"Cliff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and dragged him behind Pard through brush. She had pulled him from a quicksand bed,—made of cement that showed a strong tendency to "set" about his form before she could rescue him,—and she had fought with him on the edge of a cliff and had thrown him over; and his director, anxious for the "punch" that was his fetish, had insisted on a panorama of the fall, so that there was no chance for Gil to save himself the bruises he got. Gil Huntley's part it was always to die a violent death, or to be captured ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... a cliff fully two hundred yards distant, and of half that height. On this projecting ledge stood a noble buck, with antlers and head raised, while he seemed to be gazing over the wild expanse of country below him. ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... thought our traveller, as he continued his journey on the morrow. The day is overcast, and the clouds threaten rain or snow. Why does he stop at the little village of Capellen? Because, right above him on the high cliff, the glorious ruin of Stolzenfels is looking at him with itshollow eyes, and beckoning to him with its gigantic finger, as if to say; "Come up hither, and I will tell thee an old tale." Therefore he alights, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... material growth of our population, it is as much as we do. Where is the joyful buoyancy and expansive power with which the Gospel burst into the world? It looks like some stream that leaps from the hills, and at first hurries from cliff to cliff full of light and music, but flows slower and more sluggish as it advances, and at last almost stagnates in its flat marshes. Here we are with all our machinery, our culture, money, organisations—and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... we all started for a tramp down the canon. I do not mean that we were in the canon by the river, for that would have been impossible, but that we went along the path that runs close to the edge of the high cliff. We carried our luncheon with us, so there was no necessity for haste, and every now and then we sat upon the thick carpet of pine needles to rest, and also study the marvelous coloring of the cliffs across the river. The walls of the canon are very high and very steep—in many places ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... bit of spun yarn over one shoulder, his strapped-together boots stuffed with coarse worsted stockings, one on each side, over the other shoulder, squirted a little tobacco juice into the harbour, and went off barefoot over the steep stones to the cottage high up the cliff, muttering to himself something about Pilchar' Will being a fine young chap ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... this scheme. There was a road near his house that ran along the edge of a precipice. The man asked each one of these coachmen in turn how close he could drive to the cliff without going over. The first said he could drive within six inches of it; the second said he could drive within two inches of it. When the third man was asked he said, "I should keep away from it as ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... Yellow-breasted Chat Blue-gray Gnatcatcher Tufted Titmouse Brown Creeper House Wren Marsh Wren Brown Thrasher Wood Thrush Hermit Thrush Wilson Thrush Water Thrush Chimney Swift Bank Swallow Rough-winged Swallow Cliff Swallow Barn Swallow Song Sparrow Tree Sparrow Blue Bird Indigo Bunting Ruby-crowned Kinglet Golden-crowned Kinglet Oven Bird Yellow Throat Goldfinch Bohemian Waxwing Cedar Waxwing Phoebe Wood Pewee ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... clear-voiced heralds summon every man by name to the assembly, but not to shout aloud; and himself he toiled amid the foremost. So they sat sorrowful in assembly, and Agamemnon stood up weeping like unto a fountain of dark water that from a beetling cliff poureth down its black stream; even so with deep groaning he spake amid the Argives and said: "My friends, leaders and captains of the Argives, Zeus son of Kronos hath bound me with might in grievous blindness of soul; hard of heart is he, for ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... has not been found, but there is nothing excessively surprising in that. As a matter of fact, the trail which I followed brought me to the church at Varengeville and the old cemetery perched on the top of the cliff. From there it is a sheer precipice, a fall of over three hundred feet to the rocks and the sea below. In a day or two, a stronger tide than usual will cast up ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... the mountain-land is a meeting of many friends. The pinnacle, the forest-head, the latschen-tufted mound, rock-bastion and defiant cliff and giant of the triple peak, were in view, clearly lined for a common recognition, but all were figures of solid gloom, unfeatured and bloomless. Another minute and they had flung off their mail, and changed to various, indented, intricate, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that human history is not a smooth and well-rolled lawn of soft ascents; that it is mountainous, precipitous, terrific—a country where all progress must be won by dint of intelligence and toil, and where it is as easy to lose the gains of civilization as it is to fall over a cliff or to surrender a wheat field to the weeds. An archeologist in Mesopotamia talked with an Arab lad who neither read, himself, nor knew any one who did; yet the lad, when he acknowledged this, stood within a stone's throw of the site where milleniums ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... have whispered long enough before she would have answered me, frightened as she was, no doubt, by many a rude overture. And I durst not speak aloud, because I saw another watchman posted on the western cliff, and commanding all the valley. And now this man espied me against the wall of the house, and advanced against the ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... They went up the cliff in a long file, clawing their way, cursing the steepness, now and then one or another of them fumbling uncertainly, close to a slip and a fall. It was clear that, with the possible exception of Swen Brodie, not a man of ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... name. A low barren cliff overhung the house in which he was born, fir and birch looked down on the roof, and wild-cherry strewed flowers over it. Upon this roof there walked about a little goat, which belonged to Oeyvind. He was kept there that he might not go astray, and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... cliff and peak and slanting canyon, midway to the westward, is let King Phillip Sound, a sheet of water dotted with islands and framed by forests. It reaches inland with long, crooked tentacles which end like talons, in living ice. Hidden some forty miles up one ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... In a little time he came to a great bulging bend, around the foot of which the waters flowed in sullen sweeps. Here, careful as he was, he slipped, and lay for a moment stunned and chilled with his sudden immersion. Struggling to the bank, he regained his foothold, and, rounding the promontory of cliff which had almost defeated his search, he turned the angle that hid the grotto, and found himself ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... harness in the icy caves And barren chasms, and all to left and right The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he bas'd His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang Sharp-smitten with the ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... Jackson and the 37th Virginia came down from the heights with the impetuosity of a torrent. Behind them poured other grey troops. On the cliff heads Poague and Carpenter came into position and began with grape and canister. The blue Parrott, full before the bridge mouth, menacing the lane within, answered with a shriek of shells. The 37th ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... it has become extinct there too. Sometimes, for no reason that we can see, certain species forsake their old abodes, as the purple martin, which within the last quarter-century has receded some twenty miles from the seaboard,—or appear where they were before unknown, as the cliff swallow, which was first seen in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains, but within about the same space of time has become as common hereabouts as any of the genus. In examples so conspicuous the movement ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... outskirts of the village, where, on a hill, known locally as "The Heights" there was a grove of trees. Below the hill, at one place cutting deep into it and making a precipitous cliff, was a little river. At the point where the stream had bitten into the hill it had washed for itself a defile, the bottom rock-covered, so that the waters swirled over it ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... and is hot enough just NOT to boil an egg, I was told. At last, one reaches the little gap between the brown hills which one has seen for four hours, and drives through it into a wide, wide flat, with still craggier and higher mountains all round, and Worcester in front at the foot of a towering cliff. The town is not so pretty, to my taste, as the little villages. The streets are too wide, and the market-place too large, which always looks dreary, but the houses and gardens individually are charming. ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm; Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... invited to Rhinebeck to preach, met Catherine Livingston while there, and in 1793 they were married. Six years later they purchased a place on the banks of the Hudson, calling it Wildercliff—Wilder Klipp, a Dutch word meaning wild man's cliff, from the fact that early settlers found on a smooth rock on the river shore a rough tracing of two Indians with tomahawk and calumet. Garrettson was educated in the Church of England, but left it to become a Methodist; a man of strong personality, he soon rose to a prominent place in the church. ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... most deerect way air ter go straight through the woods thar a piece, an' then jump off'n a four hundred foot cliff," the old man chuckled titanically. "But I likewise reckon taint pra'tical; leastwise, not onless yo' happen ter be one o' them new-fangled aviationeers I've hearn tell on. However, here ye be, an' here yo're goin' ter stay twill atter supper. Come, child. Sot on ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... perturbed beneath his glance. They would have liked to go down again at once, and thus escape the uneasiness of a longer walk. But, in spite of themselves, as though impelled by some stronger power, they skirted a rocky cliff and reached a table-land, where once more they found the intoxication of the full sunlight. They no longer inhaled the soft languid perfumes of aromatic plants, the musky scent of thyme, and the incense of lavender. Now they ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... begins with the sleeping author's vision of 'a field full of folk' (the world), bounded on one side by a cliff with the tower of Truth, and on the other by a deep vale wherein frowns the dungeon of Wrong. Society in all its various classes and occupations is very dramatically presented in the brief description of the 'field of folk,' with incisive passing satire of the sins and vices of ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Germain and pointed out that their firearms were in a heap at the entrance, and that a rope attached there and coiled loosely showed their means of exit down the face of the cliff. ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... marlstone cliff, {11} rising above the river Salwarp, and overlooking the town of Droitwich, is the church of Dodderhill, belonging to the parish of that name. It gave shelter to the Royalists during the civil wars, ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... where some solitary column mourns Above its prostrate brethren of the cave; Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave; Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave, Where the gray stones and long-neglected grass Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave, While strangers only not regardless pass, Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... sometimes we get greater reality from books than we get from life. Leslie Stephen liked the real country, also. In his holidays he climbed the Swiss mountains—wrote a book about them—it's on that top shelf. Don't you remember how he loved to roll stones off a cliff? And as a pedestrian he was almost as famous as George Borrow—walked the shirt off his back before his college trustees and all that sort of thing. But he got an even sharper reality from books. He liked the city, too, but in many a mood, there's no doubt about it, he preferred ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... awkward predicament into which he had brought not only himself, but le Feu-Follet. In this manner, now thinking of her he sought, and then reverting to his situation in an enemy's port, he walked along the whole line of the cliff, scarce knowing whether to return or to seek his boat by doubling on the town, when he heard his own name pronounced in a sweet voice which went directly to his heart. Turning on his heel, Ghita was within ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Malone Gully there was a small projecting cliff, which was in the possession of "Jacko." This and the ground behind it gave a command over a limited portion of the beach, which was only a few hundred yards away. In order to clear out the Turk and ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... distance of each other. Here are the head waters of the Athabasca and north tributaries of the Saskatchewan, which falls into Lake Winnipeg; and on the east the northern waters of the Columbia, and the eastern branch of Frazer's River, near a deep cliff in the mountains, which has been called by British traders the Committee's Punch Bowl."—Rev. C. ...
— A Letter from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth to His Friend, the Author of 'The Clockmaker' • Robert Carmichael-Smyth
... of his Sacred Majesty, and Defender of the Faith, Charles Second), I reckon that we have pretty well exhausted what of 'firm earth' there was for us to march on;—and are now, very ominously, shuddering, reeling, and let us hope trying to recoil, on the cliff's edge!— ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... [Hebrew: סלל], Salal, raised, elevated, reared up, exalted, piled up into a heap, Aggeravit. [Hebrew: סללה] Salalah, means a heap, rampart, or other accumulation of earth or stone, artificially made; and [Hebrew: סלע], Salaa or Salo, is a rock or cliff or boulder, and the name of the city of Petra. There is no ancient Hebrew word to designate ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... another course, he despises Nature in herself, and in her follower, since upon other thing he sets his hope. But follow me now, for to go on pleaseth me; for the Fishes are gliding on the horizon, and the Wain lies quite over Corus,[2] and far yonder is the way down the cliff." ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... the Twins, and away they ran to join their brother, who was already some little distance ahead of them. They turned as the path rounded the great cliff where the echoes lived, and the Twins waved their hands, while Fritz played his merry little tune on the horn. Then the rocks hid them from view, and the long ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... either hand the hastening angel caught Our lingering parents, and to the eastern gate Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast To the subjected plain; then disappeared. They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that naming brand; the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms. Some ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... in face, in linnen i-clothed, Come adown from the cliff and spake me fair, And said, 'Son, sleepest thou? Seest thou this people All how busy ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... repainting for himself since yesterday morning. He went to the house, saw the stonework was going on all right, and as he returned, whom should he meet but Miss Shipton, who, undeterred by the fright of the day before, had just had another bathe, and was taking a turn along the cliff to dry her hair, which was hanging over her shoulders. She was not by any means what is called "fast," but she knew how to dress herself. She had a straw hat with a very large brim, a plain brown holland dress, a brown holland parasol, ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... of the Grassy Quarry, as it was called, she peered under the little beetling cliff that overhung the well-known ledge ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... in London which have always avoided any suspicion of respectable regularity either in their reputation or their architecture. The dead monotony of Woburn or Eaton Square, for example, the massive austerity of the Cromwell Road, and the cliff-like cornices of Victoria Street, are the antithesis of the extraordinary variety to be found in Park Lane, High Street Kensington, Maida Vale and Cheyne Walk. This last reveals, between Blantyre and Tite streets, the whole social order of England and the most disconcerting divarications of design. ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... preferred not to, and so it was a long time before I became acquainted with all my neighbors. I had not thought I should ever marry again. Jerrine was always such a dear little pal, and I wanted to just knock about foot-loose and free to see life as a gypsy sees it. I had planned to see the Cliff-Dwellers' home; to live right there until I caught the spirit of the surroundings enough to live over their lives in imagination anyway. I had planned to see the old missions and to go to Alaska; to hunt in Canada. I even ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... desperate chance, but one that had to be taken. Bud knew, if the others did not, that about a mile beyond lay a gully, led up to by a cliff, and if the steers and cows reached this, the leaders unable to stop, while the rear ranks pushed on, there would be a mass of piled-up, dead ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... a wonderful experience to climb Mount Lowe. The tourists go up half a mile into Rubio Canyon, to the engineering miracle, the triangular car that hoists them out of the hungry chasm thirty-five hundred feet up the side of a granite cliff, to the top ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... UNDIVIDED DELL Where toil and health, with mellowed love shall dwell, Far from folly, far from men, In the rude romantic glen, Up the cliff, and through the glade, Wand'ring with the dear-loved maid, I shall listen to the lay, And ponder ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... grand. Away to right were the undulations of the moor; to the left the high hills which seemed as if cut off short, and descended almost perpendicularly to the sea, and in front of them the sea itself, glistening in the sunshine beyond the cliff, which from the point where Fred lay looked like a lion couchant, end on to him, and passing out to sea. Here and there some boat's sail seemed like a speck upon the sea, while going in different directions—seaward and toward Bristol were a couple of what Fred mentally dubbed "king's ships." ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... the tides; and before me, for as far as I could see, nothing was visible but the same many-folded sand upon the sun-bright bottom of the bay. Yet the terrace to which I was then holding was as thick with strong sea-growths as a tuft of heather, and the cliff from which it bulged hung draped below the water-line with brown lianas. In this complexity of forms, all swaying together in the current, things were hard to be distinguished; and I was still uncertain whether my feet were pressed upon the natural rock or ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nothing but a pit of blackness, but gradually as he gazed the shadows passed away, and he traced a deep recess in the stone of the cliff, not much of a shelter to those unused to the woods, but sufficient for ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of the river, whose mighty current gave Its freshness for a hundred leagues to ocean's briny wave; He told them of the glorious scene presented to his sight, What time he reared the cross and crown on Hochelaga's height; And of the fortress cliff, that keeps of Canada the key;— And they welcomed back Jacques Cartier from ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... hour of climbing, the slope became so steep that we had to turn, now to the right, now to the left; and our progress was much delayed. Soon the gorge became wholly impracticable; its cliff-like sides offered no sufficient foothold. We had to cling by branches, to crawl upon our knees. At this rate the top would not be reached ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... all white with hundreds of these geese that were sitting there, and great numbers were flying in the air over it and round it. When they were able to leave off looking at all this, they saw on the top of the high cliff opposite to the Bass Rock a large ruined castle, called Tantallon Castle, which they thought ...
— Adventure of a Kite • Harriet Myrtle
... up one of the neighboring hills to a cliff known as the Bout du Puig, which commanded a wonderful view up and down the valley. Here they would take their lunch and ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... collected a fleet to enable Sigurd to avenge his father. They encountered a great storm, and were driven past a certain promontory. A man was standing on the cliff who said: ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... horses. Quite a band of armed men were also assembled upon the open plain at the head of the pass. As the Spaniards were almost dragging their horses up the gorge, suddenly the storm of war burst upon them. Showers of stone descended from the cliff from thousands of unseen hands. Huge boulders were pried over and went thundering down, crashing all opposition before them. It seems now incomprehensible why the whole squadron of horsemen was not destroyed. But in this awful hour the self-possession of De Soto did not for one moment forsake ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... touch the mossy rocks of the shore; the maiden-hair fern, the wild evening primrose, wild Michaelmas daisy, blue pimpernel, fringed gentian, are so near we can almost gather them, and so crystal-clear the untroubled waters, every object— cliff, tree, and mossy stone—shows its double. We might at times fancy ourselves but a few feet from the pebbly bottom, each stone showing its bright clear outline. The iridescence of the rippling water over the rainbow-coloured pebbles ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... by each cliff and dell, Once the lov'd haunts of Scotia's royal train;^1 Or mus'd where limpid streams, once hallow'd well,^2 Or mould'ring ruins mark the ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... I was sure it could be done. I had climbed the worst precipices in the Dungeon of Buchan, and looked into the nest of the eagle on the Clints of Craignaw. It was not likely that I would come to any harm so long as there was a foothold or an armhold on the face of the cliff. At least, my idiotic pique had now pledged me to the attempt, as well as my pride, for above all things I desired to stand well in the ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... good My gentle star, or something better gave me, I envy not myself the precious boon. As in that season, when the sun least veils His face that lightens all, what time the fly Gives way to the shrill gnat, the peasant then Upon some cliff reclin'd, beneath him sees Fire-flies innumerous spangling o'er the vale, Vineyard or tilth, where his day-labour lies: With flames so numberless throughout its space Shone the eighth chasm, apparent, when the depth Was to my view expos'd. As he, whose ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... an island at the entrance of the harbor was planted a battery of thirty cannon, carrying twenty-eight pound shot; and at the bottom of the harbor was a grand, or royal battery, of twenty-eight cannon, forty-two pounders, and two eighteen-pounders. On a high cliff, opposite to the island-battery, stood a light house, and within this point, at the north-east part of the harbor, was a careening wharf, secure from all winds, and a magazine of naval stores. The town was regularly laid out in squares; the streets were broad and commodious, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... an interval, not more than a rod or two in width, in the tree-hedge which lined the opposite cliff. Through this one might get a narrow glimpse of what lay beyond. A strip of grassy lawn extended in front of what seemed to be the stone corner of a house. The distance obscured detail, but it looked massively built, though not after the modern style. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... ruby and white across the water. Clovelly lamps made glittering disks in the quay pool, shining there side by side with the reflected star-beams. We could hear the regular swish-swash of the waves on the rocks, and to the eastward the dripping of a stream that came tumbling over the cliff. ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... full and the night clear. In an angle of a cliff they built a roaring pine-log fire whose flames, leaping up the gray wall, made wild sport of the bold corners and strange-looking escarpments of the rock. Beyond the circle that the firelight brought luridly to life, the buttes in the moonlight had their ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... still and looked at Herbert. Then the Spanish boy turned and flew over the rocks. Leaping from one slippery foothold to another, he rushed toward the cliffs, up the cliff road, on to the clusters of Chinese huts that made a little fishing-village by itself on the edge of the bay. Whatever Spanish or English vocabulary Timoteo used, he aroused two or three Chinamen to forsake their frames of drying fish and cease tossing over the other small fish ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... glad to visit this favourite seaside resort of the Roman emperors. Even before we landed we could see the ruins of their villas deep in the clear waters of the bay, fish gliding through arches and the seaweed waving its pennons from the walls. The cliff at the back of the town presented a most impressive appearance, being pierced by great arched openings like the portals of a Roman bath. And such, indeed, they were, for on the promontory above ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... like a seagull, and I scrambled and leaped, making for the corner I knew of. Something told me that the pursuit was slackening, and for a moment I halted to look round. A second time a halt was nearly the end of me. A great stone flew through the air, and took the cliff an inch from my head, half-blinding me with splinters. And now I began to get angry. I pulled myself into cover, skirted a rock till I came to my corner, and looked back for the enemy. There he was scrambling by the way I had come, and ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... been sea-cuny and bravo, scholar and recluse. I have pored over hand-written pages of huge and musty tomes in the scholastic quietude and twilight of cliff-perched monasteries, while beneath on the lesser slopes, peasants still toiled beyond the end of day among the vines and olives and drove in from pastures the blatting goats and lowing kine; yes, and I have led shouting rabbles down the wheel-worn, chariot-rutted ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... afternoon, and she set forth light-footed upon the adventure, leaving Cinders to his monotonous but all-engrossing pastime. A wide line of rocks stretched between her and her goal, which was dimly discernible in the deep shadow of the cliff—a mysterious opening that had the appearance of a ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... the only reason I do not kill myself," she thought, as she stood on the jutting brow of the cliff and looked down on the masses of huge stones which, with the gaunt outlying rocks, had once hung on the face of the crags. The great breakers boiled over them with the ponderosity peculiar to the waters of the Pacific. The least of those breakers ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... and obeyed, and then the little party proceeded to climb the cliff, Will leading and selecting the easiest path, till once more they stood beside an open mine-shaft, situated in a nook between two masses of cliff which nearly joined, as it seemed from below, but were quite twenty feet apart when the ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... a certain cliff that commanded a noble view of the sea. To get to it she must pass through the town of Gravesend; and we may be sure she did not pass so often through that city without some idea of meeting the lover she had used so ill, and eliciting an APOLOGY ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... dearie," said grandmamma, "uncle and I have just taken such a pretty little cottage for you all, high up on the cliff, looking right over the blue sea. And you are to go off and try if the fresh wind up there will put a little more colour ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... its high cheek-bones and short-pointed beard. Had he indeed come down from the skies? There seemed no other way, for Susan did not know till afterwards that there were some steps cut zigzag down the cliff just behind her. But wherever he had come from he was undoubtedly there, real flesh and blood, and she was no longer alone with the dreadful roaring sea. It was such a joyful relief that it gave her new strength; she forgot her bedraggled and woebegone ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... position two hundred yards in advance, to cover the passage of the rest. These crossed with some difficulty, for the water was three and a half feet deep, and the current very strong; and they were, moreover, exposed to the fire of Fadil's riflemen, from the high cliff on the ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... of their churches. "Evviva, Amilcare! Evviva, Madonna Inglese!" ran like a river of sound from the gates about the streets, until, in the Piazza Grande, where the Signoria waited in the solemn estate of brocade and ermine, the volume of it had the throbbing roll of breakers on a cliff. Thud upon thud came "Evviva!" each with a shock which made pale Molly catch her breath; more than once or twice her eyes swam, and she felt herself wag helpless in the saddle. But Amilcare, snuffing wine, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... to go about looking at birds, and taking omens from what he saw them doing, a way of prophesying which the Romans also used, and some savages do the same to this day. Calchas said that yesterday he had seen a hawk pursuing a dove, which hid herself in a hole in a rocky cliff. For a long while the hawk tried to find the hole, and follow the dove into it, but he could not reach her. So he flew away for a short distance and hid himself; then the dove fluttered out into the sunlight, and the hawk swooped ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... got to go overboard as I did," grumbled the man who was wet. "Talk about the strenuous life, this takes the cake! Why, in the past ten days, I have gone over a cliff, rescued two women from a burning tenement house, climbed a rope hanging from a burning balloon, and fallen off a moving freight car. Can you ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... prospect. The river runs before the door, and serpentizes more than you can conceive in the vale. The duke is widening it, and will make it the middle of his park; but I don't approve an idea they are going to execute, of a fine bridge with statues under a noble cliff. If they will have a bridge (which by the way will crowd the scene), it should be composed of rude fragments, such as the giant of the Peak would step upon, that he might not be wet-shod. The expense of the works now carrying ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the narrow beach at the foot of the lofty cliff and the men disembarked rapidly. Then, hanging to rocks and shrubs, they began to climb. There was still no alarm, and Robert held his breath in suspense, and in amazement too. He did not know just where they were, but they could not be very far from Quebec, and General Wolfe was literally putting ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... careful of the type?' but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, 'A thousand types are gone: I care for nothing, all ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... the frontier, Philippe, or rather the German side of the frontier?... A craggy cliff, a series of peaks and ravines which make this part of the Vosges ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... to the little tavern above the cliff, I could hear a dispute going on inside; then a crash as of some crockery falling, and shortly a big, burly man with an auburn beard came tumbling forth in an awkward haste, pursued by the high tone of a ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... grown bluer and bluer, were also lost in the sky. The vessel crept round the outside of the great Bay, to clear shoals and sandbanks, and, by afternoon, with the sails close rigged in the freshening wind, they were running parallel with the Cliff—"THE Cliff!" thought Mahony with a curl of the lip. And indeed there was no other; nothing but low scrub-grown sandhills which flattened out till they were ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... dancing master I would refuse to play the monkey tricks of Marcel, which are only fit for the stage where they are performed; but instead of keeping my pupil busy with fancy steps, I would take him to the foot of a cliff. There I would show him how to hold himself, how to carry his body and head, how to place first a foot then a hand, to follow lightly the steep, toilsome, and rugged paths, to leap from point to point, either up or down. He should emulate the mountain-goat, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... was even better. He felt, and knew she felt, that they had reached a clearer understanding of each other. It was as if, after a swim through bright opposing waves, with a dazzle of sun in their eyes, they had gained an inlet in the shades of a cliff, where they could float on the still surface and gaze far ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... wind turning contrary, we stood out to sea, and when the wind changed from the seaward we again stood for the land, which we fell in with at a great round red cliff, not very high, having to the eastwards a smaller red cliff, and right above that towards the inland a round green hummock, which we took to be covered with trees. In the last 24 hours we only made ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... and she threw her arms upward and outward to relieve their weariness, and then went to the open door. The tide was coming in, but the children were still paddling in the salt pools and on the cold bladder rack, and she stepped forward to the edge of the cliff, and threw them some wild geranium and ragwort. Then she stood motionless in the bright sunlight, looking down the shingle towards the pier and the little tavern, from which came, in drowsy tones, the rough monotonous songs which seamen delight to sing—songs, full ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... was indeed freshening fast; the thick weather had crept down the coast until the high land about the Burning Cliff was only dimly visible; and as we dashed out past the end of the pier, the water in the bay was all flecked with white. The Esmeralda, with royals clewed up, was halfway across toward Portland Roads; but Roberts ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... at him and wondered transitorily if some complex Providence had indeed brought them together that afternoon. "It's not a cert, you know," he remarked. "There's a cliff like that at Lulworth Cove—as high, anyhow—and a little girl fell from top to bottom. And lives ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... solitude, the place is Lympne. It is in the clay part of Kent, and my bungalow stood on the edge of an old sea cliff and stared across the flats of Romney Marsh at the sea. In very wet weather the place is almost inaccessible, and I have heard that at times the postman used to traverse the more succulent portions of his route with boards ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... dull accompaniment I climbed out of the golden lowlands, the basins of the San Joaquin and the Sacramento, into the silver mountains where the full moon was just rising. The train seemed to soar through space; we passed from cliff to cliff, above dark ravines, on bridges like spider-webs; we whirled around sharp corners as if we had started for some planet, but thought better of it and clung to earth, with our hair on end and half the breath out of our bodies. We were continually ascending; the locomotive panted hideously; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... she heard he was home again. She went out on the hill that evening and, being seen only by the gulls, she laughed and cried and ran. It was just like poetry, for there he was himself lying on the edge of the cliff near the very spot where she had been used to lie. On seeing him she went more slowly, and began to poke about in the heather as if she had seen nothing. He came up to her with both hands outstretched, and then suddenly she remembered that she was wearing her old jersey, and she flushed ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the first was that of a perfect day on the coast of Normandy—a warm, still Sunday in the early part of August. From my pillow, on waking, I could look at a strip of blue sea and a section of white cliff. I observed that the sea had never been so brilliant, and that the cliff was shining like the coast of Paros. I rose and came forth with the sense that it was the finest day of summer, and that one ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... from Monte Carlo to the low intermediate quarter along the quay. From the window in which they presently found themselves installed, they overlooked the intense blue curve of the harbour, set between the verdure of twin promontories: to the right, the cliff of Monaco, topped by the mediaeval silhouette of its church and castle, to the left the terraces and pinnacles of the gambling-house. Between the two, the waters of the bay were furrowed by a light coming and going of pleasure-craft, through which, just at the culminating ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... was certainly one of the greatest assets of the school, and to Irene, who had been transported straight from the desolation of a London suburb in January, it seemed like a vision of a different world. The long terrace, with its marble balustrade, edged a high cliff that overtopped the sea, while at present the setting sun was lighting up the white houses of the distant outline of Naples, and was touching the purple slopes of Vesuvius with gold. Pillars and archways formed a pergola, ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... heights of the air; the ship sailed on into the light till the last gleam of its canvas vanished; the sun sank westward lower and lower till it glowed in a globe of flame upon the edge of the water: she never moved; standing there on the summit of the cliff, with her head drooped upon her breast, her form thrown out dark and motionless against the gold of the western sky, on her face still that look of one who worships with intense honour and passionate faith ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... again. As the cloudlets floated quite away a great mountain was revealed. The water had given place to the surface of the earth, and there, in the early morning light, lay Fricka, the Goddess of home and domesticity, and Wotan, the God of War, who was Fricka's husband. Behind them rose a great cliff and as the sun shone more and more brightly a splendid palace could be seen rising into the clouds. All its pinnacles sparkled in the sun's rays, while the river Rhein flowed peacefully between the mountain peak whereon the palace rose, ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... ended, the kettle and dishes were once more stowed away in the boat, and Valentine proposed climbing the cliff. ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... 8th: We arrived at Nagasaki on the morning of April 8th in a pouring rain which rather dampened our ardor, inasmuch as we had a full day's programme arranged. We went ashore, however, and proceeded to the Cliff House for a short time, but as the storm increased we returned to the steamer somewhat crestfallen. The Korea was taking on coal when we left, but on our return there was an ominous silence, and we ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... into a narrow, steep-sided angle of cliff. He was unable to climb any higher. He waited. When the machine loomed over him, he held the needlebeam against its metal hide and held down ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... that restless little bridge to the picturesque old town, and through its long, narrow street, and up the many stone steps to the ruined abbey and the old church on the East Cliff; and the old churchyard, where there are so many stones in memory of those who were ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... lies or defiles himself, or blasphemes, or murders, God does not dash him from a cliff or cast him into a furnace of fire. There would be no connection of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... whoops on high, and keen, keen from yon' cliff, Lo! the eagle on watch eyes the stag cold and stiff; The deer-hound, majestic, looks lofty around, While he lists with delight to the harp's distant sound; Is it swept by the gale, as it slow wafts along The heart-soothing ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... I like to see you in a passion; Such royal rage! Your forbear was, I know Kame-a-lili-like-kalico, Or some such name; who got in that great tiff And tumbled all his foes down off the cliff. I feel I'm lying with them in the valley While you stand all ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... early stage. Take your daughter, who has always, we will suppose, lived in the country, on an excursion with you to the sea-shore, and allow her to witness for an hour, as she sits in silence on the cliff, the surf rolling in incessantly upon the beach, and infinitely the smallest part of the effect is the day's gratification which you have given her. That is comparatively nothing. You have made a life-long change, if not in the very structure, at least in the permanent furnishing of her mind, ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... here is a lofty cliff on one side of the valley, hanging over just far enough to make a strip of cool shade at its base, with ferns and deep grass and a glimmer of dripping water. And here our wise Arabs are sitting at their ease to eat their mid-day meal under "the shadow of a great ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... It was such an educational system which prepared Ovid and Lucan for their careers as poets and men of letters. Seneca the father records the brilliant declamations of Ovid as a schoolboy, quoting at some length his plea for a wife who threw herself over a cliff on hearing of the death of her husband, and calling attention to several passages in Ovid's poems where the poet has borrowed the clever sayings of his professors in the school of rhetoric.[319] Ovid makes his characters prove that they are moved by passion ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... but I don't suppose they watch as we used to do in the old days. The revenue men up there—" and he nodded up the cliff "—must of course see that we are French; and if there are any of them who were here, three or four years ago, no doubt they know us again, and must be wondering what brings ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... of us once as we were turning a sharp point in the road round a projection of a cliff; but, through the fortunate circumstance of the mule which the lieutenant was riding happening to bolt at the moment, the joker had too much to do in taking care of his own valuable carcass to have much time to growl ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... better success. An active intriguer, General Lajolais, an old friend of Pichegru, meanwhile left Paris for London; he repeated the bitter words of Moreau respecting the First Consul—words which created illusions and hopes. On the 21st August, 1803, Georges landed at the cliff of Biville, crossing the rocks by the footpaths of smugglers. The police had for some time been on the traces of the conspiracy: they were, perhaps, actively concerned in it. A few Chouans, obscure companions of ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... no opportunity. Curiosity led me on, and with it the attraction which still draws us to those we have loved, though the love be gone and more pain than pleasure wait on our visiting. In ten minutes I was following Jonah down the cliff, and plunged thence into a narrow street that ran curling and curving towards the sea. Jonah held on quickly, and without hesitation, until we reached a confined alley, and came to a halt before a ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... minute the mountain gave forth its deadly breath and a white puff of smoke, which rose slowly into the peaceful heaven and floated above the summit of the cliff. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... ribbed and naked interior, producing all the phantasmic effect of a great swampy desert; old pools of water overgrown with a green scum, lay in the hollows between its rotting timbers, and the upper planks were baking and cracking in the sun. Near where they lay a steep path ascended the cliff, whence through grass and ploughed land, it led across the promontory to the fishing village of Scaurnose, which lay on the other side of it. There the mad laird, or Mad Humpy, as he was called by the baser sort, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... of Grandpa Sparrow, received Billy's son with open arms and hearts. The unsophisticated old people just sat and looked at him and listened to his words about his father and mother, and the great farm which he was operating so successfully. Cliff Farm was a little more than a mile from Barnard's Castle, and as Elder Sparrow was very popular with the people, many of them came to see Billy's son, both young men and maidens, and many a delightful ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... the coastguard simply. He pointed up at the old graveyard on the cliff above us. Then, touching my elbow, he turned away with me toward the little hamlet across ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... Tub," as the bathing place was colloquially termed, was a small natural harbour among the rocks at the foot of the cliff on which the school stood. It was a picturesque spot at all times; but this bright spring morning, with the distant headlands lighting up in the rising sunlight, and the blue sea heaving lazily among the rocks as though not yet awake, Heathcote thought it ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... the douaniers were either forced to beat a retreat or got fearfully mauled in the contest that ensued. One day, however, three of these green-coated guardians of the French revenue caught a sight of Juan alone and unarmed. They pursued him, and a rare race he led them, over cliff and crag, across rock and ravine, until at last they saw with exultation that he made right for the chasm in question, and there they made sure of securing him. It seemed as if he had forgotten the position ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... if the bay beyond curved in quiet and uninhabited, how we loved to turn and pull along close to shore, watching its beaches and sand-cliffs draw smoothly away beside our stern, or, best of all, pulling about and running in till our bow grated and we jumped to the wet beach and ran up the cliff to look about. Such moments bring in a peculiar way the thrill of discovery. It is one thing to go along a coast by land, and learn its ways so. It is a good thing. But it is quite another to fare over its waters and turn in upon it from without, surprising its secrets ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... lords. This village, situated in Normandy on the margin of the sea, was peopled only and entirely by fishermen, who gained a livelihood openly by sardine-fishing, and secretly, it was said, by smuggling. The chateau was built on a cliff, which it completely occupied. This cliff was formed of several terraces that rose in a stair one above another. On the topmost one sat the chateau, like an eagle in its nest. It had four dentilated turrets, with great casements and immense galleries, that gave it the grandest possible ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... handed the badge over to his troop. Probably he thought that it would interfere with his climbing trees or perhaps fall off when he was hanging upside down from some treacherous limb or scrambling head foremost down some dizzy cliff. No doubt it would be more or less in the way ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... was again struck up, and the several companies, marching in single files, passed the coffin one by one, in order that all might receive from the awful spectacle the warning which it was peculiarly intended to afford. The regiment was then marched off the ground, and reascended the ancient cliff, their music, as usual on such occasions, striking lively strains, as if sorrow, or even deep thought, should as short a while as possible be the tenant of the ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... my visitors yesterday was Miss Percy, the heiress of Guy's Cliff, one of the richest in England, and, what is odd, the translator of "Emilie Carlen's Birthright," the only Swedish novel I have ever got fairly through, because Miss Percy really does her work well, and I can't read ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... his possession, as designing to settle and to dwell there, though others say that he came to beg his assistance against the Athenians. But Lycomedes, either jealous of the glory of so great a man, or to gratify Menestheus, having led him up to the highest cliff of the island, on pretense of showing him from thence the lands that he desired, threw him headlong down from the rock, and killed him. Others say he fell down of himself by a slip of his foot, as he was walking there, according to his custom, after supper. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough |
