"Steeply" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sultry and clouded. Drenching tropical showers succeeded bursts of sweltering sunshine. The green pathway of the road wound steeply upward. As we went, our little schoolboy guide a little ahead of us, Father Simeon had his portfolio in his hand, and named the trees for me, and read aloud from his notes the abstract of their virtues. Presently the road, mounting, showed us the vale of Hatiheu on a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... however, and followed on, with her eyes closed and her lips moving in prayer. She happened to open them at a bad place, although safe enough, according to Bill, and nothing to what we were coming to a few days later. Opening them as she did on a ledge of rock which sloped steeply for what appeared to be several miles down on each side, she uttered a piercing shriek, followed by a sneeze. As before, her horse started to run, and Aggie is, I believe Bill said, the only person in the world who ever took that ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Edwin came steeply out of the cinder-strewn back streets by Woodisun Bank [hill] into Duck Square, nearly at the junction of Trafalgar Road and Wedgwood Street. A few yards down Woodisun Bank, cocks and hens were scurrying, with necks horizontal, from all quarters, and were ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... from the precipitous river front of the citadel hill of Quebec, in 1889, dashed across Champlain Street, wrecking a number of houses and causing the death of forty-five persons. The strata here are composed of steeply ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... of this crowd and plunged into another passageway, sloping downward still more steeply. I was so much interested in the strange scenes opening before me that I remarked little of the distance we traveled. Nor did I question Lylda but seldom. I was absorbed in the complete similarity between this and my own world in its general characteristics, and yet its complete ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... fruits and berries, and pursued their journey, and it was not long before another of the obstacles which the roc and the hermit had foretold threatened to end their pilgrimage. It was a chasm that fell away so steeply and was so deep and wide that, looking into the depths below, the man shuddered and started back. Before he had time to utter his dismay, a large mountain deer appeared noiselessly before the travelers. The man started eagerly, but as the ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... Olaf Kyrre, the founder of the city. The narrow harbour between is crowded with fishing-vessels,—during the season often numbering from six to eight hundred,—and beyond it the southern promontory, quite covered with houses, rises steeply from the water. A public grove, behind the fortress, delights the eye with its dark-green mounds of foliage; near it rise the twin towers of the German Church, which boasts an age of nearly seven hundred years, and the suburbs on the steep mountain-sides ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... with misery and she must have been suspected. But the girl lay moodily on her bed, and the widow was at liberty to stand at the window with her hands spread on the sill, and look, and listen, and look, and listen, unwatched. She could not see the street, for below their dormer the roof ran down steeply a yard or more to the eaves; but she had full command of the opposite houses, and at one of the windows a young girl was dressing herself. The woman watched her plait her fair hair, looking sideways the while at a little mirror; and saw her put on a poor necklace and ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... way in which the sea raced past these points, that the land did not extend beyond them. Behind him, it rose steeply to a considerable height, 150 or 200 feet. In the center was the tallest hill, which seemed to end abruptly towards the south-west. On the north-east side it was connected with a rocky promontory by a ridge of easy grade. The sailor turned ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... over there,' said the Captain, who was evidently trying to be civil. He pointed to a great island rock, that rose steeply from the sea, crowned with huge walls and towers. There was another city on ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... dreaded spot where Terence Comerford had been flung on to the convenient heap of shingle. Already he could hear the roar of the water where it tumbled over the weir like long green hair. Above it on either side the banks of the river rose steeply. On the side nearest to him was the Mount, in the heart of which Admiral Hercules O'Hart had chosen to be buried. It was covered thickly with trees. In Spring it was beautiful with primroses which showed not a leaf between, ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... went back the next day, taking Mr. Hammond with them. This time they merely glanced at the spot where the bear and the bull had died, and they did not visit the family of nesters at all. The shadowy mouth of the canyon, its sides running up steeply into the hills, was long in sight before the little ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... was a providential encounter. Only half an hour ago he had been feeling horribly bored. Here was employment the bare thought of which, was righteous self-applause. He took possession forthwith. The first need of this exhausted being was companionship. He flung himself down on the steeply sloping turf beside the motionless seated figure, and threw out ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... edge fringed with sago palms in a very decorative manner. This is one of the two ridges we had seen at a distance; the other is higher and was passed further up the river. From the foot of the cliff the jungle sloped steeply down toward the water. The blue sky, a few drifting white clouds, the beautiful light of the fresh, glorious morning, afforded moments of delight that made one forget all the trouble encountered in getting ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... the iron door. Here the ground was on a level with the bottom of the pit, but sloped steeply up to the top of its walls elsewhere, so that one could look down inside. The Baron unlocked the door and entered with his cowslip wine, which (not being a very potent decoction) began to be covered with threads of ice as soon as it was set down. ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... in fearful expectancy. Then they saw her flash into view and come galloping down along the edge of the ridge where the hill fell away so steeply that it might be called a cliff. Indian fashion, she was whipping the pinto down both sides with the end of her reins. Her slim legs hung straight, her moccasined toes pointing downward. One corner ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... footing. The entrance to this series, known as Simud Putih, or "white entrance," is estimated to be at an elevation of 300 feet above sea level, and the porch by which you enter them is about 30 feet high by about 50 wide. The floor slopes steeply downwards and brings you into an enormous cave, with smaller ones leading off it, all known to the nest collectors by their different native names. You soon come to a large black hole, which has never been explored, but which is said to communicate ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... commission, Murray Frobisher had hurried back to his little ship, helped the astonished stokers with his own hands to raise steam, and at midnight on a dark, blustering night, with half a gale blowing from the south-east, the sea running steeply, and a heavy driving rain lashing right in their faces, he and his little crew cleared from Portland Roads, dashed across Weymouth Bay at a reckless speed—considering the height of the sea—and doubled ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... of the court they came to an answering door. This was already unlocked and partially ajar. It opened directly upon the highest terrace of the cemetery which led down steeply in great, curved, irregular steps to a plain. The crimson light in the west had almost gone. Here to the north, where rice-fields and small huddled villages stretched out as far as the eye could see, a band ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... The model had failed one day just for a moment to respond to Filmer's guidance, or he had been distracted by the compliments of an archbishop. At any rate, it suddenly dug its nose into the air just a little too steeply as the archbishop was sailing through a Latin quotation for all the world like an archbishop in a book, and it came down in the Fulham Road within three yards of a 'bus horse. It stood for a second perhaps, astonishing ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... come to Caernarvonshire, and reach the remarkable estuary dividing the mainland from the island of Anglesea, and known as the Menai Strait. This narrow stream, with its steeply-sloping banks and winding shores, looks more like a river than a strait, and it everywhere discloses evidence of the residence of an almost pre-historic people in relics of nations that inhabited its banks before the ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... adventure, (or even the modern history of Abu Ghosh the robber-chief of this village a hundred years ago), seem real to us to-day. Everything around us is so safe and tranquil, and, in spite of its novelty, so familiar. The road descends steeply with long curves and windings into the Wadi Beit Hanina. We meet and greet many travellers, on horseback, in carriages and afoot, natives and pilgrims, German colonists, French priests, Italian monks, ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... like a spinal column. About five miles south of Jerusalem a ridge or spur shoots off from the central range towards the east. On the terminal bluff of this ridge lies the town of Bethlehem. On the west it is shut in by the plateau, and on the east the ridge breaks steeply down into the plain. Vineyards cover the hillsides with green and purple, and wheatfields wave in the valleys. In the distant east, across the Dead Sea, the mountains of Moab are penciled in dark blue against ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... I began me a pillar of rock. Rather was it a pyramid, four-square, broad at the base, sloping upward not steeply to the apex. In this fashion I was compelled to build, for gear and timber there was none in all the island for the construction of scaffolding. Not until the close of the fifth year was my pyramid complete. It stood on the summit of the island. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... faint with weariness, and those six miles seemed a dozen. Idea of distance is vague among the mountaineers, and two hours of weary travel followed, yet nothing that he recognized was in sight. Once a bend of the river looked familiar, but when he neared it, the road turned steeply from the river and over a high bluff, and the boy started up with a groan. He meant to reach the summit before he stopped to rest, but in sheer pain, he dropped a dozen paces from the top and lay with his tongue, like a dog's, between ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... angle where two streets met steeply and started thence on a joint pitch into the centre of the town. She ran her eyes quickly up and down each vista of cobblestones, and, seeing no one that she knew either near or far, put her hand ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... sleeping king. And the flakes melted silently into the black waters. And the wide avenue to which they came led to a sleeping palace! No, it was a city, Somerville, Ditmar told her, as they twisted in and out of streets, past stores, churches and fire-engine houses, breasted the heights, descended steeply on the far side into Cambridge, and crossed the long bridge over the Charles. And here at last was Boston—Beacon Street, the heart or funnel of it, as one chose. Ditmar, removing one of the side curtains ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the forest; wandered to and fro Through many a winding path and dim retreat, Till I grew weary: when I chose a seat Upon an oak-tree, which had been laid low By some wind storm, or by some lightning stroke. And Roy stood just below me, where the ledge On which I sat sloped steeply to the edge Of sunny meadows lying at my feet. One hand held mine; the other grasped a limb That cast its checkered shadows over him; And, with his head thrown back, his dark eyes raised And fixed upon me, silently he gazed Until I, smiling, turned to him and spoke: "Give words, my ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... flat on the ground in the long grass, thus effectually concealing himself from the view of any chance passer-by, and crawled to the crest of the hill, where he again peered cautiously about him. The ground, from the spot whereon he knelt, declined pretty steeply to the sea, only a quarter of a mile distant; slightly to his right there lay a valley, with a tiny river flowing through it into the sea; and on either bank of this stream there stood two or three crazy wattle-huts, scarcely worthy the name of human habitations, with a net or two spread behind ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... times, we toil steeply up here, with the dead upon his bier; for not often in Tiverton do we depend on that uncouth monstrosity, the hearse. It is not that we do not own one,—a rigid box of that name has belonged to us ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... underwater shelf extending from the shore with a declivity of only five to ten feet to the mile toward the centre of the sea, until the depth of about five hundred feet is attained; from this point the bottom descends more steeply into the ocean's depth. It is probable that the larger part of the material composing these continental shelves has been brought to its position by tidal action. Each time the tidal wave sweeps in toward the shore it urges the finer particles of sediment along with it. When it moves out it drags ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... Mayenfeld is charmingly situated. From it a footpath leads through green, well-wooded stretches to the foot of the heights which look down imposingly upon the valley. Where the footpath begins to go steeply and abruptly up the Alps, the heath, with its short grass and pungent herbage, at once sends out its soft perfume to meet ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... been here before. He knew this street, set upon a hill, rising steeply between oak and maple trees. Those lampposts were old friends, that crack in the pavement was an ancient landmark. Here were the houses, heavy with familiarity. They seemed to lean expectantly toward him, like spectators waiting for the final act of ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... of Deborah's victory, and who now rallied around Gideon to the number of thirty-two thousand. The narrative shows us the two armies confronting each other on the opposite slopes of the valley of Jezreel, where it begins to dip steeply towards the Jordan. Gideon and his men are on the south side of the valley, above the fountain of Harod, or 'Trembling,' apparently so called from the confessed terror which thinned his army. The word 'is afraid,' in verse 3, comes from the same root. On the other side of the glen, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... night of tempest with rain and wind, a great wild wind that shouted mightily near and far, filling the world with halloo; while, ever and anon, thunder crashed and lightning flamed athwart the muddy road that wound steeply up betwixt grassy banks topped by swaying trees. Broken twigs, whirling down the wind, smote me in the dark, fallen branches reached out arms that grappled me unseen, but I held on steadfastly, since every ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... buildings, except the handsome Parliament House, the new post office, and the offices of the Standard Bank. The immediate suburbs, inhabited chiefly by Malays and other coloured people, are mean. But the neighbourhood is extremely attractive. To the north-west Table Mountain and its spurs descend steeply to the sea, and the road which runs along the beach past the village of Sea Point offers a long series of striking views of shore and crag. It is on the east, however, that the most beautiful spots lie. Five miles from Cape Town and connected with it by railway, the village of Rondebosch ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... of the islands, rising steeply from the sea, are rugged and mountainous; South Georgia is largely barren and has steep, glacier-covered mountains; the South Sandwich Islands are of volcanic ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... once impregnable Castle as have not been removed to make way for the present railway-station. Beyond this, there is little about Berwick to tell of its hoary antiquity and its eventful history. But its red-roofed houses, rising steeply from the left bank of the Tweed, and looking across the tidal river to the villages of Tweedmouth and Spittal, have a picturesqueness of their own, whether they are seen when the lights and shadows of a summer day are playing upon ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... into a cleft, where he could not reach it with the stones he threw. His thoughts, however, were brought back to his surroundings so that he remembered Peppajee. He stood still, and scanned carefully the jumble of rocks and bowlders which sloped steeply down to the river, looking for a betraying bit of color ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... met her view was one of keen disappointment. The side of the hill descended very steeply into a narrow valley, through which flowed a small stream. Beyond were hills stretching as far as she could see, until their tall peaks mingled with the clouds. Just then the sun disappeared, black shadows crept rapidly over the mountain-tops, the ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... we sally forth and are led into a curious long dark alley or passage where the houses almost meet overhead; it slopes down steeply and there are shallow steps at intervals. The sun has come out, luckily, and looking up we can see a very narrow strip of blue sky, but down below it is very dark. You slip and nearly come full length on the pavement because of the old cabbage ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... stone edifice, in the style of the Spanish Renaissance, which now goes by the name of the Nieuwerck, with its ten shapely arches supported by slender pillars, above whose sculptured capitals rise tiers of narrow windows and the steeply-pitched roof with gables of curiously carved stone. Ypres had ceased to be a great commercial city long before the Nieuwerck was built; but the Cloth Hall was a busy place during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when Ypres shared with ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... begun by searching the cave. They had followed it for fifty yards, and come to a ridge of rock, heaped with ore-weed, beyond which (it was certain) no ordinary tide ever penetrated. The floor of the cave shelved pretty steeply up to this ridge, and beyond it lay a pool of fresh water, about twenty yards long. It was impossible that a human body could have been swept over the ridge into this pool. Nevertheless they had explored it. But would the Commandant care ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... nullah, which at length brought it out on a little plateau of rocks. There the road climbed a long ridge till at last it reached the great plateau, where Forza, set on a small hilltop, watched thirty miles of primeval desert. The air was growing chilly, for the road climbed steeply and already it was many thousand feet above the sea. The curious salt smell which comes from snow and rock was beginning to greet his nostrils. The blood flowed more freely in his veins, and insensibly he squared his shoulders to drink in the cold hill air. It was of the mountains and ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... the road, pushing on towards the edge of the high downs over Kemsing; and presently came to the Ightam road where it began to run steeply down hill; here, too, Mr. Kirke looked this way and that, but no one was in sight, and then the whole party crossed; they kept inside the edge of the wood all the way along the downs for another mile or so, with the rich sunlit valley ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... sometimes, climbing," she observed. I waited. "The trail up the mountain of Self-discovery is not an easy one. One's unaccustomed feet get sore, and one's courage wavers when the trail sometimes creeps along precipices or shoots steeply up over rocks. But I think the greatest test comes when the little hamlets appear—quiet, peaceful little spots, with smoke curling out of the chimneys of nestling houses. They offer such peace and comfort for weary feet. It's then one is tempted to throw away the mountain-staff and accept ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... rock, grassy on top, with here and there cedar trees, led steeply down for perhaps five hundred feet. A precipice stopped me. From it I heard Don baying below, and almost instantly saw the yellow gleam of a lion in ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... freshly, sat high-sided with ponderous dignity alongside the wooden jetties, looking more like unmovable buildings than things meant to go afloat; others, half loaded, far on the way to recover the true sea-physiognomy of a ship brought down to her load-line, looked more accessible. Their less steeply slanting gangways seemed to invite the strolling sailors in search of a berth to walk on board and try "for a chance" with the chief mate, the guardian of a ship's efficiency. As if anxious to remain unperceived amongst ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the dark along the ridge of a deep coulee, the wall on the right of which went down steeply to a depth ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... followed a steeply descending way that passed beneath an arch of interlocking machinery, and so came into a vast deep gangway that ran athwart the bottom of the pit. This gangway, wide and vacant, and yet relatively narrow, conspired with everything about it to enhance ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Wellesley; two years about equally divided among Paris, Dresden and Florence. And now Jane Hastings was at home again. At home in the unchanged house—spacious, old-fashioned—looking down from its steeply sloping lawns and terraced gardens upon the sooty, smoky activities of Remsen City, looking out upon a charming panorama of hills and valleys in the heart of South Central Indiana. Six years of striving in the East and abroad to satisfy the restless energy she inherited from her father; and here ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... on, firing most heavily, until the charging lines were within fifteen yards of them, and then ran down the slope and disappeared behind a ridge of rocks some forty yards ahead, beyond which the ground was dead and fell steeply away to the front. Almost before the men could be secured in the position they had won, bullets began to come in quickly from the right and left, and the cover of the rocks had to be sought as several men were hit. A few of the Boers who had been dislodged ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... road rose steeply to a grass spur above the forest; and it was here, about sunset, that they came across an aged lama—but they called him a bonze—sitting cross-legged above a mysterious chart held down by stones, which he was explaining to a young man, evidently a neophyte, of singular, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... Melchior paused for them to look about them, and upward toward where the gully ended in a large field of snow, above and beyond which was steeply scarped mountain, rising higher and higher toward ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... course, the record of an earthquake is preserved in unique fashion. The steep face of a terrace is covered with trees forty or fifty years old. Near the base the trees are bent in peculiar fashion. Their lower portions stand at right angles to the steeply sloping face of the terrace, but after a few feet the trunks bend upward and stand vertically. Clearly when these trees were young the terrace was not there. Then an earthquake came. One block of the earth's crust was dropped down while another was raised up. Along the dividing line a terrace ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... woods now, walking at a good pace up the steeply rising, grass-grown wood-road. Sylvia quite consciously summoned all her powers of attention and concentration for the hour before her, determined to make a good impression to counteract whatever too great insight her host might have shown in the matter ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... again and then started off to follow the boys, trying hard to walk slowly and steadily; but it was all in vain. The hill-side sloped very steeply to the broad bed of willows and reeds far below, making the way very bad for so heavy and inactive a man. Worse still: walking over the short grass in the hot sun had made the bottoms of the monk's sandals as slippery ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... the far hollow depths. Scarcely could we travel a hundred yards but we were compelled to leap some deep, dark crack. Often they were so wide a running jump was necessary, and at times the smooth rock sloped on both sides toward the crevice rather steeply. Once the Major came sliding down a bare slope till at a point where he caught sight of the edge of a sombre fissure just where he must land. He could not see its width; he could not return, and there he hung. Luckily I was where by another path I could ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... act; to-morrow thou shalt die. Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore, Thou say'st: 'Man's measured path is all gone o'er: Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh, Man clomb* until he touched the truth; and I, Even I, am he whom it was destined for.' How should this be? Art thou then so much more Than they who sowed, ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... within a yard of him. Noiselessly, savagely determined, Nibet lifted his arm for a murderous stroke. At this precise moment Fandor stopped at the verge of the exit, by which the sewer discharged its burden steeply ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... on the Gulf of Spezzia, and Turbia, just above Monaco, are at the two ends of the Riviera; between them the mountains rise steeply from the shore, along which in Dante's time there was ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... hour before the opening of court he crossed the bridge into High Street, which was then as picturesquely Gothic and decaying and overpopulated as the Cowgate, but high-set, wind-swept and sun-searched, all the way up the sloping mile from Holyrood Palace to the Castle. The ridge fell away steeply, through rifts of wynds and closes, to the Cowgate ravine on the one hand, and to Princes Street's parked valley on the other. Mr. Traill turned into the narrow descent of Warriston Close. Little more than a crevice in the precipice of tall, old buildings, on it fronted a business house whose ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... end of the mile this snake-like split in the solid rock came suddenly out into a broader, more steeply pitched canyon whose walls went straight up to the open skies above. Here there were heaps and piles and long slides of dead stone, weathered and powdered, that had fallen from time to time from the parent walls. This ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... we reach the ground. A large hollow in the undulating surface of the Campagna, surrounded in great part by a steeply rising bank, has been chosen as the scene of operations, in order to afford as much vantage-ground as may be for the spectators. But other accommodation than such as is afforded by Nature has been provided. A range of seats of rough planks, something in the form of the grand stand on a race-course, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... posted on Groen Kop, three miles distant from Rundle's Head Quarters. The position is fairly strong, and resembles a wedge lying on the veld, with a gentle ascent from the east to a plateau to which the normal level rises steeply on three sides. A mile or two to the S.E. it is commanded by a higher eminence, from which a party of Boers had already been expelled. It was not, however, occupied, and De Wet promptly made use of it as an observation post, for which it was admirably adapted, as it looks down into the British ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... was at its worst. I hardly know how to give an adequate idea of it to one who is not familiar with Spanish-American cities and architecture, but I will try. In the first place, the site of the city is the slope of a hill which falls rather steeply to the water on the eastern side of the bay. The most important streets, such as Enramadas and Calle Baja de la Marina, extend up and down the slope at right angles to the water-front, and are crossed at fairly regular intervals ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... instant with a chart, which he studied, while steering, with a success that its reluctant folds seemed to render impossible. Waiting respectfully for his revival I had full time to look about. The fiord here was about a mile broad. From the shore we had left the hills rose steeply, but with no rugged grandeur; the outlines were soft; there were green spaces and rich woods on the lower slopes; a little white town was opening up in one place, and scattered farms dotted the prospect. The other shore, which I could just see, framed between ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... we wandered about in quest of the post-office, and for a long time without success. This little town of Grasmere seems to me as pretty a place as ever I met with in my life. It is quite shut in by hills that rise up immediately around it, like a neighborhood of kindly giants. These hills descend steeply to the verge of the level on which the village stands, and there they terminate at once, the whole site of the little town being as even as a floor. I call it a village; but it is no village at all,—all the dwellings standing apart, each in its own little domain, and each, I believe, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... leverage barely made Link's own struggle a success. The half-drowned man regained his footing. Floundering waist-deep in water, he clambered up the steeply shelving bank to shore. There at the road's edge he lay, gasping and sputtering and ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... broken concrete blocks from which the twisted ends of iron rods projected. A little further on a concrete shelter stood intact except for deep vertical fissures. I peered into the narrow entrance that sloped steeply down. I slipped in the soft mud, but by stretching out my arms and clasping the outer wall I just saved myself from falling flat on to a rotting corpse that lay half-immersed in greenish-black water. I drew slowly back, ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... the sides of the canon, occasionally received a gust that made the Callisto swerve. They kept on steadily, however, till sunset, at which time it became very dark on account of the high banks, which rose as steeply as the Palisades on the Hudson to a height of nearly a thousand feet. Finding a small island near the eastern bank, they were glad to secure the Callisto there for the night, below the reach of the winds, which they, still heard singing loudly but with a ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... decapitated and the body stripped, the head was hoisted against the ship's side —about half way out of the sea, so that it might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native element. And there with the strained craft steeply leaning over to it, by reason of the enormous downward drag from the lower mast-head, and every yard-arm on that side projecting like a crane over the waves; there, that blood-dripping head hung to the Pequod's waist like the giant Holofernes's ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... round and strewn with dead leaves about its edge, lay sombrely on their right hand, without a movement, without a gleam. It was like a pall covering something secret, something which must never be revealed, and opposite, where the ground rose steeply, tall firs stood up, guardians of the unknown. Faint quackings came from some unseen ducks among the willows and water gurgled at the invisible outlet of the pond; there were little stirrings and sighings among the trees. The protruding roots of an oak offered ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... passed the final vestige of a trail, and there was the valley before us with the mountains rising up steeply on either side, and our way to make along the steep slope crowded with trees or covered with the debris of great masses of rock which had broken from their hold hundreds upon hundreds of yards above us to come thundering down scattering ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... they will fly with stronger pinions, it will not be in the superficialities of life merely that movement will be wide and free, they will mount higher and swoop more steeply than he in his cage can believe. What will their range be, their prohibitions? what jars to our preconceptions will he and ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... the world could beat the men of Devon for courage; and that Bideford men were amongst the bravest of all, as you and I would have known from "Westward Ho!" even if we'd never read history. It looks an old-world town, almost unspoiled, even now, with its far-famed bridge on twenty-four arches, its steeply sloping streets, its quay, and its quaint pink and green houses by the river. In the Old Ship Tavern "The Brotherhood of the Rose" was founded (you remember), and Sir Richard Grenville—dear Sir Richard!—had his house where the Castle Inn stands now. I took a long walk with Sir Lionel and (I ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... fell into the Cordevole, rested on a steeply inclined stratum of limestone, with a thin layer of calcareous marl intervening, which, by long exposure to frost and the infiltration of water, had lost its original consistence, and become a loose and slippery mass instead of ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... making light mockery. And then the trees suddenly opened and they came out upon a flat bare knoll, where the road, making a loop, signified that its journey was over. Around the outside edge was a wall of loose stones from which the hill sloped steeply in all directions, and before them, stretching away for miles, lay the country through which they had passed, till soft and green and gray in the distance. A huge smoke pall, its feathery top drifting ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... moments of headlong galloping, during which they swayed perilously from side to side, and were many times on the verge of being overturned. Then, the ground rising steeply, the mare's wild pace became modified, developed into a spasmodic canter, became a difficult trot, finally slowed ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... beetling cliff, yawned the rocky jaws of a huge cavern, into which Will-o'-the-Wisp led the way, his big, dim lamp beginning to brighten the moment it entered the subterranean gloom. Hardly had they crossed the threshold when Sprigg could perceive that they were descending as steeply as, but now, they had been rising. Deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountain they sank; deeper and deeper into the heart of the earth; the ball of light no longer a phosphorescent gleam, but a flame of living fire. But it was not long before they had descended ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... pure. Blue Beard's residence was separated from this small lake by a narrow path of smooth sand, shining like silver. This house was of one story. At the first glance it seems to be constructed entirely of trees from which the bark had been removed. Its bamboo roof was steeply inclined and overlapped by some five or six feet the outer wall, which rested upon the trunks of palm trees driven into the ground, and formed a kind of gallery ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... is that Maison Vauquer, every hole and corner of which is familiar to the real student of Balzac. It is situated, as everybody should know, in the Rue Neuve St.-Genevieve, just where it descends so steeply towards the Rue de l'Arbalete that horses have some trouble in climbing it. We know its squalid exterior, its creaking bell, the wall painted to represent an arcade in green marble, the crumbling statue of Cupid, with the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Moreover, as far as I know, it had never been climbed. I had explored the adjacent wilderness summer after summer, but my studies thus far had never drawn me to the top of it. Its height above sea-level is about 13,300 feet, and it is fenced round by steeply inclined glaciers, and canons of tremendous depth and ruggedness, which render it almost inaccessible. But difficulties of this ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... house was set upon a hill, at one end of a line of hills which now look over the wilderness of London, falling steeply thereto, and upon the other side, to northward and the open country, more gently. In the epoch of Harry Boyce those hills were all woodland—pleasant patches still remain,—and if the need of great walking was not upon him ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... out a hundred feet over the cliffs. We turned inland, and soon found ourselves travelling over a wilderness of roofs and chimneys. A church-tower loomed ahead, so we climbed back into the mist. Next we all but crashed into the hill south of Dovstone. We banked steeply and swerved to the right, just as the slope seemed rushing towards us through ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... path that led steeply down through the thicket. Midway along, where a barbed wire fence was strung high across the mouth of the gulch and weighted down with big rocks, she caught her first glimpse of the tiny beach. Only from the sea could one guess its existence, so completely was ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... small, flattish terrace, where the hill sloped steeply, an area had been cleared by digging away the bank, so that the wall of the house, for nearly half its circumference, was the side of the hill, faced with stone.... The hypogeum or subterranean gallery is on a level with the floor, pierced towards the hill, and is entered by a very small ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... much to say of Beacon Hill generally, has, on the present occasion, something to say particularly of a certain street which bends over the eminence, sloping steeply down to its base. It is an old street—quaint, quiet, and somewhat picturesque. It was young once, though—having been born before the Revolution, and was then given to the city by its father, Mr. Middlecott, who died without heirs, and did this ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... size of railroad ties. At occasional intervals along the passage the roof was reinforced by a frame of these beams, so that the sape had the businesslike, professional look of a gallery in a coal mine. Descending steeply to a point twelve feet beyond the entrance, it then went at a gentle incline under No Man's Land, and ended beneath the German trenches. It was the original intention to blow up part of the German first line, but it being one day discovered that the Germans were building a tunnel parallel ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... eye revelled in the grand panorama of the sierra. The two sides of the Rio Chico Valley rise here evenly from the bottom of the gorge so as to suggest the letter V. In many places its brow is overhung by precipitous cliffs, and further down still more steeply walled chasms yawn ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... entrance where the spent waves, after tumbling over the bar, spread themselves in long ripples, widening and widening until the edge of them melted and they were gone. The banks of the lake rose sheer from its edge, or so steeply that I saw no way of climbing them—walls you might call them, a good hundred feet high, and widening gradually towards the top, but in a circle as regular as ever you could draw with a pair of compasses. Any fool could see what had happened—that ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the dyke stood a row of little houses, green and pink and white, with tile roofs mounting steeply upward, their red surfaces broken by innumerable dormers. These had once been the homes of honest and industrious fishermen, but time had changed all that. They had been remodelled to suit the demands ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... shake myself into my new garments. The day was glorious. I wandered along a green path, in the opposite direction from our walk the evening before, with a fir-wood on my right hand, and a belt of feathery tamarisks on my left, behind which lay gardens sloping steeply to a lower road, where stood a few pretty cottages. Turning a corner, I came suddenly in sight of the church, on the green down above me—a sheltered yet commanding situation; for, while the hill rose above it, protecting it from ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... nears it in his glide—to be at all the haven he imagined it. More than once, seeking to alight on a field which appeared to him, as he was high above it, to be level as a billiard table, a pilot has found, when it is too late, that the ground has sloped so steeply that his machine, after landing, has run on downhill and ended by crashing ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... at Shrewsbury, as you may know, is a street that winds steeply down to the English Bridge over the Severn. Had it been straight, the bias of the barrel would doubtless have soon carried it to the side, and Joe Punchard might have risen in course of time to the status of a master ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... main entrances to Linlithgow Palace. That from the south ascends rather steeply from the town, and passes through a striking Gothic archway, flanked by two round towers. The portal has been richly adorned by sculpture, in which can be traced the arms of Scotland with the collars of the Thistle, the Garter, and Saint Michael. This was the work of James V., and is ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... long grasses. Trees growing on the top of the bank arched across, and the sunlight came through in changing patches of brightness, turning the gully to a roofed corridor of goldy-green. The path, which was of greeny-grey flagstones where heaps of leaves had drifted, sloped steeply down, and at the end of it was another round arch, quite dark inside, above which rose rocks and ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... Japanese streets. The houses separate, become scattered along the feet of the hills: the city thins away through little valleys, and vanishes at last behind. And we follow a curving road overlooking the sea. Green hills slope steeply down to the edge of the way on the right; on the left, far below, spreads a vast stretch of dun sand and salty pools to a line of surf so distant that it is discernible only as a moving white thread. The tide is out; and ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... and on, looking about her as she ran. Presently the wood sloped downwards, and pretty steeply, so that it was somewhat of a scramble; yet still she kept a sharp look-out, but no primroses did she see, except a few here and there upon the ground, which had been plucked too close to their poor heads to be held in anybody's hands. ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... heights ahead that form the eastern boundary of the valley of the Rhine. The road is good but hilly, and for several kilometres, before reaching Saverne, winds its way among the pine forests tortuously and steeply down from the elevated divide. The valley, dotted here and there with pleasant villages, is spread out like a marvellously beautiful picture, the ruins of several old castles on neighboring hill-tops adding a charm, as well as ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... way, you look up to your right, you will perceive the Palatine Hill rising steeply above you, with its summit crowned by the lofty palaces and gardens constructed by the Caesars. At the side and corner which look down upon the Forum stands the part built by Caligula, the epileptic who thought himself no less than ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... with high freeboard. Four men sat in her, resting on their oars. The other seven were island boats, gaily painted red and green, high prowed, high sterned. The biggest of them had a mast stepped right forward, a mast which raked steeply aft, across which lay the yard of a lateen sail. Six oarsmen sat in her. The other island boats were smaller. There were only two rowers in each. They had the same high bows and high sterns curving inwards, the same low freeboard amidships where ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... from the top brought me out upon a high hill of snow that sloped steeply down into the woods. The snow was soft, and I sat down in it and slid "a blue streak"—my blue overalls recording the streak—for a quarter of a mile, and then came to a sudden and confusing stop; one of my webs had caught on a spine of one of the dwarfed and ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... and irregular; but between the two ends it sank into a deep hollow, where he saw that which at once excited a tumult of hope and fear. It was a pool of water at least fifty feet in diameter, and deep too, since the sides of the rock went down steeply. But was it fresh or salt? Was it the accumulation from the showers of the rainy season of the tropics, or was it but the result of the past night's storm, which had hurled wave after wave here till ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... where an enemy might be checked; and had fixed upon one, about halfway between the two towns. A stream some four feet in depth passed under a bridge, where the road dipped into a hollow; beyond this the ground rose steeply, and was covered with a thick wood, of very considerable extent. As soon as he reached this point, he set his band to work to destroy the bridge. As groups of peasants came flocking along, and saw what was intended, they at once joined ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... that he must be at about the middle of the tunnel. He felt the more solid earth beneath his hands again, and knew that he had passed the rock. The passage now descended deeper into the ground, slanting steeply downward. This incline was twenty feet in length; then the floor became horizontal again on the lower level. At the same time the passage widened. Cleggett stretched one arm out, then the other; he could not touch the wall on either hand. He stood erect and held his hand up; ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... temptations. For on the right of Gray's Inn Road is one of the oddest quarters of London—to those, that is, with the unsealed eyes. Here are streets of 1800-1820 that go down into a valley—Flora in "Little Dorrit" lived in one of them—and then crossing King's Cross Road climb very steeply up to heights which always suggest to me that I am in the hinder and poorer quarter of some big seaside place, and that there is a fine view of the sea from the attic windows. This place was once called Spa Fields, and has very properly an old meeting house of the Countess ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... nothing like this to give. The Simplon at its finest sang a paean to civilisation; it glorified the science of engineering, and told you that it was a triumph of modernity. But this strange, unkempt Pass, with its inadequate road,—now overhanging a sheer precipice, now dipping down steeply towards the wild bed of its sombre river,—this Great St. Bernard, seemed a secret way back into other centuries, savage and remote. I felt shame that I had patronised it earlier, with condescending admiration of some prettinesses. No wonder that Joseph had smiled and held his peace, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... promise of flowers, and, in the search for violets, dangerous topics were forgotten, and Wilfred was forgiven. They reached the spot marked by Fly, a field with a border of sloping broken ground and brushwood, which certainly fulfilled all their desires, steeply descending to a stream full of rocks, the ground white with wood anemones, long evergreen trails of periwinkles and blue flowers between, primroses clustering under the roots of the trees, daffodils gilding the grass above, ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when she saw the isle so rugged and forbidding, but when the boat came aland in a stony bight, whence the ground went up somewhat steeply toward the heights, she went ashore straightway, and toiled up toward the white battlement. Presently she found herself in a strait and rugged path betwixt two walls of rock, so that she lost sight of the castle a while, till she came out on to a level place ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... "The fort is a jungle, and where else should a 'bag' take refuge but in a jungle?" However, I was obstinate, and pursued the original direction until we arrived at the brow of the hill, where it sloped steeply down to the sea. The whole slope, for half a mile, was covered with a dense scrub of Lantana bushes. This is another plant introduced in some by-gone century from South America, and planted first in gardens for its profuse clusters of red and pink verbena-like ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... he said. "On the opposite side there are no houses; there is only a wall. Behind the wall there are climbing gardens and the ground falls steeply to the turn of the road below. There's a flight of steps leading down which corresponds with the flight of steps from the garden. Very often there's a serjent-de-ville stationed on the top of the steps. But there was not one there yesterday afternoon at three. Behind us ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... shone star white in the herbacious border, where yew trees were clipped into fantastic shapes, and tall grey statues looked like ghosts in the gathering dusk, till they reached the sweep of gravelled drive in front of the house. Wide lawns sloped steeply to the banks of the Marle, which flowed through the grounds. The red December sun was reflected in a myriad flames in the many mullioned windows of the Manor. As the girl had promised, not a soul was in sight, and it was ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... with the third (?) century Temple of Zeus at Nemea (Fig. 58). Again, the echinus of the capital is in the early period widely flaring, making in some very early examples an angle at the start of not more than fifteen or twenty degrees with the horizontal (Fig. 59); in the best period it rises more steeply, starting at an angle of about fifty degrees with the horizontal and having a profile which closely approaches a straight line, until it curves inward under the abacus (Fig. 51); in the post-classical period it is low and sometimes quite conical (Fig. 60). In general, the degeneracy ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... at noon we were in Lat. 27 deg.; we ran close along the land with a south-east wind, but could find no means to get near the land with the pinnace, owing to the violent surf; we found the coast falling off very steeply, without any foreland or inlets, such as other lands are found to have: in short it seemed to us a barren, accursed earth without leafage ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... say to Eliza, the less likely was he to speak effectively; and feeling that he had better rely on the inspiration of the moment, he sought distraction from his errand by noting the beauty of the hillside. He had always liked the way the road dipped and then ascended steeply to the principal street in the town. There were some pretty houses in the dip—houses with narrow doorways and long windows, built, no doubt, in the beginning of the nineteenth century—and his ambition was once to live in one ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... next ridge ... the hill slopes steeply down to the hamlet of Chamvery, just below us. The battery which I mentioned just now is in the wood on this side of it to our right. The Zouaves' firing line is lying flat on the hillside a little way ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... At length the army emerged into a broader but still barren portion of the pass, the road winding steeply for several miles along a snowy water-course, whence they passed over a plain, which, from the number of guinea fowls found there, obtained the name of "Guinea Fowl Plain." Here were seen tulip trees of enormous size, ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... is well-founded, there is reason to believe that, with a view to speedily filling the silk-glands to which they look to supply them with ropes, other caterpillars beginning their existence on smooth and steeply-slanting leaves also take as their first mouthful the membranous sack which is all that remains of ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... make a home in the chateaux or chalets of Savoy were foiled, or abandoned, like his earlier idea to live in Venice. But his scrambles on the Saleve led him to hesitate in accepting the explanation given by Alphonse Favre of the curious north-west face of steeply inclined vertical slabs, which he suspected to be created by cleavage, on the analogy of other Jurassic precipices. The Brezon—brisant, breaking wave—he took as type of the billowy form of limestone Alps in general, and his analysis of it ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... enough and to spare beside them, too ready for the sacrifice, and up the main street he goes unabashed, springing in at one door and at another, on either side of the street, but fondest of the western side, where the hill slopes steeply down ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... saw through their port-hole a mass of high walls, somewhat overtopped by a great round tower. A moment afterwards the carriages entered beneath a low archway, and then stopped in the centre of a long courtyard, steeply embanked, surrounded by high walls, and commanded by two buildings, of which one had the appearance of a barrack, and the other, with bars at all the windows, had the appearance of a prison. The doors ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... Lancerota, of which we had a near view, bears the appearance of a country recently convulsed by volcanic eruptions. Everything is black, parched, and stripped of vegetable mould. We distinguished, with our glasses, stratified basalt in thin and steeply-sloping strata. Several hills resembled the Monte Novo, near Naples, or those hillocks of scoria and ashes which the opening earth threw up in a single night at the foot of the volcano of Jorullo, in Mexico. In fact, the abbe Viera relates, that in 1730, more than half the island changed its appearance. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... extent of this bank, which seems to be a continuation of the flat extending North-North-East 40 miles, connecting Barrow and Tremouille Islands with the main: its outer edge being kept heaped up thus steeply by the constant action of the current sweeping round ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... of the most important of the Greek examples lately obtained for us by Professor Richmond. The statue is (rightly) so placed that in looking up to it, the plait of hair across the forehead is seen in a steeply curved arch. "Why," says Mr. Baker, pointing to it, "there's the Norman arch of Iffley." Sure enough, there it exactly was: and a moment's reflection showed me how easily, and with what instinctive fitness, the Norman builders, looking to the Greeks as their absolute ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin |
