"Expanse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... carry to Ezra, who kept on shouting. The radiant purple and red and gold above him deepened, darkened. The whole wild expanse of half-barren land became suddenly a place of unearthly beauty that dulled to the shadows of dusk. Buddy trudged on, keeping to the deep-worn buffalo trails which the herd had followed and scored afresh with their hoofs. He could not miss his way-not Buddy, son of Bob Birnie, owner of ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... weather, dry and clear, and so still that very little of the cold penetrated his fur-lined garments. Snow covered everything, fine and firm and dazzling. The smooth white expanse suggested a wish that he had brought the skees he was learning to use; then the sight of the line of boulders he would have had to steer around made him rejoice that he had not. Far ahead of him rose the glittering ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... side waked to another day. Crossing the irrigating ditch further on, he met a gang of Portuguese, with picks and shovels over their shoulders, just going to work. Hooven, already abroad, shouted him a "Goot mornun" from behind the fence of Los Muertos. Far off, toward the southwest, in the bare expanse of the open fields, where a clump of eucalyptus and cypress trees set a dark green note, a thin stream of smoke rose straight into the air from the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... tangled garden, the dusty bare floors, the broken windows. At the end of the tangled garden there was a white stone cross, and here was a most wonderful view, the high hill running precipitously down to the flat silver expanse of the Nestor that ran like a gleaming girdle under the breasts of the slopes beyond. These further slopes were clothed with wood. I remember, on the first day that I watched, the forest beyond was black and dense ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... he climbed, and began to use his beams as wedges, driving them down more perpendicularly. Whenever this industrious craftsman made a successful split, the fog gaped, and we could see for a moment, indefinitely, an expanse of water, hedged with gloomy forest, and owning for its dominant height a wild mountain, Aziscohos, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... now," he said, smiling, and with the child still in his arms drew her to a window looking northward. As far as the eye could see, nothing but snow, like a blanket spread over the land. Here and there in the wide expanse a tree silhouetted against the sky, a tracery of eccentric beauty, and off in the far distance a solitary horseman ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... to be had of an older world in the moon than that whose scarred face is now beautified for us by distance. Not far from Theophilus and the other great crater-mountains just described, at the upper, or southern, end of the level expanse called the "Sea of Nectar," is a broad, semicircular bay whose shores are formed by the walls of a partially destroyed crater named Fracastorius. It is evident that this bay, and the larger part of the "Sea of Nectar," have been created ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... the wide, snow-covered expanse for traces, and found only too many. Here horses' hoofs, there large and small feet had pressed the snow, yonder hounds had run, and—Great Heaven!—here, by the tree-stump, red blood stained the glimmering ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hay, covered up to the ears with an old patched coat. Nejdanov kept looking eagerly at the road, at the clumps of laburnums at the bottom of the garden; the still grey night lay around; the little stars did their best to outshine one another and were lost in the vast expanse of sky. To the east the rounded edges of the spreading clouds were tinged with a faint flush of dawn. Suddenly Nejdanov trembled and became alert. Something squeaked near by, the opening of a gate was heard; a tiny feminine creature, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... feet. He sung a song, and I replied to him. His song was of the wind that blew us down From sheltered hills to the unsheltered sea. Ah, little thought my heart that the wide sea, Where I should cry for comforting in vain, Was the expanse of his wide awful soul, To which that wind was helpless drifting me! I would he were less great, and loved me more. I sung to him a song, broken with sighs, For even then I feared the time to come: "O will thine eyes shine always, love, as now? And will thy lips for aye ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... them sanguinary and horrible, were mainly confined to the region in which it occurred. But a war covering nearly a whole continent cannot be confined and circumscribed in its consequences. All the world must feel them in a measure - though diminishing with distance. The vast expanse of water which separates the United States from the European continent could not save its citizens from feeling certain ill effects from the struggle of war lords. America and Europe are tied together ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... Gate now, that magnificent opening in the California shores, riven in the eternal conflict of land and water, and the rending of which made the bay of San Francisco the mightiest harbor of America. Before our bows lay the immense expanse of the mysterious Pacific. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... projection of land, which obliged her to turn southwards, until she reached what formerly would have been the southern extremity of Corsica. Of this, however, there was now no trace; the Strait of Bonifacio had been replaced by a vast expanse of water, which had at first all the appearance of being utterly desert; but on the following morning the explorers unexpectedly sighted a little island, which, unless it should prove, as was only too likely, to be of recent origin they concluded, from ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... on at full speed to meet us, and for a moment, his horse skimmed the dusky expanse like a black-winged bird.[1] Then, all at once, his speed moderated; he approached at a jog-trot, and through the gathering gloom I recognised, above the blue uniform, the sweetly ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... started: a human figure, a woman's dress, disturbing here in the desert expanse, had moved in front of him. Sommers hit the horse with his crop and was about to gallop on, when something in the way the woman held herself caught his attention. She was leaning against the wind, her skirt streaming behind her, her face ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... having no relatives in the country, resolved to follow them. He set out on foot, having for sole companion a little terrier named Wasp. On the way he had to pass a long and weary waste of heath and morass. One house alone broke the monotonous expanse. It was little better than a shed, but was sheltered by an ash tree, and a clay-built shed alongside served for a rude stable. A stout pony stood tethered in front of the door, busy with a feed of oats. Stillness brooded all around. It was a poor place, but Captain Brown had wandered too far ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... thy mountains rise Against the wind and rain, To break the strength of wintry skies And rush of storms restrain. And safe beneath them smiling spreads The green expanse of fertile meads. ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... it a perfect bog, and the water brine itself. We went round this channel to the left, and at length found a place firm enough to cross. We continued upon our course, and on ascending a high sandhill I found we had upon our right hand, and stretching away to the west, an enormous salt expanse, and it appeared as if we had hit exactly upon the eastern edge of it, at which we rejoiced greatly for a time. Continuing on our course over treeless sandhills for a mile or two, we found we had not ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... audience in the dark interior of a New York theatre sat watching a white sheet stretched across the stage; suddenly its white expanse grew dark, and against the background appeared "The Suburban, run this afternoon at 4:45 at Sheepshead Bay track; won by Alcedo, in 2 minutes 5 ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... approached Lisbon, he had to work tides. The river ran through a very low country and stretched into so wide an expanse, as almost to form a bay. He arrived in Lisbon just eighteen days from the time of starting, which included nine night's paddling. The welcome he received there was something tremendous. It was estimated that one hundred thousand people were out to see him land. Just before going ashore, a steam ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... naturally square, with dormer windows projecting from the roof, which has a balustrade with turned posts round it. It shows a good breadth of front-yard before its door, as its owner shows a respectable expanse of a clean shirt-front. It has a lateral margin beyond its stables and offices, as its master wears his white wrist bands showing beyond his coat-cuffs. It may not have what can properly be called grounds, but it must have elbow-room, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... at a distance of many miles, the old villa or castle towards which his journey lay, looking from its height over a broad expanse of valley. As he drew nearer, however, it had been hidden among the inequalities of the hillside, until the winding road brought him almost to the iron gateway. The sculptor found this substantial barrier fastened with lock and bolt. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... captain standing in the prow of the boat and looking across an expanse of swirling muddy water to the village on the bluffs beyond. I spoke more after the manner of making polite conversation than because I was desirous of information, for I knew without asking that it could be ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... each time I prepare for the State of the Union, I approach it with great hope and expectations for our nation. But tonight is special—because we stand on the mountaintop of a new millennium. Behind us we see the great expanse of American achievement; before us, even grander ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William J. Clinton • William J. Clinton
... mountainside he again checked his car where he had stopped on the upward climb and reasoned with himself about his errand. Once more he looked out over the level ground below, a vast glowing expanse of electric lights now, that stretched to the ocean beyond. He was suddenly unthrilled by this man-made illumination, and he got out of his car to stare again at the blackness above and its myriad of stars that gathered and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... drink at it in turn, as soon as each solitary marcher had moved forward the number of yards arranged upon. And thus they continued marching the whole day, raising everywhere they passed, in that level, burnt up expanse, those little columns of dust which, from a distance, indicate those who are ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... perceptions I here glance at there struck for The Tragic Muse the first hour of a season of no small subjective felicity; lighted mainly, I seem to see, by a wide west window that, high aloft, looked over near and far London sunsets, a half-grey, half-flushed expanse of London life. The production of the thing, which yet took a good many months, lives for me again all contemporaneously in that full projection, upon my very table, of the good fog-filtered Kensington mornings; which had a way indeed of seeing the sunset in and which at the very last are merged ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... Western slope they stood And saw — a wide expanse of plain As far as eye could stretch or see Go rolling westward endlessly. The native grasses, tall as grain, Were waved and rippled in the breeze; From boughs of blossom-laden trees The parrots answered back again. They saw the land that it was ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... though some may not, that this is a game played on horseback with a club and ball—a species of equestrian "hockey," as it is styled in England, "shinty" in Scotland. To be well done it requires good and trained horses, a wide expanse of level country, and expert riders. Our state of preparation for the game may be understood when I say that we had indifferent and untrained horses, that the ground was very uneven and covered with huge ant-hills, while the riders were not expert—at ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... morning of the second day out and the three girls were leaning against the rail, gazing dreamily out over the boundless expanse of ocean. They wore natty white middy suits and, with floppy little sailor hats shading flushed cheeks and laughing eyes, they made an alluringly picturesque little group that had attracted much attention ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... front of and beneath him. There were only a dozen hounds still running, and they were just disappearing among the trees. The sunlight was shining straight upon the long olive-green slopes which curved down towards this wood, and Danbury, who had the eyes of a hawk, swept them over this great expanse; but there was nothing moving upon it. A few sheep were grazing far up on the right, but there was no other sight of any living creature. He was certain then that he was very near to the end, for either the fox must have gone to ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the subsequently famous "Elia" chased butterflies across the velvety sward. "The Temple Garden," says Mr. Walter Thornbury, "has probably been a garden from the time the white-robed Templars first came from Holborn and settled by the river-side." It covers an expanse of three acres, and its gay flower-beds, umbrageous trees, and emerald turf make it a veritable oasis to the inhabitants, and especially to the children, of that corner of the great metropolis. A pillar sundial in the centre of the grass bears the date 1770, and the iron gate, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... its wild state, spends its whole life in trees, and never leaves them but through force or by accident. An all-ruling Providence has ordered man to tread on the surface of the earth, the eagle to soar in the expanse of the skies, and the monkey and squirrel to inhabit the trees: still these may change their relative situations without feeling much inconvenience; but the sloth is doomed to spend his whole life in the trees, and, what is ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... around, enameled with pond lilies and sagittaria, and the refuge of undisturbed waterfowl and browsing deer. Our lake lay at the head of such a lagoon, a devious outlet of the basin of which the lake occupied the principal expanse, reached through three miles of no-man's route, framed in green hills forest-clad up to their summits. The camp was a shelter of spruce bark, open wide in front and closed at the ends, drawn on three faces of an octohedron facing the fireplace. The beds were made ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... relief to turn from this castle to that southern fortress which the Counts made their home. A glance at the flat tame expanse of Anjou northward of the Loire explains at once why its sovereigns made their favourite sojourn in the fairer districts south of the river. There are few drives more enjoyable than a drive along the Vienne to the royal retreat of Chinon. The country is rich and noble, deep in grass and maize ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... walk above the river. Over level autumn fields and up and down the wooded hills, father and son and the slave travelled briskly toward the west. As the twilight fell, they came up with three white wagons, Staunton bound, and convoyed by mountaineers. That night they camped with these men in an expanse of scrub and sassafras, but left them at dawn and went on toward Albemarle. A day of coloured woods, of infrequent clearings, and of streams to ford, ended in an evening of cool wind and rosy sky. They descended a hill, halted, and built their fire in a ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... before," the girl answered slowly, looking away from him, through the green lace of the trees that veiled the distance. "Yet it's just as mysterious as ever. I can't guess yet what it can be, unless it's in the desert. I just see Saidee, standing on a large, flat expanse which looks white. And she's dressed in white. All round her is a quivering golden haze, wave after wave of it, endless as the sea when you're on a ship. And there's silence—not one sound, except the beating which must be my own heart, or the blood that sings in my ears when I listen for a long ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... continued as calm as before; around the ship not a ripple could be seen on its surface. The crew, hurrying from below, went to their stations, all eyes being turned in the direction of the approaching clouds. Presently cats'-paws began to play over the mirror-like expanse, and then to disappear; the sails slowly bulged out, and speedily again hung down as listlessly as before against the masts. The dark line grew brighter and brighter; presently the loftier sails swelled out, and the ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... of religious treatises and others of rigid vows, and well-acquainted with every commentary and gloss engaged themselves in pleasant converse. And, O king, that platform crowded with gods, Brahmanas and great Rishis looked extremely handsome like the wide expanse of the firmament studded with stars. O monarch, there was then no Sudra near that platform of Yudhisthira's mansion, nor ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... moments watched him sliding his white hands into the white kid, and as he did so his feelings took a singular turn. M. de Bellegarde's good wishes seemed to descend out of the white expanse of his sublime serenity with the soft, scattered movement of a shower of snow-flakes. Yet Newman was not irritated; he did not feel that he was being patronized; he was conscious of no especial impulse to introduce a ...
— The American • Henry James
... new cigarette from her old one and went on telling the fish-faces about her how little colour she had found here. She said we was by way of being a mere flat expanse in dull tints. But what could be expected of a crude commercialism where the arts was by way of being starved. Ah, it was so different from dear old Washington Square, where one was by way of being at the heart of life. It took me some time to get this by-way-of-being stuff, ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... vast plain of Gascony and of Languedoc is an arid and profitless expanse in winter save where the swift-flowing Adour and her snow-fed tributaries, the Louts, the Oloron and the Pau, run down to the sea of Biscay. South of the Adour the jagged line of mountains which fringe the sky-line send out long granite claws, running down into the lowlands and ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the most remarkable of the villages on the line from Horsham to Steyning, by reason of its association with literature, The Rape of the Lock having been to a large extent composed beneath a tree in the park. Yet as one walks through this broad expanse of brake-fern, among which the deer are grazing, with the line of the Downs, culminating in Chanctonbury Ring, in view, it requires a severe effort to bring the mind to the consideration of Belinda's loss and all the surrounding drama of the toilet and the card table. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... responsible for her, and cowed by her, though the word says rather more than I mean. She was not so well dressed; that is, not so stylishly, though doubtless her costume was more expensive. It seemed the inspiration of a village dressmaker; and her husband's low-cut waistcoat, and his expanse of plaited shirt-front, betrayed a provincial ideal which she would never decry—which she would perhaps never find different from the most worldly. He had probably, I swiftly imagined, been wearing just that kind of clothes for twenty years, and telling ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... rock and Hydra's isle [2] The God of gladness sheds his parting smile; O'er his own regions lingering loves to shine, Though there his altars are no more divine. [ii] 10 Descending fast, the mountain-shadows kiss Thy glorious Gulf, unconquered Salamis! Their azure arches through the long expanse, [iii] More deeply purpled, meet his mellowing glance, And tenderest tints, along their summits driven, Mark his gay course, and own the hues of Heaven; Till, darkly shaded from the land and deep, Behind his Delphian rock he ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... picturesque or imposing in the scenery, except the great width of the river. As we advanced, however, we caught faint glimpses of high mountains rising to the southward. Not a sail dotted the vast expanse, but now and then we saw native canoes paddling close to the wood-covered shore, though none of them came near us. The intention of our skipper was not to delay longer at the mouth of the river than to obtain provisions, but ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... meal was finished, North and his principal sauntered to the water's edge, where they stood for a minute looking at the logs and the ruffled expanse ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... meeting did not break up until the going down of the sun. It was truly solemn and delightful to hear the praises of the Lord sung by great numbers of happy converts in boats returning home from the delightful scene. The work of that day I can never forget. The clear setting sun, the large expanse of unruffled water, the serenity of the atmosphere, the delightful notes of the feathered songsters, and the solemn sound of hymns sung by many happy voices, presented to me an emblem of the paradise of God. It seemed as though heaven had ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... the reef, with sleek And foaming lips, before the flooded creek Deep-bunched with arrowy weed, its green expanse Wind-wrinkled and translucent ... A bright trance Of sun-flung splendour lay athwart the wide Blue ocean swept with loops of silvern tide Heavily heaving in a ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... one of the doors, and looking in towards the dusky stage where the company, in their ordinary dresses, were rehearsing something that had a good deal of dance and action in it. In the open air there was an arrangement of painted scenery representing a wide expanse of mountains, with a city at their feet, and before it the sea, with actual water, and large vessels upon it, the vessels having only the side that would be presented to the spectator. But the scenery was ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have done at noonday. In three-quarters of an hour he reached the park gates; and entering now upon a tract which he had never before explored, he went along more cautiously and with some uncertainty as to the precise direction that the road would take. A frosted expanse of even grass, on which the shadow of his head appeared with an opal halo round it, soon allowed the house to be discovered beyond, the other portions of the park abounding with timber older and ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... the lower orders of Welsh were largely spared, and that their descendants still form in part the labouring classes of the two counties. Here, too, the English settlers probably clustered thickest along the coast, like the Danes in later days; and the great swampy expanse of the Fens, then a mere waste of marshland tenanted by beavers and wild fowl, formed the inland boundary or mark ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... three grand-looking Ainos, clothed in skins, striding like ghosts over the sandbanks, a number of wolfish dogs, some log canoes or "dug-outs," the bones of a wrecked junk, a quantity of bleached drift-wood, a beach of dark-grey sand, and a tossing expanse of dark-grey ocean under a dull and windy sky. On this part of the coast the Pacific spends its fury, and has raised up at a short distance above high-water mark a sandy sweep of such a height that when you descend its seaward slope ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... "number four" mast sprawling loose in its lazy-jacks, unfurled and showing a tumbled expanse of canvas. When he was inside the rail, and while the boom was gathering momentum, he took his life in his hands and his grit between his teeth and leaped toward the sail. He made the jump just at the moment when the boom would give ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... wall which still stands here and there some 20 ft. high (fig. 4). Outside, on the north-east, is the grassy hollow of a tiny amphitheatre; on the west a line of earthworks runs in wider circuit than the walls. The area within the walls is a vast expanse of cultivated land, unbroken by any vestige of antiquity; yet the soil is thick with tile and potsherd, and in hot summers the unevenly growing corn reveals the remains of streets beneath the surface. Casual excavations were made here in 1744 and 1833; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... his heart he went out of his tent and seated himself on a rock near at hand. One by one the stars disappeared as the thick, black clouds came rolling up, quickly covering the whole expanse of heaven, and making the night one of inky darkness, save when the cliffs and forest, islands and lake, were illumined by ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... in which Volney and his father sailed was bound to Port au Prince, in St. Domingo. A little girl, the daughter of one of the passengers, having slipped away from her nurse, ran on deck to amuse herself. While gazing on the expanse of water, the heaving of the vessel made her dizzy, ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... that Cap'n Jack spoke the truth about his house. It was situated on the side of the gorge, well sheltered from the winds, yet so placed that from the gable windows a broad expanse of sea could be seen. It was a well-built house, too, substantial and roomy. In the front was a garden, well stocked with flowers and vegetables. In this garden were two figureheads, supposed to represent Admiral ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... been destined by the blessed gods, when a man in his ship should have passed between them alive. And the heroes breathed again after their chilling fear, beholding at the same time the sky and the expanse of sea spreading far and wide. For they deemed that they were saved from Hades; and Tiphys first of all began ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... the Lammern glacier. He strode along with a mountaineer's long swinging pace, striking the snow, which was as hard as a rock, with his iron-shod stick, and with piercing eyes looking for the little black, moving speck in the distance, on that enormous, white expanse. ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... in that chill and lonesome cavern hung round with glittering icicles of fancy. She gave me warmth of feeling, while the influence of my mind made her contemplative. I taught her to love the moonlight hour, when the expanse of the encircled bay was smooth as a great mirror and slept in a transparent shadow; while beyond Nahant, the wind rippled the dim ocean into a dreamy brightness, which grew faint afar off, without becoming gloomier. I held her hand and ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... one expanse from the hills to the sea, it bears one territorial name, either Philistine or Hebraic, just as another region is called the Negeb, or south, (see in the verses referred to above,) or as others were designated the hill country, or the desert, or Phoenicia. And many a time have ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... had just appeared over the brow of a rising, which was the last great wave toppling monstrously down toward that great expanse of the shallow valley, in the midst of which flows the Missouri. This tiny party, so meagre and insufficient-looking as they faced the sun-bound plains, had just left the river route to strike in a more westerly direction. As they topped the rise a great, wholesome ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... the plan your mother spoke of," began Rose as they went gliding across the wide expanse before them, for Charlie seemed to have forgotten everything but the bliss of having her all to himself ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... where on earth can the lover of boats find a more charming resort? How alluring are the mysterious entrances to these Broads! where a boat seems to make an insane dive into a hopeless cul de sac of a ditch, and then suddenly emerges on a wide expanse of water, teeming with pike and bream and eels; and fringed with a border of plashy ground, full of reeds and willows and flowering flags; and ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... contain a more remarkable sentinel than this pyramid on which our hero had now taken his station. There it stood, actually the Ultima Thule of this vast continent, or, what was much the same, so closely united to it as to seem a part of our own moiety of the globe, looking out on the broad expanse of waters. The eye saw, to the right, the Pacific; in front was the Southern, or Antarctic Ocean; and to the left was the great Atlantic. For several minutes, both Roswell and Stephen sat mute, gazing on this grand spectacle. By turning their faces north, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... with them—he suddenly said to me, with a determined air, that he wished to consult me on a point. I expressed the utmost readiness to be of use, and wondered in an agitated way what the matter could be; but he was silent for so long—we were sitting on a grassy headland high above a broad, calm expanse of summer sea—that I wondered if he had repented of his resolution. At last he spoke. I will not attempt to reproduce his words, but he said to me, with an astonishing calmness, that he found that he was ceasing to care for his ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... dugout, and beyond the valley, lie countless lesser hills, set so closely that their divisions are lost in one smooth, dark expanse of forest. Blackened rifts are visible here and there, but they have little meaning, and only help to materialize what would otherwise wear an utterly ghostly appearance. The valley in front is so vast ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... avers, but once in some fifteen years or so) on all the basking hillsides of the Mauritanian Atlas. But for the origin, and therefore for the evolutionary history, of either plant, we must look away from the shore of the inland sea to the arid expanse of the Mexican desert. It was there, among the sweltering rocks of the Tierras Calientes, that these ungainly cactuses first learned to clothe themselves in prickly mail, to store in their loose tissues an abundant supply of sticky moisture, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... of day on Wednesday morning, as David Lawrence, Ames Brown, and my son Joe, were seated in my office, a room which overlooked a wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, we were notified by Democratic headquarters of the first big drift toward Wilson. Ohio, which in the early evening had been claimed by the Republicans, had turned to Wilson by an approximate majority of sixty thousand; Kansas followed; Utah was leaning ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... caught the enthusiasm of the moment. The day broke beautifully clear, and having crossed a deep valley between the hills, we toiled up the opposite slope. I hurried to the summit. The glory of our prize burst suddenly upon me! There, like a sea of quicksilver, lay far beneath the grand expanse of water,—a boundless sea horizon on the south and southwest, glittering in the noonday sun; and on the west at fifty or sixty miles distance blue mountains rose from the bosom of the lake to a height of about 7,000 feet ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... sticks, the barn of ruder guise, the fodder-stack, the ash-hopper, and the rail fence were all imposed in high relief against the crimson west and the purpling ranges in the distance. The little cabin was quite alone in the world. No other house, no field, no clearing, was visible in all the vast expanse of mountains and valleys which it overlooked. The great panorama of nature seemed to be unrolled for it only. The seasons passed in review before it. The moon rose, waxing or waning, as if for its behoof. The sun conserved for ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... the slumbering city the rising moon shines over a wide expanse of glistening water. It silvers the snow upon a barren heath between two shores, and shortens with each passing minute the shadows of countless headstones that bear no names, only numbers. The breakers that beat against the bluff wake not those who sleep there. In the deep trenches they ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... to put ashore while the sun was still high above the horizon. Still the spot was a lonely one—on one side great heathy tracts rising slowly away towards the foothills of Criffel—on the other a turmoil of huge cliffs and purple summits to the west, while behind them all the expanse of Solway lay like polished silver, clean as a platter ready for the ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... creeping on. She must not remain longer in that solitary expanse. She rose and sped towards Charing Cross. In the Strand citizens and their wives, apprentices and their lasses were taking the air. The scraps of talk, the laughter, gave her a sense of security. But the problem of how to pass the night was still ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... no longer rest on the high-road, but looked out to sea—where, as tormenting chance would have it, the black hull of a big cargo boat, steaming slowly westward, cut into the vast expanse of blue, long pennons of rusty grey smoke trailing away from its twin ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Dan?" asked Lily, as she glanced out upon the vast expanse of waters which rolled to ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... was called Lambing Corner, and it was a sheltered portion of that wide expanse of rough pastureland known as the Marlbury Downs, which you directly traverse when following the turnpike-road across Mid-Wessex from London, through Aldbrickham, in the direction of Bath and Bristol. Here, where the hut stood, the land was high and ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... area was extensive and peculiar, so that twenty minutes later, having made only one mistake in the darkness, he was pressing an electric bell set beside a door which alone broke the expanse of a long and dreary brick wall, lining a street which neither by day nor night would have seemed inviting ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... his hearing is dulled, and the light is almost shut out from the "windows of his soul." Let us think of this remarkable man waiting for death uncomplainingly in his old-fashioned mansion, surrounded by the beautiful foliage and the broad expanse of green fields that he loved so much to roam when a younger man, in that sylvan Sleepy Hollow ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... hands, Louis and I, and I feared she would never speak again. Tearful and motionless these beloved ones sat about her, and at last, when the crimson and gold swept like a full tide of glory the broad western expanse that lay before us, she raised herself, looked into all our faces, held her lips for a last kiss from us of the household, and said in tones as clear ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... our money upon camels, concealed in bales of cheap goods, and travelled to the shore of the Red Sea. When I cast my eye on the expanse of waters, my heart bounded like that of a prisoner escaped. I felt an inextinguishable curiosity kindle in my mind, and resolved to snatch this opportunity of seeing the manners of other nations, and of learning ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... most interesting place. We crossed the great Nyanza Lake, in a comfortable steamer, in 24 hours, seeing a lovely sunset across the vast expanse of waters; and the moonlight later was as lovely. Here it is as hot as one would expect directly on the Equator, and the brilliant green landscape is fairly painted with even more brilliant flowers, on trees, bush, and vines; while the strange, semi-civilized people are ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... my flitterboat on the landing field and looked around without any hope of seeing anything. I didn't. The field was about the size of a football field, a bright, shiny expanse of rough-polished metal, carved and smoothed flat from the nickel-iron of the planetoid itself. It not only served as a landing field, but as a reflector beacon, a mirror that flashed out the sun's reflection as the planetoid ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... this opening, and at some little distance, he saw a sunbonneted woman of a plump and comfortable presence. She was leaning against a tub which rested on a rude bench. At her back was another bark shanty similar to the one that sheltered himself, while on either hand a shoreless expanse of water danced and sparkled under the rays of the newly risen sun. As his eyes slowly took in the scene, Yancy's astonishment mounted higher and higher. The lady's sunbonnet quite hid her face, but he saw that she ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... the vastness of his cupolas to the smallest of his oil pictures. The harmony of Correggio, though assisted by exquisite hues, was entirely independent of colour; his great organ was chiaroscuro in its most extensive sense—compared with the expanse in which he floats, the effects of Leonardi da Vinci are little more than the dying ray of evening, and the concentrated flash of Giorgione discordant abruptness. The bland, central light of a globe, imperceptibly gliding through lucid demi-tints ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... associations which every one has connected with it in his childhood from reading Robinson Crusoe. To this I may add the height and romantic outline of its mountains, the beauty and freshness of its verdure and the extreme fertility of its soil, and its solitary position in the midst of the wide expanse of the South Pacific, as all concurring to ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... adoption, with little more means than sufficient to provide for their immediate wants. After love's first fever ended, calm reflection followed. Romance disappeared before the stern realities of life. Friends they had few, relations none, in the wild wide expanse of America. Mrs. Campbell became home-sick: the scenes of her father's mansion, and everything pleasant connected with the estate, rose before her mind's eye. Above all, she constantly thought of her father with more than half regret at the rash act she had been guilty ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... world was strange to her—the broad expanse of sky, The soft, green grass, the pretty flowers, the stream that trickled by; But all at once she saw a sight, that made her hold her breath, And shake and tremble as if she were frightened ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... were many secret friends of slavery in San Francisco. One felt them like an undercurrent, covert and disquieting. To determine where men stood, a public meeting had been called for May 11. Where Post ran into Market street, affording wide expanse for out-door gathering, a speaker's stand was built. Here the issues of war, it was announced, would be discussed ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... of evening hung on the gigantic tops of Ben Ledi and Ben Vorlich; then sailing forward, by degrees obscured the whole of the mountains, leaving nothing for the eye to dwell on but the long silent expanse of ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... what does not belong to them, set to work in common on a general protection for the colony. This is a thick coat of mortar, which fills up the gaps and covers all the cells. In the end, the common nest presents the appearance of a wide expanse of dry mud, with very irregular protuberances, thicker in the middle, the original nucleus of the establishment, thinner at the edges, where as yet there are only newly built cells, and varying greatly in dimensions according to the number of workers ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... has made part of the common dream-land, and they would fair have seen the lighted windows of the house out of which a cheerful ray has penetrated to so many hearts; but being sure of nothing, as they were, they had the comfort of finding the Tappan Zee in every expanse of the river, and of discovering Sunny-Side on every pleasant slope. By virtue of this helplessness, the Hudson, without ceasing to be the Hudson, became from moment to moment all fair and stately streams upon which they had voyaged or read of voyaging, from the Nile to the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... walking of a very circuitous nature, I noticed a few bricks in the monotonous expanse of dwarf earth-mounds ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... the River opposite the city of Montreal. It is at all times a graceful sight; in summer by the refreshing shade of its deep groves beheld from the dusty city; in winter by the contrast of its flowing purple crest of trees with the flat white expanse of ice-covered river. The lower end, towards which the outlines of its double hill tend, is varied by the walls and flagstaffs of a military establishment, comprising some grey barracks, a row of officers' ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... evening of that day, when the brother and sister had strolled by moonlight up to the windmill which occupies the highest point of Sark, and as they stood looking upon the pale expanse of sea, dotted with the gleam of light-houses near and far, Dora broke the silence to ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... again and vanished like silvery flecks in the strips of swirling foam. Some of them, I noticed, circled persistently around a large isolated boulder which rose aloft in the midst of the monotonous expanse of sandy shores. Coarse seaweed grew in uneven tufts on one side of the rock; and at the point where its tangled stems emerged from the yellow salt-marsh, there was something black, and long, and arched, and not very ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the train had made no stop, he had been alone in his compartment. Yet, to his surprise, he was suddenly aware that the seat opposite to him had been noiselessly taken by a girl whose eyes, also, were fixed with curious intentness upon the broad expanse of marshland and sands across which the train was slowly making its way. Hamel had spent a great many years abroad, and his first impulse was to speak with the unexpected stranger. He forgot for a moment that he was in England, travelling in a first-class carriage, ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... extent,—as large as the German Empire, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland combined. Those who led in the secession movement relied confidently upon the impossibility of overcoming a population inhabiting so great an expanse of territory. Their judgment was confirmed by that of the best military critics of Europe who looked pityingly upon the folly of the United States for undertaking a task which after years of suffering and great loss of life could ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... were Bulgarian soldiers. This was not war or even invasion. This was worse—a cold-war raid. He kept running and presently rocky cliffs overhung him on one side, a vast expanse of sky loomed to his left. He found himself panting. He began to hope that ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... completely hidden by the high, feathery stalks of the asparagus-bed, by a row of great sunflowers, now heavy and bent with their disk-like seed-pods, and by a clump of lilac bushes. As his eye traveled along the white expanse, he gave a quick start, and his face clouded ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson |
