"Earthwork" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Battery were his absences on so many errands. Behind a big earthwork of their own construction down on the river's edge of the old battle ground, close beyond the Callenders', they lay camped in pretty white tents that seemed to Anna, at her window, no bigger than visiting-cards. Rarely did ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... that Bunker holds highest carnival. They keep in the Senate-chamber of the Capitol, nailed over the entrance doorway in full sight of the Speaker's chair, a drum, a musket, and a mitre-shaped soldier's hat-trophies of the fight fought in front of the low earthwork on Bunker's Hill. Thus the senators of Massachusetts have ever before them visible reminders of the glory of their fathers: and I am not sure that these former belongings of some long-waistcoated redcoat are not ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... on a low marshy island near the mouth of the Schuylkill. Its very situation, surrounded as it was by mud and water, made it impregnable to any land attack. While the fort itself was a fairly strong earthwork, laid out upon approved principles of engineering, its outer works of defence added greatly to its strength. In the main channels of the river were sunk heavy, sharp-pointed chevaux de frise, or submarine palisades, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... and there was a powerful odor of drugs. Around him was a forest, of the kind with which he had become familiar in Europe, that is, of small trees, free from underbrush. He saw some distance away soldiers walking up and down and beyond them the vague outline of an earthwork. ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was handy for water and shelter. Nevertheless they had their own stronghold; for amidmost of their country, on the highest of a certain down above a bottom where a willowy stream winded, was a great earthwork: the walls thereof were high and clean and overlapping at the entering in, and amidst of it was a deep well of water, so that it was a very defensible place: and thereto would they drive their flocks and herds when war was in the land, for nought but a very ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... voice, and, weakened, though not dispirited, they gallantly responded to the appeal. Once more the line pressed forward. The short space between them and the earthwork was quickly traversed. Before the artillery could deal out a second salvo, the Royal Picts were over the parapet and in the thick of the Russians, bayoneting them as they stood ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... principal street was one hundred feet wide, and was called Principia. The defences of the camp consisted of a ditch, the earth from which was thrown inward, and of strong palisades of wooden stakes driven into the top of the earthwork so formed; the ditch was sometimes fifteen feet deep, and the vallum, or rampart, ten feet in height. When the army encamped for the first time the tribunes administered an oath to each individual, including slaves, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... weeks, and now its summit is far above the reach of spade or shovel throw, and crowned by a platform firmly knit and held together by well-spliced timbers. As to its object we are somewhat dubious, but think it the beginning of an earthwork fortress, built high in order that guns may be depressed and brought to bear on the turrets of any Monitors which might possibly come down upon this ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... could see that the Spaniards were mustering their forces for attack. They did not come at once, however, but delayed till the sun was well up. Then they began to pour a furious fire upon our defences, that reduced the shattered beams of the gates to powder, and even shook down the crest of the earthwork beyond them. Suddenly the firing ceased and again a trumpet called. Now they charged us in column, a thousand or more Tlascalans leading the van, followed by the Spanish force. In two minutes I, who awaited them beyond it together ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... while in the centre stood the compact village of wooden huts, surrounded by a stockade, and girt without by the small cultivated plots of the villagers. On the Downs above rose the camp or refuge of the tribe—an earthwork rudely constructed in accordance with the natural lines of the hills—to which the whole body of people, with their women, children, and cattle, retreated in case of hostile invasion from the villagers on either side. It is not likely that any foreigners from beyond the great ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... stood together on a high place, an earthwork of the stone-age men, watching for the light. It came over the land. But the land was dark. She watched a pale rim on the sky, away against the darkened land. The darkness became bluer. A little ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... These were packed and stacked side by side and on top of each other, being almost impossible for a single man even to pick his way through, and next to impossible for a line of battle to cross over. All along the entire length of the fortifications were built great redoubts of earthwork in the form of squares, the earth being of sufficient thickness to turn any of our cannon balls, while all around was a ditch from twelve to fifteen feet deep—only one opening in the rear large enough to admit the teams drawing the batteries. Field pieces were posted ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... they were, ragged and half starved, a handful of men, not more than four hundred, but their bayonets gleamed and flashed in the sunlight. In the face of a murderous fire he charged and actually drove our men out of an entrenchment. We concentrated our guns on him as he crouched behind this earthwork. Our own men lay outside in scores, dead, dying, and wounded. When the fire slacked, we could hear their cries ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... Pepperrells, wearing even now an air of dingy respectability. Looking through its small, quaint window-panes, one could see across the water the rude dwellings of fishermen along the shore of Newcastle, and the neglected earthwork called Fort William and Mary, that feebly guarded the river's mouth. In front, the Piscataqua, curving southward, widened to meet the Atlantic between rocky headlands and foaming reefs, and in dim distance the Isles of Shoals seemed floating ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... stag his battle-field— Dying for mastery among his hinds. There vainly sprung the affrighted antelope, Beset by glittering eyes and hurrying feet. The dancing grouse at their insensate sport, Heard not the stealthy footstep of the fox; The gopher on his little earthwork stood, With folded arms, unconscious of the fate That wheeled in narrowing circles overhead, And the poor mouse, on heedless nibbling bent, Marked not the silent coiling of the snake. At length we heard a deep and solemn sound— Erupted moanings of the troubled earth Trembling beneath ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... point to overawe the inhabitants. Mr G.T. Clark in his "Mediaeval Military Architecture"[1] says that he considers Pickering Castle to represent "one great type of Anglo-Norman fortress—that is, a castle of Norman masonry upon an English earthwork, for the present walls, if not Norman, are unquestionably laid on Norman lines." He thinks that the earthworks would be taken possession of and fortified either late in the eleventh or early in the twelfth century, ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... led by the two troopers). The Prince of Homburg, Soon as the enemy, hard pressed by Truchsz, Reeling broke cover, had brought up his troops To the attack of Wrangel on the plain; Two lines he'd pierced and, as they broke, destroyed, When a strong earthwork hemmed his way; and thence So murderous a fire on him beat That, like a field of grain, his cavalry, Mowed to the earth, went down; twixt bush and hill He needs must halt ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... elaborate paneling and panes of colored glass, the same little machine-made iron gate, the same low red wall and iron railing and privet hedge; so indistinguishably, so maddeningly alike were all these diminutive houses. Each roof had the same purple slates, each roof tree the same red earthwork edging it like a lace; the same red tiles roofed each porch and faced each gable and the space between the stories. Only when your eyes became accustomed to the endless running pattern could you trace it clearly, grasp the detail, note that every two bow windows ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... leading me by Braddock Down, I turned aside for a while to examine the ground of the late fight (tho' by now little was to be seen but a piece of earthwork left unfinish'd by the rebels, and the fresh mounds where the dead were laid); and so 'twas high noon—and a dull, cheerless day—before the hills broke and let me have sight of the sea. Nor, till the noise of the surf was in my ears, did I mark the ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... war, and one can imagine that when the river was low in summer, and perhaps fordable, the spit of land before it, which formed an exception to the marshes round about, needed to be protected as a sort of bastion beyond the stream. This theory will at least account for the two great ridges of earthwork going from one water to the other and completely cutting off the peninsula, since it is agreed these works are earlier than the Roman invasion. Whatever its origin, the part which Dorchester plays in the early history of England is ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... time would have filled and almost obliterated it, but at intervals of two or three years, at a time when it was dry, quantities of earth were dug up from the bottom and thrown on the mound inside. It was in appearance something like a prehistoric earthwork. In winter as a rule it became full of water and was a favourite haunt, especially at night, of flocks of teal, also duck of a few other kinds—widgeon, pintail, and shoveller. In summer it gradually dried up, but a few ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... out in connection with the construction of the macadam surface, being completed just ahead of the surfacing. In that case, the fills must be carefully rolled as they are placed. The road bed may be shaped in connection with the other earthwork. If the road has been brought to a satisfactory grade some time prior to placing the macadam, the road bed for the broken stone will be prepared as needed for ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... then ordered the train to back to the depot, and drew back the battalion of regulars to the small earth redoubt near it. The depot-building was of brick, and had been punctured with loop-holes. To its east, about two hundred yards, was a small square earthwork or fort, into which were put a part of the regulars along with the company of the Sixty-sixth Indiana already there. The rest of the men were distributed into the railroad-cut, and in some shallow rifle-trenches near the depot. We had hardly made these preparations when the enemy ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... at last without the German entanglements being passed or their earthwork being reached. Here and there an odd man had scrambled and torn a way through the wire, only to fall on or before the parapet. Others hung limp or writhing feebly to free themselves from the clutching hooks of the wire. Both sides withdrew, panting and nursing their ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... not many miles distant from Sheffield. What makes this latter instance more peculiarly interesting, is the fact that over the churchyard wall on the west, in a small grass field, traditionally called the Castle Field, there is the well-preserved plan of a Saxon lordly mansion. The circuit of the earthwork is almost complete, and at a point in the enceinte there rises the mound on which was pitched the garrison of the little castle. I use the term castle, as the habits of the language now require, and as it is expressed in the ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... Vicarage windows you look through the trees southward upon ships moving up or down Channel in the blue distance and the white water girdling Menawhidden; northward upon downs where herds of ponies wander at will between the treeless farms, and a dun-coloured British earthwork tops the high sky-line. Dwellers among these uplands, wringing their livelihood from the obstinate soil by labour which never slackens, year in and year out, from Monday morning to Saturday night, are properly despised by the inhabitants of the Porth, who sit half their time mending nets, cultivating ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and a half feet in thickness. Outside of all, and having its northwest corner just beyond the church, ran an adobe wall, built for protection against hostile Indians and which now answered for an outer earthwork. The church was turned into a fortification, and was the point where the insurgents concentrated their strength; and against this Colonel Price directed his principal attack. The six-pounder and the howitzer were brought into position ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... washed away by the rain. I've seen defenses like this before. They used rocks as a base, filled in the cracks with clay, then put dirt on top and planted grass to hold it. That gave them a permanent earthwork." ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... crack, crack, crack, crack, half-a-dozen flashes and puffs of smoke came from over the ridge of the low earthwork in front, emptying four saddles, while one horse went down headlong, pierced from chest to haunch by a bullet, and the fleeing pair saw the rest of their pursuers open out right and left, to swing round and gallop away back, pursued ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... the Spanish cruiser Reina Mercedes, which was moored near the end of the Socapa promontory, and killing or wounding twenty-five or thirty officers and men on the cruiser, in the batteries, and in Morro Castle. The earthwork batteries east and west of the entrance did not prove to be very formidable and were quickly silenced; but the submarine mines in the narrow channel leading to the upper harbor, which prevented our fleet from forcing an entrance, could not be ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... dared not push out against a vastly superior force; his only chance was a ruse. Accordingly, putting a bold face on the matter, he manned a small earthwork with cannon, and played upon the enemy, with little or no actual injury, beyond the all-important effect of making Doria hesitate still more. Meanwhile, in the night, while his little battery is perplexing ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... the bivouac fires extended along the banks to the left of the Marne, while everywhere about the field flitted the lanterns of the Frere Chretiens. Suddenly, in the dimness of a spot cast into shadow by an incompleted earthwork, he observed a small sinister figure perched on the breast of some wounded soldier, evidently not to succour. He sprang forward and seized a hideous-looking urchin, scarcely twelve years old, who held in one hand a small crystal locket, set in filigree ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of excavation and embankment. These old practitioners formed a nucleus of skilled manipulation and aptitude, which rendered them of indispensable utility in the immense undertakings of the period. Their expertness in all sorts of earthwork, in embanking, boring, and well-sinking—their practical knowledge of the nature of soils and rocks, the tenacity of clays, and the porosity of certain stratifications—were very great; and, rough-looking though they were, many of them were as important in their ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... been rushed by the 4th Punjab Infantry gallantly led by a Dogra Subadar,[19] a Punjabi Mahomedan of this distinguished corps behaved with the most conspicuous bravery. The enemy, having been driven out of the earthwork, made for the gateway, the heavy doors of which were in the act of being closed, when the Mahomedan (Mukarrab Khan by name) pushed his left arm, on which he carried a shield, between them, thus preventing their being shut; on his hand ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... Jigyobamachi, a name signifying 'earthwork-street.' It stands upon land reclaimed ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... Breton sailor, not more than seventeen years old, seeing men armed with swords collecting one night for a rush, jumped down among them from the top of an earthwork, and shot and bayonetted three or four of them before they had time to defend themselves. Then it took him half an hour to get back to safety by creeping from one hole in the ground to another ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... of volunteers, some of whom had never been under fire, the rest of whom had bolted miserably at Verdun a few days before, men not yet soldiers and almost without discipline: the batteries banging away in the wood behind them, in front of them a long earthwork at which the enemy were lobbing great round lumps of iron and exploding shells, and along the edge of this earthwork an elderly gentleman from Norfolk, in England, walking up and down undisturbed, occasionally ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... to be alone, to consider, to focus his thought; he went off for a walk by himself among the hills, past the spring, up the valley, till he came to a place where the down ran out into the plain, the bluff crowned with a great earthwork. An enormous view lay spread out before him. To left and right the smooth elbows of the uplands ran down into the plain, their skirts clothed with climbing woods and orchards, hamlets half-hidden, with the smoke going up from ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... combustible matter within the shell by means of a fuse, which is so regulated that the explosion shall take place at the desired moment. Hollow-shot are used with advantage to destroy ordinary buildings, ships, earthwork, and thin walls of masonry; they, however, are of little avail in breaking the massive walls of well-constructed forts. Howitzes and grenades are particularly effective against cavalry and columns of infantry, and are much employed on the battle-field; they are also much used ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... England for almost half a century, "the Dunkirk of America," must stand no longer as a menace. An army of workmen laboured for months with pick and spade and blasting-powder upon those vast fortifications; yet nothing but an upheaval of nature itself could obliterate all traces of earthwork, ditch, glacis, and casemate, which together made up the frowning fortress of Louisbourg. To-day grass grows on the Grand Parade, and daisies blow upon the turf-grown bastions; but who may pick his way over those historic mounds of earth without a sigh for the buried ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... village, is placed on the south side of the river, behind the fort. The country is here hilly, broken, and now, as in La Salle's time, covered with wood, which, however, soon ends in the open prairie. A short time since, the remains of a low, irregular earthwork of considerable extent were discovered at the intersection of two ravines, about twenty-four hundred feet behind, or south of, Starved Rock. The earthwork follows the line of the ravines on two sides. On the east, there is an opening, ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... boldly into the light, and no more shots were fired at them. They ran up the slope to the crest of the bluff, leaped over a fresh earthwork, and fell among a crowd of soldiers in blue. Dick quickly raised himself to his feet, and saw soldiers about him, many of them wounded, all of them weary and drawn. Others were hard at work with pick and spade, and from ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... of man was against their hand, as their hand was against man's. Where were the other men I had seen? In a moment I guessed the truth, for I caught the dull sound of digging and delving in the earth below—thud, thud, thud—as of many spades and picks, and beyond the angle of the wall I saw the earthwork piled with new earth in many places. So my young eyes peered curiously and cautiously out through the leaves, and a flood of feelings struggled in my heart, and the digging went on—thud, thud, thud—beneath my very feet, ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... western side of the triangle we have the Troy River; and for apex the peaceful village of Lerryn, set in apple-orchards, where the tidal waters end by a narrow bridge. For the eastern side we take, not the Looe River (which doesn't count), but an ancient earthwork, known as the Devil's Hedge, which stretches across country from Looe up to Lerryn. Who built this earthwork, or when he did it, or for what purpose, no one can tell; but the Looe folk will quote you ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... are stronger, more conveniently formed, and involve less risks in construction than one of 30 ft. diameter; at the same time there is no difficulty in making the latter. The above shows the saving in the three tunnels of 23 per cent. in brickwork, and about 7 per cent. of earthwork, compared with one of 30 ft. With regard to ventilation, it is well known that the power required to force air along passages is practically as the cube of the velocity; and as the area of the air passages in the single tunnel is 106 ft. with speed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... made the Colonel determine to fill in the space between the spruce stockade and the cabin with "burnt-out" soil closely packed down and well tramped in. It was generally conceded, as the winter wore on, that to this contrivance of the "earthwork" belonged a good half of the credit of the Big Cabin, and its renown as being the warmest spot on the lower river that terrible memorable year ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... disembarking on Morris Island in the rain, and at noon Colonel Shaw was able to report their arrival to General Strong, to whose brigade he was assigned. A terrific bombardment was playing on Fort Wagner, then the most formidable earthwork ever built, and the general, knowing Shaw's desire to place his men beside white troops, said to him: "Colonel, Fort Wagner is to be stormed this evening, and you may lead the column, if you say Yes. Your men, I know, are worn out, but do as ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... I experience a southern inclination, and cross Long Bridge and rendezvous for the day in some old earthwork on the Virginia hills. The roads are not so inviting in this direction, but the line of old forts with rabbits burrowing in the bomb-proofs, and a magazine, or officers' quarters turned into a cow ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... hotly fired at for my pains. Then I walked over the ruins of the Guards' triangular fort at Gubat. The place was still capable of defence, and the trenches and rifle-pits were much as we left them on 13th February with General Buller. As for the graves, they were intact. The big earthwork we all helped to raise near the river was covered with water, except a corner of the western parapet. It was, however, partly thrown down, and the ditch and slopes were overgrown with grass and bushes. Then I rode away to Abu Kru battle-field ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... this line was covered by the Warwick Creek which he dammed up to make it unfordable, and erected batteries to guard the dams. Across the intervening ground a weak earthwork with trenches was constructed, there being no time to raise stronger works; but Magruder relied chiefly upon the swampy and difficult nature of the country, and the concealment afforded by the forest, which rendered it difficult for the enemy to ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... knoll, on three sides of which trenches had been dug. Within the entrenchment stood ten guns that were being fired through openings in the earthwork. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... threatened and almost as constantly assailed, was held. Men know now that it was not by strength, but by sleepless watch and dogged endurance, that less than 30,000 worn men—so dotted along works extending near forty miles, that at points there was one soldier to every rod of earthwork—held their own, even against the earlier onsets. Men now realize why the Federal general—failing in every separate effort to buy a key-position, even at the cost of six lives for one—was forced to sit down sullenly and wait the slow, but ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... powerful telescopic cameras photograph every foot of the battlefield covered by the enemy's lines. These photographs are developed and studied and diagrams drawn from them of the enemy's system of trenches. These diagrams are reproduced far behind the front in elaborately prepared earthwork and trenches which are an exact replica of the enemy's lines. The divisions which are to take part in the attack are sent back to rehearse their exact duties at just the point corresponding to that which they will have to take. Each officer knows every nook and crevice, each bay and angle ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... Creusot gun—throwing, some say 40lbs., some 95lbs., each shot. Anyhow, the shell is quite big enough, whatever its weight, and it bangs into shops, chapels, ladies' bedrooms without any nice distinctions. I could see "Tom's" ugly muzzle tilted up above a great earthwork which the Boers had heaped near a tree on the edge of that flat-topped hill, which we may call Pepworth, from a ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... attack Fort Donelson, but he had none forbidding him to do it. He straightway moved nearly his whole force over the eleven miles of dreadful roads, and on the 12th began investing the stronghold, an earthwork inclosing about 100 acres, with outworks on the land and water sides, and defended by more than 20,000 men commanded by General Floyd, who had been President Buchanan's Secretary of War. The investing force had its right near the river above ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... of the fog in the early light revealed the long scarlet lines of British veterans, in battle array. Surely it was only something to whet their appetites for breakfast, for such well-trained fighters to carry that low, mud earthwork. ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... posts at frequent intervals. It is locally known as "Graham's Dyke," and, since 1890, has been systematically explored by the Glasgow Archaeological Society. It is in the strictest sense "a turf wall"—no mere grass-grown earthwork, but regularly built of squared sods in place of stones (sometimes on a stone base). Roman engineers looked upon such a rampart as being the hardest of ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... had been somewhat withdrawn from their position on the top of the rising ground, where they would have been too much exposed to the enemy's fire; and their muzzles now only showed over the brow. During the course of the morning an earthwork had been thrown up, to afford protection to the men serving them. They did not return the fire until the enemy were within a distance of a quarter of a mile, then they ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... plateau, which they could dimly see in the gray light of the dawn. The men, having been marching in the dark, were tired, and most of them lay down, when they were halted, to rest. Some went to sleep; others, like Pierre, set to work and with their bayonets dug little trenches and threw up a slight earthwork before them, behind which they could lie; for the skirmishers had been thrown out, looking vague and ghostly as they trotted forward in the dim twilight, and they supposed that the battle would be fought right there. By the time, however, ...
— "A Soldier Of The Empire" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... most admirably adapted for defensive purposes. The rebel batteries, numbering at least one hundred guns, were massed on these heights, and covered not only every street leading out from the city, but every square foot of ground of the plain below. A third of the way down the terrace was an earthwork filled with infantry, whilst at its foot ran the famous stone wall extending southward from the cemetery above the city, and was continued by an earthwork around the whole circle. Behind this stone wall was massed a double line of Confederate infantry. To enter ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... Cardinham. One of the Welsh Triads speaks of the three chief palaces of Arthur as being Caerleon-on-the-Usk, Celliwig in Cornwall, and Penrhyn Rhionedd in the north. Celliwig may safely be identified with the partially effaced earthwork near St. Kew Station, known as Kelly Rounds (probably from the Cornish killi, meaning woods or groves), standing in what may be described as a Kelly district, for we have here in a cluster such names as Kelly Green, Kelly Farm, Bokelly, Kelly Brae, Calliwith. The Rounds ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... earthwork, 50 m. long, passing S. from near Galashiels, through Selkirk and Roxburgh, or from the Cheviots; it is known by the name of the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of a cast-steel piece firmly bolted to the caisson, and applied to the armor through the intermedium of a leaden ring. Externally, the cheeks of the embrasure and the merlons consist of blocks of concrete held in caissons of strong iron plate. The surrounding earthwork is of sand. For closing the embrasure, Commandant Mougin provides the armor with a disk, c, of heavy rolled iron, which contains two symmetrical apertures. This disk is movable around a horizontal axis, and its lower part and its trunnions are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... fell, and the battle ceased, save for the fitful boom of cannon along the lines, Dick sank against an earthwork, exhausted. He panted for breath and was without the power to move. He regarded vaguely the moving lights that had begun to show in the darkness, and he heard without comprehension the voices of men and the fitful ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... fortifying our position. We were on a commanding ridge looking to the southwest. A section of our battery was to occupy embrasures in the fort. The other two sections were outside and to the right of the fort. This fort was an unfinished rebel earthwork, which commanded the Loudon road, and was named by them Fort Loudon. Col. Orlando Poe was the engineer in charge, and we soon had staked out for us works to be raised to protect our guns. As our men were so wearied out, it was difficult for them to accomplish ...
— Campaign of Battery D, First Rhode Island light artillery. • Ezra Knight Parker
... became flushed, and a sudden flash of the eye showed with what reluctance he retired before the fire directed upon him. No other course was left him, however, and he continued to ride slowly toward his inner line—a low earthwork in the suburbs of the city—where a small force was drawn up, ardent, hopeful, defiant, and saluting the shell, now bursting above them, with cheers and laughter. It was plain that the fighting-spirit of the ragged troops remained unbroken; and the shout ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... the house of Lieutenant Innis, a weak and difficult post to hold, commanded as it was by several houses outside the inclosure. Commanding the extreme north point, which was in itself very weak, was the Redan Battery, a well-constructed work. From this point, facing the river, was a strong earthwork, and outside the sloping garden served as a glacis, and rendered attack on this side difficult. Near the eastern angle stood the hospital, a very large stone building, formerly the banqueting-hall of the British residents at the court of Oude. Near ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... miles, to the Upper Works, which seem to have been the only works in operation. At the Lower Works, besides the remains of the dam, the only vestige I saw was a long low mound, overgrown with grass and weeds, that suggested a rude earthwork. We were told that it was once a pile of wood containing hundreds of cords, cut in regular lengths and corded up here for use ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... then its defenders also took to panic-stricken flight. In another minute the flaunting banner of Spain had been torn down, and the stars and stripes of freedom waved proudly in its place. At the same moment, from earthwork and rifle-pit fluttered the yellow silk flags of the cavalry and the troop guidons; while to distant ears the news of victory was borne by the cheer of ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... somewhat elevated position a number of men were set to work with spades, picks, and shovels, to throw up an earthwork. When it had assumed sufficiently large dimensions to attract the attention of the French, a body of men, with blue jackets, and caps with bits of red flannel hanging down the sides, were marched up behind it at the ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... hands. AElfred himself, with a little band, "withdrew to the woods and moor-fastnesses." He took refuge in the Somerset marshes, and there occupied a little island of dry land in the midst of the fens, by name Athelney. Here he threw up a rude earthwork, from which he made raids against the Danes, with a petty levy of the nearest Somerset men. But the mass of the West Saxons were not disposed to give in so easily. The long border warfare with Devon and Cornwall had ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... the "little stuff bird-shop" for which your soul longed; Learoyd—back again in the smoky, stone-ribbed North, amid the clang of the Bradford looms; Mulvaney—grizzled, tender, and very wise Ulysses, sweltering on the earthwork of a Central India line—judge if I have forgotten ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... calling it Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Storehouses and quarters for a garrison rose around its edges, protected by a palisade. A windlass was rigged to draw water from the river below. On the northeast corner of the rock a low earthwork remains to ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... James cried, leaping down from the low earthwork into the ditch. "Let us save the boats, if ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... French settlement, proceeded to bombard the rebels on one side of the city while the imperialists attacked it on another. Although the bombardment was vigorous and effective, the loss inflicted on the insurgents was inconsiderable, because they had erected an earthwork behind the main wall of the place, and every day the Triads challenged the French to come on to the assault. At last a breach was declared to be practicable, and 400 French sailors and marines were landed ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... straggled irregularly along the beach and inland towards the fields where fine crops were raised by the Saints, who had made here, as is their custom everywhere, a garden in the wilderness; the only defence was simple but strong,—an earthwork on one of the white sand-hills back of the village, over whose rampart peeped two small cannon, commanding the harbor. Once on shore, however, a foe found only a living rampart of flesh and blood, as reckless a set of villains as New World history can produce. But this rampart ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... "it is evidently going. A good earthwork is worth a dozen of these walls. They will soon have the castle about our ears. However, it is of no great importance to us. I saw you lads just now on the wall; I did not care about ordering you down at the time; but don't go up again except ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... a force of 1200 men, under Colonel Prescott, on the night of June 16, to take possession of Bunker Hill. By some mistake Prescott passed Bunker Hill, reached Breeds Hill, and before dawn had thrown up a large earthwork. The moment daylight enabled it to be seen, the British opened fire from their ships. But the Americans worked steadily on in spite of cannon shot, and by noon had constructed a line of intrenchments extending from the earthwork down the hill toward the water. Gage might easily ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... belonged to that army which Washington commanded, in 1776, in New England and New Jersey; and it was while the army was on the heights of Haerlem, in the autumn of 1776, that he attracted the notice of Washington. The General inspected an earthwork which the Captain was constructing, conversed with him, and invited him to his tent. This was the beginning of an acquaintance that was destined to have memorable consequences and lasting effects on the American nation. On the 1st of March, 1777, Hamilton was appointed to a place ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... reduced the herds which formerly fed in the vicinity, and at last we caught the tinkle of the cow-bells only as the cattle were driven past to remoter meadows. And one autumn afternoon two laborers, hired by the city, came and threw up an earthwork on the opposite side of the street, which they said was a sidewalk, and would add to the value of property in the neighborhood. Not being dressed with coal- ashes, however, during the winter, the sidewalk vanished next summer under a growth ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Churchyard, the other to the south, in the wall of the town. Sir Arthur Ashton had placed Harry in command at St. Mary's Churchyard, and seeing that the wall would soon give way under the fire of the enemy's artillery, he set his men to throw up an earthwork behind. ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... clouds yon earthwork shrouds Where, steeped in battle to the lips, The French amain pour fiery rain On town, and ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... been provided with heavy shutters for windows and doorways, and loop-holes for fire-arms had been made at regular four-foot intervals. These the proprietor had not considered ample, and had constructed, twenty yards from the house, an ingenious earthwork which could be entered by means of a subterranean passage from the cellar. This miniature fort was in the form of a circular pit, sunk four feet and a half in the ground, and covered by a nearly flat roof, the edges or eaves of which were but a foot and a half ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... of Bihar and the United Provinces, of which 380 persons were returned in 1911. Sir H. Risley says of them: [428] "They are a tribe employed in agriculture, earthwork, fishing, hunting, making saltpetre and collecting indigenous drugs. Traditions current among the caste profess to trace their origin to the Vindhya hills, and one of these legends tells how a traveller, passing ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell |
