"Boa" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fully as significant. All the rings were gone, even the wedding ring which had been placed there such a short time before. Had she been robbed? There were no signs of violence visible nor even such disturbances as usually follow despoliation by a criminal's hand. The boa of delicate black net which encircled her neck rose fresh and intact to her chin; nor did the heavy folds of her rich broadcloth gown betray that any disturbance had taken place in her figure after its fall. If a jewel had flashed at her throat, or ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... proportion harmless, but of some, and those generally small and dark-coloured, the bite is mortal. If the cobra capelo, or hooded snake, be a native of the island, as some assert, it must be extremely rare. The largest of the boa kind (ular sauh) that I had an opportunity of observing was no more than twelve feet long. This was killed in a hen-house where it was devouring the poultry. It is very surprising, but not less true, that snakes will swallow animals of twice or three times ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... "Why didn't you confide to me before, that you were physically and mentally incapable of packing? I've often noticed that your hold-alls looked like overfed boa constrictors, but I didn't dream things were as bad as this. You had better let Innocentina and me do the work for you. We're what you call 'nailers' at it, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... announce bills came out for her annual night. There was Mrs Lenville, in a very limp bonnet and veil, decidedly in that way in which she would wish to be if she truly loved Mr Lenville; there was Miss Gazingi, with an imitation ermine boa tied in a loose knot round her neck, flogging Mr Crummles, junior, with both ends, in fun. Lastly, there was Mrs Grudden in a brown cloth pelisse and a beaver bonnet, who assisted Mrs Crummles in her domestic affairs, and took money at the doors, and dressed the ladies, and swept the house, and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... victory, the biggest thing since Donelson. I also obtained some food and small comforts for a few rebel officers, including young Johnston, Wolfe, and the Colonel Deshler already mentioned. Then hunted up General Sherman, whom I found sitting on a cracker-boa in the white house already mentioned, near where the white flag first appeared. Garland was with him, and slept with him that night, while the rest of us laid around wherever we could. It was a gloomy, bloody house, and suggestive of war. Garland was blamed ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... up drowsily into his eyes. "You don't have to be such a boa-constrictor," she suggested. "You are not a cave-man, after all, you know, if you are taking a lady without asking her." Then she contentedly whispered: "I'm going to sleep." And ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... now held the whole arrondissement of Ville-aux-Fayes. To avoid too many explanations it is necessary to state, once for all, succinctly, the genealogical ramifications by means of which Gaubertin wound himself about the country, as a boa-constrictor winds around a tree,—with such art that a passing traveller thinks he beholds some natural ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Chimera was nearly, if not quite, the ugliest and most poisonous creature, and the strangest and unaccountablest, and the hardest to fight with and the most difficult to run away from, that ever came out of the earth's inside. It had a tail like a boa constrictor, its body was like I do not care what, and it had three separate heads, one of which was a lion's, the second a goat's, and the third an abominably great snake's; and a hot blast of fire came flaming out of each of its three mouths. Being an earthly ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... perhaps because it is automatic, regard for its own comfort and well-being—it cannot be induced to tie itself into a knot. It is in mind that once in the old country a very long and very cold lethargic boa constrictor became benumbed and forgot the primal instinct of the family, and paid for its absent-mindedness with its life. But the ordinary snake under extraordinary conditions, whatsoever its length, is most careful to disentangle itself even when knots are designed for the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... with an angry guttural sound, began to put forth its full strength. The arms encircled Landless with a slowly tightening iron band; the great dark shoulder came forward with the force of a battering-ram; the limbs twined like boa-constrictors around the limbs of the other. Locked together, the two reeled into a little fairy glade, where the short grass, pearled with dew, lay open to the moon. Here, borne backwards by the overwhelming force of his assailant, Landless fell heavily ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... who was in her attitude, holding up the end of her boa as a visionary tambourine, and Mr. Walker, who was looking at her, and in his amusement at the mother's performances had almost forgotten the charms of the daughter—both turned round at once, and looked ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... boa of rebellion was stretching itself across the heart of the empire a whole brood of little serpents were poisoning and devouring other outlying provinces. An insurrection was organized in the neighborhood of Amoy early in 1853. Mr. ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... (concelhos, singular - concelho); Boa Vista, Brava, Fogo, Maio, Paul, Praia, Porto Novo, Ribeira Grande, Sal, Santa Catarina, Santa Cruz, Sao Nicolau, Sao Vicente, Tarrafal note: there may be a new administrative structure of 16 districts (Boa Vista, Brava, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... fatal boa-constrictor Charming those who soon must die, She can so transfix her victim By ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... Huntley Drummond—and spoke to a lady-like assemblage in a blizzard of draughts. To quote my beloved and early friend, Mr. John Hay, "I chill like mutton gravy," and had it not been for my chairwoman who left the stage to bring me my fur boa, I must have contracted a permanent catarrh which would have reduced my voice to a whisper. I was relieved—a feeling which I thought the audience shared—when my lecture ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... varieties of this large family; some, like the rattlesnake, cannot climb or swim, but crawl along the ground, the terror of unwary travellers who may tread upon them in the dim forest-paths; others are Water-snakes; some, like the Boa and Python, are dreaded, although not venomous, because, of their enormous strength, and power of crushing their victims in their close embrace; others, like the Cobra, for their deadly bite; while many—we might almost say most—snakes ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... was dressed in a pearl grey and pink sports coat, with a large black hat, and carried a silver chain handbag. Around her throat was a white feather boa, while her features were half concealed by the ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... us and stopped tending his ash-cake, peas, and fat back long enough to squint over the top of the "specks dat Ole Mis had give him back in '70", then he took a long look at the mahogany clock that had "sot on her parlor fish boa'd". In spite of his ninety-six years his memory of the old days is still fresh and his body surprisingly active for a ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... we follow his rule for the formation of adverbs from ij ending adjectives). However, the form which he seems to be recording is more likely the compound adverb which is listed in the Vocabulario as vomoxirovocax[vu] and glossed as contemporizando de boa maneira 'temporizing in a carefree manner.' The spelling that we suggest is derived from the attested lexical item without the application of Collado's ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... thunder of whose footsteps, as he approached the house with uncommonly fierce strides, had perhaps broken his slumbers. A frown was on his brow, and the grasp of his hand, in which every finger seemed doing the duty of a boa-constrictor, spoke of a spirit up in arms, and ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... the helpless monarch in his grizzly bear grip Mr. Gibney backed up against the nearest bungalow. A fringe of spears threatened him in front, but for the moment he was safe behind, and the king's body protected him. Whenever one of the savages made a jab at Mr. Gibney, Mr. Gibney gave the king a boa-constrictor squeeze, ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... who first put me up to the idea. I asked him a simple question about the habits of the Sigalion Boa, a certain worm in whose ways I was taking an interest at the time, and he at once replied that he himself was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... Boa-Constrictors are also found, but they are rare, and I have never seen one in freedom. They are the most harmless of all snakes in the Philippines. Sometimes the Visayos keep them in their houses, in cages, as pets. Small Pythons are common. The snakes most to be dreaded are called ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... After all, folly is the great attribute of man. No judge is as grave as an owl; no soldier fighting for his country flies as rapidly as the hare. You may be strong, but you are not so strong as a horse; you may be gluttonous, but you cannot eat like a boa-constrictor. But there is no beast that can be as foolish as man. And since one should always do what one can do best—be foolish. Strive for folly above all things. Let the height of your ambition be the pointed cap with the golden ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... to make to her fellow-passengers. Two porters accompanied her, carrying her smart bags, and, even with so much assistance, she was draped with extra garments, which hung from her arms in varying and seductive shades of green. She herself was in green of a subtle olive shade, and her plumes and boa, her chains and chatelaine, her hand-bags and camera, marked her as the traveler triumphant and expectant. Like an Arabian princess, borne across the desert to the home of her future lord, she came panoplied with splendor. The consciousness of being a personage, by the mere right conferred ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... rattlesnake has harmed him he usually cures himself. Besides these there were the omnipresent garter snakes, and the grey or silver coach-whip, both harmless. The bull snake is said to grow to an enormous size, and is a kind of North American python or boa. About five miles from our camp was an old hut, which was occupied by a sheep-herder whom I knew. One night he heard a noise, and looking out of his bunk saw by the dim light of the fire an enormous snake crawling ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... the head, and a little, low, plaintive whistle, is the only reply, but they speak in thunder of boa-constrictors, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... her, and found her concluding a somewhat lengthy toilet with the assistance of her family. The choicest possessions of several members, in assorted sizes, seemed to have been commandeered, and she was finally turned out in a red serge dress, a black jacket much too large, a feather boa, and a pair of woollen gloves, which, considering that it was quite a hot day, was rank cruelty, though—true daughter of Eve as she was—she seemed so pleased with her appearance that nothing would induce her to pull off her suffocating grandeur. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... gamble in stocks. Thank God, I'm the one to suffer, however, and not the road. If there's a more solid road in the country, Ben, than the South Midland, I've got to hear of it. It's big, but it's growing—swallowing up everything that comes in its way, like a regular boa constrictor. Think what it was when I came into it immediately after the war; and to-day it's one of the few roads that is steadily increasing its earnings in spite of this ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... descending. A short lady, in a black bonnet and short black skirts, had let herself out on the opposite side, and had come round to assist somebody out on this. Was it a ghost, or was it a man? His cheeks were hollow and hectic, his eyes were glistening as with fever, his chest heaved. He had a fur boa wrapped round his neck, and his overcoat hung loosely on his tall, attenuated form, which seemed too weak to support itself, or to get down the fly steps without ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... speak at all. She just stood still, looking at Jimsy until it seemed as if she were all eyes. "It comes so suddenly,"—Carter had told her—"like the boa constrictor's hunger ... and then ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... it is, young boa-constructer,' said Mr. Weller impressively; 'if you don't sleep a little less, and exercise a little more, wen you comes to be a man you'll lay yourself open to the same sort of personal inconwenience as was inflicted on the old gen'l'm'n ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... heard a light step in the passage, and the room door opened. A girl entered. She was wearing a large black hat and a black boa round her neck. Between them her face shone unnaturally white. She carried a small cloth bag. She started, on seeing Joan, and seemed about ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... python in the Old World is quite as formidable as the boa in the New. Perhaps it is even more to be dreaded; for, notwithstanding its great length—twenty-five to thirty feet—it is exceedingly nimble and its muscular strength is immense. There are numerous authentic stories on record of its having crushed the buffalo ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... moment Agnes opened the door and saw what appeared to be an animated feather-boa dashing about the kitchen, with the bulk of ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... charge of a wife, what are you going to say about it? We hope that this rapid review of the question does not make you tremble, that you are not one of those men whose nervous fluid congeals at the sight of a precipice or a boa constrictor! Well! my friend, he who owns soil has war and toil. The men who want your gold are more numerous than those ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Dumps, now that the enormity of her sin was brought home to her, and the articles eaten so carefully enumerated, began to feel very much like a boa-constrictor, and the tears fell from her eyes as ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... full-fledged circus and menagerie, but merely a show on its way from one county fair to another. In one cage there was a boa constrictor, untruthfully advertised to be thirty feet long, which a Fat Lady exhibited at each performance, the monster coiled round her neck. In another cage were six performing monkeys ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... me if, to all future posterity coming after us, the word 'Macleod' don't shut up their jaws from bragging of British valour just about as tight as the death-squeeze of a boa-constrictor round a smashed-up buffalo! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... His farewell concerts. Positively last appearance on any stage. May be for months and may be for never. Remember her laughing at the wind, her blizzard collar up. Corner of Harcourt road remember that gust. Brrfoo! Blew up all her skirts and her boa nearly smothered old Goodwin. She did get flushed in the wind. Remember when we got home raking up the fire and frying up those pieces of lap of mutton for her supper with the Chutney sauce she liked. And the mulled rum. Could see her in the bedroom ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... moving quickly away. But in the doorway he came face to face with Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch; the latter stood aside. The captain shrank into himself, as it were, before him, and stood as though frozen to the spot, his eyes fixed upon him like a rabbit before a boa-constrictor. After a little pause Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch waved him aside with a slight motion of his hand, and walked into ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... triumphantly. Mr. Chalk, sitting open-mouthed, was regarding him with the fascinated gaze of a rabbit before a boa-constrictor. Captain Bowers was listening with an appearance of interest which in more favourable circumstances ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... manner in which he engrossed the talk of the sportsmen, displeased him. He was bored—he wanted to be off-and off he went. Vaudemont felt that the time was come for him to depart, too; Robert Beaufort—who felt in his society the painful fascination of the bird with the boa, who hated to see him there, and dreaded to see him depart, who had not yet extracted all the confirmation of his persuasions that he required, for Vaudemont easily enough parried the artless questions of Camilla—pressed him to stay with so eager a hospitality, and ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... boa-constrictors have been born in the Zoological Gardens. A message has been despatched to Sir ARTHUR YAPP, urging the advisability of his addressing them at an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... usual; he was only a trifle slower and more fastidious in his speech. It was midnight when he left Clifford peacefully slumbering in somebody's arm-chair, with a long suede glove dangling in his hand and a plumy boa twisted about his neck to protect his throat from drafts. He walked through the hall and down the stairs, and found himself on the sidewalk in a quarter he did not know. Mechanically he looked up at the name of the street. The name was not familiar. He turned and steered ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... points of the bank, no huts roofed with palm leaves or grass, no smoke indicated the vicinity of Indians. In a thicket by a brook lay a boa constrictor, a snake allied to the python of the Old World, in easy, elegant coils, digesting a small rodent somewhat like a hare and called an agouti. At the margin of the bank some water-hogs wallowed in the sodden earth full of roots, and under a vault of thorny ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... and power about the lawless brute, which to her seemed the elements of heroic character, though but the attributes of riotous spirits, magnificent formation, flattered vanity, and imperious egotism. She was a bird gazing spell-bound on a gay young boa-constrictor, darting from bough to bough, sunning its brilliant hues, and showing off all its beauty, just before it takes ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... millions of other youngsters, its name had been made familiar by that purveyor of entertainment to American boyhood, Phineas T. Barnum, as the reputed home of the wild man. In its jungles, through the magic of Marryat's breathless pages, I fought the head-hunter and pursued the boa-constrictor and the orang-utan. It was then, a boyhood dream come true when I stood at daybreak on the bridge of the Negros and through my glasses watched the mysterious island, which I had so often pictured in my imagination, rise with tantalizing slowness from ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... book. Elvira got the best one, which was 'The Garland of Frien'ship,' and had poems in it about the bleeding of hearts, and so forth. Father was n't expectin' anything, but you left him a new pair of mittens, and mother got a new fur boa to wear to meetin'." ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... it to helplessness—the monster ate it! The lipless jaws gaped widely. The shapeless hands forced in the head of the animal. The throat muscles expanded hugely: and in less than a minute it had swallowed its living prey as a boa-constrictor swallows ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... jump out, and be free. His expectation was partly fulfilled: Jacob did go to sleep in the cart, but it was in a peculiar attitude—it was with his arms tightly fastened round his dear brother's body; and if ever David attempted to move, the grasp tightened with the force of an affectionate boa-constrictor. ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... missed seeing several of the most curious. An ugly cobra laid and blinked at me through the glass, looking quite as dangerous as he was. There were big and little snakes,—black, brown, and speckled, lively and lazy, pretty and plain ones,—but I liked the great boa best. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... wall be not less hard to win, Less tough to break down than the hearts within. First he, in impatience and in toil is The burning AZIM—oh! could he but see The impostor once alive within his grasp, Not the gaunt lion's hug nor boa's clasp Could match thy gripe of vengeance or keep pace With the fell heartiness ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... boa-constrictor in the Zoo were gems of humanity in comparison with those of the negroid-Egyptian's as he turned to obey, and then stopped mulishly until a third little reminder chipped splinters from the marble at his heel, whereupon he stooped and recovered ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... nurses a patient and the patient dies, the nurse wears an armlet of opossum's hair called goomil, and a sort of fur boa called gurroo. ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... on the Boulevard, and a few steps brought us in view of the stately white shrine on Claremont Heights. But I looked instead at her brilliant face against the velvety background of black hat and feather boa. ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... told them. "I think the squirrels are the prettiest things that live in the woods. They have tails just like mamma's feather boa and they walk sitting ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... said Bandy-legs, "I'm real glad it wasn't a snake, because they always give me the creeps, you remember, I hate 'em so. Just think what a fine pickle we'd be in now if a monster anaconda or a big boa constrictor or python, broke loose from a show, should climb up on our bridge boat, and start to chasin' us all overboard. Things look bad enough as they are without our takin' on a bunch of new trouble. So, Toby, please don't glimpse anything ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... 'Fair play!' and so we were not interfered with. I remember saying to myself, 'If I win, it must be a triumph of race and mind over matter;' but, Jack, that was mighty lively matter. We both had been rowing and practicing in the gymnasium; we were both as hard as iron. Deering was as supple as a boa-constrictor, and had a fist like a twelve-pound hammer. Later, the boys told me the fight lasted twenty minutes. The last I saw was Deering knocked out on the ground, and then my eyes closed, and the boys ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... like one who is in the embrace of the boa-constrictor and unable to defend himself. She had ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... scandal. To be a reptile, for example, is perhaps the greatest disgrace that can attach to any animal in our eyes. Reptile passes for about the worst name you can call a man. This is unjust—at any rate, in England. We have no thought of patting crocodiles under the chin, or of embracing boa constrictors; but for our English reptiles we claim good words and good-will. We beg to introduce here, formally, our unappreciated friends to any of our human friends who may not yet have ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... shore, far enough above the water to be dry, and slightly sloping, so that the head of the bed may be higher than the foot. Above all, it must be free from big stones and serpentine roots of trees. A root that looks no bigger that an inch-worm in the daytime assumes the proportions of a boa-constrictor at midnight—when you find it under your hip-bone. There should also be plenty of evergreens near at hand for the beds. Spruce will answer at a pinch; it has an aromatic smell; but it is too stiff and humpy. Hemlock is smoother and more flexible; but the spring soon ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... to be careful. She put on her neat black hat and jacket and went out. She had scarcely gone a hundred yards before she came straight up against Louisa Clay. Louisa looked very stylish in a large mauve-colored felt hat, and a fur boa round her neck; her black hair was much befrizzed and becurled. Alison shrank from the sight of her, and was about to go quickly by when the other ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... point, Pensive Public, of thy Grecian or Roman nose. Furs, at once, are all the rage; the month of muffs has come; and round the neck of Eve, and every one of all her daughters, is seen harmlessly coiling a boa-constrictor. On their lovely cheeks the Christmas roses are already in full blow, and the heart of Christopher North sings aloud for joy. Furred, muffed, and boa'd, Mrs Gentle adventures abroad in the blast; and, shouldering ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... a plateau, from the extremity of which the bank descends to the Green River. On both sides is the wild forest, and round the giant trunks the enamoured vine twines itself with the affectionate pertinacity of a hungry boa-constrictor, and boars its head in triumph to the topmost branches. But vegetable life is not like a Venus who, "when unadorned, is adorned the most;" and, the forest having cast off its summer ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... submarine continued to whirl about faster and faster in the swirling waters. Five times each minute now it made the circuit, and, like the coils of a boa constrictor that is enfolding its victim, ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... according to the shade and size. The mink is a keen observer, he lives on meat and eggs, being somewhat like a weasel, also loving blood. The mink is used for collarettes, boas, and ladies coats. A boa made from black water mink is worth about 50 dollars, a collarette about $100,00 and a coat reaching down to the hips would cost about $250,00. We took our way to the old rendavous near the sweet water mountains. While hunting one day I shot a Black tail deer. I was skining him for meat and ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... slightly of African blood. Reader,—the consternation and horror which succeeded this "new development," are, without exaggeration, perfectly indescribable. The people drew long breaths, as though they had escaped from the fangs of a boa constrictor; the old ladies charged their daughters, that should Miss —— be seen in that village again, by no means to permit themselves to be seen in the street with her; and many other charges were delivered by said mothers, equally absurd, and equally ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... a brown velvet gown and an ostrich-feather boa in delicate shades of cream and brown, and a cavalier hat with sweeping white plumes. Her hair was the colour of autumn leaves, or a squirrel's back in the sunshine, and she had grey eyes and piquant, irregular features, ears like shells, and a ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... (concelhos, singular-concelho); Boa Vista, Brava, Fogo, Maio, Paul, Praia, Porto Novo, Ribeira Grande, Sal, Santa Catarina, Santa Cruz, Sao Nicolau, Sao Vicente, Tarrafal note: there may be a new administrative structure of 16 districts (Boa Vista, Brava, Maio, Mosteiros, Paul, Praia, ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of the advertised bargains were remarkable in the highest degree. There was, for example, the 'fine silvered fox-stole, with real brush at each end,' at a guinea. Every woman who can tell a silvered fox-stole from a cock's-feather boa is aware that a silvered fox-stole simply cannot be sold for a guinea. Yet Hugo had announced that he would sell two thousand of them at that price, not to mention muffs to match at the same figure. And there was the famous 'Incroyable' ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... never had! The frightful monster, with its bob-tail and boa-constrictor neck! But ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... in there in the garden, with the round hat and the bit of boa round her neck over her jacket, was ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... disappeared from history somewhere in the waters of Hudson's {26} Bay or Labrador; but they were followed by other adventurous sailors who have left mementos of their nationality on such places as Cape Raso (Race), Boa Ventura (Bonaventure), Conception, Tangier, Porto Novo, Carbonear (Carboneiro), all of which and other names appear on the earliest maps of the north-eastern ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... the coils of the boa-constrictor is a wonderful picture. A boy must be hard to please if he wishes for anything more ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... he heard the news," announced Mrs. Billing, selecting an arm-chair and casting off her feather boa. ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... acts of piffle that was mostly talky junk to me. And, at that, I wa'n't sufferin' exactly; for when them actorines got too weird, all I had to do was swing a bit in my seat and I had a side view of a spiffy little white fur boa, with a pink ear-tip showin' under a ripple of corn-colored hair, and a—well, I had ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... see yo' pa den! He blue in de face an' dance de quadrille on de boa'ds. He leave his cha'h, git up, an' run 'cross to de odder side de platfawm, an' shake be fis' ovah dat man's head, an' screech out how it all lies dat de slaves evah 'ceive sich a treatments. 'Dat all lies, you pu'juh!' he holler. 'All lies, you misabul thief,' he ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... of the Boa has a silky sheen, like that of the finest Rep, and, when taking a nap in the sun, his Damascened appearance may remind the pious spectator of a scene damned by the intrusion of a similar reptile several thousand ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... the fireplace, as in a witch's cauldron, their fluffy laces burnt and blackened. Chiffon fichus torn in ribbons strewed the carpet. An ivory fan had been trampled into fragments on the hearth-rug, and a snow-storm of feathers from a white boa had drifted over the furniture. On the wash-stand a spangled white tulle hat lay drowning in a basin half full ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... came a hiss that sounded like a jet of escaping steam and lasted fully half a minute. Still the eyes came no nearer but motion was discernible in the darkened corner from which the reptile had appeared. The boa constrictor, for such it was, was noiselessly drawing foot after foot of its thick body into the chamber in preparation for a quick lunge at its victim. In a flash the scale-covered coils would be thrown about the ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... was fairly ingenious. I invented the following story. I happened to be taking a holiday in Shaphambury, and I was making use of the opportunity to seek the owner of a valuable feather boa, which had been left behind in the hotel of my uncle at Wyvern by a young lady, traveling with a young gentleman—no doubt a youthful married couple. They had reached Shaphambury somewhen on Thursday. I went over the story many times, and gave ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... the railway robbed us. For miles before reaching it, we used to look out for the wooded park, with its herds of mottled deer, and the great lake, where the sight of the swans always brought up that story of the big pike, choked like a boa, with a swan's neck. A story that seems to belong to ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... man of morals, of ethical duty, of certain obligations to an elder sister, of responsibility to host or hostess, or to society, would have been little better than to try to teach table etiquette to a boa-constrictor. There was only one thing that could force him to become sober for one instant and to reflect, and that was the menace of successful rivalry. But even then his sober mood would last only as long as he was maturing panic schemes ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... seemed, authority with the officials, so we had no delay, as Isnaga took us under his wing. I almost wished that the custom-house had confiscated my thick clothes and the fur-lined coat; and as for the boa, it looked like a vicious constrictor of its own name, and I wished it at the ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... to eat, and after dinner feels herself sleepy, like a boa constrictor, eructs loudly, drinks water, hiccups, and, by stealth, if no one sees her, makes the sign of the cross over her mouth, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... recapture it at the very earliest opportunity. Though the Advertiser has succeeded in temporarily securing three lions, a chimpanzee, a couple of hyaenas, and a young hippopotamus in the Vicarage drawing-room, and has managed to envelope a boa-constrictor in a lawn-tennis net, yet, as five full-grown Bengal tigers, and about thirty other wild beasts of a miscellaneous character are at large in the village, and have, to his knowledge, already devoured the Postman, the Curate, a School ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... springing from one source; and, together with this feeling, comes his love of space, which makes him less regard the rounding and form of objects themselves, than their relations of light and shade and distance. Therefore Rubens and Michael Angelo made the fiery serpents huge boa constrictors, and knotted the sufferers together with them. Tintoret does not like to be so bound; so he makes the serpents little flying and fluttering monsters like lampreys with wings; and the children of Israel, instead ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... there is no lack; and yet they are not so numerous as imagination would make them. There are one hundred and fifty species in South America, or one half as many, on the same area, as in the East Indies. The diabolical family is led by the boa, while the rear is brought up by the Amphisbaenas, or "double-headed snakes," which progress equally well with either end forward, so that it is difficult to make head or tail of them. The majority ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... old man, shifting his cigar in his mouth; "he has a regular Zoological Gardens full of them—all kinds, from boa-constrictors to adders. ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... her boa. "Does Virgilia really want him? Does he want Virgilia? Do I want them to have each other? Shall I exert myself in his behalf?" Such were the questions she submitted to her own consideration as her eyes roved ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... having been made to go and see the Boa Constrictor soon after its first arrival at the Zooelogical Gardens, Sydney Smith, who was to have been there, failed to come; and, questioned at dinner why he had not done so, said, "Because I was detained by the Bore Contradictor—Hallam"—whose ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... back at him. Her face was scarlet, for the coupling of their names, and Drexley's quiet smile, was significant. But Douglas only laughed gaily as he reached for his hat, and drew Cicely's feather boa around her with a little air ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... was indebted to it or its authoress. I have no doubt that there are certain exceptional complexions to which the purple tinge, above alluded to, is natural. Nature is fertile in variety. I saw an albiness in London once, for six-pence, (including the inspection of a stuffed boa-constrictor,) who looked as if she had been boiled in milk. A young Hottentot of my acquaintance had his hair all in little pellets of the size of marrowfat peas. One of my own classmates has undergone a singular change of late years,—his hair losing its original ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... expenditure so vast that the brain is atrophied (as it were), that a second brain, located in the diaphragm, may come into play, and the suspension of all the faculties is in itself a kind of intoxication. A boa constrictor gorged with an ox is so stupid with excess that the creature is easily killed. What man, on the wrong side of forty, is rash enough to work after dinner? And remark in the same connection, that all great men have been moderate eaters. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... his confidence in his capacity being ably supported by his appetite, he undertook a contract to which he was unequal in the matter of expansion. He couldn't disgorge, being in the predicament of the boa-constrictor who swallows a hen head first, and finds her go against the grain when he would fain reconsider the subject. The head of the inside fish was partially digested, but that process had imparted no ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... countrymen. On our return to the coche d'eau, our fat companion lighted his cigar, and hastened to lie down in the cabin, observing, "Il faut que je me repose un peu, pour faire ma digestion;" and Monsieur C., instead of leaving him quietly in his state of torpidity, like a boa refreshed with raw buffalo, began to argue with us on the superior nicety of the French in eating. "Nous aimons les mets plus delicats que vous autres," quoth he; at which we laughed, and pointed to the cabin. We found, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... sais I, "Doctor. But what do you suppose was the object Providence had in view in filling the world with beasts of prey? The east has its lions, tigers, and boa-constrictors; the south its panthers and catamounts; the north its bears and wolves; and the west its crocodiles and rattle-snakes. We read that dominion was given over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the beast of ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... said. "Look at that boa-constrictor you have out there. It is stuffed and in a glass case. Don't you know that in its natural surroundings you yourself would come mighty near stepping on one without seeing it? You would. If you had that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... invention," that phrase! The bodily wants of a reptile are elastic. If an alligator or a boa-constrictor catches a dog he can swallow him whole and enjoy that one meal in unriotous bliss for weeks. Thereafter if he must put up with no more than a minnow or a mouse he can do that for weeks in unriotous patience. In a spring in one of our Northampton gardens I saw ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... falling upon him caused him to look up. Mrs. Devereux, grey and tall, boa'd, gloved, umbrella'd, stood regarding him and his companion from the bank. Instinct prompted him immediately to screen Sanchia by dragging her into the party. He held up the net and plunged. "First prize," he cried out, as heartfully as he could, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... bladder : veziko. blade : klingo; (of grass), folieto blaspheme : blasfemi. bless : beni. blind : blinda. "window"-, rulkurteno. blond : blonda. blood : sango. blot : makulo. blow : blovi; bato, frapo. blouse : bluzo. blue : blua; -"bell", hiacinto, kampanoleto. boa-constrictor : boao. boast : fanfaroni. boat : boato. bobbin : bobeno. body : korpo. bog : marcxo. boil : boli; absceso. bold : kuragxa, sentima. bolt : rigl'i, -ilo; bolto. bomb : bombo. bombard : bombardi. bond : obligacio, garantiajxo bondage : servuto, ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... said Mattie to Bertie. "I'm proudest of my new red-top boots," said Bertie. "I'm proudest of my new black hat," said Clay. Mattie was proudest of her muff and boa. Little Bell was ...
— The Nursery, May 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... of the leading theatres. He put his lions, tigers, leopards and hyenas through their part of the entertainment, awing the audience by his awful nerve and his control over them. As a closing act to the performance, he was to introduce an enormous boa-constrictor, thirty feet long. He had bought it when it was only two days old, and for twenty years he handled it daily, so that it was considered perfectly harmless and completely under his control. He had seen it grow from a tiny reptile, which he often carried ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... his chair, and was standing between the parted blinds, gazing down into the dull, neutral-tinted London street. Looking over his shoulder, I saw that on the pavement opposite there stood a large woman with a heavy fur boa round her neck, and a large curling red feather in a broad-brimmed hat which was tilted in a coquettish Duchess-of-Devonshire fashion ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... they liked, or could catch there. The entertaining Captain has narrated an effective anecdote of an enraged elephant, and a precious big boar speared in a savage jungle—to which he might have added, with no more personal risk than Mrs. Brown may experience when hunting for a boa in her wardrobe. And, Mr. Mouldy, the city merchant, who dealt in rags, sang about a little excitable pig, and "Mac Mullin's Lament;" whilst Mr. Snobbins—who it was hoped would sit and be silent,—has broken the spell, dared to remember old times, sleeping ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... stumps and tree-trunks on which it stepped were pressed out of sight in the ground. A general exodus of the other inhabitants from his line of march began; the moccasins slid into the water with a low splash, while the boa-constrictors and the tree-snakes moved off along the ground when they felt it tremble, and a number of night birds retreated into the denser woods with loud cries at being so rudely disturbed. The huge beast did not stop till he reached the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... of his incomparable frame, in which sinews seemed springs of steel, that had our encounter been one in which my strength was less heightened by rage, I believe that I could no more have coped with him than the bison can cope with the boa; but I was animated by that passion which trebles for a time all our forces,—which makes even the weak man a match for the strong. I felt that if I were worsted, disabled, stricken down, Lilian might be lost in losing ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... all-glorious, of course. She certainly looked like an old vulture, in a pelisse of gray velvet, with a chinchilla boa round her long, bare neck, and her big beak, with marabouts overshadowing it, of the same color. Monsieur de Talbrun —well! Monsieur de Talbrun was very bald, as bald as he could be. To make up for the want of hair on his head, he has plenty of it on his hands. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... She looked like a seated cow. Her companion was like a terrapin, with her little black evil-looking head at the end of a neck which was too long and very stringy. She kept shooting it out of her boa and drawing it back with the most incredible rapidity. The rest of her body bulged out flat. These two delightful persons were the dressmakers sent for by the Custom-house to value my costumes. They glanced at me in a furtive way, and gave a little bow full of bitterness and jealous ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... crowds above their heads, and made grimaces like the fiendish spirits of these solitudes; while hideous reptiles, engendered in the slimy depths of the pools, gathered round the footsteps of the wanderers. Here was seen the gigantic boa, coiling his unwieldy folds about the trees, so as hardly to be distinguished from their trunks, till he was ready to dart upon his prey; and alligators lay basking on the borders of the streams, or, gliding under the waters, seized their incautious victim ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... apart from the other elements of the performance. As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors. The saint may simply give the universe into the hands of the enemy by his trustfulness. He may by non-resistance cut ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... managed to preserve an effect of youthfulness. Under the flaring wings in her hat her eyes were still clear and large and heavy lidded, her thin red lips still held the shape of their sensual curve. A white fur boa was thrown carelessly about her neck, and he remembered that underneath it, encircling her short throat there was the soft crease of flesh which the ancient poets had ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... Do you go there often? How ever do you find the time for such things?" asked Kitty, busily cutting from a big sheet the touching picture of a parent bird with a red head and a blue tail offering what looked like a small boa constrictor to one of its nestlings, a fat young squab with a green head, yellow body, and ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... another man take discount off a walk of over seven hundred miles? May he not cut off it, as his due, twenty-five miserable little miles in the train?' Sleep coming over me after my meal increased the temptation. Alas! how true is the great phrase of Averroes (or it may be Boa-ed-din: anyhow, the Arabic escapes me, but the meaning is plain enough), that when one has once fallen, it is easy to fall again (saving always heavy falls from cliffs and high towers, for after these there is no more falling).... Examine ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... recognized as banyan trees. In one part of the garden, winding paths led through a tangled tropical growth so dense and wild that one felt as if in the midst of an African jungle where a tiger might spring forth or a boa constrictor drop ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... the hook-and-ladder trucks are just one mass of golden-rod and hydrangeas, and some of them are all fixed with this red-white-and-blue paper rope, sort of chenille effect, or more like a feather boa. Everybody has on white cotton gloves, and those entitled to carry speaking trumpets have bouquets in the bells of them, salvias, and golden-rod, and nasturtiums, and marigolds, and ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... the mission station was excited over the loss of their only donkey. The donkey had been feeding in the field and a boa-constrictor had captured him, squeezed him into pulp, dragged him a hundred yards down to the river bank, and was preparing to swallow him. The missionaries, all with guns, took aim and fired, killing the twenty-five-foot boa-constrictor. The boa was turned over to the natives and they ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... people were interested in petty happenings of no ultimate value whatsoever; that an Oriental dance and pantomime given in New York by "society" women, led by Mrs. Waldorf Astor, where a rich young woman reaped astonishment and admiration by coiling a live boa constrictor around her neck, was one of the great events of the day, because the newspapers devoted two columns to it, whereas scarcely any mention was made of armies of men being ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... pleated skirt of green silk, surmounted by a bustle, to sway like a lime-tree in a breeze, wore a bodice open in front, with short sleeves, the fag end of some other fashion, but the long draggled-tailed feather boa belonged to the eighties, as did the Marie Stuart bonnet. Her blackened eyebrows and a thickly painted face attracted Dick's attention from afar, and when she approached nearer he was struck by the dark, brilliant, restless ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... stranger, as how hit sorter is. He was a-stayin' at Tom's house, the furriner was, a-dickerin' fer a piece o' lan'—the same piece, mebbe, that you're atter now—an' Tom keeps him thar fer a week to beat him out'n a dollar, an' then won't let him pay nary a cent fer his boa'd. Now, stranger, ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... is something singularly grand and impressive in the sound of a tree falling in a perfectly calm night like this, as if the agencies which overthrow it did not need to be excited, but worked with a subtle, deliberate, and conscious force, like a boa-constrictor, and more effectively then than even in a windy day. If there is any such difference, perhaps it is because trees with the dews of the night on them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... evidence that the wood afforded, it had been untrodden for many years. Giant ceiba trees reared themselves two hundred feet into the air. Lianas hung in festoons from the boughs like monstrous boa constrictors. Parrots flew squawking from branch to branch, and humming birds and butterflies of many hues and gorgeous beauty darted like ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes |
