"Driftwood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... half-breed paddling a canoe with a small diamond- shaped sail, filled with trout. The cliff above me was crowned with beds of blue flowers, whose names I did not know. Against the little gulfs and coasts of rock at my feet were washing a few white logs of driftwood. I wondered if they could have floated across from England, or if they could be from the Titanic. The sun was very hot, the sky a clear light blue, almost cloudless, like an English sky, and the water seemed fairly deep. I stripped, hovered a while on the brink, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... of sycamore, and the steady and thorough combustion of soft apple wood soon become familiar characteristics to those who have the opportunity to lay the fire in variety. Then there is, of course, the fascination and the weird coloring in a driftwood fire—most spectacular of all but unfortunately denied to ...
— Making a Fireplace • Henry H. Saylor
... no doubt about Neb's pony making land, unless struck by some driftwood, or borne to the centre of the stream by the shifting force of the current. But if Neb had failed to retain his grip he might have been sucked under by the surge of waters. A hundred yards below he found them, dripping and weak from the struggle, yet otherwise unhurt. There were no words ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... times before leading away. We were fortunately able to keep track of the chase from the baying of the hounds without entering the timber, and were watching its course, when suddenly it changed; the pack followed the scent across a bridge of driftwood on the Frio, and started up the ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... result was absolutely new to all experience, —India-rubber not melting in contact with red-hot iron! A man must have been five years absorbed in the pursuit of an object to comprehend his emotions. He felt as Columbus felt when he saw the land-bird alighting upon his ship, and the driftwood floating by. But, like Columbus, he was surrounded with an unbelieving crew. Eagerly he showed his charred India-rubber to his brother, and to the other bystanders, and dwelt upon the novelty and marvellousness of his fact. They ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... that some whar in these seas there's a place they call the Lumber Yard, 'cause of all the driftwood and floatin' spars and bits o' wreck and sich gittin' jumbled up together; for all the currents sort o' meet there, like them puzzles whar every road leads in and none out. If a ship once gits in there, good-by to her; for there ain't no wind, ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... a piece of driftwood. The roaring in his ears grew less, and he felt the touch of something under his feet. Sunlight burst upon him. He caught at a rock, and hung to it. His eyes cleared a little. He was within ten feet of a shore covered with sand and ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... ourselves comfortable on the shady bank, and while I busied myself in splitting the fish and pinning it open on a bit of board that I had found in a pile of driftwood, and setting it up before the fire to broil, my new companion entertained me with the sweetest and friendliest talk that I had ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... fact was that he felt himself an outcast, a negligible bit of driftwood upon the tide of opportunity. His profession had found him a useless unbeliever. In the end, it would cast him out completely, a tattered remnant of a soul, riddled with doubts. His wife would be quite too well-mannered to do anything so radical as to cast him out; ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... in the exact center of the most grew-some collection of human skulls and bones I have ever seen. Bones were strewn on the floor of the cave like driftwood. Skulls were grinning at us from every corner of the darkness. We had stumbled into a big grave where some of the Indians had hidden their dead away from the wolves after a battle. It may be that none of us were superstitious, but we got out of ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... Panuco town in less'n three hours, ... if we don't hit a log," Peter leaned back and shouted in Wemple's ear. "And if we do hit driftwood, I'll have you in the ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... recovered from jams of driftwood that had piled up along the shallow shores of the flood. All of them were badly mutilated and in several cases identification was difficult. The authorities organized a squad of men to cover the entire inundated area in the search of bodies. Up ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... tinder-box, made a blaze of driftwood, and bound up the bleeding arm and leg roughly. 'Wretch,' he said, ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... one get a glimpse of this shy little bird, that darts out of sight like a flash at the first approach. Balancing on a cat-tail stalk or perched upon a bit of driftwood, it makes a feeble, husky attempt to sing a few notes; and during the brief performance the opera-glasses may search it out successfully. While it feeds upon the bits of sea-food washed ashore to the edge of the marshes, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... arm resting on the mantelpiece, the firelight glowing on her black dress. Her clever speculative eyes were fixed on the smouldering logs of driftwood. Lucille was moving about the room, exhibiting by her manner that impatience which the mention of my name seemed ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... I gathered me brush and driftwood, and striking flint and steel soon had a fire going and set about cooking certain strips of dried goat's flesh for my breakfast. Whiles this was a-doing I was startled by a sudden clatter upon the cliff above and down comes a great boulder, ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... beyond which lay the forest, and skirted the latter to the lake shore. There he hid his rifle and his supplies in the hollow of a tree, so that he might have greater freedom of action. Then he worked his way cautiously toward the rude breastworks facing the blockhouse. A small fire of driftwood burned dimly behind these, and about it sat several blanketed figures. In no other direction was there a sign ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... fury. They trembled when they thought of the "Griffin." When at length the tempest lulled, they re-embarked, and steered southward, along the shore of Wisconsin; but again the storm fell upon them, and drove them, for safety, to a bare, rocky islet. Here they made a fire of driftwood, crouched around it, drew their blankets over their heads, and in this miserable plight, pelted with sleet and rain, remained for ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... McQueen dismissed his followers with a blessing and a promise to see them all after dinner. Then, after a few kindly words to Mother Nolan, he entered his own room, where Cormick had a fire of driftwood roaring in the chimney. He soon returned to the kitchen, in socks and moccasins of the skipper's, a rusty cassock and a red blanket. The innate dignity and virtue of the old man gave to his grotesque attire the seeming of robes of glory, in spite of the very ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... rock that looked toward the river, was a stretch of clean dry sand. Against this rock, the guide had placed a rubber air-mattress and a plentiful supply of blankets. A small folding table stood before a rough stone fire place. A canvas shelter stretched vertically on two strips of driftwood, shut off the night wind that was beginning to sweep through the Canyon. The mules were ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... sluggish current, and the channel shoals up to eight feet, then falling to twelve, fifteen and seventeen feet, and suddenly dropping to 100 feet of water and over. In the spring months it will rise from twenty-five to forty feet, leaving driftwood high up among the trees on the banks. The tide ebbs and flows at Portland from eighteen inches to three feet, according to season, and this tidal influence is felt, in high water, as far up as the Cascades. It is fifty miles of glorious beauty from "The Dalles" to the Cascades. Here we ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... we flit, One little sandpiper and I; And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered driftwood bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit, One ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... contentedly. We made an attempt to dry our clothes, which were soaked with salt water, but did not meet with much success. We could not afford to have a fire except for cooking purposes until blubber or driftwood had come our way. ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... of course because they were struck by them, but also frankly, because of Injustice with a capital I; for in their short-sightedness it filled the field of vision. The capacity to feel and judge is very limited in an ordinary man; submerged as he is in the species, he clings to any driftwood; and just as he reduces the infinite number of shades in the river of light to a few colours, the good and evil that flow in the veins of the world are only perceptible to him when he has bottled a few samples, chosen among those around him. All good ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... overlooking the Big Blue, early on the afternoon of the twenty-sixth of May, we found the river booming, and the water still rising. Driftwood and good sized logs were floating by on a current so strong that all hope of fording it vanished even before its depth was measured. We encamped on the slope of the prairie, near a timber of cottonwood, oak, beech, and sycamore trees, where a clear brook rushed over its stony bed to join the ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... carefully selected one and decorated in Indian fashion—was embarked on the sullen stream above the timber-boom. The holding back of the water and the driftwood had formed an angry stretch of river which under ordinary circumstances Ruth and the other girls who had accompanied her West thought they would have feared to venture upon. The Indian girl, however, seemed to consider the ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... fruits as flourished in profusion, for this island, Martin, is a very earthly paradise. That night, the moon being high and bright, I came to that stretch of silver sand beside the lagoon where they lay together rigid and pale and, though I had no other tool but his dagger and a piece o' driftwood, made shift to bury them 'neath the great pimento tree that stood beside the rock, and both in the same grave. Which done, I betook me to a dry cave hard by a notable fall of water that plungeth into a lake, and there passed the night. Next day, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... outer tip where the breeze tended to thin the plague of insects. They were all old-stagers in the ways of camplife, so there was no lost motion or bickering as to their respective duties. Their preparations were simple. First they built a circle of smudges out of wet driftwood, and inside this Lee kindled a camp-fire of dry sticks, upon which he cooked, protected by the smoke of the others, while Gale went back to the edge of the forest and felled a dozen small firs, the branches of which he clipped. These Poleon ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... then, turning over on her side, shot him out on to the planking of the steep descent into the small lasher. He grasped at the boards, but they were too slippery to hold, and the rush of water was too strong for him, and rolling him over and over like a piece of driftwood, plunged him into ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... that she was losing her hold of herself. Soon she would be a-wash in a sea of love, helpless to resist as a bit of driftwood, and then the waters would close over her head and she would be drawn down into the depths of shame which yielding to her love ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... back to the house, and King and Marjorie continued their explorations. The beach was flat and smooth, and its white sand was full of shells, and here and there a few bits of seaweed, and farther on some driftwood, and in the distance a pier, built out ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... be far gone indeed when an arrow point will not sting him to life. I was no longer a fever-riven log of driftwood. I knew where I was and what was happening. I had reached the Malhominis village. Working through the rice swamp, I had come into the main river too far to the west, but following the woman's voice I ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... outgrown their youthful pleasure in "Maidenhood," "The Rainy Day," "The Bridge," "The Day is Done," verses whose simplicity lent themselves temptingly to parody. Yet such poems as "The Belfry of Bruges," "Seaweed," "The Fire of Driftwood," "The Arsenal at Springfield," "My Lost Youth," "The Children's Hour," and many another lyric, lose nothing with the lapse of time. There is fortunately infinite room for personal preference in this whole matter ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... sandy slope, and found themselves on the summit of an oval island, with a pretty glade in the middle surrounded by birches. Bill, the second raftsman, a stolid, silent man, at once swung his axe upon a log of driftwood. Mr. Wells and Jim walked to and fro under the birches, and Kate and Nell sat on the grass watching with great interest the old helmsman as he came up from the river, his brown hands and face shining from the scrubbing he had given them. Soon he had a fire cheerfully blazing, and after ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... descended the stairs to the sitting room. Before a driftwood fire in a big brick fireplace sat Captain Warren in his shirt-sleeves, a pair of mammoth carpet slippers on his feet, and the said feet stretched ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Thayor above the roar, as he settled himself behind the pile of driftwood the trapper had indicated. "But where are you ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... and often we saw fawns peering at us from the underbrush, or looked straight into the brown eyes of a stag as we charged full tilt round a corner and entered another reach of the river. Foxes, too, everywhere haunted the banks, tripping daintily among the driftwood and disappearing so suddenly that it was impossible to see how they ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... Flying Star that had been her home for so long. The storm had wrought great havoc with some of the shipping, and big boys were out gathering driftwood. The Gazette had some melancholy news of "lost at sea." But Captain Corwin thought ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... sent instantly. I wired him to hold on to Eliphalet but to drop all the men he didn't need to handle the tug at the first convenient point and send them singly into the woods beyond Calderville to await instructions. This is a dead port; nothing but driftwood has landed here since the mill shut down ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... as they passed through the gloomy silence of the box canyon, picking their way over rocks and bowlders and driftwood cast forty feet above the river level in some terrific glut of waters, he began to talk again, evenly and quietly, pointing out indifferent things along the trail, and when at last they mounted the hill and looked down upon Hidden Water ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... there are men, whose political, social, intellectual, or philanthropic labours are put on, as the harlot puts on paint, and for the same purpose: but they can no more retard the progress of the great bulk of vital and sincere womanhood, than the driftwood on the surface of a mighty river can ultimately prevent its waters ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... are solid structures always, built up of logs, brush, stones, and driftwood, well knit together by alder poles. One summer, in canoeing a wild, unknown stream, I met fourteen dams within a space of five miles. Through two of these my Indian and I broke a passage with our axes; the others were so solid that it was easier to unload our canoe and make a portage than to break ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... or two later, my brother and I were riding along the road at about the same place, and we met a very miserable-looking specimen of humanity, driving a poor limping horse to a rickety wagon in which were some pieces of driftwood. My brother was in a "spell of the blues" at this time, and he remarked that he was coming to just that condition as fast as he could. The image and memory of this incident also came into consciousness as if it had been waiting repressed just under ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the way to Point Rodney. It was blowing a living gale an' the snow was blinding. In the dark Jarvis' deer wandered from the trail, got entangled in a lot of driftwood on the beach, which was half covered over with snow, took fright, an' finally wound up by running the sled full speed agin a stump, breakin' the harness, draggin' the line out of Jarvis' hand an' disappearin' in the darkness an' the flying snow. Luckily Jarvis knew enough not to ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... day after day and night after night, over the unknown ocean; the mutinous and ill-appeased crew; at length, when hope had turned to despair in every heart but one, the tokens of land—the cloud banks on the western horizon, the logs of driftwood, the fresh shrub floating with its leaves and berries, the flocks of land birds, the shoals of fish that inhabit shallow water, the indescribable smell of the shore; the mysterious presentment that seems ever to go ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... though they had strained their eyes to the utmost no sign could they discover of the Benbow frigate, but they fancied that the darkness, which is generally the greatest an hour before dawn, had concealed her from their sight. Toby, who turned out on being called, quickly lighted a fire with the driftwood, of which there was generally an abundant supply on the beach, and they sat before it for some time drying their wet clothes, its bright light preventing them from seeing how rapidly the dawn was advancing. At length Roger starting up exclaimed, "Why, it is nearly broad daylight: ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... elucidation he seized the corners of his mother's shawl and spread them out till it bellied like a sail. Bask-Wah-Wan scolded and struggled, but was blown down the beach for a score of feet and left breathless and stranded in a heap of driftwood. The men uttered sage grunts of comprehension, but Koogah suddenly tossed ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its fulness. But a girl comes into his life—a beautiful bit of human driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and through his passionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life has to ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... listen as for footsteps; for what might not come to him out of this vague, nebulous world beyond? Perhaps even SHE,—for this strange solitary was not insane nor visionary. He was never in spirit alone. For night and day, sleeping or waking, pacing the beach or crouching over his driftwood fire, a woman's face was always before him,—the face for whose sake and for cause of whom he sat there alone. He saw it in the morning sunlight; it was her white hands that were lifted from the crested breakers; it was the rustling of her skirt when the sea wind swept through the beach ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... river that seemed ever trying to come up close to the barren and make its acquaintance, but could not quite succeed, since it must always turn and flee at a fixed hour, like Cinderella at the ball, leaving not a silver slipper, but purple driftwood and bright sea-weeds, brought in from the Gulf Stream outside. A planked platform ran out into the marsh from the edge of the barren, and at its end the boats were moored; for although at high tide ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... Sartigan, the nearest French settlement where provisions could be bought, was nearly seventy miles away. The swift current carried the frail canoes down the first twenty miles in two hours. Here through the rapids, there over hidden ledges, now escaping the driftwood and the sharp-edged rocks, Arnold and his men ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... so careless and clumsy that we can approach very near without disturbing them, as they are feeding on the young willows. Toward evening we also found for the first time the nest of a goose among some driftwood, all that we had hitherto seen being on the top of a broken tree on the forks, invariably from fifteen to twenty or more feet ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... the gentlemen, colonel included, got behind, and rolled down into the water. Mr. Perrowne and the fisherman doffed their shoes and socks, rolled up their trouser legs, and waded in to get the logs in position as sleepers. Three spars of driftwood, bleached white, were found along the bank, and were laid over the logs at right angles, and kept in their places, as were the logs, by stakes hammered into the lake bottom. Mr. Errol and Mr. Terry produced some planks, saved ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... unless the storm came up again. As the arms came ashore Morgan served them out to those men whom he considered most reliable; and, after throwing out a strong guard around the band, the rest sought shelter around huge driftwood fires which had been kindled by the use of flint and steel. There was hardly a possibility they would be observed in that deserted land, but still it ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... prudent to make the attempt and are determined, knowing ourselves in such imminent danger, to pursue our journey down the river.... When we approached them [the Shoals] they had a dreadful appearance.... The water being high made a terrible roaring, which could be heard at some distance, among the driftwood heaped frightfully upon the points of the islands, the current running in every possible direction. Here we did not know how soon we should be dashed to pieces and all our troubles ended at once... Our ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... displayed in all classes of her work, should not be slighted amidst the enthusiasm one entertains for her magical mastery of thoughts and images. No other conservative poet of the period is more versatile and individual in choice of numbers, or in adaptation of measure to mood. "Driftwood," a wonderfully original poem of imagination describing the fancies which arise from the smoke of logs wafted from far mysterious lands where once the trees grew under strange suns, moons, and rainbows, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Driftwood floats thickly upon its surface; here in single logs, there in raft-like clusters. To run a boat against one of these is attended with danger, and the pilot avoids them. Sometimes one swimming below the surface escapes his eye; and then a heavy bumping against ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... well begin, therefore, by telling you at once that no furry or hairy quadruped of any sort—no mammal, as I understand your men of science call them—was ever stranded alive upon the shores of my islands. For twenty or thirty centuries indeed, I waited patiently, examining every piece of driftwood cast up upon our beaches, in the faint hope that perhaps some tiny mouse or shrew or water-vole might lurk half drowned in some cranny or crevice of the bark or trunk. But it was all in vain. I ought to have known beforehand that terrestrial animals of the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Walter, he had built too many fires in his mother's kitchen stove and started too many blazes of driftwood on the beach to be at a loss as to how to proceed. Almost in a twinkling scarlet flames were roaring up the wide-throated chimneys and he had placed fenders before them to keep in captivity any straying sparks. While he looked about ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... they saw that the skiff was not going to be of any use, and one of them had got out of the window of the bridge onto the middle pier, with a long pole in his hand. It had an iron hook at the end, and it was the kind of pole that the men used to catch driftwood with and drag it ashore. When the people saw Blue Bob with that pole in his hand, they understood what he was up to. He was going to wait till the water brought the roof with Jim Leonard on it down to the bridge, and then catch the hook ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... bared knees, and with a shout dashed into the yellow water. A cry arose from the opposite bank as the head of a man and horse struggled for a few moments against the battling current, and then were swept away amidst uprooted trees and whirling driftwood. ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... abyss of waters with her dim light, and called to know if any one was there alive. In answer to her repeated calls came the answer of the engineer, who had caught hold of and made a lodgment in a tree-top, and around whom the waters were still rapidly rising, sending floating logs, trees, and driftwood against his frail support, and threatening momentarily to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... early that year, which gave an excuse for the fire in the big fireplace. This fire was made of that peculiar kind of driftwood whose flames show marvellous rainbow tints. Patty never tired of watching the strange-coloured blaze, and delighted in throwing on more chips and splinters ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... been able to work his vessel out of the danger-zone had any signal been made from the coast in reply to his guns and flares. Even if after the arrival of the men from Chance Along on the beach at Nolan's Cove, the heaps of driftwood had been fired, he might have had time to pull his ship around to the north, drag out of the current that was speeding towards the hidden rocks, and so win away to safety. There was wind enough for handling ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... but we remarked on this, as on several other occasions during this season, that a northerly breeze, contrary to ordinary observation, brought more moisture with it than any other. In the course of this run, we also observed more driftwood than we had ever done before, which I thought might possibly be owing to the very great prevalence of easterly winds this season driving it farther from the coast of Greenland ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... did so, whilst I ran backwards and forwards with the blankets and provisions, before the hurricane was upon us. Henceforth there was no stirring out of doors until the gale had blown itself out. We dragged in some driftwood, barricaded the door, and prepared to pass the time as well as we could. Oh, the fleas in the hut! The ground was literally alive with them, and their audacity and appetite was unparalleled. Our boatmen sat tranquilly by the tiny window and played cribbage incessantly with ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... be to-night? When the loosed storm breaks furiously? My driftwood fire will burn so bright! To what warm shelter can'st thou fly? I do not fear for thee, 'though wroth The tempest rushes through the sky. For are we not GOD'S children both, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the Gothic gloom, And stamened with keen flamelets that illume The pale high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor, By surging worshippers thick-thronged of yore, A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb, The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea— For these alone the finials fret the skies, The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free, While from the triple portals, with grave eyes, Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity, The cloud ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... show them the way, the men scrambled up the outer wall of the fort and crossed the moss-covered ramparts at the run. Below them, on the sandy beach, were three men sitting around a driftwood fire that had sunk to a few hot ashes. Clay nodded to MacWilliams. "You and Ted can have them," he said. "Go with ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... visitors, and collected about a hundred hides, and every night, at sundown, the gig was sent ashore to wait for the captain, who spent his evenings in the town. We always took our monkey-jackets with us, and flint and steel, and made a fire on the beach with the driftwood and the bushes which we pulled from the neighboring thickets, and lay down by it, on the sand. Sometimes we would stray up to the town, if the captain was likely to stay late, and pass the time at some of the houses, in which we were almost always ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... easy to understand the advantages derived by the animal from the conditions in which he is usually found. Thus, for example, there is a fish, the Polyprion cernium, which accompanies driftwood on which Barnacles have fixed themselves. Yet the remains of these Crustaceans are never found in his stomach, and it is known on the contrary that he lives exclusively on other small fish. It is ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... is at flood, with danger always present in floating trees and driftwood, muddy torrents coming from the melting snows of the Rocky Mountains. In the autumn the river falls, until in places there are mere trickles around the muddy banks. Navigation, perforce, had to be suspended. These were the conditions under which it was proposed ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... a form that occurs in the valley regions where driftwood can sometimes be obtained. It is closely related to the "lean-to" type, but it is formed partly by excavating the side of a hill and is well covered with earth. It will be noticed that the front is partly closed by logs leaned against it and resting against ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... starving in the midst of abundance, broken only by moments of firmer faith, and so of larger, happier possession, that make the poverty-stricken ordinary days appear ten times more poverty-stricken. The channel lies dry, a waste chaos of white stones and driftwood for long months, and only for an hour or two after the clouds have burst on the mountains does the stream fill it from bank to bank. Do not many of us remember moments of a far deeper and more earnest trust ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... at that place three days, doctoring her wound, and then set off for home. She crossed the Ohio river, at the mouth of Great Kenhawa, on a log of driftwood, travelling only during the night, for fear of discovery—She subsisted on roots, herbs, green grapes, wild cherries and river muscles—and entirely exhausted by fatigue and hunger, sat down by the side of Greenbrier river, with no expectation of ever proceeding ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Black spars of driftwood burn to peacock flames, Sea-emeralds and sea-purples and sea-blues, And all the innumerable ever-changing hues That haunt the changeless deeps but have no names, Flicker and spire in our enchanted ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... between them and the breakers, old stumps that had been months before brought in by the waves lay half buried from sight. A short distance farther up the coast, the sands went a greater way inland, forming a nook where driftwood and stumps had accumulated. On the sand in this nook stood a horse and an old wagon. Beyond a large log, a little fire of driftwood had been started, and a woman was endeavoring to fry some fish in a spider. Two children had partly ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... untraversable. Inductive proof of the existence of accessible land to the west was thus what Columbus chiefly needed, and what he sought every opportunity to find and produce; but it was not easy to find anything more substantial than sailors' vague mention of driftwood of foreign aspect or other outlandish jetsam washed up on the Portuguese strand.[479] What a godsend it would have been for Columbus if he could have had the Vinland business to hurl at the heads of his adversaries! ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... end of the shelf," she advised him, "is a poem in free verse, done by a real journalist who was here in June. See: 'Homage to Dunecrest'—written with a blue pencil on a bit of driftwood." ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... or rocks available, but along the shore she found quantities of driftwood deposited by the river at a slightly higher stage. These she gathered and piled far in the stern of the boat, until at last, to her immense relief, she saw the bow rise gently from the mud of the bank and the stern drift slowly with the current until it again lodged a few ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... length of the rapids we encountered the usual troubles that overtake the tracker—those of clearing our lines of trees and bushes, slipping into the muck of small inlets, stumbling over stones, cutting the lines upon sharp rocks, or having them caught by gnarled roots of driftwood. As we approached the last lap of white water the canoes passed through a rocky basin that held a thirty- or forty-yard section of the river in a slack and unruffled pool. While ascending this last section, the last canoe, the one in which the old grandmother was wielding ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... little money was gone in foolish speculations, and he was dependent on his granddaughter's slight earnings from music teaching and needlework. But he rented an acre of ground from Finley, and grew vegetables; he gathered driftwood from the river for his winter fire, and made up the accounts of the storekeeper occasionally. Yet it was merely keeping off starvation. He was not popular. He had no tongue for the meaningless village talk. People held him in a kind of awe, and yet they felt a mean satisfaction when they saw ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the timber growing along the margins of large streams is softwood. Hence, driftwood is generally a poor mainstay unless there is plenty of it on the spot; but driftwood on the sea ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... fifteen to twenty, but some of them 370 centimetres in length. They were all stuck in the ground on the south-east part of the eminence. Near the place of sacrifice there were to be seen pieces of driftwood and remains of the fireplace at which the sacrificial meal was prepared. Our guide told us that at these meals the mouths of the idols were besmeared with blood and wetted with brandy, and the former statement was confirmed ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... quite away, but still we drifted southward, passing Rocky Point and peering curiously into Pilot Boat Cove, which looked so strangely unfamiliar to me from the sea, though I had fished in its trout-brooks many a day, and had hauled driftwood from the rocky beach to Johnson's ranch in times gone by. The tide turned after sundown, and Captain Booden thought we ought to get a bit of wind then; but it did not come, and the fog crept up and up the glassy sea, rolling in huge wreaths of mist, ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... to the hackberry and see if I can rustle some wood," said Dell, wheeling his horse and following the back trail of the cattle. He returned with an armful of dry twigs, and a fire was soon crackling under the cliff. A lodgment of old driftwood was found below the bend, and as darkness fell in earnest, a cosy fire threw ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... the main channel, and progress was slow, the wheelsman evidently not being well acquainted with the stream. The cry of a leadsman forward was almost constant. Once we tied up against the western bank for nearly an hour to remove a bit of driftwood from the wheel, and I heard voices speaking above on the upper deck as though passengers were grouped along the rail. I obtained no glimpse of these, however, although one of the negroes informed me that ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... rivers—the Settite, Royan, Salaam, and Angrab—in addition to its own original volume. Its waters are dense with soil washed from most fertile lands far from its point of junction with the Nile; masses of bamboo and driftwood, together with large trees, and frequently the dead bodies of elephants and buffaloes, are hurled along its muddy waters in wild confusion, bringing a rich harvest to the Arabs on its banks, who are ever on the look-out for the river's treasures ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... when he disappeared from it. And now here he was back in Poland, with a Russian name for daily use and another name hidden in his heart that had blazed all over Poland once. Here he was, a raftsman plying between Cracow and Warsaw, those two hot-beds of Polish patriotism—a mere piece of human driftwood on the river. He had made the usual grand tour of Russia's deadliest enemies. He had been to Siberia and Paris and London. He might have lived abroad, as he said, in the sunshine; but he preferred Poland and its gray ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... swinging the cane, was Bianchi—Julius Bianchi—known to the Skylarkers as "The Pole," and to the world at large as an accomplished lithographer and maker of mezzotints. Bianchi was a piece of the early artistic driftwood cast upon our shores—an artist every inch of him—drawing from life, and handling the crayon ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that lasted two days, after which the wreck having been broken up, was scattered in every direction. I however managed to secure the driftwood, tubs, spars, and chests, which were all got on shore, and proved of the greatest service to me some ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and get some more," and he came back with a great armful of broken driftwood, and went again for as much gorse as he could carry in a rude wooden fork he found near ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... Mackenzie the slip and escaped in the {81} woods. For several days after this most of the party trudged on foot carrying the cargo, while four of the most experienced canoemen brought the empty canoe down the rapids. But on June 17 they found further progress by water impossible owing to masses of driftwood in the stream. They were now, however, less than a mile from the south fork of the Fraser; the men carried the canoe on their shoulders across the intervening neck of swamp, and at last the explorers ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... in the night was not needed except to afford the proper stage setting. But it was enjoyed. Hume leaned forward to feed the flames, and Starns pushed some lengths of driftwood closer. ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... every night, at sundown, the gig was sent ashore, to wait for the captain, who spent his evenings in the town. We always took our monkey-jackets with us, and flint and steel, and made a fire on the beach with the driftwood and the bushes we pulled from the neighboring thickets, and lay down by it, on the sand. Sometimes we would stray up to the town, if the captain was likely to stay late, and pass the time at some of the houses, in which we were almost always well ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... autumn or in the spring, after the water has retired to its narrow channel, and examine piece after piece of the rubbish that has been lodged here and there against a knoll or some willows, a patch of rushes or dead grass. We are studying the different modes by which plants travel. In the driftwood may be found dry fruits of the bladder nut, brown and light, an inch and a half in diameter. See how tough they are; they seem to be perfectly tight, and even if one happens to have a hole punched in its side, there are probably two cells that are still tight, for there are three in all. ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... crouched for a minute on the bare stone to get his wind. Then he crawled forward along the rough cliff top, feeling his way with his hands. Soon he heard a distant shout. A faint glow of light shone over the edge of the crag. As he drew near, he saw, on the beach below, a great fire of driftwood and some score or more of men gathered in the circle of light. The distance was too great for him to tell much about their faces, but Jeremy was sure that no English or Colonial sloop-of-war would be manned by such a motley company. Their ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... the teeth of the enemy's fire, till he expired. What would the story have been without this example of devotion and fortitude? Then, holding the pursuers in check, they slowly retreated down the side canyon they were in to the main gorge, where they discovered an abundance of driftwood, and decided to make a raft with which to escape. This raft consisted of three sticks of cottonwood about ten feet long and eight inches diameter, tied together with lariats. They had abandoned their horses above, ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... ten-pound rockfish underwater on the day before, and they had baked it in a driftwood fire on a beach at Poplar Island. Rick was as proud as though the catch had been his own. He had been Jan's diving instructor and had taught her how ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... driftwood for her fire. There is a little bay not far from here, The shingle of it a thronging city of flies, Feeding on the dead weed that mounds the beach; And the sea hoards there its vain avarice,— Old flotsam, and decaying trash of ships. An arm of reef half ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... smiling and murmuring song. And he nursed little ships with gleaming sails, and in his hands were old regretted wrecks, and mast all studded over with golden nails that he had rent in anger out of beautiful galleons. And the glory of the sun was among the surges as they brought driftwood out of isles of spice, tossing their golden heads. And the grey currents crept away to the south like companionless serpents that love something afar with a restless, deadly love. And the whole plain of water glittering with late sunlight, ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... metallic green-and-blue wings burning like a spark. Great gnats, with filmy, glittering wings, danced aimlessly above the young golden-rod; burnished crickets, inquisitive, timid, ran from under chips of driftwood, waved their antennae at us, and ran back again. One by one the marbled tiger-beetles tumbled at our feet, dazed from the exertion of an aerial flight, then scrambled and ran a little way, or darted into the wire grass, where great, brilliant spiders eyed them askance from their ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... river, Where the salmon-nets hang brown, Piles the driftwood of the freshets, And the naked logs move down To the clanking chains and shrieking saws of the mills ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... me tonight, a piece of driftwood at thirty-five, and all for the want of money enough to buy an automobile and take the darned-fool world by storm on its vain side! You can't scratch it with a diamond on its reasoning side—I've scratched away on it ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little canon was stifling with heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth faint sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day and its fierce passions still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank of the river, striking no answering reflection from its tawny current. Against the blackness of the ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... the Lewis and Clark men, were attacked by the Blackfeet, and Potts killed and Colter forced to run naked, six miles over the stones and cactus—till at last he killed his nearest pursuer with his own spear, and hid under a raft of driftwood ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... within her. Yes, the old people were past hoping for; mere wreck and driftwood on the shore, the spring-tide of death would soon have swept them all into unremembered graves. But the young men and women, the children, were they too to grow up, and grow old like these—the same smiling, stunted, ignobly submissive creatures? One woman at least would do her ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... swiftly down the chasm without mishap. The stream, to which each mile added its contribution of flood water from the mountain tops, increased constantly in width and depth, but only now and then was there a rock to threaten their progress, and no driftwood at all. When the gold seekers landed for dinner they were confident of two things: that they had passed far beyond the mad hunter's reach, and were very near to the first waterfall. Memory of the thrilling experiences through which they had so recently run ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... panelled simply in woods, furnished with the old Sturtevant mahogany, came upon Bertram Chester like a stage setting as he entered with Mrs. Tiffany. Upstage, burned a driftwood fire in a low hearth of rough bricks; Judge Tiffany sat there, in a spindle-backed chair, reading. Across a space broken only by a painting, a Japanese print or so, and more spindle-backed chairs, Eleanor and Kate had grouped themselves by the piano. Eleanor, turning ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... in sheets and the broken plain, thoroughly saturated, held the water in pools or sent it down the steep sides of the arroyo, to feed the turbulent flood which swept along the bottom, foam-flecked and covered with swiftly moving driftwood. Around a bend in the arroyo, where the angry water flung itself against the ragged bulwark of rock and flashed away in a gleaming line of foam, a horseman appeared bending low in the saddle for better protection against ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... fishermen, who knew the coast well, went out in their boats, hugging the rocky shore until the promontory was gained, and gathering up great heaps of driftwood on the edge of the bluff, set it on fire, and ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... the water drove him away. The house was finally carried away with most of the family in it. The father swam to a stump with one boy on his back and stood there till the water carried away the stump, then tried to swim with the boy for shore, but the driftwood soon engulfed him and all was over. Two of the bodies were never found. Their bones doubtless rest somewhere in the still waters of ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... would avail him little to surrender, for the gun-man would undoubtedly make good his threats; fidelity to such pledges is one of the few things sacred to the race. With some vague and desperate idea of defence, Bob picked up a heavy branch of driftwood. Then, as the man drew nearer, Bob scrambled hastily over the smooth apron to the tiny beach that the eddies had washed out below ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... there was a blazing fire of driftwood, and Larry drew near to the grateful heat, for, though it was only late in September, it was much colder at the beach than in the city, and he was chilly ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... radicle with its pent-up energy, having after weeks of drifting and swaying this way and that to the slightest current and ripple, grapples Mother Earth and makes a law to the ocean. Among the interlacing roots seaweed, sodden driftwood and leaves lodge, sand collects, and as the level of the floor of the ocean is raised the sea retires, contributing by the flotsam and jetsam of each spring-tide ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... with me as I expected, and I got the despair of living that Solomon did. I suppose it was a necessary incident to wisdom in us both; but, some how or other, instead of being actor and regenerator in society, I became a piece of driftwood, and have been floating and eddying about, ever since. Alfred scolds me, every time we meet; and he has the better of me, I grant,—for he really does something; his life is a logical result of his opinions and mine is a contemptible ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... wearily upon their broad, swelling sides,—a couple of dories, apparently in daily use; a small sloop yacht, dismantled and plainly beyond repair; and an oyster-smack also out of commission. About them the beach was strewn with a litter of miscellany,—nets, oars, cork buoys, bits of wreckage and driftwood, a few fish too long forgotten and (one assumed) responsible in part for the foreign ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the carpenter died, and was interred the next day in the cleft of a mountain, it being impossible to put a spade into the ground, on account of the severity of the frost. The following days were devoted to the transport of driftwood and the building of the house. To cover it in, it was necessary to demolish the fore and aft cabins of the ship; the roof was put on, on the 2nd October, and a piece of frozen snow was set up like a May pole. On the 31st September, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... that was coming, but not very many got through. Some of the people asked Elder Brother to help them, but he did not answer. Only Coyote he answered. He told Coyote to find a big log and sit on it, so that he would float on the surface of the water with the driftwood. Elder Brother got into a big olla which he had made, and closed it tight. So he rolled along on the ground under the olla. He sang a magic song as he climbed ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... attributes of a man of thought. You are one that the world has a right to expect will take the correct stand on great human questions. Yet the moment the barriers are down and jingoism floods the earth you give up without a struggle and join the great mass of the world's driftwood.' ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... the smell of bacon frying over the camp-fire, or the crack of a fine, mealy Arizona potato, roasting in the ashes, or a whiff from the coffee-pot, just about to topple over on the burning sticks. The fire is made of driftwood washed down possibly from some storm-swept region where a Mormon dwells with his numerous family; or, mayhap, from a forest where the elk ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... night closed in, the wind rose steadily, still blowing from the southwest. In Brenton's kitchen they found a group round a great fire of driftwood; some of these were fishermen who had with difficulty made a landing on the beach, and who confirmed the accounts already given. The boat had been seen sailing for the Narragansett shore, and when the squall came, the boatman had lowered and reefed the sail, and stood for the light-ship. ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Glenelg the next morning I found it so swollen by the heavy rain of the preceding night as to render it impossible to get near the main bed. The river was now far beyond its banks, and in the forks of the trees above our heads we saw driftwood, reeds, dead grass, etc., lodged at least fifteen feet higher than the present level; and which could only have been left there during some great flood. Whether these had frequently recurred we had of course no means of judging, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... understand that in a week or two I should have been worth L100,000, and now you see, here I am, over thirty years of age without a profession, invalided out of the army and having failed in finance, a mere bit of driftwood without hope ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... dark pines and firs that covered both sides of the valley of the Blue grew down to the bars of the river, which along its banks was thickly grown with wild gooseberry and raspberry bushes, and piled up here and there with great tangled heaps of driftwood which the spring floods brought down and left in masses of inextricable confusion along its sides. Back a little distance from one of these sandy flats, and nestled right in the shadow of the forest's edge, they built a long rough cabin early in June. In summer-time the spot was a wild and picturesque ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... camp on a dry, level sand-bar under a shelving wall. Nas Ta Bega collected a pile of driftwood to be used for fire, and then he took the mustangs back up the side canyon to find grass for them. Lassiter appeared unusually quiet, and soon passed from weary rest on the sand to deep slumber. Fay and Jane succumbed to an exhaustion that manifested itself the moment relaxation ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... pursuit. As soon as the mastiff leaped into the canoe, Ben shoved off, and the light craft was pushed up the stream by himself and Gershom without much difficulty, and with considerable rapidity. But little driftwood choked the channel; and, after fifteen minutes of moderate labor, the two men came near to the point of low wooded land in which the bee-tree had stood. As they drew nigh, certain signs of uneasiness in the dog attracted his master's ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... associations. The very vegetation was unfamiliar. The thrift, sea lavender, rocket, sea campion, and maritime spurge did not descend so low as this. They came no nearer than where the highest tidal marks left lines of driftwood and bleached shells, just below the break of the upper marshes. Here it was another kingdom, neither sea nor land, but each alternately during the spring tides. At first the sandy mud was reticulated ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... the night had risen upwards of eight feet; and still continued rising with surprising rapidity, running at the rate of from five to six miles per hour, bringing down with it great quantities of driftwood and other wreck. The islands were all deeply covered, and the whole scene was peculiarly grand and interesting. The sudden rise probably was caused by the heavy rains of the preceding days; but great must be ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... exhibition to God and man of life in the light of eternity. I have been startled to find a kinship between Wordsworth and Millet. I found it today in a stooped old man who was traveling the roads with a walking stick and a heavy bundle of driftwood. He was worthy of a great painter or a great poet. By the sign of the cross one draws a magic circle round the soul which evil may not penetrate. It places one "in the name." On the seashore one should lie parallel with the waves facing inland. ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... Richardson and the brave sailor; their awful story of the cannibal Michel;—we revert to these things with a shudder. But we must continue on our route. The current still flows westward, bearing now large quantities of driftwood out of the Mackenzie River. At the name of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, also, we might pause, and talk over the bold achievements of another Arctic hero; but we pass on, by a rugged and inhospitable coast, unfit for vessels of large draught—pass the broad mouth ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... glance he saw that nearly the whole upper floor of the building had been converted into one gigantic room. Near a big stone fireplace, where burning driftwood sent up its many tinted flames, Heinrich stood rigidly at attention. Hans, the dachshund, crouched at his feet. When the dog started to meet Parker a guttural ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... is that respecting the so-called "Bernicle" or "Barnacle Geese," which by the naturalists and educated persons of the Middle Ages were believed to be produced by those little Crustaceans named "Barnacles." With the "Barnacles" every one must be familiar who has examined the floating driftwood of the sea-beach, or who has seen ships docked in a seaport town. A barnacle is simply a kind of crab enclosed in a triangular shell, and attached by a fleshy stalk to fixed objects. If the barnacle is not familiar to readers, certain near relations of these animals must be well known, by sight ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various |
