"Expanse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... question whether it would compare favourably with Southend under similar atmospheric circumstances. There was some shrubbery creeping up the white hill-side that may have been considered artistic, and possibly the great expanse of ocean (when completely free from mist) had to a certain extent a sort of charm. As I looked towards the coast of France I had an excellent view of a steamer, crammed with (presumably) noisy excursionists, coming from Margate. But when I have said this I have nothing more to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... Division, however, followed the stage-road some distance farther. How far we advanced up the Quaker road I am unable to say; but we finally turned to the left, and formed line of battle, facing the west. In our front was quite an expanse of open ground sloping down toward woods beyond. About a hundred yards to our left was a battery, ready for action. The Two Hundred and Tenth was again sent forward to skirmish. They advanced with due form and ceremony until they neared the woods, ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... Clarence MacFadden. Clarence MacFadden, it seems, was 'wishful to dance, but his feet wasn't gaited that way. So he sought a professor and asked him his price, and said he was willing to pay. The professor' (the legend goes on) 'looked down with alarm at his feet and marked their enormous expanse; and he tacked on a five to his regular price for teaching MacFadden ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... plain on the edge of which Boult-aux-Bois is situated: forests rise to the west and north, and there is a hill crowned by the hamlet of Belleville, while, over to the east, Buzancy way, there is a broad, level expanse, stretching far as the eye can see, with an occasional shallow depression concealing a small cluster of cottages. Was it from that direction that they were to expect the enemy? As he was returning from the stream with his bucket filled with ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... to a long winding road, with clumps of trees here and there on the borders of it. The road was apparently not much used, for it was more than sprinkled with grass all over. A ploughed field was on one side, and a wild heathy expanse, dotted with fir-trees, on the other. Suddenly on the side of the field, gradually on that of the heath, the ground changed to the green ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... deficient in still another essential feature. Every other European country possesses a mountain system which gives form and solidity to its structure. She alone has no such system. No skeleton or backbone gives promise of stability to the dull expanse of plains through which flow her great lazy rivers, with scarce energy enough to carry their burdens to the sea. Mountains she has, but she shares them with her neighbors; and the Carpathians, Caucasus, and Ural are simply a continuous girdle for ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... that has no well, Darkly bright in forest-dell; As a world without the gleam Of the downward-going stream; As a world without the glance Of the ocean's fair expanse; As a world where never rain Glittered on the sunny plain; Such, my heart, thy world would be, If no love ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... that afternoon on the green slope of Malvern Hill. The guns of the entire army were massed on the crest, and thirty thousand of our infantry lay, musket in hand, in front. For eight hundred yards the hill sank in easy declension to the wood, and across this smooth expanse the Rebs must charge to reach our lines. It was nothing short of downright insanity to order men to charge that hill; and so his generals told Lee, but he would not listen to reason that day, and so ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... ago, in the room of the great mahogany table, with its clean blotting pad, its writing tablet, and its superb rose rising from a green vase in the midst of the shining unlittered expanse, there was a plain, heavy mahogany wainscoting reaching chin-high to the average man. A few soft-toned pictures adorned the dull gray walls above the wainscoting, and directly over a massive desk that never was seen open ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... mankind from its first formation by the Almighty . . . . till after the flood. On one of the sides of the chapel are pictures by Perugino, and other old masters, of subsequent events in sacred history; and the entire wall behind the altar, a vast expanse from the ceiling to the floor, is taken up with Michael Angelo's summing up of the world's history and destinies ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... highness has never yet made a pilgrimage, you can have no conception of the country which we had to pass through: it was one vast region of sand, where the tracks of those who pass over it are obliterated by the wind,—a vast sea without water,—an expanse of desolation. We plunged into the desert; and as the enormous collection of animals, extending as far as the eye could reach, held their noiseless way, it seemed as if it were the passing by ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... imagine a human being a hundred feet high? That is how you looked to me as I stepped upon that huge expanse of black silk and shouted my ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... divided from one another by the terrace walls, which run parallel to the river, and by paths formed sometimes by steps, and sometimes by zigzags, which ascend and descend from the crest of the hills above to the line of the shore. The only buildings to be seen among all this vast expanse of walls and terraces are the little watchtowers that are erected here and there at commanding points to enable the vinegrowers to watch the fruit, when it comes to the time of ripening. The laborers who till the fields, and dress the vines, and gather the grapes ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... breakfast had long since passed, but still no signs of a resting-place appeared. On the contrary, the sand became finer and deeper, and the dreary expanse before us seemed to lengthen out to the horizon. As the sun also rose higher in the sky, his unobstructed rays darted down with greater force upon our heads. There had been a slight breeze in the morning, blowing fresh from over the snowy summits ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... which we are sitting, let us think of summer days elsewhere. Let us think of them listlessly, that we may the more enjoy the quiet here: as a child on a frosty winter night, snug in his little bed, puts out a foot for a moment into the chilly expanse of sheet that stretches away from the warm nest in which he lies, and then pulls it swiftly back again, enjoying the cozy warmth the more for this little reminder of the bitter chill. Here, where the air is cool, pure, and soft, let us think of a hoarding round some old house which the labourers ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... as these that Johnny had ample opportunity to study the country through which they passed. Lighted as it was by a glorious moon, it presented a grand and fascinating panorama. To the right lay the frozen ocean, its white expanse cut here and there by a pool of salt water pitchy black by contrast with the ice. To the left lay the mountains extending as far as the eye could see, with their dark purple shadows and triangles of light and seeming but ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... drought, the earth assumes the appearance of a desert. The turf is then reduced to powder, the earth gapes in huge cracks; the crocodiles and great serpents lie in a dormant state in the dried mud, till the return of rains, and the rise of the waters in the great rivers, which flood the vast expanse of level surface, awaken them from their long slumber. These appearances are often exhibited over an arid surface of fifty or sixty leagues square—every where, in short, where the savannah is not traversed by any of the great rivers. On the borders, on the other hand, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... miles long. Four rivers flow through these downs to the sea. In olden times their lower courses must have been deep inlets of the sea, thus dividing those hills into five groups, each separated from the other by a wide extent of water and marsh land. To the north of these hills was a vast expanse of densely wooded country. It is not strange, then, to find traces of numerous settlements among these hills. As the surface soil is very thin, old embankments can still be traced. The cut given is a representation of Cissbury, one of the largest of ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... Hatteras: immense gray combers, five to the mile, charging shoreward, occasionally breaking, again lifting their heads too high in the effort, truncated as by a knife, and the liquid apex shattered to spray; an expanse of leaden sky showing between the rain-squalls, across which heavy background rushed the darker scud and storm-clouds; a passenger-steamer rolling helplessly in the trough, and a square-rigged vessel, hove to on the port tack, two ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... had died down to a dull red glow; only one tiny flame remained, which, flickering to and fro, showed a wide expanse of floor, and two easy-chairs drawn up before the fender, on which reclined vague, feminine figures. The voice which had asked the question was slow and languid, and breathed a wearied indifference to the world in general, ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... knock on the door, Mr. Trentman entered a room at the end of the shanty, and there he found Lapelle reclining on a cot. Two narrow slits in a puffed expanse of purple grading off to a greenish yellow indicated the position of Barry's eyes. The once resplendent dandy ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... the ship seems literally to fly along; the masts and yards bend forwards, as if they would drop over the bows, while the studding-sail booms crack and twist, and, unless great care be taken, sometimes break across; but still, so long as the surface of the sea is plane it is astonishing what a vast expanse of canvas may be spread to the rising gale. By-and-bye, however, it becomes prudent to take in the royals, flying-jib, and top-gallant studding-sails. The boatswain takes a look at the gripes and other fastenings ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... Some lost their heads, and began to rush about wildly. A few screamed. Nearly every one became visibly paler. Syd and I started from our seats, and gazed bewilderedly at an expanse of yellow sand softly revealed beneath the mist, and stretching ahead and on either hand into the white moisture by which we were encompassed. John walked ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... covered with turf, on which grow bilberry bushes and stunted trees. Mists are almost always hovering over this region, which, seventy years ago, was overrun with wolves. It may well be called the Wild Moor; and one can easily imagine, with such a wild expanse of marsh and lake, how lonely and dreary it must have been a thousand years ago. Many things may be noticed now that existed then. The reeds grow to the same height, and bear the same kind of long, purple-brown leaves, with their feathery tips. There still ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... shores. Fiery beams now marked the clouds, and the east glowed with increasing radiance, till the sun rose at once above the waves, and illuminating them with a flood of splendour, diffused gaiety and gladness around. The bold concave of the heavens, uniting with the vast expanse of the ocean, formed, a coup d'oeil, striking and sublime magnificence of the scenery inspired Julia with delight; and her heart dilating with high enthusiasm, she forgot the sorrows ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... In the distance, Malone could see the blot on the desert that indicated the broad expanse of Yucca Flats Labs. Just the fact that it could be seen, he knew, didn't mean an awful lot. Malone had been able to see it for the past fifteen minutes, and it didn't look as if they'd gained an inch on ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... you something of Orange Park, the town, the school established there, and the trouble connected with it. The village is situated on the west bank of the St. John's River, which at that point is a beautiful expanse of water three miles wide. Nature has been very prodigal in that section. The trees and plants are of a luxurious growth. Flowers are numerous. Every kind of fruit is plentiful. Because of these natural advantages, general climate and apparent fitness ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... in the reign of Queen Anne; the stillness was too perfect to be modern, the nearness counted so as distance, and there was something so fresh and sound in the originality of the large smooth house, the expanse of beautiful brickwork that showed for pink rather than red and that had been kept clear of messy creepers by the law under which a woman with a rare complexion disdains a veil. When Paul Overt became ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... trip to the vessel, and brought back quite an expanse of sailcloth. All hands, with the exception of Mr. Clinton, went to work at once, and by sunset a considerable space was roofed over, which the little company ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... the explorers ventured, and had nearly reached the mouth of the Arkansas River, floating on a wide expanse of water between lofty woods, when they heard wild yelling on the west shore, and saw a crowd of savages pushing out huge wooden canoes to surround them. Some swam to seize the Frenchmen, and a war club was thrown over their ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of the sea birds and have an enormous expanse of wing, the Wandering Albatross, the largest of the family, sometimes attaining an expanse of fourteen feet. Their nostrils consist of two slightly projecting tubes, one on each side near the base of the bill. They are unsurpassed in powers ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... kindly feelings were nourished on both sides. If I understand anything of human nature now, it comes partly of having known and respected the poor of my father's parish. She passed in at the gate and went as usual to the kitchen door, while I stood drowsily contemplating the green expanse of growing crops in the valley before me. The day had grown as sleepy as myself. There were no noises except the hum of the unseen insects, and the distant rush of the water over the dams at our bathing-place. In a few minutes the old woman approached me again. She was an honest and worthy ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... mood. Nor are they placed at random, but are more or less in harmony with their surroundings. Remember, too, their great number and their large size—a man 214 feet long, a beast 160 feet long, with a tail measuring 320 feet, a hawk 240 feet in expanse of wing. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... shamiana or canopy, under which we could see a host of attendants spreading carpets, placing chairs, and otherwise making ready for us. The banks of the stream were very steep, but the guide at length brought us to what seemed a safe and fordable passage. On the further side was a flat expanse of seemingly firm and dry sand, but no sooner had our elephants begun to cross it, than the whole sandbank for yards began to rock and tremble; the water welled up over the footmarks of the elephants, and S. called out to us, Fussun, Fussun! quicksand, quicksand! We scattered ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... middle of all this forest verdure, there lay a patch of white, like driven snow. This was an expanse of blossoming fruit-trees, and out of them, up on the high lake shore, rose the manor-house, shining white, with tiles of red. A stork flew up from the chimney, and circled ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... antique towers That crown the wat'ry glade, Where grateful Science still adores Her Henry's holy shade; And ye, that from the stately brow Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey, Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among Wanders the hoary Thames ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... bed pondering over these fancies, and my sleep was full of happy dreams. I saw myself dwelling in a retired spot amidst peace and plenty. I thought I was surrounded on all sides by a fair expanse of country which belonged to me, where I enjoyed that freedom the world cannot give. My dreams had all the force of reality, till a sudden awakening at day-break came to give them the lie. But the imaginary ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... view and made it impossible to manage the ships. The soldiers, too, unaccustomed to the perils of the sea, in their alarm embarrassed the mariners, or, helping them awkwardly, rendered unavailing the services of the skilful. After this, the whole expanse of air and sea was swept by a southwest wind, which, deriving strength from the mountainous regions of Germany, its deep rivers, and boundless tract of clouded atmosphere, and rendered still harsher by the rigor of the neighboring north, tore away the ships, scattered and drove ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... wide, turf-covered expanse, we should remember that its smoothness, on which so much of its beauty depends, is mainly due to all the inequalities having been slowly levelled by worms. It is a marvellous reflection that the whole of the superficial mould over any such expanse has passed, and will again pass, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... not regret, although Beaucaire rather interested me, but, as the gambler seldom permitted the Judge out of his sight, our intimacy grew very slowly. Thockmorton, being his own pilot, seldom left the wheelhouse, and consequently I passed many hours on the bench beside him, gazing out on the wide expanse of river, and listening to his reminiscences of early steam-boating days. He was an intelligent man, with a fund of anecdote, acquainted with every landmark, every whispered tale of the great stream from New Orleans to Prairie du Chien. At one time or another ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... administered by Newfoundland, which still remains outside the Dominion of Canada. On the Atlantic the chief indentations which break its shores are the Bay of Fundy (remarkable for its tides), the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and Hudson Bay (a huge expanse of water with an area of about 350,000 square miles); and the Pacific coast, which is small relatively, is remarkably broken up by fjord-like indentations. Off the coast are many islands, some of them of considerable magnitude,—Prince Edward Is., ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... is the breeze, cloudless the sky, brilliant, beaming, magnificent, the sunshine, but not a leaf stirs in answering rustle to the wind. Far and near no patch of shade delights or tempts the eye. Look where you will,—look for miles and miles over boundless expanse of rolling upland, of ridge and ravine, of dip and "divide," of butte and swale, no speck of foliage, no vision is there of even isolated tree. The solid earth beneath our feet is carpeted with dense little bunches of buffalo-grass, juicy, life-giving, yet bleaching already of the faint hues ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... his vowels, that he was guilty of elisions and interpolations which were equally unexpected, and that his discourse was pervaded by something sultry and vast, something almost African in its rich, basking tone, something that suggested the teeming expanse of the cotton-field. Mrs. Luna looked up at all this, but saw only a part of it; otherwise she would not have replied in a bantering manner, in answer to his inquiry: "Are you ever different from this?" Mrs. Luna was ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... heart. Look upon me! a virgin, like thyself; I to the Christ, the Lord divine, gave birth, And am myself divine!" Mine eyelids then She touched, and when I upward turned my amaze, Heaven's wide expanse was filled with angel-boys, Who bore white lilies in their hands, while tones Of sweetest music floated through the air. And thus on three successive nights appeared The Holy One, and cried,—"Arise, Johanna! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... noticed this change. Students in the School of Fine Arts pointed him out from the gallery of the Opera-house or stopped on the sidewalk when they saw him at night, with a shining silk hat on his carefully trimmed hair and the expanse of shirt-front showing in his unbuttoned overcoat. The boys in their simple admiration imagined the great master thundering before his easel, as savage, fierce and intractable as Michael Angelo in his studio. And so when they saw him looking so differently, their ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... were lengthening the party from The Willows set forth again, and reached the foot of the mountain a little before sunset, making the ascent in time to see the day-god's last radiance streaming over the fair, broad expanse of country beneath them. There was a small cabin on the summit which was to be devoted to the ladies, and round the camp-fire which was soon sparkling brightly the gentlemen proposed to spend the night on the blankets with which they were all plentifully provided. Meanwhile, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... would have understood. Men do these things in time of stress, and I was in great stress. I loved a woman for the first time in my life—and I was a man nearly forty. I wanted her with every quivering nerve in me. And she was gone. Lost in the vast expanse of Europe with a parcel of performing cats. Gone out of my life loving me as I loved her, all on account of this Hell-invented principle. Ye gods! If the fierce, pure, deep, abiding love of a man for a woman ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... inland broad expanse of salt water, usually shallow, and connected with the sea by one or more channels, or ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of either the mountains or the Pacific coast. In the far north, to be sure, the rigorous climate caused all the Indians to live practically alike, whether in the Rockies, the plains, or the Laurentian highland. South of them, in that great central expanse stretching from the latitude of Lake Winnipeg to the Rio Grande River, the Indians of the plains possessed a relatively uniform type of life peculiar to themselves. This individuality was due partly to the luxuriant ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... prospect in summer. Then all is laughing, and it is a joy in every nerve to ride out over the Long Bridge at high tide, and, looking southward, to see the wide crinkle and glitter of that beautiful expanse of water, which laps on one hand the granite quays of the city, and on the other washes among the reeds and wild grasses of the salt-meadows. A ship coming slowly up the channel, or a dingy tug violently ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... the planet seemed a good deal smaller than the moon, and yet so dense as to have a greater gravitational attraction. The atmosphere was cloudless, and the surface a forbidding expanse of sand. The globe whirled at a rate that must give it a day of approximately five hours. We angled down, picking a spot just within the ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson
... his horse, slipped the bridle over his arm, and let him pick away at the short grass and tufts of heath, as he himself first stood, and then sat, and looked out over the scene which she had so often looked over. She might have sat on the very spot he was sitting on; she must have taken in the same expanse of wood and meadow, village and park, and dreamy, distant hill. Her presence seemed to fill the air round him. A rush of new thoughts and feelings swam through his brain and carried him, a willing ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the girls. A pool, so called, was supposed to contain but a small amount of water, and how could the devil, being so large, get into it? Then came the origin of the word pool—from "palus," a marsh, as we were told, some dictionary attesting to the fact, and such a marsh might cover a large expanse. The "Palus Maeotis" was then quoted. And so we went on till Satan's ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... a coping of worn brick on which she had set her feet, but she did not see it now. She saw migratory birds traveling steadily through a vast expanse of gray sky; birds that were going, at the appointed time, to some far-distant place, in search of a golden climate, in search of the sun. Inevitably they would come into the golden climate, inevitably they would find the sun which they needed. Like them she was traveling through a vast gray ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... waves. And they saw that it was deep and abounding with fierce whales and makaras. And it resounded constantly with the terrible sounds of aquatic creatures. And they saw that it was vast, and wide as the expanse of space, unfathomable, and limitless, and the grand ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... himself rewarded with one of the finest prospects in the world. Immediately beneath him, stretches the entire extent of the Teneriffe, with all its lovely scenery; round it the other nineteen Canary Islands; the eye then glances over an immense expanse of waters, beyond which may be descried in the distance the dark forests of the African coast, and even the yellow stripe which marks the verge of the great Desert. With thoughts full of the enjoyments which awaited us, we approached ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... The equestrian statue of Louis XIV. in the court-yard, his bed and crown, his clock and chair in the long suite of rooms kept sacred to his memory, typify the age when genius and beauty mingled their charms in the corrupt atmosphere of intrigue and profligacy. The noble expanse of wood, water, and meadow; the paths lined with stately myrtles and ancient box, spread as invitingly to the eye from this embayed window, as when the grand monarque stood there to watch the graceful walk of La Valliere, or the staid carriage of Maintenon. The abandonment and quietude of ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... developed to a degree that afforded the utmost fluidity of movement of all articles of trade. Furthermore, the range of movement of internal trade was greatly widened by the settlement of the vast expanse of new country west ...
— Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States - 1789-1900 • T.W. van Mettre
... fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam. Here and there grayish-whitish specks showed up, clustered inside the white surf, with a flag flying above them perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger than pin-heads on the untouched expanse of their background. We pounded along, stopped, landed soldiers; went on, landed custom-house clerks to levy toll in what looked like a God-forsaken wilderness, with a tin shed and a flag-pole lost in it; landed more ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... some fields upon the easier acclivities and woodlands higher up. There was one field of a hundred acres upon Captain Webster's mountain farm so level that a lamb could be seen on any part of it from the windows of the house. Every tourist knows that region now,—that wide, billowy expanse of dark mountains and vivid green fields, dotted with white farm-houses, and streaked with silvery streams. It was rougher, seventy years ago, secluded, hardly accessible, the streams unbridged, the roads of primitive formation; but the worst of the rough work had been done there, and the production ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... scenery. The heart reposes on them with a feeling that few things else can give, because almost all other objects are abrupt and clearly defined; but a meadow stretches out like a small infinity, yet with a secure homeliness which we do not find either in an expanse of water or of air. The hills which border these meadows are wide swells of land, or long and gradual ridges, some of them densely covered with wood. The white village, at a distance on the left, appears to be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... finest poems, compared Bacon to Moses standing on Mount Pisgah. It is to Bacon, we think, as he appears in the first book of the Novum Organum, that the comparison applies with peculiar felicity. There we see the great Lawgiver looking round from his lonely elevation on an infinite expanse; behind him a wilderness of dreary sands and bitter waters in which successive generations have sojourned, always moving, yet never advancing, reaping no harvest, and building no abiding city; before him a goodly land, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... one dotted with the same line of logs and stones strewn along the water's edge, which turned out as he approached them to be basking crocodiles and sleeping pelicans. His eye, wearied with the continual confinement and want of distance, longed for the boundless expanse of the desert, for the jagged outlines of those far-off hills, which he had watched from boyhood rising mysteriously at morn out of the eastern sky, and melting mysteriously into it again at even, beyond which dwelt a whole world of wonders, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... purple shades of all beyond. Then, flashes of the broad ocean, like quick transitory bursts of light, started at intervals, washing the feet of a tall emerald cliff, or, like a lake, buried between the hills. Shorter and shorter become the intermissions, larger and larger grows the watery expanse, until, at length, the mighty element rolls unobstructed on, and earth, decked in her verdant leaves, her flowers and gems, is on the shore to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... time into scraps of song, the surroundings of his walk changed, for he passed over a rough stone wall, provided with projections to act as a stile, and left the moorland behind, to enter upon a lovely park-like expanse, dotted with grand oaks and firs, among which he had not journeyed long before, surrounded on three sides by trees, he came in full sight of the fine-looking, ruddy stone hall, glimpses of which he had before seen, while ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... this exclamation and understood it, but no one turned around to see where it came from. The grey mass of people suddenly stirred, gave a sigh, surged like the sea whipped by a gale, and, sinking at each step into the mud, the entire regiment rolled forward, over the expanse of the shoreless fields which now suddenly looked strange and dreadful. The soldiers, their faces haggard and queer, were crossing themselves as they ran. They marched in disorder, and when they were stopped on the hill-crest, ...
— The Shield • Various
... since the curtain rose upon this episode, a man might have been spied, praying on the sand by the lagoon beach. A point of palm trees isolated him from the settlement; and from the place where he knelt, the only work of man's hand that interrupted the expanse, was the schooner Farallone, her berth quite changed, and rocking at anchor some two miles to windward in the midst of the lagoon. The noise of the Trade ran very boisterous in all parts of the island; the nearer palm trees crashed and whistled ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... bent his bared arm as the resistant cord cut the flesh; for a second it strained, seeming to have withstood the full expanse of his muscle. Then he closed his arm a little more, and the four ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... husband, quick as a flash burst into a beautiful crystal light. The heavens looked like shining silver, all around the horizon was a wide cloud of clear light blue, with a border of gold. Beneath was a broad expanse of green, with large groves of trees at regular intervals dressed in a deeper shade. Through these were meandering streams or rivers as of clear glass. Clear cut avenues ran through at regular spaces from stream to stream, on the borders of which (avenues and rivers) were thousands ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... star or two and struggling moon. In front, a distant hillside, with points of camp-fire twinkling, where the Boers, indifferent to our little party, were carousing and drinking their dop. Now and then a yawn or groan as a man stretches his cramped limbs. Down below under us an expanse of dark plain, like a murky sea, reaching to our feet, which we peer across, but can make out nothing. Peep-of-day time is the Boer's favourite hour for a call, and we were all very much on the qui vive ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... "Ah! the noble Frederic is no more!" The chief reluctant yields his latest breath; His eye-lids settle in the shades of death; Dark sable shades present before each eye, And the deep vast abyss, Eternity! Through perpetuity's expanse he springs; And o'er the vast profound he shoots on wings; The soul to distant regions steers her flight, And sails incumbent on inferior night: With vast celerity she shoots away, 60 And meets the regions of eternal day, To shine for ever in the heavenly birth, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... remained in our sleighs. The surrounding scene had impressed us all very forcibly, and there was a general disinclination to get out. The expanse of snow, in its half-melted condition, was enough to deter any reasonable being. To get out was to plunge into an ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... this paralyzed enterprise in Africa until white men learned that the climate was not so deadly, after all, if they adhered to the manner of life, the hygienic rules, that should be observed in that tropical expanse. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... minutes," said Randolph, as they resumed their march. On the one hand the ragged line of dunes with their draping, dense or slight, of pines, lindens and oaks; on the other the unruffled expanse of blue, spreading toward a horizon ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... to be completely deserted, the people having removed weeks before; for lying, as they did, between the rival cities, they were likely to suffer at the hands of both. The party soon turned off and made across the country. Here and there a few animals could be seen over the flat expanse. Presently they came upon a mill; the water of the canal that turned its wheel was running to waste, and the place ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... had condensed into a sudden shout. Now I saw the ball rolling solitary in the middle of the field, and a single red doll racing towards it; at one end was a confused group of red and white, and at the other two white dolls, rather lonely in the expanse. The single red doll overtook the ball and scudded along with it at his twinkling toes. A great voice behind me bellowed with ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... some broad road and footed it hour after hour, through the night, through the next day, through the next night, and so till the end overtook him, striking him down in his tracks. He would get as far away as possible, keeping out under the broad expanse of the sky above. He could find rest only by taking a course straight on over the hills, turning aside for nothing, tearing a path ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... he had said nothing in the train of those stern things which he had resolved to say. Of course he was not saying them when Roger Carbury came upon him; but was indulging in some poetical nonsense, some probably very trite raptures as to the expanse of the ocean, and the endless ripples which connected shore with shore. Mrs Hurtle, too, as she leaned with friendly weight upon his arm, indulged also in moonshine and romance. Though at the back of the heart of each of them there ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... couple hundred yards extending out into cleared land, where the 42d Illinois was posted, refused as to the 65th and facing south to cover that flank. To the front, right and rear of the 42d was a broad expanse of rolling fields extending on the right to the pike, about 1,000 yards away, where two guns were posted to sweep the fields in front of the 42d with their fire. To the left of the 42d an extension of the woods ran out into the fields and concealed the 42d from Cleburne ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... one has connected with it in his childhood from reading Robinson Crusoe. To this I may add the height and romantic outline of its mountains, the beauty and freshness of its verdure and the extreme fertility of its soil, and its solitary position in the midst of the wide expanse of the South Pacific, as all concurring to ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... undetermined cause which had produced this change ceased, and the party rowed homeward with their last load, just in time as the pack closed in, and the channel through which they had rowed, in the morning, over a glassy expanse of nearly a mile in width, narrowed, until, with a shock which was wholly unexpected, so gradual and gentle seemed the motion, the opposing borders were again united, and the waves of the sea were no ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... forlorn street in Paris at the present moment than the Rue de la Paix, the headquarters for dressmakers and milliners. Upwards of seventy-five per cent. of the shops are closed, and on both sides the street presents a long, gray expanse—broken only ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... the houses looked stunted like gravestones, with a line of black trees above their roofs that loomed shadowy and cloud-like. Only in the furthest corner of the expanse was the light of a solitary street lamp bearing a resemblance to the disk of a stationary, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... face of this expanse of waters, and perfectly secure from fowlers, lie all day long, in the winter season, vast flocks of ducks, teals, and widgeons, of various denominations; where they preen and solace, and rest themselves, till towards sunset, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... the horizon, and nothing on earth could be fairer than that soft sleep of the golden sunshine on the green and flowery meadowland, while overhead only a few silvery cloudlets variegated with their fleecy lustre the expanse of blue, rippling down to the horizon like curves of white foam at the edges ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... on the bottom step and pushed the hair back from her forehead. Suddenly she looked very small and faintly forlorn with all that expanse of age-blackened wood ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... deliberation, or when suspicious blotches appeared on the ceiling in rainy weather, there was always the bay-window to turn to for comfort. And the view was a fine one. Alcatraz, Lime Point, Fort Point, and Saucelito were plainly visible over a restless expanse of water that changed continually, glittering in the sunlight, darkening in rocky shadow, or sweeping in mimic waves on ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... was sinking slow, And twilight spread a rosy glow Around its single star, His eye the western sea's expanse Would search, creating by its glance Some ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... illimitable expanse of sky and sand swam slowly into view, each insignificant landmark in the desert magnified almost incredibly by the powerful glasses; and at last the blue-robed native appeared suddenly as though only a stone's throw away from the ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... of repairing our drenched and bedraggled condition. The storm, clearing away at about sunset, opened a noble prospect from the porch of the colonel's house, which stands upon a high hill. The sun streamed from the breaking clouds upon the swift and angry Missouri, and on the immense expanse of luxuriant forest that stretched from its banks back ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... and study were to be weighed one against the other, in order to discover which must contribute most to a good work, the question would become more curious, and, perhaps, very difficult of solution. Indeed, though nature must have a great part of the expanse of poetry, yet no poetry lasts long that is not very correct: the balance, therefore, seems to incline in favour of correction. For is it not known that Virgil, with less genius than Ovid, is yet valued more by men of exquisite ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... something to do and I guess we are going to have plenty of time on our hands before we get away from here." As he finished speaking he turned to scan the horizon, but nothing was in sight save the endless expanse of ocean. As far as appearances went they might have been alone in the world. The occasional note of a bird and the soft murmur of the waves as they caressed the beach below were the ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... confined in the narrow limits of his cell, his spirits sank. He pined with the hunger of a wild thing for liberty—to move without the clanking fetters; to drink of the fresh water of the Jordan, to breathe the morning air; to look on the expanse of nature. Is it hard to understand how his deprivations reacted on his mental and spiritual organization, or that his nervous system lost its elasticity of tone, or that the depression of his physical life cast a ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... thorny and succulent shrubs of fantastic aspect, which alone could live on the sandy and waterless soil. This is a strange land, that can boast three separate climates within its borders, and is able to show all the glories of the tropics side by side with deserts of measureless expanse. ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... Spaniards maintained their feeble hold in the Southwest, no white men inhabited the great prairies which swept westward to the foothills of the Rockies. Only nomadic Indian tribes and occasional traders followed the buffalo trails across this wide expanse. Between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific was the region which Lewis and Clark had penetrated. Along the valley of the northern branch of the Columbia River, the Hudson's Bay Company had planted their trading posts. Farther to the south lay Spanish ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... the wide plains of earth, swaying slowly and going nowhere; and on the other side all those artists who were passing through the mob in all directions, loudly proclaiming something, singing with inspired voices, pointing to the expanse of heaven, calling attention to the stars, trying to bring about some order in this disorderly, teeming multitude, opening paths among it, imploring it in deep tones. But the multitude either laughed or merely nodded its assent, but did not budge from its place. ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... of the great fortresses of Europe. The town lay in the plain, and had no strength except what was derived from art. But art and nature had combined to fortify that renowned citadel which, from the summit of a lofty rock, looks down on a boundless expanse of cornfields, woods and meadows, watered by two fine rivers. The people of the city and of the surrounding region were proud of their impregnable castle. Their boast was that never, in all the wars which had devastated the Netherlands, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... morning I went out into the veranda, and took a survey of the ocean—the broad infinite expanse of waters into which I was about to plunge ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... mild light athwart the crowded and affluent landscape, we involuntarily exclaimed, "that this even equalled the Neapolitan coast in the twilight." The manner in which the obscurity settled on this picture, slowly swallowing up tower after tower, hamlet, cottage, and field, until the blue expanse of the lake alone reflected the light from the clouds, was indescribably beautiful, and was one of those fine effects that can only be produced amid a nature as grand as ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... followed in laying out the streets of this village, and even the sinuous main avenue, lined on either side by a row of full grown maples, adds to its charm. Beyond the town to the westward the view of rolling plain and delightful wooded expanse greets the eye, and in the distance the smoky Sugar Loaf looms up to beckon one to mountain scenes. In an afternoon drive from the village to the south or west the lover of nature may find ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... The sea, however, continued as calm as before; around the ship not a ripple could be seen on its surface. The crew, hurrying from below, went to their stations, all eyes being turned in the direction of the approaching clouds. Presently cats'-paws began to play over the mirror-like expanse, and then to disappear; the sails slowly bulged out, and speedily again hung down as listlessly as before against the masts. The dark line grew brighter and brighter; presently the loftier sails swelled out, and the ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... saw that the lane proceeded downwards to a river crossed by a wooden bridge, with an expanse of meadows beyond. To her left was a stable-yard, and below it a white gate and white railings enclosing a graveyard, with a very beautiful church standing behind a mushroom yew-tree. The upper boundary of the churchyard was the clipped yew hedge of the ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... anchors, and heavy boxes of freight, which made it difficult for him to find his way to a good place for a view. He finally reached a place where, by standing upon an anchor, he could look over the bulwarks, and get a view of the expanse of water before him. It was smooth, and its glassy surface was bright with the reflection of the ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... come; the expanse of water lay before her motionless, in hue a dull, leaden gray, and only the dimly illumined air and a glimmering radiance along the edges of the waves that washed the island showed that the moon ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... where the Hull boats first touch, is mostly between islands, and in continuous shelter. Sometimes the narrows are not wider than the Thames at Oxford; then you steam out into what seems to be a land-locked expanse of water, with precipitous mountain rocks ahead. By and by you swerve to right or left, and a totally different picture is presented. And so it is, hour after hour, and day after day. For many a league north of Bergen ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... throughout the entire winter in St. Lawrence County, had piled up their accumulated snows over the space of ground that separated the school-house from Willard Glazier's home. Over this single expanse of deep snow many feet had trodden a hard path, which alternate melting and freezing had formed into a solid, slippery, back-bone looking ridge, altogether unsafe for fast travel. Over this ridge young ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... farewell! I quit thy shore; My native country charms no more; No guide to mark the toilsome road; No destin'd clime; no fix'd abode: Alone and sad, ordain'd to trace The vast expanse of endless space; To view, upon the mountain's height, Through varied shades of glimm'ring light, The distant landscape fade away In the last gleam of parting day: Or, on the quiv'ring lucid stream, To watch ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... was a crash, and a champagne glass struck squarely in the high official's soup and spattered it all over his white expanse of shirt front. We all looked up at the punkah. At the same instant a big, soft mango smashed in the high official's face and changed its ruddy red color to a ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... the next morning. If the weather had been doubtful—if there had been any pretence for supposing that the day might not be fine, she would have remained at home. But she looked in vain all round the sky for a cloud: and the wide expanse of fields and meadows in the Levels, with their waving corn and fresh green grass, seemed to bask in the sunshine, as if they felt its luxury. It was a glowing August day;—just such a day as would ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... billows closed around him; a singular lassitude passed into his limbs as he swam; he felt himself slowly sinking, as if drawn downward by an invisible hand. He opened his eyes. The waves lapped musically above his head; a tawny glory was all about him, a luminous expanse in which he saw strangely formed creatures moving, darting, rising, falling, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... watched him sliding his white hands into the white kid, and as he did so his feelings took a singular turn. M. de Bellegarde's good wishes seemed to descend out of the white expanse of his sublime serenity with the soft, scattered movement of a shower of snow-flakes. Yet Newman was not irritated; he did not feel that he was being patronized; he was conscious of no especial impulse to introduce a discord ...
— The American • Henry James
... the shelves were empty, it called for our united efforts to move the heavy piece of furniture; but we accomplished the task ultimately, making visible a considerable expanse of panelling. Nearly forty years had elapsed since that case had been removed, and the carvings which it concealed were coated with all the dust which had accumulated there since the night of ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... glorious weather, dry and clear, and so still that very little of the cold penetrated his fur-lined garments. Snow covered everything, fine and firm and dazzling. The smooth white expanse suggested a wish that he had brought the skees he was learning to use; then the sight of the line of boulders he would have had to steer around made him rejoice that he had not. Far ahead of him rose the glittering wall ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... was the most extensive that had ever obeyed a single chief. The dominions of Alexander and of Trajan were small when compared with the immense area of the Scythian desert. But in the estimation of statesmen that boundless expanse of larch forest and morass, where the snow lay deep during eight months of every year, and where a wretched peasantry could with difficulty defend their hovels against troops of famished wolves, was of less account than the two or three square miles into which were crowded ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the Muscovite hosts. Its appearance from the sea is very attractive, for its port is surrounded with mountains, the highest of which still retains a memorial of the old Genoese dominion, while in part of its blue expanse lies the pretty Greek town, with its balconied houses and masses of foliage rising in terraces one above the other. Above it towers a ruined castle, whence the Genoese, in their days of supremacy, scanned with vulture-gaze ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... similar manner in the crust of the earth, though in a lesser degree, resulting in a heaving up and down amounting to one foot; but we are only concerned with the action of the sea at present. Now, although this pull is felt in all seas, it is only in the Southern Ocean that a sufficient expanse of water exists for the tidal action to be fully developed. This ocean has an average width of 1,500 miles, and completely encircles the earth on a circumferential line 13,500 miles long; in it the attraction of the sun and moon raises the water nearest to the centre of attraction ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... stepped down from the end of the piazza and floated up the garden-path and into the woods that skirted the lake-shore and stretched far back and away. Thus abandoned, the others turned their attention to the expanse before and below them; and one or two made their way down to the brink, unhooked a boat, ventured in, and, lifting the single pair of oars, were soon laboring gayly out and creating havoc ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... watched the houses slipping behind us as we swept along. Then we came to the tree-lined expanse of road immediately leading to the cottage. As the car stopped, I leaped out quickly, Gatton close upon my heels, and ran up the path to ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... averse to the idle labor of walking. His legs were very short, but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain: so that, when erect, he had not a little the appearance of a beer barrel on skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament; and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... long journey she had said very little, shyness enveloping her as in a mantle; but when the train began to run along the sea shore, so that the whole expanse of ocean lay spread before the window, Toni's face changed, her eyes sparkled, and she turned to Owen with a ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... should arrive. The total nominal strength of the United States army, officers and men, was only 17,113, of whom not two thirds could be counted upon the Union side, and even these were scattered over a vast expanse of country, playing police for Indians, and garrisoning distant posts. Rumors of Southern schemes to attack Washington caused widespread alarm; the government had no more definite information than the people, and all alike feared that there ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... sufficient points of "discrepancy with agreement," here is material for talk and argument enough; and an expanse of free discussion open, which requires rather to be speedily restricted for convenience' sake, than allowed to widen itself into the boundless, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... dark, but the room beyond was a blaze of light, with the curtains drawn, and apparently every lamp the house contained trimmed and burning. He himself stood in the shadow, and his entrance had been unnoticed, though almost the entire expanse of the room before him was visible through ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... my camel till I was out of the thicket, when I remounted; but at a loss which way to go, and unknowing where Providence might direct me, I reached the desert, and cast my eyes over the expanse; when, lo! at length a smoke appeared in the midst of it. I whipped my camel, and at length reached a fire, and near it observed a handsome tent, before which was a standard planted, surrounded by spears, horses picketted, and camels grazing. I said to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... morning an arch-like appearance in the clouds over the furthest ranges was pointed out to me as the sure forerunner of a violent gale from the north-west, and the prognostic was fulfilled. It was formed of clouds of the deepest and richest colours; within its curve lay a bare expanse of a wonderful green tint, crossed by the snowy silhouette of the Southern Alps. A few hours afterwards the mountains were quite hidden by mist, and a furious gale of hot wind was shaking the house as if it must carry it off into the sky; ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... of a hill which slopes toward the river; it commands an extended view of the Hudson. But even this did not meet his requirements. The formality and routine of conventional life palled upon him; the expanse of the Hudson, the noise of railway and steamboat wearied him; he craved something more retired, more primitive, more homely. "You cannot have the same kind of attachment and sympathy for a great river; it does not flow through your affections like a lesser stream," he says, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... questioned a man loafing upon a pile of lumber. It appeared that a strike of stevedores was the cause of this outward sign of inactivity. Boats were being loaded quietly, but the process was furtive and sullen. Occasionally, out of the wide expanse of brooding indolence a knot of men would gather flockwise, and melt as quickly. There was an ominous quality in the swiftness with which these cloudlike groups congealed and disintegrated. The sinister blight of repression was over everything—repressed ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... lived, as she had told me, sous les toits—and sous les toits, up seven flights of very steep and dirty stairs, I found her. It was a large attic with a sloping roof, overlooking a bristling expanse of chimney-pots, and commanding the twin towers of Notre Dame. There were some colored prints of battles and shipwrecks wafered to the walls; a couple of flower-pots in the narrow space between the window-ledge and the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... I only acted—as oftentimes I since have longed to act—on the desire we all feel to have "the wings of a dove, and fly away and be at rest,"—floating afar from the dross and dust of earth into the blue expanse of the heavenly ether:—a thing yet to be accomplished!—or I will confess to be no prophet: in these days of electricity, concentrated and accumulative after the fashion of M. Faure, aided perhaps by some lighter gas, some condensed form of tamed dynamite,—these ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... be hung upon a ceiling. These spheres were conceived to be one above the other; the planets were on the lower of them, and the fixed stars on the higher, the several crystal roofs revolving about the earth. So long as the earth was supposed to be a flat and limitless expanse, forming the centre of the universe, it was impossible for the students of the heavens to attain any more rational view as ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... Phipps sailed into the basin of Quebec, one of the grandest scenes on the western continent opened upon his sight. The wide expanse of waters, the lofty promontory beyond, and the opposing Heights of Levi, the cataract of Montmorenci, the distant range of the Laurentian Mountains, the warlike rock with its diadem of walls and towers, the roofs of the Lower Town clustering on the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... with a loud voice, that filled the whole expanse, and thrilled with various emotions the dumb assembly. "To Boabdil el Chico, King of Granada, Ferdinand of Arragon and Isabel of Castile send royal greeting. They command me to express their hope that the war is at length concluded; and they offer to the King of Granada ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... as if some shadow, or momentary darkening of the brilliant atmosphere; some film across the mirror-like expanse of the open windows, or misty dimming of their wholesome light, had arisen to their elevation. Mainwaring felt that he was looking forward with unreasoning indignation and uneasiness to this impending interruption of their idyllic life; Mrs. Bradley and Louise, who had become a little ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... stood on the western range of the Great North mountains towering above the picturesque Shenandoah Valley, and from the summit of one of the loftiest peaks, where, until then, the foot of a white man had never trod, they viewed the vast expanse of plain and forest with glistening eyes. Returning to Williamsburg they told of the wonderful richness of the newly discovered country and thus opened the way for the venturesome pioneer who was destined to overcome all ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... There seemed scarce any mark of human habitation. The life of the people, where there were people, must have been back from the banks. The river itself was empty. Nowhere was there wreath of smoke or shimmer of sail. Just the wild beauty of the shores, the noble expanse of the stream, the cloudless blue of the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... fire, we had ample time e'er it was consumed to contemplate the singular beauty and romantic wildness of the scenery and objects around us. Via Reggio, the only seaport of the Duchy of Lucca, built and encompassed by an almost boundless expanse of deep, dark sand, is situated in the centre of a broad belt of firs, cedars, pines, and evergreen oaks, which covers a considerable extent of country, extending along the shore from Pisa to Massa. ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... be the worse for each offering a reflection, according to its turn to the light, without marring the unity of the general expanse." ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... side of this tree-bound square ran avenues east, west, and south into the wide expanse of cornland and coomb to the distance of a mile or so. It was by one of these avenues that the pedestrians were about to enter. Before they had risen to proceed two men passed outside the hedge, engaged ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... neighboring coffee plantation was visited, and its floral and vegetable beauties thoroughly enjoyed. It was in the very height of fragrance and promise, the broad expanse of the plantation, as far as the eye could extend, being in full bloom. Some hours were agreeably passed in examining the estate, the slaves' quarters, and the domestic arrangements, and also in partaking of the hospitalities of the generous owner, after which we ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... the nation from ruin. At the end of thirty years from the time when the soil of Missouri was devoted to slavery the "Kansas-Nebraska Bill" was proposed, which should open for the extension of slavery the vast expanse of national territory which, by the stipulation of the "Missouri Compromise," had been forever consecrated to freedom. The issue of the extension of slavery was presented to the people in its simplicity. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... greatly interested, for the blank expanse of the moaning sea round the corner of a tall tenement filled him with ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... after long and careful study of their position, rendered possible by occasional glimpses of the Orange Hills and high points further up the course of the Hudson, that Cosmo Versal and Captain Arms were able to reach that conclusion. Where New York had stood nothing was visible but an expanse of ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... large head covered with hair which shot in all directions in scholarly abandon. His neck seemed much too thin to carry such a weight, but that, I think, was the effect of a collar much too large, and a white tie so long that its ends trailed down over an expanse of crumpled shirt. The doctor's black clothes looked dusty; the doctor himself looked dusty, yet the smile with which he greeted me was as warm as the sunshine breaking through ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... singing. How delightful it was! How unlike it was to that Petersburg night when the wet snow was falling and beating so rudely on our faces. If one looks straight across the canal, one sees the sea, and on the wide expanse towards the horizon the sun glittered on the water so dazzlingly that it hurt one's eyes to look at it. My soul yearned towards that lovely sea, which was so akin to me and to which I had given up my youth. I longed ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Farm, 1748. A wide expanse of green. Trees right, left, and background. The trees in background supposedly screen the Colonial house from view. At the left the estate supposedly stretches to the highway. At the right, behind the trees, it is given over to ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... contain a more remarkable sentinel than this pyramid on which our hero had now taken his station. There it stood, actually the Ultima Thule of this vast continent, or, what was much the same, so closely united to it as to seem a part of our own moiety of the globe, looking out on the broad expanse of waters. The eye saw, to the right, the Pacific; in front was the Southern, or Antarctic Ocean; and to the left was the great Atlantic. For several minutes, both Roswell and Stephen sat mute, gazing on this grand spectacle. By turning their faces north, they beheld the high lands of Terra del ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... on the after-deck and drove the punt down the creek with a pole. He could see across the bank, and the wet marsh, glistening faintly in the moonlight, ran back into thin mist. In front, the creek got wider until it melted into the expanse of sands. Here and there a belt of smooth mud caught a silvery reflection, but for the most part the sands were dark. The night was calm and the advancing surf rumbled in the distance like a heavy train. It was a good night for shooting and Jim wondered ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... in which he spoke was Greek; and here, in the Bay of Naples, he was in the midst of a Greek colony, where Roman influence had not been able to efface the deep impression which Greece had made upon the place. The original name of the splendid expanse of water before him was the Bay of Cumae; and Cumae was absolutely the first Greek settlement in the western seas. Neapolis or Parthenope was the beautiful Greek name of the city of Naples, testifying to its Hellenic origin; and Dicaearchia ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... were also associated fossil bones of the Semnopithecus, showing that here, as in the south of France, the quadrumana were characteristic of this period. The whole fauna attests the former extension of a vast expanse of grassy plains where we have now the broken and mountainous country of Greece; plains, which were probably united with Asia Minor, spreading over the area where the deep Aegean Sea and its numerous islands are now ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... though no caravan had ever braved this desert expanse, or it would have left visible traces of its encampments, or the whitened bones of men and animals. But nothing of the kind was to be seen, and the aeronauts felt that, ere long, an immensity of sand would cover the whole of this ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... their son Thomas was born. There is little to redeem the place from insignificance; the houses are mostly mean, the position of the village is tame and commonplace. But if a visitor will mount the hills that lie to the north, turn southward and look over the wide expanse of land and water to the Cumbrian mountains, then, should he be fortunate enough to see the landscape in stormy and unsettled weather, he may realize why the land was so dear to its most famous son that he could return ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... snow began to fall in those close, compact flakes which forebode a heavy storm. We were glad to think that Luis must have reached his destination before it began; but when the next morning dawned on a wide expanse of snow, and the air was still thick with fast-falling flakes, it was feared that the state of the roads would preclude all hope of the arrival of ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the canaries in their cage rustled and bickered; unwashed plates were crowded on the table; the big unmade bed added a flavor of its own to the atmosphere. Madame eased herself, panting, into the chair before the desk, revealing the great rounded expanse of her back with its row of straining buttons and lozenge-shaped revelations of underwear. With the businesslike deliberation of a person who transacts a serious affair with due seriousness, she spread the bill before her, smoothing it out with a ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon |
