"Scow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... holds four port offices, is being rowed to the gangway; on shore the only other visible inhabitant of Banana, a man with no nerves, is disturbing the brooding, sweating silence by knocking the rust off the plates of a stranded mud-scow. Welcome to our city! Welcome to busy, bustling Banana, the port of entry ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... anniversary of the day upon which Balboa took possession of the Pacific Ocean) the Gamboa dike, marking the division between the canal waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific, is blown open when President Wilson presses an electric button at the White House. This year a mud scow passes through the canal from the ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... or three hundred feet from the shore Deerslayer took in his sail, and he dropped his grapnel as soon as he found the ark had drifted in a line that was directly to windward of the rock. The motion of the scow was then checked, when it was brought head to wind by the action of the breeze. As soon as this was done Deerslayer "paid out line," and suffered the vessel to "set down" upon the rock as fast as the light air would force ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... shall I say then?" demanded poor Bill, in despair; "you are as hard to please as the skipper of a mud-scow." ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... place, they must again row up stream in the slack water on the Canadian side, their whole course being thus like the outline of the letter 'N'. [Footnote: The present writer has a vivid remembrance of a night-passage of the river under circumstances of some peril. It was in a small flat-bottomed scow. Shortly after leaving the American shore, a tremendous storm of thunder, lightning, rain, and hail burst over the river. The waves, crested with snowy foam which gleamed ghastly in the dim light of our lantern, ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... rather go to sea in a diving-bell!" said one, as the waves dashed over the pilot-house, and the little craft seemed buried in water. "Give me an oyster-scow!" cried another,—"any thing! only let it be wood, and something that will float over, instead of under the water!" Still she plunged on; and about 6:30 P.M., we made Cape Hatteras; in half an hour we had rounded the point. A general hurrah went up,—"Hurrah for the first iron-clad ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... big ships all his life and never know what real sailing is. From the time I was twelve, I listened to the lure of the sea. When I was fifteen I was captain and owner of an oyster-pirate sloop. By the time I was sixteen I was sailing in scow-schooners, fishing salmon with the Greeks up the Sacramento River, and serving as sailor on the Fish Patrol. And I was a good sailor, too, though all my cruising had been on San Francisco Bay and the rivers tributary to it. I had never been on the ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... boss scowman, stood upon the running-board of the leading scow and directed the stowing of the freight. He was a picturesque figure—Vermilion. A squat, thick half-breed, with eyes set wide apart beneath a low forehead bound tightly around with a ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... White Star steamships came up New York harbor the other day, a grimy coal barge floated immediately in front of her. "Clear out of the way with that old mud scow!" shouted an officer ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... anticipation of my afternoon hours of literary activities, smiling and smiling in sweet remembrance. The children by the wayside got nickels instead of pennies, and the fisherman who lay caulking his boat hauled up on shore in the little harbor peered out from under the scow with an attentive expression as though he would say: "Well, bless my heart, and if the old gentleman ain't gone and got a jag ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... the spring after the deep snow of 1831, that three or four lumbermen, who had built a large flatboat for carrying a cargo to New Orleans, were on the Sangamon River, trying the rowboat, or scow, to accompany the vessel. The river was very high and on the run. Two of the men leaped into the boat to get the drink for being the first in, and sent her out into the current. They were unable to stem it and row back. Lincoln shouted for them to head up ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... navigated canals intended only for Indian canoes. One of these vessels, when supplied with a sail, a cannon, and a movable keel or side-board, would be a formidable auxiliary in an assault upon the city at the present day. And if one such scow was placed in the ditch on each side of the southern causeway, as Cortez alleges, it would enable an assailing enemy to present just so much more front as the additional width of two boats would ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... upper river with a cargo of hides, had anchored for the night a half-mile up-stream; it was an easy matter to impress crew and vessel into service. The hides were tossed ashore, and by midnight the expedition was ready to start. The scow was fitted with two masts, carrying square sails, and, as the wind was directly astern and blowing strongly, the clumsy craft swept away from her moorings with imposing animation, leaving a full half-acre of bubbles to ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... Brigham Young visited the Paria, as is shown in a letter written by W.T. Stewart, this after the President had seen the mouth of the Virgin and otherwise had shown his interest in a southern outlet for Utah. In this same year, according to Dellenbaugh, Major Powell built a rough scow, in order to reach the Moqui towns. This was the crossing in October, when Jacob Hamblin guided Powell to the Moqui villages ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... frequent. At this rate we calculated that it would take eight or ten days to reach the mouth of Lesser Slave River. Mr. d'Eschambault and myself, having experienced the crowded state of the first and second boats, and foregathered during the trip, decided to take up our quarters on the scow, which had no awning, but which offered some elbow room and a tolerably cozy nook amongst the cases, bales and baggage ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... with the wife and husband constantly complaining that they could not get along, she could scarcely believe her eyes. A half pan of hominy of the preceding day's breakfast lay in the pail next to a third of a loaf of bread. In later years, when I saw, daily, a scow loaded with the garbage of Brooklyn householders being towed through New York harbor out to sea, it was an easy calculation that what was thrown away in a week's time from Brooklyn homes would feed the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... ferry-boat of some sort," the new-comer said, indicating a whistle off to the right. "And there! D'ye hear that? Blown by mouth. Some scow schooner, most likely. Better watch out, Mr. Schooner-man. Ah, I thought so. Now hell's a poppin' ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... I was like you I'd walk down to the river here and I'd get in the scow and I'd push off, and when I got in the middle I'd say, 'Lord, crack this nut if you can! It's too much for me!' and I'd ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... faster than they did 160 When they pried up the imperial Past's deep-dusted coffin-lid, Searching for scrolls of precedent; the wire-leashed lightning now Replaces Delphos—men don't leave the steamer for the scow; What public, were they new to-day, would ever stop to read The Iliad, the Shanameh, or the Nibelungenlied? Their public's gone, the artist Greek, the lettered Shah, the hairy Graf— Folio and plesiosaur sleep well; we weary o'er a paragraph; The mind moves planet-like ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... doubtless be propagated, like those of domestic cattle. In course of time the old ones would be worn out or wrecked; the best sorts would be chosen for each particular use, and further improved upon; and so the primordial boat be developed into the scow, the skiff, the sloop, and other species of water-craft—the very diversification, as well as the successive improvements, entailing the disappearance of intermediate forms, less adapted to any one particular purpose; wherefore these go slowly out of use, and become ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... the party was a broad, scow-like float, with low sides, steady, and of considerable capacity. At the bow was a raised platform, covered with gravel, on which stood a fire-jack. The crew were lying on the silent water, engaged with their ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... it seems to the one-day tourists who flock along because the fee is cheap. You fish from a wide-beamed old scow, usually, with hand-lines instead of regular tackle, and you use multiple hooks that go down to the bottom where the big red ones are. There's no real thrill to it, as the one-day anglers find out quickly. ...
— To Remember Charlie By • Roger Dee
... edge of the unpaved waste they walked, or rather floated, so strange and uplifted and glorious they felt, blown and carried bodily with the exultant west wind, and they only stopped when they reached the wooden margin, where an old scow, half laden with brick, was moored fast with ropes. This scow heaved up and down with the motion of the rolling waters; the tight ropes grated; the water ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... sailed in a scow on Black River. They were partially sheltered from the rain by sheets stretched over hoops. At night they went ashore and slept in a ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... over the sheet of grey note paper. Presently, a middle-aged man, a palpable German, came hesitatingly into the room and bunted among the desks as unmanageably as a tempest-tossed scow. Finally he was impatiently towed in the right direction. He came and stood at Coleman's elbow and waited nervously for the engrossed man to raise his eyes. It was plain that this interview meant important things to him. Somehow on his commonplace ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... returned we proceeded up Pungo river to Leechville, a small place at the head-waters of that river. The occupation of its inhabitants was cutting down timber and making shingles. There was an armed party sent ashore, who captured and brought aboard a quantity of corn. We then left with a scow in tow, and proceeded down the river and anchored off Wright's Creek. The 17th, the United States steamer Ceres arrived from Newbern. An armed party was sent ashore for the purpose of foraging. On the 18th, in company with the United States steamer Ceres, the Valley City ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... river in the face of the formidable force which was guarding the ford two or three miles in our front. In fact, for some days we had been preparing for the effort, and up in a sluggish bayou the best of our mechanics were industriously at work fashioning a rude scow out of such material as axes could get from the native forests. In this craft, if it could be made to float, a select party was to cross the river some foggy morning, while the enemy were intently watching the ford below, and then, while the chosen few were being ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... there the craft was, Its shape 'twixt scow and raft was, Square ends, low sides, and flat, And standing close beside me, An ancient chap who eyed me, Beneath a steeple-hat; Short legs—long pipe—style very Pre-Revolutionary,— I bow, he grimly bobs, Then, with some perturbation, By way of salutation, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... direction for them to use. I saw on the North Platte trees cut down by beaver which were four feet in diameter. They make chips resembling a chopper with a dull ax. He cuts his timber for winter and anchors it down four feet under water with mud useing his tail as a scow and also for ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... in Charon's place, And ran that crazy scow with perilous skill, I should be so worn out with keeping trace Of gibbering ghosts and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... St. Louis came a surprise. The launch had entered the harbor on fire and those on board had had to swim for their lives. The craft had been running at full speed, had struck a mud scow and gone under, and was now resting in eight ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... along, girl's mother likely—around eleven o'clock, and in a little while cast off and went on down-river. As fine a boat as ever made the river run—still as a mouse she was, but quick as a cat, and around Ste. Genevieve, I reckon, before I got back to my own scow after helping them off here. No wonder her owner was proud. He stood on the quarter-deck like a lord. Why shouldn't he, ownin' a boat an' ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... worry a thing. No. He's got big finance in the Skandinavia bunch in Quebec. We know all about that. It's Idepski. Idepski ain't visiting the packet office for his health. He ain't figgerin' on a joy trip up the Labrador coast. No. That's the signal, sure. Idepski at the packet office. Their darn mud-scow mostly runs here, to Sachigo, and there ain't a thing along the way to interest Idepski—but Sachigo. We'll be getting word from ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... helping her across the streams swollen with winter rains and melted snow. On these excursions he cut down trees that hid a view he thought she would have liked, he cut paths over which she might have walked. Or he sat idly in a flat-bottomed scow in the lake and made a pretence of fishing. The loneliness of the lake and the isolation of the boat suited his humor. He did not find it true that misery loves company. At least to human beings he preferred his companions of Lone Lake—the beaver building his home among ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... his scow stud still, an' the breakers came atop as if it war a clam-shell. He warn't five yards from shore. His Ben's aboard." Another peal of a gun from the schooner broke through the dark ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... that the water has more power by night than by day, or at least he came to believe so. He knew another boy who had a father who had a stone-quarry and a canal-boat to bring the stone to town. It was a scow, and it was drawn by one horse; sometimes he got to drive the horse, and once he was allowed to steer the boat. This was a great thing, and it would have been hard to believe of anybody else. The name of ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... memory of her childhood. A cavalcade of six army wagons, men, women, children, horses, cattle, dogs, hens, pushed their weary way eleven days through wild woods, cutting their own roads, and fording creeks and rivers. Crossing the Genesee in a scow, one immense cow walked off into the water, others followed and swam ashore. The little girl thinking that everything was going overboard, trembled like an aspen leaf until she felt herself safe on land. The picnics under the trees, the beds in the wagons drawn ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... path between canal and river two mules appeared with a man slouching heavily behind them. The towline led to a grimy scow which loomed out of the misty stillness like a heavier drift ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... as we proceeded, and we got down presently to a level, where a long wire cable stretched across the river. Under the cable ran a rope. On the other side was an old scow moored to the bank. ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... we voyaged Lake Bennett, Tagish, then Windy Arm, Sinister, savage and baleful, boding us hate and harm. Many a scow was shattered there on that iron shore; Many a heart was broken straining ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... great pomp by His Excellency Lord Dorchester in 1789, having been constructed a few acres to the west, and called after him. The bridge, as a means of crossing from one shore to the other, is an undoubted improvement on the scow used ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... with burning Jackson between them put out half the stars a covered carriage, under the unsolicited escort of three or four gray-jacketed cavalrymen and driven by an infantry lad seeking his command after an illness at home, crossed Pearl River in a scow at Ratcliff's ferry just ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... Green River, in Wyoming, early in 1849, a party bound for California discovered an old scow ferry-boat, twelve feet long and about six feet wide, with two oars. Deciding to complete their journey by water they embarked. Later they built canoes. They were: William Lewis Manly (aged 29); M. S. McMahon; Charles and Joseph Hazelrig; Richard Field; Alfred Watson; ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... might be whalers from the Arctic which lay there in the morning, their oils making noisome the breeze; it might be a fleet of beaten, battered tramp wind-jammers, panting after their fight about the Horn; it might be brigs from the South Seas; it might be Pacific steamers, Benicia scow-schooners, Italian fishing smacks, Chinese junks—it might be any and all of these together. As for the background, that changed not every day but every hour what with the shifts of wind, tide and mists. Now its tinge was a green-gold betraying pollution of those mountain placers which fed the ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... I stand. There's my steamer, the Bella—worth twenty thousand if she's worth an ounce. There's Sixty Mile with five thousand in stock on the shelves. And you know I got a sawmill coming in. It's at Linderman now, and the scow is building. Am ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... scow or float, used as a rest for row boats and canoes lay near the end of the dock moored to the shore. A couple of agile young men leaped upon the upturned wharf, and making their way on all fours along it, they reached the scow ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... of the hooks and begin to pull, and immediately that particular bottle turns wrong end up, and acts as if it had taken a drop too much of its own original contents. Then the Dutchman paddles out in his little scow, and perhaps by the time he has hauled in his fish and re-baited the hook another bottle is excitedly standing on its head. But never before nor since have any of them behaved as wildly as the one that a loon got ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... again at the Nan-Shan. "There's a fellow there that ain't fit to have the command of a scow," he declared, quivering with passion, while the other ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... point where it dropped suddenly between steep sides we halted in black shadow. A gleam of pale sand, a whisper of deep flowing waters, and a farther glimmer of more sands beyond them challenged our advance. We had come to a "grapevine ferry." The scow was on the other side, the water too shoal for the horses to swim, and the bottom, most likely, quicksand. Out of the blackness of the opposite shore came a soft, high-pitched, quavering, long-drawn, smothered moan of woe, the call of that snivelling little sinner the screech-owl. Ferry ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... Erelong another scow hove in sight, creeping down the river; and hailing it, we attached ourselves to its side, and floated back in company, chatting with the boatmen, and obtaining a draught of cooler water from their jug. They appeared to be green hands from far among the hills, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... and cookee were stowing articles in the already loaded wanigan. The scow contained tents, blankets, provisions, and a portable stove. It followed the drive, and made a camp ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... as much bite in 'em as a ki-oodle," the man said; "how old is this old scow? 'Bout a ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... J. Harper, Jr. You have heard of my father. Every one has since he commenced consolidating interurban traction companies. And I'm not married, Virginia, and never have been; but I shall be if this miserable old mud scow ever reaches Singapore." ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... man in gray, with a chuckle. "She may be all right to row round in on a troubled sea, but she'll tip quicker'n scat if you step up on the side of her. This one near spilt me into the drink after I was alongside here. What I want is a flat-bottomed scow or raft. I hope this yacht is good and steady, for I'm going to take ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... in a scow, and took the mother, with her infant of scarcely a day old, upon her bed to the boat, in which they carefully conveyed her and the other members of ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... their grievances; and no aid coming from the general government, then as now sorely perplexed over the Mormon problem, they took justice into their own hands and sailed bravely out, with the stars and stripes floating from the mast of their flag-ship,—an old scow impressed for military service. But this was later; and when Fog and Waring came scudding into the harbor, the wild little village existed in all its pristine outlawry, a city of refuge for the flotsam vagabondage ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... it was impossible, and Charley agreed; yet there was a whole fleet, manned by men who knew us only too well, and who took no more notice of us than if we were a hay scow or a ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... at the gangway and guided us through the little brig from stem to stern. Our limited marine experience would not have qualified us to pass an ex cathedra judgment upon the seaworthiness of a mud-scow; but Bush, with characteristic impudence and versatility of talent, discoursed learnedly to the skipper upon the beauty of his vessel's "lines" (whatever those were), her spread of canvas and build generally,—discussed the comparative merits of single and double topsails, and new patent yard-slings, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the lack of landing facilities. Not anticipating, apparently, that he might be forced to disembark on an unsheltered coast, he had neglected to provide himself with suitable surf-boats, and was wholly dependent upon the small boats of the transports and a single scow, or lighter, which he had brought with him from Tampa. Seeing that it would be impossible to land sixteen thousand men safely and expeditiously with such facilities, he applied for help to Admiral Sampson, and was furnished by the ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... of the incident which changed this opinion. William needed some fertilizer for his farm, and asked his father to give him a load of manure from his stables. His father told him to go ahead and take a load, and William thereupon brought a great scow up to the pier near the stables, proceeded to load it, and when his father protested, pointed out that he had not specified the kind of load, but that he had meant a scow-load. This bit of sharp practice pleased his father, and, shortly afterwards, the great success with ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... collection of people, looking on or taking leave of passengers,—the steam puffing,—stages arriving, full-freighted with ladies and gentlemen. A man was one moment too late; but running along the gunwale of a mud-scow, and jumping into a skiff, he was put on board by a black fellow. The dark cabin, wherein, descending from the sunshiny deck, it was difficult to discern the furniture, looking-glasses, and mahogany wainscoting. I met two old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... steamboat slowed down, and a scow, manned by two bare-footed negroes with sweep oars, rounded to. In a few moments the major, two guns, two valises, Jack, and I were safely landed on its wet bottom, the major's bag with its precious ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... tints of autumn; again the sluggish brigs drifting down with the tide, and sailors in tasselled caps leaning over the bulwarks; again the flocks feeding leisurely on the rock-strewn hills; again the ferryman, in his broad, cumbrous scow, oaring across; again the stoppage at the wharf of the little town, from which the coach still plies over ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... and, traveling on a mono-rail track, deposited them on wagons for transportation to the dock. Arriving at the dock, the buckets were lifted by electrically-operated stiff-leg derricks and their contents deposited on scows for final disposal. The spoil was thus transported from the heading to the scow without ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason |
