"Underbrush" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they were thin and peeped between the leaves, Ann and Peter crowding each other to see over his shoulder. They looked into a kind of open glade not much larger than a good-sized room and walled on all sides by tall trees and thick underbrush. It had a flooring of soft green turf, and about in the middle lay a great rock as large as a playhouse. This rock was all covered over with moss and lichens, and the strange thing about it was that a neat door had been cut in its side. Before this door, talking and waving his hands to ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... between them; there was not a spot that Joy could climb. Across, the great tongues of flame tossed themselves into the air, and glared awfully against the sky, which was dark with hurrying clouds. The underbrush was all on fire; two huge pine trees were ablaze, their branches shooting off hotly now ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... seldom been seen. "Forward!" was the word, and forward it was. The woods became a thicket, sometimes apparently impassable; but the horses, spurred by their riders, dashed at headlong speed through the trees, through the underbrush, under branches—thorns scratching the face and hands, projecting limbs tearing clothes and bruising bodies. Down hill and up hill, through marsh and bog, over logs and across streams, leaping obstacles, shouting, yelling, screaming, and hurrahing, away we went—mud ...
— Bugle Blasts - Read before the Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of - the Loyal Legion of the United States • William E. Crane
... to drop upon one's shoulders. The moonlight gave to this forest of great trees a weird, fantastic look. I felt like a knight entering an enchanted wood. But nothing disturbed our silence except the sudden awakening of a great bird or the stealthy rustle of an animal in the underbrush. Near midnight we rode into a grove of manacca palms as delicate as ferns, and each as high as a three-story house, and with fronds so long that those drooping across the trail hid it completely. To push our way through ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... wild beasts, and saw, under some gigantic tree, the dim shadow of some strange animal passing between himself and the bivouac fires; or caught a glimpse of some great snake slowly winding through the underbrush. But the monsters to be found in Paris are more terrible even than those in the African forests; or they would have been, had he understood the dangers he incurred. But he could not find his Gri-gri. Madou could not talk much, his exhaustion was so great; and ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... cried Grace, as Nabob stepped daintily over the rocks and underbrush that almost completely overgrew the narrow path. "A peach of a horse under you, the whole day before you, and nothing to do but enjoy yourself. Whoa-up there, Nabob. What's the matter with you?" for the horse had whinnied softly ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... of a twig in the underbrush brought his mind back with a jerk to their present plight. He wished they had brought the rifles from the plane. Some animal was lurking there in the shadows. Wolves, ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... a brisk trot, and in an hour we were upon the road, which we found crowded with troops and wagons. Pressing through the underbrush along-side the road, we kept on at a rapid pace. We soon heard shouts and cheers ahead of us, and in a few moments came in sight of a farm-house, in front of which was an excited crowd. Men were swarming in at every door and window. The yard was filled with furniture ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... underbrush, Beaudry took stock of this dusky nymph with surprise. In her attitude was something wild and free and proud. It was as if she challenged his presence even though she had summoned him. Across his mind flashed the thought that this was woman primeval before the conventions of civilization ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... of the river is much higher than the right, which is flooded, therefore the utan on that side presents a very different appearance, with large, fine-looking trees and no dense underbrush. All was fresh and calm after the rain which prevails at this season (February). There were showers during the afternoon, at times heavy, and the Malays were much opposed to getting wet, wanting to stop paddling, notwithstanding ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... out of sight in the thick underbrush, Chester jumped to his feet. The ten men did likewise, and turning to the left all dashed off through the brambles as fast and as quietly as possible. Among the bushes it was very dark, and for this reason the little party ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... seeking to enlarge his pastures by burning the underbrush, sets fires which often destroy hundreds of square miles of forest. The summer camper and the prospector also frequently go on their way without extinguishing the camp fire, though a great forest fire may be ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... When one starts out to hunt birds it is well to bear in mind a few simple rules. The first of these is to go quietly. One's good sense would of course tell him not to rush headlong through the woods, talking loudly to a companion, stepping upon brittle twigs, and crashing through the underbrush. Go quietly, stopping to listen every few steps. Make no violent motions, as such actions often frighten a bird more than a noise. Do not wear brightly coloured clothing, but garments of neutral tones which blend well with the surroundings ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... hillside arose a confused noise of snapping and snarling, punctuated by occasional short, sharp yelps. He increased his speed at much expense of pain, and cried loudly and threateningly. He saw the wolves hurrying away through the snow and underbrush, many of them, and he saw the scaffold down on the ground. The animals were heavy with the meat they had eaten, and they were content to slink away ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... must be an hour while he was making his way over the hill, through the underbrush, around the cliff. Again and again the fish ran out my line almost to the last turn. A dozen times he leaped from the water, shaking his silvery sides. Twice he tried to cut the leader across a sunken ledge. But at ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... the fox, and came tearing through the thick underbrush. They saw the fox and started ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... seen a black or dark mould; the roots of trees stretch frequently across the path; often a moss-grown brown log lies athwart, and when you set your foot down, it sinks into the decaying substance,—into the heart of oak or pine. The leafy boughs and twigs of the underbrush enlace themselves before you, so that you must stoop your head to pass under, or thrust yourself through amain, while they sweep against your face, and perhaps knock off your hat. There are rocks mossy and slippery; sometimes you stagger, with a great rustling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... the Scotchman had none of the stomachic phlegm and never-perturb'd placidity of the Konigsberg sage, and did not, like the latter, understand his own limits, and stop when he got to the end of them. He clears away jungle and poisonvines and underbrush—at any rate hacks valiantly at them, smiting hip and thigh. Kant did the like in his sphere, and it was all he profess'd to do; his labors have left the ground fully prepared ever since—and greater ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... suppose it is a sort of country, but not the kind that I live in. Here everything is pruned and raked until it looks as if it had just had its hair parted smoothly in the middle, and its shoe-strings tied. At home there is so much underbrush, and such a tangle of weeds and high grass and briers, that the yards look as if they'd forgotten to comb their hair when they got up, and had gone around all day with it hanging down their backs ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... same claim to it that, in the first days of the world, the first men had to their forests on land. Besides, who else could dispute his ownership of this underwater property? What other, bolder pioneer would come, ax in hand, to clear away its dark underbrush? ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... other direction, a false landing would send them over the cliff into the trees and underbrush along the ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... started out through the fog to find the freckled white sphere. He threshed around in the trees and underbrush for a while, and then to his mind came a memory of the horrible words which the Potent Noble had spoken. "This place was a graveyard!" The Wildcat shuddered extensively and abandoned the search for the ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... the old portage leading round the rapids. Here he had recently acquired an option on a considerable acreage, calculating that before long a new town would spring up in the shadow of the works, and, just as he pushed through the underbrush and came out on the gravel beach, he caught the flash of a paddle a mile away. He was hot and breathless and, lighting his big pipe, sat in the shade, his ruminative eye on the fast approaching canoe. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... as playful, wilful, evanescent as a wood-spirit. Sometimes, when they were separated, she would lead him into a ravine by imitating a squirrel or a wild-turkey, and, as he crept noiselessly along with bated breath and eyes peering eagerly through the tree-tops or the underbrush, she would step like a dryad from behind some tree at his side, with a ringing laugh at his discomfiture. Again, she might startle him by running lightly along the fallen trunk of a tree that lay across a torrent, or, in a freak of wilfulness, would let herself down the bare face of some ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... habit, and as it is worthy of cultivation in groups, it often becomes a question where to place it so that the bare ground it leaves behind is not an eye-sore. Besides colonies I have established in my ravine, where the overhanging underbrush hides its absence later on, I grow it under large bushes of forsythia. Both bloom at the same time and the pink buds and open blue bells of the Mertensia, when seen through the fleecy mass of the golden bells of the forsythia, make a charming picture. After flowering, the forsythia ...
— Making a Garden of Perennials • W. C. Egan
... with the setting of the sun. Toward evening, when the shadows are rapidly lengthening across the clearings, the ermine may be seen issuing forth for its night campaign. Now it twists its lithe body like an eel in and out among the rocks and underbrush; now it stands for a moment motionless, peering about in search of a victim, its slender little body arched up in the middle like an enraged cat. It is always on the alert, whisking here and there, sniffing at every hole and corner where perchance some ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... had promised, seemingly made for them to camp in. High and dry above the stream, sheltered by great towering pine trees, covered with a thick carpet of pine needles, this little woodland chamber opened in the dense tangle of underbrush which everywhere else grew up between the trees in a heavy tangle. Down near the shore a clear little spring went tinkling down into ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... going up to the girl, ordered her to follow him. They went up the side of the ridge which divides Manoa Valley from Nuuanu. It was hard work for the tenderly nurtured maiden to climb the steep mountain ridge, at one time through a thorny tangle of underbrush, and at another clinging against the bare face of the rocks, holding on to swinging vines for support. Kauhi never offered to assist her, but kept on ahead, only looking back occasionally to see that she followed. When they arrived at the summit of the divide ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... with the white dashes of the dogwood, and hung with the tassels of the maple. The foliage was still unfolding, patterned with fresh creases, the prey of a continuous, frail unrest. Little streams chuckled through the underbrush, and from the fusion of woodland whisperings bird notes detached themselves, soft flutings and liquid runs, that gave another expression ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... path, so narrow that later the summer luxuriant growth of underbrush would almost obliterate it. But Amanda knew the way to her spot. Deeper into the woods they delved, past bowers of pink azalea and closely growing branches of trees whose tender green foliage was breaking into summer growth. The bright May sunshine dripped through the ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... through the tree-tops, and the golden sunbeams shimmered and danced over the branches, trunks and ground, as if they had been prisoned in the woods and could never find their way out. The shadows of the tall trunks lay in transparent bars on the underbrush, luxuriant moss, and ferns, and the dew clung ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... through what seemed to Marjorie's city-bred eyes a dense forest, but which Francis had assured her was only a belt of woodland—quite negligible. And they had come out, now, on what Francis called a clearing. It was thick with underbrush, little trees, and saplings; while bloodroot flowered everywhere, and the gleam of thickly scattered red berries showed even as they rode quickly over the grass. In the center of things were the two cabins Francis had spoken of; one quite large—Francis seemed given to understatement—and ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... his ears, Angus redoubled his speed, and they could hear him crashing through the underbrush as if the devil himself ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... waveringly across a secluded grass-plot which looked green and inviting even after the parching summer. The sound of water bickering down the winding way of a stream gave life and coolness to the warm silence. Thick among the tree-trunks on one side grew cornel bushes and sloes, making a solid mass of underbrush, while on the other side there was an opening through which one might catch sight of a long meadow, and arable fields beyond, and even of blue ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... surely compelling in Tom's manner. Alf Drew went along, though he didn't wish to. The two were just at the fringe of the thick underbrush when there came a warning sound ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... American summer pervaded this secluded spot, harmonizing with the unceasing roar of the Great Falls. Ever and anon, tall, dark forms might be seen suddenly appearing from the thick foliage of the underbrush, through which their paths with difficulty wound, and silently their painted faces and gayly plumed heads dropped round the big wigwam. Important questions waited the decision of their wisest Sachems, and runners had been sent with wampum to call together ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... mansion had turned, to the right or the left, or whether, like the timid colored gentleman in a trying situation, he had taken to the woods. Christy walked up the street, and then down the street; but the underbrush had recently been cut in the grove, and he did not venture to explore it without any ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... to reach the woods, for the little suburb was embraced by these primitive arms, and it was like a child's running to a waiting mother to go out to them. He took no road or given path for a time, merely tramping through the underbrush that tangled the woodland; along the edges of ravines; down into their shadowy depths; up again; now breaking through the bramble out into the open on the edge of the bluff that skirts the lake; then bounding back again, like ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... the crackling of the dry twigs behind them, and Yates, who had been keeping his eye nervously on the fence, turned round. Young Bartlett pushed his way through the underbrush. His face was red; he had ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... underbrush, the lantern was swung high, and the two runaways were discovered. With a sob Flossie clasped the infant closer, hiding its face with ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... soon after this, the shorter yellow-legged man did hit a bird. It was a water-turkey, that had been sitting on a tree, just as we turned a corner. The big bird spread out its wings, made a doleful flutter, and fell into the underbrush by the shore. ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... up land when the country was new and land could be had at a low price. For a long time they, in common with all the other Middle Western people, were very poor. The land they had settled upon was heavily wooded and covered with fallen logs and underbrush. After the long hard labor of clearing these away and cutting the timber, there were still the stumps to be reckoned with. Plows run through the fields caught on hidden roots, stones lay all about, ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... morning I saw him go by with a dip-net and gunnysack, and Bellona trotting at his heels. I knew where he was bound, and cut out by the back pasture and climbed through the underbrush to the top of the mountain. Keeping carefully out of sight, I followed the crest along for a couple of miles to a natural amphitheatre in the hills, where the little river raced down out of a gorge and stopped for breath in ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... faithful Rover was hungry, and she had not given him even one piece of meat. She tried to forget how selfish she had been; but she could not do so, and quite early she started for home. 14. When she was nearly out of the woods, a rustling in the underbrush attracted her attention. "I wonder if that is a bird or a squirrel," said she to herself. "If I can catch it, how glad I shall be!" 15. She tried to make her way quietly through the underbrush; ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... sounds on the midnight, Blown by a fairy boy, And the rabbits rush from the underbrush, ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... compelled him to desist. He and his companions bore their share of the baggage across the portages, sometimes a distance of several miles. Four trips, at the least, were required to convey the whole. The way was through the dense forest, incumbered with rocks and logs, tangled with roots and underbrush, damp with perpetual shade, and redolent of decayed leaves and mouldering wood. [ 1 ] The Indians themselves were often spent with fatigue. Brbeuf, a man of iron frame and a nature unconquerably resolute, doubted if his strength would sustain him to the ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... spot. There are huge points of rock which time and nature are clothing with velvet garments of moss. Layer after layer of dust settles in the hollows, the rains beat it down, and the birds bring seeds. The tropical vegetation spreads out luxuriantly in thickets and underbrush, while curtains of interwoven vines hang from the branches of the trees and twine about their roots or spread along the ground, as if Flora were not yet satisfied but must place plant above plant. Mosses and fungi live upon the cracked trunks, and orchids—graceful guests—twine ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... they went, scrambling over the wall and running down the sloping fields on the other side, till they were hidden among the rocks and underbrush. The berries were thick, and at last the pails were actually full. It was shady and cool down there, and a little spring gave the thirsty children a refreshing drink out of its ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... undulating wide expanses of sugar-cane—a fine, fresh green and very pleasant to the eye; and everywhere else you have a ragged luxuriance of tropic vegetation of vivid greens of varying shades, a wild tangle of underbrush, with graceful tall palms lifting their crippled plumes high above it; and you have stretches of shady dense forest with limpid streams frolicking through them, continually glimpsed and lost and glimpsed again in the pleasantest hide-and-seek fashion; and you have some tiny mountains, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had ordered him into a thick part of the woods where the high underbrush cut them off from the sight of other working parties a hundred yards away. Here the German had seated himself comfortably on a fallen tree while he watched his prisoner toil, occasionally hurling a threat ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... of the cliff, so as to look over; but after that they encountered a dense alder thicket. In order to traverse this, they had to go farther inland, where there was some sort of an opening. There they came to a wood where the underbrush was thick, and the walking difficult. This they traversed, and at length worked their way once more to the edge of the cliff. Looking down here, they found the scene very much like what it had been farther ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... old deserted nest, Half-hidden in the underbrush: A withered leaf, in phantom jest, Has nestled in it like a thrush With ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... did not. He was quite full grown when I first laid my eyes upon him. He was sitting in the sun, on top of a rail fence, blinking at me consideringly. The fence skirted a little trail that led from my back yard down to Calapooia Creek. It seemed trying to push back a fringe of scrubby underbrush which ran down a hillside; a fringe which was, in truth, but a feeler from the great forest of Douglas fir which one saw marching, file upon file, row upon row, back and back to the ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... arrangement. It is a kind of natural magic that enables these favored ones to bring out the hidden capabilities of things around them; and particularly to give a look of comfort and habitableness to any place which, for however brief a period, may happen to be their home. A wild hut of underbrush, tossed together by wayfarers through the primitive forest, would acquire the home aspect by one night's lodging of such a woman, and would retain it long after her quiet figure had disappeared into the surrounding shade. No less ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gratify some adolescent curiosity, or perhaps, after the fashion of other and human adolescents, to relish the spectacle of the maternal anxiety. Ever and anon the sound of the mare's troubled call rang on the air. Then the colt would come with a burst of speed, a turbulent rush, out of the underbrush, and, with its keen head-tones of a whinny, all funnily treble and out of tune, dash on in advance. The rider of this preoccupied steed was a grizzled, lank, thin-visaged mountaineer, with a tuft of beard ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... silent than on the larger lake. There was a chorus of frogs among the lily pads, an owl hooted wistfully in the forest, and they heard an angry snort from the underbrush, ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... to sunset when the passengers were landed, and their household effects brought ashore. It was a busy time, for camping sites had to be chosen, underbrush cleared away, and tents pitched. But men and women alike worked with a hearty good will. There was something thrilling and invigorating in this new and strange life. It was most restful after the tumult and distractions ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... for silence, but there was no need. The girls ceased chatting at once, and silently followed Cora toward a hedge of underbrush, some little distance from where their ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... on her mind, she sought to find her way through the trees to the wall. This she was able to do without much difficulty, for though the trees grew thick, there was no underbrush, but she was able to walk along without any very great trouble. Penetrating in this way through the trees, she at length came to the wall. But, to her great disappointment, she found its height here quite ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... instinct of her sex, from whom no secrets of the affections are hid, and to whom all hearts are laid open, she had heard the story of Hawkins's folly, and the existence of the "Idiot Asylum." Alone, on Hawkins Hill, she had determined to penetrate its seclusion. Skirting the underbrush at the foot of the hill, she managed to keep the heaviest timber between herself and the "Blazing Star" tunnel at its base, as well as the cabin of Hawkins, half-way up the ascent, until, by a circuitous route, at last she reached, unobserved, the summit. Before her rose, silent, darkened, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... without further opposition and found instead of one man, whose form they had been able to distinguish from the boat, ten or a dozen more a few feet back from the shore, squatting around a small fire, the light of which was masked by a thick growth of underbrush. They were all dark-skinned men with heavy growths of black beard. They looked up without displaying any particular interest as the boys landed, but the sentinel who had challenged them came forward and held out his hand in greeting. He was ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... more, I turned and sprang away into the denser gloom of the wood. And ever as I went, crashing and stumbling through the underbrush, above the noise of my headlong flight rang the hated name of the enemy I had journeyed so far to kill—"Brandon! ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... trees and the far white stars that flashed through the still leaves overhead, we leaped down the mountain side, regardless of path or landmark, straight through the tangled underbrush, across mountain streams, through fens and copses, anywhere, so only that our ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... It was the middle of a fine autumn day, and the scenting was very uncommonly good. One of our beaters flushed a bevy of quail very wide of us, and they came over our heads down a steep hillside, and all lighted in a small circular hollow, without a bit of underbrush or even grass, full of tall thrifty oak trees, of perhaps twenty-five years' growth. They were not much out of gun-shot, and we all three distinctly saw them light; and I observed them flap and fold their wings as they ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... of the marl-pit was so irregular, and the thorny underbrush so thick, that when pedestrians wished to reach the nearest highway they, were compelled either to make a long detour or to cross the deepest part of the excavation by means of the trunks of two great trees, which had been cut in half, lashed together, and thrown ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... forget the chaplain's look at that. He had unslung long Tom; holding it up in his right hand, he fairly yelled out, 'Fight, by G—d! Boys, follow me.' And we did follow him. Skirting around through underbrush to our left, concealed from the Rebs, we came to an open again of about thirty yards. The Rebs had retired about eighty yards in the wood to where it ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... point on the Missouri river, the bluffs rise abruptly from the banks. The railroad, winding around the curves, was literally hewn from the solid rock. Deep gullies and ravines, starting from the water, Intersected all portions of the country, and the thick underbrush made this place a safe and secure hiding-place for fugitives from justice, river pirates ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... nothin' to shoot him with, and knew that the only way to save my life wuz to run for it. I jest bent over and threw the partridges on the ground, thinkin' as I did so that perhaps the b'ar would stop to eat them, and I could git away. I started to run, but caught my toe in some underbrush and went down ker-slap. I said all the prayers I knew in 'bout eight seconds, then got up, and started to run ag'in. Like Lot's wife, I couldn't help lookin' back, and there wuz the b'ar flat on his back. I went up to him kinder cautious, ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... long!" Tommy argued. "He can't make any headway out there in the underbrush, and the fellow who was here will probably run away from him before he gets ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... a rustling sound in the underbrush. "P'raps it's savages," thought Archie, and, half pleased, half frightened at the idea, he gave a loud whoop. Out flew a fat motherly hen, cackling and screaming. What she was doing there in the woods I cannot imagine. Perhaps she had lost her way. Perhaps she had private business there which ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... warped up in that shape along about the time when everybody had to hump himself. Try to bring before the young man's defective mental vision a dissolving view of a "good old-fashioned barn-raisin' "—and the old man doing all the "raisin' " himself, and "grubbin'," and "burnin' " logs and "underbrush," and "dreenin' " at the same time, and trying to coax something besides calamus to grow in the spongy little tract of swamp-land that he could stand in the middle of and "wobble" and shake the whole farm. Or, if you can't recall the many salient features of the minor disadvantages under which ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... previously passed us, were awaiting our arrival before daring to proceed. On reaching the crest of the bluff leading to the valley of the river we saw hundreds of Sioux Indians, in war paint and feathers, camped on the opposite side in the underbrush and woods, and in the main trail directly in ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... clubs tightly, they worked their way through the underbrush. The trees were scattered in places, letting a few beams of moonlight seep through, though the dark shadows were deceptive and no objects could be ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... Jimmy, were unusually fleet, and they soon overtook Cassey. Bob's hand was almost upon him when the man doubled suddenly in his tracks and darted off into the thick underbrush. ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... canon. But Imogene, arousing herself, declared that she had letters to write; and Dave, still fast asleep, was already on roamings of his own. Ruth and Lee therefore went alone up the path through the trees and underbrush, until they emerged in the cool, dusky gorge formed by the contracting of the rocky walls. The brook rippled by over stones and moss. A few insects hovered over the stream with their tiny bodies shining like bronze. From somewhere came a sweet, ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... States, no lover of American nature can have failed to observe a marked difference between a native wood from which cattle are excluded and one where they are permitted to browse. A few seasons suffice for the total extirpation of the "underbrush," including the young trees on which alone the reproduction of the forest depends, and all the branches of those of larger growth which hang within reach of the cattle are stripped of their buds and leaves, and soon wither and fall off. These effects are observable at a great distance, and ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... this moment the Filipinos saw that the Americans' fire had practically ceased. Throwing back from off their trench the limbs and underbrush that had concealed them, the Filipinos, armed with guns, spears, bolos and clubs, made a bold dash for the boat and captured the ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... of snares for lynxes we resumed our march, and on rounding the end of a little lake, saw two fresh moose-tracks. Following them up, we finally came to a park-like region, where was very little underbrush, and where most of the trees were pine and spruce—an ideal spot for marten. So Oo-koo-hoo, forgetting all about his moose-tracks, made ready to set ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... Farmer Ellison rush suddenly from cover upon the very place where she had sat, fishing. She saw him run, furiously, hither and thither, beating the underbrush with his cane, shaking the stick wrathfully. His face showed the keenest disappointment ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... important victories in Galicia, thus placing all the passes of the Carpathians in jeopardy. But whatever his interest in conjectures regarding the possibility of victory or defeat, his own business was too urgent to admit of other issues, and so he made his way forward cautiously through the underbrush, which in places was almost impenetrable. Four-footed things, startled by this unusual invasion of their hunting ground, started up almost beside him and fled—rabbits, squirrels, a wolf, and a brown bear, which rocked upon its four legs dubiously for a moment, and then lumbered comically ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... breathless from his tussle with the tangled underbrush, his old clothes had some fresh tears, and his hands were cut ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... a Bitter-root Grizzly is a bad Bear. The Bitter-root Range is the roughest part of the mountains. The ground is everywhere cut up with deep ravines and overgrown with dense and tangled underbrush. ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... younger. His kinky gray hair, generally knotted into little wads, was now divided by a well-defined path starting from the great wrinkle in his forehead and ending in a dense tangle of underbrush that no comb dared penetrate. His face glistened all over. His mouth was wide open, showing a great cavity in which each tooth seemed to dance with delight. His jacket was as white and stiff as soap and starch could make it, while a cast-off cravat of the colonel's—double starched to suit Chad's ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... William) and contiguous counties. The responsibility for this condition has been traced to the hunters who frequented this region prior to its settlement and wantonly set fire to the forests in order to destroy underbrush, the better to secure their quarries. A comparatively dense and vigorous new growth followed the discontinuance of this ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... he was picking his way through the palmlike fern and thick underbrush of the pine forest, starting the hare from its form, and awakening a querulous protest from a few dissipated crows, who had evidently been making a night of it, and so came to the wooded ridge where he had ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... which seemed to have been made expressly with a view to camping out. It was surrounded on three sides by woods, and opened on the fourth into a wild mountain gorge, choked up with rocks, logs, and a dense growth of underbrush and weeds. A clear cold stream tumbled in a succession of tinkling cascades down the dark ravine, and ran in a sandy flower-bordered channel through the grassy glade, until it disappeared in the encircling ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... apparently the newcomers did not see Martin and Greyson. There was a crackling of underbrush by feet no longer feeling need of caution, then another space of silence before safety was made sure for ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... was small where the cradle lay, As it swung in the winds by night and day; For a thicket of underbrush fenced it round, This lone little cot ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... it took me tew days to decide even that. The underbrush has growed up around it, and the old scar ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... their way through the bushes in the direction from which the volleys came. It was like forcing the walls of a maze. If each trooper had not kept in touch with the man on either hand he would have been lost in the thicket. At one moment the underbrush seemed swarming with our men, and the next, except that you heard the twigs breaking, and heavy breathing or a crash as a vine pulled some one down, there was not a sign of a human being anywhere. In a few minutes we broke through into a little open place in front of ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... his ears to listen there was only the sound of falling water or the clamor of a hidden creek. Sight was of almost as little service among those endless rows of towering trunks, between which the tall fern and underbrush sprang up. There was no distance, scarcely even an alternation of light and shadow. The vision was narrowed in and confused by the unchanging sameness of the ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... giving strength and solidity to the wall, may be compared to the larger trees in a forest, which give it shade and density; but between these grow all kinds of trailing vines, ferns and mosses, wild flowers and low shrubs, that till the spaces between the larger trees with a thick underbrush. The Coral Reef also has its underbrush of the lighter, branching, more brittle kinds, that fill its interstices and fringe the summit and the sides with their delicate, graceful forms. Such an intricate underbrush of Coral growth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... far, we heard loud screams, mingled with oaths and the heavy blows of a whip. Quickening our pace, we soon reached the bank of the little stream, which there was lined with thick underbrush. We could see no one, and the sounds had subsided. In a moment, however, a rough voice called out ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... might ask questions, Raymond held together the barbed wires of the fence very carefully, so she could creep under without mishap. And when they neared the woods, he kicked all the twigs from her path, and lifted aside the underbrush lest it touch her face. And at each opportunity for this delicious solicitude they would look at each ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... observation and support on the part of the members of the patrol. On arriving at the farther edge of the wood, the patrol remains concealed and carefully looks about before passing out to open ground. When there is such a growth of underbrush as to make this method impracticable, and it is necessary to enter a wood by a road, the road is reconnoitered as in case of defile, though ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... desolation. It was like being ordered into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Dense everglades, swamp-fevers, malaria in the air, poisonous underbrush, and venomous reptiles and insects, and now and then a wily unseen foe picking off the men, one by one, as they painfully cut out roads through the thickets,—these were the features of military life in Florida at that period. Men who would have marched boldly to the cannon's ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... another associate, given in our next picture, Fig. 21, and yet he is a European employe from the Landes department of highly cultivated France. The inhabitants of this country buckle stilts on to their feet, so as to make their way faster through brambles and underbrush which surrounds them. The mail carrier copied them in his equipment, and thus he goes around on stilts, provided with a large cane to help him keep his balance, and furnishes a correct example of a post office official suiting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... causes as to incompetency or lack of vigor on the part of the subordinate commanders. The blind grapplings in the forests of the Wilderness could not be helped, when both armies were marching through it, for they could not see each other through the tangled underbrush till they were almost face to face, but it is now certain that if the marches of the Union army corps had been properly timed and properly conducted, they could have reached the open country before the Confederate ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... willows, fringed the water's edge. The stream swirled in deep black eddies beneath their drooping branches, though a little farther on it poured tumultuously between scattered boulders into the slacker pool. The rock sloped on one side, and there was a bank of underbrush near the foot ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... towards Belle Haven. It was not a strange journey. For years the Hunting Creek warehouse had handled tobacco from Mount Vernon, Belvoir, Gunston Hall, and the neighboring estates. Tradition has it in Alexandria that Washington aided John West when he was struggling through the underbrush and tree stumps staking out the lots. So familiar did the embryo engineer become with the future town site that he drew a map, and added the names of lot purchasers to the side ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... is a shy fish and the blundering sportsman who goes stumbling through the underbrush, who allows his shadow to fall upon the pool, or who in other ways announces to the fish lurking under the bank that he is present with homicidal intent often wonders why it is that the results are so small for the amount of effort expended. He may aver ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... of breaking branches. The boys flattened themselves on the carpet of needles as a man's body crashed toward them through the underbrush. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... led the way into the thick underbrush once more. They had a stiff climb before they reached the summit of their ridge where the timber broke away and gave them once more their splendid view out over the Miette valley and the mountains beyond. They ran rapidly down this fair slope and soon were ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... darkness fell, and its breath was hot and sultry. As Pascherette plunged deeper into the woods, the heavy boom of the seas along shore died away and gave place to the softer, more vibrant hum and murmur of the great trees. The track, little more than a line of flattened underbrush, vanished before she had gone fifty yards; but the little octoroon was no stranger to nocturnal rambles, her keen eyes, and, keener still, her sense of direction, led her unerringly through the shades toward the rearward spur of the granite cliff. Creepers and hanging mosses ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... abolishing common land generally felt. Everywhere communal lands are being cleared, let, enclosed; new advances, new wealth. But the poor day-laborer, whose only patrimony is the communal land and who supports a cow and several sheep in summer by letting them feed along the roads, through the underbrush, and over the stripped fields, will lose his sole and last resource. The landed proprietor, the purchaser or farmer of the communal lands, will alone thereafter sell, with his wheat and vegetables, milk and cheese. Instead ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... building operations. Grown careless from months of continued safety, during which time he had seen no dangerous animals during the daylight hours, he had left his rifles and revolvers all within the little cabin, and now that he saw the great ape crashing through the underbrush directly toward him, and from a direction which practically cut him off from escape, he felt a vague little shiver play up ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... no detail of the drama that was being enacted beside the brook escaped him. He who could observe with ease the smashing of a moth's wing thirty rods from shore, possessed a clearness of vision akin to that of a hawk. A bird fluttered in the underbrush near them. ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... lower level and began their return walk. On the slope the buildings were not so close together. There were more open spaces, more undeveloped stretches where trees yet remained and thickets of underbrush still stood undisturbed. ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... The underbrush is risin' an' spreadin' all around, Jest like a mist o' greenness 'at hangs above the ground; A million manzanitas 'ill soon be full o' pink; So saddle up, my sonny,—it's time to ride, ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... the old man would show himself at daylight in different places removed from his camp in the woods. While squadrons of avengers were scouring the ravines, the river bottoms and the tangled underbrush, he was lying quietly on his arms. Sometimes his pursuers camped within hearing and got their water from the ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... which a crowbar could be thrust its length into the ground without encountering them. To complete the miseries of the scene, the wretched squatters had, in the process of time, ruthlessly denuded it of all its vegetation except a miserable tangled underbrush." ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... that belong to it. Therefore, I will show you the trail, and this is what it will lead you to: a thousand pleasant friendships that will offer honey in little thorny cups, the twelve secrets of the underbrush, the health of sunlight, suppleness of body, the unafraidness of the night, the delight of deep water, the goodness of rain, the story of the trail, the knowledge of the swamp, the aloofness of knowing,—yea, ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... young host. However, Crow Wing and Bolderwood were in time to help do the heaviest of the work and soon the last stump was out of the soil and piled upon a flaming pyre. The several bonfires could not spread to the underbrush, so the boys were able to leave them for the time and rush away to the creek for a swim before dinner. After they had washed off the smut and smoke, they engaged in races and in diving matches until the horn blew to recall them to the house. In all aquatic sports Lot Breckenridge ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... feet press the underbrush that no sound preceded her coming, until she reached the blanketed opening of a wigwam where sat an aged Algonquin chief, very grave, very dignified, very far from being immaculately clean. The young girl was not intimidated ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... 'Undertakers' and their companions, stand on a lower level; they are good stories, no doubt,—very good, indeed, one or two of them. But they have an added importance in that they seem to have been the needful accompaniment of the Mowgli tales; they may be considered as the underbrush that at first protected the growth of ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... not a good time for prospecting, but travel is often easier then, for the hand-sledges run smoothly on the snow that covers fallen trunks and underbrush and levels the hollows. The muskegs are frozen and one can make fast marches along the rivers and across the lakes. Thirlwell had no tent, but it is not a great hardship for a well-fed man, wrapped in furs, to sleep ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss |
