"Precipitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... herd of these creatures, who to a stranger's eye would appear to be in danger of drowning, although in reality they are merely gamboling in the element which is their delight. I have seen them cross the Brahmaputra when the channel was about a mile in width. Forty elephants scrambled down the precipitous bank of alluvial deposit and river sand: this, although about thirty-five feet high, crumbled at once beneath the fore-foot of the leading elephant, and many tons detached from the surface quickly formed a steep incline. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... stop, a deafening yell pierced the night, punctuated with pistol-shots. Cautious investigation revealed figures dancing wildly around a bonfire; and the passengers remembered the worst they had ever heard about Indians. The flames shot upward, setting the shadows fantastically leaping up the precipitous bluffs and among the weird petrifactions of a devil's nightmare that rimmed the circle of flaring light. A man with a gun in his hand climbed aboard the train and made his way to the dining-car, yelling for "cow-grease," and demanding, at the least, a ham-bone. It took ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... other explorations, in a general way, confirm these. Mr. Dawkins explored a group of caverns in Derbyshire, England. These caverns and fissures are situated in what is known as Cresswell Crags, the precipitous sides of a ravine through which flows a stream of water dividing the ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate, its capacity for sorrowful impression; and acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... the untold dangers and hardships in store, toiled up the Yukon, or, swarming over the precipitous Chilcoot Pass, braved, too often at cost of life, the boiling rapids to be passed in descending the Upper Yukon to the gold fields. Later the easier and well-wooded White Pass was found, traversed, at length, by a railroad. In October, 1898, the Cape Nome coast, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... murmuring and hooting in the darkness. And the violet glow-worms that hung in front of theatres and cinemas seemed to mark the entrances to unimaginable fastnesses, and the side streets seemed to lead to the precipitous edges of the ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... acoustic qualities inside their heads—and not much of anything else; but never did I despise them more than at that moment. He sent his grating, raucous, discordant, ill-timed guffaws reverberating off among the precipitous crags, and then he turned from me and ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... name I forget, succeeded in killing this queen of the moose tribe with great difficulty, while her calf was killed somewhere among the islands in Penobscot Bay; and to his eyes this mountain had still the form of the moose in a reclining posture, its precipitous side presenting the outline of her head. He told this at some length, though it did not amount to much, and with apparent good faith, and asked us how we supposed the hunter could have killed such ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... their uneventful year is the coming of the onion-sellers from over the sea. The historic connexion between Cornwall and Brittany is very ancient, and is a romance in itself. The English and French coasts, as they face each other there, are very much alike—broken, precipitous, and grand. The peoples live pretty much the same kind of lives on either side of the Channel. And when the onion-sellers come from France they are greeted with enthusiasm by the Cornish people, and although they speak their own tongue, they are perfectly understood. ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... go with him." Mary did not answer, but her head was reclined upon his bosom, and the Familist knew that she resigned herself wholly to his direction. He folded the shawl more carefully around her, and supported her down the precipitous and ragged bank of the river, followed closely by Passaconaway ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... note: archipelago of 17 inhabited islands and one uninhabited island, and a few uninhabited islets; strategically located along important sea lanes in northeastern Atlantic; precipitous terrain limits habitation to small ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... more gradual and less precipitous descent, he fixes his eye on some distant point in the earth beneath him, and thither bends his course. He is still almost meteoric in his speed and boldness. You see his path down the heavens, straight as a line; if near, you hear the rush of his wings; his shadow hurtles across the fields, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... Allen Garden, situated between the end of Camac Street and Wood Street, which for many years was known as the three-cornered taut, the banks of which were both high and precipitous, and a constant source of danger to children playing in the surrounding garden. The Corporation very wisely decided to fill it up, and so converted it into the present garden, in which are to be seen every evening crowds of happy and merry children playing about and thoroughly ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... diverged in so many different directions, that she soon saw it would be useless to follow their windings, and abandoning it, at the first turn, she labored forward towards what she thought was the nearest point of the summit. The cleared ground was soon past, and woods and rocks, clinging to the precipitous sides of the mountain, again opposed themselves to her progress. Occasionally, the path was to be seen running along the verge of the clearing, and then striking off into the scattering patches of grass and herbage, but in no instance could she trace it upward. Tufts ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... see, it might as well have been forty miles. I placed one arm round the trunk of the tree and leaned over the abyss. Far down were the small dark figures of our servants, looking up at us. The wall was absolutely precipitous, as ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... last chapter, and that men might be furnished with a material for their works of architecture and sculpture, at once soft enough to be subdued, and hard enough to be preserved; the second, that some sense of danger might always be connected with the most precipitous forms, and thus increase their sublimity; and the third, that a subject of perpetual interest might be opened to the human mind in observing the changes of form brought about by time on these ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... horses' hoofs. The road here must have curved sharply, for they were already so close upon us that, almost simultaneously with the sound, we could distinguish the deeper shadow of a small, compact body of horsemen directly in our front. To left of us there rose, sheer and black, the precipitous rock; to right we might not even guess what yawning void. It was either ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... descending into valleys, we reached a peak separated from the true summit of the mountain by a considerable chasm. Here our porters gave in, and declared they could carry their loads no further; and certainly the ascent to the highest peak was very precipitous. But on the spot where we were there was no water, whereas it was well known that there was a spring close to the summit, so we determined to go on without them, and carry with us only what was absolutely necessary. We accordingly took a blanket each, and divided our food ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... men. His right rested on the broken mountainous country of Elandskloof to the north, and his left on the mountains overlooking the Komati to the south. His centre was at Bergendal Farm and the rugged and precipitous hills in the rear of the farm, through which wound the railway and road, his line of retreat, quite concealed from the fire and view of the British force. On the extreme left a big gun with two or three smaller pieces were mounted, ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... hand-to-hand fighting, the night attacks, the charges up precipitous hills, the retreats made carrying the wounded under constant fire, which he witnessed and in which he bore his part, he never again can see with the same fresh and enthusiastic eyes. Then it was absolutely new, ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... have been subjected to an enormous amount of denudation. In some cases, as in the Longmynd Hills in Shropshire, they form low rounded elevations, largely covered by pasture, and with few or no elements of sublimity. In other cases, however, they rise into bold and rugged mountains, girded by precipitous cliffs. Industrially, the Cambrian Rocks are of interest, if only for the reason that the celebrated Welsh slates of Llanberis are derived from highly-cleaved beds of this age. Taken as a whole, the Cambrian formation is essentially composed of arenaceous ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... business the Captain did some adventurous climbing; it would have distressed Daisy if she had not been so intent upon his object; but as it was she strained her little head back to look at him, where he picked his way along at a precipitous height above her, sometimes holding to a bramble or sapling, and sometimes depending on his own good footing and muscular agility. In this way of progress, while making good his passage from one place to another, the ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... bent their steps as soon as the little basket had been well filled with strawberries; and descending the precipitous bank, fringed with young saplings; birch, ash, and poplars, they quickly found themselves beside the bright waters of the lake. A flint was soon found among the water-worn stones that lay thickly strewn upon the shore, and a handful of dry sedge, almost as inflammable ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... above story of piled-up loveliness, with opal and diamond cellars below. Spikes and stars crystalline radiated and refracted and reflected marvellously. But we did not reach the primary source of the stream by miles; we were stopped by a precipitous rock, down the face of which one half of the stream fell, while the other crept out of its foot, from a little cavernous opening about four feet high. Charley was a few yards ahead of me, and ran stooping ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... was found necessary to enlarge the platform in the centre of which the temple stood; and as the hill was sloping, even precipitous, on three sides, it was necessary to raise huge foundation walls from the plain below to the level of the platform, a work described by Pliny (xxxvi. 15, 24) as prodigious, and by Livy (vi. 4) as one ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... dun-and-ochre-coloured veld, where patches of bluish-green are beginning to spread. The south bank, where the bush grows thinnest, was frequently patronised by picnic-parties, and at all times a place of resort for strolling sweethearts. The north bank, much more precipitous, was clothed with a tangled luxuriance of vegetation, and threaded only by native paths, so narrow as to prove discouraging to pedestrians desirous of walking side by side. Where the outermost line of defences impinged upon the river-bed, the trees had been cut down and the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... again they went up and down the gorge, convinced that the fugitives must be hidden somewhere; for, as Nessus had anticipated, the cliffs at the upper end were so precipitous that an escape there was impossible, and the natives had kept so close a watch all night along the slopes at the lower end, and at the mouth, that they felt sure that their prey could not have escaped them unseen. And ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... round the Castle Hill, which King Charles pronounced the finest in his dominion, commands a prospect that cannot fail to interest. Below, the river winds like a thing of life; around, are wave- like sweeps of country, red and green, broken by precipitous rocks into a succession of natural terraces, many of which, being higher than the town itself, afford the most ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... compared to the one in the same key in the B minor Scherzo, while the return to the first subject is managed as consummately as in the E flat minor Scherzo, from op. 35. I confess to being stirred by this B minor study, with its tempo at a forced draught and with its precipitous close. There is a lushness about the octave melody; the tune may be a little overripe, but it is sweet, sensuous music, and about it hovers the hush of a ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... sawas, as though the sea penetrated through creek and inlet to the heart of the green country, the vague glitter of this watery world investing the scene with dream-like unreality. Brown campongs cling to mountain crest and precipitous ledge. These almost inaccessible fastnesses were colonised after the Moslem conquest by a Hindu tribe which refused to relinquish Brahminism. Driven from place to place by the fanatical hordes of Islam on the downfall of the Hindu empire, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... because else the perpendicular elevation above the level of the lake cannot be above one half of that extent. Seated on such an eminence, but yet surrounded by foregrounds of such quiet beauty, and settling downwards towards the lake by such tranquil steps as to take away every feeling of precipitous or dangerous elevation, Elleray possesses a double character of beauty, rarely found in connection; and yet each, by singular good fortune, in this case absolute and unrivalled in its kind. Within a bow-shot ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... not concur in these views. A little farther down the stream there was another elevation called the Aventine Hill, which seemed to him more suitable for the site of a town. The sides were less precipitous, and thus were more convenient for building ground. Then the land in the immediate vicinity was better adapted to the purposes which they had in view. In a word, the Aventine Hill was, as Remus thought, for every substantial reason, much the best locality; and as for the fact of their having been ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... emasculation we must go back to mythological relations. In the old legendary lore of ancient Scandinavia or of Germany, the loves and hatreds of their semi-mythological heroes and heroines space over many romantic incidents before reaching a culmination. The swiftly flowing Rhine, with its precipitous banks, eddies, and rapids; the broad and more majestic Danube or Elb; the broad meadows and Druidical groves on its hilly slopes and stretches of dark and gloomy forest,—all conspired to people the fancy with elfs, gnomes, fairies, and goblins, who were more or less intermingled in all the episodes ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... the youngest of the party. The trail had now become a grayish streak along the level table-land they were following, which also had the singular effect of appearing lighter than the surrounding landscape, yet of plunging into utter darkness on either side of its precipitous walls. Nevertheless, at the end of an hour the leader rose in his stirrups with a sigh ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... down by Monk's soldiers during the civil war, and had never been replaced, therefore presented no obstacle to Bothwell and his party. The avenue, very steep and narrow, and causewayed with large round stones, ascended the side of the precipitous bank in an oblique and zigzag course, now showing now hiding a view of the tower and its exterior bulwarks, which seemed to rise almost perpendicularly above their heads. The fragments of Gothic defences which it exhibited were upon such a ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... with his foot and found it slight and shallow, albeit with a rocky bed that made wading in his condition difficult. But he felt so much better he was able to attempt this, and, keeping near to one side of the current, he began to follow it slowly up-stream. The ascent was at times precipitous, which pleased him, though it depleted his new strength. It was easy in this way to hide his trail, and the higher and faster the stream took him into the mountains the safer he would be from any Calabasas pursuers. When he had regained a little strength and oriented himself, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... of the afternoon Joe observed that the hills grew more rugged and precipitous, and the river ran faster. He kept a constant lookout for the wall of rock which marked the point of danger. When the sun had disappeared behind the hills, he saw ahead a gray rock protruding from the green foliage. It was ponderous, overhanging, ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... so as to come down near the low ground at the foot of the ridge. No doubt they would have a far better chance to run across a landing-place there than where the ground was rocky and more precipitous. They had also to bear in mind that it would be necessary to make an ascent later on, if all went well; which must require a certain amount of ground level enough to make ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... defence for infantry. Chapultepec is a mound springing up from the plain to the height of probably three hundred feet, and almost in a direct line between Molino del Rey and the western part of the city. It was fortified both on the top and on the rocky and precipitous sides. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Chungking—which would have barred the advance of the Northern troops permanently as the river defiles even when lightly defended are impassable here to the strongest force. It was largely due to the hardships of forced marches conducted over these rugged mountains, which raise their precipitous peaks to the heavens, that Tsao-ao subsequently lost his life, his health being undermined by exposure, tuberculosis finally claiming him. But one thing at least did his resolute action secure. With Yunnan ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... nooks. The inspection on the whole created a favorable impression. First, in respect to safety, Mount Linde was as though the chosen spot of all Africa. Its sides were accessible only to chimpanzees. Neither lions nor panthers could climb over its precipitous sides. As to the rocky ridge, it was sufficient to place the King at its entrances to be able to sleep safely on both ears. Stas came to the conclusion that there he could repulse even a small division of dervishes, as the road leading to ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... front line while the stem ran back connecting with the road through the dip which goes from Beaumont-Hamel on the north to the Ancre. At the forked or western end, projecting down to the front, there is a chasm more than thirty feet deep, with walls so precipitous that in some parts they overhang. The Germans had burrowed into the sides of the earth and established lairs far below the thirty feet level of the ravine, where they were practically out of reach of shell fire coming from whatever direction. In some instances they had hollowed out great caves ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... precipitous mountain on the left, was so near to the flying train that the passengers in an open car could almost touch Madge, and she was to them like a strange and beautiful apparition, with her white face and large dark eyes filled with ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... gather once more, and darkness swallows up his individuality. He tells one anecdote in the History of the manner in which the Huguenots chased Catholics in the hills of Languedoc. They tracked the fugitives to caverns half way up precipitous cliffs. Then they smoked them out with their treasures by lighted bundles of straw let down by iron chains opposite the mouth. General Pelissier plagiarised the device, with more murderous details, in Algeria ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... conflicting channels, burst suddenly into frenzied convulsion—heaving, boiling, hissing—gyrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes, except in precipitous descents. ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... other, and the exact height of the banks above water level. We decided we would build the bridge across the mouth of the lagoon. The distance here between the two banks measured a little over 60 feet. The banks were very precipitous, and rose 13-1/2 feet above the level of the water. All these details, together with soundings of the bottom, all the way across, were sent to Uncle Ed, and on the day after our railway was completed quite a bulky ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... down, it seesawed endlessly. The afternoon wore on; each successive slope grew harder, for my legs were weary. Twice, braking with one foot on the front crotch and sliding the wheel, I had pitched headlong over the handle bars. Upon two descents that were too precipitous to venture unballasted, I tied fair-sized pine trees to the rear of my craft ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... just a tiny hamlet, a small cascade of houses tumbling to the riverside, with its own stone slip to meet the ferry at its foot. The road to this ferry is so steep as to be almost precipitous, and the cottages abutting on its side are embowered in fragrant bloom. There is a runnel of water at the roadside, and in one place this water is collected in a round stone basin that looks immensely old; from this it trickles forth again with coolness and musical plash. Having reached this spot, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... are among the most interesting to be found in the whole realm of Nature. Thus, the great tree, the "Grizzly Giant," of Mariposa, is shown in two admirable views; the mighty precipice of El Capitan, more than three thousand feet in precipitous height,—the three conical hill-tops of Yo Semite, taken, not as they soar into the atmosphere, but as they are reflected in the calm waters below,—these and others are shown, clear, yet soft, vigorous in the foreground, delicately distinct ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and six hundred feet in length, and about fifty in height. There was no resemblance to a coffin now as Brandon approached it, for that likeness was only discernible at a distance. Its sides were steep and precipitous. It was one black solid mass, without any outlying crags, or any fragments near it. Its upper surface appeared to be level, and in various places it was very easy to ascend. Up one of these places Brandon climbed, and soon stood ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... to descend the precipitous path the Inspector sang out a cheery "Hullo!" The man on duty in the box immediately answered. His voice echoed and reverberated down the cutting, and the next moment he appeared at the door of the box. He told us that he would be with us immediately; ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... follow her at once: he did not guess her purpose. She had almost reached the leaping-place, when Pierre shot from the trees, and seized her. The impulse of this was so strong, that they slipped, and quivered on the precipitous edge: but Pierre righted then, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... progress was slow, as the negro proceeded now with more caution. Darkness soon came upon them and made their advance still more difficult. The route that Washington was following often necessitated a climb up the almost perpendicular face of a rock as the mountain became more precipitous. Mason's hands bled from contact with the rough rocks, and he panted for breath. Still Washington pushed on, and when morning broke they found themselves at the top ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... canyon, as it seemed to Bart, and made for a patch of good-sized trees about half a mile from the mountain, and upon reaching this they found that the great river chasm had curved round, so that it was not above a hundred yards away, and Bart began to think that perhaps it would not prove to be so precipitous there. ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... serviceable, red-handed, broad-and-high-shouldered type; one of those imported female servants who are known in public by their amorphous style of person, their stoop forwards, and a headlong and as it were precipitous walk,—the waist plunging downwards into the rocking pelvis at every heavy footfall. Bridget, constituted for action, not for emotion, was about to deposit a plate heaped with something upon the table, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... Cibola to the east, says Castaneda, there was a village called "Acuco," erected on a rock. "This village is very strong, because there was but one path leading to it. It rose upon a precipitous rock on all sides, etc."[38] Jaramillo mentions, at one or two days' march from Cibola to the east, "a village in a very strong situation on a precipitous rock; ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... from fourteen to sixteen hundred feet over the sea-level; and the valleys by which they are traversed,—no mere shallow inflections of the general surface, like most of the other valleys of Orkney,—are of profound depth, precipitous, imposing, and solitary. The sudden change from the soft, low, and comparatively tame, to the bold, stern, and high, serves admirably to show how much the character of a landscape may depend on the formation which composes it. A walk of somewhat less than two miles brought me ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... hundred-weight each, in which state it leaves the mine. The casks are conveyed down the side of the mountain in a curious manner. Each cask is fixed upon a light sledge with two wheels, and a man, who is well used to the precipitous path, walks down in front of the sledge, taking care that it does not acquire momentum enough to overpower him. When the cask has been thus guided safely to the bottom, the man carries the sledge up hill upon his shoulders, and prepares ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... inquired Jo, "that day you got stalled in our first canyon in Colorado, when you tried to imitate an eagle and fly up a precipitous cliff and we had to ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... wore at that time—and accompanied him into a strange city, where the names of the streets were written on the walls in characters quite new to him; which gave him no surprise or uneasiness, for he remembered in his dream to have been there before. Although these streets were very precipitous, insomuch that to get from one to another it was necessary to descend great heights by ladders that were too short, and ropes that moved deep bells, and swung and swayed as they were clung to, the danger gave him little emotion ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... as an impertinence the chronicler's intrusion upon the scene may here depart and slam the door, if such violence truly express their sentiments. Others, averse to precipitous leavetaking, may linger, hat in hand, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... often puts his pursuers at fault—by passing over rocky shingle, along ledges of cliffs, or up precipitous slopes, where neither men nor dogs can safely follow him. This was just what they now had to fear; for the guide well knew that the forest they were in was surrounded on almost every side by rocky cliffs; ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... sides. A few tumbled-down cottages of grey stone lay scattered upon the lower slopes among patches of shabby and forlorn cultivation. Here and there an outcrop of rock ran skywards into somber and precipitous ridges. The October wind passed to and fro over it all, mournfully singing, and driving loose clouds that seemed to drop weighted ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... appropriate place in no other picture in the world but this? Is there anything in modern art—we will not demand that it should be equal—but in any way analogous to what Titian has effected, in that wonderful bringing together of two times in the Ariadne, in the National Gallery? Precipitous, with his reeling Satyr rout about him, repeopling and re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk with a new fury beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, fire-like flings himself at the Cretan. This is the time present. With this telling of the story an artist, and no ordinary ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... during a severe snow-storm in the year 1798, had gone with his dog, called Caesar, to a spot on the small stream of Paphry (a tributary of the North Esk), where his sheep on such occasions used to take shelter beneath some lofty and precipitous rocks called Ugly Face, which overhung the stream. While employed in driving them out, an immense avalanche fell from these rocks, and completely buried him and his dog. He found all his endeavours to extricate himself from this fearful situation ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... men; he admired the wonderful quickness of Butifer's movements, the sure-footed grace with which the hunter swung himself down the rugged sides of the crag, to the top of which he had so boldly climbed. The strong, slender form of the mountaineer was gracefully poised in every attitude which the precipitous nature of the path compelled him to assume; and so certain did he seem of his power to hold on at need, that if the pinnacle of rock on which he took his stand had been a level floor, he could not have set his foot down upon it more calmly. He carried ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... the precipitous hill which he had described to Dourlowski as the way up to the frontier from the Albern Woods, by the Cold Spring, the Fontaine-Froide. In all certainty, somebody was scaling the upper portion of that precipice, ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... scene, but she could enumerate enough of indiscriminate particulars for Margaret to make it out for herself Captain Lennox and another lately married officer shared a villa, high up on the beautiful precipitous rocks overhanging the sea. Their days, late as it was in the year, seemed spent in boating or land pic-nics; all out-of-doors, pleasure-seeking and glad, Edith's life seemed like the deep vault of ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... their speed alone, they rose like gleaming bows of silver from the foam. Intent to show him all her treasures, Wildenai guided him to a quiet stretch of water lying close to shore within the shadow of tall cliffs which rose at that point with precipitous ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... distinguished relative, Mr. Will Esmond, went as captain), was embarked at New York, and our armament sailed up the noble Hudson River, that presents finer aspects than the Rhine in Europe to my mind: nor was any fire opened upon us from those beetling cliffs and precipitous "palisades," as they are called, by which we sailed; the enemy, strange to say, being for once unaware of the movement we contemplated. Our first landing was on the Eastern bank, at a place called Verplancks ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... country that looked smooth but was very rough; a neglected field which they soon found to be full of the tallest grasses and the deepest rabbit-holes. Moreover, that great curve of the countryside which looked so slow and gentle when you glanced over it, proved to be highly precipitous when you scampered over it; and Turnbull was twice nearly flung on his face. MacIan, though much heavier, avoided such an overthrow only by having the quick and incalculable feet of the mountaineer; but both of them may be ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... riding in front. Two or three days later, word was brought to Ferguson that the Back-water men had come over the mountains; that the Indian-fighters of the frontier, leaving unguarded their homes on the Western Waters, had crossed by wooded and precipitous defiles to the help of the beaten men of the plains. Ferguson at once fell back, sending out messengers for help. When he came to King's Mountain, a wooded, hog-back hill on the border line between North and South ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... a town which was already on the point of falling into the hands of the enemy. Forming one of a reconnoitring party, which preceded the main body at some considerable distance, he and his companions came suddenly upon one of the enemy's outposts, occupying a high, and on one side precipitous rock, a short way from the town, which it commanded. Retreat was impossible, for they were already discovered, and the bullets were falling amongst them like the first of a hail-storm. The only possibility of escape remaining for them was a nearly hopeless ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... had often sat observing through a rondel of bossed glass of a multicoloured pane the spectacle offered with continual changes of the thoroughfare without, pedestrians, quadrupeds, velocipedes, vehicles, passing slowly, quickly, evenly, round and round and round the rim of a round and round precipitous globe. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... revealed a landscape of such beauty that Eleanor involuntarily pulled up the blind and sat entranced before it. No such thing as servants or servants' offices. A wide receding stretch of broken country, rising in the distance to the dignity of blue precipitous hills; a gorge of which opened far away, to delight and draw the eye into its misty depth; a middle distance of lordly forest, with patches of clearing; bits of tropical vegetation at hand, and over them and over ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... shattered and upturned fragments of the Moon's crust, convulsed by forces of a volcanic nature which have long since expended their energies and died out. The mountain ranges on the Moon resemble those of the Earth, but they have a more rugged outline, and their peaks are more precipitous, some of them rising to a height of 20,000 feet. They are called the Lunar Alps, Apennines, and Cordilleras, and embrace every variety of hill, cliff, mound, and ridge of comparatively low elevation. The plains are large level areas, ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... more delight; Nor how his chariot Siyan Ou did guide; Nor how, incas'd in hauberk's steely pride, His hundred myriads, at the cymbals' sound, The falcon launch'd, or slipp'd the eager hound; Or giving rein to every fiery steed No more precipitous Tai Shan would heed, Than stair which leadeth to some upper bower; Or swarming down tumultuous to the shore, Chain'd the sea-waters with the nets they cast— For such wild miracles the ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... walls and dominated by a great fortress called Sacsahuaman, which stood upon a steep and rocky hill overlooking the capital. On the side toward the city the fortress was practically impregnable on account of the precipitous slopes of the cliffs. The other side was defended by three stone walls laid out in zigzag shape, with salient and reentrant angles (demi-lunes), like an old-fashioned rail fence, with many doors, each closed ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... that Henry, in his progress to Arques, had to pass through a long and gloomy valley, which was bounded on either side by precipitous and forest-covered hills. Through this dangerous defile the long train of Henry's army was advancing, arranged and marshaled in such an order as seemed to afford the greatest hope of security in ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... winds along about midway up the mountain, bounded on the right by the towering cliffs and sloping forest of Hackgalla, and on the left by the almost precipitous descent of nearly one thousand feet, the sides of which are clothed by alternate forest and waving grass. At the bottom flows a torrent, whose roar, ascending from the hidden depth, increases the gloomy ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... steep and rugged, our speed abated. The precipitous banks shut out the sunlight, except at noon, and the road through this defile, overhung by towering trees and rocks, was even now in solemn shadow. The cart-road leading down to Redman's Dell, and passing the mills near Redman's Farm, diverges from the footpath with ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... hemicycle of hills. The heights of Mount Tifata began to fall away on the left, the rough, precipitous line of crags, sweeping around toward the east, seemed to dwindle into the distance, even as they drew nearer, while the low jumble of Neapolitan hills, beyond which towered Vesuvius with its fluttering pennon of vapour, rose higher and ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... on visiting the top of Dundurn, where the original well is supposed to have been, find themselves expatiating upon other features of interest surrounding them. The hill itself, it will be remarked, is covered all round, with the exception of the precipitous front facing the east, with piles of loose water-worn stones. At first view they appear only an irregular mass, and seem to be there only to make the ascent more slippery and difficult. Mr Skene, in his Celtic Scotland; points out that here we have the remains ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... started. Evidently the beast had been badly hit, for the blood spoor was easy to follow. Yet it had been able to retreat up to the end of the kloof that terminated in a cliff over which trickled a stream of water. Here it was not more than a hundred paces wide, and on either side of it were other precipitous cliffs. As we went from one of these a war-horn, such as the Basutos use, was blown. Although I heard it, oddly enough, I paid no attention to it at the time, being utterly intent upon ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... own eyes in Orthodoxy, in Love of glorious Liberty, confederated at Bar, and got into that extraordinary whirlpool, or cesspool, of miseries and deliriums we have been looking at; and now it has issued on a broad highway of progress,—broad and precipitous,—and will rapidly arrive at the goal set before it. All was so rapid, on the Polish and on the Turkish part. The blind Turks, out of mere fanaticism and heat of humor, have rushed into this adventure;—and go rushing forward into a series of chaotic platitudes on the huge scale, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... unexpectedly long and rough march, but reported as ordered. [Footnote: Id., p. 351.] We continued the march to Gover's Gap, drove away a cavalry rear-guard, and repaired the road which ran along a bench cut in the precipitous hillside. An easy way of communication with Sherman in the Chattooga valley was thus opened, after a day's march of twenty-two miles. General Kenner Garrard with his cavalry had followed a parallel valley further east, toward Dirt-town, and joined me at Gover's Gap soon after my arrival ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... now seated on her sturdy animal, Uncle took the bridle to lead her down the steep mountain path; she begged him not to come far with her, but he insisted on seeing her safely as far as Dorfli, for the way was precipitous and not without danger for the ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... we boarded a six AM train for Parahyba do Sul, which we reached about ten o'clock. It is a charming town situated on the river by the same name. This river reminds one of the French Broad, though the mountains are not so high and precipitous as the North Carolina mountains. The mountains, too, in this section are not covered with trees, but with a tall grass, which, being in bloom, gave a beautiful purple color to the landscape. The railroad climbs up the mountain sides from Rio ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... said, enough to make the hair on one's fur cap stand on end, to look at it. From the summit of what might almost be termed a small mountain—certainly, a tremendous hill—to the base, down a precipitous incline, the boys had constructed a chute, by banking the snow on either side. This chute led down on to the frozen stream, where a similar chute had been formed for a half-mile or more ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... borings which have been abundantly prosecuted in the counties of Merced, Fresno, Kings and Kern afford evidence looking toward such a determination of bedrock depth. On the ocean side the continental shelf is extremely narrow. The great peninsula presents a most precipitous aspect toward the ocean basin. It is interrupted at intervals by deep submarine gorges extending close ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... natural fortress, a large fertile valley, protected by precipitous hills and forests, yet with defiles known to the Americans, through which they could retreat if necessary. It was within striking distance of New Brunswick and Amboy, in which towns Washington kept the British cooped up for months, not permitting them to cut a stick of forest ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... will scatter, and the members of it prove very unruly. They will charge and rush in every direction but the right one, and the very devil seems to be in the beasts. Scrambling up steep ranges, dashing down precipitous ravines, and always forcing a passage through dense undergrowth and jungle, plunging through marsh and bog, chasing to right and to left, it is a wonder how dogs and men get through the work they do. And often there are miles and miles of this before the welcome ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... body. Towards daybreak the skipper appeared in shining oilskins, tapped the barometer, glanced at me, and laughed because my pillow—which was a linen bag stuffed with old magazines—at that moment became lower than my heels, and the precipitous rug tried to smother me. I enjoyed ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... hour of noon, when I came, all tattered and wayworn, to the summit of a steep descent, and looked below me on the sea. About all the coast, the surf, roused by the tornado of the night, beat with a particular fury and made a fringe of snow. Close at my feet, I saw a haven, set in precipitous and palm- crowned bluffs of rock. Just outside, a ship was heaving on the surge, so trimly sparred, so glossily painted, so elegant and point-device in every feature, that my heart was seized with admiration. The English colours blew from her masthead; and from my high station, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... Now a ditch is a ditch, assumably muddy, and usually traversing uninteresting and monotonous landscapes. But the Nahiku Ditch is not an ordinary ditch. The windward side of Haleakala is serried by a thousand precipitous gorges, down which rush as many torrents, each torrent of which achieves a score of cascades and waterfalls before it reaches the sea. More rain comes down here than in any other region in the world. In 1904 the ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... sailed again, and reached the Molucca Islands November 4th. In his passage thence to the island of Celebes, he incurred the most imminent danger of the whole voyage. The ship struck, as they were sailing before a fair wind, on a reef of rocks, so precipitous that it was impossible to lay out an anchor to heave her off. They stuck fast in this most hazardous situation for eight hours. At the end of that time the wind shifted, and the ship, lightened of part of her ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... detours, but follows straight up the bed of a stream, and the greater part of the five thousand feet is ascended by stone steps. A great ladder of eighteen flights climbs the last ravine, and to see it from below, sinuously mounting the precipitous face to the great arch that leads on to the summit, is enough to daunt the most ardent walker. We at least were glad to be chaired some part of the way. A wonderful way! On the lower slopes it passes ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... steep; precipitous in places. There were little gullies, which expanded as we climbed up them. It seemed as if we would never reach the top, but at last we were there. I was aware that the drug had ceased its action. The yellow, rocky ground was ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... precipitous rock wall surmounted by a fringe of thick shrubbery. On the left was another wall, perpendicular, flat on its top and stretching away into the distance, forming a grass plateau. Directly in front of him was ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Pike Lake. There, earlier in the season, a number of pines had been felled out on the ice, cut in logs, and left in expectation of ice thick enough to bear the travoy "dray." Owing to the fact that the shores of Pike Lake were extremely precipitous, it had been impossible to travoy the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... attack the town from the Heights of Abraham on the southern side. It seemed on the face of it an impossibility. How was it possible for the attacking force to make its way unseen by the French up the precipitous cliffs to the Heights of Abraham? Luckily, there was a young man in Wolfe's army, a Lieutenant McCulloch, who had been held prisoner in Quebec in 1756. With a view to future possibilities, he employed his time in surveying the cliffs, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... too, that never since these vessels were started has there been a single accident to life or limb. But the last bag is on board, steam is up, and away goes the ship past the South Stack lighthouse, built on an island under precipitous cliffs, from which a gun is fired when foggy, and in about an hour the Irish coast becomes visible, Howth and Bray Head. The sea gets pretty rough, but luckily does not interfere with your excellent appetite for the first-class refreshments supplied. The ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... the path we followed led up a somewhat steep ascent which, though not so precipitous as the place where I had entered the hollow, was a difficult climb, notwithstanding; seeing which, I put out a hand to aid my aged companion. But he ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... breakfast. The strangest thing of all is that these Protean creatures, which seem fitted only for an aquatic existence, should be so much at home on land, so ably using their queer wings as substitutes for legs that they can run up or down high and precipitous slopes with the ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... we trudged along, passing now and then a Kurdish lad, with his flock of sheep and goats feeding on the mountain-grass, which was here much more luxuriant than below. Looking backward, we saw that we were higher than the precipitous cliffs which overtower the town of Bayazid, and which are perhaps from 1500 to 2000 feet above the lowest part of the plain. The view over the plateau was now grand. Though we were all fatigued by the day's work, the cool, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... served The Company for fifty-seven years, and his ambition is to put in three years more. The Company gives its employes a pension after thirty years' service, and this veteran of Good Hope surely deserves two pensions. The steps are almost precipitous, but the old gentleman insists upon coming down to present in person his report to his superior officer. Then the two climb up the bank together, the younger man giving a strong arm to the older. We follow, and half-way up the two figures stop, ostensibly for Mr. Gaudet ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... flint-hard, ice-paved road had dissolved to a river of soft slush, and one could sense rather than see the ominous premonitory twitchings in the lowering snow-banks as the lapping of the hot moist air relaxed the brake of the frost which had held them on the precipitous mountain sides. Every stretch where the road curved to the embrace of cliff or shelving valley wall was a possible ambush, and we slipped by them with muffled engine and ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... left of us rise the rugged and desolate shores of Mull, while far away to the northeast extends the lofty range of dark, resounding Morven,—the prospect in that direction terminated and crowned by the huge and precipitous Cruachan Ben, while in a more northerly direction the Adnamurchan ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... his covert should he fail in his first attempt. His object now was to see if his estimate of proximity to the mine was correct; and leaving his horse, he pushed up the mountain-side. At last he reached a precipitous ledge. Skirting this a short distance, he found a place of comparatively easy ascent, and soon learned with much satisfaction that he was not over two hundred yards from the thicket opposite Mr. Alford's quarters. These discoveries all favored possible future operations; ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... Kublai-Khan had sent an ambassador who had brought him back some pretended relics of Adam, and among other things two of his molar teeth; for, if we can believe the Saracen traditions, the tomb of our first father must have been on the summit of one of the precipitous mountains, which forms the highest ground in the island. After losing sight of Ceylon, Marco Polo went to Cail, a port that we do not find marked on any of the modern maps, but a place where all the vessels touched ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... through the south end of a flat-topped sandstone range of about 1,200 feet elevation above the sea, presenting many bold and picturesque outlines and detached summits, terminating in abrupt and almost precipitous faces; to this we gave the name of the Kennedy Range, in honour of ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... were sudden glimpses of icy peaks, cut diamonds in the sun, seen for a moment, then swallowed up by stealthily creeping white clouds, or caressed by them with a benediction in passing. Thin streaks of cascades on precipitous rocks made silver veinings in ebony. Side valleys opened unexpectedly, and one knew from hearsay that gold mines were hidden there. Treading the road built by Napoleon, I was enveloped in the gloom of the wondrous Gondo Schlucht, to come out into a broad valley,—a green amphitheatre, above ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... bees had their special quarry, a small deep valley in the midst of a waste of interlacing Bad Lands, on the side of a precipitous butte. Here they picked and shoveled to their hearts' content, plastering their thighs until their wings would hardly lift them. They braced their feet, whirred, lifted unevenly, and sank back with a jar. Then turning, they bit off a piece of ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... to the top of the precipitous ascent and found themselves upon the broken edge of the forest amid a black chaos of piled up rock and underbrush. Evidently, the land here was giving way, little by little, for here and there they could see a tree canting tipsily over the edge, its network ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... four miles of Berwick. No one has seen and not admired the romantic amphitheatre below Edrington Castle, through which the Whitadder coils like a beautiful serpent glittering in the sun, and sports in fantastic curves beneath the pasture-clad hills, the grey ruin, the mossy and precipitous crag, and the pyramid of woods, whose branches, meeting from either side, bend down and kiss the glittering river, till its waters seem lost in their leafy bosom. Now, gentle reader, if you have looked upon the scene we have described, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... flooding showers which had been falling upon hundreds of square miles of precipitous mountin sides were now gorging through the crooked, narrow throat of the Little Rockcastle. The torrent filled the ragged banks to the brim, and in their greedy swirl undermined and tore from there logs, ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... couch. A sudden discharge of musketry rang through the forest, and thirteen bullets pierced as many bodies. Appalled by so sudden an attack and such terrible slaughter, the survivors, unaware of the feebleness of the force by which they were assailed, plunged down the precipitous hill, tumbling over each other, and rolling among the rocks. The adventurous band eagerly pursued them, and shot at them as they would at deer flying through the forest. Many more thus fell. One keen marksman struck ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... admiration, or devotion, or even animal spirits. He now and then, though seldom, attempts to write as if he were: and never, we think, without leaving an impression of poverty: as the brook which on nearly level ground quite fills its banks, appears but a thread when running rapidly down a precipitous declivity. He has feeling enough to form a decent, graceful, even beautiful decoration to a thought which is in itself interesting and moving; but not so much as suffices to stir up the soul by mere sympathy with itself in its simplest manifestation, nor ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... 8th.—Yesterday afternoon, a stroll with B—— up a large brook, he fishing for trout, and I looking on. The brook runs through a valley, on one side bordered by a high and precipitous bank; on the other there is an interval, and then the bank rises upward and upward into a high hill with gorges and ravines separating one summit from another, and here and there are bare places, where the rain-streams have washed away the grass. The brook is bestrewn with stones, some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Quebec, with her gray walls and shining tin roofs; her precipitous, headlong streets and sleepy squares and esplanades; her narrow alleys and peaceful convents; her harmless antique cannon on the parapets and her sweet-toned bells in the spires; her towering chateau on the heights and her long, low, queer-smelling ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... ledges cut around the sides of a precipitous trail, or crossing a narrow natural bridge spanning the frightful gorges found everywhere in the mountains, a mule will be incontinently thrown off the slippery path, and fall hundreds of feet into the yawning canyon below. Generally instant death is their portion, though I recall ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... a small sailing-boat and had made for St. Mena's Island, a small rocky piece of land lying about a mile off shore, and nearly five miles from Killigwent Cove. The island was roughly three-quarters of a mile in length, and four hundred yards wide in the broadest part. The north and west sides were precipitous, but on the side nearest to the mainland the ground sloped gradually, and was indented by several ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... in length by three in breadth. The whole seems to be of volcanic origin; although there is no appearance of any crater, or of any one central eminence. The most remarkable feature is a hill 1,000 feet high, of which the upper 400 feet consist of a precipitous, singularly shaped pinnacle, formed of columnar phonolite, containing numerous crystals of glassy feldspar, and a few needles of hornblende. From the highest accessible point of this hill, I could distinguish in different parts of the group several other conical hills, apparently of the same ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... uneasy in his lawful gears; 60 At best, as little honest as he could, And, like white witches[81], mischievously good. To his first bias longingly he leans; And rather would be great by wicked means. Thus framed for ill, he loosed our triple hold[82]; Advice unsafe, precipitous, and bold. From hence those tears! that Ilium of our woe! Who helps a powerful friend, forearms a foe. What wonder if the waves prevail so far, When he cut down the banks that made the bar? 70 Seas follow but their nature to invade; But he by art our native strength betray'd. So Samson ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... its increasingly precipitous edge till he reached a sort of cornice that formed a jutting circle of stone around it. There he leaned far over and saw, about ten feet below him, a round opening like a big port-hole. From it were streaming waves of warm, foul air, from which he judged it to ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... nothingness as compared with the almost unconquerable obstacles which he was to face on his way to the South. In no other part of the continent do the Andes present such an appalling combination of ravines, torrents, precipitous paths and gigantic peaks. Furthermore, nowhere on the continent was the population so hostile to freedom as were the pastusos (inhabitants of the Pastos). Men, women and children cordially hated the cause of the Republic, and stopped at no crime to destroy ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... distribution in public of grain and pulse to all, both citizens and strangers. And the child-image of Charila is brought in. When they had all received their share, the king struck the image with his sandal, the leader of the Thyiades lifted the image and took it away to a precipitous place, and there tied a rope round the neck of the image and ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison |
