"Ravine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bank, lies a triangular plateau, bounded to the west by a streamlet, which in these days is of no importance, for it flows beneath the town; but in the fifteenth century, so say historians, it formed quite a deep ravine, of which there still remains a sunken road, almost an abyss, between the suburbs of the ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... themselves on all ordinary occasions. It was a mere fissure in the mountain, hidden from external view by thickets. Above rose steep ledges of rocks, thickly covered with earth and bushes. Below yawned an immense ravine, far down in the cool, dark depths of which a little ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... to be filled delayed Raymond, who succeeded, by paying a small sum to every one who would throw three stones, in building, in three days, a good path across the ravine. This done, the signal was given ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... I had gone somewhere on a botanizing expedition, but whether at home or abroad I don't know. At all events, I remember that I had taken up the study of plants with a good deal of enthusiasm, and that while hunting for some variety in the mountains I sat down to rest on the edge of a ravine. Perhaps it was on the ledge of an overhanging rock; anyhow, if I remember rightly, the ground gave way all about me, precipitating me below. The fall was a very considerable one—probably thirty or forty feet, or more, and I was rendered unconscious. How long I lay there under ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... made active use of the hours since he parted from Toussaint. He must have sent messengers in many directions; for, from beneath the shadow of every cacao grove, from under the branches of many a clump of bamboos, from the recess of a ravine here— from the mouth of a green road there, beside the brawling brook, or from their couch among the canes, appeared negroes, singly or in groups, ready to join the travelling party. Among all these, there were no women and children. They had been safely bestowed ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... residence of the ocean over all the lower parts of Chili, the outline of every view and the form of each valley possesses a high interest. Has the action of running water or the sea formed this deep ravine? was a question which often arose in my mind and generally was answered by finding a bed of recent shells at the bottom. I have not sufficient arguments, but I do not believe that more than a small fraction of the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... accomplish. He pointed out here and there what might be done. Over there was a maple wood where they would have sugar-makings in the spring. There was a quarry in yonder hill. Down here, through that left hand hollow and ravine, would ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and ravine, up to the forest-clad hill overlooking the cemetery, and who can describe the truly magnificent and extensive views before us? There lay the lovely valley beneath, the grand semicircle of Esterel hills ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... frivolity was changed into silent admiration of the savage beauty of the gorge. They stood for a while leaning upon the desolate bridge, turning reluctantly from the great beetling rocks of the ravine above to gaze with strange qualms into the yawning precipice beneath. Rainham pointed out the little thread of white which was the one dangerous pathway down the gorge, confessing his sympathy with the fatal fascination with ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... rocky zigzag up out of the ravine again and on over rough and hilly going. Here I fell into conversation with an Indian finca laborer, a slow, patient, ox-like fellow, to whom it had plainly never occurred to ask himself why he should live in misery and his employers in luxury. He spoke a slow and ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... journey ahead of us when we left the trail—that we would find their camp-fires still smoking. Now, what I want to know is this: How did that scout know that those Indians were going to that particular spring or creek or ravine near which we found ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... the men with their heads bent over the handlebars, Mausers slung over their shoulders, pedaling heavily through the mud and slush of a cold September storm. A few mitrailleuses, known as the Minerva type, and mounted on armored motor-cars, were trained on the ravine through which the road dipped a thousand yards ahead of us. They had sighted the German outposts on the crest of a hill opposite us about three quarters of a mile away. In a very poor kind of trench, hastily constructed in the beet-fields, and little more than ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... fire in the immediate vicinity of our neighbours, whom we could hear singing and rejoicing. The next morning, long before dawn, we stole away quietly, and trotted briskly till noon, when we encountered a deep and almost impassable ravine. There we were obliged to halt, and pass the remainder of the day endeavouring to discover a passage. This occupied us till nightfall, and we had nothing to eat but plums and berries. Melancholy were our thoughts when we reflected ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... along the course of a mountain torrent, whose sudden descent as it hurried toward the river, formed successive water-falls not unmusical in their cadence. A few purple beech and drooping willows with here and there a mountain ash, skirted the ravine that formed its bed; their leaves had fallen before the blasts of autumn, they seemed emblematic of myself; like me their glory had departed—they were shorn of their loveliness by the rough storm, left bare and verdureless in the chilling breath of autumn; the seasons in their round ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... fancy, listening to the babble the waters made, watching the sparkling of the flying spray. Ah! many a rainbow shimmered about the waterfall; right dangerous was the whirlpool above and below the fall. Deep down in the ravine the waters meandered, calmly tranquil: very like mature thoughtful manhood, after the prankish follies ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... bald at the top, and one was recently felled by a gale. But still that quiet plateau stands in a serene hush, flooded with rich orange glow on a warm evening. The hollyhocks in the back gardens of Rubicam Street are scarlet and Swiss-cheese-coloured and black; and looking across the railroad ravine one sees crypts and aisles of green as though in the heart of some ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... my peasant-maiden Rosa gives me a smile, I am at the summit of bliss; but my bliss-mountain is not so high that I fear a fall from it. If it were the princess that gladdened me so, I should expect a tumble into the ravine now and then, and would not mind the hard scramble up again, to reach ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the title. Were I no more than that, I could have died without a murmur. But with my life as a physician is bound up the knowledge of great secrets and the future of man. This it was, when we missed the caravan, tried for a short cut and wandered to this desolate ravine, that ate into my soul, and, in five days, has changed my beard from ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... the ravine just beyond Salt Creek were several high and important trestles which, if destroyed, would take months to replace, and General Anderson thought it well. worth the effort to save them. Also, on Muldraugh's ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... with his usual alacrity; and mutually relieving one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended, Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for a moment, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder-showers which often take ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... was the man to influence him and bring him to a sense of the great work awaiting his efforts. He was sitting at his door one evening a few days after the new minister's advent, looking down into his glen. His hopes for the valley had never been so high. The little ravine lay in purple shadow, but on the crest of the opposite hill he saw one tall pine standing up erect and grand and all ablaze where it caught the last gleam of the dying sun, a pine tree with golden needles like the one in the fairy tale. Duncan's heart, always in keen ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... the crooked track of a blind man; and when it would appear the easier and almost the only way to keep on up the gentle eminence, whereon might have been found renown and happiness, by that same constant fatality, it suddenly turns short off to one side, plunges down into the rocky ravine, and pants on, for many a weary mile. That man shapes not his own ends, is a truth which I felt long since, and which each day's experience brings home to me with the freshness of a new discovery. It is a truth which rises up and mocks us, when we sit down to calculate or plan for the future; ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... and the Swahili dropped flat on their faces while F. and I crawled slowly and cautiously through the mud until we had gained the cover of a shallow ravine that ran in the beast's general direction. Noting carefully a certain small thicket as landmark, we stooped and moved as fast as we could down to that point of vantage. There we cautiously parted the grasses and looked. The sable had disappeared. ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... to John, "I hope we have not many more of these hills to ascend." "We have none so steep; but, Paulus, now we have come to the most dangerous part of our whole journey; we are going to run along the brink of one of the ravines of which I spoke to you. Look ahead," said he, pointing to the deep ravine. ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... unfortunate as not to have enough money to purchase employment in some useful industry will rather engage in a useless one than not labor at all. It is not unusual to see hundreds of men carrying water from a river and pouring it into a natural ravine or artificial channel, through which it runs back into the stream. Frequently a man is seen conveying stones—or the masses of metal which there correspond to stones—from one pile to another. When all have been heaped in a single place he will convey them ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... the low gap, Dan made his way down the mountain side into the deep ravine, below Sammy's Lookout, that opens ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... away and around a bend of the stream, and I was moving to the bank to explore it to its end when my eyes were arrested by something white not ten paces away. It was a piece of paper caught against one of the large boulders between which, as through a broken dam, the water poured into the ravine. I waded towards it and stooped, steadying myself ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... behind a stony kopje in front of it; the infantry, already equipped, fell rapidly into their places, each company before its own line of tents, and were immediately marched at the "double" into the shelter of a ravine some 200 yards to the south of the camp, where fighting ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... Calling my driver, who was awake and talking with the voorloopers, for they knew what was passing at the kraal and were alarmed, I told them to get the oxen ready to start as I would be back presently. Then I set off for the stream and, after a longish walk, scrambled down a steep ravine to its banks, following a path made by Kaffir women going to draw water. Arrived there at last I found that it was in flood and rising rapidly, at least so I judged from the sound, for in that deep, tree-hung place the light was ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... where he would go—to his brother's grave. Presently they were there, standing on the hither edge of a ravine. A cloud had hidden the face of the moon, and they could see nothing, so they stood awhile idly waiting ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... declivity, and gives a look of sweeter tranquillity to the green pastoral meadow. It yields a darker frown to the projecting cliff, and a more awful uncertainty to the mountain-pass or the hollow ravine. Amid desolate scenery it spreads a cheerfulness that detracts nothing from its power over the imagination, while it relieves it of its terrors by presenting a green bulwark to defend us from the elements. Nothing can be more cheerful in scenery than the occasional groups ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... 18th, Pratt again acted as advance explorer, and went ahead with one companion. Following a ravine on horseback for four miles, they then dismounted and climbed to an elevation from which, in the distance, they saw a level prairie which they thought could not be far from Great Salt Lake. The whole party advanced only six and a quarter miles that ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... now in sight of Monte Moro, which, as the name denotes, was once a fortress of the Moors; it is a high steep hill, on the summit and sides of which are ruined walls and towers; at its western side is a deep ravine or valley, through which a small stream rushes, traversed by a stone bridge; farther down there is a ford, over which we passed and ascended to the town, which, commencing near the northern base, passes over the lower ridge towards the north-east. The town is exceedingly ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the vast monasteries, and the broad steep of Sion crowned with the tower of David, vary the monotony of the general masses of building. But the glory of the scene is the Mosque of Omar as it rises on its broad platform of marble from the deep ravine of Kedron, with its magnificent dome high in the air, its arches and gardened courts, and its ornaments glittering amid the cedar, the ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... apparent when, after a few paces, they descended half a dozen steps to a lower landing. This disclosed the fact that the dwelling part of the Sidon General Store was quite below the level of the shop and the road, and on the slope of the solitary undulation of the Tasajara plain,—a little ravine that fell away to a brawling stream below. The only arboreous growth of Tasajara clothed its banks in the shape of willows and alders that set compactly around the quaint, irregular dwelling which straggled down the ravine and looked upon a slope of bracken and foliage ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... you had traced its course you would have seen that it is swung from this mountain to the one directly to the south, just at the point where the valley between narrows down to little more than a deep ravine." ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... season must be watched for; one must be ready at any moment to profit by a lucky chance, and resign oneself to interminable watches at the bottom of a ravine, or keep on the alert for hours under a fiery sun. Often the chance goes by, or the trail followed proves false; but the season is over, and one must wait for the return of another spring. The trade of observer ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... After passing a little tangled jungle and swampy thickets through which our men had cleared a path, we emerged into a fine lofty forest pretty clear of undergrowth, and in which we could walk freely. We ascended steadily up a moderate slope for several miles, having a deep ravine on our left. We then had a level plateau or shoulder to cross, after which the ascent was steeper and the forest denser until we came out upon the "Padang-batu," or stone field, a place of which we had heard much, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... and the rocks and the trees for company, with the lovely peaks of other mountains stretching away as far as eye could see, the six Friars made themselves a little camp of huts; but St. Francis had his hut right away from the other Friars, and across a little rocky ravine which was crossed by a plank. Here he could feel quite alone with God. Looking up, there was just the blue, blue sky and the steady clouds; and looking down, there was a steep rock falling away below him to a great depth, with little ferns and flowers clinging to it. In this rocky solitude ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... proprietor of the establishment, is well posted up. Every herdsman as he comes in at night tells what animals he has seen through the day, and thus at the batan you hear where tiger, and pig, and deer are to be met with; where an unlucky cow has been killed; in what ravine is the thickest jungle; where the path is free from clay, or quicksand; what fords are safest; and, in short, you get complete information on every point connected with the jungle and its ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... fires. At three in the morning (August 20th) the word was passed to march. Such pitchy darkness covered the face of the plain that Smith ordered every man to touch his front file as he marched. Now and then a flash of lightning lighted the narrow ravine; occasionally a straggling moonbeam pierced the clouds and shed an uncertain glimmer on the heights; but these flitting guides served only to make the darkness seem darker. The soldiers groped their way, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... trees and undergrowth, and Colonel Moore, felling the heaviest timber, had constructed a formidable abatis across the narrowest part of it. Just in front of the abatis there was open ground for perhaps two hundred yards. South of the open was a deep ravine. The road ran on the east side of the cleared place, and the banks of the river were high and precipitous. The center of the open space rose into a swell, sloping gently away both to the north and south. On the crest of the ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... go out unnoticed, directing my steps up the ravine in which our hamlet is situated, towards the old grey stone church which stands solitary on the hill-top, surrounded by the lonesome moor. If any children happen to be playing among the scattered tombs, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... then in a small ravine, nearly hidden by a growth of thick brush, and gave a peculiar whistle. Thrice had this sounded, when a man came cautiously out of the ravine, or rather out of its mouth. He was tall, slender, yet seemed to possess the bone and muscle of a giant. His eyes were jet black, fierce and ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... were advancing: their nags' hoofs, beating in unison, devoured mile after mile of the road. It was a typical colonial road; it went up hill and down dale, turned aside for no obstacles. At one time it ran down a gully that was almost a ravine, to mount straight up the opposite side among boulders that reached to the belly-bands. At others, it led through a reedy swamp, or a stony watercourse; or it became a bog; or dived through a creek. Where the ground was ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... gathered that the attack was about to be renewed. Spears upon which shone the light of the rising sun, appeared above the edge of the ground-fold that I have mentioned, which to the east increased to a deep, bush-clad ravine. Also there were voices as of leaders encouraging their men to ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... brushed my wings Against the pointed chestnuts, where a stream That foamed and chattered over pebbly shoals Fled through the bryony, and with a shout Leaped headlong down a precipice: and there, Gathering wild-flowers in the cool ravine, Wandered a woman more divinely shaped Than any of the creatures of the air, Or river-goddesses, or restless shades Of noble matrons marvellous in their time For beauty and great suffering; and I sung, I charmed her thought, I gave her dreams; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Cooper, in a letter to his wife, dated Canajoharie, 1834, wrote of his father: "I have been up to the ravine to the old Frey house. It recalled my noble-looking, warmhearted, witty father, with his deep laugh, sweet voice, and fine, rich eye, as he used to light the way with his anecdotes and fun. Old Frey, with his little black peepers, pipe, hearty ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... bullets poured upon Bruce Hamilton on the plateau, until the heights were reached by De Lisle's mounted infantry from Broadwood's brigade. Bruce Hamilton's right flank was thus relieved, but between him and the enemy clustering on the ridge intervened the impassable ravine of the Donkerpoort. Night was approaching and nothing more could ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... sun-rays glance and gleam, Clarine, Peachbloom and Phoebe Phillis Stand knee-deep in the creamy lilies In a drowsy dream; To-link, to-lank, to-linklelinkle, O'er banks with butter cups a-twinkle, The cows come slowly home; And up through memory's deep ravine Come the brook's old song and its old-time sheen, And the crescent of the silver queen, When ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... could not get his words out of my head. I followed him as best I could, for he climbed up huge boulders with the agility of a monkey. It was no easy job, for we bounded and leapt from rock to rock and vaulted over fallen trees. The track became more marked and went up along the incline of a steep ravine. We continued until, hot and panting, we arrived at a large hollow high up in the cliff of clay. There, on a semicircular platform with entrenchments of felled trees, were about a dozen men almost devoid of clothing, some sitting on their heels and resting their arms on their knees, ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... he ran until he had covered a goodly number before his strength began to fail. At length he was panting so that each hissing breath was a stab, and his eyesight grew dim. He plunged, almost headlong, down the precipitous side of a ravine and at its bottom, fell, face downward, into the cool waters of a rippling brook. How deliciously refreshing were the two or three great gulps that he swallowed. How the life-giving fluid thrilled his whole frame! If he ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... eyes of the English the terrors of an army with banners. The belief that they beheld the rise of an ambuscade, or the arrival of a new army of Scots, gave the last impulse of terror, and all fled now, even those who had before resisted. The slaughter was immense; the deep ravine of Bannockburn, to the south of the field of battle, lying in the direction taken by most of the fugitives, was almost choked and bridged over with the slain, the difficulty of the ground retarding the fugitive ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... one or the other to spare, the remainder of us, who had voted ourselves into a sort of board of survey, thought it most prudent to find him dead; and, carrying him a little off the road to the edge of a ravine, we scraped a hole in the sand with our swords, and placed him in it. We covered him but very lightly, and left his head and arms at perfect liberty; so that, although he might be said to have had both feet in the grave, yet he might still have scrambled out ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... are picnicking in the ravine below there. They used to be rigidly excluded, but we can't stand that; and this is the first experiment of admitting them on condition that they don't ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they scanned the great expanse below them with eager eyes. It spread remoter and remoter, with only a few clusters of sere thorn bushes here and there, and the dim suggestions of some now waterless ravine, to break its desolation of yellow grass. Its purple distances melted at last into the bluish slopes of the further hills—hills it might be of a greener kind—and above them invisibly supported, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... of mooncalves bellowing up a ravine, and then we passed over a place of sounds, sounds of beating machinery as if some huge hall of industry came near the surface there. And while these sounds were still about us we came to the edge of a great open space, perhaps two hundred yards in diameter, and perfectly ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... about three miles below Grasmere and connected with it by another stream. Langdale Pike (or Pikes, for there are more than one) is the name of the steep hills at the head of Langdale, on the Cumberland border. Dungeon-Ghyll is a ravine in Langdale (see Wordsworth's "The Idle Shepherd Boys; or, Dungeon-Ghyll Force"). Borrowdale lies over the border in Cumberland and slopes the other way, toward ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... into a deep narrow ravine filled with tangled undergrowth that constantly threatened to tear Dermot from his seat. Indeed, only the continual employment of the latter's kukri, with which he hacked at the throttling creepers and clutching ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... obtain the slightest trace. They had nothing for it, day having dawned, but to return to their master, and inform him, that they had lost the whole flock of lambs, and knew not what was become of one of them. On our way home, however, we discovered a lot of lambs at the bottom of a deep ravine, and the indefatigable Sirrah standing in front of them, looking round for some relief, but still true to his charge. The sun was then up, and when we first came in view, we concluded that it was one of the divisions which Sirrah had been unable to manage until he came to that commanding ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... Prudhomme, about ten miles out of the town. The Europeans, consisting of thirteen men, one woman named Dorliat and her four children, set out the next morning, accompanied by Brahim and about forty of his men. On arriving in a ravine they were suddenly attacked by a large body of the rebels. Six of the party, who were in the rear, succeeded in escaping, but twelve of the men were massacred. Madame Dorliat, it is said, owed her life to a native named Abdallah at the saw-mills, who, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... the morning being foggy, Maw-hood mistook the Americans for Hessians; but soon discovering his error, he opened a heavy charge of artillery upon them, which threw their van into disorder. One of the regiments now rushed forward with fixed bayonets, and drove the Americans back to a ravine, which separated them from the rear; and in this attack General Mercer who was attempting to rally the rabble rout, was mortally wounded. Washington came up with the rear, and succeeded in getting ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... we turned back to the divide between the Frio and San Miguel. Here there grew among the hills many Guajio thickets, and from the first one we beat, the hounds opened on a hot trail in splendid chorus. The pack led us through thickets for over a mile, when they suddenly turned down a ravine, heading for the river. With the ground ill splendid condition for trailing, the dogs in full cry, the quarry sought every shelter possible; but within an hour of striking the scent, the pack came to bay in the encinal. On coming up with the hounds, we found the animal was a large catamount. ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... Brandolaccio, "I must carry you. Come, sir, a little courage! We shall have time to slip away by the ravine. The Signor Padre ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... now protected by an exceedingly deep ravine, which was a watercourse cut by the torrents from the mountain. I accordingly took a party of the "Forty Thieves," and following along the edge of the ravine, ascended the slope that led to the stockades upon the heights. Great numbers of ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... Mountain, some four miles from Enniskillen, there is one of these circles; a ring of huge stone boulders with equal spaces between stone and stone. A four-fold avenue of great blocks stretches away from it along the shoulder of the hill, ending quite abruptly at the edge of a ravine, the steep channel of a torrent. It looks as if the river, gradually undermining the hillside, had cut the avenue in halves, so that the ravine seems later in date than the stones. But that we cannot be quite sure of. This, however, we do ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... lad urged her; "this is a job for one man." But the girl would not listen, and so the two stole along the edge of the ravine hiding themselves as ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... low crest which, for the moment, hid them from their pursuers. The ambush was so quickly arranged that, two minutes later when these appeared, they saw nothing of it and heard only a rush of horses' hoofs in the ravine below. ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... assumes a bluer tint as it comes to reflect more of the cloudless heavens, and at length its tiny waves die away on a bed of violets, as closely netted together as the sand upon the shore. If you disembark from the boat, you find in the cleft of a neighbouring ravine a fountain of living water, which gushes beneath a narrow path formed by the goats, which leads up from this sequestered solitude, amidst overshadowing fig-trees and oleanders, to the cultivated abodes of man. Few scenes struck me so much in my long ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... this or more characteristic in the glorious ride over the Sierras—not even the lake, above whose green shores we rushed with half a mountain between us; nor the ice-gorges, nor the black forests, nor the chaos of rock and ravine that has defied the humanizing touch of time. I felt the burden of the mountains then, and it is for ever associated with a memory of the high Sierras, caught and fixed as we swept onward into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... here lies through a ravine cut by the Mohawk River through a spur of the Adirondack Mts. The town is picturesquely situated on the sides of the gorge overlooking the rapids and falls. The Mohawk here descends ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... now more anxious than ever to reach the summit of the butte. There was a flock of wild sheep upon it, and from these they hoped to replenish their larder. As they proceeded, every crevice or ravine that seemed to lead up the cliff was carefully examined; but upon all its southern front no practicable path ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... openings descended a deep ravine, widening as it issued on the prairie. We entered it, and galloping up, in a moment were surrounded by the bleak sand-hills. Half of their steep sides were bare; the rest were scantily clothed with clumps of grass, and various ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... now in long curves, now in steep short dips, till I was aware of a glen opening towards the south. From long living in the wilds I have a kind of sense for landscape without the testimony of the eyes, and I knew where the ravine narrowed or widened though it ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... "A deep ravine, steep banks dominated by two declivities, lined with brambles and long rows of trees, hidden, drowned in milky vapor, clad in that misty robe which sometimes floats over valleys at break of day. At the extreme end of that thick and transparent ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... morning of Saturday the twenty-seventh of July, Dundee arrived at Blair Castle. There he learned that Mackay's troops were already in the ravine of Killiecrankie. It was necessary to come to a prompt decision. A council of war was held. The Saxon officers were generally against hazarding a battle. The Celtic chiefs were oL a different opinion. Glengarry and Lochiel ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... within its circuit the Cathedral of St. Sophia and the Palace of the Metropolitan, was in remote ages a Sclavonian Pantheon, sacred to the Russian Jupiter and other savage gods. The new town, separated from the old town by a deep ravine, stands on a broad platform which rises precipitously from the banks of the Dnieper. The walls are massive, the fort is strong, and the famous monastery, the first in rank in Russia, with its gilt and coloured domes, shines from out the shade of a deep wood. The third division, "the Town of ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... recreation at Chautauqua is the habit of impromptu eating in the open air. Every one invites you to go upon a picnic. You take a steamer to some point upon the lake, or take a trolley to a wild and deep ravine known by the somewhat unpoetic name of the Hog's Back; and then everybody sits around and eats sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, and considers the occasion a debauch. This formality resembles great good ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... the piazza they walked alongside a deep natural gorge which divided Fossato from the open country. This immense ravine was a fearsome place, with a sheer descent of many hundreds of feet; its jagged rocks were clothed with bushes and creepers, and clefts and the openings of caves could be seen amongst the greenery. The girls leaned ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... some elk meat to take with us, as our route would be mostly through the unsettled part of the country, and no provisions could likely be procured, so Mr. Bradford of New Orleans and myself took our mules and went down where the hills were low and the game plenty. We camped in a low ravine, staked out our mules and staid all night without a fire, believing that when we woke in the early morning some of the many herd of elk then in sight would be near us at daylight, and we could easily ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... ice; that he would pursue her, though she should pass the snows of the midland cliffs, or seek shelter in the caves of the eastern cannibals: that he would tear her from the embraces of the genius of the rocks, snatch her from the paws of Amarock, and rescue her from the ravine of Hafgufa." He concluded with a wish, that "whoever shall attempt to hinder his union with Ajut, might be buried without his bow, and that, in the land of souls, his skull might serve for no other use than to catch the droppings of the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... rejoiced to see her, for it had been several weeks since Grace had called, and she was eager to tell her of the great tree up in the ravine that had been blasted by the lightning, and about the beautiful little waterfall caused ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... hauled the steamer alongside again, and recommenced coaling. Called to see the ladies at the Admiral's after dinner, and walked through their quite extensive garden, winding up a ravine with a rapid little stream of water ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... horsemanship, sudden whirling, protecting the body by clinging to the side of the horse, and rapid movements in open and difficult ground, no trained cavalry in the world can equal them. On foot their ability to hide behind any obstruction, in ravine, along creeks, and under creek and river banks, and in fighting in the open plains or level ground, the faculty to disappear is beyond one's belief except he has experienced it. In skulking and sharpshooting they are adepts, but troops properly instructed are a match for them ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... complaining sweetness of his theme. The goldenrod has lighted the candles in the candelabra that skirt the borders of the wood, and the aster has already hung out her purple gown and her yellow laces upon the bushes that follow the windings of the steep ravine. Only six weeks to frost! Only six weeks to the time for the unbottling of the year's vintage and the exchange of tea for sparkling wine. Hasten forward, then, oh, days of radiant life and sparkling weather! We are tired of torrid waves and flies; of snakes, ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... the City of Swords sits in the mouth of a ravine so narrow that a wall no more than a hundred yards in length is sufficient to seal its southerly approach. Beneath this wall, to one side of the city gate, a river flows from the lake that is Kuttarpur's chiefest beauty. Within, a multitude of dwellings huddles, all interpenetrated ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... slope of mountain-side, and opposite the mouth of a deep ravine, hung the crude wooden buildings and costly machinery of a modern mine. Zigzagging up the heights, the road that led to it from the ramshackle town in the valley was dotted with groups of rough-coated men, all plodding steadily onward. Perched on "benches" and ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... than is necessary to achieve that desirable result. Three, four, five,—let us say, six years. Well, that is not an eternity! By the time we come back we shall both of us still be young. Come, then, my dearest Athenais, come, and make closer acquaintance with these imposing Pyrenees, every ravine of which is a landscape and every valley an Eden. To all these beauties, yours is missing; you shall be here, like Dian, the goddess of these noble forests. All our gentlefolk await you, admiring your picture on the sweetmeat-box. They ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... married the daughter of Sayri Tupac, was sent in pursuit of the Inca. His men found the road "narrow in the ascent, with forest on the right, and on the left a ravine of great depth." It was only a footpath, barely wide enough for two men to pass. Garcia, with customary Spanish bravery, marched at the head of his company. Suddenly out of the thick forest an Inca chieftain named Hualpa, ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... then agreed that Hughes should go and kill it for him. Hughes went out of the fort on the side that was farthest from the supposed turkey, and running along the river, went up a ravine and came in on the rear, where, as he expected, he saw an Indian, sitting on a chestnut stump, surrounded by sprouts, gobbling and watching to see if any one would come from the fort to kill the turkey. Hughes crept up and shot ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... will show you now such a covered position from which you are to attack the enemy," said Andreas Hofer, with impressive calmness. "Look there, to the left. Do you see the ravine leading into the mountains yonder? Well, we will now ascend the mountain-path rapidly, descend into the ravine, and ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... in the midst of the awnings and porticoes of the market-place. Bending over the chipped ewers and tubs full of sweet basil, clove pinks, and marigolds, I can just see a corner of the palace turret, and the vague ultramarine of the hills beyond. The house, whose back goes sharp down into the ravine, is a queer up-and-down black place, whitewashed rooms, hung with the Raphaels and Francias and Peruginos, whom mine host regularly carries to the chief inn whenever a stranger is expected; and surrounded ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... immediately perceived a ravine before me, and at a mile and a quarter from the first fall of the ground I crossed a chain of fine ponds in a valley, where we finally encamped on a fine stream flowing to the south-west over ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... weaver. So the next morning the seven weavers set out to go to the village where they could buy what they wanted. On the way they had to cross a ravine which lately had been full of water, but now was quite dry. The weavers, however, were accustomed to swim over this ravine; therefore, regardless of the fact that this time it was dry, they stripped, and, tying their clothes on their heads, they proceeded to swim across ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... the Pier the cliffs are imposing, on one of the highest points near the town being the Lookout. A hundred yards or so farther on is Little Durley Chine, beyond which is a considerable ravine known as Great Durley Chine, approached from the shore by Durley Cove. The larger combe consists of slopes of sand and gravel, with soft sand hummocks at the base; while on the western side and plateau is a mass of heather and gorse. Beyond ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... below, and ascended to the top of the rise, from which the shafts of our eyes went down upon the southern beach. But the Sea Queen was concealed from view by the abutment of hill which sloped outwards and formed an arm to a pleasant little ravine. From the top of this a stream bubbled out of the rock and fell downwards in a jet of silver. Legrand stooped to refresh himself with a draught preparatory to turning back, for it was not advisable that we should venture lower upon that side of the hills. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... happy threshold, he, Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize, Or red with spirted purple of the vats, Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk With Death and Morning on the silver horns, Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine, Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice, That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls To roll the torrent out of dusky doors: But follow; let the torrent dance thee down To find him in the valley; let the wild Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave The monstrous ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... For when the eyes are used to the darkness, the horror of the gloom was no longer like a solid thing, but moved into shades of darker and less dark, so that she saw where the rocks stood, and how they sank with edges that cut like swords down and ever down into the abysses; and how here a deep ravine was rent between them, and there were breaks and scars as though some one had caught the jagged points with wounded hand or foot, struggling up the perpendicular surface towards the little ray of light, like a tiny star which shone as on immeasurable ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... The next day we arrived before Constantine, and we had to defile before the enemy's guns. At one portion of the road, men and horses were tumbled over by their fire; the caisson that I was riding upon was upset by a ball, and thrown down the ravine, dragging the horses after it. I lay among the horses' legs—they kicking furiously; it was a miracle that my life ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... be only desired to cut off some particular springs, or to assist Nature in some ravine or basin, a deep drain here and there may be expedient; but when any considerable surface is to be drained, there can be no good work without a ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... natural feeling clinging to our mortal nature, and doubtless has its use. But I must not indulge it. The soldier is even less at liberty than other men to choose his own grave. The fosse of a beleaguered fortress, a shallow trench in a well-fought field, the ravine of a disputed mountain pass, the strand of some river to be crossed in the face of the enemy—all these have furnished, and will furnish graves for those who fall, and have the luck to find burial; the wolf and the vulture provide for the rest. We have a wide graveyard," he added, more cheerfully, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... the bluffs came close to the river, so there was considerable hill climbing to get along, the road in other places finding ample room in the bottom. Here we found a large camp of the Sioux Indians on the bank of a ravine, on both sides of which were some large cottonwood trees. Away up in the large limbs platforms had been made of poles, on which were laid the bodies of their dead, wrapped in blankets and fastened down to ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... long, low wail smote their ears, their hearts leaped into their throats. They were travelling along the edge of a black ravine. Halting, they stood with suspended breath, ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... brick or wood exists in Edinburgh; all are constructed of the excellent and lasting stone which the earth supplies almost close to their foundations. High and solid bridges of this material, with broad arches, connect the old town with the new, and cross the deep ravine of the Cowgate in the old town, at the bottom of which you see a street between prodigiously high buildings, swarming with the poorer population ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... suddenly, so suddenly that Pocahontas behind him could not stop quickly enough and fell against him and almost down into a ravine that lay beneath, but Nautauquas caught her ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... the Dyaks up some of the rivers. The poor creatures were so terrified that they left their houses, as in small-pox, and scarcely dared bury their dead. In one instance they paid a very strong man to carry the dead on his back to a steep hill, and throw them into the ravine at the bottom. The food enjoyed by the Dyaks, rotten fish and vegetables, no doubt inclined them to get cholera. The first time of its visitation was after a great fruit season when durian, that rich and luscious fruit, had been particularly abundant. A durian is somewhat ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... our claim I awoke one morning and saw a covered wagon with two oxen which had been unyoked and were grazing on the grass near a spring in a ravine below me. I soon discovered that a line had been drawn from the wagon to a clump of rocks, upon which were hung several articles of feminine apparel to dry. Women were so scarce in California at that time that this was sufficient to arouse the whole camp. The "Boys" ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... rose from the table, he glanced again toward Sokwenna's cabin. A solitary figure had climbed up out of the ravine and stood against the sun on the clough-top. Even at that distance, with the sun in his eyes, he knew ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... a wild ravine, gashing a mountain spur, and with here and there in its course abrupt descents. One of these is so deep and sheer that it might be ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... a little closer I'll point out the tree. See? Right down the ravine there? See the big limb swaying? That's the place. The old lady is carrying her joke too far. That's pretty close home. Stand right there, please. I won't let it ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... cliff here rises almost perpendicularly to a height of 350 feet, and one of the soldiers was heard to remark that going up there would be like going up the side of a house. No time was lost, and the ascent of the ravine was at once begun. The enemy had a line of sentinels all along the top of the cliff, and one of the sentries was stationed at the precise spot where the British would emerge on the summit. When those who were in the van of ascent ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... in the vicinity of Broxmouth House; Leslie with the Scots moving along the heights of Lammermuir, occupied[a] a position on the Doon Hill, about two miles to the south of the invaders; and the advanced posts of the armies were separated only by a ravine of the depth and breadth of about thirty feet. Cromwell was not ignorant of the danger of his situation; he had even thought of putting the infantry on board the fleet, and of attempting to escape with the cavalry by the only outlet, the high road to ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... away in a cloud of dust to one side of the road, whilst Moti nearly rolled off too, but clasped his steed valiantly by its ragged mane, and, dropping his staff, held on for dear life. Then fortunately the other rock broke away from his other leg and rolled thunderously down a neighbouring ravine. Meanwhile the advanced cavalry had barely time to draw to one side when Moti came dashing by, yelling bloodthirsty threats ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... of the Brigade sector, this being one of the rare occasions on which relief was carried out by daylight. The distribution was as follows: Right—"The Willows"—A Company (Capt. Vann); Centre "The Osiers"—B Company (Capt. Turner); Left—"The Ravine"—C Company (Capt. Piggford); Reserve—Bretencourt—D Company (Capt. Hill). Battalion Headquarters was in the "Sunken Road," just in front of Bretencourt, off "Engineer Street." Each Company had two platoons in the front line and two in support; a system which, besides ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... witnesses as samples of his sayings at other times, indicate his reasoning on this occasion: "Give a slave a pike and you make him a man. I would not give Sharps rifles to more than ten men in a hundred, and then only when they have learned to use them. A ravine is better than a plain. Woods and mountain-sides can be held by resolute men against ten times their force. Nat Turner, with fifty men, held Virginia five weeks; the same number, well organized and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... of six miles from Laon, the descent begins to the plain below, down the side of a deep ravine, beautifully clothed with woods and vineyards. On the other side of this ravine lies the plateau on which the battle of Craon was fought, whose level desolate surface seemed a fit theatre for the struggle that ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... immense bridge across a deep ravine I suddenly became acutely aware that the bridge was about to give way. In a terrible state of alarm I called out this fearful fact to my family. I burst into tears. I suffered agonies. My mother scolded me, and when we safely reached the other side of the ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... though once the old road from Altringham to Knutsford skirting the rich and sylvan domains of Dunham, and descending the hill that brings you to the bridge crossing the little river Bollin. With some difficulty we penetrated this ravine. It is just the place for an adventure of the kind. A small brook wells through it; and the steep banks are overhung with timber, and were, when we last visited the place, in April, 1834, a perfect nest of primroses and wild flowers. Hough (pronounced Hoo) Green lies about three miles ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... groping through wild defiles and rugged valleys, following the guidance of a frightened peasant who was strapped by the wrist to Black Simon's stirrup-leather. With the early dawn they found themselves in a black ravine, with others sloping away from it on either side, and the bare brown crags rising in long bleak terraces ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Faubourg d'Isle, to which that general had now advanced, was a narrow pass or defile, between steep and closely hanging hills. While advancing through this ravine in the morning, the Constable had observed that the enemy might have it in their power to intercept his return at that point. He had therefore left the Rhinegrave, with his company of mounted carabineers, to guard the passage. Being ready to commence his retreat, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... reconnoitred the position. Its strength is as great as that of the vale of Tempe, although it wants the lovely meadows and groves of trees for which the latter is celebrated. The river Apsus runs in a deep ravine between vast and lofty mountains, like the Peneus in appearance and swiftness, and beside it, at the foot of the mountains, runs one narrow and rocky path, along which it is difficult for an army to proceed even if unmolested, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... siege of Knoxville Private William Oakes was down in a ravine near the teams. A bullet fired from the rebel lines came over and passed through his head just above the tongue, carrying away two or three of his teeth. He was in a hospital a short distance away, and the next day after he was wounded I went to see him. I found him with his cheeks swollen ...
— Campaign of Battery D, First Rhode Island light artillery. • Ezra Knight Parker
... early thaw in the stream, while the bore was being equipped with a five-foot flume. You all know what that means, hundreds of miles from navigation or a main traveled road. To get that necessary lumber, he felled trees in a spruce grove up the ravine; every board was hewn by hand. And about two-thirds of those sluice-boxes, the bottoms fitted with riffles, were finished. Afterwards, at that camp where he stopped for dogs, I learned that aside from a few days at long intervals, when the two miners had exchanged their ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... Lasse!" he cried woefully; and at the same moment he was caught by brambles, and sank slowly down through their interwoven runners, which struck their myriad claws into him and reluctantly let him pass, until he was cautiously deposited, deep down among the sharp stones at the bottom of a ravine, shuddering and thanking his stars for all the thorns that had mercifully flayed his hide in order that he should not split his skull. Then he must needs grope forward, through the darkness and running water, until he found a tree and was able to ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Maewo ghost has done chuckling at the folly of his surviving relatives, who sorrow as those who have no hope, he turns his back on his old home and runs along the line of hills till he comes to a place where there are two rocks with a deep ravine between them. He leaps the chasm, and if he lands on the further side, he is dead indeed; but if he falls short, he returns to life. At the land's end, where the mountains descend into the sea, all the ghosts of the dead are gathered ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... while to mention, in this place, that the banks of the river Eden, about Corby, are well worthy of notice, both on account of their natural beauty, and the viaducts which have recently been carried over the bed of the river, and over a neighbouring ravine. In the Church of Wetherby, close by, is a fine piece of monumental sculpture by Nollekens. The scenes of Nunnery, upon the Eden, or rather that part of them which is upon Croglin, a mountain stream there falling into the Eden, are, in their way, unrivalled. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... a hardy, robust, sinewy frame, and keen piercing hazel eyes, that glanced with quickness at every object as they passed on, now cast forward in the direction they were travelling, for signs of an old trail, and in the next moment directed askance into the dense forest or the deep ravine, as if watching some concealed enemy. The reader will recognise in this man, the pioneer Boone at the ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... a companion who should also be a guide, and turned my steps to the only promising place in the vicinity, a deep ravine, through which ran a little stream that was called a river, and dignified with a river's name, yet rippled and babbled, and conducted itself precisely like ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... the ranges, I started ahead on foot, leaving Brown and Harding to come on gently, while I was to make a signal by fires if successful in finding water. Two hours' heavy toil through the sand, under a broiling sun, brought me to the ranges, where I continued to hunt up one ravine after another until 5 p.m. without success. Twelve hours' almost incessant walking, on a scanty breakfast and without water, with the thermometer over a hundred degrees of Fahrenheit, began to tell upon me severely; so much so that by the time I had tracked up my companions (who had ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... tired;—for, though healthy, I have not the strength I possessed but a few years ago. At Montbovon we breakfasted; afterwards, on a steep ascent, dismounted; tumbled down; cut a finger open; the baggage also got loose and fell down a ravine, till stopped by a large tree; recovered baggage; horse tired and drooping; mounted mule. At the approach of the summit of Dent Jument[1] dismounted again with Hobhouse and all the party. Arrived at a lake in the very bosom of the mountains; left our quadrupeds ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... higher, and in a narrow ravine among the rocks a perfect chasm, into which they descended till the sides almost shut out the light of day, so closely did they approach above their heads, Mark, who was in advance, made a find of a deposit of a ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... ineffectual attempts to determine where he had seen them. He turned to his guide to ask who they were, but before he could speak the stranger of the portrait placed his fingers on his lips, as if to require silence. The two persons advanced until they reached a small brook that babbled down a ravine, and fell into the river. Suddenly something glittered in the air; the figures vanished; and upon looking at the brook Holden beheld, to his horror, that it was red like blood. He turned in amazement to his guide, who made no reply ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... position which the rebel had chosen for himself. About five miles from McIntosh's stand two bluffs, about five hundred yards apart, thickly wooded on the top. Between these bluffs is a level open prairie that extends backward about a thousand yards, across which there runs a deep ravine, thickly timbered ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... gradually conducted, we reached a mountain valley at a high level above the sea, closed at the opposite end by the main ridge of the Col di Tende. Here the chief ascent commences, in a regular zigzag up a jutting shoulder of the mountain. The road is wide and good, and free from ravine or precipice; but from its continual turns, (of which I counted not less than sixty-five) is difficult and embarrassing to any but a crane-necked carriage; though in no place could an overturn produce worse consequence than a roll of a few yards. The distance may be abridged on ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... were discussing that, weren't we? I've a rotten memory; but my oldest brother, Tommy, can't even remember his middle initial. Pretty good that, don't you think; Tommy is a perfect ass in every respect." And idly considering Tommy's perfection as an ass, he turned and gazed down into the ravine where Courtney had built some attractive little waterfalls and cave paths. "About how deep should you say ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... spring floods. In the bosom of the hill several springs unite their sources to give birth to a petty rivulet that hurries down the steep to be lost in the river. Its cradle lies in the bed of a broad ravine, forty or fifty feet deep, that rises in the hill-side, and, crossing the whole of the second bottom, debouches on the first, where the waters whose current it so far guides, trickle oozily down through a swampy bed. Great trees ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the din, Though sharing in another fray— Till all became an Indian fight, Intricate, dusky, stretching far away, Yet not without spontaneous plan However tangled showed the plight; Duels all over 'tween man and man, Duels on cliff-side, and down in ravine, Duels at long range, and bone to bone; Duels every where flitting and half unseen. Only by courage good as their own, And strength outlasting theirs, Did our boys at last drive the rebels off. Yet they went not back to their distant lairs In strong-hold, but loud in ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... devilish horse to ride; and I love it! I've climbed all over the Gilded Dome and Lynx Peak after the biggest and shaggiest boar you ever saw. Oh, Duane! I came on him just at the edge of evening, and he winded me and went thundering down the Westgate ravine, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... their Catholic Calvaries and expiation chapels, where Strindberg lived with his parents-in-law in Mondsee and with his wife's grandparents in Dornach and the neighbouring village Klam, with its mill, its smithy, and its gloomy ravine. The Rose Room was the name he gave to the room in which he lived during his stay with his mother-in-law and his daughter Kerstin in Klam in the autumn of 1896, as he has himself related in one of his autobiographical books Inferno. ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... Garth searched from side to side, as well as he could in the darkness, for a suitable spot to make a stand. High above the level of the river, a huge cube of rock resting squarely in the bottom of the ravine, and forcing the stream to travel around it, offered what he wanted. One side of the boulder lay against a steep rocky wall; and in the angle was a secure ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the mountain spirit to throw itself into continual succession of bold slope and dale; elevated, also, just far enough above the sea to render the pine a frequent forest tree along its irregular ridges. Through this elevated tract the river cuts its way in a ravine some five or six hundred feet in depth, which winds for leagues between the gentle hills, unthought of until its edge is approached; and then, suddenly, through the boughs of the firs, the eye perceives, ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... all but the towering hills. Another toils up a steep hillside from the sluggish creek. Another slouches along a vague, unmade trail. Yet another scrambles his way through a low, dense-growing scrub which lines the sides of a vast ravine, the favored locality of ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... three windows opening on to a terrace, below which lay a charming garden. On this side of the house the wood ended abruptly; but in the distance, beyond a rose arch, Malcolm caught sight of a little rustic bridge which seemed to span a sort of green ravine. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... A woman was going through a wild glen in Strath Carron, in Sutherland—the Glen Garaig—carrying her infant child wrapped in her plaid. Below the path, overhung with trees, ran a very deep ravine, called Glen Odhar, or the dun glen. The child, not a year ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... cannonade, but the Mexican column was overthrown and the entire force fell back to Resaca de la Palma. The Americans took up their march to Fort Brown. When within three miles of the fort they encountered the Mexicans, strongly posted in Resaca de la Palma, a ravine three hundred feet wide bordered with palmetto trees. Taylor deployed a portion of his force as skirmishers, and a company of dragoons overrode the first Mexican battery. The Americans then advanced their battery to the crest. A regiment charged in column, and, joined by the skirmishers, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... haole: only one white woman, and she a resident of Hawaii, having been seen in Waimanu before. I am really alone, miles of mountain and gulch lie between me and the nearest whites. This is a wonderful place: a ravine about three miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide, without an obvious means of ingress, being walled in by precipices from 2000 to 4000 feet high. Five cascades dive from the palis at its head, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... valleys of Ionian hills. The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen, Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine In cataract after cataract to the sea. Behind the valley topmost Gargarus [2] Stands up and takes the morning: but in front The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal Troas and Ilion's column'd citadel, The crown ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson |
