"Declivity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their superb lids slowly as you spoke to her, and dropping them again with the deliberate motion of a cloud, when she had murmured out her syllable of assent. Her figure, in a sitting posture, presented a gentle declivity from the curve of her neck to the instep of the small round foot lying on its side upon the ottoman. I remember a fellow's bringing her a plate of fruit one evening. He was one of your lively men—a horrid monster, all right ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... our little hero's hopes imparted fresh vigour to his limbs; and he darted down the steep declivity at the imminent danger of his neck, but happily reached the bottom in safety, just as the light which had aided him in his descent expired, which then made every thing appear even darker than before. Consequently, Frank, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... her brother, 'and nothing more charming than their situation. An extensive view over the Mendip Hills is in front of their house, with a pretty view of Wrington. Their home—cottage, because it is thatched—stands on the declivity of a rising ground, which they have planted and made quite a little paradise. The five sisters, all good old maids, have lived together these fifty years. Hannah More is a good deal broken, but possesses fully her powers of conversation, and ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... away, and fell himself upon the Jews on their flank, with those select troops that were with him, and slew a considerable number, and wounded more of them, and put them all to flight, and made them run away hastily down the valley. Now as these Jews suffered greatly in the declivity of the valley, so when they were gotten over it they turned about and stood over against the Romans, having the valley between them, and there fought with them. Thus did they continue the fight till noon; but when it was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... governing the production of tides are well understood, the irregularities in the depths of the oceans and the outlines of the coast, the geographical distribution of the water over the face of the globe and the position and declivity of the shores greatly modify the movements of the tides and give rise to so many complications that no general formulae can be used to give the time or height of the tides at any place by calculation alone. The average rate of travel and the course of the ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... pines that Kit always loved. The back of the house looked directly out over the lake, and the land here was frankly left to nature. Trees, grass and underbrush rioted at will, until they suddenly ended on the brow of the bluff, where there was a sheer declivity of sand to the beach. Looking at it from below, Kit afterwards thought it was like a miniature section of the Yosemite, the sand had hardened into such fantastic shapes, and the strata in places was ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... guiding the horses with a firm, unquivering hand. The coach rattled and bounded along the dangerous way hewn in the side of the mountain. A misstep or a false turn might easily start the clumsy vehicle rolling down the declivity on the right. The convict was taking desperate chances, and with a cool, calculating brain, prepared to leap to the ground in case of accident and save himself, without a thought for the ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... on seamen, after they had received their pay at the latter place. The following robbery was committed there in or verging on the year 1676: About four o'clock one morning, a gentleman was robbed by one Nicks, on a bay mare, just as he was on the declivity of the hill, on the west side. Nicks rode away, and as he said, was stopped nearly an hour by the difficulty of getting a boat, to enable him to cross the river; but he made the best use of it as a kind of bait to his horse. From thence he rode across the county ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... of morass country—a gloomy, terrible-looking place. To the left was a steep slope of small rocks and stones, leading downwards to the hollow of sedgy land that fringed the cliffs of the chasm. The only retreat possible was to pass down this declivity, and try to escape by the sedgy land, and this is what the Black huntsmen had expected. It was a very weird and desolate place; and everything looked dark and dismal, under the moonlight, as it streamed between stormy black clouds. In that light Dot could see the Blacks hurrying forward. Already ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... during the autumn of 1853, a camp of immigrants had encountered grave difficulties. A short way out from the camp, a steep mountain declivity lay squarely across their track. One of the women of the party exclaimed, when she first saw it, "Have we come to the jumping-off place at last?" It was no exclamation for effect, but a fervent prayer for deliverance. They could not ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... from Posilipo, the work of Murat, skirted the gulf, rising along the mountain edge and constantly emphasizing the declivity between the covering of its feet and the border of the sea. On this hanging slope may be seen villas with white or rosy facades midst the splendor of a vegetation that is always green and glossy. Beyond the colonnades of palm trees and parasol pines, appeared ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... distribute the spoil about the slope below, but the engineers had chosen a quicker and cheaper plan. Heavy timbers would be driven into the face of the hill to make a foundation for the track, which would be partly dug out of, and partly built on to, the declivity. Where the main piles reached the rock the plan would be safe, but where they were bedded in gravel there was danger of their giving way under a heavy load. Festing knew he must share the risk of this happening with ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... rested a minute, the light, dry earth began to crack and crumble away from under the tires, rolling in a miniature avalanche down the steep declivity into the water. And not until Wemple had backed fifty yards down the narrow road did he find solid resting for the car. He came ahead on foot and examined the acute angle formed by the two zig-zags. Together with Davies he planned what was to ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... began to feel all the awkwardness of our situation. My companion, however, at length espied a thin wreath of smoke issuing from a small clay-built hut thatched with furze, built against the steepest part of the hill, of which it seemed a mere excrescence, about half way down the declivity; and, on calling aloud, two children, who had been picking up dry stumps of heath and gorse, and collecting them in a heap for fuel at the door of their hovel, first carefully deposited their little load, and then came running to know ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... him that he had but just waked up from some inexplicable dream, and that he found himself slipping down a declivity in the middle of the night, erect, shivering, holding back all in vain, on the very brink of the abyss. He distinctly perceived in the darkness a stranger, a man unknown to him, whom destiny had mistaken for him, and whom she was thrusting into the gulf in his stead; in order ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... slid down. Those who went first smoothed the way for those who came behind them. This rapid descent greatly amused us, and we were only stopped by the mud which succeeded the snow at the distance of five or six hundred toises down the declivity. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... mountains in the most capricious curves and loops, and the train seldom accomplishes the whole journey without a mishap. The Japanese Consul at An-tung, who had made the journey eight times, had been in four railway accidents, and two days previously the train had rolled down a declivity with a ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... slipping along beneath his horse's hoofs, like the unwinding of coils of brown ribbon, "is like that witch-face slope that we saw awhile ago. It seems to occur at long intervals in patches. You see down that declivity how little grows, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... resumed, with Nas Ta Bega leading on foot, and Shefford walking in the rear. A quarter of a mile below camp the Indian led down a declivity into the bottom of the narrow gorge, where the stream ran. He did not gaze backward for a last glance at Nonnezoshe; nor did Jane or Lassiter. Fay, however, checked Nack-yal at the rim of the descent and turned to look behind. ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... placed, hoping to take it by sheer audacity. But the troops inside were held ready, and at the proper moment issued forth; the assailants found themselves in their turn assailed, and, fighting at a disadvantage on the slope, were soon driven down the declivity. The battle was renewed in plain below, where the mailed horse of the Parthians made a brave resistance; but the slingers galled them severely, and in the midst of the struggle it happened that by ill-fortune Pacorus was slain. The result followed which is almost ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... they had feasted. Uya went too far. Ugh-lomi awoke, scowling under his heavy brows, and he took his axe, and extending his hand towards Eudena he bade her wait for him upon the ledge. Then he clambered down the white declivity, glanced up once from the foot of it and flourished his axe, and without looking back again went striding along the river bank until the overhanging cliff at ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... directed me, and was pushed forward by wind and tide. I often let my legs drop, and could feel no bottom; but when I was almost gone, and able to struggle no longer, I found myself within my depth; and by this time the storm was much abated. The declivity was so small, that I walked near a mile before I got to the shore, which I conjectured was about eight o'clock in the evening. I then advanced forward near half a mile, but could not discover any sign of houses or inhabitants; at least ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... over a great many words, so dull, so insipid, so void of all wit or common sense, that indeed they were only French words: after a long and tedious travel, I came at last to meet with a piece that was lofty, rich, and elevated to the very clouds; of which, had I found either the declivity easy or the ascent gradual, there had been some excuse; but it was so perpendicular a precipice, and so wholly cut off from the rest of the work, that by the first six words, I found myself flying into the other world, and thence discovered ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... of his walking down it direct, (which, were he to attempt, his huge tody, soon disarranging the centre of gravity, would certainly topple over,) proceeds thus. His first manoeuvre is to kneel down close to the edge of the declivity, placing his chest to the ground: one fore-leg is then cautiously passed a short way down the slope; and if there is no natural protection to afford a firm footing, he speedily forms one by stamping into the soil if moist, or kicking out a footing ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... mountains and laid them out in an irregular semicircle; from certain others behind, at a greater distance, she has drawn a canal into which she has put a little river of hers called the Anio,... which she has no sooner done, but, like a heedless chit, it tumbles down a declivity fifty feet perpendicular, breaks itself all to shatters, and is converted into a shower of rain, where the sun forms many a bow—red, green, blue, and yellow.... By this time it has divided itself, being crossed and opposed by the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... were not the aggregate of these loose materials traceable to the hills from which they descended. In this case water had no part in loosening or bringing down this mass of fragments. They simply rolled from the declivity, and stopped when they had exhausted the momentum imparted to them by their weight. In the case of the debacle of Bagnes, above Martigny, in a valley leading to the St. Bernard, the circumstances were very different. A glacier, advancing beyond its usual limits ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... perhaps too cautious. By night a rider must leave to his mount the decision as to what hills may be descended at a trot. Marcos knew that the old horse beneath him invariably decided to walk down the easiest declivity. At the summit of the road the horse was trotting at a long, regular stride. On the turn of the hill he proposed to stop, although he must have known that the descent was easy. Marcos touched him with the spur and he started forward. The next instant he ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... Prussians, from the convent of St. Margaret to the river. At three in the morning the Prussians quitted their camp to engage the enemy. The battalion of Pannewitz attacked a building called the Red-house, situated at the bottom of a declivity, before Wellastowitz. The pandours who had taken possession of this house, fired upon them incessantly from all the doors and windows until they were dislodged; and the Prussian battalions were obliged to sustain the fire both of cannon and musquetry for ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... summer day, long gone among the summer days that come but to go, a lad of twelve years was idly and recklessly swinging in the top of a tall hickory, the advance picket of a mountain forest. The tree was on the edge of a steep declivity of rocky pasture-land that fell rapidly down to the stately chestnuts, to the orchard, to the cornfields in the narrow valley, and the maples on the bank of the amber river, whose loud, unceasing murmur came to the lad on his aerial perch like the voice of some tradition ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the duke was debating with himself whether to go on or retrace his course, the trampling of a horse was heard behind them, and looking in the direction of the sound, they beheld Herne the Hunter, mounted on his swarthy steed and accompanied only by his two black hounds, galloping furiously down the declivity. Before him flew the owl, whooping as ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... on a knoll. On either side were tall and stately trees. A purling brook at the left rolled its silvery current down a gentle declivity, and in front, for half a ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... need. Coasting down the declivity, Fred struck Mr. Baxter on the shoulder with his outstretched hands, and the force of the blow shoved the man ahead. Straight ahead it forced him, the weight of Fred's body, with the speed it had attained, being sufficient to send Mr. Baxter within the cave. Fred ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... all to no purpose. He then resolved to seek some way whereby he could outwit the stubborn lord, for he would not willingly resign his lady-love. He left the tower, vowing to do his utmost to perform the seemingly impossible task, and as he descended the rocky declivity his beloved waved her ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... thrust upon it by Philip II. Some premonitory symptoms of the dangerous honor that awaited it had been seen in preceding reigns. Ferdinand and Isabella occasionally set up their pilgrim tabernacle on the declivity that overhangs the Manzanares. Charles V. found the thin, fine air comforting to his gouty articulations. But Philip II. made it his court. It seems hard to conceive how a king who had his choice of Lisbon, with its glorious harbor and unequalled communications; Seville, with its delicious ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... and scraping painfully in the darkness. Terror had deprived them of speech or the power of uttering a sound, or they would have shouted. As it was, however, when they finally landed in a heap on some hard surface at the foot of the steep declivity down which they had fallen, it was some seconds before any of them breathed a word. Then it was Jack ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... work, often took a short cut homeward from the lower slope to the road just below the power-house, by crossing this gentle declivity of the ledge. Evidently Billy McCann with this in mind had twisted the injunction to "go straight home" into a chance to "cut across"; for surely this way would be the "straightest." Besides, there was the added inducement ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... of Mahomet executed a plan of a bold and marvellous cast. He transported his fleet over land for ten miles. In the course of one night four-score light galleys and brigantines painfully climbed the hill, steered over the plain, and were launched from the declivity into the shallow waters of the harbour, far above the molestation of the deeper vessels of the Greeks. A bridge, or mole, hastily built, formed a base for one of his largest cannon. The galleys, with troops and scaling ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... on, the aspect of the valley becomes formidable. Troops of mammoths and mastadons in stone lie crouching over the eastern declivity, one above another, and heaped up over the whole slope. These colossal ridges shine with a tawny hue like iron rust; the most enormous of them drink the water of the river at their base. They look as if warming their bronzed skin in the sun, and sleep, turned over, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... fortified pa. Ruatara's residence was on the highest point; around it were crowded about fifty other dwellings; outside the mighty palisade neat plantations of potatoes and kumaras seemed to hang down the steep declivity; an outer rampart encircled the whole. At sight of the vessel the inhabitants rushed down to the beach with cries of welcome, and greeted Marsden, on his landing, with affectionate regard. He seemed to be no stranger among them, for his name and his fame were familiar to all. The horses and cows ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... Salome stood for some moments on the threshold of the front door, staring vacantly out over the lawn; then, snatching her hat from a hook in the hall, she swiftly crossed the grounds, climbed over a low lattice fence at the foot of the declivity, and followed a worn but neglected path leading into the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... can only leave to the imagination that brief exploratory climb. The broken body seemed at least a hundred feet long; the mangled shoulders and chest filled the great torn hole in the cliff. I climbed over the litter. Indescribable, horrible scene! A river of warm blood was flowing down the declivity outward.... ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... ever expect to light the torch which shall illumine the road to felicity. Then let man study nature; observe her immutable laws; let him dive into his own essence; let him cure himself of his prejudices: these means will conduct him by a gentle declivity to that virtue, without which he must feel he can never be permanently happy ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... face upturned in the starlight. He sat so still that Peter slipped out from the blankets (which covered Boylan as well) and took his place beside the lens-maker. Spenski was facing the east. The street of the little hill town lost itself in a sharp declivity just ahead; the nearer huts were low. The whole east was naked to the horizon and an indescribable glory ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... the rocks above, while half-seen through the mist that rose from a river spectral pines reeled by, and an icy blast lashed my cheeks like a whip as, with throttle wide open and the long cars bouncing behind, the great mountain locomotive thundered down a declivity. ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... His own company ran forward to follow his impetuous lead. The others joined in rapidly. Away they dashed down the side of the declivity, and in an instant more were swarming up the opposite side toward the astonished Rebels. Among these divided councils reigned. Some were excited snapping unloaded guns at the oncoming foe; others were fixing bayonets, and sturdily ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... more nearly to the place advancing, Descending rather quickly the declivity, Through the waved branches o'er the greensward glancing, 'Midst other indications of festivity, Seeing a troop of his domestics dancing Like Dervises, who turn as on a pivot, he Perceived it was the Pyrrhic dance[178] so martial, To which ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... The left of the enemy occupied the north end of this ridge. The Bolton and Edward's station wagon-road turns almost due south at this point and ascends the ridge, which it follows for about a mile; then turning west, descends by a gentle declivity to Baker's Creek, nearly a mile away. On the west side the slope of the ridge is gradual and is cultivated from near the summit to the creek. There was, when we were there, a narrow belt of timber near the summit ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... eager to wait, and pressed on. The hill which sloped away from the top of the little plateau on which he stood, was steeper than he had counted on. As he leaned forward he lost his balance and toppled, head foremost, down the declivity, rolling over. ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... eye, which alone can scan the heart, to read all the agonized suspense with which that young and beautiful creature approached the spot, where she might command a view of the whole of the side of the fearful declivity, from its giddy summit to the base, where it was washed by the sea. The latter, indeed, could not literally be seen from above, the waves having so far undermined the cliff, as to leave a projection that concealed the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... must have seen Verona under a disadvantage: there was no sunshine during our short stay. The beautiful, lordly gardens of the Palazzo Giusti on the declivity of a hillside on the left bank of the Adige were dank and dripping; there was no temptation to linger near their chilly statues and gloomy cypresses; even the view from their noble terraces, formed partly by the wall of the town, was cold and colorless under the November sky. Out-of-door ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... vast river, two or three miles in breadth, pouring down from the eminence of an icy peak thirty miles away,—a river fed by numerous lateral tributaries that flow in from every declivity. Imagine this river lashed to a fury and covered from end to end, fathoms deep, with foam, and then the whole suddenly frozen and fixed for evermore—that is your glacier. Sometimes the surface is stained with the ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... being also the most elevated level on that magnificent modern work, the Rideau Canal;[149] it is 290 feet above the Ottawa at Bytown, and 160 feet higher than the surface of Lake Ontario. Toward these waters the plain descends at the gradient of about four feet in the mile; this declivity is imperceptible to the eye, and is varied by gently undulating slopes and inequalities. Beyond the broad, rich valley lying to the north of this elevation there is a rocky and mountainous country; ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... one of my Chasseurs appeared, coming by the steep path which led from the road to the wooded ridge on which we were. His horse was panting, for the declivity was stiff, and he had had to hasten. He brought ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... the hill, on which the royal Life-Guards were now drawn up, sloped downwards (on the side opposite to that which they had ascended) with a gentle declivity, for more than a quarter of a mile, and presented ground, which, though unequal in some places, was not altogether unfavourable for the manoeuvres of cavalry, until near the bottom, when the slope terminated in a marshy level, traversed through its whole length by what seemed ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that I had passed the slide or declivity on the hillside, where logs were slipped down into the valley, and I inferred that Johnson's business was cutting timber for ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... two miles they came out on a hay-track, that skirted an extensive and level sweep of meadow, along which they proceeded with as much speed as a pillionless midwife was capable of bearing. At length, on a gentle declivity facing the south, they espied in the distance the low, long, whitewashed farm-house of Fardorougha Donovan. There was little of artificial ornament about the place, but much of the rough, heart-stirring wildness of nature, ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... far as the Monte Pallade pass, and they started, avoiding the high road, which was enviably broad and solid. Within view of a village under climbing woods, they discerned an open car, flanked by bayonets, returning to Cles. Angelo rushed ahead of them down the declivity, and stood full in the road to meet the procession. A girl sat in the car, who hung her head, weeping; Lorenzo was beside her; an Englishman on foot gave employment to a pair of soldiers to get him along. As they came near at marching pace, Lorenzo yawned and raised his hand to his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Schuylkill was here a pure and translucid current, broken into wild and ceaseless music by rocky points, murmuring on a sandy margin, and reflecting on its surface, banks of all varieties of height and degrees of declivity. These banks were chequered by patches of dark verdure and shapeless masses of white marble, and crowned by copses of cedar, or by the regular magnificence of orchards, which, at this season, were in blossom, and were ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... and years, in an incessant round of the same trivial gayeties, so exhausts all the susceptibilities of enjoyment that life itself becomes a burden. Louis XIV. had created for himself a sort of elysium of voluptuousness in the celebrated gardens of Marly. Spread out upon the gentle declivity of an extended hill were grounds embellished in the highest style of art, and intended to rival the garden of Eden itself in every conceivable attraction. Pavilions of gorgeous architecture crowned the summit of the hill. Flowers, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... their feet, went down the gentle slope at a trot. They were halfway to the hills when the long lines of the French cavalry were seen, sweeping down upon them from the right; having evidently ridden along the foot of the steep declivity, until they came to a spot where they were able ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... avoid it until he can control himself. It is true his books are in there, his manuscripts, his chronicles, "Josephus," and a thousand things without which he cannot lay hold on the true dignity of life. It is true he is slipping down the declivity that invites the easy descent of the obscure and powerless citizen. If he have true hope—and what lover has it not—he must hurry away. He is not safe in Chicago just at present, because the abstraction of a lover, joined with the self-forgetfulness of a man in the ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... by no stirring incident until he reached the eastern declivity of the Rocky Mountains, where a company of United States Volunteers were overtaken. They had in charge an enormous train of wagons on the way to New Mexico. On the morning after the encampment of Carson near them, the Indians made an attack ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... swarming with trout. The water was as cold as one ever need wish. After a while the ascent grew steeper, the creek became a mere rill that issued from beneath loose, moss-covered rocks and stones, and with much labor and puffing we drew ourselves up the rugged declivity. Every mountain has its steepest point, which is usually near the summit, in keeping, I suppose, with the providence that makes the darkest hour just before day. It is steep, steeper, steepest, till you emerge on the smooth level or gently rounded space at the top, which the old ice-gods ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... was at last attained. He staggered up a few paces upon the sandy declivity, and then fell down exhausted ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... declivity of the mountains, the descent of which was gentle and our march easy. The sound of the waves increased by degrees. Near three o'clock in the afternoon we perceived through the trees that the sun was clear; and an instant afterwards we beheld the sea, and a magnificent beach, covered with fine ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... beneath the declivity between the two points of the Palatine, and by tortuous ways under the temple of Jupiter Victor on its highest summit, did connect the house which Dea Flavia now occupied with the Palace of Augusta. The latter, since the death of the great imperator, had been used entirely as a ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... safe, but there is a spice of excitement about it. I was nervous at first, and seeing that the mule wished to nibble such herbage as offered itself, I had thought it well to humor him. At a narrow space with sharp declivity below, the beast fixed his jaws upon a small tough bush on the upper bank. As he warmed up to the work, his hind feet worked around toward the edge of the chasm. The bush began to come out by the roots, which seemed to be without end. As the weight of the mule was thrown ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... on the summit of mysterious disappearances. Choosing the shortest path he could find which promised to lead him down to the mining hamlet at the foot of the westward-fronting slope, he set his feet in it and went stumbling down the steep declivity, bringing up, finally, on a little bench just above the mine workings. Here he stopped to get his breath and his bearings. From his halting-place the mine head-quarters building lay just below him, at the right of the tunnel entrance to the mine. It was a long log building ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... ebbing tide would prevent their getting back. But it was not necessary to go far to find the channel. Indeed it was found unpleasantly near. The houseboat had stranded on a safe, level shoal, but almost on the edge of a steep declivity leading down into twelve feet of water. We felt that if Gadabout had to go aground, she at least might have done it a little farther ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... they missed it, and staggered a foot away from it. Then they came back to it again, and lurched against it. The woodwork snapped, and the two men fell over the edge on to the sloping bank below. Still locked together they rolled over and over, down the declivity towards the edge of the cliff. A great cry from Hayle reached our ears. A moment later they had disappeared into the abyss, while we stood staring straight before us, too terrified ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... there was another narrow escape. As the prisoners quitted the post-house, they saw the whole population pouring in fury down the steep declivity on which the city is built. They passed near Niort, but could not venture to enter it. The inhabitants came forth with threatening aspect, and vehemently cried to the postilions to stop; but the postilions urged the horses to full speed, and soon left the town behind. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... shore, I discovered them approaching the mountain on which Santa Cruz stands. Soon after we came to anchor in the road, the boats came off, and the battery, which is situated about half-way up the mountain on the western declivity, saluted me with 8 guns, (the Muhamedans always saluting with an even number.) This compliment being unexpected, we were about half an hour preparing to return it, when we saluted the battery with 9 ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... secondary. In general the appearance of the constitution of the locality must be considered if one would proceed usfully to choose the samples destined to represent them; the choice would be easy if one would establish a rule never to quit a declivity, a mountain, a country even, without having made the section (geologically). We should add that these sections should be the principal object in the labours of the ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... breadth. The gardener led us to a walk along its banks, close by the Hall, where he said Southey used to walk for hours and hours together. He might, indeed, get there from his study in a moment. There are two paths, one above the other, well laid out on the steep declivity of the high bank; and there is such a very thick shade of oaks and elms, planted by Southey himself over the bank, that all the ground and grass were moist, although it had been a sunny day. It is a very sombre walk; not many glimpses of the sky through ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... madly, furiously, as if rejoicing in the work of destruction, while the white foam of its eddies presents a fearful contrast to the prevailing blackness of the surface. Over the last declivity it leaps, hissing, foaming, crashing like an avalanche. The stone wall for a moment opposes its force, but falls the next, with a mighty splash, carrying the spray far and wide, while its own fragments roll onwards ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... subject when I returned to Linyanti, I found that, according to Dr. Arnott, a declivity of three inches per mile gives a velocity in a smooth, straight channel of three miles an hour. The general velocity of the Zambesi is three miles and three quarters per hour, though in the rocky parts it is sometimes as much as four and a half. If, however, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... fresh declivity new scenes of deserted, melancholy districts were revealed to us; every thing was cold and dead, every where there was black burnt lava. It was a painful feeling to see so much, and behold nothing but a stony desert, an ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... sufficient to inspire philanthropy. Notwithstanding the frostiness of the morning, the sun in his cloudless journey had acquired sufficient power to melt away the thin covering of snow from every southern declivity, and to bring out the living green which adorns an English landscape even in mid-winter. Large tracts of smiling verdure contrasted with the dazzling whiteness of the shaded slopes and hollows. Every sheltered bank, on which ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... me infinite labour too. It lay about one hundred yards from the water, and not more; but the first inconvenience was, it was up hill towards the creek. Well, to take away this discouragement, I resolved to dig into the surface of the earth, and so make a declivity: this I began, and it cost me a prodigious deal of pains (but who grudge pains who have their deliverance in view?); but when this was worked through, and this difficulty managed, it was still much the same, for I could no more stir the canoe than I could the other boat. Then I measured ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... pass, that which formed the southern protection of the building, and come out on the side of the cove at another shelf, that was not more than fifty feet above the level of the vessel's decks. Down this last declivity, Roswell proposed to lower his casks by means of a projecting derrick, the rock being sufficiently precipitous to admit of this arrangement, while his spare spars furnished him with the necessary means. Thus was every preparation ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... find the means of existence, as the place was accessible to ships, and had wood and water in plenty. Before departing therefore, they set up high marks of stones on two opposite hills at the entrance of the bay, and placed a board on the declivity of a hill to the right, on one side of which they cut G. III. R. and S.U.F.—Georgius III Rex, Societas Unitatis Fratrum; and on the other, the initials of the missionaries, with the date of their arrival. This tablet was raised with some solemnity in presence of Uttakisk and his family, as representatives ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... continuing thence up a very steep hill, more than one hundred feet, they reached its summit. Arrived at the summit, a scene of awful grandeur and magnificence is presented to the view. Looking down the declivity, you see far below to the left, the visiters whom you have left behind, standing on the platform or termination of the avenue along which they had come; and lower down still, the bottom of the Great Dome itself. Above, two hundred and eighty feet, is the ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... together and quickly came to a place where Elizabeth was weeping bitterly, while Katherine was descending the steep declivity as if to try ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... the two injured men down the uneven declivity and then across the narrow lava bridge over the fissure. Here he bade them rest while he went along the trail on that side to search for Laddy. Gale found the ranger stretched out, face downward, a reddened hand clutching a gun. Gale thought he was dead. Upon examination, however, it ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... number of British subjects in 1749. It is situated on a spacious and commodious bay or harbour, called Chebucto, of a bold and easy entrance, where a thousand of the largest ships might ride with safety. The town is built on the west side of the harbor, and on the declivity of a commanding hill, whose summit is two hundred and thirty-six feet perpendicular from the level of the sea. The town is laid out into oblong squares; the streets parallel and at right angles. The town and suburbs are about two miles ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... good three hours before sunrise, and the moon had again left them in darkness, when they almost groped their way down a steep declivity into a small hollow. ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... Kingsburgh, and mounted our horses. We passed through a wild moor, in many places so soft that we were obliged to walk, which was very fatiguing to Dr Johnson. Once he had advanced on horseback to a very bad step. There was a steep declivity on his left, to which he was so near, that there was not room for him to dismount in the usual way. He tried to alight on the other side, as if he had been a 'young buck' indeed, but in the attempt he fell at his length upon the ground; from which, however, he got up immediately without being ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... questions and answers passed between them, and then Sir Muscovy waddled rapidly by the quickest path, Miss Crippletoes following him at a slower pace, and both passed out of sight, using their wings to help their feet down the steep declivity. The next morning, when I wakened early, my first thought was to look out, and there on the sunny greensward where they were accustomed to be fed, Sir Muscovy, Lady Blanche, and their humble maid, Malardina Crippletoes, were scattering their own breakfast before the bills of twelve beautiful ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... at a little waterfall, and here occurred a break in the woods, causing him to stand entranced by the view which presented itself. Down the declivity the forest lasted for some distance, then it gave place to ever-descending vineyards, with here and there a house showing among the vines. At the foot of this hill ran a broad blue ribbon, which he knew to be the Rhine, ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... waves and of the heavens mingle; red or white sails are scattered over it like wings, steamers leaving behind them their trail of smoke; and on the sands, fishermen no larger than birds, in their anchored boats like nests. Then the road descends, follows a rapid declivity along the rocks and sharp promontories. The fresh wind from the waves shakes the little harness bells; while on the right, on the side of the mountain, the rows of pine-trees, the green oaks with roots capriciously leaving ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... property and person. Casting a brief glance over it, they turned short to the left, by a branch of the Sacred Way, which led, skirting the market place, between the Comitium, or hall of the ambassadors, and the abrupt declivity of the Palatine, past the end of the Atrium of Liberty, and the cattle mart, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... hundred and fifty men, having lost eight in attacking some passes, and left forty at Mazma, to maintain an open intercourse with the viceroy of the Indies. This little troop of our countrymen were upon the declivity of a hill near a wood; above them stood the Abyssins, who resolved to remain quiet spectators of the battle, and to declare themselves on that side which should ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... Mandeville's house and L——— wrought as distinct a change in the character of the country as any length of space could have effected. Falkland's ancient and ruinous abode, with its shattered arches and moss-grown parapets, was situated on a gentle declivity, and surrounded by dark elm and larch trees. It still retained some traces both of its former consequence, and of the perils to which that consequence had exposed it. A broad ditch, overgrown with weeds, indicated the remains of what ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... here, and sat down to rest. Then I began to look about for a place to suit me, to gather together heather and juniper leaves, and make up a bed on a little declivity where it was a bit dry. I opened the parcel and took out the blanket; I was tired and exhausted with the long walk, and lay down at once. I turned and twisted many times before I could get settled. My ear pained me a little—it was slightly ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... one horse after another began to stumble and to stagger, so that we were in continual danger of falling. Under these circumstances it was unanimously resolved that we should halt beneath the next declivity, and ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... smallest verdure or vegetation of any kind. They met with only one piece of drift wood, about three fathom long, with a root on it, and as thick as the Carcass's mizen mast; which had been thrown up over the high part of the land, and lay on the declivity towards the pond. They saw three bears; and a number of wild ducks, geese, and other sea fowls, with birds-nests all ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... springs, and the low growth was undercut with a maze of rabbit runs, very distracting to a dog of a hunting breed. Bobby knew, by much journeying with Auld Jock, that running water is a natural highway. Sheep drift along the lowest level until they find an outlet down some declivity, or up some ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... precipices of craggy mountains, and could not be come at from any side, since they had only some winding pathways, very narrow, by which they got up to them; but the rock that lay on their front had beneath it valleys of a vast depth, and of an almost perpendicular declivity; insomuch that the king was doubtful for a long time what to do, by reason of a kind of impossibility there was of attacking the place. Yet did he at length make use of a contrivance that was subject to the utmost hazard; for he let down the most hardy of his men in chests, and set them at the ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... was soon speeding over the snow and in a few minutes was at the edge of the declivity in which lay the penguin rookery. Gazing down into it the boys ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... bears; and those who confirm false principles thence derived, appear like leopards." On seeing us, they turned away, and we proceeded. Beyond the forest there appeared thickets, and afterwards fields of grass divided into areas, bordered with box: this was succeeded by a declivity which led to a valley, wherein were several cities. We passed some of them, and entered into one of a considerable size: its streets were irregular, and so were the houses, which were built of brick, with beams between, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... horses scrambling and struggling up the almost perpendicular streets. How could you ever have borne it, my dear aunt? You must have been in perpetual fear of your life! Lord Bellamont's description of the county of Cavan—all acclivity and declivity, without any intervention of horizontality—I am sure applies to Lausanne. I am sure travelled horses from all parts of the world say to each other when they meet in the stable, "Were you ever at Lausanne? Don't ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... celebrity during his proprietorship. One of the straightest and steepest of the stairways had been cut close to the terre which the mason owned, and a massive wall, destined to bound the high-road at the foot of the declivity, was in ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... night when Carlos Freggetti came down a steep declivity into Great Saffron Street and walked swiftly along that deserted thoroughfare till he came to his brother's house. His brother was a respectable Italian artisan, engaged by an asphalt company in London. Near the narrow door of the tenement in which his relative lived, a stranger ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... those heavy sea-fogs peculiar to the locality began to drift across the hills and presently encompassed him. While endeavoring to evade its cold embraces, Padre Vicentio incautiously drove his heavy spurs into the flanks of his mule as that puzzled animal was hesitating on the brink of a steep declivity. Whether the poor beast was indignant at this novel outrage, or had been for some time reflecting on the evils of being priest-ridden, has not transpired; enough that he suddenly threw up his heels, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... irregular and have no flow. But even the mountain peaks in the horizon are, to the eye of science, parts of one range. We should consider that the flow of thought is more like a tidal wave than a prone river, and is the result of a celestial influence, not of any declivity in its channel. The river flows because it runs down hill, and flows the faster the faster it descends. The reader who expects to float down stream for the whole voyage, may well complain of nauseating swells and choppings of the sea when his ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... The declivity was so small that I walked near a mile before I got to the shore, which I conjectured was about eight o'clock in the evening. I then advanced forward near half a mile, but could not discover any sign of houses or ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... The declivity of the road was gradually becoming more gentle. In the valley below there are meadows extending as far as the Viorne, which runs at the other end, beneath a range of low hills. These meadows, separated from the high-road by thickset hedges, are the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... foot to satisfy himself, of the power and flexibility of its muscles, and then committing himself to his God, dashed the blanket suddenly from his shoulders, and, with eye and heart fixed on the distant soldiery, darted down the declivity with a speed of which he had never yet believed himself capable. Scarcely, however, had his fleeing form appeared in the opening, when a tremendous and deafening yell rent the air, and a dozen wild and naked warriors followed instantly in ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... to the lake was down a gentle declivity, and the wheelbarrow moved more easily than before. In a short time they reached their destination, on the shore of the beautiful sheet of water at which was moored a boat. It was not such a craft as the Greyhound, in which Fanny had been accustomed ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... arms round the neck of Athos. The latter watched them along the high road, elongated by the shade, in their white cloaks. Like two phantoms they seemed to be enlarged on departing from the earth, and it was not in the mist, but in the declivity of the ground that they disappeared. At the end of the perspective, both seemed to have given a spring with their feet, which made them vanish as ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... stream, on the opposite fields. The garden or kail-yard was a little way from the house. A pretty footpath led southward along the river side, another ran northward, affording fine views of the Nith, the woods of Friars Carse, and the grounds of Dalswinton. Half-way down the steep declivity, a fine clear cool spring supplied water to the household." Such was the first home which Burns found for himself and his wife, and the best they were ever destined to find. The months spent in the Isle, and the few that followed the settlement at Ellisland, were among the ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... been observing this open spot on the afternoon of the day in question, he would have seen a large bowlder suddenly roll from the top of the bank to bound along down the green declivity and fall into the water with a loud splash. This in itself was nothing remarkable, as such things are of frequent occurrence in the great order of things, and the tooth of time easily could have gnawed away the few ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... from the crest of one of them the chief pointed out what in South Africa is called a pan, or vlei, covered with green reeds, and explained by signs that in these lay the lions. Descending a steep declivity, we posted ourselves, I at the top, and Higgs and Orme a little way down either side of this vlei. This done, we dispatched the Zeus to beat it out towards us, for although the reeds grew thick ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... stood was narrow, a shallow cutting winding down the declivity of the hills. The horses were tired, It was a bad time and place for my design, and only the coming night was in my favour. But ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... because Mr. Sagittarius always whispered in such a manner as to tickle the nape of his neck. But he could not hear anything except a sound like steam escaping from a small pipe. The steam went on escaping until the brougham passed through a gate, rolled down a declivity, and drew up before an enormous mansion ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... questioning his room-mate, a towerman in Miraflores freight-yards. Luck would have it that my chauffeur friend —— was just then passing with an I. C. C. motor-car and only a photographer for a New York weekly aboard. I found room to squeeze in. The car raced away through the "cut," up the declivity, and dropped me at the foot of the tower. The room-mate referred me to a locomotive engineer and, being a towerman, gave me the exact location of his engine. I found it at the foot of Cucaracha slide with a train nearly loaded. By the time the engineer had added his whit of information, we ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... a row situated on a terrace, above a muddy declivity marked with footpaths. It looked over a wide expanse of waste ground, covered in places with coarse herbage, but for the most part undulating in bare tracts of slag and cinder. Opposite, some quarter of a mile away, rose a lofty ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... upward. At the base of the mountain one saw only a circle of hills, and the long sweep of wooded slopes which converge in the valley; gradually the horizon widens as one climbs beyond the summit lines of the lower hills; at turns in the path, where it crosses some rocky declivity, one looks out upon a landscape into which some new feature enters with every new outlook; one range of hills after another sinks below the level of vision, and discloses another strip of undiscovered country beyond; and so one climbs, step by ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... like gold in the distance, under the hot rays of a noonday sun and my companions would have made a dash for the coveted goal if their horses had not been utterly exhausted and footsore. As it was, I had the greatest trouble to calm them. Arriving at the last and steepest declivity of the trail, I succeeded in halting the party long enough to listen to my words. 'Companions,' I said, 'hear me before you rush on! I shall stay here with this Indian, whom you will first tie to this mesquite tree. Now you may go, and may the saints deliver you from ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... flowers, until at length they reached the bridge. Just beyond it was the rocky precipice, with shrubs and evergreens growing upon the shelves and in the crevices, and spaces between the rocks. It towered up pretty high above the road, and the declivity extended also down to the brook below the bridge, forming one side of the deep ravine across which the bridge was built. There was a very large, old hemlock-tree growing upon a small piece of level ground between the ravine and the higher part of the precipice. Under this hemlock-tree was ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott
... side, now peering down into the ravine where the car was visible, bottom side up against a tree, near the base of the declivity. The horse's head could be seen protruding ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... foray; derivation, lineage, extraction, parentage, birth; declivity, slope, decline; dismounting; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... half-insensible men tangled together as if in a race for total oblivion, only to plunge through a thicket of willow tops that whipped and stung them. On they went, now vastly heartened, over another ridge, down another declivity, and then into a grove of spruce timber, where the air suddenly stilled, and only the tree-tops told of the ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the dilapidated outhouses found in farm-yards in England, of the rickety old wooden tenements, the cracked, shutterless structures of planks and tiles, the sheds and stalls, which our bye lanes, or fish-markets, or river-sides can supply; tumble them down on the declivity of a bare bald hill; let the spaces between house and house, thus accidentally determined, be understood to form streets, winding of course for no reason, and with no meaning, up and down the town; the roadway always narrow, the breadth never uniform, the separate houses ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... with which he had forced Ruth to the edge of the path. She fell sideways, dizzy and faint, clinging to the rough rock with both hands. As it was, she came near rolling over the declivity after all. ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... I am therefore left to the tender mercies of the grooms; at least, I should have been, if Mr. Musgrave had not taken pity on me, and guided my uncertain feet and the petticoats, which Zephyr is doing his playful best to turn over my head, down the steep declivity of the ladder. This, as you may guess, does not help to restore my equanimity. However, I am down now, on firm ground; and, at least, we are rid of the dust. My eyes are still full of grit, but I suppose they will get over that. I ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... simplicity of the inscription which its portico presents. Its situation has been selected with singular taste, to aid the effect which was thus intended. It is placed at the top of an eminence, which shelves in a declivity on every side; and the immediate approach is by an immense flight of steps, which form the base of the building, and increase the effect which its magnitude produces. Over the entrance is placed a portico of lofty pillars, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... ground and the varying density of the undergrowth; naturally selecting a path that afforded her the easiest passage through the bush. In this manner, after a very pleasant and enjoyable walk for about an hour, she arrived at the crest of the eastern spur of the mountain, and, descending a gentle declivity, soon found herself in a region as romantically beautiful as even her vivid fancy had painted. Ravine succeeded ravine, each with its own tiny streamlet meandering through it, and each more picturesque and enchanting ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... above it was the anchoret's bedroom; and the top story was used as a study. Sixty feet away, rose a second building containing kitchens, stables, and servants' rooms. The whole stood in its own grounds, fenced in with walls, half of which, being situated on the steepest portion of the declivity, persisted in tumbling. One curious feature of the house was its outside staircase. Wags pretended that the owner had forgotten it in his plans, and been obliged to add it as an after-thought. The truth was that an ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... began to retrace their steps. But the necessity for caution not being so great on the return, most of the way being up a steep declivity, they moved along much faster than had been the case on their previous ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... too far down the declivity to be seen till the enemy came to the top of the hill, and the riflemen were likely to bring them to a halt before they could reach that point. The captain had taken a position where he could see ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... picturing to themselves a valley between two and three miles long, of various breadths at different points, but generally not exceeding half a mile. On each side of the valley there is a winding chain of low hills running somewhat parallel, with each other. The declivity from each of these ranges of hills to the intervening valley is gentle but not uniform, the undulations of the ground being frequent and considerable. The English army was posted on the northern, and the French army occupied the southern ridge. The artillery ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... same time attack the village of Sueptitz. These two corps, acting in concert, must necessarily divide the centre of the Austrians; after which it would be easy to drive the remnant toward the Elbe, where the ground was one continued gentle declivity, excellently advantageous to the Prussians, and must have procured them ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... over a dock-glass at Finches, the celebrated bar in Fleet Street, had recommended a certain chop-house where night-birds ate before retiring to their nests in distant suburbs. To this hostelry the author therefore repairs, down the narrow declivity, in at the door whose brass handles are being vigorously polished by a youth in a green baize apron, and upstairs to a long low chamber furnished with small tables. Here one discovers some half-dozen strays ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... old railway station, which formed an imposing feature from the gardens of the house. The grounds, some ten or a dozen acres in extent, were laid out in terraced gardens, one above the other, with flights of broad steps ascending and descending the declivity of the garden. On these steps there were statues of most exquisite workmanship. Besides the statues there were vases filled with various shrubs that were new to me; and on either side the flights of steps there were rows of old cypresses and cedars, with grassy alleys ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... undulating sound, somewhat resembling that of a humming top, which rose and fell, and ceased and began, and then ceased again; and in an hour and three quarters after, when in the act of climbing along the declivity, he heard the sound yet louder and more prolonged. It seemed as if issuing from under his knees, beneath which the sand, disturbed by his efforts, was sliding downwards along the surface of the rock. Concluding that the sliding sand was the cause of the sounds, not an effect of the vibrations ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... far from concluded. Beyond Llwyngwril, to which the line was opened for traffic in November, 1863,—the engines and coaches had been brought by barge across the Dovey from Ynyslas—there lay a still more formidable barrier to rapid progress. For the cliffs hereabouts, which, with their steep declivity down to the rock-strewn shore, left scarcely a foothold for the wandering mountain sheep, were enough to daunt the heart of any but the most courageous and determined engineer. Here, again, the problem rose as to whether ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... three years, and from week to week, have always predicted wisely, and who have employed reason in their demonstrations—these three, Mallet du Pan, Mirabeau, Mabuet, agree in their estimate of the event, and in measuring its consequences. The nation is gliding down a declivity, and no one possesses the means or the force to arrest it. The King cannot do it: "undecided and weak beyond all expression, his character resembles those oiled ivory balls which one vainly strives to keep together."[1447] And as for the Assembly, blinded, violated, and impelled on ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... by potent artificial breath. It lingered, and might linger, but would never culminate again without some stimulus from earthly vineyards. [Footnote: Though not exactly in the same circumstances as Kate, or sleeping, a la belle etoile, on a declivity of the Andes, I have known (or heard circumstantially reported) the cases of many ladies besides Kate, who were in precisely the same critical danger of perishing for want of a little brandy. A dessert spoonful or two would have saved them. Avaunt! you wicked 'Temperance' medallist! repent as fast ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... as though almost panic-stricken, the spies finally betook themselves into the sheltering forest. Before they could hide under the branches of the oaks, the tall man was seen to stumble at the top of a rather steep declivity and roll all the way to the bottom, as though he might be a barrel that some mischievous lad had started downhill for the fun ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... murderously on the steep, treeless declivity. The sound of shells bursting off at a distance, of tattooing machine guns, and roaring artillery on their own side was now mingled with the howling sound of shots whizzing through the air and coming closer and closer. And still the top of the ridge ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... must, indeed, have been a place of formidable defence, for, on the side opposite to the town, its walls rose straight up from the verge of a tremendous and rocky precipice, whose base was washed by Saint Ronan's burn, as the brook was entitled. On the southern side, where the declivity was less precipitous, the ground had been carefully levelled into successive terraces, which ascended to the summit of the hill, and were, or rather had been, connected by staircases of stone, rudely ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... nomenclature! The waggon scrambled down a rather steep declivity, towards a dozen houses scattered beside a stream: stumps stood erect in the single short street, and a ferry-boat was the only craft enlivening the shore. A Greenock without commerce or warehouses, a Clyde without wharves or ships, ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... side of the chateau, and was enriched by a collection of the best books in the ancient and modern languages. This room opened upon a grove, which stood on the brow of a gentle declivity, that fell towards the river, and the tall trees gave it a melancholy and pleasing shade; while from the windows the eye caught, beneath the spreading branches, the gay and luxuriant landscape stretching to the west, and ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... discordant "hoot" of a motor-horn sounded on the stillness, and sheer down the winding way came at a tearing pace the motor vehicle itself. It was a large, luxurious car, and pounded along with tremendous speed, swerving at the bottom of the declivity with so sharp a curve as to threaten an instant overturn, but, escaping this imminent peril by almost a hairsbreadth, it dashed onward straight ahead in a cloud of dust that for two or three minutes entirely blurred and darkened the air. Half-blinded and choked by the rush of its furious ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... gorge are from 300 to 350 feet high. We reach the whirlpool, trend to the north-east, and after a little time gradually resume our northward course. Finally, at about seven miles from the present falls, we come to the edge of a declivity, which informs us that we have been hitherto walking on table-land. At some hundreds of feet below us is a comparatively level plain, which stretches to Lake Ontario. The declivity marks the end of the precipitous gorge of the Niagara. Here the river escapes from its steep mural ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... with manifest proofs of gratitude, and departed from Malaga, for that was the native city of his masters, without further delay. Descending the declivity of the Zambra on the road to Antequera, he chanced to encounter a gentleman on horseback, gaily accoutred in a rich travelling dress, and attended by two servants, also on horseback, whose company he joined; their journey thenceforward lay in the same direction, and the gentleman accepted ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... in terraces, quite level for about fifty yards, then with a steep-paved declivity leading to another level portion. One has to be careful in riding down from one level to another, as horses and mules are very liable to slip on the smooth pavement. The houses are built of "adobe" or sun-dried brick. The walls are plastered and whitewashed, and ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... minute or two more he felt capture would be certain, unless he could instantly secrete himself till his strength should be again renewed. Fortune for once now seemed to stand his friend; for stooping down at the base of the rock, he discovered it to be shelving and projecting somewhat over the declivity; so that by dropping upon the ground and crawling up under it, he would, owing to the density and darkness of the thicket, as before mentioned, be wholly concealed from any one standing upright. To do this ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... could not tell whether she gazed backward, forward, to the left or the right, but it impressed me that she stood gazing backward over the route to the west along which she had come. Then, it was plain, she began running down the gentle declivity toward me, and once she fell and either lay or sat on the ground for some time. Presently, though, she got up, and began coming on more slowly, sometimes as if running, most of the time going from ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... of Wellington was before the village of Mont St. Jean, about a mile and a half in advance of the small town of Waterloo, on a rising ground, having a gentle and regular declivity before it—beyond this a plain of about a mile in breadth—and then the opposite heights of La Belle Alliance, on which the enemy would of course form their line. The Duke had now with him about 75,000 men in all; of whom about 30,000 were English. He formed his first line of the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... having descended a declivity with great speed, now slackened its course to mount a steep hill which faced it; at this moment four horsemen bounded into the road—two of them seizing the horses' heads, the two other attacked the postilion, who fell lifeless at their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various |
