"Waterless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... somewhere in the column with some chum of old days. He belonged to another regiment, but knew the Fifth of old. The hounds had tired of chasing over a waterless country, and with lolling tongues were trotting behind ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... The large, rather waterless island of Bra['c], which is nearest to the mainland, seems to be chiefly remarkable on account of its chrysanthemums, from which an insect-powder is produced; and the number of changes, no less ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... while they were digging the trench, something happened which was altogether amazing. A great abundance of water sprang forth from the earth, a thing which had not happened before in Byzacium, and besides this the place where they were was altogether waterless. Now this water sufficed for all uses of both men and animals. And in congratulating the general, Procopius said that he rejoiced at the abundance of water, not so much because of its usefulness, as because it seemed to him a symbol of an easy ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... terraced and cultivated, is like a scrap of landscape from some airless, treeless planet. Still more desolate was the scene upon the Carso to the right (south) of Goritzia. Both San Martino and Doberdo are destroyed beyond the limits of ruination. The Carso itself is a waterless upland with but a few bushy trees; it must always have been a desolate region, but now it is an indescribable wilderness of shell craters, smashed-up Austrian trenches, splintered timber, old iron, rags, and that rusty ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... labyrinth of vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels, when he quits the surface, are completely distended with oxygenated blood. So that for an hour or more, a thousand fathoms in the sea, he carries a surplus stock of vitality in him, just as the camel crossing the waterless desert carries a surplus supply of drink for future use in its four supplementary stomachs. The anatomical fact of this labyrinth is indisputable; and that the supposition founded upon it is reasonable and true, seems the more cogent to me, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Range, now better known as Barrier Range, Sturt, who ascended to one of the summits, could see nothing hopeful in the prospect. How little did he dream that the hills beneath him were full of silver, and that one day a populous city of miners should occupy the waterless plain in front of him! In this region he had to be very careful how he advanced, for he had with him eleven horses, thirty bullocks, and two hundred sheep, and water for so great a multitude could with difficulty be procured. He had always to ride forward and find a creek or pond of sufficient ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... (Harrah) of Kheibar were always inaccessible, owing to their being surrounded by waterless deserts ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... mountainsides, hot and waterless, seem best adapted to the nut pine's development. No slope is too steep, none too dry; every situation seems to be gratefully chosen, if only it be sufficiently rocky and firm to afford secure anchorage for the tough, grasping roots. It is a sturdy, thickset little tree, usually ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... their heads; and then, further south, the stony summits of the Judaean hills, where Jerusalem and Bethlehem lie, and, through some gap in the mountains, a gleam as of sunshine upon armour tells where the ocean is. And then his eye falls upon the waterless plateau of the South, and at his feet the fertile valley of Jordan, with Jericho glittering amongst its palm trees like a diamond set in emeralds, and on some spur of the lower hill bounding the plain, the little Zoar. This was the land which the Lord had promised to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was one of the few He could take For His mission supernal, Whose feet would not falter, whose limbs would not ache, Through the waterless lands of the thorn and the snake, And the ways of the wild—bearing up for the sake ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... sank. The low undergrowth beneath the trees apparently swept unbroken from where we stood to the low bank opposite. It was exactly like the shallow, damp but waterless ravines at home, filled with black berry vines. We pushed forward, however, and found ourselves looking down on a smooth, ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... at Hebuterne there is the snout of the woodland salient; looking south there is the green shallow shelving hollow or valley which made the No Man's Land for rather more than a mile. It is just such a gentle waterless hollow, like a dried-up river-bed, as one may see in several places in chalk country in England, but it is unenclosed land, and therefore more open and seemingly on a bigger scale than such a landscape would be ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... the outermost edge of civilization, and he was waiting for the return of an Arab spy, a man he trusted, who had pushed on into the interior. The country beyond him was a dense tract of bush almost impenetrable; so far as he knew, waterless. ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... water in it. The creek runs through mimosa and garrawon scrub for 5 miles, and the spring occurs on the side of a scrubby ridge, running into the creek from the west. At 18 miles they struck an ana-branch having some fine lagoons in it, and half-a-mile further on a river 100 yards wide, waterless, and the channels filled up with melaleuca and grevillea; this, though not answering to Leichhardt's description, they supposed to be an ana-branch of the Lynd; its course was north-west. They followed its left bank down for three miles, then crossing it, they bore ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... consideration on waterless Clipper Cay, was more than adequate. In addition to a built-in fifty-gallon tank in the cabin, there was a rack of five ten-gallon jerry cans ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Puna coast is waterless. From the Volcano House you take with you not only food for the journey back to Hilo, but water in bottles; and your thirsty animals get none until you reach the end of your first day's journey, at Kaimu. Here, also, you can send a more than half-naked ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... come, they lie like daisies white in the grass Of the dark-green hills; new calves in shed; peewits turn after the plough— It is well for you. For me the navvies work in the road where I pass And I want to smite in anger the barren rock of each waterless brow. ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... ridges with thin forests of pine or fir, clambered and sweated up and down incessantly by slopes steeper than any stairway, until I felt like the overworked chambermaid of a tall but elevator-less hotel. My foot was much swollen, and to make things worse the region was arid and waterless. Once I came upon a straggling mud village, but though it was half-hidden by banana and orange groves, not even fruit could be bought. Yet a day or two before some scoundrel had passed this way eating oranges ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... eating?" The answer seems to be "A cloud." "My coal-brazier clothes me with a divine garment, my rock is founded in the sea" (a volcano). "I dwell in a house of pitch and brick, but over me glide the boats" (a canal). "He that says, 'Oh, that I might exceedingly avenge myself!' draws from a waterless well, and rubs the skin without oiling it." "When sickness is incurable and hunger unappeasable, silver and gold cannot restore health nor appease hunger." "As the oven waxes old, so the foe tires of enmity." "The life of yesterday goes on every day." "When the seed ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and the upward course of this river they followed for the next eight days, although it led them somewhat out of their way; for they found, upon scouting in the direction which they wished to pursue, that their direct course would soon carry them into an arid, waterless district, infested, moreover, by tsetse fly, to enter which would infallibly result in a serious loss of cattle. And the preservation of their cattle was now, or very soon would be, a matter of vital importance ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... cathedrals, pyramids, amphitheaters, towers, arches, and colonnades—by the processes of weathering aided by deflation. It is thus by the help of the action of the wind that great plateaus in arid regions are dissected and at last are smoothed away to waterless plains, either composed of naked rock, or strewed with residual gravels, or covered with ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... a desultory artillery duel proceeded on both sides with slight loss to us. The water question presented some difficulty, as the Blue Krantz River was several miles from Hussar Hill and the hill itself was waterless. A system of iron tanks mounted on ox waggons was arranged, and a sufficient though small supply maintained. The heavy artillery was also brought into action and strongly entrenched. The formidable nature of the enemy's ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... airless, waterless and lifeless, days and nights are two weeks long, temperatures range from that of boiling water at noon down perhaps to that of liquid air at midnight. The men of the ship would walk on the moon clad in diving suits. Gravity being only one-sixth that of the earth, a man would carry ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... tablelands eastward, up the steep sidling way into the passes of the Glorietta Mountains, down through lone, wind-swept canons, and on between wild, scarred hills, coming, at last, beyond the picturesque ridges, snow-crowned and mesa-guarded, into the long, gray, waterless lands of the Cimmarron country. Here we journeyed along monotonous levels that rose and fell unnoted because of lack of landmarks to measure by, only the broad, beaten Santa Fe Trail stretched on unbending, ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... occur is continuous. The change from the large, dark Mexican subspecies to the small, pale Arizonan subspecies is gradual. The reason may lie in the ecology of M. velifer. It seems that there are few barriers separating populations. Waterless areas and regions lacking suitable roosting places such as fissures in cliffs and outcrops of rocks, caves and buildings, may exclude the species from certain areas, but there are few areas of any great size within the range of the species that ...
— A New Subspecies of Bat (Myotis velifer) from Southeastern California and Arizona • Terry A. Vaughan
... many natural advantages. Her capital is far in the interior. Between her railway on the south, which almost reaches the Cape frontier, and her border spreads out the desert of Kalahari and the arid, waterless plains of northwest Cape Colony. The branch railways are separated by about 200 miles from German territory, and on the northern line Kimberley was a little less than 400 miles distant. British forces entering the colony by land must encounter many difficulties, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... no attention to the interruption, "you did build that fool dam regardless of my advice; and you first left her cattle waterless, ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... at 7 A.M., and, after passing the village cultivation, entered a waterless wilderness of thorn and tree forest, with some long and broad plains of tall grass intersecting the line of march. These flats very much resemble some we crossed when travelling close to and parallel with the Malagarazi river; for the cracked and ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... is a pan of water made by a dam across an almost waterless brook, and alongside of this pan we pitched our camp. When the sun set, the high wind rose again, whirling up the dust in heavy clouds and sending the sparks from the fire scurrying over the ground. But the Kedong Valley wind is more or less a phenomenon of the country. You can count upon it ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the buffaloes move forward in an impetuous march which nothing seems to interrupt. Ravines are passed, and waterless plains traversed, and rivers crossed without hesitation. In many cases broad streams, with steep or marshy banks, are attempted, and thousands either perish in the waters or become mired in the swamp, and cannot escape, but die the most terrible of deaths. Then is the feast ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... hidden nest of the Hawk. It was very dark now except for glimmer of stars through lacy, slow-drifting clouds,—there was no wind. Later there would be a waning moon! Much of every waking life is a dream, and her dreams were of the No Man's Land of the desert,—the waterless trail from which she had been rescued ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... monk, when he is rekkeless, Is like to a fish that is waterless; This is to say, a monk out of his cloistre. This ilke text held ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... been in fearful situations in the face of charging lions and elephants, and once he had been bowled over and carried some distance by a lion, but on none of these occasions had fear demoralized him. There was no question of his general pluck. But on one occasion he was lost in rocky waterless country in Somaliland. He strayed out in the early morning while his camels were being loaded, followed some antelope too far, and lost his bearings. He looked up expecting to see the sun on his right hand and found it on his left. He became bewildered. He wandered ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... many years to cone. If this be properly attended to, emigration, which principally benefits the labourer, may be discontinued. We have now arrived at a pass when the absence of those who have already emigrated becomes a matter of regret. There is work to be had nearer than the Canadian woods or the waterless prairies of Australia—work, too, that in its results must be of incalculable benefit to the community. But the government is bound to regulate it so, that, amidst superabundance of wealth, due regard is paid to the ECONOMY OF LABOUR. It is rumoured that some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... descried from the opposite side, even through a telescope! And the inland is a mere strip of sea-washed rock, running parallel to the coast, cliff-bound, table-topped, sterile, treeless—and, to all appearance, waterless! ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... assemblage of nymphs and sea-monsters spouting water from their lusty throats, and plashing in its rivulets. It may well be that the existence of this fount helped to decide Manfred in his choice of a site for his city; such springs are rare in this waterless land. And from this same source, very likely, is derived the local legend of Saint Lorenzo and the Dragon, which is quite independent of that of Saint Michael the dragon-killer on the heights above us. These venerable water-spirits, these dracs, are interesting beasts who went through many ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... far more miserable and contemptible than I know or dare to say, Yet remember me, Lord, because I am nothing, I have nothing, and am worth nothing. Do not turn your face from me; do not defer your coming; do not withdraw your consolation, lest my soul become like a waterless land before you. Lord, teach me to do your will; teach me to walk worthily and humbly in your presence; because you are my wisdom, who truly know me, and knew me before the world was made and before I ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... all, their Prophet must have been an ignorant fellow. It is clear that the case of a cold climate had never occurred to him; and even a hot one had been conceived most narrowly. Many of the Bedouin Arabs complain of ablutions not adapted to their waterless condition. These evidences of oversight would have been fatal to Islamism, had Islamism produced a high civilization.] from century to century, from the simplicity of shepherds to the utmost refinement of philosophers, carries ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... that in the same Desert is a wonderful city where all the rich money lenders retreat after they have made their fortunes (fortunes so vast that the owners cannot trust even the strong hand of the Government to protect them, but take refuge in the waterless sands), and drive sumptuous C-spring barouches, and buy beautiful girls and decorate their palaces with gold and ivory and Minton tiles and mother-of-pearl, I do not see why Jukes's tale should not be true. He ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... There are no clouds in the moon; there are not even the mists or the vapours which invariably arise wherever water is present, and therefore astronomers have been led to the conclusion that the surface of the globe which attends the earth is a sterile and a waterless desert. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... southwards, where a broad spur of the Tarbagatai mountains stretches north-westwards, containing gold, copper and coal. Many lakes, of which the largest is Teniz, are scattered along the northern slope of these hills. Farther south, towards Lake Balkash, on the southeastern frontier, is a wide waterless desert, Bek-pak-dala, or Famine Steppe. This section of the government is drained by the Sary-su and Chu, the latter on the southern boundaryline. The climate is continental and dry, the average temperatures at the town of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... about 50 deg. is a generator of appetite. A sufficient quantity should be taken for that end; say, one or two tumblers an hour or so before each meal, followed by some exercise. Those who have acquired the waterless habit, and the many ills resulting from it, will hardly relish cool water as an appetizer; but if they would become robust they must adopt the water habit—a habit that will refresh ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... space they scanned the great expanse below them with eager eyes. It spread remoter and remoter, with only a few clusters of sere thorn bushes here and there, and the dim suggestions of some now waterless ravine, to break its desolation of yellow grass. Its purple distances melted at last into the bluish slopes of the further hills—hills it might be of a greener kind—and above them invisibly supported, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... moon is the waterless crystal which seeks to complete itself by means of our sea, to quench the thirst of its arid rigidity, and ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... time to be too late, and was itself extricated from imminent disaster by the masterful promptitude of Sir Redvers Buller. Notwithstanding a general consensus of professional and expert opinion in favour of the alternative route from Souakin to Berber, 240 miles long and far from waterless, the adoption of it was condemned as impossible. In June 1801, away back in the primitive days, an Anglo-Indian brigade 5000 strong ordered from Bombay, reached Kosseir on the Red Sea bound for the Upper Nile at Keneh thence to join Abercromby's force operating ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... on through a land the filth and poverty of which Is unimaginable to those who have never left England. The sterile waterless rocks make it impossible to live with any decency. The worst English slum is luxury in comparison. Barely enough water to drink. None to wash in. One day I had nothing but dirty melted snow out of a hole. Vermin swarmed and no one worried about them. "If we had only as many gold pieces as lice," ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... respects the same in the second as in the first. There was the same dependence for life on the second as the first. There was the same necessity that the second rock or stream should follow them as there was of the first; for they were yet a long way from Canaan, with a waterless desert before them. We can, therefore, see no reason why the first should be a type of Christ and ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... three days, and were like to die of thirst, they and the beasts of burden. In this emergency the prophet Elisha, who was with the army, called for a minstrel and bade him play. Under the influence of the music he ordered the soldiers to dig trenches in the sandy bed of the waterless waddy through which lay the line of march. They did so, and next morning the trenches were full of the water that had drained down into them underground from the desolate, forbidding mountains on either hand. The prophet's success ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... plateau, from which the shimmering desert flung its vast and desolate distances, forbidding and menacing. This was not the desert upland country of Utah, but a naked and bony world of colored rock and sand—a painted desert of heat and wind and flying sand and waterless wastes and barren ranges. But it did not daunt Slone. For far down on the bare, billowing ridges moved a red speck, at a snail's pace, a slowly moving dot of color which ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... with clouds, the ground sown with numberless stones, with here and there a bunch of hungry-looking grass pushing itself feebly up among them. Not a tree do you behold, hardly a shrub. You come to a river—it is a broad, waterless bed of cobble-stones and gravel, only differing from the dry land in being less mixed with dirt, and wholly, instead of partly, destitute of vegetation. But your eye falls at last on a sheet of water—there is surely a placid lake giving beauty and fertility ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... is known about the planet tends to show that the time when it attained that stage of planetary existence through which our earth is now passing must be set millions of years, perhaps hundreds of millions of years, ago. He has not yet, indeed, reached that airless and waterless condition, that extremity of internal cold, or in fact that utter unfitness to support any kind of life, which would seem to prevail in the moon. The planet of war in some respects resembles a desolate battle-field, and I fancy that ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... of it, great fields of wire, through which wide lanes have been flattened down. Now we have turned eastward, and we stand and gaze towards Cambrai, over the road we have come. The huge trench is before us, the waterless canal with its steep banks lies beyond, and on the further hill-side, trench beyond trench, as far as the eye can see, the lines still fairly clear, though in some places broken up and confused by bombardment. The officer beside me draws my attention ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not concerned with his travels. When a man travels across Arizona in a Pullman car, we do not think of him as having performed a feat bearing even the most remote resemblance to the feats of the first explorers of those waterless wastes; whatever admiration we feel in connection with his trip is reserved for the traffic-superintendent, engineer, fireman, and brakeman. But as regards the less-known continents, such as South America, we sometimes fail to remember ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... monotony broken by foothills and beyond, a range of purple snow-covered peaks. From the slight elevation or "bench" upon which he sat he looked down upon a greasewood flat where patches of alkali gleamed dazzling white under the noon-day sun. The flat was quarter-circled by a waterless creek upon whose banks grew a few misshapen ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... route. Between us and the Silver Palace lie waterless deserts, great mountains, and, at last, a yawning chasm, miles in width, miles in depth. This chasm extends entirely round the broad plateau on which the wonderful palace stands like a dazzling dream. The bottom of the chasm is hidden by mists which assume fantastic forms, and whirl and sway and ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... creatures from the woods, man in his primitive animality. But nothing lasts for ever. In some millions of years the sea will begin to wither, and the vase containing me will sink (my hope is that it will sink down to some secure foundation of rocks to stand in the airless and waterless desert that the earth will ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... were contesting stubbornly every mile of waterless, thorn-covered ground and clinging desperately to their positions along the railway. The officers of the Second Rhodesians had seen nothing more of Tarzan of the Apes since he had slain Underlieutenant von Goss and disappeared toward the very heart of the ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... going there to live. Before her mind's eye floated a vision of long streets filled with thousands of people all strangers to herself. To go into such streets and to live her life among strangers would be like coming out of a waterless desert and into a cool forest ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... bend of the river was found amongst much excellent grass and amidst much fine timber. A species of Anthistiria appeared here, which seemed different from the ordinary sort, although this was no stranger to me, when exploring the waterless plains westward of the Lachlan, where it looked as if stunted for want of moisture. Here, however, this variety presented the same knotty head, where other grasses grew luxuriantly. After getting round the extreme eastern turn of ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... the one night, and turned back, thinking that they had not been discovered. At the end of a day's journey through a bad, waterless land, they halted and camped by a ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... with the desert is required to appreciate fully its waterless condition. For most of the year there are no living waters on the surface. As a rule, ground-waters are concentrated beneath very limited areas of valley land. The great masses of valley fill in some places are underdrained ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell
... us confidence in our Guide. We have the chart, and as we look upon it we see marked 'waterless country,' 'pathless rocks,' 'desert and sand,' 'wells and palm-trees.' Well, when we come to the first of these, and find ourselves, as the map says, in the waterless country; and when, as we go on step by step, and mile ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... was observed in the mode of building the hut, and its relative position with regard to the fire and water supply, and the position with regard to the great features of the country was exactly where a party going westward would first receive a check from the waterless tableland between the Roper and Victoria Rivers, and would probably camp and reconnoitre before attempting to cross ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... drove to Durgin's farm. He found his man in the center of a vast expanse of duck-pens, where ducks by the thousand, all singularly white and waterless, were greeting their ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... said the American, "and sometimes far away from anything in the very midst of the waterless, trackless desert, I see 'ruins' marked upon it—or 'remains of a temple,' perhaps. For example, the temple of Jupiter Ammon, which was one of the most considerable shrines in the world, was hundreds of miles from ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... carts or chariots with him, and we have seen that these were a special feature of orthodox China. He came across a huge moulting-ground of birds in the desert regions, and the later Chinese very frequently speak of it in Tartar-land. Being caught in the waterless desert, he had to cut the throats of some of his best horses and drink their warm blood: two friends of my own, travelling through Siberia and Mongolia, were only too glad, when nearly starving from cold, to cut a sheep's throat ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... have heard others told of, but the best mirages of all we never hear described; the mirage that waterless travellers see at the last. Those fountains rising out of onyx basins, blue and straight into incredible heights, and falling and flooding cool white marble; the haze of spray above their feathery heads through which the pale green domes of weathered copper shimmer and shake ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... indeed absolutely affirm that Life has no place at all upon this airless and waterless globe, since we know not under what strange conditions it may manifest its presence; and our most powerful telescopes, besides, do not bring the lunar surface sufficiently near to us to disprove the existence there of even such large creatures as disport ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... moon is, in this respect, especially interesting, on account of the change that has occurred in the opinions held concerning its physical condition. For a very long time our satellite was confidently, and almost universally, regarded as an airless, waterless, lifeless desert, a completely "dead world," a bare, desiccated skull of rock, ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... better sort of dream! This was better than dreaming of prison-cells, lunatic asylums, tortures by the Snake, lying smashed on rocks, being eaten alive by vultures, wandering for aeons in red- hot waterless deserts, and other horrors. However illusory and tantalizing, this was at least a glorious dream, a delirium to welcome, a wondrous change indeed—to seem to be holding the hand of Lucille while she gazed into his eyes and, from time to time, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... poor fellow would probably feel the next day if help had not arrived, and of the sufferings of the others, which, by that time, would have begun. Still, as before, he spoke hopefully, and the two women, as brave as he, kept up good spirits, and although they each thought of the waterless morrow, they said ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... reason of their pressure-suits, which they dared not remove, they started gesturing with them, trying to explain their predicament and make known that they bore them no ill-will, but the creatures waved for them to cease and led them swiftly through the now waterless temple. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... time he had seen it, and he knew full well that it would not bar his progress. Even as he gave vent to the sigh the glassy waters trembled, undulated, retreated, and, under the influence of a puff of air, slowly melted away, leaving the waterless karroo ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... Thou in the dim dominions Driftest with waterless lips, Unburied; and me the ships Shall bear o'er the bitter brine, Storm-birds upon angry pinions, Where the towers of the Giants[43] shine O'er Argos cloudily, And the riders ride by ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... a reinforcement. But he knew nothing more; for until the morning when the desert wind blew, no Hebrew had disclosed the plans of his kindred. But the more sorely the heat of the day oppressed them, the greater became the dread of the faint-hearted of the pilgrimage through the hot, dusty, waterless desert. The terrible day had given them a foretaste of what was impending and when, toward noon, the dust grew thicker, the air more and more oppressive, a Hebrew trader, from whom the Egyptian soldiers purchased goods, stole into the store-house to ask the commander ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the Arizona and New Mexico men had taken part in warfare with the Apaches, those terrible Indians of the waterless Southwestern mountains—the most bloodthirsty and the wildest of all the red men of America, and the most formidable in their own dreadful style of warfare. Of course, a man who had kept his nerve and held his own, year after year, while living where each day and night ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... and cutting deep gorges and caons through the rocks. The water then flowed away or disappeared in the sands, and the sun came with its parching heat to complete the work of ruin. Famine and thirst stalk over those arid plains, or lurk in the waterless and gloomy caons; as if to compensate for these evils, the soil of the territory teems with mineral wealth. Grains of gold glisten in the sandy dbris of ancient torrents, and nuggets are wedged in the faces of the precipices. Mountains of silver and copper ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... to fear from human enemies, for they were riding far enough east of the Santa Fe trail to be out of the path of raiding parties, while this desert country was shunned by Indian hunters. It consisted of sand hill after sand hill, a drear waterless waste where nothing grew, and amid the dread sameness of which a traveller could only find passage by the guidance of stars at night or the blazing sun by day. To the eye mile after mile appeared exactly alike, with nothing whatever to distinguish either distance or direction—the ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... of men in the dust of the dry land, Vain were the ploughing and planting in waterless fields, Save for the life-giving currents we send from the sky-land, Save for the fruit our ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... Steele, the Steerforth, are both English. O. P. Heggie deserves more than a passing word of commendation for the things he refrains from doing as Uriah Heep. He is not forever going through that waterless washing ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... the Dead. A few contain hymns that are not older than the XVIIIth dynasty, and one is an extract from the text on the Pyramid of Unas (lines 379-399). The most interesting is, perhaps, Chapter CLXXV, which describes the Tuat as airless, waterless, and lightless. In this chapter the deceased is assured of immortality in the words, "Thou shalt live for millions of millions of years, a life of ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Beyond the coast plain the country rises in a generally well defined step or steps to an altitude of some 800 ft., forming the wide level plain called "Nyika" (uplands), largely composed of quartz. It contains large waterless areas, such as the Taru desert in the Mombasa district. The next stage in the ascent is marked by an intermittent line of mountains—gneissose or schistose—running generally north-north-west, sometimes in parallel chains, and representing the primitive axis of the continent. Their ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... between them. On their left hand they saw the Thermae of Caracalla, their external magnificence scarce touched by decay, but waterless, desolate; in front rose the Caelian, covered with edifices, many in ruin, and with neglected or altogether wild gardens; the road along which they went was almost as silent as that without the walls. Arrived at a certain point, the two looked at each other and waved a hand; then Marcian, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... its disadvantages, the village is waterless; at all events in summer, when water is most wanted. Water is such a blessing and joy in a village—a joy for ever when it flows throughout the year, as at Nether Stowey and Winsford and Bourton-on-the-Water, to mention but three ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... after the conquest of Antioch when the main body of the crusading army set out on its march to Jerusalem. They had wished to depart at once, but their chiefs dreaded to encounter waterless wastes at the end of a Syrian summer, and for the present they were content to send Hugh of Vermandois and Baldwin of Hainault as envoys to the Greek Emperor, to reproach him with his remissness or his want of faith. But the miseries endured by Christians and Turks ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... naturally played the chief part in these tales, the descriptions given of certain parts of this little-known region are accurate, and by no means overdrawn; at the same time, though they treat principally of the dangerous and waterless desert, it must be borne in mind that although the sand dunes form one of Damaraland's most striking features, yet it is by no means altogether the barren, scorching dust-heap it ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... our encampment flowed a little stream, on the farther side of which is a stony slope, the same down which, twenty years before, I had seen poor Silvestre creeping back after his attempt to reach Solomon's Mines, and beyond that slope begins the waterless desert, covered with a species of ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... making stand after stand until most were slain. The Afghans pursued for about four miles, but were checked by a detachment of rallied cavalry, and desisted. The fugitives, forming with wounded and baggage a straggling column upwards of six miles long, crossed the waterless desert sixteen miles wide, to Hanz-i-Madat, which was reached about midnight and where water was found. From Asu Khan, where cultivation began, to Kokoran near Candahar, the retreat was harassed by armed villagers and the troops had ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... which are most accessible to Europe, and which for 2000 years have been occasionally visited by Europeans, are guarded by the cruel jealousy of its inhabitants; or, if that is overcome, advances to any very great distance from the coast are effectively impeded by natives still more savage, or by waterless and foodless deserts. ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... had not thought of that as a reason for this summons. Johnny Grantline was a close friend of ours. He had organized an exploring expedition to the Moon. Uninhabited, with its bleak, forbidding, airless, waterless surface, the Moon—even though so close to the Earth—was seldom visited. No regular ship ever stopped there. A few exploring parties of recent years had ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... awhile and breathed us, and handled our weapons some half a furlong from the alien host. They had no earth rampart around them, for that ridge is waterless, and they could not abide there long, but they had pitched sharp pales in front of them and they stood in very good order, as if abiding an onslaught, and moved not when they saw us; for that band of shooters had joined themselves ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... position and were continuously wired. The main attack was to be pushed home south of the Wadi Saba by the 74th and 60th Divisions, and at the same time the enemy's extreme left flank was to be turned by the cavalry, who were to make a wide detour through very difficult and waterless country and attack Beersheba from the east, and, if possible, cut off the retreat of the garrison of the Beersheba area. Covering all these preparations an outpost line was established some miles east of Karm ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... reached the crossing at Fra Cristobal. Here the road parts from the river, and strikes into the waterless desert. We plunge through the shallow ford, coming out on the eastern bank. We fill our "xuages" with care, and give our animals as much as they will drink. After a short halt to refresh ourselves, ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... were forced to smuggle them in through my faithful adherent's territories, the stable, to avoid lectures within doors and at last even that resource failed; my garden, my blooming garden, the joy of my eyes, was forced to go waterless like its neighbours, and became shrivelled, scorched, and sunburnt, like them. It really went to my ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... in the black edge of the Bad Lands when Philip dashed up out of the dip into the plain. There was only one break ahead of him, and toward this he urged his horse. In the entrance to the break there was another sandy but waterless dip, and across this trailed the hoof-prints of the outlaws' mounts, two at a walk—one at a gallop. At one time, ages before, the break had been the outlet of a stream pouring itself out between jagged and ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... seventy-two hours, and where the transcontinental traveler of less than half a century ago was threatened day and night with attacks from murderous Apaches, and ran the risk of perishing of thirst in many a waterless "Valley of Death," the modern tourist sleeps securely in a Pullman car, is waited on by a colored servant, and dines in railway restaurants the management of which, both in the quality and quantity of the food supplied, even in the heart ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... the ocean breeze, its climate is nearly, on the whole, as agreeable as that of the Hawaiian Islands, though pitched in a lower key, and with greater variations between day and night. The key to its peculiarity, aside from its southern exposure, is the Colorado Desert. That desert, waterless and treeless, is cool at night and intolerably hot in the daytime, sending up a vast column of hot air, which cannot escape eastward, for Arizona manufactures a like column. It flows high above the mountains westward till ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... finally said, "is over five hundred and sixty miles from here; you would have to cross mountains, go among savage peoples, and even pass over deserts, for it is probable that there are waterless localities. But the country nominally belongs to England. You might chance upon transports of ivory to Kismayu, to Lamu and Mombasa—perhaps upon missionary expeditions. Realizing that on account of the dervishes I would not be able to explore the course of ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... no scruple to take with him for the journey any of the wine and fruits that were still fit for use, and Antonia assured him that by the direct way, well known to her, they would reach the fruitful shore of this waterless ocean in a few days. So with the approach of evening coolness they set out ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... spirit, when he is gone out of the man, passeth through waterless places, seeking rest, and findeth it not. Then he saith, 'I will return into my house whence I came out;' and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter ...
— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong
... braving the terrors of the great waste. Tilshead met with a curious misfortune in 1841, according to the inscription on one of the cottages. A great flood, caused by a very sudden thaw which liberated some miles of snow-water on the higher portions of the Plain, tore down the narrow (and usually waterless) valley and caused great destruction in the tiny village; the old Norman church being the only building that was quite undamaged. Market Lavington is farther east on the Pewsey road. It was once of some importance and is one of those decayed towns ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... the grave. The Persian monarch chooses the southern rather than the northern side of the mountains for the site of his capital, preferring the keen winter cold and dry summer heat of the high and almost waterless plateau to the damp and stifling air ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... northern territory of South Australia is 523,620 square miles. Within this vast expanse are stony wastes and waterless tracts, vast rolling downs, wide grassy plains, rich alluvial flats, large navigable rivers, and metalliferous areas, exceptionally rich in tin, coal, copper, and silver. Thus far mining has been more successful than agriculture. The Chinese have alone been able to accomplish ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... their sources in the Andes and flowing westward to the Pacific. Their courses are necessarily short, and only a few have navigable channels, the aggregate length of which is only 705 m. Nearly all rivers in the desert region are lost in the sands long before reaching the coast. Their waterless channels are interesting, however, as evidence of a time when climatological conditions on this coast were different. The principal rivers of this region are Sama (which forms the provisional boundary line with Peru), Tacna, Camarones, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... was shimmering heat and dry, thirsty sand, miles upon miles of it flashing by in a gray, barren blur. A flat, arid, monotonous land, vast, threatening, waterless, treeless. Its immensity awed, its bleakness depressed. Man's work here seemed but to accentuate the puny insignificance of man. Man had come upon the desert and had gone, leaving only a line of telegraph-poles with their ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... a dispirited company which went into camp, waterless and hungry, in the dense jungle. Attracted by the horses, lions roared about the boma, and to their hideous din was added the shrill neighs of the terror-stricken beasts they hunted. There was little sleep for man or beast, and the ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Coronado in a kind of scream of horror. "It is a waterless desert, without a blade of grass, and haunted from end to end by Apaches. My little cousin would die of thirst and hunger. She would be hunted and ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... kitchen and turned on one of the taps. For perhaps three seconds a stream of the dimension of a darning-needle emerged, then with a sad gurgle the tap relapsed into a stolid inaction. There is no stolidity so utter as that of a waterless tap. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... the other face of it—a visage scored with regrets, dead dreams, burnt passions, bald illusions, and the like, the like!—sunless, waterless, without a flower! It is the old volcano land: it grows one bitter herb: if ever you see my mouth distorted you will know I am revolving a taste of it; and as I need the antidote you give, I will not be the centaur to win you, for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... horizon, for the country is flat. No ranges in the distance. The bush consists of stunted, rotten native apple-trees. No undergrowth. Nothing to relieve the eye save the darker green of a few she-oaks which are sighing above the narrow, almost waterless creek. Nineteen miles to the nearest sign of civilization—a ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... so complete that in her desert bedroom there was scarcely an item missing which could ensure her comfort. She contemplated going to bed with enjoyment. Where money is, there also are the fleshpots of Egypt, even if it is in the waterless tracts of ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... that unless one is himself accustomed to such methods of travel or has an experienced plainsman as his driver and guide, there is danger of becoming lost, or so out of the way that night may overtake him and compel a waterless camp for ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... battalion pride and soldierly pride grappled in unyielding effort and enmity. The middle of the woods became a neutral ground where the wounded of the different sallies lay groaning from pain and thirst. Small groups of British had dug themselves in among the Germans and, waterless, foodless, held out, conserving their ammunition or, when it was gone, waiting for the ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... humours of the soil, or whether the waters of Nepenthe are of such peculiar heaviness that, instead of flowing upwards in the shape of fountains, they tumble downwards into caverns below the sea—the fact remains: Nepenthe is a waterless land. And this may well be the reason, as several thoughtful observers have already pointed out, why its wines are so abundant in quantity, so cheap in price, and of such super-excellent flavour. For it is a fact conformable to that law of compensation which regulates all earthly affairs, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... in the Low Country was to be found in the vicinity of the rivers. These, considering that they are African, do not lie very far apart. Yet sometimes there were long stretches of waterless country to be traversed, and severe suffering from thirst was a possibility occasionally realized. Besides, as we were practically explorers in a country without human inhabitants or recognizable landmarks, we might unwittingly pass the bend ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... earth. Thalassa brought up before the young man's eyes a vivid picture of an African diamond rush of that period—a corrugated iron settlement of one straggling street, knee-deep in sand, swarming with vermin and scorpions, almost waterless, crowded with a mongrel, ever-increasing lot of needy adventurers brought from all parts of the world by reports of diamonds which could be picked out with a penknife from the dunes and sandy shingle which formed the background of the villainous "town." In the great ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... an invitation to make sure of the fact by being present at an afternoon dance, a sort of "garden party" got up in our honour—a great temptation truly, but a great perplexity as well! People coming back off a mountain climb, including two waterless bivouacs and a pull through the smoke and ashes of a volcano, are not in ball trim, either as to costume or to cleanliness. After a hasty council of war, it was decided that we should draw lots for the names of three ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... have landed. We are fixing up our gear for floating and other piers and are trying to improvise ways and means of coping with the water problem—this ugly nightmare of a water problem. The question of the carriage and storage of water for thousands of men and horses over a roadless, mainly waterless track of country should have been tackled before we ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... to cross wild, barren wastes, where the pools had dried up, and they suffered terribly from thirst. On the first occasion the horses were in good condition, and they travelled steadily, with only occasional short halts, for over thirty-six hours, by which time they were across the waterless country. The journal reads: "January 27th—Big hunt—no water, and we left Quinn's blockhouse this morning 3 A.M.—on the go all night—hot. January 28—No water—hot—at seven we struck water, and by eight Stinking Creek—grand 'hurrah.'" On the second occasion, the horses were weak and travelled ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... Dartmoor. Our first halting-place would be Meyrueis, and between Le Vigan and Meyrueis relays could be had, but at that point civilization ended. The second day's journey must lie through a treeless, waterless, uninhabited desert; in other words, as a glance at the map will show, we must traverse the ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards |
