"Cleft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... several hundred queens to each hive, then from the Very nature of the case, a colony must have gone on increasing, until it became a scourge rather than a benefit to man. In the warm climates of which the bee is a native, they would have established themselves in some cavern or capacious cleft in the rocks, and would there have quickly become so powerful as to bid defiance to all attempts to appropriate the avails of ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... happiness had opened her heart, and she went on,—"I have had so many delightful walks with him through the beautiful wood full of rocks, and out upon the moor. O, Clara, you cannot think what it is to sit upon one of those rocks, all covered with moss and lichen, and the ferns growing in every cleft and cranny, and the beautiful little ivy-leafed campanula wreathing itself about the moss, and such a soft, free, delicious air blowing all around. And Edmund and I used to take out a book, and read ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... East Branch of the Yellowstone wandered through a vast valley, beyond which, in a huge semicircle, rose a thousand nameless mountains, summit over summit, snow-flecked or snow-clad, in boundless fields—a grim, lonely, desolate horror of rugged, barren peaks, of dark gray for the most part, cleft by deep shadows, and right in face of us one superb slab of very pale gray buttressed limestone, perhaps a good thousand feet high. I thought it the most savage mountain-scenery I had ever beheld, while the almost feminine and tender beauty of the parks which dotted these wild ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... Atlanta, the object of its toils, is a great centre of railroad communication, and when our armies obtain possession of it, the confederacy will experience another severing stroke, almost as severe as that which cleft it in twain by the capture of Vicksburg and the reopening of the Mississippi. By such strokes the pretentious imposture of a Southern nation must be broken into fragments, even should the armies supporting it remain for a time organized and defiant; for, under the appliances ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... faint in places, padded down by the feet of generations of Athabascan tribesmen long before the Ancient and Honorable Company of Adventurers laid the foundation of the first post at Hudson's Bay, long before the Half Moon's prow first cleft those desolate waters. They have been trodden, these dim trails, by Scotch and French and English since that historic event, and by a numerous progeny in whose veins the blood of all three races ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... The Clariden, the Spannoerter, the Titlis, then the Bernese colossi from the Wetterhorn to the Diablerets, then the peaks of Vaud, Valais, and Fribourg, and beyond these high chains the two kings of the Alps, Mont Blanc, of a pale pink, and the bluish point of Monte Rosa, peering out through a cleft in the Doldenhorn—such is the composition of the great snowy amphitheatre. The outline of the horizon takes all possible forms: needles, ridges, battlements, pyramids, obelisks, teeth, fangs, pincers, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lakes, and then struck through a rocky pass of a very difficult character, into a series of valleys of widely different aspect. At last she came to a stream which flowed over a bed of lava, and between banks of lava, with great rapidity and a rushing, roaring sound. At one point the river-bed was cleft through its centre, to the depth of eighteen or twenty feet, by a chasm from fifteen to eighteen feet wide, into which the waters pour with considerable violence. A bridge in the middle of the river spans this rift, and the stranger who reaches the banks ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... come to the Doctrinal Part, and understand the Age of this our Game, which is known by several Marks, amongst which this is the most authentick: That if you take his view in the ground, and perceive he has a large Foot, a thick Heel, a deep Print, open Cleft and long space, then be assured he is Old; as the ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... the cool of a cleft, sat he—majestical Pan! Ivy drooped wanton, kissed his head, moss cushioned his hoof; All the great God was good in the eyes grave-kindly—the curl Carved on the bearded cheek, amused at a mortal's awe As, under the human trunk, ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... now and then heard long, rolling peals, like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for an instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thundershowers which often take place in mountain heights, he proceeded. Passing ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... cloven asunder, she presents to the eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach, and participate of the ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... was by the very side of the pillar; it was either some natural surface flaw, or a deep fissure caused by some subsidence or settling of the soil. The heads of other pillars could be descried around, and these the cleft seemed to be reaching, for little slits branched out in all directions. Then, on seeing his brother leaning forward, like one who is for the last time examining a mine he has laid before applying a match ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... agent had hollowed the mountain, leaving a level plateau of several acres. The earth had fallen away from a great sombre cliff of solid rock, and clinging like a swallow's nest in a cleft of this was the usual rude cabin of a mountaineer. The face of the rock was dark with vines, and the cabin was protected as by a fortress. But one way of approach was possible, and that straight to the porch. From the cliff the vines had crept to roof and chimney, and were waving their ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... delightful weather, and we enjoy it. Yesterday we went to Pool-a-Phooka, the Leap of the Goblin Horse. What is that, do you suppose? Why, a cleft in the mountains down and through which the river Liffey (not very long born from the earth) comes leaping and roaring. Cold veal pies, champagne, etc., make up the enchantment. We dabbled in the water, splashed each other, forded the river, climbed the rocks, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... to make headway against the wind, the captain tried to weather a rocky point on Hinchinbrook Island, so that he might beach her in a sandy bay beyond. She failed to get around the point, and lifted by a wave over the rocks, became fixed in a cleft, where she soon bumped a hole in her hull. Such of her crew and passengers who were not lucky enough to be thrown far inland were drowned, or crushed to death. One passenger, named Burstall, crawled out on a boom, from which the waves swept him high on to the rocks. A following wave ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... steep, from the crest of which he had a view of white lines of foam, and beyond them of a dim and rocky shore. At one spot, a little to his right, the foam seemed thinner and the line of cliff to be broken, as though here there was a cleft. For this cleft, then, he steered his plank, taking the swell obliquely, which by good fortune the set of the tide enabled him to ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... southwest face was the front, and was pierced by a Moorish arch fitted with glass doors, which could be secured on occasion by gates of fantastically hammered iron. The arch was enshrined by a Palladian portico, which rose to the roof, and was surmounted by an open pediment, in the cleft of which stood a black-marble figure of an Egyptian, erect, and gazing steadfastly at the midday sun. On the ground beneath was an Italian terrace with two great stone elephants at the ends of the balustrade. The windows on the upper story were, like the entrance, Moorish; but the principal ones ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... discovered that no other city feet than mine were likely to scale a certain rough slope which seemed the end of the ravine. With the aid of the tough laurel-stems I climbed to the top, passed through a cleft as narrow as a doorway, and presently found myself in a little upper dell, as wild and sweet and strange as one of the pictures that haunts us on ...
— Who Was She? - From "The Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1874 • Bayard Taylor
... wan. Each tree bears on its side the scar of wounds where the woodmen have set flowing the resinous blood which chokes it; the powerful liquor still ascends into its limbs with the sap, exhales by its slimy shoots and by its cleft skin; a sharp aromatic ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... guide! It was goodly in that tide To see the Bogle ride in his haste; He accompanied each blow with a cry of "Ha!" or "Ho!" And always cleft the foe To ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... a maiden I worshipped where she trod; But, when she clove my heart, the cleft Set free the imprisoned god: Then was I king of all the world, My soul had burst its bars, For grief beyond the sunset ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... of the days that followed were spent in interviewing all manner of landladies, most of whom, like Mrs. McGinniss's bell, were disordered physically or mentally. Heartsick, I decided by Saturday to take blind chances with the janitress of a Fourteenth-street lodging-house. She had a cleft palate, and all I could understand of her mutilated talk was that the room would be one dollar a week with "light-housekeeping" privileges thrown in. I had either to pay Miss Jamison another five dollars that next morning or take chances here. I took the hazard, paid the necessary one dollar ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... all Phil dashed off a few lines on a scrap of paper, telling Larry, if he hit camp while they were absent, to settle down by the boat, and wait for them. This he stuck in the cleft of a dead palmetto leaf stem, which in turn he thrust in the ground in front ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... pagodas instead of renovating the old ones. The instinct is not altogether unjust. A pagoda does not collapse like a hollow building but understands the art of growing old. Like a tree it may become cleft or overgrown with moss but it remains picturesque. In the neighbourhood of Sagaing there is a veritable forest of pagodas; humble seedlings built by widows' mites, mature golden domes reared by devout prosperity and venerable ruins decomposing ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... shrubs, which was rooted in the cliff about the height of a man above the level of the ground, and vanished so quickly that Zinti, who as watching, rubbed his eyes in wonder. After waiting a while, however, he followed in their steps to find that behind the shrub was a narrow cleft or crack such as are often to be seen in cliffs, and that down this cleft ran a pathway which twisted and turned in the rock, growing broader as it went, till at last it ended in the hidden krantz. This krantz was a very beautiful ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... the outlaw king of the ranges for nearly two years when one day, as he was standing at lookout while the band cropped the rich mesa grass behind him, he saw entering the cleft end of a distant arroyo a lone cowboy mounted on a dun little pony. With quick intelligence the stallion noted that this arroyo wound about until its mouth gave upon the side of the mesa not a hundred ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... the village street. They burst into the houses crying murder, and trying to smash everything. The peasants followed them with forks, and set their savage dogs on them. A third soldier fell with his belly cleft by a fork. The others had to fly and were hunted out of the village, and from a distance they shouted as they ran across the fields that they would fetch their comrades ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... 5th we arrived al Sabderat, the first permanent village we had met with since leaving Moncullou. This village—in appearance similar to those of the Samhar—is built on the side of a large granitic mountain, cleft in two from the summit to the base. Numerous wells are dug in the dried-up bed of the water-course that separates the village. The inhabitants of this divided village often contend between themselves for the possession of the precious fluid; and when the rushing waters have disappeared, ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... darkness did Sigmund the king upstand; And unto that saw of battle he set his naked hand; And hard the gift of Odin home to their breasts they drew; Sawed Sigmund, sawed Sinfiotli, till the stone was cleft atwo, And they met and kissed together: then they hewed and heaved full hard Till lo, through the bursten rafters the winter heavens bestarred! And they leap out merry-hearted; nor is there need to say A many words between them ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... conflict. I had never witnessed so sad and horrible a sight. The ground in the camp was strewn with dead bodies. There was one pile of slain larger than the rest. Within it was found the hilt of the broken sword of the young hero, his helmet cleft in twain, and a corpse, covered with a hundred wounds, which those who knew him best declared was his. This seemed but a disastrous commencement of an attempt to establish liberty. Many abandoned all hope of their country's freedom. But bolder spirits hoped against ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... vines, just newly burgeoned, link Their hands to join the dance of Spring, Green lizards glisten from cleft and chink, And almond blossoms rosy pink Cluster and perch, ere ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... ineffectually into the opaque window, nothing rewarded his curiosity, and after half an hour of diligent endeavor he was compelled to return home no wiser than when he had first stood on the summit of the path and looked down into the rocky cleft. ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... their journey she had learned from Mrs. Misset details which Wogan had been at pains to conceal. It was Wogan who had conceived the idea of her rescue—in the King's place. In the King's place, Wogan had come to Innspruck and effected it. In the King's place, he had taken her by the hand and cleft a way for her through her enemies. He was the man, the rescuer; she was ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... Prince now found himself was very peculiar. A high rocky wall, seemingly inaccessible, stood up solemnly in front of him, and extended out, on each side, far into the sea. Directly before him was a great cleft or tunnel in the rock, which extended so far back that its other extremity was not visible from where he stood. This rocky avenue was the only passage, in any direction, that the Prince could perceive, and consequently, without delay or fear, he drew ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... dug out of the ground; which had been particularly noted to be plain and level, and ploughed just before; but where it was now found to have made a great fissure, or cleft, an ell wide, whilst it singed the ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... wedding of degree. Local tinsmiths made the moulds for them—they were deeply cleft, and not strictly classic of outline. But, well and truly baked, frosted a glistening white, then latticed and fringed with more frosting, dribbled on delicately from the point of a tube, they were surely good to look at. If the bride's ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... from no vision of better, would begin and grow and grow; and to what it might not come no soul can tell—of essential, original misery, uncompromising self disgust! Only, then, if a being be capable of self-disgust, is there not some room for hope—as much as a pinch of earth in the cleft of a rock might yield for the growth of a pine? Nay, there must be hope while there is existence; for where there is existence there must be God; and God is for ever good, nor can be other than good. But alas, the distance from the light! ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... take him to a garden where he should find more honey-combs than ten bears could eat at a meal. But the treacherous rascal took him to a carpenter's yard, where lay the trunk of a huge oak-tree, half-riven asunder, with two great wedges in it, so that the cleft stood a great way open. "Behold now, dear uncle," said the fox, "within this tree is so much honey that it is unmeasurable." The bear, in great haste, thrust his nose and fore-paws into the tree; and immediately Reynard pulled out the two great wedges, and caught Bruin in ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... spoke the sage: the kings without delay Dissolve the council, and their chief obey: The sceptred rulers lead; the following host, Pour'd forth by thousands, darkens all the coast. As from some rocky cleft the shepherd sees Clustering in heaps on heaps the driving bees, Rolling and blackening, swarms succeeding swarms, With deeper murmurs and more hoarse alarms; Dusky they spread, a close embodied crowd, And o'er the vale descends the living cloud.(81) ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... history. Every leaf and tree and blooming flower, each have theirs; that sky-lark soaring high in the sunny blue sky has a history, and, as it pours forth a sweet melody, how the air vibrates with the gladsome song! Even that tiny spray of hare-bells clinging tenaciously to a cleft in the rugged rocks, over which the foaming mountain torrent leaps and dashes, has its own little history. So has the torrent itself. It began away back among the snow-capped hills, and at first was only a tiny stream, ...
— Silver Links • Various
... which his uncle, for greater comfort, had helped him make on the side of a gently sloping hill, a narrow ravine ran down to the valley. White veins of gypsum and glittering mica sparkled in the moonlight along its bare edges. If the agile youth could reach this cleft unseen, and crawl through as far as the pool of saltwater, overgrown with tall grass and tangled desert shrubs, at which it ended, he might, aided by the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "guide-board" of some sort, for his accommodation in following us. We therefore, upon several occasions, carried with us from the woods a few pieces, of three or four feet in length, which we planted at certain points, with a transverse stick through a cleft in the top, thus marking the direction he and his ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... by winter, and further rendered treacherous by the moss and wet by a thousand trickles of water. At the end of one hour we found what might be called a ravine, if you happened not to be particular, or a steep cleft in the precipice if you were. Here we deserted the open air for piled-up brushy tangles, many sharp-cornered rock fragments, and a choked streamlet. Finally the whole outfit abruptly ceased. We climbed ten feet of crevices and ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... to me, and I marked out two equal portions of land. One includes the higher part of this enclosure, from, the peak of that rock buried in clouds, whence springs the rapid river of Fan-Palms, to that wide cleft which you see on the summit of the mountain, and which is called the Cannon's Mouth, from the resemblance in its form. It is difficult to find a path along this wild portion of enclosure, the soil of which is encumbered with ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... his good bow, And set therein a flo; He shot through his green kirtle, His heart he cleft on two. ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... grafting were practised: in the cleft, and in the bark, the two most usual ways; shoulder or whip grafting, and grafting by approach,[295] the last 'where the stock you intend to graft on and the tree from which you take your graft stand so near together that they may ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... had one once." She added, as he looked at her in suddenly roused surprise, "I must have had one once." She was looking beyond him at a broad ray of moted white-hot sunshine that slanted through one of the wide openings above, and cleft the thick atmosphere of the crowded place like a fiery sword. "I have often wondered what it really is, and whether I should like it if I heard it? To exchange Lynette Mildare for Eliza Smith ... that would be horrible. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... this district, as regards the space from the mountains to the sea; for the plain has an extent of twenty-two thousand plethra. 207 In the mountain-range which encloses the land of Trachis there is a cleft to the South of Trachis itself; and through this cleft the river Asopos flows, and runs along by the foot ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... musket than all the marines put together. The Kroo canoe dashed alongside with the velocity of her class, and, as a petty officer on the Spaniard bent over to sink the skiff with a ponderous top-block, our boatswain cleft his skull with a musket ball, and brought home the block as a trophy! In fact, Seagram confessed that the Spaniard behaved magnanimously; for the moment our yawl was sunk, Olivares cut adrift his boat, and bade the struggling swimmers return in it ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... when they heard a rumbling noise from underneath the vessel; and at the same time, perceived her following her course in open sea: from whence they concluded, that the rock was cleft in pieces, and had left a free passage ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... talisman of Caesar's name, But Caesar had, in place of empty fame. The unresting soul, the resolution high That shuts out every thought but victory. Whate'er his goal, nor mercy nor dismay He owned, but drew the sword and cleft his way: Pressed each advantage that his fortune gave; Constrained the stars to combat for the brave; Swept from his path whate'er his rise delayed, And marched triumphant through the wreck he made. PROF. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... upon a cornice-road between the mountains and the Adriatic: following the curves of gulch and cleft ravine; winding round ruined castles set on points of vantage; the sea-line high above their grass-grown battlements, the shadow-dappled champaign girdling their bastions mortised on the naked rock. Except for the blue lights across the distance, and the ever-present sea, these earthy ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... extricate himself. I pointed at some lines in The Traveller which I told him I was sure he wrote. He hesitated a little; during this hesitation I recollected myself, that, as I knew he would not lie, I put him in a cleft-stick, and should have had but my due if he had given me a rough answer; but he only said, 'Sir, I did not write them, but that you may not imagine that I have wrote more than I really have, the utmost I have wrote in that poem, to the best of my recollection, is not more than ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... the fort. An Indian, having in his hand a long staff, with a spear in one end, pursuing closely after them, thrust it at Mrs. Freeman with such violence that, entering her back just below the shoulder, it came out at her left breast. With his tomahawk, he cleft the upper part of her head, and carried it off to ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... was all the more fond of it because of that. It was a tiny little basin of water, near the path, but up a grassy bank. On the side toward the path it was all open, but on the other side there were rocks, and out of a little cleft in the rocks ran a bit of a stream of water that fed the little basin. Then, around the rocks and over them there was more grass, and the hill rose at both sides and above. On the edge of the hill, right over the basin, was a pine-tree, and around it were other trees. Their branches came together ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... the city, there rang a tremulous bell, launching its vibrations upon the infinite silence as a sinner's guilty soul might trembling stand in the presence of Almighty condemnation. The melancholy howl of a dog at first cleft through every nerve and fibre of my being, thrilling with a creeping chill of horror. So regular did it come, so unvaried, I grew to count the seconds under my breath, and to note its monotonous precision. Somehow this occupation in a measure relieved me, and when the howls came ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... way, they knew, must soon be smooth and plain When gods could change to gold. Gold, gold can pass the tyrant's sentinel, Can shiver rocks with more resistless blow Than is the thunder's. Argos' prophet fell, He and his house laid low, And all for gain. The man of Macedon Cleft gates of cities, rival kings o'erthrew By force of gifts: their cunning snares have won Rude captains and their crew. As riches grow, care follows: men repine And thirst for more. No lofty crest I raise: Wisdom that thought forbids, Maecenas mine, The knightly order's praise. He that denies ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... were a strained cry of terrified anguish, and they cleft through my brain like the stroke of an axe. With blinding suddenness I knew then what was coming. My heart seemed turned into stone. Only Reason rejected the truth. The gong stood on the table close ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... high ground. Soft and velvety and green lay that great upward sweep in the sunshine, shaded in some places by a dark patch of pines, or gleaming with a heap of fallen snow. Here and there some deep rugged cleft would be filled from top to bottom with the gleaming whiteness, while above, crowning the steep and barren height, the snow reigned supreme, unmelted as yet even by the hot ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... remember them! You filled their glasses; You 'cut in' at their games of bridge; you left Your work to drop in on their dancing classes Before the day was cleft In twain by noontide. When the night waxed late You led your partner forth to demonstrate The newest steps before a cheering throng, And Time and Peace danced by ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... his skill in driving car by showing diverse kinds of circling motions. And the shafts of Arjuna, engraved with his name, well-tempered, resembling the Yuga-fire, tied round with catgut, of straight joints, thick, far-reaching, and made either of (cleft) bamboo (or their branches) or wholly of iron, taking the lives of diverse foes, drank in that battle, with the birds (of prey assembled there), the blood of living creatures. Standing on his car, as Arjuna ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... spirits Under the Great Spirit. Him I know not. Him I only feel With closed eyes. Or when I look from my bed of moss by the river At a sky of stars, When the leaves of the oak are asleep. I will fill this birch bark full of writing And hide it in the cleft of an oak, Here where Black Eagle fell. Decipher my story ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... tree he girdled; Just beneath its lowest branches, Just above the roots, he cut it, Till the sap came oozing outward: Down the trunk, from top to bottom, Sheer he cleft the bark asunder, With a wooden wedge he raised it, Stripped it from the ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... devoted his attention to the Cave of Mercury and caused a flight of convenient stairs to be built, wide enough to admit the passage of two of his fattest Privy Councillors walking abreast, and leading down to this particular grotto through a cleft in the rock. Nobody knew what happened there under his superintendence. Mankind being ever prone to believe the worst of every great man, all kinds of stupid and even wicked things were said, though not during his lifetime. People vowed that he carried on the old traditions, the tortures and ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... be made into boots by putting in a thick leather sole. Joe said, if a moose stood fronting you, you must not fire, but advance toward him, for he will turn slowly and give you a fair shot. In the bed of this narrow, wild, and rocky stream, between two lofty walls of spruce and firs, a mere cleft in the forest which the stream had made, this work went on. At length Joe had stripped off the hide and dragged it trailing to the shore, declaring that it weighed a hundred pounds, though probably fifty would have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... the breach, couched in the great cleft that split the Barrier, darkness within darkness. Unseen, I felt the glare of Its hate beat upon me. From It emanated deathly cold, like the nearness of an iceberg in the night, with an odor of damp ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the rude meal set before me. A cool green leaf of the wild banana was spread for me, and on it were laid smoking yams and other mealy jungle roots, which fill one, as young turkeys are filled during their rearing; a few fish, fresh caught in the stream and cooked over the fire in the cleft of a split stick, and the meat of some nameless animal—monkey I feared—which had been dried in the sun until it was as hard as a board, eked out the curious meal. I did full justice to the roots and fish, but prudently ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... the Hassler left Sandy Point. The weather was beautiful,—a mellow autumn day with a reminiscence of summer in its genial warmth. The cleft summit of Sarmiento was clear against the sky, and the snow-fields, swept over by alternate light and shadow, seemed full of soft undulations. The evening anchorage was in the Bay of Port Famine, a name which marks the site of Sarmiento's ill-fated colony, and recalls the story of the men who ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... thus exposed to the world, and then cruelly scourged; and in order that cruelty might riot in all the circumstances that melt into tenderness the fiercest natures, the nipples of their breasts were put between the sharp and elastic sides of cleft bamboos. Here in my hand is my authority; for otherwise one would think it incredible. But it did not end there. Growing from crime to crime, ripened by cruelty for cruelty, these fiends, at length outraging sex, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in the rocky cleft, Her bitter woes to weep; Little Roland played in the free fresh air; ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... 'Behold these rivers of sacred currents and these excellent trees decked with flowers!' But the faultless Savitri continued to watch her lord in all his moods, and recollecting the words of the celestial sage, she considered her husband as already dead. And with heart cleft in twain, that damsel, replying to her lord, softly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Thus Cloudeslie cleft the apple in two, As many a man might see. "Now God forbid," then said the King, "That ever thou shoot at me! I give thee eighteen pence a day, And my bow shalt thou bear, And over all the north countree I ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... horse slightly to the left, where a small group of mountain balsam, growing in a cleft of the granite, made a spot of shadow upon the very precipice's brink. The boy looked around for a minute or two without speaking, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... turned aside. There was nothing to do but to turn aside. He turned aside, and went hither and thither, desultory. He was still attractive and desirable. But there was a little frown between his brow as if he had been cleft there with a hatchet: cleft right in, for ever, ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... corner. The hour was eight o'clock. Homefarers and outgoers jostled Curly on the narrow stone sidewalk. Between the buildings to his left he looked down a cleft that proclaimed itself another thoroughfare. The alley was dark except for one patch of light. Where there was light there were sure to be human beings. Where there were human beings after nightfall in San Antonio there might be food, and there was ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... fruits of his own work; he was rising, he was making valuable speeches, he was becoming a social power, and his only handicap was his plain and over-ambitious wife. But on the other hand Mrs. Cresswell forgot two pitfalls: the cleft between the old Southern aristocracy and the pushing new Southerners; and above all, her own Northern birth ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... is responsible for the strange story of Minerva—how Jupiter commanded Vulcan to split open his skull with a sharp axe, and how the warlike virgin leaped in full maturity from the cleft in the brain, thoroughly armed and ready for deeds of martial daring, brandishing her glittering weapons with fiery energy, and breaking at once into the wild Pyrrhic dance. We refer to this myth, bearing, as it doubtless does, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... long period we paddle by the south bank, and pass a vertical cleft-like valley, the upper end of which seems blocked by a finely shaped mountain, almost as conical as Kangwe. The name of this mountain is Njoko, and the name of the clear small river, that apparently monopolises the valley floor, is the Ovata. Our peace was not of long duration, and we were soon ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... open air and directly in front of a deep cleft in the rocky background. Judging by the sound, the river could not be more than two hundred feet away. Men came up with lanterns and others piled brush upon the fire. In a very short time the glen was weirdly illuminated ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... lightning speed away through the darkness of the night. Higher and higher they rose, till they had pierced the heavy masses of clouds which hung hovering in the sky. Swift as an arrow the eagle still cleft its way upward until the clouds had vanished to an infinite distance below them; and still onward they were borne in the mighty stillness of an expanse where no human being had ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... and from a point near another bridge (which of them I did not note) had a fine view of a portion of the gorge. The river here runs at the bottom of a cleft of profound depth, but so narrow that it might be leaped across. That this cleft must be a crack is the impression first produced; but a brief inspection suffices to prove that it has been cut by the river. From top to bottom we ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... house of Otho and Casimir, the brood of the Wolf, would, like the shadow of the raven as it flits by in the sunshine, pass away. For by that time there would be no Otho. They would find him low enough, with an axe cleft in his head. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... you only knew the prodigious relief it would be," she exclaimed, with an outbreak of impatience. "It would make an incalculable difference. And yet I do not see my way. I am in a cleft stick. I dare not say Yes. And to say No——" Her sincerity was unimpeachable at that moment. Her eyes actually filled with tears. "Pah! I am ashamed of myself," she cried, "but ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... taught never to transgress their bounds or interfere with one another; and the effect of his parlour, embellished as it was in our honour, was delightful. The outlook was across the beautiful ravine, into the wooded slopes on the further side, and, on the other side, down the widening cleft to that giddy marvel, the suspension bridge, with vessels passing under ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a plot of land rent-free from the village proprietor. Another of the functions of the Chamar is the castration of the young bullocks, which task the cultivators will not do for themselves. His method is most primitive, the scrotum being held in a cleft bamboo or a pair of iron pincers, while the testicles are bruised and rubbed to pulp with a stone. The animal remains ill for a week or a fortnight and is not worked for two months, but the operation is rarely ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... who then, kindling after many an age, Saw with new fires the first VOLCANO rage, O'er smouldering heaps of livid sulphur swell 70 At Earth's firm centre, and distend her shell, Saw at each opening cleft the furnace glow, And seas rush headlong on the gulphs below.— GNOMES! how you shriek'd! when through the troubled air Roar'd the fierce din of elemental war; 75 When rose the continents, and sunk the main, And Earth's huge sphere exploding burst in twain.— GNOMES! how you ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... though her sobbing, panting breath showed the extremity of terror that had pursued her as long as consciousness remained. Nearer and nearer they come; an oar's length, a step; they touch now! No, a wave careens the boat, and she lightly grazes by. Now opens a cleft, perhaps wide enough for her to enter. With helm hard down the bow sweeps round, and they float into a narrow basin with high, perpendicular walls, opening only towards the sea. When within this little harbor, the boat lodged on a shelving rock and heeled over as the wave ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... people who have at any time been most industrious after wisdom; so that Language is but the instrument conveying to us Things worthy to be known. And, though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid things in them as well as the words and Lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother-dialect only. Hence appear the many mistakes ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... up a steep ascent, and through a narrow cleft in the rocks, a natural gateway to which the natives have attached some wonderful legends. Hot springs break through the mountain crust and run side by side with crystal-pure cold brooks, as is often the case on the mountains ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... of her den, she turned quickly round ready to cry with disappointment; but at sight of Pinney with his blue eyes, and his brown fringe of moustache curling closely in over his lip, under his short, straight nose, and a funny cleft in his chin, she felt more like laughing, somehow, as she had since told him a hundred times. He wrote back to her from Boston, on some pretended business; and they began to correspond, as they called it; and they were engaged ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... there was no parry. A kingdom seemed to be passing. Canute threw his shield before him, while his spur caused his horse to swerve violently; but the blade cleft wood and iron and golden plating like parchment, and falling on the horse's neck, bit it to the bone. Rearing and plunging with pain, the animal crashed into those behind him, missed his footing and fell, entangling his rider in ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the twelve foremost canoes to reach the landing and cross the portage before the thinning mist lifted entirely. Twelve boats had got ashore when the fog was cleft by a tremendous crashing of guns, and Iroquois ambushed in the bordering forest let go a salute of musketry. Everything was instantly in confusion. Abandoning their baggage to the enemy, the Algonquins ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... to dislodge the boat from its position between the cleft branches of shrubbery which also held other debris, and furthermore the boat was full of all sorts of ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... were alarm-bells) sounded out the fourth hour; [3] when the carriage rolled through the triumphal gate of the city, the Porta del Popolo, then the moon rent her black heavens, and poured down out of the cleft clouds the splendor of a whole sky. There stood the Egyptian Obelisk of the gateway, high as the clouds, in the night, and three streets ran gleaming apart. "So," (said Albano to himself, as they passed through the long Corso to the tenth ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... But the grand support of the soft-billed birds in winter is that infinite profusion of aureliae of the lepidoptera ordo, which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their trunks; to the pales and walls of gardens and buildings; and is found in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... newness of the precept is realised, if we think for a moment of the new phenomenon which obedience to it produced. When the words were spoken, the then-known civilised Western world was cleft by great, deep gulfs of separation, like the crevasses in a glacier, by the side of which our racial animosities and class differences are merely superficial cracks on the surface. Language, religion, national animosities, differences of condition, and saddest of all, difference of sex, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... the cry beneath the wheel Of an old triumphant Roman Cleft the people's shouts like steel, While the show was ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... buffaloes were an obstacle to those behind them, and despite their mad panic, the living became conscious of the danger in front. The herd split at last, the cleft widened to right and left, and then the tide, in two great streams, flowed past the ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... cattle-plagues are caused by witches (A. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube,*[2] Berlin, 1869, p. 149 Sec. 216). The Scotch Highlanders thought that a witch could destroy the whole of a farmer's live stock by hiding a small bag, stuffed with charms, in a cleft of the stable or byre (W. Grant Stewart, The Popular superstitions and Festive Amusements of the Highlanders of Scotland, Edinburgh, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... a dark, clean-shaven face, rather sallow complexion, and deep-set, searching eyes. There was decision in the square, cleft chin and strong character in the cleanly chiseled features. His manner ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... limit of her imaginative experience. But hitherto she had been like some young captive brought up in a windowless palace whose painted walls she takes for the actual world. Now the palace had been shaken to its base, and through a cleft in the walls she looked out upon life. For the first moment all was indistinguishable blackness; then she began to detect vague shapes and confused gestures in the depths. There were people below there, men like Denis, girls like herself—for ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... Structure.—The filter, which is shown in detail in Figs. 5 to 7, is formed of two semicylindrical cast iron shells, F, that are firmly united, and held by a strong iron band which is cleft at one point in its circumference, and to which there is adapted a mechanism permitting of loosening it slightly so as to facilitate the escape of the oil-cake. Within these shells, F, there are grooves, a, which have the arrangement shown ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... circular chamber with a vaulted ceiling eighteen feet or more in height. The most curious feature was the straight taproot of a tree which descended from above, about the size of a cable, uniform in shape from the top to the bottom. It had apparently made its way through a cleft in the rock, and penetrated downwards till it reached the floor of the apartment. On one side was an opening into a narrow passage, which the guide endeavoured to dissuade the gentlemen from entering. Archie, however, who had ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... cormorants resort, Flapping slowly from their sport With the fat Atlantic shoal, Homeward to Tregeagle's Hole— Walking there, the other day, In a bight within a bay, I espied amid the rocks, Bruis'd and jamm'd, the daintiest box, That the waves had flung and left High upon an ivied cleft. Striped it was with white and red, Satin-lined and carpeted, Hung with bells, and shaped withal Like the queer, fantastical Chinese temples you'll have seen Pictured upon white Nankin, Where, assembled in effective Head-dresses and odd perspective, Tiny dames and mandarins ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thought of nothing but shelter. They drew their blankets over their heads and ran hither and thither looking for a friendly tree. At last they found an old tree with a prodigious stem that parted about ten feet up into two forks. With some effort they got up into this cleft, and then they were on a natural platform. Robinson always carried nails in his pocket, and he contrived to nail the two blankets to the forks so as to make a screen. Then they took out their provisions and fortified ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... oracle of Apollo at Delphi in Phocis enjoyed the utmost veneration. It lay within a deep cave on the rocky side of Mount Parnassus. Out of a chasm rose a volcanic vapor which had a certain intoxicating power. The Pythia, or prophetess of Apollo, sat on a tripod over the steaming cleft and inhaled the gas. The words she uttered in delirium were supposed to come from the god. They were taken down by the attendant priests, written out in verse, and delivered to ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... His crucifix is treasured among the monastic archives, which also contain a charter signed by Peter the Great of Russia (1672-1725). Manasia (Manasiya), the still more celebrated foundation of Stephen, the son and successor of Lazar, lies 12 m. N. of Ravanitsa. Built in a cleft among the hills which line the river Resava, an affluent of the Morava, this monastery is enclosed in a fortress, whose square towers, and curtain without loopholes or battlements, remain largely intact. Within the curtain stand the monastic ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... as usual intense, and to-day they missed the shady trees that had so well protected them the day before. A couple of hours later they turned abruptly to the left, that is to say, southwards, and the Aisne disappeared in a cleft of the hills. Winding tortuously at the feet of more or less steep slopes—for the country was quite changed—progress was not as easy as it had been. At last, close on seven o'clock, a halt was made ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... her fingers to her lips, and quietly following Mariposa they walked by the silver stream into a wild gorge. Graceful pines afforded cover for Mariposa and Alfonso, as swift of foot, they scaled high cliffs, till the Indian girl held aloft her hand, and above in a cleft of white quartz the yellow gold shone brightly ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... that: but the same thing happens to them continually. I told you they were full of rents, or veins. Large masses of mountain are sometimes as full of veins as your hand is; and of veins nearly as fine (only you know a rock vein does not mean a tube, but a crack or cleft). Now these clefts are mended, usually, with the strongest material the rock can find; and often literally with threads; for the gradually opening rent seems to draw the substance it is filled with into fibers, which cross from one side ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... rock's cleft breast, A lonely, safely-sheltered nest. There as successive seasons go, And tides alternate ebb and flow, Full many a wing is trained for flight In heaven's ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... to where I had encountered Ben Gunn, the maroon; and I walked more circumspectly, keeping an eye on every side. The dusk had come nigh hand completely, and as I opened out the cleft between the two peaks, I became aware of a wavering glow against the sky, where, as I judged, the man of the island was cooking his supper before a roaring fire. And yet I wondered, in my heart, that he should show himself so careless. For ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... way where light dwelleth? And as for darkness, where is the place thereof? Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? By what way is the light parted, or the east wind scattered upon the earth? Who hath cleft a channel for the waterflood, or a way for the lightning of the thunder? Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew? Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou lead forth the signs of the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... when his better lay dead: Broke he the shield-wall and fought 'gainst the warriors, Till he his ring-giver upon the seamen Worthily avenged, ere he lay on the field. So [too] did AEtheric, noble companion, 280 Ready and eager, earnestly fought he; Sigebryht's brother and many another Cleft the curved[22] board, them bravely defended; Shield's border burst, and the byrnie sang A terrible song. In battle then slew 285 Offa the seaman that on earth he fell, And the kinsman of Gadd there sought the ground; Quickly in battle was Offa ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... with earth, forms the principal work; aside from which you meet with little private breastworks, as it were, consisting of rocks heaped up by the trunk of a tree, or beside a larger rock, or across a cleft in the rocks, where some sharpshooter stood and exercised his skill ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... crew were already hard pressed; but they fought like men, led courageously by Peters, the sailing master. As Dolores cleft the sparkling water, speeding out to them like a gorgeous sprite of the waves, men tugged at gun-tackles to swing a piece around to rake their own decks, for Yellow Rufe and his ruffians had swept the forecastle ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... into the narrow cleft which was the entrance to the ledge. As a representative of his species he was not impressive, and now with those shudders he could not master, shaking his thin body, he looked even smaller and more vulnerable. Shann drew his knees up close ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... were speaking. "Sponge out.—All right. Fire! Hot while it lasts, but it won't last long. I have every confidence in Old Jack and Old Dick. Drat that primer! All right!—Three seconds! Jerusalem! that created a sensation. The Louisianians are coming up that cleft between the hills. All the Stonewall regiments in the centre. Ewell to flank their left. Did you ever hear Ewell swear? Look out! wheel's cut through. Lanyard's shot away. Take handkerchiefs. Haven't got ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... on bread and wine at a place where the road crosses the river, and then I determined I would have hot coffee as well, and seeing in front of me a village called Rupt, which means 'the cleft' (for there is here a great cleft in the hillside), I went up to it and had my coffee. Then I discovered a singular thing, that the people of the place are tired of making up names and give nothing its peculiar baptism. This I thought really very wonderful indeed, for I have noticed wherever ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... bore it forth from the forge, it seemed to the smiths as though fire burned along the edges thereof. Now he bade Sigurd take the sword, and said he knew not how to make a sword if this one failed. Then Sigurd smote it into the anvil, and cleft it down to the stock thereof, and neither burst the sword nor brake it. Then he praised the sword much, and thereafter went to the river with a lock of wool, and threw it up against the stream, and it fell asunder when it met the sword. Then was Sigurd glad, ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... her and slipped one arm around her waist. In a few minutes they cleared the point. Stella was looking away across the lake, at the deep cleft where Silver Creek split a mountain range ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... shoulders, the face that crowned this misshapen figure might have been the original of one of those intaglios of Venice, which seem to reproduce all that is refined and choice in human features. He had the broad brow, delicate, sensitive nose, curved and mobile lips, and the square, slightly cleft chin that make up an almost perfect outline. Yet the large dark eyes bore an expression of such hopelessness, such unyouthful gravity, that the whole face seemed gloomed over, as when a heavy cloud shuts out the brilliant sunshine of an August day. He did not deign so much as a glance ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... they did not like Charles Wilcox—the grave-diggers finished their work and piled up the wreaths and crosses above it. The sun set over Hilton: the grey brows of the evening flushed a little, and were cleft with one scarlet frown. Chattering sadly to each other, the mourners passed through the lych-gate and traversed the chestnut avenues that led down to the village. The young wood-cutter stayed a little longer, poised above the silence and swaying rhythmically. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... down to rest, and they soon passed away. After a few minutes he pursued his walk, climbing towards the open stretches of heathery moor, which lay beyond the park, and a certain ghyll or hollow with a wild stream in it that cleft the moor high up—one of ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reins of his steed, and galloping forward. A few strides brought them to the other side of the knoll, where, scattered upon the torn and bloody turf, they discovered the scalped and mangled remains of about twenty or thirty human beings. Their skulls had been cleft by the tomahawk and their breasts pierced by the scalping-knife, and from the position in which many of them lay it was evident that they had ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... side, stepping, in the darkness, on the body of the man who had succeeded in delivering that sword-stroke before Tolto's own blade had cleft him. He felt the edges of the wound, but in the darkness could not tell ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... alerse by the Spaniards and lahual by the Indians, which supplies the principal part of their exports, as from 50,000 to 60,000 planks of its wood are sent yearly to Lima. It grows to a large size, and has so even and regular a grain as to admit of being cleft by wedges into boards or planks of any desired thickness, even smoother than could be done by a saw. Neither Agueros nor Falkner had ever seen the tree; but the latter supposed it of the fir tribe from description, and supposes it might thrive in England if its seeds ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... track it flew like a living thing, a red glow marking its passage as it cleft the darkness, its freight of human souls contentedly sleeping, or smoking, or reading, as the fancy took them. And half a mile ahead on the permanent way, Death stood watching—watching and waiting where, by some hideous accident of fate, a faulty ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... the perianth into carpels has been observed frequently in Tulipa Gesneriana, the change in question being generally attended by a partial virescence. M. Gay is said by Moquin to have observed a flower of Crocus nudiflorus in which the segments of the perianth were cleft and fringed at the same time, so that they presented the ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... Ronniken still showed a deep scar — a fissure or hollow. We approached it cautiously. It was not easy to see how deep it was, and whether it had an invisible connection with Nelson on the other side of the valley. But this was not the case. On a closer examination this deep cleft proved to have a solid, filled-up bottom. Between the ridges the surface was perfectly flat, and offered an excellent ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... when the two horses, bending their strength sturdily to the task, had pressed up the massive slope from the deep cleft of the gorge. As the road curved about the outer verge of the mountain, the valley far beneath came into view, with intersecting valleys and transverse ranges, dense with the growths of primeval wildernesses, and rugged with the tilted strata of great upheavals, and ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... line of the waves to the black seam of the sky. The land lay like a crumpled mass of silver velvet, heaped to tinselled brightness here, hollowed to velvety shadow there. Over both arched the mammoth silver tent of the sky. In the cleft in the rock on the southern reef sat Julia and Billy. Under a tree at the north sat Peachy and Ralph. Scattered in shaded places between sat the others. The night was quiet; but on the breeze came murmurs sometimes in the man's voice, sometimes in the woman's. Fragmentary they were, ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... Jeanne that she was casting a little of her heart into every fold of these valleys. She became infatuated with sea bathing. When she was well out from shore, she would float on her back, her arms crossed, her eyes lost in the profound blue of the sky which was cleft by the flight of a swallow, or the white silhouette ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... raised the fir-tree mast, and, fitting it Into its socket, bound it fast with cords, And drew and spread with firmly twisted ropes The shining sails on high. The steady wind Swelled out the canvas in the midst; the ship Moved on, the dark sea roaring round her keel, As swiftly through the waves she cleft her way. ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... and rabble who had followed them. Of these persons, not a few affirmed in after years, that, as they arrived at the church door, they had heard sounds of flutes and timbrels, and mocking songs filling the place; and that the devil, dressed in skins and garlands like a wild man of the woods, had cleft the roof with his head, and disappeared with many blasphemous ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... female, the passive though fruitful element in creation, the crescent moon, the earth, darkness, water, and its emblem, a triangle with the apex downward, "the yoni"—the shallow vessel or cup for pouring fluid into (cratera), a ring or oval, a lozenge, any narrow cleft, either natural or artificial, an arch or doorway, were employed. In the same category of symbols came a boat or ship, a female date palm bearing fruit, a cow with her calf by her side, a fish, fruits having many seeds, such as the pomegranate, ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... his feet, and held him up before her. She uttered a shout, whirled the great tomahawk about her head, its blade glittering in the moonlight, and struck with all her might. The skull of the prisoner was cleft to the chin, and without a cry he fell at the feet of the woman who had killed him. Paul uttered a shout of horror, but it was lost in the joyful yells of the Iroquois, who, at the command of the woman, offered a second victim. Again the tomahawk descended, ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and one of the Panes lay apart. The other three were close together, just as they had fallen, the chief impaled by the Pane spear, while his slayer lay behind him still grasping the weapon! The red tomahawk was clutched firmly in the hands of the chief, and the cleft skull of the second Pane showed ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... or abyss, was a narrow cleft in the mass of the granite, called by geologists a 'fault,' and caused by the unequal cooling of the globe of the earth. If it had at one time been a passage for eruptive matter thrown out by Snfell, I still could not understand why ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... and sprung silently at the throat of the man who waited him, and there was a flash of the keen steel, and a sound as of the cleaving of soft wood, and the beast was in a twitching heap at the man's feet. I knew what it was at last, yet I could say nothing. The wolf was quite dead, with its head cleft. ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... his heels I dared not venture, as long as his tall form passed like a shadow against the white light that the stars let in through the forest cleft, where ran the noisy stream. But presently he turned off, and for a moment I thought to lose him in the utter blackness of the primeval trees. And surely would have had I not seen close to me a vast and smoothly slanting ledge of rock which the stars shining on made ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... longer. The darkness was growing deeper. The ship might double the island during the night. I jumped into the sea, and attempted to make my way toward it. Hope trebled my strength, I cleft the waves with superhuman vigor, and had got so near the yacht that I was scarcely thirty fathoms off, when ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... consisted of overarching eglantine, thorn bushes, furze, and a thick growth of weeds and tangled underwood. From this he soon disengaged himself: turning round and finding that the hut had totally disappeared from sight, he now perceived that the main body of the building was concealed in a sort of cleft or small deserted quarry, whilst its roof, irregularly covered over with mosses and wild plants, was sufficiently harmonized with the surrounding brakes, and in some places actually interlaced with them, effectually to prevent all suspicion ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... the light flamed close; it seemed to be hovering about the head of the silent, seated man. Then Rawson moved, looked past, and found a true perspective for the phenomenon. One rugged cleft in the rim of the crater's cup made a peephole for seeing within. It was plainly red—the light came from inside ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... Chinese, but on him it was outrageous. His broad, square face was very flat as though it had been bashed in by a mighty fist, and it was deeply pitted with smallpox; but the most revolting thing in him was a very pronounced harelip which had never been operated on, so that his upper lip, cleft, went up in an angle to his nose, and in the opening was a huge yellow fang. It was horrible. He came in with the end of a cigarette at the corner of his mouth, and this, I do not know why, gave him a ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... house, which were still burning. The walls were rent, and in many places thrown down; the west gable was blown clean away, and the very ground, on the side where the King's chamber had been, was torn as with a hundred ploughshares. Certain trees that grew hard by were cleft and riven as with a thunderbolt, and stones were sticking in their timber like wedges ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... the right, is one of the most charming places in Surrey. Box Hill (590 feet), which may easily be ascended from the well-placed Burford Bridge Hotel, is on the left. The road, river and rail run through a deep cleft in the North Downs forming the Mole valley and facing the sandstone hills of the Weald. In the shallow depression between the two ranges lies Dorking (23-1/4 m.). The town is pleasant but has nothing of much interest for the visitor. It is for its fine situation from a scenic point ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... Chinese variety, called the Honey-peach, is remarkable from the fruit terminating in a long sharp point; its leaves are glandless and widely dentate.[676] The Emperor of Russia peach is a third singular variety, having deeply and doubly serrated leaves; the fruit is deeply cleft with one-half projecting considerably beyond the other; it originated in America, and its seedlings ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin |
