"Ravine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... connected with the stream that carried the mill by an artificial canal. The water of the pond began to gully away the gravel over which it was made to run, and having formed a regular channel, defied all human control, and, in the space of six hours, cut a ravine seventy feet deep, and let out the whole pond, sweeping away the mill, foundation and all, and carrying away a house and blacksmith's shop, which stood near, not giving the owner time to save any thing of ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... when it would appear the easier and almost the only way to keep on up the gentle eminence, whereon might have been found renown and happiness, by that same constant fatality, it suddenly turns short off to one side, plunges down into the rocky ravine, and pants on, for many a weary mile. That man shapes not his own ends, is a truth which I felt long since, and which each day's experience brings home to me with the freshness of a new discovery. It is a truth which rises up and mocks us, when we sit ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... brush-choked gorge, impassable at that point. Luckily the hounds turned here and started back my way. By riding along the edge of this gorge I kept up with them. They climbed out an intersecting ravine and up on the opposite side. I forced my horse to go down this rather steep soft slope. At the bottom I saw a little spring of water with fresh bear tracks around it, and one place where the bear ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... almond blossoms. They found themselves once again in their native land, where they were treated with such contempt that they had to avoid the high roads and take the side paths. When they were passing through a ravine near Nazareth, they stopped under the scanty shade of some olive trees. They were tired, and lay down under the trees. Jesus went on a little farther, where He could obtain a view of the place. He sat down on a stone, leaned His head on ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... But before he could give the word a trumpet pealed, and the Mexicans rode at full speed toward a great gully at the end of the valley into which they disappeared. The last that the Texans saw were some heavily-loaded mules following their master into the ravine. ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... required for the journey. Three sheep, a coup-full of chickens, a desert range, a wall-tent, with the other supplies, made up over 10,000 pounds of baggage as our caravan, entering the northern door of the barren and dreary steppe, felt its way through a deep ravine paved with boulders, shifting sands, and dead camels. We soon left the bluffs and crags which form the barrier between the Nile and the desolate land beyond, and then indeed the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the furious bursts of the flooded stream, and by a judicious system of zig-zagging, convert the channel, so far as he is himself concerned, into a sort of rough staircase, some two thousand feet or so in length. The torrent itself takes a more direct course; and he who has descended by the ravine may well look up with wonder at what has the appearance of a continuous cataract, which, falling a large mass of waters at his feet, seems as if it diminished and disappeared in the heavens. The Staubbach, or Fall of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... her hair, unfastened from its jeweled comb of gold, Wasted fragrance, seemed a cascade plunging down a deep ravine; Seemed the black wing of a raven who had ventured overbold, And was perched upon her forehead that its beauty might ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... to a point where, over a stony fall veil'd with brown bracken, it plunged into a narrow ravine. Standing on the lip, where the water took a smoother glide before leaping, we saw the line of the ravine mark'd by a rift in the pines, and through this a slice of the country that lay below. 'Twas a level plain, well watered, and dotted here and there with houses. A range of wooded ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... along the road toward Peakslow's house, then entered the woodland, descended into a little ravine, and, on the slope beyond, found a spring of running water in the ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... spread over many acres of rocky ravine and forest, at a point where Connecticut approaches New York, and between it and the nearest railroad station stretched six miles of an execrable wood road. In this wilderness, directly upon the lonely ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... covers an area of about forty acres. It is loftier, and its sides are more precipitous, than Koyunjik, especially on the west, where it abutted upon the wall of the city. The surface is mostly flat, but is divided about the middle by a deep ravine, running nearly from north to south, and separating the mound into an eastern and a western portion. The so-called tomb of Jonah is conspicuous on the north edge of the western portion of the mound, and about it are grouped the cottages of the Kurds and Turcomans to whom the site of the ancient ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... others. It was this; namely, we were driving at night up a rising ground between Hanau and Gelhausen, and, although it was dark, we preferred walking to exposing ourselves to the danger and difficulty of that part of the road. All at once, in a ravine on the right-hand side of the way, I saw a sort of amphitheatre, wonderfully illuminated. In a funnel- shaped space there were innumerable little lights gleaming, ranged step- fashion over one another; and they shone ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... without some part of it dragging on the ground. Mr. Sanderson gives some instances of their doing so; and I have known of one instance in my neighbourhood where a tiger after killing a bullock took it into the jungle and carried the carcase along the trunk of a tree which had fallen across a ravine. But considering its size, the dragging power of a panther is much more remarkable, and it seems to carry off a bullock as easily as a tiger does. On one occasion a panther killed a donkey close to my bungalow, and carried it off, and had even attempted to jump up the bank ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... about ten. While both armies were preparing for action, General Scott (as stated by General Lee) mistook an oblique march of an American column for a retreat; and, in the apprehension of being abandoned, left his position, and repassed the ravine ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... over to the lake," the girl suggested gently, as if anxious to humor some incomprehensible child. "There is a lovely ravine we can explore, all cool and shady, and this sun is ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... it seemed as if the human race were extinct. The town was built on a wide ravine running down to the sea; the houses were of stone, and handsome; the streets regular and paved, which proves that it had formerly been a place of some importance; but it is surprising that a spot so barren as this island generally ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... —surnames of Baptism, the pagan Bar, the, language of Barathrum, a ravine Barriers, let down Bastard, when of strange women Baths, how heated —use in winter Battus, silphium of Bed of Procrustes Beginning, fable of the Bell, to awaken sentinels Birds as love-gifts Boasters, the, of Corinth Bottles painted on ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... of low station in the village of B., which, however badly built and smoky it may be, still engrosses the eye of every traveler by the extremely picturesque beauty of its situation in a green woody ravine of an important and historically noteworthy mountain chain. The little country to which it belonged was, at that time, one of those secluded corners of the earth, without trade or manufacturing, without highways, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... four, five,—let us say, six years. Well, that is not an eternity! By the time we come back we shall both of us still be young. Come, then, my dearest Athenais, come, and make closer acquaintance with these imposing Pyrenees, every ravine of which is a landscape and every valley an Eden. To all these beauties, yours is missing; you shall be here, like Dian, the goddess of these noble forests. All our gentlefolk await you, admiring your picture on the sweetmeat-box. They are minded to hold many pleasant festivals in ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... heavy and wet snow has fallen through some windless hours, and the thin, spiry, mountain pine trees stand each stock-still and loaded with a shining burthen. You may drive through a forest so disguised, the tongue-tied torrent struggling silently in the cleft of the ravine, and all still except the jingle of the sleigh bells, and you shall fancy yourself in some untrodden northern ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... English corps into the hills of Afghanistan, and there the newly-conquered tribesmen turned against it as wolves turn against buck. It was hunted for the sake of its arms and accoutrements from hill to hill, from ravine to ravine, up and down the dried beds of rivers and round the shoulders of bluffs, till it disappeared as water sinks in the sand—this officerless, rebel regiment. The only trace left of its existence ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... more hilly become the roads as we gradually penetrate farther and farther into the foot-hills. We are now in far-famed Placer County, and the evidences of the hardy gold diggers' work in pioneer days are all about us. In every gulch and ravine are to be seen broken and decaying sluice-boxes. Bare, whitish-looking patches of washed-out gravel show where a "claim " has been worked over and abandoned. In every direction are old water-ditches, heaps of gravel, and abandoned shafts - all telling, in language more eloquent ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... had never been in this place before. As she approached it, the cry of a whippowil came up from the hollow, as if warning her away. Everything was still within the house. There was no light; the rustle of leaves with the flow of waters from the ravine, joined their mournful whispers with the wail of ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... the Duke of Cumberland the column crossed the ravine in front of Fontenoy. The ground was so broken that the troops were unable to deploy, but moved forward in a solid mass with a front of only ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... sides of a deep, broad gorge, surrounded by rolling hills, the ravine, the mouth of which commences at Marfil, being terraced on either side to make room for adobe dwellings. Here and there a patch of green is to be seen, a graceful pepper tree, an orange, or stately cypress ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... from their comrades while scouting a side ravine, Captain Wren and his quartette of troopers had made stiff and valiant fight against such of the Indians as permitted hand or head to show from behind the rocks. They had felt confident that Sergeant Brewster and the main body would speedily miss them, or hear the sound ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... them, is Roxi. It was Roxi who gave us the love story of his cousin the Nuntalmute Lochinvar. This young man wooed a maid. The girl's father had no very good opinion of the lad's hunting ability and was obdurate. The lover determined to take destiny into his own hands. A ravine of ice stretched between his igloo and that of the family to whom he would fain be son, and over the chasm a drift-log formed a temporary bridge. Lothario, one night, crossed the icy gully, entered the igloo of his elect, seized her in her shin-ig-bee or sleeping-bag ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... could fancy, listening to the babble the waters made, watching the sparkling of the flying spray. Ah! many a rainbow shimmered about the waterfall; right dangerous was the whirlpool above and below the fall. Deep down in the ravine the waters meandered, calmly tranquil: very like mature thoughtful manhood, after the prankish follies of youth ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Phillis Stand knee-deep in the creamy lilies In a drowsy dream; To-link, to-lank, to-linklelinkle, O'er banks with butter cups a-twinkle, The cows come slowly home; And up through memory's deep ravine Come the brook's old song and its old-time sheen, And the crescent of the silver queen, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... resided at a distance of two miles, at a place called Rut's Gate. General Gourgaud slept under a tent, as well as Mr. O'Meara, and the officer commanding the guard. The house was surrounded by a garden. In front, and separated by a tolerably deep ravine, was encamped the 53d Regiment, different parties of which were stationed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Union cannon which had apparently been silenced by the Confederate fire began to pour death and destruction into their ranks. Whole rows of men were mowed down by the awful cannonade, but their comrades pressed forward undismayed, halting for a moment under cover of a ravine to re-form their ranks and then springing on again with a heroism unsurpassed in the history of war. A hail of bullets from the Union trenches fairly staggered them, yet on and on they charged. Once ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... enemy, bury the dead, and perform any other service that might arise. They went as far as Little Crow's village, but not finding any signs of Indians, they returned; and on the 1st of September they reached Birch Coulie, and encamped at the head of it. Birch Coulie is a ravine extending from the upper plateau to the river bottom, nearly opposite the ferry where Captain ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... day he watched for her anxiously until she appeared over the low brow of the hill, her arms filled with books, and Agag trotting at her side. As she descended slowly into the broad ravine where he awaited her under six great poplars that surrounded the little spring, he saw that she wore a dress of some soft, creamy stuff and a large white hat that shaded her brow and eyes. She looked younger, he noticed, than she had done in her black gown, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... with two species of Hyla and two of Plectrohyla. The first specimen of this new species of Ptychohyla was discovered by Dale L. Hoyt, who found the frog on a rock at midday. At night on August 5, 1960, numerous individuals were found calling from leaves of plants growing on the slopes of the ravine by the streams. None was more than two meters above the ground. Tadpoles were found in the fast-flowing stream, where they were holding onto rocks with their mouths. Little is known of the herpetofauna of these mountains that are the home of the Chamula Indians. Since the little frog described here ...
— Descriptions of Two Species of Frogs, Genus Ptychohyla - Studies of American Hylid Frogs, V • William E. Duellman
... home, through the park, along a path skirting the top of a wooded ravine, a dashing rivulet making a pleasant murmur among the rocks below, and glancing here and there through the brushwood that clothed the precipitous banks, when, with a sudden rustling and crackling, a man leaped upon the path with a ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The stones which the glacier rubbed off the cliff beneath it it carried forward, slowly but surely, till they saw the light again in the face of the ice-cliff, and dropped out of it under the melting of the summer sun, to form a huge dam across the ravine; till, the "Ice age" past, a more genial climate succeeded, and neve and glacier melted away: but the "moraine" of stones did not, and remains to this day, as the dam which keeps up the waters of ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... country growing lovelier at every step, and turned out of our way to see wild pine-apples in a sandy spot, or 'Arenal' in a valley beneath. The meeting of the stiff marl and the fine sand was abrupt, and well marked by the vegetation. On one side of the ravine the tall fan-leaved Carats marked the rich soil; on the other, the sand and gravel loving Cocorites appeared at once, crowding their ostrich plumes together. Most of them were the common species of the island {202a} in which the pinnae of the leaves grow ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the tears from her eyes, and looked behind her, at the entrance of a ravine which would hide her from the fiord and the dwelling she had left. Thor islet lay like a fragment of the leafy forest cast into the blue waters; but Vogel islet could not be seen. It was not too far ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... in the Civil Service; the third lived in Ireland, and the only way of having the whole family together for their last fortnight was to gather them at Northmoor, as soon as its lord and lady returned, nor had they been able to escape from their Dolomite ravine till the beginning of May, for the roads were always dangerous, often impassable, so that there had been weeks when they were secluded from even the post, and had had difficulties as to ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... almost believe that to be a giant's castle," remarked Lawrence, pointing to the opposite side of the ravine, where a huge perpendicular mountain of porphyry was so broken into turrets, towers, and battlements, that it was difficult, except for its size, to believe it other than the work of man. There were even holes and formations about it that had the appearance ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... brief "So long, boys!" to Goodnight and the men, they trotted off up the trail. Riding rapidly all night, they hid themselves just before dawn in the rough hills below Pope's Crossing, ate a snack, and then slept undisturbed till nightfall. As soon as it was good dusk they slipped down a ravine to the river, watered their mounts, and resumed the trail to the north. This night also was uneventful, except that they rode into, and roused, a great herd of sleeping buffalo, which ran thundering away ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... in a deep basin, surrounded by bleak hills and barren moors, in strong contrast to the verdant valley in which the village of Matlock lies. The only entrance to and exit from this basin is by a narrow ravine, through which the river Wye flows on its way to join the Derwent ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... her hands, as if she almost saw the little girl falling, down, down to the ravine so far below the path, and was trying to shut out the picture. Nancy, still striving to quiet her fear, heard some one telling what the ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... steep flank of the mountain range is covered with billowy verdure of denser growth than the rest; and here the aid of skilful planting, added to the shelter afforded by a rugged ravine, has enabled the flora of north and south so to be brought together that, twined about with sinuous hop-tendrils, the oak, the spruce fir, the wild pear, the maple, the cherry, the thorn, and the mountain ash either assist or check one another's growth, and everywhere ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... miles' march from Dakka to Hazarnao, the Khurd Khaiber is passed, a deep ravine about one mile long, and in many places so narrow that two horsemen cannot pass each other. Hazarnao is well cultivated, and rich in fodder; 15 miles farther is Chardeh (1,800 feet altitude), from which the road passes through a well-cultivated country, and ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... with that battle know that Alvinzi and his chief of staff Weyrother wished to surround Napoleon's little army, which was concentrated on the plateau of Rivoli. Their center was beaten,—while their left was piled up in the ravine of the Adige, and Lusignan with their right was making a wide detour to get upon the rear of the French army, where he was speedily ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... morning express, who had crossed close to the boulevard at the moment the break occurred, had leaned far out of his cab as the train thundered by at right angles to the "fill," and with cupped hands to his mouth, had hurled this yell into the ravine: ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... vapour slopes athwart the glen, Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand 5 The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine In cataract after cataract to the sea. Behind the valley topmost Gargarus 10 Stands up and takes the morning: but in front The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal Troas and Ilion's column'd citadel, The crown ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the weeds. This wound about in such crazy fashion that I lost all sense of both direction and distance, yet finally we emerged into an open space, from which I saw the chimneys of the old house far away to our left. The path led onward into another weed patch beyond, down a steep ravine, and then before us stretched the lonely waters of the bayou. Hidden under the drooping foliage of the bank was a small boat, a negro peacefully sleeping in the stern, with head pillowed on his arm. Herman awoke him with a German oath, and the way the fellow sprang up, his eyes popping ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... the coach, but its fresh track was visible leading along the bank of the ravine towards the intersection of the road they should have come by, and to which the coach had indubitably returned. Mr. Boyle drew a long breath. They were comparatively safe from any invisible attack now. At the end of ten ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... gravest kind. Elsewhere in the Roman world the work of the conquerors was aided by the very civilization of Rome. Vandal and Frank marched along Roman highways over ground cleared by the Roman axe and crossed river or ravine on the Roman bridge. It was so doubtless with the English conquerors of Britain. But though Britain had long been Roman, her distance from the seat of Empire left her less Romanized than any other province of the West. Socially the Roman civilization ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... out of Millot, the two riders came to the ruins of Christophe's palace of "Without Worry" (Sans Souci). It was once a veritable palace, situated on the top of a small hill overlooking a deep ravine. Great flights of stone steps led up to it, while terrace upon terrace of what once were exquisitely kept gardens, filled with the finest statuary, stepped to the ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Eighteenth Mississippi, to attack the Federal left, while Hunton and Jenifer attacked his front, holding the attack at Edwards' Ferry in check by batteries from his intrenchments. As Colonel Burt reached his position, the enemy, concealed in a ravine, opened on him a furious fire, which compelled him to divide his regiment and stop the flank movement that had already begun. At about 3 p.m., Featherstone, with the Seventeenth Mississippi, was sent at a double-quick ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... came within ten miles of the fort, marching along the Monongahela in regular array, drums beating and colors flying. Suddenly, in ascending a little slope, with a deep ravine and thick underbrush on either side, they encountered the Indians lying in ambush. The terrible war-whoop resounded on every hand. The British regulars huddled together, and, frightened, fired by platoons, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... dense forest of majestic trees. We could not have found our way unassisted, but one of the mine inspectors from Dognacska had been sent with us. It was a delicious ride, the air still cool and fresh. Sometimes we were in the forest, and later, skirting a rocky ravine, we followed for a while a mountain stream. It was rough work for the horses, and once, when leading my horse over a narrow foot-bridge, he slipped off and rolled right over in the bed of the stream. ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... was like a wedge of green thrust through the yellow, splitting it apart, at one end meeting the sky in a level line, at the other narrowing to a point which penetrated the bases of the hills. From these streams wound down ravine and rift till their currents slipped into the brackish waters of the marsh. Such a stream, dried now to a few stagnant pools, had worn a way along the gulley where ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... illumination was unusual. I sat up at last, and found we were grading slowly downward through a long snowshed; and suddenly we shot into an open; and before we were swallowed into the next length of wooden tunnel, I had one glimpse of a huge pine-forested ravine upon my left, a foaming river and a sky already coloured with the fires of dawn. I am usually very calm over the displays of nature; but you will scarce believe how my heart leaped at this. It was like meeting one's wife. I had come home again—home from unsightly deserts to the green ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... serious and a more striking display was still to follow. The artillery were to exhibit their powers; and the crowd rushed out, and scattered over the hill to see its practice. A sheet was attached to the opposite face of the ravine, the valley rang to the roar of the guns; and as the white cloth flew in shreds to the wind, under a rapid discharge of round shot, canister, and grape, amid the crumbling of the rock, and the rush of falling stones, shouts of admiration rang from hill ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... lower spurs of the Shoshones, and soon came on that horrid smell that he had known for years, but never followed up or understood. It was right in his road, and he traced it to a small, barren ravine that was strewn over with skeletons and dark objects, and Wahb, as he passed, smelled a smell of many different animals, and knew by its quality that they were lying dead in this treeless, grassless hollow. For there was a cleft in the rocks ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... course of the Little MacLeod is full of twists and kinks, spine of ridge and depression of ravine thrusting the stream aside or welcoming it closer, she had no further view of him until they were both near the Settlement, Drennen himself already abreast of the first building at this end of the camp, his own dugout. She ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... and two companions scarcely less repulsive in appearance, who wheeled their steeds to the right. Without any exchange of word or signal, they sped down the ravine and in less than a minute the two parties were lost to ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... abrupt. On the side of the mountain it adds grandeur to the declivity, and gives a look of sweeter tranquillity to the green pastoral meadow. It yields a darker frown to the projecting cliff, and a more awful uncertainty to the mountain-pass or the hollow ravine. Amid desolate scenery it spreads a cheerfulness that detracts nothing from its power over the imagination, while it relieves it of its terrors by presenting a green bulwark to defend us from the elements. Nothing can be more cheerful in scenery than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... which it might be difficult to bring together harmoniously. Here the artist, the man of true science, will discover himself. SHELLEY affords a good choice of rhymes; chasm and spasm; rift and drift; ravine and savin, are useful conjunctions. If you have a ravine, it will be very easy to stick in a savin, but you must avoid a spavin, or your verse may halt for it. This we call being artistical. Benissimo! then. Having fixed upon your subject, all you have to do is to fill up the ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... richly repaid. One does not quickly forget the impression produced by the first view of the vast aqueduct, as you drive into the town from La Granja. It comes upon you in an instant,—the two great ranges of superimposed arches, over one hundred feet high, spanning the ravine-like suburb from the outer hills to the Alcazar. You raise your eyes from the market-place, with its dickering crowd, from the old and squalid houses clustered like shot rubbish at the foot of the chasm, to this grand and soaring wonder of utilitarian architecture, with something of a fancy ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... glad to get back, Vasili Andreevich, but which way are we to go? There is such a ravine here that if we once get in it we shan't get out again. I got stuck so fast there myself that I ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... a chance patch of half-dried mud to go upon. The beast had killed a goat and was beaten out of a thicket near by me in which he had been lying up. The probability had seemed that he would go away along a tempting ravine to where Captain Crosby, who was my host, awaited him; I, as the amateur, was intended to be little more than a spectator. But he broke back towards the wing of the line of beaters and came across the sunlit rocks within thirty yards of ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... before Gad was attracted by these heights and valleys, tribes of people lived here in their simplicity, yet in sin. The land seemed not different from other lands. Here were towering wooded mountain, rocky ravine, and strong-flowing fountain; here the beast prowled among the rocks, the bird nested in the trees, and the sweet-scented flowers graced all the landscape. The storms beat upon the mountains and the waters rushed in madness to the valley in the rainy season, and the sun scorched the vegetation ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... dropped from him reluctantly. It was nothing. Some one had been killed: that was all. It was a vendetta. A man had been missing overnight, and this morning his brother who had been prowling and searching with some dogs had found him, or rather his head. It was on this side of the ravine, thrown over from the other bank on which the body sprawled stiffly, wet through, and now growing visible in the gathering daylight. Yes—the voice was the man's wife. It was raining hard.... There would be shrieking for nine days. Yes, nine days. Confirmation ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... man was in a great rage, rose, and said to his daughter that he was going off to commit suicide, he could bear no longer the unkindness of the family. He seized his staff and went off to the mountain, where there is a deep ravine. When he reached the edge of the precipice he called to his daughter, who had followed him, that he would jump over, and cause a storm to arise and destroy the place—and over he went. The daughter thought it was of no use to go home, and so she lay down on the edge of the ravine, and became ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... on this evening, employed himself more rationally than his companions. While they went out shooting, he took his hammer and went to the ravine, to learn something about the masses of lava and basalt which lay every where. The whole ground gave evidences of the existence of an ancient volcano. The circular lake seemed to have been a crater; its depth was said to be three hundred and ninety feet. But the noble proportions of the landscape ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... dark mountain gorges of Mist Land, and sought for a while to hide himself from the sight of both gods and men. In a deep ravine by the side of a roaring torrent, he built himself a house of iron and stone, and placed a door on each of its four sides, so that he could see whatever passed around him. There, for many winters, he lived in lonely solitude, planning with himself how he might ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... intuition and followed it. And so, though it wrung her heart to see him go alone, she merely watched him with loving eyes, until his bowed head and thin, stooped shoulders disappeared from view in the willowy ravine. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... banks of the Rio Gallegos. I do not at all understand the reason of this, but I may observe, that the wounded guanacos at the St. Cruz invariably walked towards the river. At St. Jago in the Cape de Verd islands, I remember having seen in a ravine a retired corner covered with bones of the goat; we at the time exclaimed that it was the burial-ground of all the goats ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... Slaying and slain; the earth ran red with blood. As when, descending from the mountain's brow, Two wintry torrents, from their copious source Pour downward to the narrow pass, where meet Their mingled waters in some deep ravine, Their weight of flood; on the far mountain's side The shepherd hears the roar; so loud arose The shouts and yells of ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... rain of bullets poured upon Bruce Hamilton on the plateau, until the heights were reached by De Lisle's mounted infantry from Broadwood's brigade. Bruce Hamilton's right flank was thus relieved, but between him and the enemy clustering on the ridge intervened the impassable ravine of the Donkerpoort. Night was approaching and ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... intruder. He knew every inch of both house and grounds, and, after having set the house on fire, he had selected the only line of retreat, but a safe one, through the thick and lofty vegetation of the garden, which ran down to the edge of the ravine in the rear, where he could slip quietly under the fence, drop through the thick grass into the ravine unseen by the pickets, and escape at his leisure ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... theories of ethics and government? Who ever noticed such a style of preaching as Jesus has?" Ezekiel had talked of mysterious wings and wheels. Here came a man from Capernaum and Gennesaret, and he drew his illustration from the lakes, from the sand, from the ravine, from the lilies, from the corn-stalks. How the Pharisees scoffed! How Herod derided! How Caiaphas hissed! And this Jesus they plucked by the beard, and they spat in his face, and they called him "this fellow!" ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... of earth or trees left; there confronted me a bare scar, a wall of naked rock which not even a chamois could negotiate. Here was a dilemma. I must either retrace my steps along the weary road to Verace and there seek a night's shelter with the gentle hay-makers, or clamber down into the ravine, follow the river and—chance it! After anxious deliberation, the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the penitentiary are buried in the graveyard of the institution, unless they have friends who will pay for the removal of the body. Just outside the prison walls is the cemetery. Its location is a walnut grove in a deep ravine. The first graves were dug near the eastern side of the cemetery and as near to each other as possible. As fast as this space is filled with graves it is covered over many feet deep with the slate and dirt taken from the coal mines, a few yards ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... of the village the road climbed again from the ravine and emerged on open fields. A wall of timber, dark and impenetrable as the woods round an old chateau, rose at the farther end of these fields—the road cutting through it like a tunnel—and on the brow of the ravine, commanding the ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... walking with difficulty over the large, loose stones, rounded by the flow of the stream. The ascent was steep, and the torrent of water that poured down through the ravine increased the trials of its passage. But the wrecked wanderer felt that he was safe from the fury of the savage waves. When he came to a flat rock, only a few feet above the beach, upon which he could step out of the little torrent, he paused to rest ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... three hours high above the western hilltops in the mountain district of Arkansas, as a solitary horseman stopped in the shadow of the timber that fringed the edge of a deep ravine. It was evident from the man's dress, that he was not a native of that region; and from the puzzled expression on his face, as he looked anxiously about, it was clear that he had lost his way. Standing in the stirrups he turned and glanced back over ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... share in the work. He went dressed in the rough clothes he wore on the fishing excursions at night, and heartily enjoyed the animated bustle of the scene, as scores of men carrying kegs or bales on their backs, made their way up some narrow ravine, silently laid down their loads beside the carts and pack-horses, and then started back again for another trip. He occasionally lent a hand to lash the kegs on either side of the horses, or to lift a bale into the cart. No one ever asked any question; it was assumed that he was there with ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... not much to leave. It always looked well, I told him, and seemed to be a proper thing to do before going into a duel. So Mark made a will with a sort of gloomy satisfaction, and as soon as it was light enough to see, we went out to a little ravine near the meeting- place, and I set up a board for him to shoot at. He would step out, raise that big pistol, and when I would count three he would shut his eyes and pull the trigger. Of course he didn't hit anything; he did not come anywhere near hitting anything. Just then ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... note occurred until the little army, after two hours of plodding march, wound through a sinuous, wooded ravine, entered a broad, bare, slightly undulating valley, and for the second time halted. Waldron galloped to the summit of a knoll, pointed to a long eminence which faced him some two miles distant, and said tranquilly, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... few extracts. "In the valley of the Lar, I made a study of the subterranean habitations excavated in the rock and made a plan of the very ancient castle, Molla-Klo, which once defended the pass of Vahn. Finally, in the ravine called Ab—pardma, I discovered in the alluvion some stone instruments presenting very ancient paleolithic characters. At Amol, I studied the ruins of the ancient city and gathered some interesting collections containing quite a number of pieces of pottery and some bronzes ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... field was a ravine full of firs, through which Malley's Creek ran. To cross it meant a four-mile cut to Ramble Valley. The ice looked black and rotten. To the left was the ragged hole where Jack Carr's mare had struggled for her life. Bruce ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the ordeal with Stelton. From Sims, who seemed to know the country thoroughly, he learned that Indian Coulee was almost thirty miles south-east, and could be distinguished by the rough weather-sculpture of an Indian head on the butte that formed one side of the ravine. ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... about half an hour, and we were on the lookout at the top of the ravine, when we heard a shot. The captain had ordered us not to stir, and only to come to him when we heard him blow his trumpet. It was made of a goat's horn, and could be heard a league off, but it gave no sound, and in spite ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... heard, growing louder and more frequent until it became one continuous roar, fairly shaking the earth. Long, vivid flashes of lightning chased each other in rapid succession over the crags and lost themselves in crevice and ravine. All work was forgotten. In fact, one would as soon think of making saddles in the immediate presence of the Almighty as in the presence of that terrific, but sublime spectacle upon the mountain heights. Every man stood in reverential attitude ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... we were obliged to cross the Rocky Mountains, similar in formation and arrangement to the Alps. The Rocky Mountains lead into Jehoshaphat's Valley, one mile in length. Like its namesake, this valley is a deep ravine, with steep, rugged sides, and a brawling ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... chosen for the pic-nic was a delightful spot, (quite romantic Emily declared) situated at the bottom of a beautiful ravine, within a short distance of a splendid water fall yclept the "old roar," the dashing spray of its gurgling waters ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... the beasts are walking from the wood, As well of ravine, as that chew the cud. The king of beasts his fury doth suppress, And to the Ark leads down the lioness; The bull for his beloved mate doth low, And to the Ark brings on ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... some of the exploring-party. They were first attracted from following as nearly as they could the line of road, blocked as it was with drifts of snow by hearing the howling of a dog at some little distance, in the direction of the precipitous ravine which went by the name of 'Armstrong's Clough.' Following the sound, they came upon traces of wheels in the hill-side, where no carriage could have gone had it not been for the deep snow which concealed and smoothed away the inequalities of the ground. These marks were traced here and there till ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Sir, in confidence as betwixt two friends, he lost his head, Sir. No, he didn't neither. The King lost his head, so he did, all along o' one of those cunning rope-bridges. Kindly let me have the paper-cutter, Sir. It tilted this way. They marched him a mile across that snow to a rope-bridge over a ravine with a river at the bottom. You may have seen such. They prodded him behind like an ox. 'Damn your eyes!' says the King. 'D'you suppose I can't die like a gentleman?' He turns to Peachey—Peachey that was crying like a child. 'I've ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... and beautiful in spring and summertime; but now, for many years past, thick clouds of smoke from coal-pit engines and iron furnaces had given to trees and shrubs a sickly hue. Nature had striven in vain against the hot black breath of reeking chimneys. Right down among the stunted trees of this ravine went the foot-track which Johnson followed. Darkness had now gathered all around, yet here and there were wild lights struggling with the gloom. Just on the right, where the path came out on to the dusty road, and a little way down a bank, a row of blazing coke-ovens threw ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... for the amount, for the banker himself is obliged to count over the stake for him—that is Blucher, the never-wanting attendant at the Salon; he has been an immense loser, but plays on with the same stern perseverance with which he would pour his bold cavalry through a ravine torn by artillery; he stands by the still waning chance with ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... road lay through natural park-like scenery, flowery knolls, deep ravines, and oak-crowned hills, with every now and then the blue waters of the lake glittering through the trees. Our path now entered a deep and finely-wooded ravine, which wound round the base of steep hills on either hand, rising to a considerable height, their summits crowned here and there ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... purchase employment in some useful industry will rather engage in a useless one than not labor at all. It is not unusual to see hundreds of men carrying water from a river and pouring it into a natural ravine or artificial channel, through which it runs back into the stream. Frequently a man is seen conveying stones—or the masses of metal which there correspond to stones—from one pile to another. When ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... call out to the Cossacks that they would let them all escape provided they would give up their officer. Kascambo on this came forward and delivered himself into their hands; while the remainder of the troops galloped off. His servant, Ivan, with a mule carrying his baggage, had been hidden in a ravine, and now, instead of retreating with the Cossacks, came to join his master. All the baggage was, however, instantly seized and divided among the Tchetchenges; nothing was left but a guitar, which they threw scornfully to the Major. He would ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sometimes hindering it, but seldom failing to produce in her a greater tolerance of his presence. His next opportunity was the day after Somerset's departure from Heidelberg. They stood on the great terrace of the Schloss-Garten, looking across the intervening ravine to the north-east front of the castle which rose before them in all its customary warm tints ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... unluminous shadows of the moonshine invested it. The light touched all the tops of the rapids, that seemed to writhe sway from the brink of the cataract, and then desperately breaking and perishing to fall, the white disembodied ghosts of rapids, down to the bottom of the vast and deep ravine through which the river rushed away. Now the waters seemed to mass themselves a hundred feet high in a wall of snowy compactness, now to disperse into their multitudinous particles and hang like some vaporous cloud from ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... this new acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual alacrity; and mutually relieving one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended, Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for a moment, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder-showers which often take place ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... the left and across a deep ravine he saw a wide level clearing. The few scattered and blackened tree stumps showed the ravages made by a forest fire in the years gone by. The field was now overgrown with hazel and laurel bushes, and intermingling with ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... enlarges and the surface of the land above it is lowered by weathering, the roof at last breaks down and the cave becomes an open ravine. A portion of the roof may for a while ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... elsewhere; there simply ensues a stoppage of the natural issue, a dam barring useful canals, a haphazard change of current not only without gain, but loss, the stream subsiding in swamps or undermining the steep banks of a ravine. At the utmost, the millions of buckets of water, forcibly taken from private reservoirs, half fill with a good deal of trouble the great central artificial basin in which the water, low and stagnant, is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... scantily-inhabited Brandenberg valley opens on the broad and sunny Innthal. The former is merely a mountain-gorge. Far up in its recesses stands a small cottage belonging to the keeper of a wood-drift, and in close proximity to this solitary habitation is a second very wild and wellnigh inaccessible ravine, the scene of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... great, to be exceedingly jealous. The furious idol remembered the people of a long forgotten race, its loyal subjects, who had reared and worshiped it, inconceivably long ago, when the Grand Canyon of Arizona was but a tiny ravine and before icy avalanches had ground the rocks at the Dells into boulders. It remembered the descendants of its subjects, the Aztec Indians. It remembered how the Spaniards had cruelly broken the Aztec nation. Through the subtle influence of psychic forces, it stirred up ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann |
