"Spoor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... track was imprinted in the soft mud before us. The creature, whatever it was, had crossed the swamp and had passed on into the forest. We all stopped to examine that monstrous spoor. If it were indeed a bird—and what animal could leave such a mark?—its foot was so much larger than an ostrich's that its height upon the same scale must be enormous. Lord John looked eagerly round him and slipped two ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the lip of a large desolate valley with slopes of ice and icy snow. Here Marjorie spent some time in following his loops back on the homeward trail before she saw what was manifestly the final trail running far away out across the snow, with the [v]spoor of the lynx, a lightly-dotted line, to the right of it. She followed this suggestion of the trail, put on her snowshoes, and shuffled her way across this valley, which opened as she proceeded. She hoped that over the ridge ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... passage—nay, it did even more, for it occasionally slopped over and went trickling away in a tiny stream down the passage into the open, thus moistening the soil at the entrance and creating the mud in which Phil had detected the spoor of numerous different kinds of animals. A further circumstance which at once arrested Phil's attention and caused him again to look sharply about him was that the surface of the pool, instead of being glass-smooth, as one would naturally expect ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... lost three men in three days, the chief and his whole party turned out to hunt and destroy lions only. They followed the spoor or track of the one which had taken the slave, and they soon found two lions, one of which, the smallest, they shot; and then, having taken their breakfast, they went after the other, and largest, which was recognised as the one which ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... into the garden on the following day I could see Mr. Trumpington's head, tastefully framed in pink hollyhock buds, apparently following the spoor of a green-fly. He looked up almost at once and caught my eye, but made no sign of recognition. I breathed a sigh of relief. Thank heaven, I thought to myself, the worst has not happened. The danger that I feared yesterday has blown ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... the black girl sat down under the shadow of a rock, leaving Suzanne to wander to and fro looking for the shells, and not for an hour or more did she get up to find her. Then she searched in vain, for the spoor of the child's feet led from the sand between the rocks to the pebbly shore above, which was covered with tough sea grasses, and there was lost. Now at the girl's story I was frightened, and Jan was both frightened and so angry that he would have tied her up and flogged her if he had found time. ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... about Finnbog. Afterward in the evening, when men slept, he rose, took his weapons, and went forth, following the tracks which led to the dairy farm. As was his wont, he stepped out briskly along the spoor till he came to the dairy. There he found the bear lying down, and he had slain the sheep, and he was lying on them lapping their blood. Then said Finnbog: 'Stand up, Brain! make ready against me; that becomes you more than crouching over those ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... attention upon the Globigerina. It is the spoor of the game we are tracking. If we can learn what it is and what are the conditions of its existence, we shall see our way to the origin and past ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... feed; for in one year of unusual drought we saw herds of elands and flocks of ostriches crowding to the Zouga from the Desert, and very many of the latter were killed in pitfalls on the banks. As long as there is any sap in the pasturage they seldom need water. But should a traveler see the "spoor" of a rhinoceros, or buffalo, or zebra, he would at once follow it up, well assured that before he had gone many miles he ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... as not to show the direction in which he is proceeding, answer to the equally shapeless feather sandals of the blacks who "go Kurdaitcha," that is, as avengers of blood. I have nowhere else found this practice as to the shoes, which, after all, cannot conceal the direction of the spoor from a native tracker. {37b} The trick of driving the cattle backwards answers to the old legend that Bruce reversed the shoes of his horse when he fled from ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... absolutely fresh in the dust, padded methodically ahead of us down the only way until it seemed that we could not fail to plump upon their maker around the next bend. We crept forward foot by foot, every sense alert, finger on trigger. Then after a time the spoor turned off to the right, towards the hills. We straightened our backs and breathed a sigh of relief. This happened over and over again. At certain times of year also elephants frequent the banks of the Tsavo in considerable numbers We saw many old signs, and once came upon ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... of Kaf. I politely accepted the "bruederschaft," but many reasons induced me to decline his society and services. In the first place, he spoke the detestable Egyptian jargon. Secondly, it was but prudent to lose the "spoor" between Alexandria and Suez. And thirdly, my "brother" had shifting eyes (symptoms of fickleness), close together (indices of cunning); a flat-crowned head and large ill-fitting lips, signs which led me to think lightly of his honesty, firmness, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... eight miles we followed the spoor through high dried grass and thorny bush, until we at length arrived at a dense jungle of kittar—the most formidable of the hooked thorn mimosas. Here the tracks appeared to wander, some elephants having travelled ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... probably was right about the length of time. The dust was fine, and thick. No human tracks disturbed it, but the boys saw the delicate tracery where a small animal, probably a field mouse or a chipmunk, had left his spoor. ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... men. It was made, the captain told me, with great subtlety by the secret craft of a family of six who lived in a hut on the mountains of Hian Min. Once in these mountains, he said, he followed the spoor of a bear, and he came suddenly on a man of that family who had hunted the same bear, and he was at the end of a narrow way with precipice all about him, and his spear was sticking in the bear, and the wound not fatal, and he ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... that would give Baree and himself fresh meat. The white sand bars and gravelly shores of the stream were covered with the tracks of the wild dwellers of the valley and the adjoining ranges, and Baree sniffed hungrily whenever he came to the warm scent of the last night's spoor. He was hungry. He had been hungry all the way over the mountains. Three times that day David saw a caribou at a distance. In the afternoon he saw a grizzly on a green slope. Toward evening he ran into luck. A band of sheep had come down from a mountain to drink, and he came ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... scout, he is soldier, hunter, mining expert, and explorer. Within the last ten years the educated instinct that as a younger man taught him to follow the trail of an Indian, or the "spoor" of the Kaffir and the trek wagon, now leads him as a mining expert to the hiding-places of copper, silver, and gold, and, as he advises, great and wealthy syndicates buy or refuse tracts of land in Africa and Mexico as large as the State of New York. As ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... frail cabin-doors fly open before it, but continues only for a short time, and is succeeded by a dead calm. Game becomes more abundant; near our wooding-places we see herds of zebras, both Burchell's and the mountain variety, pallahs (Antelope melampus), waterbuck, and wild hogs, with the spoor of buffaloes ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... the night, and at three the next morning saddled our horses and followed the spoor of the commando. Presently, encountering a Kafir holding half a dozen horses, we asked him where the owners were. He pointed to a hill near by, where we found the gallant Villebois, the kindly Oberst von Braun, ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... "but I'm more disposed to keep a quiet lookout, and rest. We're quite safe here, and provisions are more plentiful than I thought for. Griggs has found the spoor of some big buck and his young does. They have straggled into the ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... these mountains, and we often saw the spoor of these blood-thirsty robbers. Hunger makes them very daring, and they do great damage to the flocks of the Kirghizes, as they will kill even when they do not wish to eat. A single wolf had recently worried 180 sheep belonging to a Kirghiz. A travelling Kirghiz was attacked in this neighbourhood ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... the origin of his tribe, the Beni 'Ukbah. According to our friend Furayj, the name means "Sons of the Heel" ('Akab) because, in the early wars and conquests of El-Islm, they fought during the day by the Moslems' side; and at night, when going over to the Nazarenes, they lost the "spoor" by wearing their sandals heel foremost, and by shoeing their horses the wrong way. All this they indignantly deny; and they are borne out by the written genealogies, who derive them from "Ukbah, the son of Maghrabah, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... danced, and made merry all the forenoon. I saw a man near me who must have passed Kwababana's kraal in coming to the feast, and I asked him if he had seen anything of Xolilizwe. He told me he had heard that Xolilizwe was away following the spoor of old Kwababana's only milking cow, which had been stolen three days previously, ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... after this there was nothing else to be done, so, having summoned the scratched Scowl, who seemed to have no heart in the business, we started on the spoor of the herd, which was as easy to ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... scent, effluvium; emanation, exhalation; fume, essence, trail, nidor^, redolence. sense of smell; scent; act of smelling &c v.; olfaction, olfactories^. [pleasant odor] fragrance &c 400. odorant. [animal with acute sense of smell] bloodhound, hound. [smell detected by a hound] spoor. V. have an odor &c n.; smell, smell of, smell strong of; exhale; give out a smell &c n.; reek, reek of; scent. smell, scent; snuff, snuff up; sniff, nose, inhale. Adj. odorous, odoriferous; smelling, reeking, foul-smelling, strong- ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that is this eye don't light on. The little lady up at Djen-anne-whatever you may call it is following up a spoor; and I'm the big game at the end of it. She's out to bring me down, my boy. Well, that's all right, only don't you two take me for too much of an innocent little thing, ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens |
