"Precipitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slow and leisurely, the footsteps of a contemplative, if a surreptitious sightseer, but now they quickened almost into running, and the intensely disagreeable effect of the mysterious episode had not left him wholly, when, twenty minutes afterward, he had mounted the rocky hill path by a precipitous climb and found himself within a little, cupped inclosure in the rocks, secluded enough and beautiful enough to be a fairies' dancing-floor. There, again, he seemed to recognize old landmarks, but with fewer of unpleasant ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... subjects are among the most interesting to be found in the whole realm of Nature. Thus, the great tree, the "Grizzly Giant," of Mariposa, is shown in two admirable views; the mighty precipice of El Capitan, more than three thousand feet in precipitous height,—the three conical hill-tops of Yo Semite, taken, not as they soar into the atmosphere, but as they are reflected in the calm waters below,—these and others are shown, clear, yet soft, vigorous in the foreground, delicately distinct in the distance, in a perfection ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... no need for flight. Hardly had the clumsy-looking monster commenced its headlong charge, when the precipitous rocks echoed to a hollow roar, and a patch of dry grass seemed to have been suddenly endowed with life, and to fling itself upon the shoulders ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... they bent their steps as soon as the little basket had been well filled with strawberries; and descending the precipitous bank, fringed with young saplings; birch, ash, and poplars, they quickly found themselves beside the bright waters of the lake. A flint was soon found among the water-worn stones that lay thickly strewn upon ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... Lethnot, near Brechin, during a severe snow-storm in the year 1798, had gone with his dog, called Caesar, to a spot on the small stream of Paphry (a tributary of the North Esk), where his sheep on such occasions used to take shelter beneath some lofty and precipitous rocks called Ugly Face, which overhung the stream. While employed in driving them out, an immense avalanche fell from these rocks, and completely buried him and his dog. He found all his endeavours to ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... water-shed of the Little Usuto River on the north, and the Umpulazi River on the south, the hill, the top of which is a bare rock, falling abruptly towards the Little Usuto (Bea. III.); thence to the western point of a double-pointed rocky hill, precipitous on all sides, called Makwana, its top being a bare rock (Bea. II.); thence to the top of a rugged hill of considerable height falling abruptly to the Komati River, this hill being the northern extremity of the Isilotwani range, and separated ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... smiths, and thus was Dapplegrim shod strongly and well, and when the youth went out of the King's palace a cloud of dust rose up behind him. But when he came to the mountain into which the Princess had been carried, the difficulty was to ascend the precipitous wall of rock by which he was to get on to the mountain beyond, for the rock stood right up on end, as steep as a house side and as smooth as a sheet of glass. The first time the youth rode at it he got a little way up ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... mas ver! A Dios!" floating after us into the darkness, accompanied by a ghostly flutter of scarcely discernible handkerchiefs. "A Dios!" we shouted back as the two lingering forms vanished in the gloomy shadow of the precipitous slope leading down to the shore; and in another minute or so we shot alongside the felucca and sprang ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... was this time greatly upset. She handed him a stick and requested him to insert it at once into the vulture's nest, when they had arrived in the hollow in the rock where the nest was. The boy departed with his father up the precipitous mountain side. When they had nearly reached the nest the father placed a long stick across a precipice and ordered his son to climb on it and seize the nest. The son duly climbed—carrying with him his grandmother's stick. When he had reached the top the father did all he could ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... distant about a mile, stretched out to our right, surmounted by lofty hills, sharp at the top, and clothed to the summit with dark forests, with their sides varied by hedge-rows, villas, orchards, and gardens. Deep precipitous ravines occasionally descended on this side into the sea, overshadowed by huge overgrown oaks, the branches of which dipped into the water. Further on still, on the Asiatic side, an advanced headland projected into the waves, covered with white houses—it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... it. Just in front of the abatis there was open ground for perhaps two hundred yards. South of the open was a deep ravine. The road ran on the east side of the cleared place, and the banks of the river were high and precipitous. The center of the open space rose into a swell, sloping gently away both to the north and south. On the crest of the swell Moore had thrown up a slight earthwork, which was manned when we approached. An officer was promptly despatched with a flag to demand his ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... veld, where patches of bluish-green are beginning to spread. The south bank, where the bush grows thinnest, was frequently patronised by picnic-parties, and at all times a place of resort for strolling sweethearts. The north bank, much more precipitous, was clothed with a tangled luxuriance of vegetation, and threaded only by native paths, so narrow as to prove discouraging to pedestrians desirous of walking side by side. Where the outermost line of defences impinged upon ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... sprang up off the land, which carried them along at a good speed. At noon they turned to dine, still continuing under weigh. A lofty headland was before them. No sooner did they round it, than a deep and beautiful bay opened on them, with rocks and high but not precipitous banks. In the very head of it there appeared a large junk anchored close in with ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... narrow ledges cut around the sides of a precipitous trail, or crossing a narrow natural bridge spanning the frightful gorges found everywhere in the mountains, a mule will be incontinently thrown off the slippery path, and fall hundreds of feet into the yawning canyon below. Generally ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... from this adventurous explorers reach North and South Mowich and Puyallup glaciers. No one has yet climbed the Mountain over those glaciers, or from the north side. A view from any of the trails will explain why. The great rock spines are more precipitous than elsewhere, the glaciers more broken; and the summit is fronted on either side by a huge parapet of rock which hurls defiance at anything short of an airship. Doubtless, we shall some day travel to Crater Peak by aeroplanes, ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... ink. There were eagles there too, and there was no road. Robert went on horseback, and Wilson and I were drawn on a sledge—(i.e. an old hamper, a basket wine-hamper—without a wheel) by two white bullocks, up the precipitous mountains. Think of my travelling in those wild places at four o'clock in the morning! a little frightened, dreadfully tired, but in an ecstasy of admiration. It was a sight to see before one died and went away into another world. But being expelled ignominiously ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... rabble throwing stones at the criminal, but there was a solemn and appointed method of execution which is preserved for us in detail in the Rabbinical books. And from it we gather that the modus operandi was this. The blasphemer was taken to a certain precipitous rock, the height of which was prescribed as being equal to that of two men. The witnesses by whose testimony he had been condemned had to cast him over, and if he survived the fall it was their task to roll upon him a great stone, of which the weight is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... day entirely free from rain, and instead of having a chance to run rapids, it seemed as if we had spent an entire week in carrying our loads, or in lining our boats through the canyon. The canyon walls lost much of their precipitous character as we neared the end ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... they started down the slope. It was precipitous in many places, but Pierre kept almost at a gallop, making the mare take the slopes often crouched back on her haunches with forefeet braced forward, and sliding many yards at ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... We saw, four thousand feet below, a beautiful little valley about half a mile wide at the widest part, with what appeared to be a very small stream dancing along from side to side of the valley, and surrounded by precipitous mountains in every direction. The eye and mind can now vividly recall the picture of the scenes than around me. My mule had my confidence, but I feared lest some fatal mishap might befall some of my companions, and especially I feared for a lady who ventured ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... he was not called by the senate, while he was under condemnation for an offence of which he did not feel guilty. The senate was shut up in the capitol, and hard to get at, but an ambitious youth offered to climb the precipitous hill, in spite of the besieging barbarians, and obtain the requisite order. The daring man crossed the Tiber, and scaled the hill by the help of shrubs and projecting stones. After obtaining for Camillus ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... body. Towards daybreak the skipper appeared in shining oilskins, tapped the barometer, glanced at me, and laughed because my pillow—which was a linen bag stuffed with old magazines—at that moment became lower than my heels, and the precipitous rug tried to smother me. I enjoyed ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... described as "awful." Many of them were of being mixed up with objectionable people who behaved roughly and used profane language, but, and of this she was very certain, who never talked or acted obscenely. She frequently dreamt of being on high precipitous places from which she was either falling, or could not get away from. She described one vivid dream during which she suffered great misery, and awoke from in great distress. She dreamt that she was listening to a preacher with open Bible in his hand, that he spoke about Peter ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... leagues in length and breadth; rough and rocky, interspersed with glens of a red soil, remarkably fertile, where they raised their cassava bread. The ascent from terrace to terrace was about fifty feet; steep and precipitous, formed of the living rock, and resembling a wall wrought with tools into rough diamond points. Each village had four wide streets, a stone's throw in length, forming a cross, the trees being cleared away from them, and from a ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... then places where nature had upheaved into a turmoil. Huge naked black crags; buttes; hills with precipitous black sides of sleek metal; narrow canyons with tumultuous water ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... transparent night lulled them into restfulness again. It was, as I said before, full moon; the bright orb had risen above the mountains, and sailing through space illumined the tops of Bocksteinkogl, the Tischlkar glaciers, and the precipitous slopes of the Graukogl. The snow on the heights shone with a pale-green, metallic lustre, and as the mountain sides below were shrouded in darkness, the snowy sheen seemed to float in mid air, as if not belonging to the earth. There was such a charm, such peace and restfulness ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... city wonderful for situation and for trade. It has a landlocked harbor encircled by precipitous hills and large enough to float the navies of the world. It is the second largest port on earth for exports and imports, over six hundred million dollars' worth in a year. It is a meeting-place of the East and the West, a ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... being both steep and rugged, our speed abated. The precipitous banks shut out the sunlight, except at noon, and the road through this defile, overhung by towering trees and rocks, was even now in solemn shadow. The cart-road leading down to Redman's Dell, and passing the mills near Redman's Farm, diverges from the footpath ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... ascended sweeping down in the opposite direction into broad and capacious valleys, the land appeared to retain its general elevation, only broken into a series of ridges and inter-vales which so far as the eye could reach stretched away from us, with their precipitous sides covered with the brightest verdure, and waving here and there with the foliage of clumps of woodland; among which, however, we perceived none of those trees upon whose fruit we had relied ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Their summits were crowned with extensive tracts of pitch-pine, checkered with small patches of the quivering aspen. Lower down were thick forests of firs and red cedars, growing out in many places from the very fissures of the rocks. The mountains were broken and precipitous, with huge bluffs protruding from among the forests. Their rocky recesses and beetling cliffs afforded retreats to innumerable flocks of the bighorn, while their woody summits and ravines abounded with bears ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... reinforcing the army, then vainly endeavoring to suppress the Southern rebellion. It was probably one of the most gloomy periods in the history of the Civil war. McClellan had been compelled to make a precipitous and disastrous retreat from the vicinity of Richmond; the army of Northern Virginia under Pope had met with several severe reverses; the armies in the West under Grant, Buell and Curtis had not been able to make any progress toward the heart of the Confederacy; rebel marauders ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... riding in front. Two or three days later, word was brought to Ferguson that the Back-water men had come over the mountains; that the Indian-fighters of the frontier, leaving unguarded their homes on the Western Waters, had crossed by wooded and precipitous defiles to the help of the beaten men of the plains. Ferguson at once fell back, sending out messengers for help. When he came to King's Mountain, a wooded, hog-back hill on the border line between North and South Carolina, he ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... into the Lake of Scardona, which is of considerable size, and affords a good anchorage. There is an outlet for the river to the N., close to which is situated the little town of Scardona. The banks of the river here begin to lose their rocky and precipitous appearance, assuming a more marshy character, which renders it unhealthy in the summer. The Falls are approached by a long straight reach, at the end of which they form a kind of semicircle, the entire breadth being about ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... to a seat close to the ravine, a favorite spot. Always the Martian was a step—or a slither—behind, and when Curtis sat down, Schaughtowl sat between his beloved master and the precipitous drop. ...
— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel
... obtained the first seat in the car, generally the object of most undignified elbowing, and had space to admire the beauties among which we passed. For many miles we travelled through a narrow gorge, between very high precipitous hills, clothed with wood up to their summits; those still higher rising behind them, while the track ran along the very edge of a clear rushing river. The darkness which soon came on was only enlivened by the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... a rising sun when Duane made his first halt some miles north of the scene where he had waited for the hounds. A barrier to further progress, in shape of a precipitous rocky bluff, rose sheer from the willow brake. He skirted the base of the cliff, where walking was comparatively easy, around in the direction of the river. He reached the end finally to see there was absolutely no chance to escape from the brake at that corner. It took extreme labor, attended ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... eyes the precipitous sides of the canyon dropped away seemingly into the very bowels of the earth,—far down in sheer unbroken walls of black rock for hundreds and thousands of feet. He flattened closer to the rock on which he lay, and sought to pierce with his gaze the blue-black ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... were in the water all day long, for four days, swimming, wading, digging. Perhaps the first plow furrow west of the Kaw was cast when some plows eased down the precipitous bank which fronted one of the fording places. Beyond that lay no mark of any plow for more than ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... over the lee yard-arm, grasped a back-stay, and commenced a rapid and precipitous descent to the deck. A few months before, he would have descended laboriously and fearfully by way of the shrouds; sliding down a backstay would then have rubbed his palms raw, and visited giddiness upon him. But now his hands were rope calloused, and his wits height ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... stones on the brinks of precipices, and on the declivities of the mountains, to roll down upon the heads of their enemies. By these and every other means they attempted to stop Alexander's passage. But he had contrived to send detachments around by circuitous and precipitous paths, which even the mountaineers had deemed impracticable, and thus attack his enemies suddenly and unexpectedly from above their own positions. As usual, his plan succeeded. The mountaineers were driven away, and the conqueror advanced toward the ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns, called you forth, Down those precipitous black-jagged rocks, For ever shattered, and the same for ever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the Cul de Sac is a bay then called the Carenage; now Port Castries. At its northern extremity is a precipitous promontory, La Vigie, then fortified, upon the tenure of which depended not only control of that anchorage, but also access to the rear of the works which commanded the Cul de Sac. If those works fell, ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... of the fire was deemed salutary; fruit-trees and nets were fumigated with it, in order that the trees might bear fruit and the nets catch fish. Cattle were also driven through the smoke.[709] In Sundal, a narrow Norwegian valley, shut in on both sides by precipitous mountains, there lived down to the second half of the nineteenth century an old man who was very superstitious. He set salmon-traps in the river Driva, which traverses the valley, and he caught many ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... surf on the outward crags of the promontory, but even the shrill cries of the hundreds on hundreds of sea-birds that whirled around me, except when their flight was immediately over my head. At each side of the abyss, the rocks, though very precipitous, afforded firm hold for hand and foot. As I descended them, the morbid longing to look on danger, which has led many a man to the very brink of a precipice, even while he dreaded it, led me to ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... him scramble backward into the thicket, then proceeded on their way. Several minutes later, rounding a turn in the trail where the descent was less precipitous, he joined them in the midst of a miniature avalanche of pebbles and loose soil. He was not demonstrative. A pat and a rub around the ears from the man, and a more prolonged caressing from the woman, and he was away down the trail in front of them, gliding effortlessly ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... may not a man also argue, on the contrary, that it is the effect of a precipitous and insatiate spirit not to know how to bound and restrain its coveting; that it is to abuse the favours of God to exceed the measure He has prescribed them: and that again to throw a man's self into danger after a ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... others fled for the waggon road, to find that the Undi regiment, passing round the Isandhlwana mountain, had occupied it already. Back they rolled from the hedge of Undi spears to fall upon the spears of the attacking regiments. One path of retreat alone remained, a dry and precipitous 'donga' or watercourse, and into this plunged a rabble of men, white and black, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... severer character, and there is sublimity in these gigantic walls of rock rising sheer from the silvery lakelike sheets of water, each successive one seeming to us more beautiful and romantic than the last. Perfect solitude reigns here, for so precipitous and steep are these fortress-like rocks that there is no "coigne of vantage," even for the mountain goat, not the tiniest path from summit to base, no single break in the shelving masses, some of which ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... now intersected by roads, in some parts necessarily precipitous, but equestrians can make the circuit of Hong Kong without any other risk but from the marauding Chinese, who, in spite of the police, still find means of exercising their vocation. To the left of the town of Victoria is a very pretty ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... had been given up to the Chinese, was next recaptured, after which Chinghai, a strong place situated at the mouth of the Takia River, was attacked. It was surrounded by a wall 2 miles in circumference, 37 feet thick, and 22 feet high, mounted by 69 heavy guns and numberless jingalls. A lofty and precipitous hill, with a citadel on the summit, commanded the town; stockades had been driven into the water in front of all the batteries and landing-places, and an army of 10,000 men lay encamped, with numerous guns, a short distance from the bank of the river. The ships approached till they touched ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... and several lost fingers, toes, even hands and feet from frostbite, as we waited for dawn in the open. As early as we could we moved down the glen, descending, without road, over difficult and precipitous places, the extreme depth of the snow enabling us to pass over countless dangers. Thus our enemy ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... appeal to make to Borckman. Borckman was also a two-legged white-god. Easily could Borckman lift him down the precipitous ladder, which was to him, unaided, a taboo, the violation of which was pregnant with disaster. But Borckman had in him little of the heart of love, which is understanding. Also, Borckman was busy. Besides overseeing ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... company. "You must have mistaken the meaning of the goddess," said the champion; "Freya cannot have formed a wish so unreasonable as to desire I should abandon the straight and good road, which leads me directly on my journey, to choose precipitous paths and by-roads, where I may break my neck." "Nevertheless," said the priestess, "the goddess will be highly offended if you disobey her commands, nor can I conceal from you that she may personally assault ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... point where the traveller gets the sublime view of which you have already heard. This was one of the pleasantest bits of road we had then seen in Switzerland. The water was quite near us on the right, and we were absolutely shut in on the left by the precipitous mountain, until having doubled it, we came out upon an arm of the lake of Lucerne, at Kuesnacht, to which place we descended by the chemin creux. Night overtook us again while crossing the beautiful ridge of land that separates the bay of Kuesnacht from the foot of the lake, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... south, toward Mount Hood in that direction, and Mount Adams on the north. If the Palisades were quintupled in height, domed instead of level on their upper surfaces, extended up the whole navigable course of the Hudson, and were thickly clad with evergreens wherever they were not absolutely precipitous, the Hudson would much ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... the salient and characteristic points of a scene, but she could enumerate enough of indiscriminate particulars for Margaret to make it out for herself Captain Lennox and another lately married officer shared a villa, high up on the beautiful precipitous rocks overhanging the sea. Their days, late as it was in the year, seemed spent in boating or land pic-nics; all out-of-doors, pleasure-seeking and glad, Edith's life seemed like the deep vault of blue sky above her, free—utterly ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... stroll with B—— up a large brook, he fishing for trout, and I looking on. The brook runs through a valley, on one side bordered by a high and precipitous bank; on the other there is an interval, and then the bank rises upward and upward into a high hill with gorges and ravines separating one summit from another, and here and there are bare places, where the rain-streams have washed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... haunt my memory, as then they satiated the eye with a sense of loveliness. The scene was indeed of unimaginable beauty. The blue extent of waters, the almost landlocked bay, the near castle of Lerici shutting it in to the east, and distant Porto Venere to the west; the varied forms of the precipitous rocks that bound in the beach, over which there was only a winding rugged footpath towards Lerici, and none on the other side; the tideless sea leaving no sands nor shingle, formed a picture such as one sees in Salvator Rosa's landscapes only. Sometimes the sunshine vanished ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... in the direction of the light, going as noiselessly as a panther creeping upon its prey, until presently he dimly discovered the outline of a small cabin, built back against the precipitous side of an ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... ridge by which we were mounting would become too precipitous higher up, I turned off to the left, and crossed a long, narrow snow-slope that descended between this ridge and another line of rocks more to the west. It was firm, and just steep enough to make steps cut in the snow comfortable, though not necessary; so the ice-axe was brought ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... turned to Paul with a radiant face that made him long to catch her in his arms—"do you know that wonderful country? Those fissured peaks, with their precipitous and inaccessible crests—their rock-cumbered valleys, concealing deep and lovely lakes? And the beautiful pine-woods creeping down to the foot of the mountains? I could spend all my life in that wonderful place, living in some peasant's hut, ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... leading up to the high veldt are few in number, and so precipitous as to be almost impracticable for vehicles. Of late years those roads have been allowed to fall into disrepair, in order, it may be supposed, to check wagon traffic and to promote that by railway; apart from the railway, communication with Delagoa Bay would ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... cannon, are evidently due to two sets of forces—1, their initial energy and the direction of their aim; 2, the deflecting power of resisting objects or forces—or the different balls might roll with great velocity down a precipitous mountain-side. In the first case velocity and direction of course would be determined largely by initial impulse; in the second, by the attraction of the earth and by the inequalities ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... who had brought him back some pretended relics of Adam, and among other things two of his molar teeth; for, if we can believe the Saracen traditions, the tomb of our first father must have been on the summit of one of the precipitous mountains, which forms the highest ground in the island. After losing sight of Ceylon, Marco Polo went to Cail, a port that we do not find marked on any of the modern maps, but a place where all the vessels touched coming from ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... until he had covered a goodly number before his strength began to fail. At length he was panting so that each hissing breath was a stab, and his eyesight grew dim. He plunged, almost headlong, down the precipitous side of a ravine and at its bottom, fell, face downward, into the cool waters of a rippling brook. How deliciously refreshing were the two or three great gulps that he swallowed. How the life-giving fluid thrilled his whole frame! If he could only lie there as long as he chose ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... few minutes we gained the spot, which was very rugged and precipitous, and, moreover, quite damp with the falling of the spray. We had much ado to pass over dry-shod. The ground also was full of holes here and there. Now, while we stood anxiously waiting for the reappearance of these water-spouts, we heard a low, rumbling sound near us, which quickly increased ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... many difficulties in his march, but the greatest was forcing the Khyber Pass, which was known to be guarded by a numerous, active, and daring enemy. The troops had arrived at Jumrood, on the east end of the pass—on the west end was Ali-Musjid. The hills on either side of the pass were rocky and precipitous, presenting great obstacles to troops, guarded as they were by numerous bodies of Afridis, long accustomed to warfare. The difficulties were great, but they were known, and General Pollock prepared to surmount them. Brigadier Wild was in command ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... kangaroo, this was a blind gully, and Jess knew it. Two minutes later the old-man found himself facing a quite precipitous rocky ascent at the gully's end, and so, there being no alternative that he could see, he turned at bay to face his pursuers. Jess was tremendously excited by the three-mile chase, and it may be that the sound ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... to his thistle, journeyed on. Soon he came to a wide ravine. It was impossible to jump across, and so deep that the bottom could not be seen. He walked along the edge for a long time, but it grew wider and more precipitous. "Oh!" cried Mark in despair, "no sooner do I overcome one obstacle, than another rises in its place. How shall I ever get past this dreadful ravine?" He covered his face with his hands, and murmured, "Oh, fairy Benevolence, must my ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... scrambled to the top of the precipitous ascent and found themselves upon the broken edge of the forest amid a black chaos of piled up rock and underbrush. Evidently, the land here was giving way, little by little, for here and there they could see a tree canting tipsily ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... jaunted at a half-trot to the township with his hanging baskets, to supply people with vegetables—when they had passed these, Laura fell asleep. She wakened with a start to find that the coach had halted to apply the brakes, at the top of the precipitous hill that led down to the railway township. In a two-wheeled buggy this was an exciting descent; but the coach jammed on both its brakes, moved like a snail, and ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... column to its chief was soon put to the test. After advancing up that valley, girt on both sides with lofty mountains and scored with numerous gulleys, the force descried the Peiwar Kotal Pass at its head—a precipitous slope furrowed only in one place where a narrow zigzag path ran upwards through pines and giant boulders. A reconnaissance proved that the Afghans held the upper part in force; and for some time Roberts felt the gravest misgivings. Hiding these feelings, especially ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... frontier of salt marshes, that witness the border warfare of land and sea, alternate invasion and retreat. In low-shored estuaries like those of northern Brittany and northwestern Alaska, this amphibian girdle of the land expands to a width of four miles, while on precipitous coasts of tideless sea basins it contracts to a few inches. Hence this boundary zone changes with every impulse of the mobile sea and with every varying configuration of the shore. Movement and external conditions are the factors in its creation. They make something ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... lay a low range of country, adorned with vineyards; beyond which, the mountains rose in a precipitous ridge, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... and will require still a year or two to make them verdant) we had a beautiful view of the Potomac, a truly majestic river, and the surrounding country. The fortifications, so numerous in all this region, and now so unsightly with their bare, precipitous sides, will remain as historic monuments, grass-grown and picturesque memorials of an epoch of terror and suffering: they will serve to make our country dearer and more interesting to us, and afford fit soil for poetry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... converted into stone, and are appealed to as "father" and "mother." Many of the Zuni legends and superstitions are associated with this mesa, while over its summit are spread the extensive ruins of the long ago deserted village. There are in many localities, around its precipitous sides and walls, shrines and groups of sacred objects which are constantly resorted to by different orders of the tribe. Some of the most interesting of these are the most inaccessible. When easy of approach they are in such secluded spots that a stranger might pass without dreaming ...
— The Religious Life of the Zuni Child - Bureau of American Ethnology • (Mrs.) Tilly E. (Matilda Coxe Evans) Stevenson
... the district are the strata more varied and interesting than in the neighborhood of Knockhouse, the residence of Mr. Elder, which I found pleasingly situated at the bottom of a little open bay, skirted with picturesque knolls partially wooded, that present to the surf precipitous fronts of rock. One insulated eminence, a gun-shot from the dwelling-house, that presents to the sea two mural fronts of precipice, and sinks in steep grassy slopes on two sides more, bears atop a fine old ruin. There is ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... about 5,950 feet above the sea, lie further up the Inn valley beyond St. Moritz. No railway exists to help Ski runners, and the slopes are somewhat steep and apt to be precipitous except in the Fex Thal, south of Sils-Maria, which ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... sauciness. But she has fallen into the hands of a reprobate heathen, and here, where vice prowls about the city like a roaring lion, she will be lost—lost, if I do not rescue her. Twice have I seen her in my dreams; once close to the cavern of a raging dragon, and again on the edge of a precipitous cliff, and each time an angel called out to me and bid me save her from the jaws of the monster, and from falling into the abyss. Since then I seem to see her constantly; at meals, when I am in company, when I am driving,—and I always hear the warning voice of the angel. And ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... tiny hamlet, a small cascade of houses tumbling to the riverside, with its own stone slip to meet the ferry at its foot. The road to this ferry is so steep as to be almost precipitous, and the cottages abutting on its side are embowered in fragrant bloom. There is a runnel of water at the roadside, and in one place this water is collected in a round stone basin that looks immensely old; from this it trickles forth again with coolness and ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... feet on the beach below. She straightened and turned to face the ocean. The waters were sewn with jagged rocks and long-running reefs. Sleek-haired seals bobbed up to look humanly at her. A thin, high-rising jet of water afar out bespoke the presence of a whale. Back of her loomed the precipitous wall of the cliff. She gasped at her own daring as her eye followed the rough stairway down which she had descended. A moment she wondered, with dismay, if she could possibly climb back again; a moment she pictured her plight should ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... almost in despair, they resolved, if unsuccessful the next day, to get assistance and organize a search for him. Monday passed like the days that had preceded it, and they were returning dejectedly down the left bank of the Wan Water in the gloaming, and nearing a part where it is hemmed in by precipitous rocks and is very narrow and deep, crawling slow and black under the lofty arch of an ancient bridge that spans it at one leap, when suddenly they caught sight of a head peering at them over the parapet. They dared not run for fear of terrifying ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... resided there for some time with the view of forming a settlement, but abandoned it afterwards.[1] On approaching its northern side from the east, it appears a large congeries of lofty peaked mountains, the shore in most places being composed of high precipitous rocks, presenting three several bays, East bay, Cumberland bay, and West bay, the second only being of any extent, and is by far the best, in which we moored. The island itself is of an irregular triangular figure; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... that she went out with her painting materials in the morning, whether it was at Capri, on the shores of the blue Bosphorus, in the yellow sand of the desert, facing the precipitous pinnacles in the Fjords, or in the rose gardens of the Riviera. Her delicate face got sunburnt; she no longer even paid any attention to her hands, which she used to take such care of. The ardent longing to manifest ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... travellers; and they could trace its course for miles to the right and left, here running for long reaches in a straight line, and there curving or zig-zagging through the prairie. When they arrived upon its brink, they saw at a glance that they could not cross it. It was precipitous on both sides, with dark jutting rocks, which in some places overhung its bed. There was no water in it to gladden their eyes; but, even had there been such, they could not have reached it. Its bottom was dry, and covered with ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... had washed out a veritable canon, a hundred or more feet deep in places, and with ragged, precipitous walls and banks, which they had to descend on one side and ascend on the other. Here the skill and local knowledge of their three new-found friends stood them in good stead. There was yet enough water in ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheatre, surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped gently toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked the valley. It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable spot for a camp, had camping been advisable. But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... miles into the surrounding country, growing shallower and shallower as the distance increases from the central core, just as the great spurs and ridges of a mountain range, descending, melt finally into the plain. Often there are parts where the central gorge is narrow and precipitous, just as a mountain range frequently possesses mighty precipices. But it is an error to think of great canyons as mere slits in the ground, dark and gloomy, like a deep well from whose depths stars may be ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... bit of road where the stage drivers had never been in the habit of hurrying, a tricky bit of road, with overhanging rocks jutting out just where you might graze them at sudden turns, and with abrupt dips into precipitous hollows. One stretched dark ahead of them now. Judith caught her breath as they plunged into it, and clutched Neil's arm. He laughed shortly, and did not shake off her hand. She pulled at his wrist and ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... plants that it vomits after a storm, or to have come ashore among the pipe-staves and other lumber which had been washed from the deck of an Eastern schooner. There was just space for the narrow and sandy street between the beach in front and a precipitous hill that lifted its rocky forehead in the rear among a waste of juniper-bushes and the wild growth of a broken pasture. The village was picturesque in the variety of its edifices, though all were rude. Here stood a little ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sundown arrived at the Modder, which we intended to cross at a drift near Koodoesrand. This was the dangerous neighbourhood, and we were anxious to push on and cross the river before encamping for the night. The banks of the Modder at this drift are about forty feet high and almost precipitous, the path down to the drift being little better than a track worn at a long diagonal down the bank. It was steep enough going down, but when we had crossed the shallow river and begun the ascent ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... whom one may still be alive to vouch for it. They were farmers of Wild Laguna, a few miles above Manila, and on one memorable day were cutting wood in the ravine near by,—a deep gulch through which babbles a stone-choked stream. This glen has precipitous sides, but is so thickly overhung with green that it is almost like a ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... densely populated in the Mexican republic. It has an area of a trifle over twelve thousand square miles, or it is about the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut united. The town is reached through the suburb of Marfil, along the precipitous sides of whose mountain road large adobe and stone mills are constructed, resembling feudal castles; while beside the roadbed, broken by sharp acclivities, the small, muddy, vile-smelling river Guanajuato flows sluggishly along, bearing silver tailings ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate, its capacity for sorrowful impression; and acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... seeking for scenes in which they might practise uninterrupted devotion. Thus, St. Baldred or Balther lived for some time, during the course of the seventh century, as a religious recluse, upon the rugged and precipitous island of the Bass, as stated by Boece, Leslie, Dempster,[117] etc., and, as we know with more certainty from a poem written—upwards now of one thousand years ago—by a native of this country, the celebrated Alcuin.[118] The followers ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... than it looks, for it slides for two storeys down the hill behind, and the wooden door, which is always locked, really leads into the attic. The knowing person prefers to follow the precipitous mule-track round the turn of the mud wall till he can take the edifice in the rear. Then—being now on a level with the cellars—he lifts up his head and shouts. If his voice sounds like something light—a letter, for example, or some vegetables, or a bunch of flowers—a basket is let out of the ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... paths over the "wine-dark" sea. Never, I think, have I felt the glory and beauty of the world more rapturously, more painfully—for there is pain in it!—than when one was standing alone on a December morning, at a window which seemed to make part of the precipitous rock itself, looking over that fairest of scenes. From Ravello we went back to Rome, and a short spell of its joys. What is it makes the peculiar pleasure of society in Rome? A number of elements, ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... evidently not attended to it; his eye was fixed on the bold and precipitous shore of Wales, and the lofty summits of the everlasting hills, that in the distance, aspired to a companionship with the clouds. I took my seat at a little distance from him and surveyed the scene ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Castle Hill, which King Charles pronounced the finest in his dominion, commands a prospect that cannot fail to interest. Below, the river winds like a thing of life; around, are wave- like sweeps of country, red and green, broken by precipitous rocks into a succession of natural terraces, many of which, being higher than the town itself, ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... women of all classes, and did not forget to speak of his friendly reception at the court of Catharine of Russia. He jestingly related how Frederick the Great had nearly appointed him instructor at a cadet school for Pomeranian junkers—a danger from which he had escaped by a precipitous flight. Of these and many other things he spoke as recent happenings, although in reality they had occurred years or decades before. Romancing freely, he was hardly conscious when he was lying either on a small scale or on ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... Stuggy (Mrs. Raymond Blott), whose extraordinary novel, The Lurid Lady, was described by Father BERNARD VAUGHAN as the most "precipitous" book he had ever preached on, has returned to England after two years' residence among the cannibals of the Solomon Islands. Hence the title of her forthcoming volume, The Adorable Anthropophagi, which is already ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... sands, precipitous chalk cliffs, and a very fine sea-view. The railway station is about a mile from the pier, and the town is approached by a well-kept road ("the main street of our watering-place. . . . You may know ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... canal, carefully rounded the nearer portion of the broken iceberg, and slowly sailed between the two upright sections. These were sufficiently far apart to afford a perfectly safe passage, but the hearts of those who gazed up on their shining, precipitous sides were filled with a chilling horror, for if a wind had suddenly sprung up, these two great sections of the icy mountain might have come together, cracking the Dipsey as if ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... something to have followed such a trail aright upon such a night. Down yonder, a crooked black line in a white field, was the stream which many miles further on flowed into the American. Rising abrupt beyond it were the broken, precipitous cliffs of granite such as beetle above the mountain tributaries of the American. The rocks, like the river, were black, and looked far colder than the white world which extended ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... writer lies in his art. He is not so much above the common stature; his experience is no richer than ours; but he knows how to put handles to his ideas, and we do not. Give a peasant his power of expression, or of welding the world within to the world without, and there would be no very precipitous inequality between them. The great writer says what we feel, but could not utter. We have pearls that lie no deeper than his, but have not his art of bringing them to the surface. We are mostly like an inland lake that has ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... within the Huguenot lines the clouds gather once more, and darkness swallows up his individuality. He tells one anecdote in the History of the manner in which the Huguenots chased Catholics in the hills of Languedoc. They tracked the fugitives to caverns half way up precipitous cliffs. Then they smoked them out with their treasures by lighted bundles of straw let down by iron chains opposite the mouth. General Pelissier plagiarised the device, with more murderous details, in Algeria in 1849. It is a specimen of the brutalities of a conflict, which its English assistants, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... point of the rock and up the tree stretching out into space. With firm foot he stood and gathered the peaches, placing them in the folds of his cloak, as many as it would hold, but when he wished to climb back up the precipitous slope, his hands slipped on the smooth rock, and all his attempts were in vain. Accordingly, he threw the peaches, three hundred and two in all, one by one up to Chang Tao-ling, who distributed them. Each ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... find where he was weakest, and attacked himself without mercy or remission till there, even there, he was strongest. And how seven times in the twenty-four hours, in thunder, rain, or snow, by daylight, twilight, moonlight, or torchlight, the solitaries flocked from distant points, over rugged precipitous ways, to worship in the convent church; at matins, at prime, tierce, sexte, nones, vespers, and compline. He even, under eager questioning, described to him the persons of famous anchorites he had sung the Psalter and prayed with there; the only intercourse their vows allowed, except with special ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the place, too busy apparently to modernise either their costume or their dwellings; but the railway is now bringing others to the town who will work these changes for them. Happily for them and for us, the hills are of granite and their sides most precipitous, and the innovators make slow progress in modernisation. At the hotels everyone drinks cider, rather than vin ordinaire; and at night we are awoke with the clatter of sabots and ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... narrow ravine about 70 English miles north-east of the region of the Liege caverns treated of in the last chapter, and close to the village and railway station of Hochdal between Dusseldorf and Elberfeld. The cave occurs in the precipitous southern or left side of the winding ravine, about sixty feet above the stream, and a hundred feet below the top of the cliff. The accompanying section (Figure 1.) will give the reader ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... and was generally distasteful at the North. But the initial success of the Democratic party South, and the loss of many Northern States to the Republicans, had emboldened the South to expect national success. But a too precipitous preparation for a raid upon the United States Treasury for the payment of rebel war claims threw the Republicans upon their guard, and, for the time being, every other question was sunk into insignificance. So the insolence of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... now in the hands of the Gauls. The sack and ruin of the city went mercilessly on. But the Capitol defied their efforts. It stood on a hill which, except at a single point, presented precipitous sides. The Gauls tried to storm it by this single approach, but were driven back with loss. They then blockaded the hill, and spent their time in devastating the city ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... we feel at times—shut in and overshadowed by what seems so infinitely greater than ourselves. The roaring river fills the centre of the gorge. The precipitous cliffs rise sheer on either hand. We seem for the moment too minute to cope with such titanic conditions. But sometimes by circumventing the cliffs and after a long tedious detour appearing high above them, sometimes by blasting a passage across their very ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... taste through their eager conversation the flavor of their fresher life. Allan remained with him until near sunset, then in the warm, calm gloaming, he slowly took the homeward route, down the precipitous ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... him uneasy in his lawful gears; 60 At best, as little honest as he could, And, like white witches[81], mischievously good. To his first bias longingly he leans; And rather would be great by wicked means. Thus framed for ill, he loosed our triple hold[82]; Advice unsafe, precipitous, and bold. From hence those tears! that Ilium of our woe! Who helps a powerful friend, forearms a foe. What wonder if the waves prevail so far, When he cut down the banks that made the bar? 70 Seas follow but their nature to invade; But he by art ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... priest from out beyond the borders of Afghanistan, who sat on a slab of stone by the river-bank and preached a djehad. But above all it was the road—Linforth's road. It came winding down from the passes, over slopes of shale; it was built with wooden galleries along the precipitous sides of cliffs; it snaked treacherously further and further across the rich valley of Chiltistan towards the Hindu Kush, until the people of that valley could endure ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... that arose from the group of idle negroes, startled the animals into a gallop, and they went coursing, not along the road, but upon the lawn, straight toward the river bank, which, in the line of their course, was precipitous and rocky. As Oriana and Arthur turned at the sound, they beheld the frightened steeds plunging across the lawn, and upon the carriage seat the little fellow who had caused the mischief was crouching bewildered and helpless, ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... "entirely different." Instead of a green-floored, vine-hung ravine, it is a wild mountain gorge, walled with precipitous cliffs of great height; and its river—every canyon has a river—comes from a source at the top of the gorge in a series of mad leaps, forming seven waterfalls, which plunge into circular basins of rock, worn smooth by the action of the stream. These pools are curiously various in ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... he again hastened forwards, guided by the sound of the still continued firing. The character of the country was now completely changed. It became hilly, and the hills were precipitous and covered with inky black rocks, which lay so thickly about that it seemed as if a shower of enormous aerolites had ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... comparatively recent times, for they are little changed; but the goat and still more the sheep have undergone a wonderful transformation within and without. Who could recognise in a Leicester ewe the wary denizen of precipitous mountains which will not feed until it has set a sentinel to give warning if danger approaches? And here is a curious fact which has scarcely ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... last he found himself alone in the midst of his enemies. None of them dared to meet him, but pelted him with stones and darts from a distance, so that he was with difficulty able to guide his horse over the rocky and precipitous ground, and fatigued ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... think what they would and to do what they chose. They made their gods to suit themselves, and regarded them rather as companions than as objects of reverence. The gods lived close to them on Olympus, a precipitous and snow-capped range full of vast cliffs, deep glens, and extensive forests, less than ten thousand feet in height, though covered with snow on the top even in ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... in its course; and presents the extraordinary effect of the same river at the same moment running both north and south. The summit of Simon's Yatt is not above fifty feet wide, and the descent on one side is perpendicular, showing the river directly under your feet, and on the other is nearly precipitous, leaving only room, between its base and the river, for a most picturesque assemblage of cottages called the New-Weir village. Directly in front is the rich level champaign, containing the town ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... town by design. Peculiarly formed hills or mounds. Fortified. The mystery. Sending the wagons to the south. Avoiding the forest. No word from the team. The teams reach the river. Intercepted. Illyas in front. Blocked by precipitous banks. Forming camp. Sending messengers to John. Muro gets the message. Hastens to relieve the force with the wagon. The savage attack. A ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... Lucca. It was a delight for them to ramble among the chestnut-woods of the high Tuscan forests, and to go among the grape-vines where the sunburnt vintagers were busy. Once Browning paid a visit to that remote hill-stream and waterfall, high up in a precipitous glen, where, more than three-score years earlier, Shelley had been wont to amuse himself by sitting naked on a rock in the sunlight, reading Herodotus while he cooled, and then plunging into the deep pool beneath him—to emerge, further up stream, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... Through the dome windows across the deck from the cubby the rocks of the Lunar landscape were visible. I could see the brink of this ledge upon which the ship lay, the descending crags down the precipitous wall of Archimedes to the Earthlit plains far below. Miko, Moa, and a few of the Planetara's crew ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... very difficult road, winding nearly all the way through a ravine of the rocky plateau, and finally descended by a precipitous path, among some rocks, to a small lake or pool enclosed within immense cliffs of rock, called the Egheree Water. It is produced solely by rain. Within ten minutes of this, between the cliffs, is another three times the size, and of the same origin. All about, moreover, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... for artificial fortification to a minimum. Across the neck of the tiny peninsula, Lapierre had thrown a strong stockade of logs, and from the lake access was had only by means of a narrow, one-man trail that slanted and twisted among the rocks of the precipitous cliff side. ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... engineering skill has here contrived to surmount all the obstacles set up by Nature. The train goes waltzing round the most striking curves, some of them almost elliptical. Tremendous gradients lead through tunnels and over bridges, and the swerving carriages run often in alarming proximity to the edge of precipitous ravines. What a splendid position for defensive purposes! Had the present war been declared three weeks earlier De Aar would have been quite unable to stand against the Boers, and thus the enemy might with his amazing mobility have made a swift descent along the ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... across the peninsula and then along the further shore, which rapidly grew steep and high. Half a mile down the cliffs were rocky and precipitous, while the beach beneath them was heaped with huge boulders. Alan followed the dog along one of the narrow paths with which the barrens abounded until nearly a mile from Four Winds. Then the animal halted, ran to the edge ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... by walls and dominated by a great fortress called Sacsahuaman, which stood upon a steep and rocky hill overlooking the capital. On the side toward the city the fortress was practically impregnable on account of the precipitous slopes of the cliffs. The other side was defended by three stone walls laid out in zigzag shape, with salient and reentrant angles (demi-lunes), like an old-fashioned rail fence, with many doors, each closed by stone portcullis, in each wall. Within the walls was a citadel of three tall towers. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... let the sun's forerunning rays glide between them; the sky, now old gold, is fast transforming into kaleidoscopic crimsons and other reds, while the swift arms of the day-painter are reaching from between the peaks of the precipitous crags and dyeing the scales of the mackerel sky with hues and ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... profoundest blue—the tropical sun flaming through massive clouds of vapor—a sea of exuberant color, foaming white over coral beaches—waving cocoa palms against a background of exotic verdure marking a tortuous shore line, which now rises sheer and precipitous from the water's edge to dizzy, snowcapped, cloud-hung heights, now stretches away into vast reaches of oozy mangrove bog and dank cinchona grove—here flecked with stagnant lagoons that teem with slimy, crawling life—there flattened into interminable, forest-covered ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... edge of the embankment, a look of immense relief coming to her soft, brown eyes as she saw her rescuer scrambling up the precipitous side of the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
