"Torrid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... myself, and by the time I had dressed, eaten a hasty breakfast of oatmeal, hard bread, and tea, and filled my canteen with boiled water, it was after seven. The air ought to have been fresh and cool even then; but on the southeastern coast of Cuba the change from the damp chilliness of night to the torrid heat of the tropical day is very rapid, and if there is no land-breeze, the rays of the unclouded sun, even as early as seven o'clock in the morning, have a fierce, scorching intensity that is hardly less trying than the heat of noon. The only really ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... depth of azure in her eyes that looked ocean-deep into an interior soul; she had softly purplish windings of hair around a low, cool brow, that said, "There are no torrid thoughts in me." And yet I always felt that there was an equator in Sophie's soul, only no mortal could find it. Looking at her, as thus she stood, I forgot that she Lad ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Lebanon had never been beautiful to sense, it would not now be a fit or poetic subject of allusion. And the word "Fez" would be without imaginative value if no traveller had ever felt the intoxication of the torrid sun, the languors of oriental luxury, or, like the British soldier, cried amid the dreary moralities of ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... "as to the daily acts and queer moves of pardners the least said the soonest mended, but Love is the great ruler; where he rules any state is blest, be it torrid or frigid." ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... sudden change in the state of the atmosphere; but when I reflected a little, I was able to explain it to my satisfaction. "Beyond a doubt," thought I, "we have been all the while sailing southward, and we are getting into the hot latitudes of the torrid zone." ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... latitudes are vexatious, still, when you reach the trade-winds, you are amply repaid for all disappointments and inconveniences. The trade-winds prevail about thirty degrees on each side of the equator. This part of the ocean may be called the Elysian Fields of Neptune's empire; and the torrid zone, notwithstanding Ovid's remark, "non est habitabilis aestu," is rendered healthy and pleasant by these gently-blowing breezes. The ship glides smoothly on, and you soon find yourself within the northern tropic. When you are on it Cancer is just over your head, ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... Baiae for bathing, or in the winter months a flight to the Ligurian coast, to escape the cold of January and February—these she could endure; for she was certain there to find, if not Rome, at any rate Romans; but Balbilla's wish to venture in a tossing ship, to visit the torrid shores of Africa, which she pictured to herself as a burning oven, she had opposed to the utmost. At last, however, she was obliged to put a good face on the matter, for the Empress herself expressed so decidedly her wish to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... blacker the huddling thunder-caps spotted across the brilliant, sunny sky. Gaspier and gaspier in each lulling tree-top, in each hushing bird-song, in each drooping grass-blade, the whole torrid earth seemed to be sucking in its breath as if it meant never, never to ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... sound; his spirits never flag." He is a pet bird among tribes that have never seen the peacock, goose, and turkey. In tropical countries where the dog becomes dumb, or degenerates into a mere growler, his trumpet never rusts. It is true that he was cradled in the torrid zone, yet in all Western lands, where he "shakes off the powdery snow," with vigorous wings, his voice sounds as loud and inspiriting as in the hot jungle. Pale-faced Londoners, and blacks, and bronzed or painted barbarians, all men all ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... around now, and smoke and cinders floated over the biggest brother and the little girl, choking them and shutting out the road ahead. The wind, as it brushed by, seemed to sear their faces with its torrid breath. Suddenly, the dust and smoke clearing to the right, the little girl clutched the biggest brother's arm and pointed out a dark, bulky creature that was in the lead. It was a bison, evidently one of those lonely bachelors that, ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... torrid climate on so large a scale will strike the visitor as one of the most curious triumphs of ingenuity in the whole exposition. Moisture is an essential only second in importance to heat. The two must be associated to create the normal atmosphere of most of the vegetation of the central ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... that had so terrified me was gone, and instead of it, I saw the enchanter flying through the world, pursued by the evil spirit and that dreadful woman. Through all the world they seemed to go. The scenes changed with marvellous rapidity. Now the picture glowed with the wealth and gorgeousness of the torrid zone; now the ice-fields of the North rose into view; anon a pine-forest; then a wild seashore; but always the same three flying figures; always the horrible three-formed harpy pursuing the enchanter, and beside ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... Mrs. Yeobright would have found no inconvenience in walking to Alderworth, but the present torrid attack made the journey a heavy undertaking for a woman past middle age; and at the end of the third mile she wished that she had hired Fairway to drive her a portion at least of the distance. But from ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... now to the second and opposite case; for a proof of which we shall appeal to the words of Dr. Mitchell[090], in the Philosophical Transactions. "The Spaniards who have inhabited America under the torrid zone for any time, are become as dark coloured as our native Indians of Virginia, of which, I myself have been a witness; and were they not to intermarry with the Europeans, but lead the same rude and barbarous lives with the Indians, it is very probable that, in a succession ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... prudence, courage, and forbearance; of undoubted orthodoxy in their sentiments, and must enter with all their hearts into the spirit of their mission; they must be willing to leave all the comforts of life behind them, and to encounter all the hardships of a torrid or a frigid climate, an uncomfortable manner of living, and every other inconvenience that can attend this undertaking. Clothing, a few knives, powder and shot, fishing-tackle, and the articles of husbandry above mentioned, must be provided for them; and when arrived at ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... gold— We skirr upon the crutch of haste And cleave the abyss, cold and bleak. There jejune fossils lie to tell Of pleiocene days' garnered fold; Gray bones that pierce this weird waste Lie mounted on a torrid peak; Principalities of the past, Lie scatter'd in the mildewed dust; Serai's built in ages gone, Now crumble at a sound, a voice. And Boulders that the Djinnee cast As Vengeance swirl'd the heated dust, Now rock as ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... of the Revolution, like a torrid stream flowing undiscernible amid the waters of a tumbling sea, is a new way of understanding life. The social changes desired by the various assailants of the old order are only the expression of a deeper change in moral idea, and the drift of ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the pirates and buccaneers that infested those parts, and men shouted and swore and gambled, and poured out money like water, and then maybe wound up their merrymaking by dying of fever. For the sky in these torrid latitudes is all full of clouds overhead, and as hot as any blanket, and when the sun shone forth it streamed down upon the smoking sands so that the houses were ovens and the streets were furnaces; so it was little wonder that men died like rats in a hole. But ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... fact," says this author, "that animal food is proper and necessary for health in polar regions, and that a vegetable diet is equally proper and necessary in the torrid zone, we may conclude that in winter, in our own climate, an animal diet is the best; while vegetables are more conducive to ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... some of the poor animals who are used to the Torrid Zone?" replied Capt. Noah, shouldering the crowbar and climbing up the ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... was quiet as a grave Asleep in moonlight! For, as a torrid sunset boils with gold Up to the zenith, fierce within my soul A passion burns from basement to the cope. Poesy, poesy! But one who imagines that this passion can exist in the soul wholly unrelated to any other, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... his vast reputation has flown, Through the torrid, the frigid, and temperate zone; The wretch, just expiring, springs healthy and strong From his bed at one touch of the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... lands of wonderful fertility and great natural resources. Approaching German Southwest Africa from the east access is across the Kalahari Desert. This in its trackless desolation, its frequent sandstorms and torrid heat through which only the hardiest and best provisioned caravans may penetrate is worse than the worst that Sahara can show. There is not a sign of life. Approached from the sea the principal port is Walfish Bay, a fair harbor that was improved by the British ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... Knight had sworn—that the Standard so long borne By the Aureate One, in scorn irreducible Should not solitary wave. He'd squabosh that champion brave, Or would find a torrid ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... earth and in the air From which the vital spirit shrinks afraid, And shelters him, in nooks of deepest shade, From the hot steam and from the fiery glare. Look forth upon the earth—her thousand plants Are smitten; even the dark sun-loving maize Faints in the field beneath the torrid blaze; The herd beside the shaded fountain pants; For life is driven from all the landscape brown; The bird has sought his tree, the snake his den, The trout floats dead in the hot stream, and men Drop by the sun-stroke in the populous ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... through, their souls, drifting off with the seed-dust of beautiful experience which they had ripened, to fertilize the souls of others withal. In them the sea and the sky and ships had mingled and bred new blossoms of the torrid heat of their love. And the seed of such blossoms was shaken as they slept, into the hand of God, who held it in His palm preciously; then scattered it again, to produce ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... and in May, 1512, Henry went down to Southampton to speed the departing fleet.[108] It sailed from Cowes under Dorset's command on 3rd June, and a week later the army disembarked on the coast of Guipuscoa.[109] There it remained throughout the torrid summer, awaiting the Spanish King's forces to co-operate in the invasion of France. But Ferdinand was otherwise occupied. Navarre was not mentioned in the treaty with Henry, but Navarre was what Ferdinand had in his mind. It was then an independent ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... characters have much resemblance to theirs. Those of the Moro Arabs resemble those of the Syrians. Diodorus Siculus, [11] who wrote in the time of the emperor Caesar Augustus, in making mention of an island which lay in our middle region, or torrid zone (whither Iamblicus [12] the Greek went in the course of his adventures), says that they do not write horizontally as we do, but from top to bottom in a straight line; and that they use characters which, although few in number, make up in their use for many, for ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... more Love, or more Disdain, The Torrid, or the Frozen Zone, Bring equall ease unto my paine; The Temperate affords me none: Either extreme, of Love, or Hate, Is sweeter than a calme estate." Carew's ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... circumspect, not be too ardent, stirred in her. He was touching in his desire to express his interest without ruffling her. He began to talk about Miss Vincent's affair with Mr. Starr, the wealthy old boarder at the farm. In that topic they passed safely through the torrid wilderness of summer shine ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... native kind, formerly introduced from South America; all these plants are alike in appearance, but the cochineal insect flourishes only on the native kind, on which it thrives prodigiously.[670] Humboldt remarks[671] that white men "born in the torrid zone walk barefoot with impunity in the same apartment where a European, recently landed, is exposed to the attacks of the Pulex penetrans." This insect, the too well-known chigoe, must therefore be able to distinguish what the most delicate chemical analysis fails to distinguish, namely, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... of plates and saucers and cups and mugs and jugs and basins, thousands and thousands! George stared in an enchanted silence of awe. And presently one of the Hercules's picked him up, and held him for a moment within the portal of the torrid kiln, and he gazed at the high curved walls, like the walls of a gigantic tomb, and at the yellow saggers that held the ware. Now he ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... grew on me that I was in a neighbourhood differing essentially from any spot I had hitherto visited. I saw nothing with which I had been formerly conversant. The few trees at hand resembled no growth of either the torrid, temperate, or northern frigid zones, and were altogether unlike those of the southern latitudes with which I was most familiar. The very rocks were novel in their mass, their colour, and their stratification; and the stream itself, utterly incredible ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... Gray above; wings and wedge-shaped; tail brownish; upper wing feathers tipped with white; outer tail quills white, conspicuous in flight; chin white; underneath light gray, shading to whitish. Range — Peculiar to torrid and temperate zones of two Americas. Migrations — No fixed ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... sometimes of a yellow, and of a red shade, floating upon the surface of the ocean, which, to those unused to such sights, are considered as indications of danger beneath. I met with two patches of this description lately in the Torrid Zone, but the captain being familiar with such instances, sailed through them without apprehension. The first consisted of myriads of small orbicular medusae, about the size of a pea, of a purple hue; the other patch of a reddish-brown colour, was produced ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... God before them blaz'd Fierce as a comet: which with torrid heat And vapours, as the Libyan air adust, Begun to parch that temperate clime; whereat In either hand the hast'ning angel caught Our ling'ring parents, and to the eastern gate Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast To the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... tropical Zambesi regions and the torrid Kalahari plains, down to the 34th parallel at Cape point, a great diversity of climatic conditions is met with. To the north and north-east are the steaming, death-breeding low lands, abounding with dank virgin ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... back in the wagonette with a sigh of pleasure. The drowsy, sunshiny peace of the July afternoon seemed very far removed from the torrid rush and roar of the previous ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... fire, because, as it rushed to perihelion, Mercury would plunge more than 2,500,000 miles beneath the surface of the giant star. Venus and the earth would melt like snowflakes at the mouth of a furnace. Even far-away Neptune, the remotest member of the system, would swelter in torrid heat. ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... approach. These hills have an orientation from north to south, so that one slope is exposed to the sun from morning to mid-day and the other from mid-day to evening. Now, dogs have a great horror of heat. They fear the torrid heat of the south as much as in our climate they like to lie warmed by gentle rays; there is no shadow too deep for their siesta. Therefore, on these Egyptian hills every dog hollows out a lair on both slopes. One of these dwellings is thus turned towards the east, the ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... way to the garden, where we passed the time till supper was ready. The midshipmen found more oranges, and better than they had yet met with, and did full justice to them. The fruit and vegetables of Europe and America, of the temperate and torrid zones, meet here; nor are their flowers forgotten: over against the little parterre, an orange and a tamarind tree shade a pleasant bench; close to which, in something of oriental taste, the white stucco wall of the well is raised and crowned with flower-pots, filled with roses ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... identical; but a personal atmosphere is unmistakable, and in spite of her excellent and efficient disguise, Hayden felt instinctively that this was no delicate and wistful violet, but a gorgeous tropical bloom swaying from the tallest trees and exulting in torrid sunshine and fierce tempest. Her voice, too, was deeper and fuller, and the accent was, beyond ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... been worth it? Has the result repaid one for the cold, dirt, and privation of Persia, the torrid heat and long desert marches through Baluchistan? Perhaps not. There are some pleasant hours, however, to look back upon. Kashan, a vision of golden domes and dim, picturesque caravanserais; Ispahan, with ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... a certain justice in Mosey's contention," I remarked, addressing Willoughby. "He argues that, as Burke, by dying of hardship, earned himself a statue, so Brown, Jones, and Robinson—whose souls, we trust, are in a less torrid climate than their unburied bones—should, in bare justice, have similar post-obituary recognition. For Burke's sake, of course, the comparison in value of service had better not be entered on. Mosey would have our cities resemble ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... powder-mills, went away exceedingly scandalized, and said, "I protest, they are such an impious set of people, that I believe if the last trumpet was to sound, they would bet puppet-show against Judgment." If we get any nearer still to the torrid zone, I shall pique myself on sending you a present of cedrati and orange-flower water: I am already planning a terreno ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... the whole known universe pay tribute, never did your far-famed banquet-halls witness the appearance of those succulent jellies, the delight of the indolent, nor those varied ices whose cold would brave the torrid zone. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... degrees, as the tide of sensation, thinned itself, lying back with closed eyes, while the long train swept on through the torrid day, separate pictures came before his inner sight. Just as keen and clear were they as when they first fell on his vision. He had not blurred nor dimmed their outlines with frequent ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... temperature is ten degrees lower, and the fall of rain small. At the same time, there is more sunshine to impart those aromatic qualities which are so much relished by smokers of tobacco. In Virginia the torrid heat and thunder showers during the summer months are by no means favorable for developing the mild aroma of a good smoking leaf. Such atmospheric conditions are better suited for cotton and Indian corn than tobacco, which must have dry weather and ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... down in the sea In zones both temp. and torrid, And when they are good they are very good indeed, And when they are bad they ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... through which we are passing on this torrid forenoon—"They mend this road with lime, the dirty devils!" The road has become blinding—a long-drawn cloud of dessicated chalk and dust that rises high above our columns and powders us as we go. Faces turn red, and shine as ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... reception I met with from the public; and besides, I pocketed, all expenses deducted, nearly twenty pounds. This sum came very seasonably, as I was thinking of indenting myself, for want of money to procure my passage. As soon as I was master of nine guineas, the price of wafting me to the torrid zone, I took a steerage passage in the first ship that was to sail from ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... all minor pipings. The breed of fisher-folk from these deep-sea voyagings consist of the toughest specimens of human endurance. All other dangers which lure men to venture everything for excitement or for fortune, the torrid heat or arctic cold, the battle against man or beast, the desert or the jungle, all land adventures are as nothing compared to the daring of the hourly existence of the heroic souls whose lives are cast upon the banks of Newfoundland. The fishermen may seem ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... they had already known something of torrid heat, but the next few days was to show that, as yet, they had only begun to appreciate it; for there is but one hotter zone on earth than this in which the Red Sea lies, and that contains the Persian ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... speaking, as the radio boys and their families left the group of cottages where all had spent such an eventful and pleasant summer. Brilliant sunlight beat down on the yellow sand, but its heat was very different from the torrid rays that had kept them running to the ocean to cool off all that summer. There was a clear and sparkling appearance to the air and sky, and the wind that came sweeping over the level sands had a nip in it that made even Jimmy walk ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... a mass of gas and not a solid body, there would be nothing incredible in the supposition that spots are occasionally endowed with movements of their own like ships on the ocean. It seems, however, from the facts before us that the different zones on the sun, corresponding to what we call the torrid and temperate zones on the earth, persist in rotating with velocities which gradually decrease from the equator towards the poles. It seems probable that the interior parts of the sun do not rotate as if the whole were a rigidly connected mass. The mass of the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... and view One who has travelled more than you, Quite round the world, through each degree, Anson and I have ploughed the sea, Torrid and frigid zones have past, And safe at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... be so. We have made repeated and resolute incursions in various directions into his torrid zone, but have always come out greatly scorched and stunned and affronted. Never before did we come across such an amount of energetic and tremendous words, going "sounding on their dim and perilous way," like a cataract at midnight—not flowing like a stream, nor leaping like a clear ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... to be accomplished by an unlimited command of men and money, are the common dreams of every Nebuchadnezzar. What we know if we know anything of his intentions is that he was about to set out on a campaign against the Parthians in whose plains this prototype of Napoleon might perhaps have found a torrid Moscow. No great advance of humanity can take place without a great moral effort excited by higher moral desires. The masters of the legions can only set in action by their fiat material forces. Even these they often misdirect; but ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... the first day and part of the first night. After that the weather was generally overcast and pleasant for travelling; but sometimes rain and torrid sunshine alternated. The cooking—and it was good cooking—was done at a funny little open-air fireplace, with two or three cooking-pots placed at the ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... wish to roam in foreign climes Forget thy home and long past times? Dost wish to be a wand'rer's bride, And all thy thoughts in him confide? Thou canst not traverse mountain seas, Nor bear cold Lapland's freezing breeze; Thou canst not bear the torrid heats, Nor brave the toils a wand'rer meets; Thou wouldst faint, dearest, with fatigue ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... unacquainted with the world of the fashionable New York hotel—a world over-heated, over-upholstered, and over-fitted with mechanical appliances for the gratification of fantastic requirements, while the comforts of a civilized life were as unattainable as in a desert. Through this atmosphere of torrid splendour moved wan beings as richly upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity from restaurant to concert-hall, from palm-garden to music-room, from ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... found Vessons preparing a tremendous meal, hot and savoury as a victorious and penitent old man could make it. He showed in his manner that bygones were to be bygones, and night came down in peace on Undern. But it was a curious, torrid peace, like the hush ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... were wave and wind alone! The terrors of the torrid zone, The indiscriminate cyclone, A man might parry; But only faith, or "triple brass," Can help the "outward-bound" to pass Safe through that eastward-faring class Who ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... with holy wrath inflamed; Behold the tyrants locks with dust besmeared; In sluggish breasts once more The sacred name of Liberty revered; Behold o'er all the subjugated earth, The troops of Latium march triumphant forth, From torrid desert to the gloomy pole. And thus eternal Rome, That had so long in sloth oblivious lain, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... we often hear, Ought to have a wholesome moral; And this truth is just as clear In the land of palm and coral; For this tragedy in tones Louder than a megaphone's Warns us that two things are risky, If you dwell in torrid zones— Change ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... of the opera that Gaston could recall had been played and sung twice. The convert sat in his chair no longer, but stood singing by the piano. The potent swing and flow of rhythms, the torrid, copious inspiration of the South, mastered him. "Verdi has grown," he cried. "Verdi is become a giant." And he swayed to the beat of the melodies, and waved an enthusiastic arm. He demanded every note. Why did not Gaston remember it all? But if the barkentine would arrive and ...
— Padre Ignacio - Or The Song of Temptation • Owen Wister
... stood in the chariot ever lowering: Lo, the shape of one who raced there to outstrip the legitimate hours: Lo, the ravish'd beams of Phoebus dragged in shame at the chariot- wheels: Light of days of happy pipings by the mead-singing rivulets! Lo, lo, increasing lustre, torrid breath to the nostrils; lo, Torrid brilliancies thro' the vapours lighten swifter, penetrate them, Fasten merciless, ruminant, hueless, on earth's frame crackling busily. He aloft, the frenzied driver, in the glow of the universe, Like the paling of the dawn-star withers visibly, he aloft: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... by all right-thinking people to be a blessing. It is often a balm. Outside of the building and of earshot the defeated aspirants took what comfort they could in consigning, with great fervor and volubility, all the judicial magnates to that torrid region unknown to polite ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... White River, is backed by yellow bluffs that break out of the foot-hills in turret and toadstool shapes, with stunt pines starving between their torrid bastions. In front of the fort the land slants away into the flat unfeatured desert, and in summer the sky is a blue-steel covet that each day shuts the sun and the earth and mankind into one box together, while it lifts at night ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... health should be careful to adapt their clothing to the state of the climate, and the season of the year. Whatever be the influence of custom, there is no reason why our clothing should be such as would suit an inhabitant of the torrid or the frigid zones, but of the state of the air around us, and of the country in which we live. Apparel may be warm enough for one season of the year, which is by no means sufficient for another; we ought therefore neither to put off ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... phantasmal hand and thrust me aside—me, Gustave Lenoble, a man, and not an idiot? Ah, thus we blow him to the uttermost end of the world!" cried M. Lenoble, blowing an imaginary rival from the tips of his fingers. "Thus we dismiss him to the Arctic regions, the torrid zone—to the Caucasus, where await vultures to gnaw his liver—wherever earth is most remote and uncomfortable—he and the bread-and-butter miss whom he ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... in mind, though, that neither the cold of winter nor the heat of summer, in northern Arizona, are as frigid or as torrid as the readings of the thermometer may seem to indicate. The cold or heat is not felt to such an extreme as in the East. A minimum of humidity is the basic reason for this wide difference between, for example, the July or January climate of New York, and the July or January ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... sought after; that the bugbear of Oxley, the ACACIA PENDULA, should now be held to indicate good country was inconceivable; and when, above everything, the most fondly cherished of all delusions, that in the torrid north the sheep's wool would turn to hair, had to be given up, it was quite evident that a new order of ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... frequently were seen to describe a curve. When they met the top of a wave as they skimmed along the surface of the ocean, they passed through, and continued their flight beyond it. From this time, till we left the torrid zone, we were almost daily amused with the view of immense shoals of these fishes, and now and then caught one upon our decks, when it had unfortunately taken its flight too far, and was spent by its too great elevation above the surface ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... lazy cell, In empty, airy contemplations dwell; And like the block, unmoved lay; but ours, As much too active, like the stork devours. Is there no temp'rate region can be known, Betwixt their frigid, and our torrid zone? 140 Could we not wake from that lethargic dream, But to be restless in a worse extreme? And for that lethargy was there no cure, But to be cast into a calenture? Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance So far, to make us wish for ignorance, And rather in the dark to grope our way, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... solemn word of honour that he would straightway telephone for beef and beer. He kept his word so well, and so clever had been the doctor's diagnosis that Reed Opdyke, flat on his back through all the torrid heat of summer, felt moved to ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... were all boisterous with delight. Pleasure came to them but rarely, and when it came, they caught at it wildly and crushed its fluttering wings in their strong brown fingers. They had a hard life enough, most of them. Torrid summers and freezing winters, labor and drudgery and ignorance, were the portion of their girlhood; a short wooing, a hasty, loveless marriage, unlimited maternity, thankless sons, premature age and ugliness, were the dower of their womanhood. ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... in hot countries is the abuse of liquors, the attempt to live according to the nature of his own country under another sky and another sun. We inhabitants of hot countries live well in northern Europe whenever we take the precautions the people there do. Europeans can also stand the torrid zone, if only they would get rid of their prejudices. (2) The fact is that in tropical countries violent work is not a good thing as it is in cold countries, there it is death, destruction, annihilation. Nature knows this and like ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... the mean, all jumbled together. His own apartments and those of the Queen, are inconvenient to the last degree, dull, close, stinking. The gardens astonish by their magnificence, but cause regret by their bad taste. You are introduced to the freshness of the shade only by a vast torrid zone, at the end of which there is nothing for you but to mount or descend; and with the hill, which is very short, terminate the gardens. The violence everywhere done to nature repels and wearies us despite ourselves. The abundance ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... her own small worries were petty. The consciousness came to her that the man with whom she had been speaking was making history, and she was fascinated by the fulness of his life and the greatness of his undertakings. Her eyes were dazzled with the torrid African sun which had shone through his words, and she felt the horror of the primeval forest and the misery of the unending swamps. And she was proud because his outlook was so clear, because he bore his responsibilities so easily, because his plans were so vast. She looked at him. He was standing ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... are none, and as relays are therefore unattainable, the traveller must quit civilization as soon as dawn breaks, and contrive to reach it before overtaken by nightfall. Lastly, during the brief summer, the heat is torrid, and if you start on your travels towards its close, say the middle or end of September, today's scorching sun may be followed by tomorrow's snowstorm. And to be caught in a snowstorm on the Causses would be an Alpine adventure with no chance ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... his fiercest rays, Parching with heat intense the torrid zone: No fanning western breeze his rage allays; No passing cloud, with kindly shade o'erthrown, His place usurps; but Phoebus reigns alone, In this unfriendly clime a woodland shade, Gloomy and dark with woven boughs o'ergrown, Shed chearful verdure on the neighbouring ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... who shall nurse the Nurses? When the strain Of ministry on India's torrid plain Brings the fatigue that, long-neglected, kills, They'll need, as health-resorts whereto to send, For rest restorative, the soldiers' friend, Homes ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... themselves of coasting all Africa, and one part of Arabia and Persia; by taking this compass, the Indies are distant from Portugal about four thousand leagues, and the passengers are constrained to suffer twice the scorching heats of the torrid zone, in going under the equinoctial line, which divides Africa almost in ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... of the Equator has had also something to do with staying the onward march of civilization from without. The world learned first to think only of the enervating influence of a torrid sun upon the inhabitants of the great continent, and this was not inviting ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... that he must seek to narrow his world and wall in a space such as fitted him. He was at first bare and out of doors; but though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, by daylight, the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing of the torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud if he had not made haste to clothe himself with the shelter of a house. Adam and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... since men have almost entirely annihilated this useful race? That the putrefied weeds have poisoned the air, and the poisoned air causes the yellow fever, that desolates these beautiful countries. Enormous vegetations are multiplied under the torrid seas, and the evil is irresistibly developed from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata to Florida. If we are to believe Toussenel, this plague is nothing to what it would be if the seas were cleaned of whales and seals. Then, infested with poulps, medusae, ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... Torrid Zone, the two steamers proceeded to the north, obtaining a long view of Formosa, and hearing a lecture about it. Their next port of call was Shang-hai, reached by ascending the Woo-Sung. From this port they made an excursion up the Yang-tsze-Chiang, which ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... than compensates for its fearsome nights and torrid noontides. The dew, jewelling a thousand spider-webs, the sparkling brightness of the air, the exquisite purity of the atmosphere, and grandeur of space and loneliness rimmed about by rose-tipped skies and far forget-me-not ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... nature. No great movement, possibly, in the heavens was necessary, however, to cause all its misfortunes. These regions may formerly have been those on which the sun shone most favorably; the polar circles may have been what now the tropics are, and the torrid zone have filled the place occupied by the temperate." Pretty well, Monsieur, for a philosopher! The various attempts made to unriddle the real history of graphic granite are, however, scarce less curious than the speculations connected with what may be termed ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... man as man, an elevation of the individual as a component part of society. I find everywhere a rebuke of the idea, that the many are made for the few, or that government is any thing but an agency for mankind. And I care not beneath what zone, frozen, temperate, or torrid; I care not of what complexion, white or brown; I care not under what circumstances of climate or cultivation,—if I can find a race of men on an inhabitable spot of earth whose general sentiment it is, and whose general feeling it is, that ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... tempests with the rest; they will then represent of the air, against the inundations of the peopling of any country or water, against the fire of volcanoes, of the world. In this state of natural against the intemperance of frigid liberty, society will be our first and torrid zones, against the sterility thought. A thousand motives will of the earth which, refuses him aliment, excite them thereto. The strength of or its baneful fecundity, which one man is so unequal to his wants, makes poison spring up beneath his and his mind so unfitted ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... which might be commented on, either morally only, as referring to a thirst after religion, virtue, and knowledge—or physically also, in some story of well-endured miseries at sea on a wrecking craft; or of Christian resignation even to the horrible death of drought among the torrid sands of Africa; or some noble act, like that of Sir Philip Sidney on the battle-field, or David's libation of that desired draught from the well of Bethlehem. I need not remark that all these sayings might primarily be applied to their Good Utterer, if it seemed more ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the Chickahominy and the gore of battle baked hard upon them like the shells of turtles, she went down each day to the wharves with an ambulance laden with dressings and restoratives, and there amid the turmoil and dirt, and under the torrid sun of Washington, toiled day by day, alleviating such suffering as she could. And when the steamers turned their prows down the river, she looked wistfully after them, longing to go to those dread shores whence all this misery came. But she was alone and unknown, and how could she get ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... it good for them to see that she could make an excellent lather while she corrected their blunders "without looking,"—that a woman with her sleeves tucked up above her elbows might know all about the Subjunctive Mood or the Torrid Zone—that, in short, she might possess "education" and other good things ending in "tion," and worthy to be pronounced emphatically, without being a useless doll. When she made remarks to this edifying effect, she had a firm little frown on her brow, which ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... fails me to take my life, take it thou, for 'tis death I desire of all things, such and so grievous is my suffering. But if this grace thou wilt not grant, at least bring me a cup of water wherewith to lave my mouth, for which my tears do not suffice, so parched and torrid is it within." Well wist the scholar by her voice how spent she was; he also saw a part of her body burned through and through by the sun; whereby, and by reason of the lowliness of her entreaties, he felt some little pity ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... fevers. On the other hand, the Galapagos Archipelago, in the Pacific, with a similar soil, and periodically subject to the same process of vegetation, is perfectly healthy. Humboldt has observed, that, "under the torrid zone, the smallest marshes are the most dangerous, being surrounded, as at Vera Cruz and Carthagena, with an arid and sandy soil, which raises the temperature of the ambient air." [5] On the coast of Peru, however, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... modification may be effected in some animals within even a few generations, but he attributes the effect produced to the direct influence of climate. Buffon concludes his sketch of the animals of the new world by pointing out that the larger animals of the African torrid zone have been hindered by sea and desert from finding their way to America, and by claiming to be the first "even to have suspected" that there was not a single denizen of the torrid zone of one continent which was common ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... it you?" he cried, taking me by the hand. "It's myself, I can assure you. Thanks to this torrid climate, sangaree, and Yellow Jack, you're right, my boy. All the fine fellows you knew at Savannah are invalided home, or are under the sod; but as I eschew strong drinks, and keep in the shade ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... just a week since the wreck, and for the last two days there had not been a breath of wind in the air, nor the faintest ripple on that burning water. To use even the slightest exertion in such torrid heat was almost impossible. Even to sit still under that blighting sun, with the reflected glare from the dead, dark ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... through thy gates, for thou forbiddest none In thy close-curtained couches to repose, Or lease thy narrow tenements of stone, It matters not where first the sunbeam shone Upon their cradle—'neath the foliage free Where dark palmettos fleck the torrid zone, Or 'mid the icebergs of the Arctic sea— Thou dost no questions ask; all are at ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... there are thunders beneath the earth, and the houses shake, then does this spirit of the peak, in robes of fire, ride the hot blast and shriek in the joy of destruction,—a valkyrie of the war of nature. Kanakas try to keep on the good side of this torrid divinity by secret gifts, either of white chickens or of red ohelo berries, and an old man once put into a guide's hand the bones of a child that he might throw them down the inner crater,—Halemaumau, the House of Eternal Burning, whose ruddy lava cones are homes of the goddess and ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... close were seated, others paced Incessantly around; the latter tribe More numerous, those fewer who beneath The torment lay, but louder in their grief. O'er all the sand fell slowly wafting down Dilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snow On Alpine summit, when the wind is hush'd. As, in the torrid Indian clime, the son Of Ammon saw, upon his warrior band Descending, solid flames, that to the ground Came down." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... fertile climes, Man still maintains his surreptitious power; Reigns o'er the Brutes, and, with the voice of Fate, Says "This to-day, and that to-morrow dies." Though here our Shambles blazon the Renown, The Victory, and Rule, of lordly Man; Far wider tracts within the Torrid Zone Own no such Lord: where Sol's intenser rays Create in bestial hearts more fervid fires, And deadlier poisons arm the Serpent's tooth; In gloomy shades, impassable to Man, Where matted foliage exclude the Sun, The torpid Birds that crawl from bough to bough Utter ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... a grot, Die because the day is hot? Or declare I can't endure Such a torrid temperature? Be it hotter than the flames South Gehenna Junction claims, If it be not so to me, What care ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... the cave their legends tell of," he said reluctantly. "He's the lad who wanted the city to gas Earth with some ghastly stuff they know of, and move over when the gas was harmless again. But the cave has been lost for centuries, and it's in the torrid zone—which is torrid! We're near the North Pole of this planet, and it's tropic here. It must be mighty hot at the equator. Datl took a ship and supplies and sailed off. He may be killed. In any case it'll be some time before he's dangerous. Meanwhile, ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... amount of food which a man can get off this little patch I dare not guess. Well says Humboldt, that an European lately arrived in the torrid zone is struck with nothing so much as the extreme smallness of the spots under cultivation round a cabin which contains a numerous family. The plantains alone ought, according to Humboldt, to give one hundred and thirty-three ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... an open corridor against one of the walls, in which species of cloister the human guests were privileged to spread their blankets in case of rain or an icy norther. Otherwise they slept in the sky-vaulted court among the four-footed transients, for what men on the torrid Gulf coast would allow his beast ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... sunburnt; the swollen, muddy river itself rolled swiftly and heavily along, silent, impressive; the dug-out, looking like a craft of primeval times, rocked and swayed noiselessly on the flood; the naked savages crouched over their broken paddle beneath the waving tamarisk; the sunlight fell torrid, blighting in its scorching heat, over all. The scene, with its rough, fresh, vigorous barbarism, delighted me. I slackened my pace and stood still again before disturbing ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... had mixed the two subjects, wrote: "There are two zones, masculine and feminine. The masculine is either temperate or intemperate; the feminine is either torrid or frigid!" ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... always realised the advantages of a semi-permanent line of signal stations along the communications to the telegraph, but I had doubted the practicability of using such complicated arrangements in action. In this torrid country, where the sun is always shining, the heliograph is always useful. As soon as any hill was taken, communication was established with the brigadier, and no difficulty seemed to be met with, even while the attack was in progress, in sending messages quickly and clearly. In a country ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... weather had come upon the city. June was going out in a wave of torrid heat such as August might have boasted. The day had seemed endless and intolerably close. I was feeling very limp and languid. Perhaps, thought I, it was the heat which ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... his throne, and arrested every creative power of nature. Will you call the miserable stragglers in these countries by the name of men? Now contrast this frigid power of the north and south with that of the sun; examine the parched lands of the torrid zone, replete with sulphureous exhalations; view those countries of Asia subject to pestilential infections which lay nature waste; view this globe often convulsed both from within and without; pouring forth from several ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... that the reader should bear in mind, that what is put down in this book is but a small part and scantling of the acts of sorcery and witchcraft which have existed in human society. They have been found in all ages and countries. The torrid zone and the frozen north have neither of them escaped from a fruitful harvest of this sort of offspring. In ages of ignorance they have been especially at home; and the races of men that have left no records ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... Canadians will work for nobody but themselves. Black Slaves are certainly the only people to be depended upon, but it is necessary, I imagine they should be born in one or other of our Northern Colonies, the Winters here will not agree with a Native of the torrid zone, pray therefore if possible procure for me two Stout Young fellows, who have been accustomed to Country Business, and as I shall wish to see them happy, I am of opinion there is little felicity without a Communication with the Ladys, you may buy for each a clean young wife, who can wash ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... seven hundred miles, forms a great peninsula, which crosses the tropics and terminates in the torrid zone. It is separated from the mainland by the Gulf of California, sometimes called the Vermilion Sea; into this gulf empties the Colorado of the West, the Seeds-ke-dee, or Green River, as it is also sometimes called. The peninsula is traversed ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... subdued colours of embroidered stuffs and the inscrutable traceries of bronze lamps. Or, maybe, the scene passes on a terrace overlooking a dark river. Behind the domes and minarets a yellow moon dreams like an odalisque, her hand on the circle of her breast; and through the torrid silence of the garden, through the odour of over-ripe fruit and the falling sound thereof, comes the melancholy warble of a fountain. Or is it the sorrow of lilies rising through the languid air to the sky? The night is blue ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... A week of torrid heat, in which London crawled, groaned, and panted, had been wiped from the memory by an over-night thunderstorm that burst the pent-up dams of heaven and loosed cool floods upon the staring streets. No misty drizzle nor gusty shower it had been, but a strong, straight, continuous ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... all its branches,—whether in the frozen regions of Siberia, or in the torrid zone,—practise trine immersion. All Pedobaptists require of adults, who seek for baptism, a personal profession of their faith, and so far agree with the Baptists. They also, with the Baptists, allow immersion to be valid baptism; ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... a torrid day with a promise of storm, and Kate would have preferred to go to the Settlement House to do her usual work, which chanced just now to be chiefly clerical. But she was urged to meet the Englishwoman and to discuss ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... bough of a tree overhanging the pool which the crocodile is known to frequent, being so arranged that the carcass swings a foot or so above the surface of the stream at high water level, the end of the rattan being planted in the bank. Lured by the smell of the bait, which in that torrid climate quickly acquires a bouquet which can be detected a mile to leeward, the crocodile is certain sooner or later to thrust its long snout out of the water and snap at the odoriferous bundle dangling so temptingly overhead, the slack line offering no resistance until ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... In this country, in which the vegetation was formerly so brilliant that Josephus saw in it a kind of miracle—Nature, according to him, being pleased to bring hither side by side the plants of cold countries, the productions of the torrid zone, and the trees of temperate climates, laden all the year with flowers and fruits[1]—in this country travellers are obliged now to calculate a day beforehand the place where they will the next day ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan |
