"Undergrowth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scent of the good earth, lying as it were with arms stretched forth, and smiling lips, overpowered all. His fancies made him wander, as he had wandered long ago, from the fields into the wood, tracking a little path between the shining undergrowth of beech-trees; and the trickle of water dropping from the limestone rock sounded as a clear melody in the dream. Thoughts began to go astray and to mingle with other thoughts; the beech alley was transformed to a path between ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... were and are apparent, even to spectators standing at the outer verge of her domain. We may compare the religion of the Middle Ages to an alpine range, on the lower slopes of which the explorer finds himself entangled in the mire and undergrowth of pathless thickets, oppressed by a still and stifling atmosphere, shut off from any view of the sky above or the pleasant plains beneath. Ascending through this sheltered and ignoble wilderness, he comes to free and windswept pastures, to the white solitude of virgin snowfields, to ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... young voices. Everything before me burst into sudden laughter, brighter than the sun on high, merrier than the brooks that babbled among the grass. I heard the hurried thud of light steps, among the green undergrowth there were gleams of the marble white of flowing tunics, the living flush of bare limbs.... It was the nymphs, nymphs, dryads, Bacchantes, hastening from the heights down ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... of the fight she saw a warrior fall, who had advanced some fifty yards before the main body in front. She at once resolved to possess herself of his rifle, and crouching in undergrowth she crept to the spot, and succeeded in her enterprise, being all the time exposed to the cross fire of the defenders and assailants—her practised eye had early noticed the fatal rock, and hers was the mysterious hand by which the two warriors had fallen—the ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... raw land, particularly where there is a heavy undergrowth to be cleared away, goats of some kind are an invaluable aid. In its browsing qualities the common goat is as good as any, but, aside from the clearing of the land, the profit in his keep is very little, though some demand is growing up for goat's ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... through the darkness. I had not gone a hundred yards before my ears were caught by a rustling on my left. Had I put up some animal? I came to a pause, and then there was a swift rush, and a man's figure broke through the undergrowth and disappeared across the slope of the hill. It was near dark, but I thought in that instant I recognised it as the figure of the little ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... up with a jerk at a spot where hardly a post served to mark where the woods commenced and the wayside grass stopped. We took one of the dim paths which the rabbits had made and forced our way through the undergrowth into the peaceful twilight ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... Cavloccio, and a bridle path thence to within a mile of the Forno glacier, she came to the conclusion that she was taking a short cut. At any rate, on the summit of the next little hill she would be able to see her way quite distinctly, so she jumped across the brook and climbed through the undergrowth. Before she had gone twenty yards she stopped. She was almost certain that someone was sobbing bitterly up there among the trees. It had an uncanny sound, this plaint of grief in such a quiet, sunlit spot. Still, sorrow was not an affrighting thing to Helen. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... The rain never ceased. By day we lay in icy misery, chilled to the bone in our sopping clothes, in some dank ditch or wet undergrowth, with aching bones and blistered feet, fearing detection, but fearing, even more, the coming of night and the resumption of our march. Yet we stuck to our programme like Spartans, and about eight o'clock on the third evening, hobbling painfully ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... soil all about Fewforest; after two or three fine days, even in the woods, the ground is so dry that you'd think it hadn't rained since the world was made. It's partly with the trees being mostly firs which are so neat and bare low down—no mess of undergrowth about them. And the soil is very nice, so beautifully clean and crunchy to walk on, for it's made of the pricks that fall off the firs, in great part. It's perfectly splendid to lie on—springy and yielding and not a bit dirty—your things ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... along with a carelessness not in keeping with his all-important mission. He was soon lost sight of in the undergrowth that covered many miles of territory in that section of the country, and that finally merged with a dense forest. The lad reasoned that the Germans would be found in this forest, as well as in the more open country, but somehow he must manage to get through their lines and reach the French ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... The undergrowth was thick in this part of the forest. They made their way through the bushes and waist-high grasses, being as careful as possible not to leave too many signs of their passing. Glynnis' shorts and thin blouse weren't much protection against the thorns or ...
— The Happy Man • Gerald Wilburn Page
... the trees. There was now a covey of red birds feeding on one of the little islets to the left, or again a blue-green parrot flew shrieking from tree to tree. As they moved on the country grew wilder and wilder. The trees and the undergrowth seemed to be strangling each other near the ground in a multitudinous wrestle; while here and there a splendid tree towered high above the swarm, shaking its thin green umbrellas lightly in the upper air. Hewet looked at his books again. The morning was peaceful as the night had been, only it was ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... yataghans. Compared with the telegraph post the pines were crooked—and alive. That lonely vertical rod at once deformed and enfranchised the forest. It tangled it all together and yet made it free, like any grotesque undergrowth ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... companions, two of them being the faithful Susi and Chuma. In the dark thickets of the tropical forests he wounded his feet, dragged himself over fallen trunks and decaying rubbish, and waded across swollen rivers; and among the crowns of the lofty trees and in the dense undergrowth lurked malaria, an invisible miasma. He fell ill again and had to rest a long time in his miserable hut, where he lay on his bed of grass reading his tattered Bible, or listening to the native's tales of combats with men and apes, for gorillas ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... insistent that one day we ventured up the back lane at dusk and began to explore the woods. It grew dark and we thought of turning back. Then it began to grow light again. A full moon was climbing up through the maples, inviting further explorations. We pushed through a dense undergrowth and presently were in a grove of great white pines. There was a faint sound of running water, and suddenly we came upon an astonishing brook—wide, swift, and musical. We had not suspected the existence of such a brook ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... obstructions of the streams flowing therein. There is an occasional alder bottom, hemlock is quite common, bull pine is found in a few localities, and yew, dog-wood and crab-apple occur upon all the islands. There is a dense undergrowth of salal, whortle, salmon, raspberry ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... The islands were covered with a lofty growth of living timber clothed in the deepest green. There were not then, as now, upon some of them, great dead trees reaching out their long bare arms in verdureless desolation above a stinted undergrowth, and piled up trunks charred and blackened by the fire that had revelled among them, but all were green, and thrifty, and glorious in their robes of beauty. Thousands of happy songsters carolled gaily ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... little blocked and confused by the lumbermen and the course of Nature. For when the lumbermen go into the woods, they cut roads in every direction, leading nowhither, and the unwary wanderer is thereby led aside from the right way, and entangled in the undergrowth. And as for Nature, she is entirely opposed to continuance of paths through her forest. She covers them with fallen leaves, and hides them with thick bushes. She drops great trees across them, and blots ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... passed through them, as deliberately replaced. He then proceeded along an obscure path, which led across stubble-fields, to a wood. The path continued through the wood, but he quickly struck out of it, and made his way, seemingly at random, through a most perplexing undergrowth of ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... noise of the man's retreat through the undergrowth told that he was willing to risk ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... were burning for a whole month, and this house scarcely saved; when whole cane-fields, mills, dwelling-houses, went up as tinder and flame in a moment, and the smoky haze from the burning island spread far out to sea. And yet where the fire passed six months ago, all is now a fresh impenetrable undergrowth of green; creepers covering the land, climbing up and shrouding the charred stumps; young palms, like Prince of Wales's feathers, breaking up, six or eight feet high, among a wilderness of sensitive plants, scarlet-flowered dwarf Balisiers, {81a} climbing fern, {81b} convolvuluses of every ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... dropped lower in the western sky. A velvet twilight seemed to rise out of the heart of the valley. Slowly the glowing light vanished behind a bluff of woodland. In a few minutes the trees and undergrowth were lit up as though a mighty conflagration were devouring them. Then the fire died down, ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... oriole; but for brightness, volubility, execution, and power of imitation, he is unsurpassed by any of our northern birds. His ordinary note is forcible and emphatic, but, as stated, not especially musical; Chick-a-re'r-chick, he seems to say, hiding himself in the low, dense undergrowth, and eluding your most vigilant search, as if playing some part in a game. But in July of August, if you are on good terms with the sylvan deities, you may listen to a far more rare and artistic ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... commence, and it is astonishing how little it will cost if care is taken that no weed be allowed to run to seed. The bulk of Hawaiian coffee lands is situated in the forests where the land is covered with a dense undergrowth of ferns and vines and there are no pernicious weeds to bother. But soon after clearing, the seeds of weeds are dropped by the birds and are carried in on the feet and clothing of the laborers and visitors. We have no weeds that run to seed in less than thirty days, and if the fields are gone over, ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... said, hurriedly. "Lend me, your ear for half a jiffy!" Outside the baying of the pack had become imminent. "Stow me away for a moment in the undergrowth, and ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... from New Westminster to Yale, a distance of about ninety miles, along which the wire will be carried. There has heretofore been no communication between these points except by water. The river is bordered on both sides by high mountains and dense forests of heavy timber, with an almost impenetrable undergrowth. Notwithstanding these difficulties, Mr. Conway, one of the telegraph engineers, made an exploration of the entire route, during the latter part of last winter, on snow-shoes, being at one time three days in the woods without food ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... on a felled oak-trunk in the shadows of the beech undergrowth, and were looping the wires Hobden had given ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... overseers, were on the other side of the house. I kept the house between them and myself, and ran as fast as I could for the woods. On reaching them I found myself obliged to proceed slowly as there was a thick undergrowth of cane and reeds. Night came on. I straggled forward by a dim star-light, amidst vines and reed beds. About midnight the horizon began to be overcast; and the darkness increased until in the thick forest, I could scarcely ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of the United States may from time to time set apart and reserve in any State or Territory having public land bearing forests, in any part of the public lands wholly or in part covered with timber or undergrowth, whether of commercial value or not, as public reservations; and the President shall by public proclamation declare the establishment of such ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... a narrow path made originally by the Indians, as they traversed the woods in the manner peculiar to themselves, known by the name of Indian file, now skirting the edge of a morass, now penetrating through a thick undergrowth, and now walking in more open spaces and under the shade ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... down the narrow valley as fast as he could go, for he had no time to spare if he would reach his stopping-place before night, and he knew that there was small chance of finding the way back after dark; but his course was so rough and obstructed by heavy undergrowth, fallen trees and boulders, that his progress was slow and the shadow of the mountain was over the trail while he was still a mile from the road at the end of the ravine. As he looked anxiously ahead, hoping every moment to see the broader valley where the road lay, he caught a ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... At times it wound in and out among trees of great beauty and variety, and of tropical aspect. Elsewhere it plunged into denser stretches of forest, where the profusion of vegetable life was extraordinary—here, a dense undergrowth of shrubs, tree-ferns, and dwarf-palms; there, trees of higher growth, and, shooting high above them all, the slender trunks of many varieties of palms, whose graceful crowns and feathery leaves were pictured vividly on the blue sky. Elsewhere, innumerable creeping ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... we strolled out along the common, through heather which as yet was a mere brown expanse of flowerless undergrowth, and copses which overhead were a canopy of golden oak-leaf, and carpeted underneath with primroses and the young up-curling bracken. Presently through a little wood we came upon a pond lying wide ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... silence, now, he ahead this time, brushing aside the thick undergrowth that blocked ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... heat, G. W. reached the summit, only to sink down at once in the tangle of bushes and pant and puff. But after a while he revived; and then peering through the undergrowth he gazed down upon the plain below ...
— A Little Dusky Hero • Harriet T. Comstock
... was making my way through a teakwood forest, when I came upon a deep circular depression in an open space, in the centre of which was a rude stone temple. I was sure that this was one of the temples of the Thugs, so I concealed myself in the undergrowth to watch. ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... first of last August (1882) I noticed that a large percentage of the undergrowth of the sugar maple (Acer saccharinum) in Lewis County, Northeastern New York, seemed to be dying The leaves drooped and withered, and finally shriveled and dried, but still clung to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... berries set. The graceful red bud, found in luxuriant growth in Lake County, was also here. Likewise the elders, with their heavy clusters of yellow blossoms. The buckeye, with its long, graceful blossoms, reached far up above the undergrowth. The mountain sage, differing materially from the valley sage and bearing a yellow flower, was also here. The mountain balm, with its long purple blossoms, mingled its colors with its neighbors. Occasionally an humble thistle, with its blossom of purple base and intense pink center, thrust up ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... their voyage they came upon many islands, whose thick growth of forest trees was so interlaced with vines and undergrowth as to render them almost impenetrable. Vigorously they plied their paddles, day after day, breasting the strong current of the river, encountering no incident of importance. Every night they landed, drew their canoe upon the grass, turned it over, so as to cover its ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... three locks of hair, cultivated to a great length and plastered by means of pomade across his cranium, concealed a certain poverty of undergrowth thereabouts; while a pair of whiskers, sandy in colour and stiff in texture, and a clean-shaven upper lip and chin, threw out a challenge that Mr. Peter Farrell could grow hair if and where he chose. His eyes bulged like gooseberries. They ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... southern New England; grows rapidly in a good, moist soil in sun or shade; the large leaves start late and drop early; useful where it is hardy, in low tree plantations or as an undergrowth in woods; readily transplanted, but seldom offered for sale by nurserymen or ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... little while the party landed at Memloose Island. Before them, rising sharply against the evening sky, drooping cottonwoods lifted high above an undergrowth of willows. The party marched down a little trail for half the length of the island, and then, at a point where the trail divided into the sombre interior of the wooded ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... likely place now, as they climbed over a rough, moss grown fence, and entered the unfrequented spot, to find old masses of rock peering out of the soil, ancient trees coated with ivy, and an abundance of thick undergrowth such as they had been fighting ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... business was to avoid attracting the attention of (p. 041) the enemy to our preparations, and in this we were aided by the fact that there was a considerable amount of cover beside us, in the form of trees and undergrowth, the foliage of which ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... did he do? Need made him wise; his brain was strong and little used; he trained it up to ever more and more. His first way was to let the goats loose before starting off himself, so that they could get a full feed among the undergrowth in the woods. But he found another plan. He took a bucket, a great vessel, and hung it up by the river so that a single drop fell in at a time, taking fourteen hours to fill it. When it was full to the brim, the weight was right; the bucket sank, and in doing so, pulled a line connected with ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... a vengeance sent 170 From Media post to Aegypt, there fast bound. Now to th' ascent of that steep savage Hill Satan had journied on, pensive and slow; But further way found none, so thick entwin'd, As one continu'd brake, the undergrowth Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplext All path of Man or Beast that past that way: One Gate there onely was, and that look'd East On th' other side: which when th' arch-fellon saw Due entrance he disdaind, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... ground. The spot was a wild one. A broken ledge of rock was at her feet, and just below it ran a dark, narrow winding footpath half-obscured by the undergrowth. Here she once more proceeded to nerve her mind for the commission of the deed, but she had not been there an instant when she was surprised to hear ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... friends, in response to my inquiries about the river, told me that it certainly took its rise from the deep pool I have before described, and that had I made a more careful examination I should have seen several tiny rivulets, hidden by the dense undergrowth, flowing into it from both sides of the gorge. During severe rains an immense volume of muddy water would rush down; yet, strangely enough, the two kinds of fish which inhabited it were just as plentiful as ever as ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... rode through the bush his head reeled a little at the beauty that surrounded him. The country was indescribably fertile. In parts the forest was still virgin, a tangle of strange trees, luxuriant undergrowth, and vine; it gave an impression ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... disheveled aspect might escape the servants Marcia took her down a side staircase of the vast house, and piloted her through some garden paths. Then the girl herself, returning, opened a gate into a wood, where an undergrowth of wild roses was just breaking into flower, and was soon pacing a mossy path out of sight ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... their catkins on the banks of the Yvette; and farther yet, over yonder beneath the green domes of the forest of Fontainebleau, the deer prick their ears at the sound of the first riding-parties. Off with you! Flowers line the pathways, the moors are pink with bloom, the undergrowth teems with darting wings. All the town troops out to see the country in its gala dress. The very poorest have a favorite nook, a recollection of the bygone year to be revived and renewed; a sheltered corner that invited sleep, a glade ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... tangle, leaping from moss-clump to fallen log, he forced his way, the lantern, like a swaying will-o'-the-wisp, now casting a red splash on the surface of a pool, now leaving it in blackness, to light up a new circle of vine and stump and riotous undergrowth. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... sat I heard a rustle behind me, and there, not eight feet away, narrow snout held high, one tiny foot lifted, was that furry fiend, Rikki-tikki. He was too quick for me, and dived into a small clump of undergrowth and bamboos. But I wanted a specimen of mongoose, and the artist offered to beat one end of the bush. Soon I saw the gray form undulating along, and as the rustling came nearer, he shot forth, moving in great bounds. I waited ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... that this self-justifying, self-proving purity of style, is commoner in ancient literature than in modern literature, and also that Shakespeare is not a great or an unmixed example of it. No one can say that he is. His works are full of undergrowth, are full of complexity, are not models of style; except by a miracle nothing in the Elizabethan age could be a model of style; the restraining taste of that age was feebler and more mistaken than that of any other equally great age. Shakespeare's mind so teemed with ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... arose and pulled aside the curtains of a window. The nearer world was dripping; the farther world was hidden or obscured by long veils of rain, driven in ragged clouds before a west wind. Yesterday the leaves had waved lightly, the undergrowth of shrubs had uplifted in feathery airiness of texture, the ground beneath had been crisp and aromatic with pine needles. Now everything bore a drooping, sodden aspect which spoke rather of decay than of the life ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... we could see a short distance in front, the ground having been partially cleared of trees and undergrowth. A chain of double sentries was posted, and the utmost vigilance observed. We could hear the batteries opening on the ridge, while occasionally, as if to harass the picket, a 13-inch shell would burst either in our front or in our rear. The night passed quickly, ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... that. She was sure that it did not take her more than twelve or fifteen minutes (for she had gone that way a hundred times) to get back to the gate, to walk up the little wood, to cut through it by a track in the undergrowth, and turn round the further and western end of it. Thence she could either take the long path that slanted across the field to the Farm bridge or keep to the upper ground along a trail in the grass skirting the wood, ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... camp, through forest so dense that even the progress of a native clambering from trunk to trunk and over undergrowth ten feet deep was slow and tortuous, was the temporary village of Zalu Zako; some six or seven hundred huts of branches and creepers straggling over a wide area of ground which had been roughly cleared from undergrowth by ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... smoke. It came from a tangle of undergrowth in a depression of the forest. Very cautiously, with the patience of his race, he circled round the cabin through the timber and crept up to it on hands and knees. Every foot of the way he took advantage of such cover as ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... and smiling mien, as of one who had known enough sorrow to purge prosperity of its grossness. From the churchyard there led a little path, which skirted a wide moat of dark water, full of innumerable fish, basking in the warmth; in the centre of the moat stood a dark grove of trees, with a thick undergrowth. Suddenly, through an opening, Hugh saw the turrets of an ancient gatehouse, built of mellow brick, rising into the sunlight, with an astonishing sweetness and nobleness of air; below was a lawn, bordered by yew-hedges, where a party of people, ladies in bright dresses ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the rock and emerging upon the higher, dry ground. The island thus attained proved a small one, not exceeding a hundred yards wide, rather sparsely covered with forest trees, the space between these, thick with undergrowth. What first attracted my gaze after penetrating the tree fringe was the glimpse of a small shack, built of poles, and thatched with coarse grass, which stood nearly in the center of the island. It was a rudely constructed, primitive affair, and ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... the screening fronds of a young areca palm, and came to an abrupt halt, his eyes fixed on an object in the midst of the tropical undergrowth. ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... Western Siberia, a fur-trader who had once secretly witnessed a Shaman ceremony, which he thus described to me: "Half a dozen worshippers were gathered in a clearing in a lonely part of the forest and I came on them by accident, but concealed myself behind some dense undergrowth. In a circle of flaming logs I saw the Shaman, clad in pure white and looking considerably cleaner than I had previously thought possible. Round his neck was a circular brass plate signifying the sun, and all over his body were ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... day, I was walking, under convoy of the Deputy Warden, in the prison grounds that lie outside the walls, when we stumbled upon the prison graveyard. It lay at the crest of some rising ground, partly overshadowed by second growth timber, and was merely an unenclosed clearing in the rough undergrowth with rows of headstones standing one behind the other, each with a name and date on it. But under all of them lay all that remained on earth of prison tragedies; for even if a prisoner die a natural death in prison, he dies with ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... to the untrodden undergrowth we heard a weird, wailing sound that would have curdled my blood had I not glanced in the window that afternoon and so, in a measure, ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... effective weapon is the spear known as kalawat (Fig. 15d). In this the metal head fits loosely into a long shaft to which it is attached by a rope. As soon as the weapon enters the body of the animal the head pulls out of the shaft, and this trails behind until it becomes entangled in the undergrowth, thus putting the game at the mercy of the hunter. Dead falls and pits are put in the runways, and a frightened animal is sometimes impaled on concealed sharpened bamboo sticks. Less frequently, large animals are secured by means of rope loops which ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... nonsense of it. I have shut the volume, therefore, and, with my hat tilted over my eyes, and my cheek on my hand, am watching the long blue dragon-flies, and the numberless small peoples that inhabit the summer air. All at once, I hear some one coming, crashing and pushing through the woody undergrowth. Perhaps it is Algy come to say that he has changed his mind, and that he will not go after all! No! it is only Mr. Musgrave. I am a little disappointed, but, as my fondness for my own company is always of the smallest, I am able to ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... the Pasay road, encountered a very sharp fire, coming from the blockhouses, trenches, and woods in his front, positions which it was very difficult to carry, owing to the swampy condition of the ground on both sides of the roads, and the heavy undergrowth concealing the enemy. With much gallantry and excellent judgment on the part of the brigade commander and the troops engaged these difficulties were overcome with a minimum loss (see report of brigade commander ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... stopped in some woods clear of undergrowth, like most of those in Europe. The camp kitchens went to work at once, and they received good food and coffee. As far as John could see men were at rest, but he could not tell whether the whole army was doing likewise. It spread out much further to both right and ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... another change in his course. This time it was to the right, and again he put forth a burst of speed the like of which his enemies had never seen. He passed in and out among the trees, and through the undergrowth, with such bewildering swiftness, that, though he was within gunshot, neither would risk firing, where it was more difficult to take aim than at the bird darting through ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... nature of the sound. She had heard it before though in a lesser degree. A tree was falling. She remembered a tall aged pine that stood a short distance to the south of the tent. Between the tree and the tent was a fairly open space, that was filled principally with saplings and scrub undergrowth. Harriet in that moment understood, she thought, that the heavy downpour of rain had weakened the hold of the aged roots of the tree in the ground. The heavy wind blowing against the old pine had been too much for the weakened roots. The tree ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... of the undergrowth forced him to draw nearer to them. When the man had reached the densest part of the thicket, he wheeled round. It was in vain that Thenardier sought to conceal himself in the branches; he could not prevent the man seeing him. The man cast upon him an ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... facilities (the Japanese Government has built one desalination plant and plans to build one other); beachhead erosion because of the use of sand for building materials; excessive clearance of forest undergrowth for use as fuel; damage to coral reefs from the spread of the Crown of Thorns starfish; Tuvalu is very concerned about global increases in greenhouse gas emissions and their effect on rising sea levels, which threaten the country's underground water table; in 2000, the ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... entirely beyond his power, he was about to give the signal to advance when a most unexpected interruption occurred. They heard the snapping of twigs behind them, accompanied by a slight rustling among the leaves, such as might be made by some heavy body working its way cautiously through the thick undergrowth. The astonished troopers hugged the ground closely, holding their breath in suspense; and in a second more, without a single footstep being audible, the bushes parted and the form of an Indian warrior could be ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... two. It was the most beautiful spot in a country noted for its fine scenery. Dense woods were its chief feature. And by dense I mean well-supplied not only with trees (excellent things in themselves, but for the most part useless to the nest hunter), but also with a fascinating tangle of undergrowth, where every bush seemed to harbour eggs. All carefully preserved, too. That was the chief charm of the place. Since the sad episodes of Morton-Smith and Ainsworth, the School for the most part had looked askance at the Dingle. Once a select party from Dacre's House, headed by Babington, who always ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... and opened it, and they passed out into the country. For an hour they kept on. By the end of that time Jack could scarcely drag his limbs along. The Chinaman halted at length in a clump of trees surrounded by a thick undergrowth. ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... was a vast, empty garden, neglected and dead. The hedge that surrounded it was only a tangled mass of undergrowth, and the paths were buried and choked by weeds. The desolate house beyond it loomed up whitely in the shadow. It was damp and cold in the garden, but she went in, mutely obeying the blind force that impelled her ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... called "Melisande in the Wood," justified by the extraordinary circumstances in which she was discovered. One day at No. 35 hut hospital I saw three of the men hunting in a bank opposite, covered with undergrowth and small shrubs. They told me that for the past three days a kitten had been heard mewing, but in spite of all their efforts to find it, they had failed to do so. I listened, and sure enough heard a plaintive mew. The place ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... exquisitely bitted cattle, piloted us at the rate of full ten miles the hour; the scenery, through which the wild track ran, being entirely of the most wild and savage character of woodland; the bottom filled with gigantic timber trees, cedar, and pine, and hemlock, with a dense undergrowth of rhododendron, calmia, and azalia, which, as my friend informed me, made the whole mountains in the summer season one rich bed of bloom. About six miles from the point where we had entered them we scaled the highest ridge of the hills, by three almost ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... the busy little animals began their work again, for they knew that the Wolverene might still be on the watch for them, and have crossed the river himself. So they "lay very low," as Father Beaver put it, keeping to the thick undergrowth of the brushwood, or playing hide-and-seek with their young ones in the deeply tunnelled banks. Phil soon found that though each tunnel had a separate entrance, they all led to the same spot, within easy reach of the winter ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... and sand runs a long way in shore under cocoa-nut groves, but there is no very dense undergrowth. The wind when easterly blows freely along and is drawn rather upon the shore there. Two miles to windward of Mboli is the good harbour of Sara, where ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the companion of the animal he had killed it would be better to do so at the edge of the undergrowth where he could have a fair view of his antagonist, rather than fight in the darkness where the branches would obstruct ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... retired to our tents and the screeching-hot bath so grateful in the tropics. When we emerged, in our mosquito boots and pajamas, the daylight was gone. Scores of little blazes licked and leaped in the velvet blackness round about, casting the undergrowth and the lower branches of the trees into flat planes like the cardboard of a stage setting. Cheerful, squatted figures sat in silhouette or in the relief of chance high light. Long switches of meat roasted before the fires. A hum of talk, bursts of laughter, the crooning of ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... went through the undergrowth. He stamped on every fungus that grew on his way. He was in a destructive mood. He looked for a snake so as to trample on it or kill ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... from the street, was of the true Colonial type, with stately white pillars at the dignified entrance. The garden was a tangled mass of undergrowth—in spite of the snow one could see that— but the house, being substantially built, ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... to do, but the feathers are not pulled, and on examination of several specimens, I found these well and regularly planted, and cleaned from their original down, as a forest of trees is cleared of its undergrowth. In this state the female is still well clothed, and little or no difference can be seen ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... neither had she been crying; but she was not much happier with her sketch than I had been with mine. The jutting group of birch-trees was well chosen, and she had drawn them admirably. But when she came to add the confused background of trees and undergrowth, her very outline had begun to look less satisfactory. When it came to colour—and the midday sun was darting and glittering through the interstices of the trees, without supplying any effects of chiaroscuro to a subject already defective in point and contrast—Eleanor ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... palm, the king of the tropical forest, with its tufted head, like a bunch of ostrich feathers, bending its majestic form here and there over the verdant and luxuriant undergrowth, the mahogany tree, the stout lignumvit, the banana, the fragrant and beautiful orange and lemon, and the long, impregnable hedge of the dagger aloe, all go to show us that we are in the sunny ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... little scream of terror Millicent sprang apart from her companion's side and stood for a space staring at the man who had appeared out of the rent-down undergrowth. The pale light beat upon Geoffrey's face, showing it was white with anger. Looking from Geoffrey, the girl glanced towards Leslie, who waited in the partial shadow of a hazel bush. Even had he desired to escape, which was possible, the bush would have ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... their full height above ground, suggesting tea-gardens in England. Further on they sank into the earth till, at the top of the ascent, only their solid brown roofs showed. Torn branches drooping across the driveway, with here and there a scorched patch of undergrowth, explained the ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... September day, the sun rose over the eastern hills clear and beautiful. The day itself seemed to have a Sabbath-day look about it. The battlefield was in a rough and broken country, with trees and undergrowth, that ever since the creation had never been disturbed by the ax of civilized man. It looked wild, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... were resting—and the Filipino's ability to rest is one of his striking qualities—they were startled by the hurried advance of something, or somebody, on the bank. There was a swish and crash of undergrowth, a hobbling stamp, and something that sounded like the smiting of leaves with a club. At first the farmers thought that a water buffalo had run away from some plantation and was angry because he could not descend the craggy sides and reach ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... opposite side of the straits, and almost everywhere on the Sound, are smooth, sandy shores, or high bluffs covered with trees. The trees, too, at once attracted our attention,—large, handsome oaks, instead of the rough firs, and a totally different undergrowth, with many flowers wholly unknown on the opposite side, which charmed us with their brilliancy and variety of color; among them the delicate cyclamen, and others that we had known only in greenhouses. They continually recalled to us the surprise of some of the ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... pleasant place, to which the luxurious occupants of the mansion at Redlawn occasionally resorted to spend a day. The land was studded with a growth of sturdy forest trees. Formerly it had been covered with a thick undergrowth of canes; but these, near the Point, had been cut away, and the place otherwise prepared for the visits of the ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... a response got the dauntless little girl, slipping almost up to her knees, sometimes, in black swamp-mud; and sometimes stumbling painfully over tree-stumps, and through tangled undergrowth. ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... unpopular sides on hot questions; action toward license after games, spasmodic excitement culminating in excessive strain for body and mind, with alternations of reaction; "beefiness"; overdevelopment of the physical side of life, and, in some cases, premature features of senility in later life, undergrowth of the accessory motor parts and powers, and erethic diathesis that makes steady and continued mental toil seem monotonous, dull, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... not seeing her where she stood on the road across which he now burst, flinging himself out of the pines on one side and into the thicket of undergrowth ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... cliffs which were exceedingly deep, but barely wide enough to admit of the passage of a large boat or a small vessel. Many of these inlets or creeks, which in some respects resembled the narrow fiords of Norway, though on a miniature scale, were so thickly fringed with trees, and the luxuriant undergrowth peculiar to southern climes, that their existence could not be detected from the sea. Indeed, even after the entrance to any one of them was discovered, no one would have imagined it to ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... the parks and palaces of the Cotton Kingdom have not wholly disappeared. We plunge even now into great groves of oak and towering pine, with an undergrowth of myrtle and shrubbery. This was the "home-house" of the Thompsons,—slave-barons who drove their coach and four in the merry past. All is silence now, and ashes, and tangled weeds. The owner put his whole fortune ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... seen all denominations of religions exercised by the jerks, gentleman and lady, black and white, young and old, without exception. I passed a meeting-house, where I observed the undergrowth had been cut away for camp meetings, and from fifty to a hundred saplings were left, breast high, on purpose for the people who were jerked to hold by. I observed where they had held on, they had kicked up the earth, as a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... After three miles sailing we came to a willow island on the north side, behind which enters a creek called by the Indians Tarkio. Above this creek on the north the low lands are subject to overflow, and further back the undergrowth of vines particularly, is so abundant that they can scarcely be passed. Three miles from the Tarkio we encamped on a large sand island on the north, immediately opposite the ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... miserable frame buildings, tenanted during summer by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of England. The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burdening the ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... tried to lead her down the hillside, along the winding paths of the gardens, his hands around her shoulders. It was too slow. Twice the moaning girl had tripped over unseen obstacles. Then he caught her up in his arms and ran with her, the shadows of the trees and the undergrowth clutching at him like mocking shapes in a Dantesque ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... murmured deep into the cushions, with a shiver, "a graceful, cruel, merciless beast." She remembered a tiger she had shot the previous winter in India. After hours of weary, cramped waiting in the machan the beautiful creature had slipped noiselessly through the undergrowth and emerged into the clearing. He had advanced midway towards the tree where she was perched and had stopped to listen, and the long, free stride, the haughty poise of the thrown-back head, the cruel curl of the lips and the glint ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... to the fish pool that morning, he had seen a number of sharply impressed, three-toed clusters of footprints, and recognized the tracks of the hare. Now, he searched the by-ways of the low ground in the vicinity, and finally discovered a line of undergrowth like a hedge, through which a passage had been forced. The hard-packed runway told him that here the long-ears passed through on their foraging expeditions. He cut a number of small sticks and planted them across ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... strictly speaking, it is not with any or all of these three religions that the Christian missionary comes first, oftenest or longest in contact. In ancient, in mediaeval, and in modern times the student notices a great undergrowth of superstition clinging parasitically to all religions, though formally recognized by none. Whether we call it fetichism, shamanism, nature worship or heathenism in its myriad forms, it is there in awful reality. It ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... far into the undergrowth, and then stopped it in shelter so close that, keen as his own eyes were, he could scarcely see the main stream of the river. The water where he came to rest was not more than a foot deep, but he ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... rather I should say was, heavily forested almost to its peak, with a grand and varied type of forest, very rich in oil palms and tree-ferns, and having an undergrowth containing an immense variety and quantity of ferns and mosses. Sugar-cane also grows wild here, an uncommon thing in West Africa. The last botanical collection of any importance made from these forests was that of Herr Mann, and its examination showed that Abyssinian genera and species ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... direction as far as the eye could pierce stretched brown, columnar aisles, carpeted with the brown of needles and the green of June undergrowth: aisle on aisle, green arch on green arch, flecked with sunshine, mighty trunks supporting great swaying boughs, drooping ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... at his pace, a short run eastward over sandy roads, lined with stunted oaks and thick undergrowth of poison ivy, scrub and ferns; characteristic Long Island country with here a group of small untidy shacks and there a farm and outhouses with stone walls and scrap heaps, clothes drying on a line, chickens ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... leaves stirred a little. There was a flash of flame against the green, but it was only a scarlet tanager that shot past, then a flash of blue, but it was only a blue jay. Around them, clustering close to the trees, was the dense undergrowth, and they could ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... undertaken to lead them a short way through the forest. The girls hesitated as they reached the point where they left the military road and had to take to a narrow and blind path amidst the dense trees and undergrowth. The terrifying aspect of the guide and the loneliness of the route ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... and we see the undergrowth on the hills, and it does not seem very unfamiliar; it is considerate the way in which Nature leads you from one scene to another without any change sudden enough to shock you; in the most out-of-the-way corners of the world I believe, you may find features ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... Washington deemed it prudent to fall back a few miles to the Great Meadows, a beautiful little plain, situated in the midst of woods and hills, and divided by a rivulet. Here he threw up strong intrenchments, cleared away the undergrowth, and prepared what he called "a charming field for an encounter." Shortly after, Mr. Gist, whom you well remember, came into camp, from his home on the Monongahela, with the tidings, that a party of French had been ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... hands, and, with a quick swing, faces the pintos down the steep side of the ravine, which is almost sheer ice with a thin coat of snow. It is a daring course to take, for the ravine, though not deep, is full of undergrowth, and is partially closed up by a brush heap at the further end. But, with a yell, Baptiste hurls his four horses down the slope, and into the undergrowth. 'Allons, mes enfants! Courage! vite, vite!' cries their driver, and nobly do the pintos respond. ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... the woods were open and clear of undergrowth, and the troops passed through, preserving their array with little difficulty; but as the point, where the fight between the pickets had commenced, was neared, the timber became dwarfed into scrubby brush, and at some places dense ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... everybody had clapped and clapped so she couldn't get a start for several minutes, "The Harpeth Valley women have been a-marching along behind the men for many a day, because their strong shoulders had to break undergrowth for both, but now husbands and fathers and sons have got their feet up on the bluff of Paradise Ridge, and it does look like they will be a-reaching down their hands to help us up, in the break of a new day, to stand by their side; and I, for one, ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to proceed with caution. Once his leg sank to the knee in the oozy undergrowth. He was just considering whether he had not better abandon a trail which was indeed no longer a trail at all, and pick his way around the pond, when he noticed something a little distance ahead of him which caused him to pause and strain ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... robbed the yellowed leaves of their silken rustle. They fluttered softly, hanging limp from the drooping branches as if attached by invisible threads. As he went on a deep bluish smoke issued from among some far-off poplars where a farmer was burning brush in a clearing. The smoke hung low above the undergrowth, assuming eccentric outlines and varied tones of dusk. Presently the fires glimmered nearer, and he saw the red tongues of the flames and heard the parched crackling of consuming leaves. The figures of the workers were limned ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... Walden's Ridge is almost entirely oak and chestnut. Hickory, perhaps, comes next in frequency, and pine after. There is but little undergrowth, and where the forests have never been molested there are but few small trees. This is due to the annual fires which occur every autumn, or some time in winter, almost without exception, and overrun the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... circumference. This hill and its outliers are a museum of stone circles and dolmens, the best known of which is the "Helstone," or Stone of the Dead. On Ridge Hill, north of Abbotsbury, are the five large stones, almost lost in a tangle of nettles and undergrowth, called the "Grey ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... time something really was coming through the bushes. I lifted my head as far as I could, and listened. For a little while nothing happened, and then, straight in front of me, I saw lights. And there was a sound of trampling in the undergrowth. ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... darting about, and thick moss, and little cascades bursting out. The path grew narrower and steeper, and the flower scents and the sultriness made it like walking in a hothouse. He heard rustlings in the undergrowth, which might have been made by any kind of wild animal; once he stepped across a deadly snake without seeing it. But it was asleep and did not hurt him. He knew the natives had been convinced that he would not ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in the country again, but in a new spot, seated on a log in the woods, warm, sunny, midday. Have been loafing here deep among the trees, shafts of tall pines, oak, hickory, with a thick undergrowth of laurels and grapevines—the ground cover'd everywhere by debris, dead leaves, breakage, moss—everything solitary, ancient, grim. Paths (such as they are) leading hither and yon—(how made I know not, for nobody seems to come here, nor ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... attached to the house, and for the singularly advanced state of dilapidation in which everything was allowed to remain. Beyond the gardens the woods stretched down to the sea, unpruned and thick with a heavy undergrowth; from the road the gardens were hidden by thick hedges, and by the forbidding gray front of the building. It was not an attractive place to look at, and once within the precincts there was a heavy sense of loneliness and utter desolation, that ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... brightly, and the country was an open woodland, with an occasional spot of thick undergrowth. In one of these thickets I placed the Seventy-third Indiana, lying down, and not more than twenty paces from the road, which was in plain view. The enemy approached. The head of his column passed without ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... These swords were to be used for clearing away jungle. The country was very rugged, and the work had to be done at the altitude of twelve thousand feet, where the mountains are mostly covered with forest trees and undergrowth. ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... superb day, and the russet-brown mantle in which Nature arrays herself in the autumn never showed to better advantage; but in all directions we see the prairies on fire. Farmers burn them over as the easiest mode of getting rid of the rank weeds and undergrowth; but it seems a dangerous practice. They plough a strip twenty to thirty feet in width around their houses, barns, hay-stacks, etc., and depend upon the ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... followed the thought that I wash in the lake, and started in that direction, along a footpath that led across a meadow, over a stile. A thick growth of bushes lined the lake for aways, and then the footpath seemed to follow right through the undergrowth. I pushed the green branches aside, and continued along for about a hundred feet, when I stood on the green, grass-covered bank of the beautiful "Windermere." Daffodils lined the water's edge—the daffodils of Wordsworth—down the lake were the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... picturesque lanes, mostly in the shade of umbrageous trees, crossing many a brawling brook, till they reached, on the gentle slope of a hill, the confines of a lofty forest, with a peculiar undergrowth of shrubs from ten to fifteen feet in height of a delicate green tint. These were the cocoa-trees, and the duty of the more lofty ones, whose boughs, interlaced by numberless creepers, formed a thick roof, was ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... say, along of the dust. But, then, there was no dust now, because it was all laid. So the reason why was allowed to lapse, and the fact to take care of itself for once. Helped by an illusion that a path through an undergrowth of nut-trees and an overgrowth of oak on such a lovely afternoon as this wasn't distance at all—even when you got hooked in the brambles—and by other palliative incidents, it was voted a very short cut indeed. Certainly ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... of new desires had had, however, one salutary effect. The depression of my earlier mood had fallen from me. When I looked round at the widening pool of darkness that flowed and deepened about the undergrowth, I found that it produced no ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... and ran curving away into deep shadows, fringed with ferns, and overhung with the dense foliage of oak and walnut. A distant glimpse of brilliant scarlet flowers, standing like sentinels in uniform against the dark green of the undergrowth, beckoned like a hand. With a laugh Charlotte set her foot upon the bottom rail. "I'm coming," she called blithely to the scarlet flowers. "You needn't ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... grass; tangled in the film of lilac seeding grasses, spread, like the bloom on a grape, over all the heath; sparkling on the crisp edges of the heather blooms, pure white, wild-rose colour, shell-tinted, purple; emphasising every grey-green spur of the undergrowth of ground-lichen; striking every scarlet-splashed, white-budded spray of ling: an iridescent, shimmering, dancing effect of white and pink and purple flowers; of lilac bloom, of grey-green and whitish-grey buds and branches, all crisply moving and dancing together ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... thousands of bare poles stand stark and stiff against the river light which have been glorious pyramids of leaf shedding welcome shadows on the river path; and many a bold round hill like the ballons of the Vosges, once rich of grass as they, now shorn of wood, and even of undergrowth, lift a bare stony front to the lovely sunlight, and never more will root of tree, or seed of flower or of fern, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... now time to give the plant a light touch of the plough. This eases the soil about the roots, lets in air and light, tends to clean the undergrowth of weeds, and gives it a great impetus. The operation is called Bedaheunee. By the beginning of June the tiny red flower is peeping from its leafy sheath, the lower leaves are turning yellowish and crisp, and it is almost time to begin the grandest and most important ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the rough pasture land of Zoar, was reached by a somewhat tedious climb from the lonely farmhouse, in a sheltered nook, through straggling woods and gray pastures. It was a vast exposed surface rising at a slight angle out of the grass and undergrowth. Along the upper side was a thin line of bushes, and, pushing these aside, the observer was always startled at the unexpected scene—as it were the raising of a curtain upon another world. He stood ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... west of north, and sixteen rods twenty-nine links, from your corner," the young surveyor read aloud, as he copied the marks into his notebook. "The other tree is so surrounded by undergrowth, it would take you and your axe an hour to cut a passage through so that I could run a line; and I am going to try running a line from this tree alone. Be cutting a few good stakes, while I go and bring up my horse and ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... all round, I continued to film the general attack until the spool in the camera ran out. To have changed spools there would have been the height of folly, so I plunged down a side path, where in the shelter of a dell, with thick undergrowth, I loaded up my camera again, and utterly careless of direction, made a dash for the edge of the wood again, emerging just in time to catch the passage of a French regiment advancing along the edge of the wood to cut ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... below, at once turned, and, injured as she was, made up towards the summit of the mountain with incredible speed. Then began the fan, the dogs yelping and howling, and the boys and girls screaming with excitement, as they plunged through the undergrowth and vines in pursuit. Nearly on the summit was a huge tree, with foliage like an Australian white cedar, and here was the old pig's lair, for the soil at its buttressed foot was ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... what to do when this occurs. Enderby and Jackson believe that the next train is the 10.15; but that is their narrow-minded parochialism. They are quite wrong. About ten minutes after the 8.52 has gone away another perfectly good train steals panting from the undergrowth. When one has missed the 8.52 one cannot wait on the platform till 10.15, nor, on the other hand, having waved an airy good morning to the butcher, the baker and the grocer as I trotted along, can I very well go back and undo it. And then the derision at home, the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... Vadi to the brink of this precipice, I toppled it over, swaying dizzily as I watched it crash down into the poisonous undergrowth two ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... high bluff and overlooking the river. Below the houses a tangled mass of bushes and small trees lay black in the moonlight, and in the distance the grey body of the river showed faint and far away. The undergrowth was so thick that, looking down, one saw only the tops of the growth, with here and there a grey outcrop of rocks that glistened in ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... "I half suspected it might be so. This is the work of that rascal Flat Nose—and if that is so, he is moving northward with all speed to get away with his booty. More than likely some French hunters—ha!" He broke off short, for in the undergrowth he had caught sight of another form, that of a white man leaning against a fallen tree, with a gun clutched tightly in ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... no flight, no song, but went like a half-fledged bird, hopping tentatively through the undergrowth. The bright springing mercury that carpeted the open spaces had only just hung out its pale flowers, and honeysuckle leaves were still tongues of green fire. Between the larch boles and under the thickets of honeysuckle and blackberry came a tawny silent form, wearing ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... could satisfy myself positively that the old snake really held supervision over her brood, the gentleman with whom I happened to be came upon the scene, whereupon the interesting family disappeared beneath the undergrowth ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... pigs with tusks that had to be hunted and slain. Elephants too! He had left out the elephants, but they crowded in royal array into Olga's quick imagination. She and Nick would often go elephant-riding in the jungle. Mysterious word! It held her like a spell. Tall trees and winding undergrowth, a gloom well-nigh impenetrable, creatures that hid and spied upon them as they passed! Perhaps they would go tiger-hunting together. She thrilled at the thought, picturing herself creeping down ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... back into the denser undergrowth and they looked out through the leaves to where the road circled in toward the bridge. The hoof-beats of horses ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... pines and floored with harsh palmetto-scrub. Strewn here and there through this sandy expanse lovely oases, locally known as "hammocks", usually in hollows, and consisting of several acres of rich soil where tropic and sub-tropic trees grow as luxuriantly as in a jungle, where undergrowth and vine run riot, where orchid and airplant and wondrous-hued flowers blaze through the green ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... horrible black animal made Martin quite happy, in spite of hunger and fatigue, and he pushed on as bravely as ever. But it was slow going and very difficult, even painful in places, on account of the rough thorny undergrowth, where he had to push and crawl through the close bushes, and tread on ground littered with old dead prickly leaves and dead thorny twigs. After going on for about an hour in this way, he came to a stream, a branch of the river he had left, and much shallower, so that he ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... stake thrust into a crevice of the rock. An old woman, wasted and wrinkled, wrapped in a yellow-gray wolfskin lined with lamb's wool, lay on a pile of leaves near the fire, and savage heads emerging from the undergrowth might have been those of wolves, or of men in the guise ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... to himself as, at the close of that long and varied day, he stood at the mouth of a natural cave, half hidden by tangled undergrowth, which had been appointed months ago by Joanna the gipsy as the place where on May Day evening she would meet him, and tell him more of the matter so ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... there, as if it might have been in the deepest part of the wood Nettles and ferns raised their slender stalks, and the uncanny wolf's milk was competing for supremacy with the burdock. In the midst of this tangled undergrowth he crouched down, put his elbows on his knees, ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... were tinted a shimmering blue, like the forests of a dream. On the seaward side the belt of great trunks and matted undergrowth came to the western shore of the oval lagoon; and in the pure freshness of the air the groups of brown houses reflected in the water or seen above the waving green of the fields, the clumps of palm trees, ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... the boys saw the harried buck hasten out of the shallow water. He turned once on the very edge to give a single glance back toward the baffled dogs, still swimming aimlessly about, and yapping in defeat, then leaped lightly into the undergrowth and vanished ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... Notes, and by the Darkness, Solitaryness, and strong undergrowth of the place assured of their Haunts, closely lodge your self, and softly at first call; lest being near you, a loud Note affright them; and no Reply made, raise your Note gradually, to the highest; and if there be a Pheasant ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... tall-tressed Ida's leafy glades The sons of Atreus sent swift messengers. These laid the axe unto the forest-pines, And hewed the great trees: to their smiting rang The echoing glens. On those far-stretching hills All bare of undergrowth the high peaks rose: Open their glades were, not, as in time past, Haunted of beasts: there dry the tree-trunks rose Wooing the winds. Even these the Achaeans hewed With axes, and in haste they bare them down From those shagged mountain heights to Hellespont's shores. Strained with a strenuous ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus |
