"Great Plains" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Euphrates mud; the greatness of Nineveh reposed on the silt of the Tigris. Upper India is the Indus; Agra and Delhi are Ganges and Jumna mud; China is the Hoang Ho and the Yang-tse-Kiang; Burmah is the paddy field of the Irrawaddy delta. And so many great plains in either hemisphere consist really of nothing else but mud-banks of almost incredible extent, filling up prehistoric Baltics and Mediterraneans, that a glance at the probable course of future evolution in this respect may help us to understand and to ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... been wounded and plundered by a gang of robbers close outside the walls of the town. Those who were able ran in to the Amil, or chief of the district, who resides in the town; and begged him to send some horsemen after the banditti, and intercept them as they passed over the great plains. 'Send your own people', said he, 'or hire men to send. Am I here to look after the private affairs of merchants and travellers, or to collect the revenues of the prince?' Neither he, nor the prince himself, nor any other officer of the public establishments ever dreamed that it was their duty ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the grass did begin to grow upon the eastern edge of the great Plains; and so I saw begin that vast and splendid movement across our continent which in comparison dwarfs all the great people movements of the earth. Xenophon's March of the Ten Thousand pales beside this of ten thousand thousands. The movements ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... out across the Great Plains, Ascalon was there as a fort, under another name. The railroad brought new consequence, new activities, and made it the most important loading place for Texas cattle, driven over the long route on their slow way ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... as these is being expanded as a result of this new drought all through the Great Plains area, the Western corn belt and in the states that lie further south. In the Middle West water conservation is not so pressing a problem. Here the work projects run more to soil erosion control and the building of ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... the conquerors and masters of the countries to which their wanderings led them. And there is now some agreement on the part of leading authorities as to the quarter of the world from which the migrations of the Aryans proceeded. In the Southern Steppes of Russia, in the great plains north of the Black Sea, the Caspian, and the Sea of Aral, there dwelt, we are told, in times far before the dawn of history, hordes rather than tribes of men, who, though they had originally spoken the same language, were coming to differ from each other ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... On the great plains of the west you may still see the beautiful and gentle antelope, though that animal is fast disappearing, while the thieving coyote thrives and multiplies ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... from the place where the sun is hid at night, over great plains where the buffaloes live, until we reached the big river. There we fought the Alligewi, till the ground was red with their blood. From the banks of the big river to the shores of the salt lake, there was none to meet us. The Maquas followed at a distance. We said the country should be ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... their hunting grounds. I then continued my journey to Battleford, which I reached on Monday, the 24th, at noon. Here I was happy to meet Major Irvine, who had come straight from Fort McLeod, across the Great Plains, to conduct me on my journey, and to inform me that for satisfactory reasons adduced by Crowfoot, the leading chief of the Blackfeet, Lieut.-Col. McLeod, my associate Commissioner, had consented that the meeting of the treaty ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... dormant until evoked by the fiercer emotions. His complexion was dark, but as you studied his face you could not repress the suspicion that Nature had marked him for a blonde, and that constant exposure to the wind and sun and rain of the great plains of the West had wrought the color change, and the conviction was strong that the change was an improvement on Nature. His features were cast in a mold of great beauty—such beauty as we seldom look for in a man. He was never moody, despondent, or cast down, and at all times, ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... race study ever since the Teuton prisoners began to arrive. From the very first, German and Austrian prisoners mated with the sturdy peasant women of Siberia and settled to a happy and unhampered life in the undeveloped lands of the great plains. Some of the women had husbands at the front, but nichevo never means "never mind" to a greater extent than it does in Russian marital affairs. A man's a man for a' that, and there was little trouble until the two parents of different nationality ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... story lies west of the Mississippi River, in the days when emigrants made their perilous way across the great plains to the land of gold. There is an attack upon the wagon train by a large party of Indians. Our hero is a lad of uncommon nerve and pluck. Befriended by a stalwart trapper, a real rough diamond, our hero achieves the ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... objects that meet the eye of the traveler over the great plains of the southern portion of California and New Mexico is the candelabra cactus. Systematically it belongs to the Cereus family, in which the notable Night-blooming Cereus also is naturally included. In tropical or semi-tropical countries these plants thrive, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... hills and mountains stretch the great plains beyond the distant eastern horizon; not suddenly and in one smooth slope, but foothills and small broken mesas end in scattered and irregular bluffs, these gradually blending and losing themselves in the billowy rolling country, which makes ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... in Hawaii and Florida, arctic in Alaska, semiarid in the great plains west of the Mississippi River, and arid in the Great Basin of the southwest; low winter temperatures in the northwest are ameliorated occasionally in January and February by warm chinook winds from the eastern slopes of the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... we passed what are called the Great Plains of the Columbia. From the top of the first rapid to this point, the aspect of the country becomes more and more triste and disagreeable; one meets at first nothing but bare hills, which scarcely offer a few isolated ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... California. The specimens of Myotis velifer from Roosevelt, Arizona, referred to M. v. velifer by Miller and Allen (op. cit. :90), actually average significantly smaller than specimens of this subspecies from Mexico, and than specimens of the large subspecies M. v. incautus from the Great Plains, and therefore, with reference to size, are not intergrades between these subspecies. All of the Arizonan material is here referred ...
— A New Subspecies of Bat (Myotis velifer) from Southeastern California and Arizona • Terry A. Vaughan
... life in France, about thirty years ago, was in a fine old chateau standing high in pretty, undulating, wooded country close to the forest of Villers-Cotterets, and overlooking the great plains of the Oise—big green fields stretching away to the sky-line, broken occasionally by little clumps of wood, with steeples rising out of the green, marking the villages and hamlets which, at intervals, are scattered over the plains, and in the distance the blue line of the forest. The chateau was ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... had got past the village the fog rose, and revealed magnificent views of the snowy mountains and their nearer abutments, while in front I could now and again catch glimpses of the great plains which I had surveyed on the preceding evening. The country was highly cultivated, every ledge being planted with chestnuts, walnuts, and apple-trees from which the apples were now gathering. Goats were abundant; also a kind of small black cattle, in the marshes near the river, which was now fast ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... very high grass the game was rather scarce, but after we had climbed by insensible grades to the shorter growth we began to see many hartebeeste, zebra, and gazelles, and a few of the wildebeeste, or brindled gnus. Travel over these great plains and through these leisurely low hills is a good deal like coastwise sailing—the same apparently unattainable landmarks which, nevertheless, are at last passed and left astern by the same sure but insensible progress. Thus we drew up ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... fort, and shaded pleasantly by cottonwood trees. There he dwelt with his numerous family, his peones and his slaves. In the spring and summer every one worked in the fields, though not too hard. In the fall the men went east to the great plains to kill a supply of buffalo meat for the winter, and often after the hunt they travelled south into Sonora and Chihuahua to trade mustangs and buffalo hides for woven ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... is our most common species east of the great plains, breeding from the Gulf States to the northern border of the United States and to New Brunswick. One peculiarity about him is that he breeds throughout his range, and therefore may be found as both a summer and winter resident in all suitable localities within these boundaries. In ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... tribe ... frequently make excursions to steal horses" from the Mandan,(38) and make other references indicating that the horse was in fairly common use among some of the Siouan tribes, though the animal was "confined principally to the nations inhabiting the great plains of the Columbia,"(39) and dogs were still used for burden and draft.(40) Grinnell learned from an aged Indian that horses came into the hands of the neighboring Piegan (Algonquian) about 1804-1806.(41) Long's naturalists found the horse, ass, and ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... us by the pluck and endurance of the indomitable pioneers, to where in sunshine roll the smiling Sierras of golden California, given to our heritage by the unconquerable energy of those brave men and women who braved the tomahawk on the Great Plains, the tempest, of Cape Horn, and the fevers of Panama, to make American soil of El Dorado! America! Oh, my America, how glorious you stand! Country of Washington and Valley Forge, out of what martyrdoms hast thou arisen! ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... famous highway was established across the great plains as a line of communication to the shores of the blue Pacific, the only method of travel was by the slow freight caravan drawn by patient oxen, or the lumbering stage coach with its complement of four or six mules. ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... and ordnance stores. The prisoners were paroled, the artillery parked and the small arms and ammunition destroyed. The battle of Buena Vista was probably very important to the success of General Scott at Cerro Gordo and in his entire campaign from Vera Cruz to the great plains reaching to the City of Mexico. The only army Santa Anna had to protect his capital and the mountain passes west of Vera Cruz, was the one he had with him confronting General Taylor. It is not likely that he would have gone as far north as Monterey to attack ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... formed part of an extensive Southern Continent or great island. The very numerous and remarkable cases of affinity with Malaya, require, however, some closer approximation with these islands, which probably occurred at a later period. When, still later, the great plains and tablelands of Hindostan were formed, and a permanent land communication effected with the rich and highly developed Himalo-Chinese fauna, a rapid immigration of new types took place, and many of the less specialised forms of mammalia and ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... variation in the rate of discharge of energy. The rate of energy discharge is especially high in animals evolved along the line of hunter and hunted, such as the carnivora and the herbivora of the great plains. ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... went by way of Bucharest, Roman, and Lemberg into Galicia, finally making our way back again to Vienna, and thence to Paris and home. In those days much of the ground I have mentioned was practically unknown to English tourists. The lower Danube, for example, and the great plains of Roumania, though they were within four days' rail of London, were not so well known to English people as the Nile, the Ganges, or the Mississippi. It seems strange, indeed, now to recall the fact that both in Hungary and in Roumania we visited places where Englishmen were regarded ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... wisely and truly in the physical aspect of Asia and the South of Caucasus, that very destiny of slavery and of partition into great empires, which has always hung over them. The great plains of Asia fit it for the action of cavalry and vast armies—by which the fate of generations is decided in a day; and at the same time fit it for the support of those infinite myriads without object, which make human life cheap and degraded. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... on a scientific excursion on the great plains, with the lamented Prof. Mudge, he nearly lost his life. He had captured a rattlesnake, and, in trying to introduce it into a jar filled with alcohol, the snake managed to bite him on the hand. The arm was immediately ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... existed a white stallion of great speed and splendid proportions—that there were twenty, perhaps a hundred such—among the countless herds of wild-horses that roam over the great plains, I did not for a moment doubt. I myself had seen and chased more than one that might have been termed "a magnificent animal," and that no ordinary horse could overtake; but the one known as the "white steed of the prairies" had a peculiar marking, that distinguished ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... of the world, and they derive their title from the range of hills which the old French geographers named the "Laurentides." These hills are composed of Laurentian Rocks, and form the watershed between the valley of the St Lawrence river on the one hand, and the great plains which stretch northwards to Hudson Bay on the other hand. The main area of these ancient deposits forms a great belt of rugged and undulating country, which extends from Labrador westwards to Lake ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... cartridges to frighten them. So passed an eventful day with much smoke but little fire. It was indeed becoming apparent that the Congo was a true land of exaggerations. On all sides were great hills, great plains, great forests, great rivers, great beasts, great trees, and ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... and the great plains the Indian trails usually avoided the bottom-lands of the river-valleys, following the divides and portages instead. This selection of routes was probably due to the fact that the lowlands were swampy and subject to overflow; ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... soon as travel was safe, they gladly turned their faces homeward, and after a fatiguing journey of about three months, reached the Great Plains. ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... with a slight thrill of vague fear, but this passed presently into that profound peace which the mountains alone can give their lonely or perturbed children. It seemed to her that Nature was never the same, on the great plains where men and cities always loomed into such ridiculous proportions, as when the Great Mother raised herself to comfort them with smiling hillsides, or encompassed them and drew them closer in the loving arms of her mountains. The long white canada stretched before her in a purity that did not seem ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... are a small people, and our war is weak: Who knows whether our God doth not desire Armies and great plains full of spears and horses, And cities made of bronze and hewn white stone And scarlet awnings, throng'd with sworded men, To shout his name up from the earth and kill All crying at the gates of other heavens; And hath grown tired of peaceable praise ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... hunters, the main occupation of all savages, depending largely upon stealthy approach to game, and from the sole form of their military tactics—to surprise an enemy. In the still expanse of virgin forests, and especially in the boundless solitudes of the great plains, a slight sound can be heard over a large area, that of the human voice being from its rarity the most startling, so that it is now, as it probably has been for centuries, a common precaution for members of a hunting or war party not to speak together when on such expeditions, ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... vast territory which in 1854 was not only unsettled but had no form of civil government whatever. It stretched from the north line of Arkansas to the border of British America,—twelve and a half degrees of latitude,—and westward over great plains and across mountain ranges till it reached the confines of Utah and Oregon. It was the unorganized remainder of the territory of Louisiana, acquired from France in 1803, and in extent was ten times as large as the combined area of New York and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... The great plains and table-lands which lie east of the Cascades, and are drained by the Columbia, the Snake, and their affluents, will some day contain a vast population. Already enterprising pioneers are pushing into the remotest valleys of this region. As you sail up the Columbia, you will hear of wheat, ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... preceded the main body; and the line of the migrating hosts soon stretched from the Missouri to the valley of the Great Salt Lake. Wagons there were, as also some horses and men, but all too few for the journey; and a great part of the company walked the full thousand miles across the great plains and the forbidding deserts of the west. In the Black Hills region, the pioneers were delayed a week at the Platte, a stream, which, though usually fordable at this point was now so swollen as to make fording ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... admiration. It was more than a village of the Onondagas that lay before them, it was the temple and shrine of the great league, the Hodenosaunee. The Onondagas kept the council fire, and ranked first in piety, but the Mohawks, the Keepers of the Eastern Gate, were renowned even to the Great Plains for their valor, and they stood with the Onondagas, their equals man for man, while the Senecas, known to themselves and their brother nations as the Nundawaono, were ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... shutters, from which all the paint had peeled away, and let in the scented air. Mignonette close at hand—which had bloomed and died and cast its seed amid the old walls and falling stones since Marie Antoinette had taught the women of France to take an interest in their gardens; and from the great plains beyond—flat and fat—carefully laid there by the Garonne to give the world its finest wines, rose up the subtle scent ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... and Will could not sleep. They went to Ned's old position at the edge of the creek bed, and together watched the opening dawn. They saw the bright sun rise over the great plains, and the dew sparkle for a little while on the brown grass. The day was cold, but apparently it had come with peace. They saw nothing on the plain, although they had no doubt that the Mexicans were waiting just beyond the first swell. But ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... away into the plains of Dauphiny,—those great plains that stretch from the Rhone to the Alps, and which offer to the eye, as seen from the heights that overhang Lyons, a vast and varied expanse of wood and meadow, corn-field and vineyard, city and hamlet, with the snowy pile of Mont Blanc rising afar in the horizon. ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... wilderness, conquering first the low coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard, then the forested foothills and ridges of the Appalachians, had finally penetrated into the Mississippi Valley, and, subduing that, had followed on westward to the prairies, and then to the great plains, and then clear across the great divide, the alkali deserts, and the Sierras, to California and the Pacific Coast; how these frontiersmen, at every stage of our history, had sent back wave after wave of strength and virility to keep alive the sturdy ideals of toil ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... Turkey, are better situated than other European countries; but the scientific nations lie further north; and from these the law has gone forth to regulate more southern lands. In the United States, particularly in the great plains of the west, the weather can be better compared; not only on account of the latitude being more favorable, but also on account of the greater magnetic ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... 14. The Great Plains.—Soon, however, a new hope came to the Spaniards, for an Indian told them that far away in the north there really was a golden land. Onward rode Coronado and a body of picked men. They crossed vast plains ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... Lane Allen has let in the light upon Kentucky; the Red Men and White of the great plains have found their interpreter in Mr. Owen Wister, a young Philadelphian witness of their dramatic conditions and characteristics; Mr. Hamlin Garlafid had already expressed the sad circumstances of the rural Northwest in his pathetic idyls, colored from the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... there is water enough at times; only, those rivers of the great plains, like the Platte and the Kansas and the Arkansas, are so wasteful of their supply in the spring that by July they are gasping for a shower. So, part of the year they revel in luxury, and during the rest ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... heard it first. We strained to hear it again; twice we thought we had caught it, and then again twice we doubted. It is not so easily recognizable a sound as you might think in those great plains cut by islands of high trees and steading walls. The little "75" gun lying low makes a different sound altogether at a distance from the old piece of "90." At any rate there was here no doubt that there were guns to the right and in front of us, and the umpire had gone to the left. We were ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... was not at all as I had pictured it. We were now on those great plains which stretch unbroken to the Rocky Mountains. The country was flat like Holland, but far from being dull. All through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, or for as much as I saw of them from the train and in my waking moments, it was rich ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when Congress authorized the raising of three cavalry regiments from among the wild riders and riflemen of the Rockies and the Great Plains. During Wood's service in the Southwest he had commanded not only regulars and Indian scouts, but also white frontiersmen. In the Northwest I had spent much of my time, for many years, either on ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... became more rare, but in revenge the sandy banks soon began to reflect a heat that was hardly bearable. As the implacable sun neared its zenith the party walked with bent heads and blinded eyes, now dashing through great plains of bamboos, now following the hatchets of the peons through ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... day following the receipt of this letter, a look of joy came over the face of the candidate and there was a visible exhilaration throughout his party. Men, worn, exhausted, and covered with the dust of the great plains, began to freshen up themselves as much as they could; there was a great brushing of soiled clothing, a hauling out of clean collars, a sharpening of razors, and a general inquiry, "How do I look?" The whole atmosphere ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Hints of it may be noted here and there like muffled gongs of doom. The other day some people preaching some low trick or other, for running away from the glory of motherhood, were suddenly silenced in New York; by a voice of deep and democratic volume. The prigs who potter about the great plains are pygmies dancing round a sleeping giant. That which sleeps, so far as they are concerned, is the huge power of human unanimity and intolerance in the soul of America. At present the masses in the Middle West are indifferent to such fancies or faintly attracted by them, as fashions of ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... ruling features of the country, from a gathering-ground situated in the vicinity of the 57th parallel. Ice from this glacier poured through passes in the coast ranges, and to a lesser extent debouched upon the edge of the great plains, beyond the Rocky Mountain range. The great valley between the coast ranges and Vancouver Island was also occupied by a glacier that moved in both directions from a central point in the vicinity of Valdez Island. The effects of this glacial action and of the long periods of erosion ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... then United States, and therefore comprised men who had already some experience in pioneering. As far as the Mississippi or even Kansas these parties generally traveled separately or in small groups from a single locality. Before starting over the great plains, however, it became necessary to combine into larger bands for mutual aid and protection. Such recognized meeting-points were therefore generally in a state of congestion. Thousands of people with their equipment and animals were crowded ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... on the west of Grosvenor's orangery. Soon I could not hear their footfalls, for I stood still to watch the trains pass by. 'Twas the hour of the last division of the Western passenger mail, bearing its daily cargo of news and people to the great plains beyond the hills that loomed faintly in the light of the half moon. Haughtily its huge first-class engine roared along, and its carriage windows, like so many warm red mouths, permitted a glimpse of the folk inside ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... mill-sails were idle, and Mrs. Lake was dozing from the heat, he betook himself to the water-meads to sketch. In the mill itself he made countless studies. Not only of the ever-changing heavens, and of the monotonous sweeps of the great plains, whose aspect is more changeable than one might think, but studies on the various floors of the mill, and in the roundhouse, where old meal- bins and swollen sacks looked picturesque in the dim light falling from above, in which also the circular stones, the shaft, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... shooting, and in turn being chased by the enraged animals. That evening we camped on the verge of the great herd that extended some sixty or seventy miles to the westward, and blackened the bluffs to the south, and the great plains beyond as far as the eye could reach. This great herd was not a solid, continuous mass, but was divided up into innumerable smaller herds or droves consisting of from fifty to two hundred animals each. These kept together when grazing, marching or ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton
... voyageurs of his generation there were in plenty, and their service was not inconsiderable. But in courage and persistence, as well as in the scope of his achievements, La Salle, the pathfinder of Rouen, towered above them all. He had, what so many of the others lacked, a clear vision of what the great plains and valleys of the Middle West could yield towards the enrichment of a nation in years to come. "America," as Parkman has aptly said, "owes him an enduring memory; for in this masculine figure she sees the pioneer who guided her to the possession of ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... down into valleys stretching fifty miles away and see the buzzards half a mile below us. Then we go through forests of manaca palms that spread out on a single stem sideways and form arches over our heads with the leaves hanging in front of us like portiers or we cross great plains of grass and cactus and rock. The best fun is the baths we take in the mountain streams. They are almost as cool as one could wish and we shoot the rapids and lie under the waterfalls and come out with all the soreness rubbed ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... life and of life to physical environment.[292] The continent of North America contained a small vital area during the Later Cretaceous Period, when a notable encroachment of the sea submerged the Atlantic coastal plain, large sections of the Pacific coast, the Great Plains, Texas and the adjacent Gulf plain up the Mississippi Valley to ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... wait; at the end of the second, the next stronger; at the end of the third, the next; and so for each of the hundred days of the journey; and the Boy was the strongest runner, and went to the last trail with the Counsellor. High mountains they crossed, and great plains, and giant woods, and at last they came to the Big Water, quaking along the sand at the ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... the Great Plains, of the West there; is a bird whose song resembles the skylark's quite closely and is said to be not at all inferior. This is Sprague's pipit, sometimes called the Missouri skylark, an excelsior songster, which ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... shall see them all there amid the savage romance of the grim jungle and the great plains where Tarzan of the ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... while the train was rushing past the lonely settler's shacks on the Minnesota Prairies. When we woke we found ourselves far out upon the great plains of Canada. The morning was cold and rainy, and there were long lines of snow in the swales of the limitless sod, which was silent, dun, and still, with a majesty of arrested motion like a polar ocean. It was like Dakota as I saw it in 1881. ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... which were grazing herds of small lean horses, and flocks of sheep without tails, but with their wool puffed out behind into a sort of bustle or panier. There was a cluster of clean, white-looking houses in the distance; and Lucy knew that she was in the great plains called the Steppes, that lie between the rivers Volga and Don, and may be either in Europe or Asia, according as you look at an old ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Reed told of a heroic deed in the history of brave pioneer girls—but as the story comes from her pen, it is scarcely possible to realize the anxiety, the torturing fear, the hideous danger of such an expedition as that one of hers when at midnight, on the great plains, she set out ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... heart of North America," said the report, "a distinct subdivision, of which Lake Winnipeg may be regarded as the centre. This subdivision, like the valley of the Mississippi, is distinguished for the fertility of its soil, and for the extent and gentle slope of its great plains, watered by rivers of great length, and admirably adapted for steam-navigation. It has a climate not exceeding in severity that of many portions of Canada and the Eastern States. It will, in all respects, compare favorably with some of the most densely peopled portions of the continent of Europe. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... Ten-ie-ya, and your people shall be many as the blades of grass, and none shall dare to bring war unto Ah-wah-nee. But look you ever, my son, against the white horsemen of the great plains beyond, for once they have crossed the western mountains, your tribe will scatter as the dust before the desert wind, and never come ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... new world as well as in the old, similar customs prevailed from a very remote period. In the great plains of North America the dead were buried in barrows of enormous magnitude, which occasionally present a remarkable similarity to the barrows of Great Britain. In these mounds cremation appears more frequently ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... In but little over two weeks we shall be safe on the great plains. I have good hope that many have survived there, and that we shall find a plenty of everything needed. With the instruments that were aboard the aero I can make observations to determine our position, and I shall steer for ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... troop of the Orenoqueponi, and was there slain with all his people and friends, and that he had now remaining but one son; and farther told me that those Epuremei had built a great town called Macureguarai at the said mountain foot, at the beginning of the great plains of Guiana, which have no end; and that their houses have many rooms, one over the other, and that therein the great king of the Orejones and Epuremei kept three thousand men to defend the borders ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... over the great plains of Wyoming the wagons carried these emigrants. Many found the trip grow tiresome, while the oxen and mules would often lie down in their traces and refuse to go any farther. A few days' rest, and the rich bunch-grass to crop soon set the ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... of adventures on the mighty Mississippi River, and then on the great plains, where Dick, Tom and Sam, and some of their friends, have a variety of adventures and assist in unraveling the mystery surrounding a lonely ranch. Of course, their old enemy, Baxter, is bound to make himself known, ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... a palace in Melbourne or Sydney or some other of the large cities, and make occasional trips to his sheep-kingdom several hundred miles away in the great plains to look after his battalions of riders and shepherds and other hands. He has a commodious dwelling out there, and if he approve of you he will invite you to spend a week in it, and will make you at home and comfortable, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a fourth and last wide level of rice- fields to traverse. The absolute flatness of the great plains between the ranges, and the singular way in which these latter 'fence off' the country into sections, are matters for surprise even in a land of surprises like Japan. Beyond the fourth rice-valley there ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... went to live in Philadelphia." Pittsburg is the subject of endless criticism, and Chicago is "the limit." To me, indeed, it seemed "the limit"—of the industry, energy, and enterprise of man. In 1812 this vast city was only a frontier post—Fort Dearborn. In 1871 the town that first rose on these great plains was burned to the ground. The growth of the present Chicago began when I was a grown woman. I have celebrated my jubilee. Chicago will not do ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... half a century throughout Canada's great plains, the red coat of the Mounted Policeman was the visible and definite assurance that right was might. A red speck on the horizon was notice to both weak and strong, honest and dishonest, that the rule of law prevailed; ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... record anything to his advantage. At a quarter of a mile from the camp we crossed the little sand hill which separates the two basins of Cawndilla and Minandichi, from which we descended into the flats of the latter, but at a mile rose, after crossing a small creek, to the level of the great plains extending between us and the ranges. Our first course over these plains was on a bearing of 157 degrees to the west of south, or N.N.W. nearly. They were partly covered by brush and partly open; ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... the American people has been in no way made more evident during the last few years than by the creation and use of a series of large land reserves—situated for the most part on the great plains and among the mountains of the West—intended to keep the forests from destruction, and therefore to conserve the water supply. These reserves are created purely for economic purposes. The semi-arid regions can only support a reasonable ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... mudholes where the buffaloes covered themselves with mud as a protection from mosquitoes and flies. They would lie down and work themselves into the muddy water up to their eyes. Crossing the Great Plains, you can still see round green places that were wallows in the days of ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... much shocked, during the early spring, to hear that that terrible disease, the small-pox, had broken out among the Indians on the great plains of ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... all this, what has Russia to show? Not so much, I confess, but she has effected considerable improvements in the annexed territories. The great plains to the north of the Black Sea, which were formerly the home of nomadic, predatory tribes, have been brought under cultivation; the tents of the nomads have been replaced by thriving villages, flaming blast furnaces, great foundries, and fine towns, such as Odessa, Taganrog ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... Since the days when the Bird of Ages dwelt on the Coteau-des-Prairies the Ojibbeway and the Sioux have warred against each other; but as the Ojibbeway dwelt chiefly in the woods and the Sioux are denizens of the great plains, the actual war carried on between them has not beena unusually destructive. The Ojibbeways dislike to go far into the open plains; the Sioux hesitate to pierce the dark depths of the forest, and the war ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... the University. I remember that all the Americans who heard it said that Uncle told them things about their own country that they had never known, or even suspected, before. So I was glad when I heard Uncle explaining to these people the wonderful possibilities of their country. He talked of the great plains of Connecticut and the huge seaports of Pittsburg and Colorado Springs, and the tobacco forests of Idaho till one could just see it all. He said that the Mississippi, which is a great river here as large as the Weser, should be dammed back and held while a war of extermination was carried ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... point on the banks of this river, or rather—as it has the habit of abandoning and destroying said banks—at a safe distance therefrom, there is a town from which a railroad takes its departure for its long climb up the natural incline of the Great Plains, to the base of the mountains; hence the importance to this town of the large but somewhat shabby building serving as terminal station. In its smoky interior, late in the evening and not very long ago, a train was nearly ready to start. It was a train ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... Christiania in company with a party of his fellow-believers, and in due uneventful time, landed in the New World. He found America a wonderfully big and interesting country. He went directly westward first, crossing the great plains and rugged mountains to the valleys beyond. Here he found and visited many of his former friends. He lived with the Latter-day Saints in their homes, and learned to know their true character ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... The great plains of the Mare Imbrium and the Mare Serenitatis (the "Sea of Showers'' and the "Sea of Serenity''), bordered in part by lofty mountain ranges precisely like terrestrial mountains, scalloped along their shores with beautiful bays curving back into the adjoining highlands, and united ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... species with little or no tawny; found in the Great Plains from Texas north to the Saskatchewan; winters south of the ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... commencing to cross the great plains of Texas. At first the plains are desert, with mountains skirting our view; the scenery is less interesting than the Arizona desert, because there are no cacti. This desert has probably been under salt water at some time. ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... the Harvest Mouse, Reithrodontomys megalotis, On the Central Great Plains And in ...
— Geographic Variation in the Harvest Mouse, Reithrodontomys megalotis, On the Central Great Plains And in Adjacent Regions • J. Knox Jones
... upon the Congress the importance of authorizing the President to set aside certain portions of these reserves or other public lands as game refuges for the preservation of the bison, the wapiti, and other large beasts once so abundant in our woods and mountains and on our great plains, and now tending toward extinction. Every support should be given to the authorities of the Yellowstone Park in their successful efforts at preserving the large creatures therein; and at very little expense ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Sandynugghur resembles that which is common to all the great plains of India watered by the Ganges and Jumna. The country is for the most part perfectly flat, and cut up into little fields, divided by shallow ditches. Here and there nullahs, or deep watercourses, with tortuous channels and perpendicular sides, wind through the fields to the ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... the slopes of Vimy Ridge. That ridge is seven and a half miles long and is shaped like a dog's hind leg. Lifted up to an elevation of several hundred feet, the hill not only commands an outlook upon the German lines eastward, but protects the great plains that slope ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... view. His opinion is, that the Himalayas then existed only as a chain of islands, and did not till a much later age become elevated into mountain ranges,—a change which took place during the same revolution that raised the great plains of Siberia and Tartary and many parts of north-western Europe. At the same time the great continent whose position between the tropics has been alluded to, and whose previous existence is still indicated by ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... take it in—he knew that Europe itself at last dwelt again with one mind in her house. There beyond the channel—across which ten minutes ago, as the thunder of guns had told him, the Arbiter of the World had come at last with his train of kings behind him—there lay the huge continent, the great plains of France, the forests of Germany, the giant tumbled debris of Switzerland, the warm and radiant coasts, the ancient world-stage of Italy, passionate Spain which never yet had wholly lost her love. There all lay, at one at last, each her own, with her own liberties ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... of eastern North America, living from the great plains to the Atlantic coast, going northward to the British lands and southward to the warm-watered Gulf of Mexico. I am often called Hen Hawk by those who speak without thinking, but in truth I am not much of a bird-thief, for a good reason. I am a thoughtful ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... at the same hour, the owner of the grain elevators, in which is stored the crops of the great plains, there to be kept until the needs of the people shall place an exorbitant price upon every bushel, was smothered to death in the hold of one of his own ships. With him died the martyr who had succeeded in bringing a just retribution upon the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... relictus, like S. c. paludis, represents a relict population of the more southwesterly distribution of the subgenus Synaptomys during Wisconsin and post-Wisconsin times. Additional relict populations likely will be found in the eastern Great Plains. ...
— A New Bog Lemming (Genus Synaptomys) From Nebraska • J. Knox Jones
... presently into a better country, and the way led for a day or two through a typical part of the Great Plains, not a flat region, but one of low, monotonous swells. Now and then they crossed a shallow little creek, and occasionally they came to pools, some of which were tinged with alkali. There were numerous small depressions, two or three feet deep, and Dick knew that they were ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... chariots were made to contain, besides the driver of the horses, one or more warriors, each armed in the completest manner. These warriors stood on the floor of the vehicle, and fought with javelins and spears. The great plains which abound in the interior countries of Asia were very favorable for this ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... The great plains stretching for so many miles to the westward of Mount Harris, even where they were clear of reeds, were covered with shells and the claws of cray-fish and their soil, although an alluvial deposit, was superficially sandy. ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... and its note resembles that of a toy-dog. It is a species of marmot; it subsists on grass roots and other vegetable products; its flesh is delicate and, when fat, of good flavor. The writer of these lines, when crossing the great plains, in early times, found the "prairie-dogs" excellent eating, but difficult to kill; they are expert at diving into their holes at the ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... the wool or hair of the native sheep, having to a great extent settled residences, though these last characteristics are rapidly disappearing; the second, trappers and hunters, wandering for the most part in pursuit of game; and the third, the equestrian tribes, who, on the great plains about the waters of the rivers, chase on their fleet horses the gigantic bison, whose flesh supplies them with food, and whose hide covers them. The former bear some resemblance to the native inhabitants of the islands of the Pacific. The two latter ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... can paint the life of the "Chasseurs of the Great Plains," tell of the gathering of the mighty Halfbreed clan going forth—each spring and fall—in a tumult of carts and horsemen to their boundless preserves, the home of the buffaloes, whose outrangers were the grizzly bear, the branching elk, the flying antelope that skirted the great ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce |
