"Swampy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... islands large and small, of which the most important is Hongkong on account of its fine harbor. More than half a century ago the English seized upon this island and forced the Chinese to cede it to them. Then it was little more than a barren rock with a low swampy shore on which were a few villages inhabited by poor fisher folk. The swamps have been drained, gardens planted, and villas built, until now the once barren heights vie in beauty with the grass-grown slopes of the hills at the foot of which in the shade of great ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... from the distant meadows, were in proper order to sustain their ponderous annual load. Daniel Thorpe was the only accredited unfeathered biped who figured in the parish books as occupant of The Moors; nevertheless that swampy district could boast of one other irregular and forbidden but most pertinacious inhabitant—and that inhabitant ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... below. Between this (now become the valley stream) and the foot of the mountains, we journeyed along a handsome sloping level, which frequent springs from the hills made occasionally miry, and halted to noon at a swampy spring, where there were good grass and abundant rushes. Here the river was forty feet wide, with a considerable current, and the valley a mile and a half in breadth; the soil being generally good, of a dark color, and apparently well adapted to cultivation. ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... the sea only by a narrow ledge of rock, having a depth over it of four feet at high-water. They are consequently replenished by the sea every tide, and form salt-water cascades during the ebb and rise of of the tides; some of them, divided into several branches, run through a low swampy woodland country. Here also are streams of water, so warm as to be unpleasant to the hand; and every feature of this district evidences the violent effort of nature in its production. Except the coast and ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... formerly very unhealthy, on account of the low, swampy nature of its grounds. The Sanitary Reform, dating from about thirty years ago, had a great effect on the condition of the place. Before the drainage the annual mortality was twenty-seven in the thousand; since the drainage ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Kreluit, above which is a fine forest of oaks; and encamped for the night, on a low point, at the foot of an isolated rock, about one hundred and fifty feet high. This rock appeared to me remarkable on account of its situation, reposing in the midst of a low and swampy ground, as if it had been dropped from the clouds, and seeming to have no connection with the neighboring mountains. On a cornice or shelving projection about thirty feet from its base, the natives of the ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... des Morts to the Portage, the distance by land is about seventy miles; by water, it is not less than a hundred and thirty, so serpentine is the course of the river through the low swampy prairies which stretch over a great portion of this part ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... covered over with a kind of shell that abounds in the neighbourhood: this binds with the fine sand, and makes the cleanest, best road possible, and is besides, I believe, very durable. Since the swampy ways have been replaced by good roads of this material, the health of the city has never been attacked by fever, which was frequent before. The cholera is unknown here, although its ravages in the south-western country were, and in fact ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... should like to inquire whether animals suffer from the bad qualities of the air. The lake is not nearly so beautiful on a nearer view as it is from the hill above, there being no rocky margin, nor bright, sandy beach, but everywhere this interval of level ground, and often swampy marsh, betwixt the water and the hill. At a considerable distance from the shore we saw two islands, one of which is memorable as having been the scene of an empress's murder, but I cannot stop to fill my ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Guajava, for it had acted upon them during a period of thirty hours. There can be no doubt as to the identity of these keys with those about Cayo Romano; for they are the only ones in the neighborhood of Cuba that are not of a low and swampy nature, but large and lofty. They inclose a free, open navigation, and abundance of fine harbors, in late years the resort of pirates, who found security and concealment for themselves and their prizes in the recesses of these lofty keys. From the description ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... Anyone who has cleaned our fresh water fishes in preparation for the table will remember that inside of them there is a long slender bladder filled with air. This bladder assists in making the fish light, hence making it easier for it to support itself in the water. In certain swampy regions these lungfish swim freely in the water of the marshes. When the dry season comes, however, the water evaporates, draining the marshes completely. This would prove the death of most fishes. The lungfish ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... to lead a charge or brave a peril. He deserved a better fate, after his glorious exploits in the Peninsula, than to be picked off by a sneaking Yankee rifle, in the swampy plains of New Orleans. But the same "boiling spirit and hasty temper" that won him laurels in Europe, led him to his death in another hemisphere. Over-confidence may be pardoned in a man who had so often driven before him the redoubtable cohorts of the modern Alexander. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... taken Babylon by turning the Euphrates out of its course, the ground had been ill drained, swampy, and unhealthy; and before setting out on further conquests, Alexander wished to put all this in order again, and went about in a boat on the canals to give directions. His broad-brimmed hat was blown off, ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vanished and the thermometer mounted daily. A dank, warm atmosphere embraced the country. Under the vanishing snow were green buds that burst into bloom at the first direct rays of the sun. An unwelcome visitor invaded the camp—the mosquito. He rose from the swampy river in myriads, and made ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... throwing up the trip; but under the influence of the hearty meal and the invigorating wine, his courage was renewed and he felt he could easily complete the journey. All that day he passed through lonely and miserable looking country. Swampy lands and rice fields bordered either side of the river. About five o'clock he saw two men on the bank and called out to them, asking how far ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... the exception, perhaps, of Asterophyllites (see Figure 461), there is a remarkable absence from the coal-measures of any form of vegetation properly aquatic, the true coal being a sub-aerial accumulation in soil that was wet and swampy but not ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... said Percy, "that our farmers are always trying to find a crop that is adapted to their soil. Down in 'Egypt,' which covers about one-third of Illinois, the farmers once raised so much corn that the people from the swampy prairie went down there to buy corn, and hence the name 'Egypt' became applied to Southern Illinois. But there came a time when the soil refused to grow such crops of corn; the farmers then found that wheat was adapted to the soil. Later the wheat ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... northwest margin of the lake there is a little cove, with a landing, near which one ascends from the shore by means of a swaying board walk over swampy ground, where flags and forget-me-nots bloom luxuriantly during summer days, and fireflies hold carnival at night. At the top of the slope stands "Swanswick," a cottage-like and rambling house whose rear windows look down the lake, while the low veranda in front opens ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... exposures are equipped to resist late and early frosts as well as very hot sunshine. The moisture needs of different trees are as remarkable as their likes and dislikes for warmth and cold. Some trees attain large size in a swampy country. Trees of the same kind will become stunted in sections where dry ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack
... or 300 feet in extent. At the entrance to Batavia was a large group of houses extending along the shore, and occupied by Chinamen. This portion of the city was entirely destroyed, and not many of the Chinese who lived on the swampy plains managed to save their lives. They stuck to their homes till the waves came and washed them away, fearing torrents of flame and lava more ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... Thames and leaving behind us a new log house, belonging to a sailor named Carpenter, we passed a thick, swampy wood of black walnut, where His Excellency's servant was lost for three or four hours. We then came to a bend of the La Tranche (Thames)[19] and were agreeably surprised to meet twelve or fourteen carioles coming to meet and conduct ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... into virgin forests and who expressed his fear of malaria, he replied: "There is no special danger of malaria or other diseases in a dense forest region. I am sure this is a delusion, and the dense virgin forests, even when swampy, are, in a state of nature, perfectly healthy to live in. It is man's tampering with them, and man's own bad habits of living, that render them unhealthy. Having now gone over all Spruce's journals and ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... gardens on the Merri Creek, between four and five miles out by the Sydney-road, I diverged westwards from the purely bush track which as yet constituted that main highway of the future Victoria. My object was to escape the swampy vicinities of Brunswick, a village about three miles out of town, consisting for a number of years of three small brick cottages, adventurously rather than profitably built by an early speculator. With firm footing and under a bright moon, I had a pleasant walk ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... than a few huts for workmen, and a few Indian families, the Fort was the only centre of life in the whole region. Two rivers, the Nelson and the Hayes, enter the Hudson Bay at this point—the Nelson being the more northerly of the two. Between the two rivers is really a delta or low swampy tongue of land. On the Nelson's north bank, the land near the Bay is low, while inland there is a rising height. Five or six different sites of forts are pointed out at this point. These have been built on during the history of the Company, which dates back to 1670. In Lord ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... bank of the river was a high land, no marshy swampy ground in it; the verdure good, and abundance of cattle feeding upon it wherever we went, or which way soever we looked; there was not much wood indeed, at least not near us; but further up we saw oak, cedar, and pine-trees, some of ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... the trees, a delicate being, unused to this dark world, seeking in vain for a ray of sun and a breath of fresh air. Sometimes we hear the grunt of an invisible pig, the breaking of branches and the rustling of leaves as it runs away. Moisture and lowering gloom brood over the swampy earth; one would not be surprised if suddenly the ground were to move and wriggle like slimy snakes tightly knotted around each other. Thorns catch the limbs, vines catch the feet, and the wanderer, stumbling along, almost ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... grove on the western side, was a low, swampy piece of ground, that had never yielded to cultivation, where we sometimes used to jump from one hillock to another in search of swamp pinks and cheeses which were to be ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... Terrain: flat, swampy coastal plain; low mountains in south lowest point: Caribbean Sea 0 m highest point: Victoria ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... neighed again. From behind the hazel bushes on the other side of the enclosure came an answer, a second neighing, deeper and fuller. The swampy ground of the enclosure shook, powerful hoofs scattered the stones, to right and left and a black stallion appeared at full gallop. The tense neck carried a magnificent head, the muscles lay like ropes under the glossy skin. As he caught sight of the mare, his eyes began to flash. He stopped and ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... tributary stream which here joined the Glenelg, and to my chagrin found that it was so much swollen by the late rains as to be utterly impassable. To attempt to construct a bridge over it would have been useless for the adjacent ground was now so swampy the horses were bogged before we got them near it. I wandered up its banks as far as I could before nightfall, but could not succeed in finding any place in our vicinity at which we might hope to effect our passage. Just as it got dark the rain again began to pour in torrents; ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... time was divided between Berlin and the Palace of Wusterhausen, a country seat some twenty miles outside of the capital. The palace was a very simple dwelling set in the middle of swampy fields, with a fringe of thickets. In the grounds were many natural fish-ponds, and game of all kinds was plentiful in the woods. The somber old monarch loved this place, and had built there a fountain with stone steps, ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... was no possible way of finding out anything else at once. The chance seemed favourable. Montcalm knew he had to fight or starve, as he was completely cut off by land and water, except for one bad, swampy road in the valley of the St Charles; and he ordered ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... stretch his neck out of joint, and she'll turn the heads of all the flowers. Wherever she goes, I can go back afterward and see the things she's seen, walk the path she's walked, hear the grasses whispering over all she's said; and if there's a place too swampy for her bits of feet; Holy Mother! Maybe—maybe she'd be putting the beautiful arms of her around me neck and ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... deep as the first. The bullets of the enemy made "watery flashes" on all sides. After passing this second torrent the squadron found themselves again on the same bank of the river as the enemy. They were in swampy ground. Captain Wright dismounted his men and returned the fire. Then he turned back himself, and riding into the stream again, rescued the hospital assistant, whose pony, smaller than the other horses, was ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... began to gather: whereupon (for the cottage was small) we took our leave, giving the pair good wishes for the continuance of a happy married life. And when we got to our house we found waiting in the kitchen Mag Trawl, who had that day brought her fish from Swampy Arm—a dull girl, slatternly, shiftless: the mother of two ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... file, one of them, owing to the narrowness of the track, was obliged to keep stepping into the heather. At the top of the crest they dipped down again into a high, narrow valley between two fells. It was swampy here, and in places there were quite wide pieces of water to jump across. The path, which had been growing worse and worse, finally separated into a fork. The girls came to a halt, and stood looking first ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... might have been warm enough in late Pliocene times to have allowed the migration of these animals. In Asia they were driven southwards by the competition of numerous higher and more powerful forms, but have found a last resting-place in the swampy forests of ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... into the thick bush the horses had to be abandoned. Papehara was left in charge of them, while Joan and Sheldon and the remaining Tahitians pushed ahead on foot. The way led down through a swampy hollow, which was overflowed by the Berande River on occasion, and where the red trail of the murderers was crossed by a crocodile's trail. They had apparently caught the creature asleep in the sun ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... we went to visit the Governor's garden, which lies in a low swampy situation, much below the town, and not far from the sea, where the boats are obliged to land to procure water, subject to the inconvenience of the surf, which sometimes renders it very difficult to get the casks off. The water ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... south of the tracks it is almost the same, save that the country is flat and low. As a matter of fact, the railroad passes across the spur which lies between the rough country to the north and the flat, swampy country ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... acre of swamp land uncleared of South Carolina, I would raise my voice against restricting the importation of negroes. I am as thoroughly convinced as that gentleman is, that the nature of our climate, and the flat swampy situation of our country, obliges us to cultivate our land with negroes, and that without them South Carolina would ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... about us was uncultivated and unhealthy. The lands were low and swampy, and mostly covered with a heavy growth of yellow pines. The few remaining inhabitants were mostly women, negresses and children; now and then a disabled specimen of poor white trash, or a farmer too infirm to be of service ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... entitled "The Paradise of Insects," in Young People No. 10, some interesting facts are told of small sand-flies, called sancudos, which abound on the Upper Amazons and other swampy localities of South and Central America. Boys will like to know the origin of their name. Stilts are called zancos in Spanish, and these flies, a species of mosquito, are called sancudos—more properly spelled zancudos—on ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... looked back. Through the darkness I saw my assailants scattering up and down along the dyke. The pursuit was evidently not ended, and again I had to choose my course. Beyond the dyke where I stood was a wild, swampy space very similar to that which I had crossed. I determined to shun such a place, and thought for a moment whether I would take up or down the dyke. I thought I heard a sound—the muffled sound of oars, so ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... and acted upon the advice thus given, and hastened to cast up intrenchments along the line of the canal from the Mississippi back to an impassable swamp two miles away. In building the redoubts the ground was found to be swampy and slimy, and the earth almost unavailable for any sort of fortification, whereupon a French engineer suggested the employment of cotton bales. The requisite cotton was at once taken from a barque already laden for Havana. The owner of the cotton, Vincent Nolte, complained to Edward ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... success? This question is an all-important one, not only to the summer resident, but also to cities and towns contiguous to salt-water marshes, or to swampy lands, well suited for mosquito breeding. The answer is this: Mosquito control is possible; actual extermination impossible with an insect that develops so rapidly. The "Jersey mosquito," the unscientific ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... Smyrna Caf, He saw them, seven solemn negroes dancing, With faces rapt and out-thrust bellies prancing In a slow solemn ceremonial cakewalk, Dancing and prancing to the sombre tom-tom Thumped by a crookbacked grizzled negro squatting. And as he watched ... within the steamy twilight Of swampy forest in rank greenness rotting, That sombre tom-tom at his heartstrings strumming Set all his sinews twitching, and a singing Of cold fire through his blood—and he was dancing Among his fellows in the dank green twilight With naked, oiled, bronze-gleaming ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... to find this plant growing wild; for, in fact, it is a garden flower. And its history here is connected with a bit of mud wall, ruined and covered with mosses and ragwort, that still pushed up from the swampy ground when I knew it, and had once been part of a cottage. How a cottage came here, and how its inhabitants entered and went out, are questions past guessing; for the marsh hemmed it in on three sides, and the fourth is a slope of hill fit ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... reasons, the man I know went up to vote in Battersea in a drifting and even dubious frame of mind. As the train slid through swampy woods and sullen skies there came into his empty mind those idle and yet awful questions which come when the mind is empty. Fools make cosmic systems out of them; knaves make profane poems out of them; men try to crush them like an ugly lust. Religion is ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... along in company, sometimes with the brook between them—for it was no wider than a man's stride—sometimes close together. The green carpet grew swampy, and they kept ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... female mosquito bites or sucks blood, the male being without tongue or mandibles; and he asks, What, then, does the male feed on? He conjectures that it feeds on flowers; but, had he visited some swampy places in hot countries, where flowers are few and the insects more numerous than the sands on the seashore, he would most probably have said that the males subsist on decaying vegetable matter and moisture ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... had already seen herds of quaggas, and buffaloes, and some of the larger sorts of antelopes, also one rhinoceros, but not yet elephants. Now, to their joy, the giant tracks of these monsters were discovered. Near the river, in swampy places, it was evident that some of them had been rolling luxuriously in the ooze and mud. But it was in the forests and jungles that they had left the most striking marks of their habits and mighty power, for there thorny brakes of the most impenetrable character had been trodden ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... several thousand acres, the greater portion being covered with enormous grass and dense thickets of tamarisk, which, in the hot season, is the cool and loved resort of tigers. There were also extensive jungles in swampy portions of the island, so intermixed with reeds and marsh grass of twelve or fourteen feet high, that it was difficult to penetrate, even ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... companies, pushed through the light soil on either side the road. Trailing sprays of bramble glowed as flame. Rowan berries hung in heavy coral bunches, and the dogwood spread itself in sparse china-pink clusters. Only the undergrowth of crooked alders, in swampy, low-lying places, kept its dark, purplish green; and the light foliage of the ash waved in shadowy pallor against its knobbed and knotted branches; and the ranks of the encircling firs retained their solemn habit, as though in protest against the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... countenance when the English army had advanced in the neighborhood of it. That it was M. de Vaudreuil who commanded-in-chief in Canada, and not M. de Levis; and that there was yet a possibility of retiring with the garrison towards the north side of the island, where the swampy ground upon the border of the river had hindered the English from establishing a post." De Bougainville immediately decided for a retreat, which was executed and combined with equal justness; and the success answered ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone
... and other preparations made for disembarking, in case the governor had not succeeded as, to the great satisfaction of every one, it was found he had; for had he been compelled to remain in Botany Bay, the swampy ground every where around it threatened us with unhealthy situations; neither could the shipping have ridden in perfect security when the wind blew from the SE to which the bay lay much exposed, the sea at that time rolling in with a prodigious swell. A removal therefore to Port Jackson was highly ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... into the forest along swampy paths cut by charcoal burners, and saw many beautiful and curious insects. Amongst the numerous butterflies, large blue Morphos and narrow, weak-winged Heliconidae, striped and spotted with yellow, red, and ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... rode, and the cradle and its precious contents were carried by four men; but this the poor little Lassla, as Helen shortens his lengthy name, resented so much, that he began to scream so loud that she was forced to dismount and carry him in her arms, along a road rendered swampy by much rain. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... fluff from the cattail's crest, 'Mid the juniper boughs is hung; And further on, by the elder hedge, Where the turtles come out to sleep, The marsh-hen builds, by the brooklet's edge, Her warm, wet home in the swampy sedge, 'Mid the shadows so ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a windy, cloudy morning that found Ree and John tramping through the valleys and over the hills of a fine, thickly wooded country toward the Indian village. Early in the afternoon they came to a sloping hillside beyond which lay a swampy tract grown up to brush and rushes. Close by was a beautiful little lake and at the opposite side the smoke was rising from the town of the Delaware ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... bearer. the berry is easily geathered as it seperates from the bough readily, while the leaf is strongly affixed. the shrub which produces this fruit rises to the hight of 6 or 8 feet sometimes grows on the high lands but moste generally in the swampy or marshey grounds; it is an evergreen. the stem or trunk is from three to 10 Inches in circumference irregularly and much branched, seldom more than one steem proceding from the same root, tho they are frequently associated very thickly. the bark is somewhat ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... this out, and a net of chicken wire had been placed across the river in No Man's Land. Some one had to go down there and fish for bottles twice nightly. I took this patrol alone. The lines were rather far apart along the river, owing to the swampy nature of the ground, ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... Ikan stream twice we arrived at some hot springs, about three or four miles in the winding course we were obliged to take from dusun Tanjong, situated in a low swampy spot, about sixty yards in circumference. This is very hot in every part of it, excepting (which is very extraordinary) one place on its eastern side, where, although a hot spring is bubbling up within one yard of it, the water running from it is as cold as common spring water. In consequence of ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... my boy. Well, we had to perform a journey of four hundred miles in an ox-cart, which carried, besides me and the children, all our household stuff. Our way lay chiefly through the forest, and we made but slow progress. Oh! what a bitter cold night it was when we reached the swampy woods where the city of Rochester now stands. The oxen were covered with icicles, and their breath sent up clouds of steam. 'Nathan,' says I to my man, 'you must stop and kindle a fire; I am dead with cold, and I fear the babes ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... driving we were not getting on very fast. The country was exceedingly swampy and we had ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... again into scattered holdings. Much new land came into cultivation or into use for pasture through the draining of marshes and fens, and the clearing of forests. This work had been begun for the extensive swampy tracts in the east of England in the latter years of Elizabeth's reign by private purchasers, assisted by an act of Parliament passed in 1601, intended to remove legal difficulties. It proceeded slowly, partly because of the expense and difficulty of putting up lasting ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... bird, of very shy and secluded habits, being found in the Middle and Eastern States, during the period of song, only in the deepest and most remote forests, usually in damp and swampy localities. On this account the people in the Adirondack region call it the "Swamp Angel." Its being so much of a recluse accounts for the comparative ignorance that prevails ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... everybody came up. The thing that struck me now was that I wasnt scared. Id been more afraid of bein scared than anything else. Then the Major got up an started on with everybody else taggin along with him. It was to foggy to see what was happenin on each side. We went down a hill. It got swampy an we struck some duck boards. Somebody must have been over before us an put them down. If they could get around as easy as that it beat me what they were ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... made to the lake after her return, discovered to her, that it was sadly changed. It was no longer full to overflowing, but swampy and low; the water was constantly drained off to supply the manufactory and mills which were erected at a distance. Mr. Draper had found out that the little stream could much more than earn its own living, and it was made to work hard. One ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... part of the Fitch property that was used for pasturing purposes was low and swampy and had long been the haunt of many poisonous snakes. One portion of the land that was higher than the rest, Mr. Fitch had decided to have prepared for spring plowing, and Edwin's work was to gather the brush ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... what a chase that stricken gobbler was giving him. In and out of the swampy places, and through the more open ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... passed; animals resembling chipmunks with enlarged razor-sharp fangs, whose craving for raw meat was so great that they would attack an animal ten times its size; lizards the size of elephants with scales like armor plate that rooted in swampy ground for their food, but which would attack any intruder, charging with amazing speed, their three horns poised; and, finally, there were the monsters of Venus—giant beasts whose weights were measured in tons, ruled over by the most horrible ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... true. We had come out into a sort of marshy, swampy place like I think, a jungle is, that the stream ran through, and it was simply crammed with queer plants, and flowers we never saw before or since. And the stream was quite thin. It was torridly ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... aneroid barometer, which a second hot walk failed to recover. Our photographer, arrived at the lake with a grievous burden of camera, plates, tripod, etc., found that he had forgotten his lens tubes, and was compelled to double his tracks back to the canoes, then wade out into the swampy borders of the lake, waist-deep in slime, to secure a view of this highest Mississippi water, only to have his plate light-struck and ruined by an accident on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... out of the bush-veld and reached the place where the drive was to be. Here, bordered by steep banks covered with bush, was swampy ground not more than two hundred yards wide, down the centre of which ran a narrow channel of rather deep water, draining a vast expanse of morass above. It was up this channel that the sea-cows travelled to the ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... in fancy, back to those early ages of the world, thousands, yes millions, of years ago. Stand with me on some low ancient hill, which overlooks the flat and swampy lands that are ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... the first part of this name has a reference to a staked-out ford on the Witham, corresponding to the “wath,” or ford, at Kirkstead, or whether it is from the old Norse “stigt,” a path, as some suggest, is uncertain. Streatfeild says, “The swampy locality would favour the idea of ‘stakes’” (“Lincolnshire and the Danes,” pp. 147–8). I may here notice that the old name of Dublin (Dubh-lynn, i.e. the black water) was Athcleath, or “the ford of the hurdles,” which ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... farming land belongs to your Cousin Jasper," the Beeman said, while Oliver, too intent upon staring at the view below him, failed to wonder how he happened to know so much of their affairs. "That whole portion of the valley was waste, swampy ground at one time; it was an uncle of Jasper Peyton's who drained the land thirty years ago and built dikes to keep the river back. He arranged to rent it out to tenant farmers, for he said one man ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... fox fire," I said, feeling impatient because that did not satisfy me at all, but having no other explanation that I could think of handy. "I've seen wonderful exhibitions of it in low, swampy ground—" ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... her Lincolnshire Gaius, Jeanie resumed her solitary walk, and was somewhat alarmed when evening and twilight overtook her in the open ground which extends to the foot of Gunnerby Hill, and is intersected with patches of copse and with swampy spots. The extensive commons on the north road, most of which are now enclosed, and in general a relaxed state of police, exposed the traveller to a highway robbery in a degree which is now unknown, except in the immediate vicinity of ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... provision for a free overflow was necessary. For some reason, probably for the mere sake of facility in the construction, the passage for the superfluous water had been made larger than needful at the end next the moat. About midway to its outlet, however—a mere drain-mouth in a swampy hollow in the middle of a field—it had narrowed to a third of the compass. But the quarriers had cut across it above the point of contraction; and no danger of access occurring to lord Herbert or Mr. Salisbury, while ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... horns. There are several allied species, sometimes known as harnessed antelopes, which are of a larger size. Some of these such as the situtunga (T. spekei) have the hoofs elongated for walking on swampy ground, and hence have been separated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... came in sight of the river they saw their agile leader racing down the river's bank, leaping from hummock to hummock of the swampy ground that spread between them and a little promontory which rose just where the river curved inward from ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... as large as Yosemite and almost as beautiful. Early in the season the mosquitoes make life miserable, but as late as August the swampy land is pretty well dried up and they are few. The Tuolumne tumbles in less effectively than the Merced enters Yosemite. Instead of two falls of nine hundred feet, there is one of twenty or so. The Wampana, corresponding to the Yosemite Falls, is not so high nor so picturesque, but ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... river from Fort Garry—and then sped onward again with unabated energy, until they passed the Indian settlement, with its scattered wooden buildings and its small church; passed the last cottage on the bank; passed the low swampy land at the river's mouth; and emerged at last as evening closed, upon the wide, calm, sea-like bosom of ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... lies east and west: a ridge of dark-red sandstone, covered with trees, forms its side on the south. Other ridges like this make the slope have the form of a stair with huge steps: the descent is gradually lost as we insensibly climb up the next ridge. The first plain between the steps is at times swampy, and the paths are covered with the impressions of human feet, which, being hardened by the sun, make walking on their uneven surface very difficult. Mosquitoes again; we had lost them during our long stay on the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... another land, lying low in the sea, and sailed in towards it. Here also they landed, but on a shore of fine white sand, very level towards the sea, but blown into hummocks, whereon grass grew, towards the land. That was a flat country, and swampy, with trees so far as they could see, in some places dense and in others more open; but where the country lay open there were the swamps. "This country pleases me more than the last," Leif said. "The least it ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... inconceivable that to-day Dalmatia should be in different hands from Bosnia-Herzegovina. Herzegovina does actually touch the sea at two places—for a few miles at the swampy mouth of the Narenta below Metkovie, and for a mile at Castelnuovo-Zelenika, inside the Bocche di Cattaro. It is obvious that to allow Serbia these two outlets, while leaving their surroundings ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... this one, which was the merriest, wildest young fellow, full of his songs and fun. He took on dreadful at the news; went to his bed, had that fever which lays so many of 'em by the heels along that swampy Potomac, but he's got better on the voyage: the voyage makes everyone better; and, in course, the young gentleman can't be forever a-crying after a brother who dies and leaves him a great fortune. Ever since we sighted Ireland he has been quite gay and happy, only he would go off at times when ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... thrive best on an inclined plane, for nearly all the wild hemp which I have seen has been found on mountain slopes, even far away down the ravines. Although requiring a considerable amount of moisture, hemp will not thrive in swampy land, and to attain any great height it must be well shaded by other trees more capable of bearing the sun's rays. A great depth of soil is not indispensable for its development, as it is to be seen flourishing in its natural state on the slopes of volcanic formation. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... And it is to be kept in mind that no river like the Saskatchewan can be permanently mapped. No map or chart of such a river could serve its purpose for more than a year. Chart it to-day, and perhaps to-morrow it jumps its river bed; and where was a current is now a swampy lake in which the ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... course, frae where it leaves Coutin till where it enters the sea, without passing ower the scene o' some frightful auld legend o' the kelpie or the waterwraith. And ane o' the most frightful looking o' these places is to be found among the woods of Conan House. Ye enter a swampy meadow that waves wi' flags an' rushes like a corn-field in harvest, an' see a hillock covered wi' willows rising like an island in the midst. There are thick mirk-woods on ilka side; the river, dark an' awesome, an' whirling round an' round in mossy eddies, sweeps away behind it; ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... guide told me, that even eagles, had for three centuries abandoned the desolate crags of Snowdon; and as for its being a haunt for owls, neither bird nor mouse could reside there to supply such with subsistence. Snowdon appeared to me too swampy to be drained for cultivation in many parts, and in most others its marble, granite and shingles, forbade the idea of spontaneous vegetation. I am sorry for the poets, having a sincere regard for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... Schuylkill in its many windings once covered a great extent of ground, though its waters were but shallow even in our highest tides: and though some parts were always dry, yet the whole of this great tract presented to the eye nothing but a putrid swampy soil, useless either for the plough or for the scythe. The proprietors of these grounds are now incorporated; we yearly pay to the treasurer of the company a certain sum, which makes an aggregate, superior to the casualties that generally happen either by inundations or ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... poisonous plant in the flora of the United States, and has probably destroyed more human lives than all our other toxic plants combined. As a member of the parsley family (Umbellifera) it resembles in general appearance the carrot and parsnip of the same group of plants. It grows in swampy land. The poisoning of the human is ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... river," mused Diane with shining eyes, "and marsh marigolds; over there by a swampy hollow are a million violets, white and purple; and the ridge is thick with mountain laurel. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... before the seed is sown. For sowing in spring, the beds should be prepared in the rough before winter, and when the time comes for levelling down and finishing, the top crust will be found well pulverised, and in a kindly state to receive the seed. Stagnant moisture is deadly to Onions, therefore swampy ground is most unfit; but a sufficient degree of dryness for a summer crop may often be secured by trenching, and leaving rather deep alleys between the beds to carry off surface ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... restored to health he would erect and establish a hospital for poor sick people. He did recover and he fulfilled his vow. He built the Priory of St. Bartholomew, whose church still stands in part and beside it established his hospital. The place called Smithfield was then a swampy field used for a horse fair: it was also a place of execution without the City wall. At first the hospital was a very small place. It consisted probably of two large rooms or halls, one for men and one for women—with a chapel. If it had any endowment at all it must have been very small, ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... Argentine is very variable; we have great extremes of heat and cold. It is healthy as a rule, except in the swampy districts or during a very wet season, when a great ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... the old Court House. The history of the latter, however, is unrecorded. The lands were in the main very poor and grown up in pine, or else, where the head-waters of a little stream made down in a number of "branches", were swampy and malarial. Possibly it was this poverty of the soil or unwholesomeness of their location, which more than anything else kept the people of this district somewhat distinct from others around them, however poor they might be. ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... and wet, and it became necessary for me to make my couch under bridges or in caves or holes of the earth. On the skirts of the tobacco plantations and in the swampy malarial region where the ground never gets dry I slept beside bonfires. I learned of the natives to safeguard against fever by placing withered leaves on bark or wilted bracken leaves between myself and the ground. At a little settlement called Olginka ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... something else equally pointless. He had not bothered to learn the native name of Island Twenty-seven, because his ship had mapped one thousand three hundred and eighty-six islands, all small, and either rocky or swampy or both. Island Twenty-seven, to him, had only one importance, and that was its being the site of the largest ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier |
