"Steepness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought they could have come through with their reason or their life. I have no fear for the Christian man, so he keeps to the path of duty. Straining up the steep hill, his heart will grow stout in just proportion to its steepness. Yes, and if the call to martyrdom came, I should not despair of finding men who would show themselves equal to it, even in this commonplace age, and among people who wear Highland cloaks and knickerbockers. The martyr's strength ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... drop something?" he called down, coming meanwhile as rapidly after them as the steepness of the flight allowed. "Mr. Harper says, he found this ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... noticed that the air of Snowdon seemed to have its usual effect on Sinfi. In taking the path that led to Knockers' Llyn we saw before us Cwm-Dyli, the wildest of all the Snowdonian recesses, surrounded by frowning precipices of great height and steepness. We then walked briskly on towards our goal. When the three peaks that she knew so well—y Wyddfa, Lliwedd, and Crib Goch—stood out in the still grey light she stopped, set down her basket, clapped her hands, and said, 'Didn't I tell you the mornin' was a-goin' to be ezackly the ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... designed to commemorate some feat of an ancient King of Man, which had been long forgotten, was erected on the side of a narrow lonely valley, or rather glen, secluded from observation by the steepness of its banks, upon a projection of which stood the tall, shapeless, solitary rock, frowning, like a shrouded giant, over the brawling of the small rivulet which ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... outline of the ridge, so broad and flowing are the slopes, that those who have not mounted them cannot grasp the idea of their real height and steepness. The copse upon the summit yonder looks but a short stroll distant; how much you would be deceived did you attempt to walk thither! The ascent here in front seems nothing, but you must rest before you have reached a third of the way up. Ditchling Beacon there, on the left, is the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... loud cry, the lad sprang down upon the enemy, regardless of the steepness of the place, and in an instant the man was locked in his arms, just as the musket report came. Down the two fell, bounding over two or three shelves of rock, and then pitching headlong some twenty or thirty feet ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... Christian, to see him go up the hill, where I perceived he fell from running to going, and from going to clambering upon his hands and his knees, because of the steepness of the place. Now, about the midway to the top of the hill was a pleasant arbour, made by the Lord of the hill for the refreshing of weary travelers; thither, therefore, Christian got, where also he ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... The steepness of the rocks formed an insurmountable barrier to men, whether on horseback or on foot, so that the sorceress judged that the prince retired either into some cavern, or some subterraneous place, the abode of genies or fairies. When she thought the prince and his ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... slender force he had then with him. He, suffering Hicetes to pass forward, pursued him with his horsemen and light infantry, which Hicetes perceiving, crossed the river Damyrias, and then stood in a posture to receive him; the difficulty of the passage, and the height and steepness of the bank on each side, giving advantage enough to make him confident. A strange contention and dispute, meantime, among the officers of Timoleon, a little retarded the conflict; no one of them was willing to let another pass over before him to engage the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... if he would run away from his own thoughts. The torn strips of clouds, that had looked like molten gold, were now darkening, and their darkness seemed ominous to him. The steepness of the "loanie" made him pant and presently he slackened his pace and slowed-down to walking. His eyes felt hot and stiff in their sockets and when he put his hand on his forehead, he felt that it was ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... spreads open sea. But the fantastic grandeur of the place cannot be described in words. The pencil of the artist must be trusted. I can vouch that he has not in the least exaggerated the slenderness and steepness of the rock-masses. One of them, it is said, has never been climbed; unless a myth which hangs about it is true. Certain English sailors, probably of Rodney's men—and numbering, according to the pleasure of the narrator, three hundred, thirty, or three—are ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... owing to the steepness of the ascent now wound a great deal, but it was smooth and safe, and the automobile, despite its size, had an organism as delicate as that of a watch. It obeyed the least pressure of his hand, ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... necessary to form a path for the horses, and while Mr. H. Gregory returned, and was bringing up the party from the camp, I employed myself in filling up chasms with stones and removing rocks from the path, the steepness of the declivity greatly facilitating their removal, as it required but little force to hurl rocks of several tons weight into the valley below. Fortunately, we accomplished the descent without any accident, and reached the base of the hill at 11.30 a.m. Descending the creek, which occupied ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... undergrowth had been cleared away, and that "The Sanitarium" consists only of a cabin with a single room divided into two, and elevated on posts like a Malay house. The deep veranda which surrounds it is reached by a stepladder. A smaller house could hardly be, or a more picturesque one, from the steepness and irregularity of its roof. The cook-house is a small attap shed, in a place cut into the hill, and an inclosure of attap screens with a barrel in it under the house is the bath-room. The edge of the hill, from which a few trees have ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... hours across the savannahs, we entered into a little wood composed of shrubs and small trees, which is called El Pejual; no doubt because of the great abundance of the 'Pejoa' (Gaultheria odorata,) a plant with very odoriferous leaves. The steepness of the mountain became less considerable, and we felt an indescribable pleasure in examining the plants of this region. Nowhere, perhaps, can be found collected together in so small a space of ground, productions so beautiful, and so remarkable in regard to the geography of plants. At ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... down a land slide which it took them a day to clear. On a previous day he had blasted too close to the wagon and a bowlder had smashed the rear axle. He took extraordinarily narrow chances with the steepness of grade but in spite of the Sun Planters' prophecies they did not lose either horses or wagon down canyon or mountain side. Ernest, however, slipped on top of one of the finished sections and rolled two hundred feet before he ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... wine-seller, who may or may not have been affiliated to the devil, or indeed by any other dweller in that primitive village. But unfortunately the cove was the only possible landing place for miles; and from the steepness of the ravine I couldn't make a circuit ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... is very gradual. The mountain begins to leave the plain in slopes scarcely perceptible, measuring from two to three degrees. These are continued by easy gradations mile after mile all the way to the truncated, crumbling summit, where they attain a steepness of twenty to twenty-five degrees. The grand simplicity of these lines is partially interrupted on the north subordinate cone that rises from the side of the main cone about three thousand feet from the summit. This side cone, past which your way ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... The steepness of strange stairs had tired his feet, And his lips yet seemed sick of that salt bread Wherewith the lips of banishment are fed; But nothing was there in the world so sweet As the most bitter love, like ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... apparently, from a meadow of flowers to a wilderness of fissured rock, lying white and skeleton-like in the afternoon sun. We only skirted this rock in the first instance, and made for a clump of trees some little way off, in which we found a deep pit, with a path of sufficient steepness leading to the bottom. Here we came to a collection of snow, much sheltered by overhanging rocks and trees; and this, our guide told us, was the neigiere, a word evidently formed on the same principle as glaciere. The snow was half-covered with leaves, and was ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... practice. The teaching of Rousseau was ever pouring like thin smoke among his ideas, and clouding his view of actual conditions. The Tenth of August produced a considerable change in Robespierre's point of view. It awoke him to the precipitous steepness of the slope down which the revolutionary car was rushing headlong. His faith in the infallibility of the people suffered no shock, but he was in a moment alive to the need of walking warily, and his whole march ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... and very uncomfortably cold; and we were not sorry to walk whenever the steepness of the road gave us cause. I do not remember what o'clock it was, but not far into the afternoon, when we reached the Baillie Nicol-Jarvie Inn at Aberfoyle; a scene which is much more interesting in the pages of Rob Roy than we ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... successful, must put Alhama in his power. Early one morning, when it was scarcely the gray of the dawn, about the time of changing the watch, these cavaliers approached the town at a place considered inaccessible from the steepness of the rocks on which the wall was founded, which, it was supposed, elevated the battlements beyond the reach of the longest scaling-ladder. The Moorish knights, aided by a number of the strongest and most active escaladors, mounted ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... the state of the ice, and the weather fine and warm, Brother Kmoch and Ogiksuk rowed across the straits to the nearest great cataract, and were able, notwithstanding the steepness of the ascent, to get pretty close to it. It falls fifty or sixty feet perpendicular, and the noise is terrible. The spray ascending from it, like the steam of a huge cauldron, wetted the travellers completely. They amused themselves some time by rolling large stones into the fall, ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... blest Ubaldo's chosen hill, there hangs Rich slope of mountain high, whence heat and cold Are wafted through Perugia's eastern gate: And Norcera with Gualdo, in its rear Mourn for their heavy yoke. Upon that side, Where it doth break its steepness most, arose A sun upon the world, as duly this From Ganges doth: therefore let none, who speak Of that place, say Ascesi; for its name Were lamely so deliver'd; but the East, To call things rightly, be it henceforth styl'd. He was not yet much distant ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... they found half the ammunition useless, and themselves wearied, while the steepness of the track to the valley, and its treacherous condition after the rain made it wise to seek the Hapaas for rest and food. But, first, they fired a volley to let friendly tribes know they still had serviceable weapons, and as threat and warning to the Typees. They heard the echo ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... was a vessel. This made me melancholy, and I could not help asking myself whether I was to remain all my life upon the island, alone, or if there were any chance of my ever being taken off it. As I looked down upon the cabin, I was surprised at the steepness of the rocks which I had climbed, and felt alarmed, as if I never should be able to get back again. But these thoughts were soon chased away. I turned from the seaward, and looked inland. I found that on one side of me there was a chasm between the rocks, ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... and breaks the furrow slice. The degree to which the mouldboard pulverizes depends on the steepness of its slant upward and the abruptness of its curve sidewise. The steeper it is and the more abrupt the curve, the greater is its pulverizing power. A steep, abrupt mouldboard is adapted to light soils and to the heavier soils when they are comparatively dry. This kind of a plow is ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... at him she saw that little sleep had visited him that night, for he looked old and very weary, so weary that she motioned to him to sit upon the stool. This he did, breathing heavily and muttering something about the steepness of the tower ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... the boards and sticks were loaded on the scow, and ferried over to the cliff. Then we carried them on our backs, three or four at a time, up the slanting hillside to the first ledge. From there up, owing to the steepness of the ascent, we had to ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... profiles bent above visiting-lists, of hurried hands dispensing notes and cards to attendant footmen—this glimpse of the ever-revolving wheels of the great social machine made Lily more than ever conscious of the steepness and narrowness of Gerty's stairs, and of the cramped blind alley of life to which they led. Dull stairs destined to be mounted by dull people: how many thousands of insignificant figures were going up and down such ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... of the hideous monster Geryon, the poets were carried into a fearful abyss whose sides were Alp-like in steepness. This was the eighth circle, Malebolge, or Evil pits, consisting of ten concentric bolge, or ditches of stone with dikes between and rough bridges running across them to ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... and so escaped from the cloud, we should find light enough to guide us. But it was not so. The rain soon became a matter of indifference, and so also did the mud and briers beneath our feet. Even the steepness of the way was almost forgotten as we endeavored to thread our path through the forest before it should become impossible to discern the track. A dog had followed us up, and though the beast would not stay with us so as to be our guide, he returned ever and anon, ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... There was steepness on three sides of their nest. Above it was the wide expanse of the sky. Around, about, and beneath it lay bones washed and whitened by the rain. The nest itself was made of stones and mud, and overspread ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... ascended by the gig in question nearly two hours before the present moment. Molly, the servant, held the reins, Mrs. Loveday sat beside her, and Anne behind. Their progress was but slow, owing partly to Molly's want of skill, and partly to the steepness of the road, which here passed over downs of some extent, and was rarely or never mended. It was an anxious morning for them all, and the beauties of the early summer day fell upon unheeding eyes. They were too anxious even for conjecture, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... mountain I get a larger vision. The miles that seem so great down in the valley, seem so small as I look down upon them from higher up. Each day as I look back I see more clearly the plan of a human life. The rocks, the curves and the struggles fit into a divine engineering plan to soften the steepness of the ascent. The bumps are lifts. The things that seem so important down in the smudgy, stormswept valley, seem so unimportant as we go higher up the mountain ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... good and was followed without a minute's delay. The four animals were rounded up and turned into the ravine, up which Vose Adams had disappeared. They gave no trouble, but, probably because of the steepness of the slope, none of the four went beyond sight. Had the three men been given warning, they would have placed them out of reach, for none knew better than they how attractive horses are to men beyond the power of the law. But it was too late now, and the little party ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... and one soldier armed with a shield, the master-of-camp advanced toward the Moro fort. He reached the foot of the hill, without allowing any others to follow him; and, being unable to proceed any further on account of its steepness, he summoned from above two Moros, to treat for peace. There seemed to be a difference of opinion among the Moros, as was gathered from their demeanor, for some made gestures of war, and others of peace, some of them even going ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... double row of latticed windows, overlooking the water, while two small doors, which were always closed, constituted the entrance from the narrow stone quay. Nothing could penetrate those lattices, nor surmount the blank steepness of those walls. Our only means of reaching the interior of the dwelling and the secrets which perhaps were hidden there lay in our power over Selim; but the Lala had no difficulty in eluding us, and either kept resolutely within doors, or sallied out in company with his mistress. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... reach the gate, for a blazing hut fell across his path. Turning he sped to the edge of a cliff that rose near by, where, because of its steepness, there was no wall. Here for a while he ran up and down till the wind-driven fire from new-lit huts at its brink leapt out upon him like thin, scarlet tongues. He threw himself to the ground, he rose ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... to take my gun, and was half resolved to do so; because it seemed so hard a thing to be shot at and have no chance of shooting; but when I came to remember the steepness and the slippery nature of the waterslide, there seemed but little likelihood of keeping dry the powder. Therefore I was armed with nothing but a good stout holly staff, seasoned well for many a winter in ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... boy had followed the little woman into the house through a small front hall, from which a narrow flight of stairs shot aloft with almost unbelievable steepness, and into a large room. Albert had a swift impression of big windows full of plants, of pictures of ships and schooners on the walls, of a ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... business of pity. She had thought of dances for no more than a minute, though it had long been one of her dreams to enter a ballroom by a marble staircase (which she imagined of a size and steepness really more suited to a water-chute), carrying a black ostrich-feather fan such as she had seen Sarah Bernhardt pythoning about with in "La Dame aux Camelias." This hour she had dedicated to Mr. Philip, and he knew ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... edge of this precipice was marvelous. From the lower margin of the mighty wall the broken hills, covered with virgin forest, fell away with lessening steepness to the plains. These, also, were covered with trees; here, however, the woodland had a different character, for there was little or no undergrowth. The plains stretched away, to an immense distance. It was in this tract, far below the gazer ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... platform sloping northward, but exceedingly even, generally run north and south; their sides near the summits generally become suddenly more abrupt, and are fringed with narrow strips, or, as they are here called, "shaws" of wood, sometimes merely by hedgerows run wild. The sudden steepness may generally be perceived, as just before ascending to Cudham Wood, and at Green Hill, where one of the lanes crosses these valleys. These valleys are in all probability ancient sea-bays, and I have sometimes ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... steepness of the ascent increased, so did the desire to climb higher and see more of the volcano, and also more of the country into which fate had brought him. Once a few hundred feet higher, he felt he would be able to set all doubts at rest as to whether they were surrounded by the sea; and to ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... carrying on this excited dialogue, as their horses climbed the slope from the Pacific side, its steepness hindering them from going at their usual gait—a gallop. On rising the ridge's crest, and catching sight of San Francisco, with its newly painted white walls, and shining tin roofs, reflected red in the rays of ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... hide, invariably hangs. This room in Benri's case is 35 feet long by 25 feet broad, another is 45 feet square, the smallest measures 20 feet by 15. On entering, one is much impressed by the great height and steepness of the roof, altogether out of proportion to ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... depends upon the steepness of the gradient, and the momentum acquired will, In some Instances, cause the current to continue to run in the same direction for some time after the tide has turned, i.e., after the direction of the gradient ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... see his mistress, he had practiced a way of clambering by night down the castle rock on the south side, and returning at his pleasure; when he came to the foot of the wall, he made use of a ladder to get over it, as it was not very high at that point, those who built it having trusted to the steepness of the crag; and for the same reason, no watch was placed there. Francis had gone and come so frequently in this dangerous manner, that, though it was now long ago, he told Randolph he knew the road so ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... creep up near and yet nearer to the base of the castle, but have always stopped short before reaching it. The furrows of these environing attempts show themselves distinctly, bending to the incline as they trench upon it; mounting in steeper curves, till the steepness baffles them, and their parallel threads show like the striae of waves pausing on the curl. The peculiar place of which these are some of the features is 'Mai-Dun,' 'The Castle of the Great Hill,' said to be the Dunium of Ptolemy, the capital of the Durotriges, which eventually came ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... stage before breakfast. Every few li where the steepness of the valley side permits it, there are straw-thatched, bamboo and plaster inns. Here rice is kept in wooden bins all ready steaming hot for the use of travellers; good tea is brewed in a few minutes; the tables ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... plateau, on the south is divided by a subsidiary valley of much the same character, down which the small River Vesle flows to the main stream near Sermoise. The slopes of the plateau overlooking the Aisne on the north and south are of varying steepness, and are covered with numerous patches of wood, which also stretch upward and backward over the edge on to the top of the high ground. There are several villages and small towns dotted about in the valley itself and along its sides, the chief of ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... she spoke, her features writhed into a sort of sneering laugh, which made them seem even more hideous than their habitual frown. She locked the door behind her, and Rebecca might hear her curse every step for its steepness, as slowly and with difficulty ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... as I advanced, until, at the distance of a mile from where I first struck it, the gulf yawned full fifty feet into the plain, the sides still preserving their vertical steepness! ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... party this evening. Adrian, usually the first to rally his spirits, and dash foremost into fatigue and hardship, with relaxed limbs and declined head, the reins hanging loosely in his grasp, left the choice of the path to the instinct of his horse, now and then painfully rousing himself, when the steepness of the ascent required that he should keep his seat with better care. Fear and horror encompassed me. Did his languid air attest that he also was struck with contagion? How long, when I look on this matchless specimen of mortality, may I perceive that his thought ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... had sunk to three or four hundred feet in height, but in no place did we find any point where they could be ascended. If anything, they were more impossible than at the first point where we had met them. Their absolute steepness is indicated in the photograph which I took over the ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to-day with Maria and Du B. This is the place I carried away in my thoughts and wishes, a mere rapidly passed steep grassy hill, topped with pines and leafless chestnuts, from that motor drive last year round by Monte Compatri and Grottaferrata. The steepness and bareness of that great grass slope was heightened to-day by the tremendous gales blowing in a cloudless sky; one felt as if it were that wind which had kept the place so inaccessible, so virgin of trees and people, nay, had made the grass ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... miles east by the valleys of the Aigues and Blme, bounded on both sides by high mountains. Time, 7 to 8 hours. Fare, 7 frs. Most of the towns passed are at a considerable height above the road, and sometimes on account of the steepness of the banks cannot be seen from it. The first village passed is Les Piles, situated on the road 3m. from Nyons, and 3m. from the gorge "Des 30 Pas," one of the excursions from Nyons. A little farther E. is Curnier, on a hill on ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... the Himalayan range in Asia are over 25,000 feet; and Kilima Njaro, the most lofty peak in Africa, is about the same altitude as Chimborazo. Chimborazo, for solitary grandeur—and from the excessive steepness of its sides, which has prevented the foot of man from reaching ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... purpose, as now the use of our toes became necessary to a further advance. I availed myself of a sort of comb of the mountain, which stood against the wall like a buttress, and which the wind and the solar radiation, joined to the steepness of the smooth rock, had kept almost entirely free from snow. Up this I made my way rapidly. Our cautious method of advancing at the outset had spared my strength; and, with the exception of a slight disposition to headache, I felt no ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... broken flash of lightning, blazing in a flare of blue and amber, poured livid reflections, and illuminated with dreadful distinctness, if only for one ghastly moment, the stupendous cliffs of the Ichang Gorge, whose wall-like steepness suddenly became darkened as ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Keeling atoll, if left undisturbed, we can see that the islets may still extend in length; but as they cannot resist the surf until broken by rolling over a wide space, their increase in breadth must depend on the increasing breadth of the reef; and this must be limited by the steepness of the submarine flanks, which can be added to only by sediment derived from the wear and tear of the coral. From the rapid growth of the coral in the channel cut for the schooner, and from the several ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... Musgrave mentioned between us. If he had been one most dear to us both and had died untimely, we could not avoid with more sacred care any allusion to him. And, even if, by doing infinite violence to myself, I could bring myself to overcome the painful steepness of the hill of difficulty that lies between me and the subject, and tell the tardy truth, to what use, pray? Having once owned that I had lied, could I resent any statement of mine being taken with distrust? Would he believe me? Not ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... incompressibility of water, while a glacier gradually thins out in consequence of the packing of its mass, however large and numerous may be its accessions. The analogy fails also in one important point, that of the acceleration of speed with the steepness of the slope. The motion of the glacier bears no such direct relation to the inclination of its bed. And though in a glacier, as in a river, the axis of swiftest motion is thrown alternately on one or the other side of the valley, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... the burghers crept within 300 yards of the British sangars. The heat of the day was intense, and considerable difficulty was experienced in conveying water and ammunition up the steep slopes of the kopje to the British fighting line. Unfortunately, this steepness at the same time rendered it almost impossible to withdraw the wounded. Meanwhile Major Urmston's detachment frustrated the attempt of the enemy, a Ladybrand commando under Commandant Froneman, to work down the bed of the river from ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... to realize their steepness, for they put all eight of the horses to one van and bravely started up the hill. But alas, they were New York horses, and only capable of dodging elevated pillars and of keeping their footing on icy asphalt. They were not used to climbing trees, as we afterward discovered Clovertown ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... and even struck him, until they compelled him to resume his shield as well as his place in the ranks. Xenophon then remounted and ascended the hill on horseback as far as the ground permitted; but was obliged again to dismount presently, in consequence of the steepness of the uppermost portion. Such energetic efforts enabled him and his detachment to reach the summit first. As soon as the enemy saw this, they desisted from their ascent, and dispersed in all directions; leaving the forward march open to the main Grecian army, ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... forming in time a level field with steep sides all round. The reef, however, continually increases, and being prevented from going higher, extends itself laterally in all directions. But this growth being as rapid at the upper edge as it is lower down, the steepness of the face of the reef is still preserved. These are the circumstances which render coral reefs so dangerous in navigation; for, in the first place, they are seldom seen above the water; and, in the next, their sides ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... been the castle of Leiria, some fifty miles south of Coimbra: it or the keep was begun by Dom Diniz in 1324.[64] The rock on which it stands, in steepness and in height recalls that of Edinburgh Castle, but without the long slope of the old town leading nearly to the summit: towering high above Leiria it is further defended on the only accessible quarter by the river Lis which runs round two sides not far from the bottom of the steep descent. Unfortunately ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... of ferns and trailers, grow luxuriantly in every damp rift of rock, and screen from view the precipices of the pali. The valley looks as if it could only be reached in a long day's travel, so very far it is below, but the steepness of the track makes it accessible in an hour from the summit. As we descended, houses and a church which had looked like toys at first, dilated on our sight, the silver ribbon became a stream, the specks on the meadows turned into horses, the white wavy line ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... is all the communication by land between one village and another on the side along which we passed, for upwards of thirty miles. We entered on this path about noon, and, owing to the steepness of the banks, were soon unmolested by the sun, which illuminated the woods, rocks, and villages of the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... the unpainted wooden backs of a number of frame buildings which, though they are but two or three stories high in front, reach in some cases a height of five or six stories at the rear, owing to the steepness of the hillside to which they cling. The roof lines, side walls, windows, chimneys, galleries, posts, and railings of these sad-looking structures are all picturesquely out of plumb, and some idea of the general dilapidation may be gathered from the fact ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... minute!) we pulled up hill and tore down dale. Nobody knows a hill by experience but New-Hampshire travellers. The Green Mountains are full of comparatively gentle slopes, and verdure crowns their highest and tallest tops; but the hills of New Hampshire are Alpine in their steepness and barrenness, and the roads of old time made by the Puritans took the Devil by the horns. There was no circuitous, soothing, easy passage. The road ran straight over mountains and pitched deep down ravines, the surveyors having evidently kept only in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... great difficulty in tracking the canoe against the rapid stream that now opposed us. From the steepness of the banks in some places, and their being clothed with thick willows in others, it became a slow and fatiguing process for the men to drag us against the strong current; and sometimes the poor Indians had to cling like flies against nearly perpendicular cliffs of slippery clay, whilst ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... saddles forth we set once more and on a path no easier than before, but worse—like a very housetop for steepness, without a tinge of any living thing for succour if one fell, but only sharp, jagged rocks, and that which now added to our peril was here and there a patch of snow, so that the mules must cock their ears and feel their way before ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... the carriage started out of the village and up the rise beyond was soon checked by the steepness of the hill. Gradually it subsided to a foot pace, swinging and lumbering upward among the many sweet scents of a summer night. The postilions, with a thousand gossamer gnats circling about them in lieu of the Furies, quietly mended the points to the lashes of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... would discover their mistake and return, we had no alternative but to struggle up a most fearful precipice towards the only ray of light which we could see in the distance. It really was hard work, not only on account of the steepness of the ascent, but of the slippery and slimy condition of the rocks. Sometimes we knocked ourselves with painful abruptness against hard projections, at other times we sank to our knees in a mass of soft, wet guano teeming with animal life of various kinds, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... steeper than the Alp-king; and steepness is a quality more quickly appreciated than mere massiveness. "Mont Blanc (says a writer in Frazer's Magazine) is scarcely admired, because he is built with a certain regard to stability; but the apparently reckless architecture of the Matterhorn brings the traveler fairly on his knees, with ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... Prince Mannikin strictly forbade that any attempt should be made to thaw them. So they went on and on for more than three months, and day by day the Ice Mountain, which they had seen for a long time, grew clearer, until at last they stood close to it, and shuddered at its height and steepness. But by patience and perseverance they crept up foot by foot, aided by their fires of magic wood, without which they must have perished in the intense cold, until presently they stood at the gates of the magnificent Ice Palace which crowned the mountain, where, in deadly silence and icy ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... as one always wishes to do in such cases, a clear idea of the place where these marbles—three statues of the best style of Greek sculpture, now in the British Museum—were found. Occupying a ledge of rock, looking towards the sea, at the base of a [141] cliff of upheaved limestone, of singular steepness and regularity of surface, the spot presents indications of volcanic disturbance, as if a chasm in the earth had opened here. It was this character, suggesting the belief in an actual connexion with the interior of the earth (local tradition claiming it ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... conduct me by the best way for carts to Wallamoul on the Peel, for which service I undertook to reward him with a tomahawk.* It was necessary, that we should ford the Cuerindie, which flows to the north-west, and notwithstanding the steepness of its banks, we effected a passage without difficulty, guided by Jemmy. One mile beyond this, another creek lay in our way. It was smaller, but much more formidable and difficult to cross, for ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... said that there were some remarkable caves at this place, which had long been objects of interest to the traveller and excursionist. One there is in particular, called the Devil's Cave, which penetrates far into the heart of the rock, on the face of which lies its entrance. From the steepness of the path which leads into this cavern, it is rarely visited by tourists. The party, however, with perhaps more curiosity than prudence, determined to explore and visit this cave. A female guide was procured, and a candle supplied to each person. All being ready, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... Panauni, is about 5½ miles over the chain of mountains called Lamadangra, and by the pass called Chisapani. The mountain is of great elevation, and very steep, but not very rugged; nor are the woods thick, although the trees are lofty. Except in steepness, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... his course once more toward the southeast. The country here was entirely new to him, much rougher, the hills increasing in height and steepness, and he inferred that he was approaching a river, some ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... grown almost a fixed idea with Gibbie—he can seldom be in doubt whether he is going right, even where there is no track. Indeed in all more arduous ways, men leave no track behind them, no finger-post—there is always but the steepness. He climbed and climbed. The mountain grew steeper and barer as he went, and he became absorbed in his climbing. All at once he discovered that he had lost the stream, where or when he could not tell. All below and around him was red granite rock, scattered over with the chips and splinters ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... steepness of West Street. They walked athwart the metallic and leathery tumult of sound into the light cast by the little circle of yellow lamps. Several people saw them and wondered what the boys and girls were coming to nowadays, and one eye-witness even subsequently described their carriage as ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... most judiciously chosen to cover the passage into Anglesey, and the remoter part of their country; and must, from its vast strength, have been invulnerable, except by famine; being inaccessible by its natural steepness towards the sea, and on the parts fortified in the manner described." So far, Pennant versus Pownall! "Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" The opinion of both these antiquarians is liable to demur. Governor Pownall ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... toilsome journey, rendered positively dangerous now by the vicinity of the water and the steepness of the banks that led down to it. But I did not go far, for as, in my avoidance of the stream, I drew nearer and nearer the walls, I caught glimpses of what I at first thought to be the flash of a fire-fly in the bushes, but in another moment discovered ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... anxious listeners in the shanty heard the click of the horse's shoes and the rumble of the departing wheels on the stones amid the wagon's creaking complaints against the steepness of ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... briars brushing the sides of our horses and wetting us with dew. It is not long until we begin to ascend a high ridge. Here there are no paths whatever, and at times our horses can scarcely move on because of the steepness of the ascent. But a few minutes before nine o'clock, after a toilsome struggle, we reach the summit of the ridge, and here I get my first panoramic view of the west-Jordan ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... throat a bunch of frosted beard sparkles as if the painter's pencil had fastened there in reverence. I do not need to study the bent, broad shoulders and thin sinewy limbs to measure the hardness and steepness of his path; he climbed it like a bridegroom, humming quaint snatches of hymns to lull his human waywardnesses, and all the fever and errantry of our own vain career shrink abashed before his ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... wild with wood; once or twice he passed a timbered farmhouse, with tall brick chimneys. The country round about was much invaded by new, pert houses, but there were none here; and Hugh supposed that this road, which seemed the only track into the valley, was of so forbidding a steepness that it had not occurred to any one to settle there. The road became more and more precipitous, and at the very bottom, having descended nearly three hundred feet, Hugh found himself in a very beautiful place. He thought he had never seen anything more sweetly, more characteristically English. ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to become more and more brilliant, and the scenery to keep pace with the weather. It was evident that we were nearing the monastery very rapidly. On catching the first distinct view of it, my companion could not restrain his admiration. At this moment, from the steepness of the ascent, I thought it prudent to descend, and to walk to the monastery. The view from thence was at once commanding and enchanting. The Danube was the grand feature in the landscape; while, near ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... rivers well armed with waste make short work of cutting their beds to grade, and thus erode narrow, steep-sided gorges only wide enough at the base to accommodate the stream. The steepness of the valley slopes depends on the relative rates at which the bed is cut down by the stream and the sides are worn back by the weather. In resistant rock a swift, well-laden stream may saw out a gorge whose sides are nearly or even quite vertical, but as a rule young ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... even to the crown of fir-trees that towered remote and very blue upon the uplifted sky-line. Swallows, with white breasts flashing, circled over the river, and while their elevation above the water appeared at times tremendous, the abrupt steepness of the gorge was such that the birds almost brushed the hillside with their wings. A sledge, laden with the timber of barked sapling oaks, creaked and jingled over the rough road beside the stream; a man called to his horses and a dog barked ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... immortal beings when written—with the comprehension here displayed. Even the complicated history of the period is made clear, and the poet, whose tortures came from the heart, is as feelingly touched on as he who suffered from the political factions of the Bianchi and the Neri, and who felt the steepness of other's stairs and the salt savour of other's bread. Petrarch's banishment through love is not less feelingly described, and we are taken to the life and the homes of the time in the living descriptions given by Mary. One passage ought in fairness to be given to show ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... notice his father going towards the moor, and he took the same path, running simply for exercise, measuring his young strength against the steepness of the hill and filling his lungs with the sweet evening air, in a passionate physical reaction against the ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gearing automatically while one rode, so as to enable one to adapt it to the varying slope in mounting hills. This part of the mechanism he explained to me elaborately. There was a gauge in front which allowed one to sight the steepness of the slope by mere inspection; and according as the gauge marked one, two, three, or four, as its gradient on the scale, the rider pressed a button on the handle-bar with his left hand once, twice, thrice, or four times, so that the gearing adapted itself without an effort to the rise ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... next two days the sand-ridges seemed to vie with each other in their height and steepness, between them there was hardly any flat ground at all; mile after mile we travelled, up one and down and over the next without ceasing. First came the native and his guard, then in a long, broken line the string ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... devotion strung me too high to mind the infinite pity and horror of the sights. I used to ride over from Kalawao to Kalaupapa (about three miles across the promontory, the cliff-wall, ivied with forest and yet inaccessible from steepness, on my left), go to the Sisters' home, which is a miracle of neatness, play a game of croquet with seven leper girls (90 degrees in the shade), got a little old-maid meal served me by the Sisters, and ride home again, tired enough, but not too tired. The girls have all dolls, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in launching our boat, and we effected a passage and encamped on the opposite bank before sunset, having driven all the cattle and horses safely across also, although with considerable difficulty from the steepness of the banks and softness of the soil at the water's edge on the side ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... scientific man actually turned his back to it in examining first one rock, then another. The practical man must have looked both at the plain in front and at the hill he was on, since he judged that there was pasture and water-power, and that the steepness required supplementing the tramway by a funicular. But besides the different items of landscape, and the same items under different angles, which were thus offered to these two men's bodily eyes, there was a far greater ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... its surface scarcely ruffled by the faintest zephyr, though it was blowing moderately fresh outside. The shore all round sloped very gently up from the water's-edge, with a gradually increasing steepness, however, further inland, until just before the culminating ridge was reached the inclination appeared to be quite precipitous, giving indeed to the entire basin some similitude to the interior of a gigantic saucer. The slopes here, at least near the water's-edge, were not quite so densely ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... the other dog-trains. Of them the boys had also lost control. Such was the steepness of the hill that soon the momentum obtained by the sleds caused them to go faster than the dogs could run. Here was the real danger. Frank and Alec saw how it was faring with Sam, and were also quick to observe that with that wolf so plainly visible it would ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... the flat, two in the leafy and gradually ascending creek-bed of a canyon, a half hour of laboring steepness in the overarching mountain lilac and laurel. There you came to a great rock gateway which seemed the top of the world. * * * Beyond the gateway a lush level canyon into which you plunged as into ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... and after a further three-quarters of an hour of arduous labour—the steepness of the acclivity and the looseness of the soil rendering progress exceedingly slow and difficult—they finally reached their goal, to find themselves standing, as it were, upon the rim of a huge basin about a third of a mile in diameter and some three ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... up the cliff in a long file, clawing their way, cursing the steepness, now and then one or another of them fumbling uncertainly, close to a slip and a fall. It was clear that, with the possible exception of Swen Brodie, not a man of them was entirely sober. But they made the climb safely and hastened into the upper ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... unknown though convulsed with agitation—it was the voice of my dear son! Oh what a quick transition from every direful apprehension to' joy and delight! yet knowing his precipitancy, and fearing a rash descent to join me, in ignorance of the steepness and dangers of the precipice which parted us, I called out with all the energy in my power to conjure him to await patiently, as I would myself, the entire ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... elapsed, that when I got to the top of the first steepness, and could see some part of the open mountain, the murderer was still moving away at no great distance. He was a big man, in a black coat, with metal buttons, and carried ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 5.45, 20 [micron]; at 8 P.M., 70 [micron] and so on. Such curves show differences of steepness according to the temperature (see temp. curve), and to alterations of light (lamp) and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... The fearful steepness of the ground absorbed all Christina's attention. The road, or rather stairs, came down to the stream at the bottom of the fissure, and then went again on the other side up still more tremendous steeps, which Hugh climbed with a staff, sometimes with ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... though only darkly and indistinctly, in the gorge, and after some hesitation, Plattner began to clamber down the precipitous descent towards them. The descent was long and exceedingly tedious, being so not only by the extraordinary steepness, but also by reason of the looseness of the boulders with which the whole face of the hill was strewn. The noise of his descent—now and then his heels struck fire from the rocks—seemed now the only sound in the universe, for the beating of the bell had ceased. As he drew nearer, he perceived ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the dark pupil; and in "illuminated" lettering beneath was printed very minutely, "Thou God Seest ME," followed by a long looped monogram, "S.S.," in the corner. The other pictures were all of the sea: brigs on blue water; a schooner overtopping chalk cliffs; a rocky island of prodigious steepness, with two tiny sailors dragging a monstrous boat up ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Seine, whose sinuous course here shapes the adjoining land into a narrow peninsula. The chalky cliffs on each side of the castle are broken into hills of romantic form, which add to the impressive wildness of the scene. Towards the river, the steepness of the cliff renders the fortress unassailable: a double fosse of great depth, defended by a strong wall, originally afforded almost equal protection on ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... Difficulty, and have abandoned each in turn,—it is only when we have attained a point somewhere near the top, that we can look down and see the way we should have come, the one road that avoided unnecessary steepness and needless windings, and led by the quickest and easiest direction to the summit. The knowledge that we have thus gained, however late to profit by it ourselves, should at least be valuable to others. But, unfortunately, as Balzac has said, experience is an article that no one will ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... northern Apennines, as well as of many minor mountain ridges in Tuscany and other parts or Italy, are covered with earth which becomes itself almost a fluid when saturated with water. Hence the erosion of such surfaces is vastly greater than on many other mountains of equal steepness of inclination. The traveller who passes over the route between Bologna and Florence, and the Perugia and the Siena roads from the latter city to Rome, will have many opportunities of observing ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... crossed by a locomotive before the Alleghanies were outraged, as we see them, here and by this track. As the railroad we follow was the first to take existence in this country, excepting some short mining roads, so the grade here used was the first of equal steepness, saving on some English roads of inferior length and no mountainous prestige. Here the engineer, like Van Arnburgh in the lion's den, first planted his conqueror's foot upon the mane of the wilderness; and 'in this spot modern science first claimed the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... The steepness of the heavily wooded wall that rises hundreds of feet sheer round three sides reminds one of the geyser-studded old crater of Unzen, in the island of Kyushiu in Japan, "Its gleaming mirror," the guide book says, "exhibits a wonderful luxury of tints and ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... to suit. It was a rocky hollow running back about fifteen feet, and with a height and width of perhaps ten feet. It was approached by an opening about four feet in height and two feet in width. Dick wondered at first that it had not been used as a den by some wild animal, but surmised that the steepness of the ascent and the extreme roughness of the rocky floor had kept ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... daughter, check the gathering tear That lurks beneath thine eyelid, ere it flow And weaken thy resolve; be firm and true— True to thyself and me; the path of life Will lead o'er hill and plain, o'er rough and smooth, And all must feel the steepness of the way; Though rugged be thy course, press ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... and we talked of indifferent things on the way up: of the house, and the steepness of the attic stairs. At the top of the steps, however, he changed his tone. Aunt Mary had mentioned a certain oak secretary-bookcase with glass doors, standing close to the head of the stairs, and as I steered for it, along a narrow lane between ancient trunks and packing ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... If anything, Roaring Bill increased his pace. He himself no longer rode. When the steepness of the hills and canons made the going hard the packs were redivided, and henceforth Satin bore on his back a portion of the supplies. Bill led the way tirelessly. Through flies, river crossings, camp labor, and all the petty irritations of the trail he kept an unruffled spirit, a fine, enduring ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... sharpest, which is a genuine peninsula overhanging the main valley, sits the village of Chatillon, formerly crowned by a haughty feudal castle, on whose ruins was erected a statue of Pope Urban II, who long ago had trouble with the German emperors. The slopes below are hard to climb, because of their steepness and the network of tilled fields. Here we are at the heart of the vine-growing district, and these banks of the Marne contribute largely to the production of the famous champagne. The vines extend, on long rows of poles, to the ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... better entertainment of his Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth answered "Satis"—and it takes its name from having received the restored Merry Monarch under its roof on his way to London and the throne. Pepys, who was terrified by the steepness of the castle cliff and had no time to stay to service at the Cathedral, when he had been inspecting the defences at Chatham, found something more to his mind in a stroll by Restoration House, and into the Cherry Garden, where he met a silly shopkeeper with a pretty ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... was one wholly according to my own heart; and next morning Johnstone and I were hard at work on the giddy brow of the precipice. It was topped by a thick bed of boulder clay, itself—such was the steepness of the slope—almost a precipice; but a series of deeply-cut steps led us easily adown the bed of clay; and then a sloping shelf, which, with much labour, we deepened and flattened, conducted us not unsafely some five-and-twenty or thirty feet along the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... coast, besides the organic remains, there are in very many parts, marks of erosion, caves, ancient beaches, sand-dunes, and successive terraces of gravel, all above the present level of the sea. From the steepness of the land on this side of the continent, shells have rarely been found at greater distances inland than from two to three leagues; but the marks of sea-action are evident farther from the coast; for instance, in the valley ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... of his best men-at-arms, stood in the front line and received the first shock of the assault. The roughness and steepness of the mound prevented the French from attacking in regular order, and the very eagerness of the knights and squires who came first in contact with their enemies was a hindrance to them. When the columns were seen gathering for the assault Walter ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... was the village of Kharzan, which is situated near the summit of the mountain, about six thousand feet high. The ascent is continuous and precipitous. An idea may be gained of the steepness by the fact that we now left the valley of the Shah Roud, barely one thousand feet above sea-level, to ascend, in a distance of about twelve miles, over ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... filled with comfortable homesteads. The line runs through a valley between two ranges of hills. All about the slopes on the river side stand snug little houses, each within its own grounds, each having a peaked roof, which strives more or less effectually to rival the steepness of its neighbour. The houses straggle for miles down the line, as if they had started out from Quebec with the intention of founding a town for themselves, and had stopped on the way, beguiled by the beauty of the situation. Sometimes a little group stand ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... perpendicular cliffs some hundreds of feet in height, leads from Krogkleven to the level of the Tyri Fjord. There is no attempt here, nor indeed upon the most of the Norwegian roads we travelled, to mitigate, by well-arranged curves, the steepness of the hills. Straight down you go, no matter of how breakneck a character the declivity may be. There are no drags to the carrioles and country carts, and were not the native horses the toughest and surest-footed little animals in the world, this ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... was roaring like a desperate, cornered thing now; its crawling pace slackening with the steeper inclines, gaining with the lesser raises, then settling once more to the lagging pace as steepness followed steepness, or the abruptness of the curve caused the great, slow-moving vehicle to lose the momentum gained after hundreds of feet of struggle. Again the engine boiled, and Barry stood beside it in shivering gratitude for its warmth. ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... abruptly in an opening of the chalk range extending from Ballard Down to Worthbarrow in the Isle of Purbeck, county of Dorset. The walls are extremely thick, (12 feet in some places,) and are about half a mile in circuit. On the northern side the steepness of the ascent renders it inaccessible, and on the south is a deep ditch, over which is a bridge of three arches commanded by a gateway, flanked by two circular massive towers. The first ward has several towers. Passing onwards in a considerable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... all that is surely self-evident. For our way in a holy life is always closely fenced up. It is far oftener a lonely way than otherwise. And the steepness, sternness, and loneliness of our way are all aggravated by the remembrance of our past sins and follies. They still, and more and more, lie upon our hearts a heart-crushing burden. But if we, like Christian, know how ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... the Arab way of doing things—rush and riot to begin with. The steepness of the stony ravine we rode up soon reduced the horses to a walk, after which there was a good deal of attention to rifle-bolts, and a settling down to the more serious aspects of the adventure. The escort began to look sullenly ferocious, ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... verticality to the cliff above which the abbey stands; but I believe it must have some steep places about it, since the tradition which, in nearly all parts of the island where fossil ammonites are found, is sure to be current respecting them, takes quite an original form at Whitby, owing to the steepness of this rock. In general, the saint of the locality has simply turned all the serpents to stone; but at Whitby, St. Hilda drove them over the cliff, and the serpents, before being petrified, had all their heads broken off ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... the mounds and the edge of the terrace. The most reasonable hypothesis, therefore, is that the space between the base of the mounds and the edge of the terrace was occupied by rooms of one story. This would also help to explain the steepness of the slopes of the mounds themselves. The walls of the structures they represent, being protected by the adjacent low walls of the one-story rooms, would not suffer appreciably by undermining at the ground level, and if the central room or rooms of each cluster were higher ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... some of the grandest scenes in nature. Considering how conventional the treatment of such subjects is, and how unanimous artists seem to be as to the propriety of exaggerating those features which should predominate in the landscape, it may fairly be doubted whether the total effect of steepness and elevation, especially in a mountain view, can, on a small scale, be conveyed by a strict adherence to truth. I need hardly add, that if such is attainable, it is only by those who have a power of colouring that few pretend to. In the list of plates ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... peculiarity of these roches moutonnees consists in the direction of the glacier-scratches, which ascend the slope to its summit in a direct line on one side, while they deviate to the right and left on the other sides of the knoll, more or less obliquely according to its steepness. Occasionally, large boulders may be found perched on the very summit of such prominences. Their position is inexplicable by the supposition of currents as the cause of their transportation. Any current ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... the defenders in the two cases was not the same; but, throwing out of consideration this chance, it must be granted that the difficulties of a position, when properly taken advantage of, need not be insurmountable in order to render the attack abortive. At Elchingen the great height and steepness of the banks, rendering the fire almost ineffectual, were more disadvantageous than useful in ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... nurse's; and without losing another minute he called Tom, ordered him to saddle the pony, and was on his way towards nurse's not ten minutes after he had spoken to the old woman. He made the pony go at a very brisk trot, wherever the steepness of the road ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... gravitation upon its exterior, the mountains, other circumstances being equal, might have been expected to be much smaller than ours, they are, in many instances, equal in height to nearly the highest of our Andes. They are generally of extreme steepness, and sharp of outline, a peculiarity which might be looked for in a planet deficient in water and atmosphere, seeing that these are the agents which wear down ruggedness on the surface of our earth. ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... riding a favorite old white horse. But the Indians intercepted him, and hemmed him in on the brink of an almost perpendicular slope, [Footnote: The hill overlooks Wheeling; the slope has now much crumbled away, and in consequence has lost its steepness.] some three hundred feet high. So sheer was the descent that they did not dream any horse could go down it, and instead of shooting they advanced to capture the man whom they hated. McColloch had no thought ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... was one of the mountain's landmarks. Beyond it the grade became much more abrupt, and although it was worn fairly smooth by the sleds of the men who planted aerial cornfields far up on the highest clearings, yet its steepness rendered this last half-mile the truly formidable part ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... most idolised objects upon earth! It was towards sun-set that I first paused upon his tomb, in the church-yard, near the summit of Harrow Hill. For a few moments I was breathless—but not from the steepness of the ascent. The inscription, I would submit, is too much in the "minor key." It was the production of his eldest son, who preferred to err from under-rating, rather than over-rating, the good qualities ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... have gone on shore, which, for that without great danger he could not accomplish, he deferred it until a more convenient time. All along the coast lie very high mountains, covered with snow, except in such places where, through the steepness of the mountains, of force it must needs fall. Four days coasting along this land we found no sign of habitation. Little birds which we judged to have lost the shore, by reason of thick fogs which that country is much subject unto, came flying ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... in with a pass-key at a low door, and then conducted Hugh, by a stair whose narrowness was equalled by its steepness, to a room, which, though not many yards above the level of the court, was yet next to the roof of the low house. Hugh could see nothing till his conductor lighted a candle. Then he found himself in a rather large room with a shaky ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... hundreds of yards it led upward in a sharp incline; and with its added steepness, the ardor of the explorer warmed. With impetuous haste he climbed the last dozen yards; when, as the anticipated summit was reached, he halted in abrupt, dismayed surprise; for with alarming suddenness the land broke off short, disclosing a deep gap or fissure, carpeted with heather ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... of which no other tracks but those of a tiger were visible, and these were clearly defined. They could also be distinctly traced from the place in the open grassland whence the body was carried. Taking all the circumstances into consideration—the distance travelled, the steepness of the ground, and the fact that the tiger passed a favourable jungle for lying in, I am strongly of opinion, in fact, I consider it almost certain, that the wounded tiger must have been dispatched by the other tiger, which was hungry ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... course of this river there are limited areas of intense erosion where naked gulleys of no mean magnitude have developed but these were exceptions and we were continually surprised at the remarkable steepness of the slopes, with convexly rounded contours almost everywhere, well mantled with soil, devoid of gulleys and completely covered with herbaceous growth dotted with small trees. The absence of forest growth finds its ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... is a thin slice of a house with three rooms on each little floor, and a staircase like a ladder. There is something very sinister about this smallness and narrowness and steepness. You say to yourself: Supposing the Germans really do come into Ghent; there will be some Uhlans among them; and the Uhlans will certainly come into the Hotel Cecil, and they will get very drunk in the restaurant below; and you might as well be in a trap as in ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... became necessary to use the greatest precaution, for it was literally entering the enemy's country. The steepness of the short ascent requiring them to mount nearly on their hands and feet, this part of their progress was made without much hazard, and the two adventurers stood on the plain, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... ravine; and Toby could not find the place where he had previously crossed. He passed beyond it. Then they crossed at random in the easiest place. Once on the side where the cave was, Toby decided that they were above it; and, owing to the steepness of the banks, it was necessary to go around over the rocks, at a short distance from the ravine, in order to reach the shelf behind the thickets. It was in making this movement that they had been seen to ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... convinced that although she will have a great struggle, in the end she will yield to it. This is like the 'Hill Difficulty' to Primrose, but she is not the sort of girl to turn away from it without conquering its steepness and its toils. Jasmine, dear, you three have tried bravely to help yourselves, and you have—yes, I must say it, dear—you have failed. Primrose cannot spend her life as continual reader to Mrs. Mortlock; you see now, my dear little ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... which, with all my experience of Western America mountain travel, seemed very hard to beat in point of rockiness and steepness. We had to lead our horses and climb most carefully. But when a quarter of a mile had been done in this way it was possible to mount again, and we were close to Fayal. I had thought all the time that it was a small town, but it appeared to be no more than the scattered huts we had passed, or those ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... Massachusetts, the other with the Alleghanies in Virginia, find that not only are grades of ten and of twenty feet admissible, but, where Nature requires it, inclines of forty, sixty, eighty, and even one hundred feet per mile,—it being only remembered, the while, that just as the steepness of the grade is augmented, the power must be increased. This discovery, when properly used, is of immense advantage; but in the hands of those who do not understand the nice relation which exists between the mechanical and the financial elements of the question, as governed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... which descends from the hill chosen by the blessed Ubaldo, hangs the fertile slope of a high mountain, wherefrom Perugia at Porta Sole[2] feeleth cold and heat, while behind it Nocera and Gualdo weep because of their heavy yoke.[3] On that slope, where it most breaks its steepness, rose a Sun upon the world, as this one sometimes does from the Ganges. Therefore let him who talks of that place not say Ascesi,[4] for he would speak short, but Orient,[5] if be would speak properly. He was not yet ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... turning off from the high road, when an exclamation from Peter Barnett (who, from his exalted station, was able to command a more extended view than ourselves) attracted my attention. We were at the moment descending a hill, which from its steepness obliged the postilions to proceed at a more moderate pace. Thrusting my head and shoulders out of one of the front windows, and raising myself by my hands, I contrived to obtain a view of the scene which had called forth Peter's ejaculation. Rather beyond the ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... some time to descend, owing to the steepness of the slope, and the rocks and bushes that obstructed the way. When they finally reached the water's edge the duskiness of twilight had come, and they knew that darkness would follow in ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... back, it sloped below them up to the right and then came towards them. About them grew a rich heather with stunted oaks on the edge of a deep ditch along the roadside, and this road was sandy; below the steepness of the hill, however, it was grey and barred with shadows, for there the trees clustered thick and tall. Mr. Hoopdriver fumbled clumsily with ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... rag at the end of it, by way of plummet, but I felt no ground till the second night The next morning I came into thirty fathom water, then twenty, then sixteen. In both tours I could perceive no abatement in the height or steepness of the rock. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... there seemed to be an unbroken wall of rock ahead; but, climbing higher, Prescott saw a small smooth track running up the barrier. It was obviously a gully filled with snow and its steepness suggested that the ascent of it might prove beyond his powers; but the footprints led on to where it began. After following them to the spot, Prescott sat down on a stone to gather breath. He looked upward with a ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... hills, which locally have the name of kopjes, now become so familiar. These kopjes are of varying heights, from fifty to five hundred feet, and consist mainly of large boulders, with, however, a plentiful sprinkling of smaller rocks not too heavy for handling. The steepness and roughness of the surface make climbing a matter {p.143} of hands as well as of feet, and are therefore a source of particular difficulty and exposure to an assailant; while, on the other hand, the ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... wind brought us, without much delay from the opposing ebb-tide, to the northern shore. We left the common embouchure of its two principal rivers, distinguished by the steepness of their banks to the right, and rowing up the narrow channel which has formed itself through the marsh land, reached our landing-place just as the sun's disk touched the blue summits of the mountains in ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... freezing as it fell with such severity, that even the alternative adopted presented little prospect of saving any one left on the wreck. During this state of awful suspense, we had every reason to think that the ship was completely bilged, and were apprehensive, from the steepness of the bank, that she would fall with her decks to the lee, as the ebb made, in which case all on ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... be carried forth feet first from such a front. The shop keeper followed the pair with his eyes. He passed his hand over the money. Then he looked again. The lady went lightly up the hill. Puffing and blowing at last Rokuzo was compelled to zig-zag on its steepness. Then she followed after his movements, gently encouraging him with words, and a cheerful pleased giggle that was a very goad in his rear. The grocer crossed to consultation with the baker. "Bah! He ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... above Astoria the river is so wide that it forms really a vast bay. Then it narrows somewhat, and the channel approaches now one and then the other of its bold, picturesque shores, which often for miles resemble the Palisades of the Hudson in steepness, and exceed them in height. But even after it becomes narrower the river frequently widens into broad, open, lake-like expanses, which are studded with lovely islands, and wherever the shore lowers you see, beyond, grand mountain ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... rode off at a canter. Dick gave the horse his head and drove home as fast as the steepness of the hill permitted, Yasmini talking to him nearly ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy |
