"Precipice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Lackarago, a small village standing upon the ridge of hills that separates Kasson from Kaarta. The following morning they left Lackarago, and soon perceived, towards the south-east, the mountains of Fooladoo. Proceeding with great difficulty down a stony and abrupt precipice, they continued their way in a dry bed of a river, where the trees, meeting over head, made the place dark and cool. About ten o'clock they reached the sandy plains of Kaarta, and at noon came to a watering place, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... of thorny shrubs. Bands of Shausu were accustomed to make this route dangerous, and even the bravest heroes shrank from venturing alone along this route. Towards Aluna the way began to ascend Mount Carmel by a narrow and giddy track cut in the rocky side of the precipice.** ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Oh! You are on the brink of ruin, you are on the brink of a hideous precipice. You must leave this place at once, my carriage is waiting at the corner of the street. You must come with ...
— Lady Windermere's Fan • Oscar Wilde
... in the car began to realize that something else was occurring. Somehow, they could feel the accommodation car wavering as if on the brink of a precipice. Then it began to settle slowly and the mystified performers and car hands thought it was going to rest where it was on ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... gazed at the Scarecrow; who crawled to the edge of the nest and looked over. Below them was a sheer precipice several hundred feet in depth. Above them was a smooth cliff unbroken save by the point of rock where the wrecked body of the Gump still hung suspended from the end of one of the sofas. There really seemed to be no means of escape, and as they realized their helpless plight the little band of ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... places B——cast his line, and sometimes drew out a trout, small, not more than five or six inches long. The farther we went up the brook, the wilder it grew. The opposite bank was covered with pines and hemlocks, ascending high upwards, black and solemn. One knew that there must be almost a precipice behind, yet we could not see it. At the foot you could spy, a little way within the darksome shade, the roots and branches of the trees; but soon all sight was obstructed amidst the trunks. On the hither side, at first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... else that start, which discomposes 5 The drowsy waters lingering in your eye? And are you really able to descry That precipice three yards beyond ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the train I slept soundly for a long time. It must have been somewhere about the middle of the night when I was awakened all of a sudden by a fearful crash and the feeling that I was pitching headlong down a frightful precipice. ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... maltreated in many and cruel ways. Some they made raving mad; to some they caused very dangerous illnesses; some took to the mountains in flight; some, going up to the heights, let themselves fall down a precipice. So terrible a persecution put the whole port beside itself. The churches were opened and the august sacrament exposed day and night. The greatest crowd collected in the new convent and church. Missions were preached there with spirit and fervor, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... active though he was, found it no easy matter to keep up with him. Pride, however, forbade him to show the slightest sign of difficulty, and made him even converse now and then in tones of simulated placidity. At last the path turned abruptly towards the face of a precipice and seemed to terminate in a small shallow cave. Any one following the path out of mere curiosity would have naturally imagined that the cave was the termination of it; and a very poor termination too, seeing that it was a rather uninteresting cave, the whole of the interior ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... ravine was a fearsome place, with a sheer descent of many hundreds of feet; its jagged rocks were clothed with bushes and creepers, and clefts and the openings of caves could be seen amongst the greenery. The girls leaned on the low wall and shuddered as they gazed down the precipice. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... a way you will come across a track, and will follow it breathlessly for hours, and it will lead to a sheer precipice. Whether the explanation is suicide, or a reprehensible tendency on the part of the animal towards practical joking, you are left to decide for yourself. Then, with many rough miles between you and your rest, you ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... a huge recess, That keeps, till June, December's snow. A lofty precipice in front, A silent tarn below! Far in the bosom of Helvellyn, Remote from public road or dwelling, Pathway, or cultivated land; From trace of human foot ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... used to put me up on the chimney-piece and exhort me to stand up straight like a hero, which I did, straighter and straighter, and then suddenly 'was 'ware' (as we say in the ballads) of the walls' growing alive behind me and extending two stony hands to push me down that frightful precipice to the rug, where the dog lay ... dear old Havannah, ... and where he and I were likely to be dashed to pieces together and mix our uncanonised bones. Now my present false position ... which is not the chimney-piece's, ... is the necessity you provide ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... man who had gone for it, casually looking up at a cliff several hundred feet high, saw what he thought were a couple of wolves looking down upon him. Paying no attention to them, he walked on toward camp, when happening to look back, he still saw the watchful eyes peering over the edge of the precipice. It now flashed upon him that they might not be wolves ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the soil to find gravel. The work of the road-builders on the Upper Isonzo resembles a vast suburban development, for the smooth white highways which zigzag in long, easy gradients up the mountain slopes are bordered on the inside by stone-paved gutters and on the outside, where the precipice falls sheer away, by cut stone guard-posts. So extensive and substantial are these improvements that one instinctively looks for a real-estate dealer's sign: "This beautiful lot can be yours for twenty-five dollars ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... for me, distracting thoughts crowd themselves upon me. God knows that I was simple-minded and pure; I took nothing upon myself; I walked with free and unflagging steps in the path which He disclosed before me, and behold this path has led me to the brink of a precipice! God has betrayed me! I never doubted but that a wise and merciful Providence governed the universe and governed me in the course which I was to take. It is not, however, without considerable effort that I have been able to apply so formal a contradiction ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... from time to time, to go into the adjoining room where her daughter was. Rosarito had been ordered to sleep, but, already precipitated down the precipice of disobedience, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... cliffs are slippery with the daily sun-thaw congealing in thin sheets upon the rocks. He tells us that there is one peak immediately behind the hotel which yet remains unclimbed. It is the Piz Langrev, and it rises like a tower. No man could climb that mural precipice and live. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... in some way for a declaration of his sentiments,—and that the call would be one which all his wit would not enable him to answer with any comfort. It was very well jesting about milestones, but every jest brought him nearer to the precipice. He perceived that however ludicrous might be the image which his words produced, she was clever enough in some way to turn that image to her own purpose. He had called a woman a finger-post, and forthwith she had offered ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... perilous edge of a snowdrift that even in summer curves giddily over the lip of the dreadful gulf over which the eastern precipice beetles. There is ever a certain pathos about discarded articles of apparel: a baby's outgrown shoe, a girl's forgotten glove, an abandoned bowler; but the situation of this boot, thus high uplifted towards the eternal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... through the scattered birch-trees to a projecting point overlooking the river from a very considerable height; and there, right below him, he discovered what it was they called the Bad Step. The precipice on which he stood going sheer down into the Aivron, the path along the stream left the banks some distance off, came up to where he stood, and then descended again by a deep gorge probably cut by water-power through the slaty rock. And even as he was regarding ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... drove at a diabolical rate, one foot on the brake, the other planted against the dashboard to keep his balance, holding a tremendously long whip in one hand and the six reins in the other. I shut my eyes and said my prayers. I cannot find words to describe my emotion when I saw the precipice on one side and the mountain on the other, especially when we came to a sharp corner and looked in front, when we actually seemed to be going ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... hand, speaks of the Grande Chartreuse as 'one of the most solemn, the most romantic, and the most astonishing scenes.... I do not remember to have gone ten paces without an exclamation that there was no restraining. Not a precipice, not a torrent, nor a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry.' 4. The same passionate appreciation extends with the Romanticists to all full and rich beauty and everything grand and heroic. 5. This is naturally ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... evil, and who, in such a case, has not steadiness and self-restraint enough to quench that flame by some icy words, who has not sense enough for two, who cannot recover his self-possession and master the runaway brute within him, and who loses his head on the edge of the precipice over which she is going to fall, is as contemptible as any man who breaks open a lock, or as any rascal on the look-out for a house left defenseless and without protection, or for some easy and profitable stroke of business, or as that thief whose various exploits ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... gentleman of title who in his day was the best swordsman in Europe. He loved a scornful lady with great devotion. I read a hundred pages with dwindling attention and at last found that I had failed to be excited by the story of a prolonged duel fought on the brink of a precipice under the shadow of an ancient castle from the battlements of which the scornful lady was looking down. I was vexed with myself, for I ought to have enjoyed the scene. I turned back and read the whole chapter through a second time. Again I somehow missed the emotion ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... crevasses, obliterated all signs of the two lakes and covered the rocks, so that between the high summits there was nothing but an immense, white, regular, dazzling and frozen surface. For three weeks Ulrich had not been to the edge of the precipice from which he had looked down on the village, and he wanted to go there before climbing the slopes which led to Wildstrubel. Loeche was now also covered by the snow and the houses could scarcely be distinguished, covered as they were by that ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... hoped against hope that he had wandered far off to the east, and had lost his way. Then some of the party recollected having seen him going towards the edge of the cliff. He was a stranger, and was not aware how abruptly the downs terminated in a fearful precipice. It was too late to send back that night. They still hoped that he might have slipped down, and have lodged on some ledge. At daybreak boats were despatched to the island. At length his mangled remains were found at the foot of the highest part of the ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... promised a practicable path, at least as far as my eye could reach. I placed the weaker and smaller of my birds in portable cages, and then commenced my experiment by taking out a strong-winged cuckoo and throwing him downwards over the precipice. He fell at first almost like a stone; but before he was quite lost to sight in the mist, I had the pleasure of seeing that he had spread his wings, and was able to sustain himself. As the mist was gradually dissolving, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... sound behind him, and looked round sharply. Then he turned and got up on his feet, and stood with his back to the precipice. The long fellow stood in the path facing him, with his hands in his pockets and his dark face in the shadow. A glance told Field, what he knew already, that there was only one way to go back. His face was white, but there was no more tremor in his voice than if ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... would be cruelty, not kindness, to the latter (to the slave) to give him a freedom which he is unprepared to understand or enjoy. It would be cruelty to strike the fetters from a man whose first steps would infallibly lead him to a precipice." So far, then, according to the author himself, are all men from having an "inalienable right" to liberty, that some men have no ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... in the very last year you stood on the precipice of general bankruptcy? Your danger was indeed great. You were distressed in the affairs of the East India Company; and you well know what sort of things are involved in the comprehensive energy of that significant appellation. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Montcalm's soldiers knew him. He was permitted to handle arms. Many a boy of fifteen was then in the ranks, and children of his age were growing used to war. His father called it his apprenticeship to the trade. A few empty houses stood some distance back of the tents; and farther along the precipice, beyond brush and trees, other guards were posted. Seventy men and four cannon completed the defensive line which Montcalm had drawn around the top of the rock. Half the number could have kept it, by vigilance. And it was evident that the officer in charge thought so, and was ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... strongest positions for defence that could be found in the ancient world. It was built on an isolated cube of rock that towered above the vast cultivated tracts of the surrounding plain. At its eastern extremity the precipice made a sheer drop of six hundred feet, and was perhaps quite inaccessible on this side, although it threw out spurs, whether natural or of artificial construction, which formed a difficult and easily defensible communication with the lower land around. Its natural bastions ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... to the fall leads down the right bank of the river through the magnificent maple woods I have mentioned elsewhere, and fine views of the fall may be had on that side, both from above and below. It is situated on the main river, where it plunges over a sheer precipice, about two hundred and forty feet high, in leaving the level meadows of the ancient lake basin. In a general way it resembles the well-known Nevada Fall in Yosemite, having the same twisted appearance at the top and ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... he writes, after the account of her death: "... Dear Nannie, she often thought of you, and when once, from the violence of the disease, she was delirious, she called out, 'See! Agnes is falling down a precipice,' May our Heavenly Saviour, who must be your Father and Guide, preserve you from falling into the gulf of sin over the precipice of temptation.... Dear Agnes, I feel alone in the world now, and what will the poor dear baby do without ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... Wolfe landed, and saw the difficulty of ascending the precipice, he said to the same officer in a familiar strain, "I don't believe there is any possibility of getting up; but you must do your endeavour." The narrow path that slanted up the hill from the landing place the enemy had broken up, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... consequences. In passing by his tailor's, at two in the morning, he absolutely wanted to wake up his creditor, and pay him the hundred and fifty francs on account. A ray of reason which flashed across the mind of Colline, stopped the artist on the border of this precipice. ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... helplessly toward the precipice, Buck made a tremendous, despairing effort and managed to catch Lynch by the belt and clung there for a moment. When one hand was torn loose, he even struck Tex wildly in the face. But there was no strength in his arm, and ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... the weather yard-arm managed to crawl upon the spar and scramble down the rigging; but with us, upon the extreme leeward side, this feat was out of the question; it was, literary, like climbing a precipice to get to wind-ward in order to reach the shrouds: besides, the entire yard was now encased in ice, and our hands and feet were so numb that we dared not trust our lives to them. Nevertheless, by assisting each other, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the past week, of the day before, of two days before, extended in a line down the slope; they glided along, plunged suddenly downward, and seemed to be taking long strides as if they were in danger of being carried over a precipice. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... holds hidden, save from the eagle and the mid-day sun. Caught in a dark prison of stupendous cliffs, hollowed beneath so that the topmost ledge literally hung over the boiling abyss of water, the river foamed and lashed against rock and precipice. The rocks at the base held the record of its wrath in great trunks of trees, and blocks of ice lying piled and smashed in shapeless ruin. It is difficult to imagine by what process the mighty river had cloven asunder this wilderness ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... recent years. But this, fortunately, does not detract to any serious extent from the interest of the whole place. Up on the ramparts there are fine views over the surrounding country, and immediately beneath the precipice below nestle the picturesque, browny-red roofs of the lower part of the town. Just at the foot of the castle rock there is still to be seen a tannery which is of rather unusual interest in connection with the story of how ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... said old Elsie, as Agnes pointed to some superb gillyflowers which grew nearly half-way up the precipice,—"is the child possessed? You have all the gorge in your apron already. Stop looking, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... wait for the premisses to be proved true, and there is no drama for you to understand—no drama, but a series of incoherent, unrelated and inconsequent incidents. Finally, we all know that when a man tumbles over a high precipice he is killed. Suppose that in a melodrama the villain tumbled and is killed. Would some wise commentator write, "The master here proves the wickedness of villainy, and shows conclusively how it always meets ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... cluster of islands, the wind suddenly failed us; and the current hurried us with such velocity directly towards the point, that we expected momentarily to be dashed in pieces; but on coming within twice the length of the ship of the perpendicular precipice, which was some hundred feet high, the eddy swept her round three several times with great rapidity. The Captain would have dropped the anchor, but an old Chinese fisherman, whom we had taken on board to pilot us, made signs that ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... he remembered that his sister needed such a boy to weed her flower-beds, and had spoken to him about procuring one for her. So he had bidden Jerome follow him; and the boy, who would at that moment have gone over a precipice after him, went to Miss Camilla's tea-drinking in ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... bowlders and fragments lay, veiled by a growth of small, bushy shrubs to which a spring gave nourishment. Behind this the long spine of the rock tapered back to the parent ridge that ran, a bristling rampart, east and west. He sat down on the edge of the precipice watching the trail. He had no idea how long he remained thus. A shadow falling across him brought him back to life. He turned and saw Courant standing a few feet ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... little cairn of rocks in still another cavelike recess a dozen yards away, hidden there by night, when prowling Apaches could not see the sorrowing burial party and crush them with bowlders heaved over the precipice above, or shoot them down with whistling lead or steel-tipped arrow from some safe ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... ahead might stimulate him to greater effort and speed, still he knew his duty was to keep in the well-defined track. A straight cut to the guide might run him into a dangerous gully or over a steep precipice. So, knowing his duty, perhaps taught it by bitter experience—and dogs have long memories—he tried his best in his doglike way to ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... town of Quebec a road, altered since beyond recognition, ran along the base of Cape Diamond between the cliff and the river. As it climbed it narrowed to a mere defile, known as Pres-de-Ville, having the scarped rock on one hand and on the other a precipice dropping almost to the water's edge. Across this defile the British had drawn a palisade and built, on the edge of the pass above, a small three-pounder battery, with a hangar in its rear to ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... boy. But his mind was quickly brought to the consideration of things which he could understand. Almost at his feet was Maka, lying on his face, his arms and head over the edge of what might be a bank or a bottomless precipice, and yelling piteously. Making a step toward him, the captain saw that he had hold of another man, several feet below him, and that he ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... the succeeding nights fell upon Him, He would sleep on some wild mountain cliff, on the edge of some mighty precipice, the sides of which dropped down a thousand feet or more. But these things disturbed Him not. On and on He pressed at the appearance of each dawn. Without food He boldly moved forward to the Heart of the Hills, where the ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... stormy sea, chuck! chuck! from boulder to boulder, without intermittence. We found delicious spring water about noon and passed a most remarkable place later in the day. This must have been the pit of a volcano. A few steps aside from the road you might lean over the precipice and look straight down into a great, round crater, so deep that it made a person dizzy. At the bottom there was a ranch house, a small lake and a cultivated field, the whole being apparently ten acres in area. I looked straight down ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... prophet's hiding-place was certainly on the other side of the Jordan, and this Wadi is probably the Valley of Achor, spoken of in the Book of Joshua. On the opposite side of the canyon, half-way down the face of the precipice, clings the monastery of Saint George, one of the pious penitentiaries to which the Greek Church assigns unruly ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... went over the ground, but found nothing. In the darkness he could not locate the door and he made his way around to the back of the hill. The precipice loomed above him and he swept it with his gaze, but he could locate no opening in the darkness and he dared not use a flash-light. As he turned he faced the east and noted with a start of surprise that the sky was getting red. He glanced at his watch and found that Carnes had been ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... gathered brush and dry-kye and proceeded to make a fire, not far from the precipice, but well out of sight of the patriarch's grave. He fetched a generous heap of wood from the neighboring forest, and presently a snapping blaze flung its smoke-banner down ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... to think of the suffering I endured during those weeks with Ulick Dean, walking in Hyde Park, round that Long Water, talking of sin and its pleasures, feeling every day that I was being drawn a little nearer to the precipice, that I was losing every day some power of resistance. It is terrifying to lose sense of the reality of things, to lose one's own will, to feel that one is merely a stone that has been set rolling. To feel like this is to experience the obtuse and intense sensations of nightmare, and this ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... drinking blood from skulls and trampling prostrate creatures to death beneath their feet. Probably the wild and fantastic landscapes of Tibet, the awful suggestions of the spectral mists, the real terrors of precipice, desert and storm have wrought for ages upon the minds of those ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... sun that shines upon the abandoned barque lights up the men who abandoned her, still on that spot where they came ashore. As the first rays fall over the cliff's crest, they show a cove of semicircular shape, backed by a beetling precipice. A ledge or dyke, sea-washed, and weed-covered, trends across its entrance, with a gate-like opening in the centre, through which, at high tide, the sea sweeps in, though never quite up to the base of the cliff. Between this and the strand lies ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... walked far until he came to a precipitous bluff formed by two branching cañons, and it seemed at first impossible for him to proceed farther. Soon, however, he noticed a tall spruce tree, which grew beside the precipice from the foot to the summit, for the day had now begun to dawn and he could see objects more clearly. At this juncture Qastcèëlçi again appeared to him and said: "How is it, my grandchild, that you are still here? Get on the top of that spruce tree and go down into the cañon ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... resourceful men. During their long trudge across the mountainous country between Shelbyville and the Tennessee, Watson had uttered many a grumble, but his complaints meant nothing more than a desire to hear himself talk. When it came to fording a stream, climbing a precipice, or fairly wading through the slush, he was quite as willing and energetic as the other two ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... came to Penmanmaur by daylight, and found a way, lately made, very easy and very safe. It was cut smooth and enclosed between parallel walls; the outer of which secures the passenger from the precipice, which is deep and dreadful.... The sea beats at the bottom of the way. At evening the moon shone eminently bright: and our thoughts of danger being now past, the rest of our journey was very pleasant. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... in a hut on the mountains of Hian Min. Once in these mountains, he said, he followed the spoor of a bear, and he came suddenly on a man of that family who had hunted the same bear, and he was at the end of a narrow way with precipice all about him, and his spear was sticking in the bear, and the wound not fatal, and he had no other weapon. And the bear was walking towards the man, very slowly because his wound irked him—yet he was now very close. And what the captain did he would not say; but every year as soon ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... twilight of a sky full of stars, could descry dim outlines of the surroundings of our path and even of the Mountain, silent above us like a huge black ghost. We toiled up the steep stair, guiding ourselves by feeling, and in a few minutes Were at Prospect Point, that jutting bit of turf on the precipice's edge where the trees draw back and allow in daytime a wide view of the city and surrounding country, and we both stood breathless there in the dimness, in front of a sight bewilderingly grand enough to of itself take ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... communicate with her, but they answered none of her questions. She had dreaded reaching their destination, where she expected to find Yuan Shi Hung awaiting her; and once, in fear of it, she had tried to throw herself down a precipice along the brink of which the path ran. After that she had been roped to a ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... alluded as having been lately thrown up; whilst on another table, at the opposite side of the left ravine, which winds round in the direction of the wall, as nearly as if it were the work of art, stands the other redoubt. Beyond this, again, there is a perpendicular precipice, the hills there abruptly ending; so that on two sides the walls of the fort skirt the extremity of a bare rock. It was along the outer ridges of these ravines, and through the churchyard of St. Etienne, that our trenches were ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... water-precipice he saw the sharp point of a rock jutting about three feet above the water. More by good luck, than any guidance on his part, he came within reach of it as he was hurried onward. Reaching out, he caught hold; ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... she said, "it is too much for my poor nerves. Only think of it; Mr. Peters loads Mr. Pownal's gun with sixteen buck-shot, topples him off a precipice twenty feet high, breaks three of his ribs, and makes a considerable incision in his skull. Never was there such a wonderful escape. It is ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... tell. Here are some three millions of you, as I count: so many of you fallen sheer over into the abysses of open Beggary; and, fearful to think, every new unit that falls is loading so much more the chain that drags the others over. On the edge of the precipice hang uncounted millions; increasing, I am told, at the rate of 1200 a day. They hang there on the giddy edge, poor souls, cramping themselves down, holding on with all their strength; but falling, falling ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... murderers are to-day. Yet they're but tools; it is their captains whom I want. Well, torture may make them speak; Stauracius has gone to see to it. Oh! the strife is fierce and doubtful. I walk blindfold along a precipice. Above are Fortune's heights, and beneath black ruin. Perhaps you'd be wise to get you to Constantine, Olaf, and become his man, as many are doing, since he'd be glad of you. No need to shake your head, for that's not your way; you are no hound to bite the hand that feeds you, like ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... the area was unprotected by parapet or battlement; and the combatants, as they struggled in mortal agony, were sometimes seen to roll over the sheer sides of the precipice together. Cortes himself had a narrow escape from this dreadful fate.... The number of the enemy was double that of the Christians; but the invulnerable armor of the Spaniard, his sword of matchless temper, ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... as you do; young men will be young men,' etc., etc. You know all that sort of talk. Take this for a certain fact: that whoever puts the reins into the charge of his own will when he is young, has put the reins and the whip into hands which will drive over the precipice. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... night-time when we came to one of the great falls. We were able here to get at water; and having halted through the day, on account of the heat, kept on while our animals were refreshed. We had to ascend the banks again, and wind along the brink of the precipice. From this the view was magnificent. The moon shone brightly upon the dancing waves hundreds of feet below us, and upon the rapids which extended as far as we could see. The deep shade of the high cliffs contrasted in its impenetrable darkness with the brilliancy ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... the precipice there lay a long hollow log, which had been probably dragged there with the intention of making a bridge across the chasm. Overton dismounted, led his horse to the very brink, and pricked him with his knife: the noble animal leaped, but his strength was ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... provisions; if not, it would be fifty miles back to our home. The trail was much more direct than the river. The great drawback to this course was the fact that Ha Va Su Canyon, sheer-walled, deep, and narrow, contained a number of waterfalls, one of them about 175 feet high. The precipice over which it fell was nothing but a mineral deposit from the water, building higher every year. Formerly this was impassable, until some miners, after enlarging a sloping cave, had cut a winding stairway in it, which allowed a descent to be made to the bottom of the ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... three weeks before Roger again obtained news. Bathalda had injured his leg in a fall down a precipice, while stalking a deer; and was obliged to lie up in the hut for more than a fortnight. As soon as he was well enough to get about again, he joined Roger in a turkey hunt, and started the next day ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... committed, I must share. As she advanced step by step upon her uncertain road, it would be my unhappy fate to advance with her, in terror of the same pitfalls, with our faces set towards the same precipice—slipping, fainting, experiencing agonies together. She knew my secret, and I, alas! knew hers. So I interpreted this intolerable, ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... gains from the easy enveloping glory of its heather, Westmoreland, which is almost heatherless, must owe to an infinitude of fine strokes, tints, curves, and groupings, to touches of magic and to lines of grace, yet never losing the wild energy of precipice and rock that belongs of right to ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ships rounded westward, and there burst to view against the high rocks of the north shore the white-plumed shimmering cataract of Montmorency leaping from precipice to river ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the very imperfect woodland path, which was completely shaded by the overhanging trees. After a walk of nearly a mile, the path suddenly ended at the top of a tremendous precipice of granite, and opposite this point the great hillside of tumbling white foam plunged for ever downward. At the foot of the falls the waters flung themselves against the massive granite barrier, and then, turning at a right ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... to the conclusion that the convict had devoted himself during his shepherding tours to hunting out some place where he could descend the terrible precipice into that glorious valley far below, where there were sheep and cattle, plenty of water, and no doubt wild fruits ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... bread and cold water, and fettered in accordance with the time-honored traditions of the treatment lavished on captives. His cell, under the fortress-yard, was vaulted with hard stone, the walls were of desperate thickness; the tower overlooked the precipice. ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... they fight about the ship of Protesilaus. Then Patroclus drew near to Achilles with tears welling from his eyes, as from some spring whose crystal stream falls over the ledges of a high precipice. When Achilles saw him thus weeping he was sorry for him and said, "Why, Patroclus, do you stand there weeping like some silly child that comes running to her mother, and begs to be taken up and carried—she catches hold of her mother's ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... of this great controversy, I shall have the consolation of believing that no efforts were lacking, on my part, to uproot the prejudices of my countrymen, to persuade them to walk in the path of duty and shun the precipice of expediency, to unloose the heavy burdens and let the prisoners go free at once, to warn them of the danger of expelling the people of color from their native land, and to convince them of the necessity of abandoning a dangerous ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... it,—how I'd tear him!—First I'd seize him round the waist, and lift him high, Then dash his head against the ground, and strew The pavement with his brains.—For AEschinus, I'd tear his eyes out, and then tumble him, Head foremost down some precipice.—The rest I'd rush on, drag, crush, trample under foot. But why do I delay to tell my mistress This heavy news ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... Henry 176the Eighth; and on the north side of the promontory is Alum Bay, the most beautiful and unique feature of the sea cliffs of Albion. For about a quarter of a mile from the Needles the precipice is one entire glare of white chalk, which curves round to, and is joined by a most extraordinary mixture of vertical strata, composed of coloured sands and ocherous earths blending into every variety of tint, and so ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... could not wait for the night, must have risen from the leafy valley to the ears of the listless shepherd-boy gathering feather-grass where goats would not dare to venture, or eating his dark bread in the sun on the edge of a precipice. Time flowed gently like the river, and I was surprised to find myself at Lacave so soon. This village is near the spot where the Ouysse falls into the Dordogne. A little beyond the clustering houses, upon the edge of a high rocky promontory overlooking the Ouysse, is the castle of Belcastel, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Dion, more Greek than when her hair was concealed. He saw in her then more clearly than at other times the woman of all the ages rather than the woman of an epoch subject to certain fashions. As he looked at her now, resting on a block of warm marble above the precipice which is dominated by the little temple of Athena Nike, he wondered, with the concealed humility of the great lover, how it was that she had ever chosen to give herself to him. He had sworn to marry her. He had not been weak in his wooing, had not been one of those men who will linger on indefinitely ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Englishman, such Limbs we make in Yankeeland! As a Logic-fencer, Advocate, or Parliamentary Hercules, one would incline to back him at first sight against all the extant world. The tanned complexion, that amorphous crag-like face; the dull black eyes under their precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces, needing only to be blown; the mastiff-mouth, accurately closed:—I have not traced as much of silent Berserkir-rage, that I remember of, in any other man. "I guess I should not like to be your nigger!"— Webster is ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... his knees smote together, and lemon-yellow took the place of brown-ochre on his cheeks. It was an awkward place of meeting, for the path, if we may so style it, was a mere ledge, with a perpendicular cliff on one side, a precipice on ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... kicked another, which, falling perpendicularly, from a height of about forty feet, was so much hurt as to be unable to rise. The folly, or rather obstinacy of the man, leading so many together, on the verge of a precipice, was contrary to particular orders previously given, and which ought to have been enforced by Graham, who was in charge. Thermometer, at sunrise, 32 deg.; at noon, 78 deg.; at 4 P.M., 79 deg.; at 9, 60 ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... meant. I knew that I was tottering on the very edge of a precipice, and to save myself I tried to think of Father Dan, of Martin's mother, of my own mother, and since I could not speak I ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Animas (the souls), I had crossed, and did not find out till a day afterwards, that it was one of the awful dangers. No doubt there are many parts in which, if the mule should stumble, the rider would be hurled down a great precipice; but of this there is little chance. I dare say, in the spring, the "laderas," or roads, which each year are formed anew across the piles of fallen detritus, are very bad; but from what I saw, I suspect the real danger is nothing. With cargo-mules the case is rather ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... walked straight out of the Casino; but uncertainly, feebly, as a man who has received a staggering blow between the eyes, as a man who has been pitched into a mountain-pool in January, as a somnambulist who has wakened to find himself on the edge of a precipice. ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... position and practice of the seer were very like those of the Birraark. "A person," says Scott,(8) "was wrapped up in the skin of a newly slain bullock and deposited beside a waterfall or at the bottom of a precipice, or in some other strange, wild and unusual situation, where the scenery around him suggested nothing but objects of horror. In this situation he revolved in his mind the question proposed and whatever ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... way to increase the speed of the earth so that the hours will be like minutes. Then he'll begin fooling with gravitation, and he will discover a new-fashioned lodestone, which can be carried in one's hat to counter-act the influence of the centre of gravity when one falls out of a window or off a precipice, the result of which will be that the person who falls off one of these high places will drop down slowly, and not with the rapidity which at the present day is responsible for the dreadful outcome of accidents of that ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... turnpike within half a mile of the point where the second runaway commenced, and there there was an embankment twenty or more feet deep on the opposite side of the pike. I got the horses stopped on the very brink of the precipice. My new horse was terribly frightened and trembled like an aspen; but he was not half so badly frightened as my companion, Mr. Payne, who deserted me after this last experience, and took passage on a freight wagon for Maysville. Every ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... have seen for a great distance, and from which we named the place Ash Rapids. On these hills there is but little timber, but the salts, coal, and other mineral appearances continue. On the north we passed a precipice about one hundred and twenty feet high, under which lay scattered the fragments of at least one hundred carcases of buffaloes, although the water which had washed away the lower part of the hill must have carried off many of the dead. These buffaloe had been ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... making a very agreeable appearance. The author of the Grand Tour says, that from Antibes to Nice the roads are very bad, through rugged mountains bordered with precipices On the left, and by the sea to the right; whereas, in fact, there is neither precipice nor mountain near it. ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... chrystal l'hyver conduit leurs pas, Le precipice est sous la glace; Telle est de nos plaisirs la legere ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... lonely exaltation. I found the descent from the Strahlegg as much of a climb as I was disposed to undertake; for an hour we were coming down frozen snow that wasn't so much a slope as a slightly inclined precipice.... ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... put on his cap and sallied out in the direction of the Fourth. A man about to throw himself over a precipice could hardly have looked ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... way is dark and dangerous. After advancing sixty or seventy feet we descend a strong but rough ladder twenty feet long, placed against a very precipitous rock. Not the faintest glimmer of daylight reaches that spot; but after a while we stand on the brink of a perpendicular precipice, the bottom of which is strongly illuminated through a hole in the surface rock more than 200 feet above. Standing on the verge of this awful pit in the dim light, the rocks and crags seem to take on most weird shapes. We go down into the great hole by a ladder eighty feet high and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... valuable. Again, I shall not readily forget with what emotion he once told me an incident of their associated travels. On one of the mountain ledges of Madeira, Fleeming's pony bolted between Sir William. and the precipice above; by strange good fortune and thanks to the steadiness of Sir William's horse, no harm was done; but for the moment, Fleeming saw his friend hurled into the sea, and almost by his own act: it was a ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the gathering night. Cold and weather mattered little to him, still less did danger. But Fisher minor mattered very much. For Percy or any of the rest he might probably have stayed where he was; but for the one boy in Fellsgarth he oared about he would cheerfully go over a precipice. ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... of Lake George, making his soul the mirror of its loveliness and grandeur till not a picture in the Vatican was more vivid than his recollection. He had gone with the Indian hunters to Niagara, and there, again, had flung his hopeless pencil down the precipice, feeling that he could as soon paint the roar as aught else that goes to make up the wondrous cataract. In truth, it was seldom his impulse to copy natural scenery except as a framework for the delineations of the human form and face instinct with thought, passion or suffering. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... when from the heavens I circled near and nearer to the earth, Nearer and nearer, till I brushed my wings Against the pointed chestnuts, where a stream That foamed and chattered over pebbly shoals Fled through the bryony, and with a shout Leaped headlong down a precipice: and there, Gathering wild-flowers in the cool ravine, Wandered a woman more divinely shaped Than any of the creatures of the air, Or river-goddesses, or restless shades Of noble matrons marvellous in their time For beauty and great suffering; and I sung, I charmed her thought, I gave her dreams; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... discouraging silence of the King warned him; he persisted, however, and related how the bishop, mounted upon a mule, and visiting one day his diocese, found himself in a path which grew narrower at every step; and which ended in a precipice. There were no means of getting out of it except by going back, but this was impossible, there not being enough space to turn round or to alight. The holy bishop (for such was his term as I well remarked) lifted his eyes to Heaven, let go the bridle, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... old castle stands terminates, on one side, at the foot of the castle walls, in a precipice of rocks, and on two other sides, also, the ascent is too steep to be practicable for an enemy. On the fourth side there is a more gradual declivity, up which the fortress could be approached by means of a winding roadway. At the foot of this roadway was the town. The access ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... After climbing up a pinnacle of rock which overlooked the abyss, he was compelled to return re infecta; "and when we got a little way along the valley, I looked back; Sokol looked like a little castle of Edinburgh placed in the clouds; and a precipice on the other side of the valley presented a perpendicular stature of not less than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... to the extreme edge of the precipice, and, lying flat, he tried to discover what lay beneath. Evidently he did not see much, for upon getting up he shook his head. Then he gazed ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... above the stream was not more than forty or fifty feet. Down this gully Sam rode furiously, so that his horse might not be able to refuse the leap, which was a frightful one. Coming to the edge of the precipice with headlong speed, the animal could not draw back but plunged over with Sam sitting bolt upright on his back. Riding back to the top of the bank Weatherford ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... back from her flower-strewn feast, Set all her fields aflower, her flowers aflame, To applaud him that he came. Nor surely flashed not something of delight Through that steep strait of rock whose twin-cliffed height Links crag with crag reiterate, land with land, By one sheer thread of narrowing precipice Bifront, that binds and sunders Abyss from hollower imminent abyss And wilder isle with island, blind for bliss Of sea that lightens and of wind that thunders; Nor pealed not surely back from deep to steep Reverberate acclamation, steep to deep Inveterately ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... work that week as if the spirit of his father were hovering over him, warning him when awake in words of love and pleading, crying to him in his sleep in tones of anger and command, "Stand back; you are at the edge of the precipice." ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... seem to have been burnt over by fire, and baked of many colors, like the neighborhood of an old brick kiln. Any one who has seen the island of St. Helena will at once recognize it as the same phenomenon which is famous in the 'Hangings,' the blasted precipice by the side of Longwood Farm, overhanging the valley which Napoleon chose for his last resting place. This striking similarity is all the more worthy of note from its occurring there in a purely volcanic ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that sinks behind the hill at the first turn and reminds me no longer by sight or sound that life is fretting its channels there and everywhere with its world-old pathos and onward movement, caught on the sudden by unseen currents and swept into wild eddies, or flung over a precipice in a mist of tears. As I go on I feel a return of emotions which I am sure have their root in my earliest ancestry, a freshening of sense which tells me that I am nearing again those scenes which the unworn perceptions of primitive men first fronted. The conscious, self-directed ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... were sufficient to show how right I had been about his circulation. It didn't move one, as I had said; it stopped short in the same place, fell off in a sheer descent, like some precipice gaped up at by tourists. The public in other words drew the line for him as sharply as he had drawn it for Minnie Meadows. Minnie has skipped with a flouncing caper over his line, however; whereas the mark traced by a ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... narrow life, are shut off behind by the ponderous and impassable cliff; as if we had dwelt in the dim light of a cave, but coming out at last to look at the sun, a great stone had fallen and closed the entrance, so that there was no return to the shadow. The impassable precipice shuts off our former selves of yesterday, forcing us to look out over the sea only, or up ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... her father, nervously; "I'm really almost afraid to have you go. You might come to the precipice sooner, than you expect, and ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... exist as long as we live in the world. Yet, pursuing with joy the road of virtue, Like the man who observes the rugged path along the precipice, we ought Gladly and profitably ...
— The Essence of Buddhism • Various
... out on all-day excursions, enjoying the thrills of clambering up to what appeared to be inaccessible ledges, until eventually he became an expert cragsman. One day he came upon David Haggart {14a} sitting on the extreme verge of a precipice, "thinking of ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... came to the precipice in the side of the mountain from which the cave opened, he saw the black spot which marked the entrance. It was not large, and, close in front, sitting with his back against the ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... ruins of the entrance to the second ward, and of the tower near it, are very remarkable. "The latter (which once adjoined to the gate) was separated with a part of the arch at the time of the demolition of the Castle, and is moved down the precipice, preserving its perpendicularity, and projecting almost five feet below the corresponding part. Another of the towers on the same side is, on the contrary, inclined so much, that a spectator will tremble when passing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... He would construct there his English cottage in good solid stone, whose steep roofs would shed with facility the summer rain and the winter snow, whose irregularities of form and outline would harmonize with nature's Gothic work in precipice and rock, in trees and climbing vines. Or else, he would place there his Swiss chalet, which would be in harmony with the scene, and a pleasing object to the eye of the observer. On the broad, open plane the villa should be ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... received.' 'Alas! what are they, madam?' said I. 'The death of the queen, my dear mother,' she replied, 'that of the king, my father, killed in battle, and of one of my brothers, who has fallen down a precipice.' ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... only as a sort of parachute to break its fall in descending from a rock or tree to its accustomed feeding-ground. To get up again, it climbs, parrot-like, with its hooked claws, up the surface of the trunk or the face of a precipice. ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen |
