thus escaped harbour dues. The mosquito-haunted stream, clear in the dries, and, as usual, muddy during the rains, supports wild duck, and, carried some ten miles in "dongos" or flat-bottomed boats, supplies the capital of Angola ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Delta, (the course of which, as in the Mississippi, changes with every inundation,) they usually discharged their cargoes at Kurrachee, whence they were transported sixty miles overland to Tatta, and there embarked in flat-bottomed boats on the main stream. The port of Kurrachee, fourteen miles N.W. from the Pittee, or western mouth of the Indus, and Sonmeani, lying in a deep bay in the territory of Lus, between forty and fifty miles further in the same direction, are the only harbours of import in the long ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... the shore a curious flotilla bears down upon us. There is one boat, two or three canoes; but the bulk of the craft are simply wooden frames,—flat-bottomed structures, made from shipping-cases or lard-boxes, with triangular ends. In these sit naked boys,—boys between ten and fourteen years of age,—varying in color from a fine clear yellow to a deep reddish-brown or chocolate tint. They row with two little square, flat pieces of wood ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... the West or East Indies. Guiana hath but one entrance by the sea, if it hath that, for any vessels of burden. So as whosoever shall first possess it, it shall be found unaccessible for any enemy, except he come in wherries, barges, or canoas, or else in flat-bottomed boats; and if he do offer to enter it in that manner, the woods are so thick 200 miles together upon the rivers of such entrance, as a mouse cannot sit in a boat unhit from the bank. By land it is more impossible ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... crossed rivers in their wagon boxes and very few lost their lives in doing so. The difference between one of these prairie-schooner wagon boxes and that of a scow-shaped, flat-bottomed boat is that the wagon box has the ribs on the outside, while in a boat they are ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... where they anchored and remained quiet until yesterday about noon, when several of the ships got under way, and proceeded towards Portsmouth, which place I have no doubt they intend to attack by water or by land or by both, as they have many flat-bottomed boats with them for the purpose of landing their troops. As I too well know the weakness of that garrison, I am in great pain for the consequences, there being great quantities of merchandise, the property of French merchants ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... went to dry-dock, an' in the next dock lay the Grotkau, their big freighter that was the Dolabella o' Piegan, Piegan & Walsh's line in '84—a Clyde-built iron boat, a flat-bottomed, pigeon-breasted, under-engined, bull-nosed bitch of a five thousand ton freighter, that would neither steer, nor steam, nor stop when ye asked her. Whiles she'd attend to her helm, whiles she'd take charge, whiles she'd wait to scratch ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... same as the first, except that it righted the craft. We were buried, choked, and half drowned; but when the wave had passed on, the main and mizzenmasts, unsupported by the rigging that I had cut away, snapped cleanly about three feet above the deck, and the broad, flat-bottomed craft straightened up, lifting the weight of the foremast and its gear, and lay on an even keel, with foresail, staysail, and jib set, the fore gaff-topsail, flying jib, and jib-topsail clewed down and the wreck of the masts bumping against the ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... of fertile soil, the conquerors obtained the command of a naval force, sufficient to transport their armies to the coast of Asia. [102] This ships used in the navigation of the Euxine were of a very singular construction. They were slight flat-bottomed barks framed of timber only, without the least mixture of iron, and occasionally covered with a shelving roof, on the appearance of a tempest. [103] In these floating houses, the Goths carelessly trusted themselves to the mercy of an unknown sea, under the conduct of sailors ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... often took passage on sailing vessels or batteaux, and if engaged in the lumber trade, as many of them were, they went down on board their rafts and returned in the batteaux. "These boats were flat-bottomed, and made of pine boards, narrowed at bow and stern, forty feet by six, with a crew of four men and a pilot, provided with oars, sails, and iron-shod poles for pushing. They continued to carry, in cargoes of five tons, all the merchandise that passed to Upper Canada. ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... flat-bottomed coulee with high ragged bluffs shutting it in upon every side. The Kid dimly remembered that coulee, because that was where Andy got down to tighten the cinch on Miss Allen's horse, and looked up at her the way Daddy Chip looked at Doctor Dell sometimes, and made a kiss with his lips—and got ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... ships are, first, great draught. Although draught need not be increased in the same degree as length, a stable and seaworthy model cannot be very shallow or flat-bottomed. Hence the harbors in which very large vessels can manoeuvre are few, and there must be a light-draught class of vessels to encounter enemies of light draught, although they cannot be expected to cope very successfully ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... motionless and the temperature mild, the ground covered with grass and shrubs and flowers, over which hovered clouds of bright-winged butterflies. Low down in the hollow was a still and silent pool, and though, so far as I could make out, it had no exit, two large flat-bottomed boats and a couple of canoes were made fast to the side. Hard by was a hut of sun-dried bricks, in which were slung three ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... a flat-bottomed sailing skiff, was originally developed for oyster fishing, about the middle ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle
... William Tremlett, who had not enjoyed a sound night's rest since the First Consul's menace had become known, pricked up his ears at sound of this subject, and inquired if anybody had seen the terrible flat-bottomed boats that the enemy ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... Chollerford and Gilsland its traces are still plain, as it climbs from hill to hill and winds along perilous precipices. Secondly, there is the so-called "Vallum," in reality no vallum at all, but a broad flat-bottomed ditch out of which the earth has been cast up on either side into regular and continuous mounds that resemble ramparts. Thirdly, nowhere very clear on the surface and as yet detected only at a few points, there are the remains of the "turf wall," ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... with other authors; and I am persuaded if one were to live here (which could not be long I think) he should forget the use of sleep; for what with the market folks bringing up the boats from Terra Firma loaded with every produce of nature, neatly arranged in these flat-bottomed conveyances, the coming up of which begins about three o'clock in a morning and ends about six;—the Gondoliers rowing home their masters and ladies about that hour, and so on till eight;—the common business of the town, which it is then time to begin;—the state ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... cumbrous articles as wagons, or, if he was rich and ambitious, the lumber wherewith to build a frame house. All kinds of craft were used, even bark canoes and pirogues, or dugouts; but the keel-boat, and especially the flat-bottomed scow with square ends, were the ordinary means of conveyance. They were of all sizes. The passengers and their live stock were of course huddled together so as to take up as little room as possible. Sometimes the immigrants ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... stream, which just there is very still, sleeping in the shadow under the trees; sometimes it dips quite down to the river bank, a great stretch of dusty shingle across which the stream passes like a road of silver. Slowly in front of me a great flat-bottomed boat crossed the river with two great white oxen. And then at a turning of the way a flock of sheep were coming on in a cloud of dust, when suddenly, at a word from the shepherd who led them, they crossed the wide beach to drink at the river, while ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... know what will become of you after I've gone away, and there's no one who really knows how to make you behave. Aren't these apples bully though? Do you suppose they'll mind very much if we stay just a few minutes? Don't you love this old pond, Billie? Remember your flat-bottomed boat that always leaked when we used to go fishing in it. How I hated to take turns bailing ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... rural and quiet with narrow lanes and high hedges and hardly any ruts. It is really surprising to think London is only 16 miles off. The house stands very badly, close to a tiny lane and near another man's field. Our field is 15 acres and flat, looking into flat-bottomed valleys on both sides, but no view from the drawing-room, which faces due south, except on our flat field and bits of rather ugly distant horizon. Close in front there are some old (very productive) cherry trees, walnut ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin |
