"Cataract" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... falling, still in your car, with the descending cataract. Over and over you are turned in the seething waters, dashed against rocks, hurled through ravines, and finally you are given a sheer drop down a perpendicular waterfall of three hundred feet. Out of the white foam formed in the bed of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 - 1917 Almanack • Various
... years, with various adventures, among which is the one wherein he is said to have accompanied Arthur Gordon Pym (disguised in the published account of that voyage under the name and appearance of one Peters) upon his fearful South-Sea sail towards that vapory cataract at the world's end which was seen "rolling silently into the sea from some immense and far-distant rampart of the heaven," from the horrors of which he escaped in the same miraculous manner that Mr. Pym did. ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of yearning thought And aspiration, to do nought Is in itself almost an act,— Being chasm-fire and cataract Of the soul's utter depths unseal'd. Yet woe to thee if once thou yield Unto the act ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... in Quadri's window, though the former supply dainty food, and the latter command a bird's-eye view of the Piazza. Rather would I lead them to a certain humble tavern on the Zattere. It is a quaint, low-built, unpretending little place, near a bridge, with a garden hard by which sends a cataract of honeysuckles sunward over a too-jealous wall. In front lies a Mediterranean steamer, which all day long has been discharging cargo. Gazing westward up Giudecca, masts and funnels bar the sunset and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... would work, and to catch her in the act miraculous. But here, unhappily, the Devil, who never sleeps, had laid a snare for this lamb of God, had belched forth this devouring monster of a she-dragon, this mixture of maniac and demoniac, to swallow him up, to overwhelm him in a cataract of slander." ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... resolution to come back to us after the shock of grounding. On the weather side the seas struck and curled over the brig with a noise like thunder, and the force of countless tons. They came over the top of the deck-house in a cataract of solid water, and there was a crash, crash, crash of rending wood, as plank after plank gave way before that stern assault. We could feel the deck-house itself quiver, and shake again as we stood with our backs against it, and at last ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... amazon princess was a magnificent sight as they looked on her. Her oars flew in a flashing rhythm. The foam leaped in a cataract over her ram. The sun made fire of the tossing weapons on her prow. A yell of triumph rose from the Phoenicians. On the Nausicaae men dropped sword and spear, moaned, raved, and gazed wildly on Themistocles as if ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... fern its fragrant plumage droops O'er mosses, crisp and gray, Where on the shaded crags I sit, Beside the cataract's spray, And watch the far-off, shining sails Go down the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... the waters within, retained by the embankment, poured through its two points an impetuous cataract, curling and boiling in innumerable eddies, and making a tumultuous melody admirably in unison with the surrounding scene. The three philosophers looked on in silence; and at length unwillingly turned away, and proceeded ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... and frighten one with their enormous aquatic insurrections. There is the Trophonius' cave in which, by some artifice, the leaden Tritons are made not only to spout water, but to play the most dreadful groans out of their lead conchs—there is the nymphbath and the Niagara cataract, which the people of the neighbourhood admire beyond expression, when they come to the yearly fair at the opening of the Chamber, or to the fetes with which the happy little nation still celebrates the birthdays and marriage-days of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to St. Ann's, within two miles of the western extremity of the island of Montreal. At the rapid of St. Ann, the navigators are obliged to take out part, if not the whole of the lading; and to replace it when they have passed the cataract. The Lake of the two Mountains, which they next reach, is about twenty miles long, but not more than three miles wide, and is, nearly surrounded ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... on castle walls The snowy summits old in story; The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... glorious valley, bowl-shaped, green with grass and groves of aspen and fir, and flooded with a cataract of sunshine. All about it ran a rim of lofty summits, purple in shadow, garnet and gold and green in the sun. Here and there a prospect-hole showed like a scar, or a gray, dismantled stamp-mill stood like a disintegrating bowlder ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... pilot would bring the bows of the canoe to stem the rapid. A long, a vigorous, and, as it appeared to the females, a desperate effort, closed the struggle. Just as Alice veiled her eyes in horror, under the impression that they were about to be swept within the vortex at the foot of the cataract, the canoe floated, stationary, at the side of a flat rock, that lay on a level ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... mountain villages like one in Castile or La Mancha but for the trees, mountains that made him exclaim: "I have had Heaven opened to me," moors of a "wretched russet colour," "black gloomy narrow glens." He can also be precise and connoisseur-like, as when he describes the cataract at ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... discovering the treasure and the skeletons of the pirates in the cave near the Cataract, that we heard the doleful sound of some bird while going ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... native boats such as the Makalanga owned and used for fishing, or to cross from bank to bank. Apparently it was impossible, for although the river beneath and above them was still enough, about a mile below began a cataract that stretched as far as she could see, and was bordered on either side by rocky hills covered with forest, over which, even if they could obtain porters, a canoe could not be carried. This, indeed, she had already heard from the Molimo, ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... the Director visited the Supai Indians of Cataract Canyon, and was informed by them that their present home had been taken up not many generations ago, and that their ancestors occupied the ruins which have been described; and they gave such a circumstantial account of the ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... continuous day's journey from Boston, we reach Niagara late at night. The best view of the falls, which form the grandest cataract on the globe, is to be enjoyed from the Canada side of the Niagara River. In the midst of the falls is Goat Island, dividing them into two unequal parts, one of which forms the American, and the other the Horse Shoe Fall, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... rises; the cataract seems to seize its own rhythm and sing it over again, so that the ear and soul are roused by a double vibration. This is some effect of the wind, causing echoes to the thundering anthem. It is very ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... world," she went on, as if she had followed a train of imagination through the triumph of the risen great man. "Rome, the ruler of nations humbled! Conquest from Germany to the First Cataract, from Gaul to the dry rocks of Ecbatana! A world in anarchy, for one greater than Alexander to subjugate! The ancient splendor of Asia, the wisdom of Africa and the virginity of Europe to be his, and the homage of the four corners of the ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... save the note of the boiling water in the iron kettle. The kettle sings well, for pieces of iron are so arranged in the bottom as to produce a peculiar melody in which one may hear the echoes of a cataract muffled by clouds, of a distant sea breaking among the rocks, a rainstorm sweeping through a bamboo forest, or of the soughing of pines on some ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... such a holder as this tiny, raft-like isle? And where else are just such delicate and, as I have said, light and almost feminine elegance and charm set in the midst of such severe sterility? Once, beyond Philae, the great Cataract roared down from the wastes of Nubia into the green fertility of Upper Egypt. It roars no longer. But still the masses of the rocks, and still the amber and the yellow sands, and still the iron-colored hills, keep guard round ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... dentist. "I remember—I remember. I ought to hear the Morning Star's stamps from here." He cocked his head. A low, sustained roar, like a distant cataract, came to his ears from across the river. "That's right," he said, contentedly. He crossed the river and regained the road beyond. The slope rose under his feet; a little farther on he passed the Morning Star mine, smoking and thundering. McTeague pushed ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... stern-wheeler, with a 30-inch draught and the lines of a flat-iron, started upon the 13th of February, in the year 1895, from Shellal, at the head of the first cataract, bound for Wady Haifa. I have a passenger card for the trip, which ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... the point of an arrow it cleaves through the air Yet the pinions of birds cannot follow it there. The bosom disowns it, yet bright through our tears, When shed in affection, it ever appears. The cataract fearfully hurries it on, But, search it through billows and tempest—'tis gone. From the joys of our mortal existence 'tis driven; Yet finds an unchanging asylum in heaven. With the harp of the minstrel it ever shall dwell And it comes to my lips ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... the feeling), swished the smaller shells from the French .75 and English 18-pounder batteries. They gave one the sensation of being under a swiftly rushing stream. The larger shells kept up a continuous shrieking overhead, falling on the enemy's trenches with the roar of a cataract, while every now and then a noise as of thunder sounded above all when our trench-mortar shells fell amongst the German wire, blowing it to bits, making holes like mine craters, and throwing dirt and even bits of metal into ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... with the storm until the rough edge was taken off, and then heave to. I cried, "All hands down!" as the gale struck us with the force of a thunderbolt, carrying a wall of white water with it which burst over us like a cataract. I thought we were swamped as I clung desperately to the tiller, though thrown violently against the boom. But after the shock, our brave little boat, though half filled, rose and shook herself like a spaniel. ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... In dislocation of the lens into the anterior chamber as the result of a blow, the lens appears like a large drop of oil lying at the back of the cornea, the margin exhibiting a brilliant yellow reflex. Partial dislocations of the lens as the result of severe blows generally terminate in cataract. ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... their favorite authors. Tom couldn't better show his liking for the lobster than by eating him. On the other hand, if he goes there and turns his back on the Candydike he'll miss the most wonderful sight in all creation, and that is the Nesselrode Cataract on the Soda Water river. It is located at the point where the Vanilla glacier comes down from the Cream mountains on the one side, and the famous Marrons orchards line the other bank for a distance of seven miles. It's a perfectly ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... winding between the rugged walls of the valley—but the ground was clear before him and calling up his lagging herd, he made on towards a sound of falling water ahead. It was a new sound to Alcatraz in that place, for he remembered no cataract in this gorge. But every water-course had been greatly changed since the rains began, and who could tell what ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... Sibu, who was father to the one, and grandfather to the other party. Sibu, however, had pronounced the same judgment as Thot, and divided the kingdom into halves—poshui; Sit retained the valley from the neighbourhood of Memphis to the first cataract, while Horus entered into possession of the Delta. Egypt henceforth consisted of two distinct kingdoms, of which one, that of the North, recognized Horus, the son of Isis, as its patron deity; and the other, that of the South, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... loosened now, and all this golden cataract of hair has rushed out over the piled pillows. It oppresses and terrifies me. If I could speak, it seems to me that I would ask Louise to come and bind it up. Won't ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... festival. It is a wonderful thing to hear a wind singing in myriads of their branches at once. The surging tones of this oratorio of nature resounded for miles along the deep indented ravines and the rocky slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains. Now and again the flow of a torrent or the dash of a cataract added fugue-like effects. The men were constantly impressed by these paeans of the forests; the tuft of violets abloom beneath a horse's hoofs might be crushed unnoticed, but the acoustic conditions of the air and the high floating of the tenuous white clouds against a dense blue sky, ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... way of protecting the eyes. Even when their eyes were in a normal condition, they nearly all had some defect of vision. Squinting was frequently to be noticed among them, and nearly invariably unevenness of the eyes. Cataract was common at a comparatively early age, and they knew no remedy for it. An abnormally marked discoloration of the upper part of the iris was constantly to be noticed even in young people. Among the healthiest ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... immediately, however. Yoritomo was placed originally under Sukechika's care, and during the latter's absence in Kyoto a liaison was established between his daughter and the Minamoto captive, with the result that a son was born. Sukechika, on his return, caused the child to be thrown into a cataract, married its mother to Ema Kotaro, and swore to have the life of his ward. But Yoritomo, warned of what was pending, effected his escape to Tokimasa's manor. It is recorded that on the way thither he prayed ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... region where the foundered imagination of Edgar Poe roamed at will. Like the fabulous Gordon Pym, at every moment I expected to see "that veiled human figure, of larger proportions than those of any inhabitant of the earth, thrown across the cataract which defends the approach to the pole." I estimated (though, perhaps, I may be mistaken)—I estimated this adventurous course of the Nautilus to have lasted fifteen or twenty days. And I know not how much longer it might have lasted, had ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... house close by Essouan, yet closer to the first cataract—so close, indeed, that the sound of the eternal battle waged there between river and rocks was of the place ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... high, tree-clad hill whose barren, rocky dome we had seen from afar. Now the waters of this lake flooded away through a great rent in the surrounding rocks betwixt which I might catch a glimpse of the distant sea; and beholding this rushing cataract I must needs fall a-wondering where so great a body of water should come from, and to ponder on the marvels of nature. And from this I got to considering how we might cross this stream, supposing we should explore the island. I was yet puzzling ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... four which stood back some little way from the street, two being occupied and two empty. The latter looked out with three tiers of vacant melancholy windows, which were blank and dreary, save that here and there a "To Let" card had developed like a cataract upon the bleared panes. A small garden sprinkled over with a scattered eruption of sickly plants separated each of these houses from the street, and was traversed by a narrow pathway, yellowish in colour, and consisting apparently of a mixture ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... peculiar odor is observed in the patient's breath and exhales from his body. The skin becomes harsh, dry, and scurfy. There are dizziness, headache, dejection, lassitude, and not unfrequently blindness, caused by cataract, is developed in one or both eyes. The intellect is blunted, and, as the disease progresses, the emaciation and debility increase, and pulmonary diseases develop; or, perhaps, an uncontrollable diarrhea sets in, and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... utterly stunned by the uproar of the wind among the trees on the other side of the valley. Sometimes, we would have it it was like a sea, but it was not various enough for that; and again, we thought it like the roar of a cataract, but it was too changeful for the cataract; and then we would decide, speaking in sleepy voices, that it could be compared with nothing but itself. My mind was entirely preoccupied by the noise. I hearkened to it by the hour, gapingly hearkened, and let my cigarette ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rivers. His very subsistence is snatched from the midst of toil and peril. He gains his food by the hardships and dangers of the chase: he wraps himself in the spoils of the bear, the panther, and the buffalo, and sleeps among the thunders of the cataract. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... the Island of Maui, where he had gone to bargain with the Sun, a storm arose. The angry waters roared about the mouth of Hina's cave. They hissed and tossed in ugly blackness down the narrow river gorge; but Hina heard naught of the wildness without. Being used to the noisy cataract, her slumbers were not disturbed by the heightened ...
— Legends of Wailuku • Charlotte Hapai
... of light the vanguard, and the pillar of cloud the rearguard of their mysterious progress, the ark and the God of the ark piloting and defending them.... You are like a presumptuous and unskilful traveller, passing under the arch of the waters of Niagara. The falling cataract thundering above you; a slippery, slimy rock beneath your gliding feet; the smoking, roaring abyss yawning beside you; the imprisoned winds beating back your breath; the struggling daylight coming but mistily to the bewildered eyes,—what is the terror of your condition ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... had her poultry-yard and conservatory, and Joshua his garden. Besides this, they enjoyed, doubtless, their devotional meditations; and, on the whole, time glided softly and imperceptibly on with them, though to me, who long for stream and cataract, it seemed absolutely to stand still. I meditated returning to Shepherd's Bush, and began to think, with some hankering, after little Benjie and the rod. The imp has ventured hither, and hovers about to catch a peep of me now and then; I suppose the little sharper ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... but Brahma forewarns him, that the unbroken descent of Ganga from heaven would be so overpowering, that the earth would be unable to sustain it, and Siva must be propitiated, in order that he may receive on his head the precipitous cataract. Under this wild and unwieldy allegory appears to lurk an obscure allusion to the course of the Ganges among the summits, and under the forests of the Himalaya, which are the ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... shall lose their honours. They have transgressed my laws and deserve death, but through the supplications of the people of Imerina their lives are spared. But their honours, I say, shall be thrown into the river and carried over the cataract of Ifarahantsana, for they are trying to change the customs of our ancestors. Of some, half the honours shall be thrown into the river. Of others, one-third of their honours shall be thrown in, and some shall lose all their honours; the ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... Western giant smiles, And twirls the spotty globe to find it;— This little speck the British Isles? 'Tis but a freckle,—never mind it!— He laughs, and all his prairies roll, Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles, And ridges stretched from pole to pole Heave till ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... a gale; for if the vessel get into the trough of the sea, and is met in that situation by a wave of unusual magnitude, she runs the double risk of being thrown on her beam-ends, and of having her decks cleared of everything, by the cataract of water that washes athwart them. Landsmen entertain little notion of the power of the waters, when driven before a tempest, and are often surprised, in reading of naval catastrophes, at the description of the injuries done. But experience ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... he knew so much through long, bitter experience. Familiar to all of us, perhaps, is the thrilling word picture of the young men who launched their rowboat upon the quiet, smooth waters of the broad Niagara river a few miles above the mighty cataract. [Draw the boat and the young men, completing Fig. 96. It might be well to prepare this first scene ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... get some idea of the fear which they inspired throughout Egypt when we read of the great national rejoicing which followed the triumph of Usertesen III (c. 2660-22) over these hordes. He drove them back and attempted to confine them to the edge of the Nubian Desert above the Second Cataract. Hemmed in here, they set up a state about this time ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... A fine steam-barge, which would greatly have facilitated the passage of all kinds of merchandise, had most disastrously slipped its moorings during one stormy night of last wet season, and had not since been seen, the presumption being that the relentless stream had carried it to the mighty cataract, which, like a huge ogre, had engulfed it for all time. But this disaster had not caused anything like consternation among the small community to whom it meant so much, and the thought occurred to one how ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... to it from the neighboring Taurus Mountains, on the snowy peaks of which the inhabitants of the town were wont, on summer evenings, to watch from the flat roofs of their houses the glow of the sunset. Not far above the town the river poured over the rocks in a vast cataract, but below this it became navigable, and within the town its banks were lined with wharves, on which was piled the merchandise of many countries, while sailors and merchants, dressed in the costumes and speaking the languages of different races, were constantly to be seen in the streets. ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... Fleece, just forward of the fore rigging. So tremendous was the shock that every individual who happened at the moment to be on his, or her, feet on board the sailing ship was thrown to the deck; while, as for the ship herself, she was heeled over by it until the water poured like a cataract in over her starboard topgallant rail; there was a horrid crunching sound as the ponderous iron bows of the steamer irresistibly clove their way through the wooden side and decks of the ship; a loud twanging aloft told of severed rigging; there was a terrifying crash of breaking ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... his protracted voyage, 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 strand beneath, the Chateau St. Louis perched at the brink of the cliff, and over it the white banner, spangled with ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... barrel. He wore no beard, but a short-clipped military moustache, and smoked cigars. As he was always too hot, he used all the year round to wear a canvas coat at home and at the warehouse. He had lately had an operation for cataract. His sight was bad, and he did nothing in the business but talk to the customers and have tea ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... there to take a longer rest than usual, after a very trying case, and told me that she was in great distress. A friend of hers, who had been her predecessor, and was now the Matron of an Orphan Asylum in New York State, was going to the hospital to have a cataract removed from her eye, and had written to ask her to come and take her place while she was away. She begged me to replace her at the Friendly Society while she was gone. As her assistant was a capable young woman, and my relations with every ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... followed Sir George into Dorothy's room. Madge was dressed for the day, and Dorothy, who had been helping her, was making her own toilet. Her hair hung loose and fell like a cataract of sunshine over her bare shoulders. But no words that I can write would give you a conception of her wondrous beauty, and I shall not waste them in the attempt. When we entered the room she was standing at the mirror. She turned, comb in hand, toward ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... went on, the reef-belt still accompanied us; turning as we turned, and thundering its distant bass upon the ear, like the unbroken roar of a cataract. Dashing forever against their coral rampart, the breakers looked, in the distance, like a line of rearing white chargers, reined in, tossing their white manes, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... yawning canyon through which the dark Saguenay rushed down from the north; he had gazed upon the blue sky-line of the Laurentian mountains; in the caravel of De Chastes the surging tide had carried him past the Isle of Bacchus and the milky cataract ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... powers! shear that mane that had been growing for years!—that cataract of hair that has been, so to speak, my oriflamme; the only physical belonging of which I ever was proud, the only thing, so far as I know, that I have ever been envied! For the moment the suggestion knocked me all of a heap. There came into my head some ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... you must pay me a little more attention," expostulates the teacher. "What does the operation for cataract resemble in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Island of Elephantine, in the Nile, near Assouan (Syene) is styled in hieroglyphical writing "The Land of the Elephant;" but as it is a mere rock, it probably owes its designation to its form. See Sir GARDNER WILKINSON'S Ancient Egyptians, vol. i. pl. iv.; vol. v. p. 176. Above the first cataract of the Nile are two small islands, each bearing the name of Phylae;—quaere, is the derivation of this word at all connected with the Arabic term fil? See ante, p. 76, note. The elephant figured in the sculptures of Nineveh is ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... crying somewhere, and of Dave on the landing above, shouting:—"Oy say, oy say!" more, Miss Grahame thought, as a small boy excited than one afraid; and then, light through the dust-cloud. For Uncle Mo, with a giant's force, had released the jammed door, and a cataract of brick rubbish, falling inwards, left a gleam of clear sky to show Gwen, beckoning them up, none the less beautiful for the tension of the moment, and the traces of a ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... considerable height. The ridge was of the same decomposing granite already mentioned, and the water had worked the surface, in many places, into a wavy surface of ridges and holes. We ascended the rocks to reconnoitre the ground, and from the summit the passage appeared to be a continued cataract, foaming over many obstructions, and broken by a number of small falls. We saw nowhere a fall answering to that which had been described to us as having twenty or twenty-five feet; but still concluded this to be the place in question, as, in the season of floods, ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... clove the rock and sifted the soil, and chained the cataract, but their law was force and cunning, and the only tie they recognized was a partnership in gain. What civilization or true citizenship could there be in a society in which the family circle and its kindred outgrowth—the school and the church—were unknown! The denizens of that mountain ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... worn, as with eternal tears,—these traces, so evident of ancient and vast desolations,—suggest the idea of boundless power and inexorable will, before whose course the most vehement of human feelings are as the fine spray of the cataract. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... interested in hearing this account of the Fall of Alpbach,—for that was the name of this unmanageable cataract,—and expressed a very strong desire to go to Meyringen and ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... quick-coming onset of death; no more dread of what may be than there is when the hamlet, with its little roofs and tall trees, is folded in the arms of the night, as the sunset dies behind the hill. Beauty may be a terrible thing, as in the sheeted cataract, with all its boiling eddies, or in the falling of the lightning from the womb of the cloud. There is desolation behind that, gigantic movement, ruthless force; but charm comes like a signal of security and good-will, and even its inevitable end is lit with something of mercy ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... controller of the distribution of trees, I stopped to watch it and learn what I could of its works and ways with the giants. It came racing up the steep chaparral-covered slopes of the East Fork canon with passionate enthusiasm in a broad cataract of flames, now bending down low to feed on the green bushes, devouring acres of them at a breath, now towering high in the air as if looking abroad to choose a way, then stooping to feed again,—the lurid flapping surges and the smoke and terrible ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... in him called out greeting to the savage in nature. It is not music, or fine talk, or artificial wonders that waken a thrill deep down in the Indian soul, it is the great mountain, the vast plain, the roaring cataract! And so ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... a miniature cataract adds its tiny roar to the many "breathings of the night;" at Molly's feet lie ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... his mountain home by taking upon him his favorite form of a salmon, and lying listlessly, beneath the waters of the great Fanander Cataract, which fell from the shelving rocks a thousand feet above him. One day while thus lying, he bethought himself of former days, when he walked the glad young earth in company with the All-Father. And among other things he remembered how he had once borrowed the magic net ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... Punch supported her to such good effect that she kept up with the others very well on their march into the water towards the fall. All, except the pirates, shivered as the cold water came again around their knees, and they looked with fear upon the tumbling cataract which they were required to go under. There was no help for it, however; the seven pirates surrounded them and persuaded them to go on. They stood in a forlorn group in the quiet water near the foot of ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... Langewachte Spruit was commanded by strong entrenchments, I reconnoitred for another passage of the Tugela. One was found for me below the cataract by ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... long days in the open. He can walk—or hoe corn on an almost perpendicular corn patch—from daylight till dark. He is patient and is never in a hurry. Time means nothing to him. Down in the Unakas a mountaineer once had a cataract removed from the right eye. The surgeon told him to return in a couple months when it would be safe to operate upon the other eye. Twenty years elapsed before the fellow returned to the doctor's office; when he was chided for the delay he answered ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... its progress is apt to be rapid. The complications of the disease are many and serious. It may cause impaired vision by weakening the muscles of accommodation, or by lessening the sensitiveness of the retina to light. Also cataract is very common. Skin affections of all kinds may occur and prove very intractable. Boils, carbuncles, cellulitis and gangrene are all apt to occur as life advances, though gangrene is much more frequent in men than in women. Diabetics are especially liable ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... first cataract, from the deepest recess in the Arabian hills to the remotest peak in the Libyan desert, Egypt was blinded and muffled and smothered in a dead, black night—even darkness that could ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... particular, from which she had at first shrunk with terror, became by degrees her favourite haunt. A path turning and returning at acute angles, led down a steep wood-covered slope to the edge of a chasm, where a pool, or resting-place of a torrent, lay far below. A cataract fell in a single sheet into the pool; the pool boiled and bubbled at the base of the fall, but through the greater part of its extent, lay calm, deep, and black, as if the cataract had plunged through it to an unimaginable depth, without disturbing its eternal repose. At the opposite extremity ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... quiet me, but you can't quiet me. I am like the surging cataract, which, suppressed in one place bursts out again with more fury in another. I have suffered too much to be tamed down by soft and gilded promises. No, Robert D'Alton, you have started the mighty avalanche and it is too late now to ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... days gone by. She knew the Cause so well—had it not suckled her and reared her?—with all the depth of the nature that her lightness of manner only veiled as the frothy spray of the flooded Barron veils the swell of the cataract beneath, with all the capacity for understanding that made her easily the equal of brilliant men. It was a Moloch, a Juggernaut, a Kronos that devoured its own children, a madness driving men to fill with their hopes and lives the chasm that lies between what is and what should ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... "The view of it from Coleman Heights, with its neat cottages, its maple groves, and apple orchards, is remarkably beautiful," writes one appreciative author. The "wide-spreading pond," the "mill," the "dairy-house," the "rock where the cataract fell," and even the "old well," if not the original "moss-covered bucket" itself, may still be seen just as ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... streaming from all quarters of the horizon towards the island. The noise was incessant and most tiresome. On walking rapidly into the centre of the island, countless myriads of birds rose shrieking on every side, so that the clangour was absolutely deafening, "like the roar of some great cataract." The voyagers could see no traces of natives, nor of any other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... limits, it is practicable to obtain perfectly distinct vision under water by pressing the spectacles forwards or backwards to a moderate degree. Lenses of these high magnifying powers are sometimes sold by spectacle-makers, for persons who have undergone an operation for cataract. I have tried, but hitherto without much success, to arrange the fittings by which the lenses are secured so that by a movement of the jaw or by an elevation of the eyebrows, I could give the necessary adjustment of the glasses, leaving my hands free for the ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... the old gunlock,—flint and steel,—on a large scale but the order and majesty of it are sublime. Still, we sculptors and painters care little about it. "It is very fine," we say, "and very useful, this knocking the light out of the sun, or into it, by an eternal cataract of planets. But you may hail away, so, forever, and you will not knock out what we can. Here is a bit of silver, not the size of half-a-crown, on which, with a single hammer stroke, one of us, two thousand ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... The cataract of Tequendama, although not the largest in the world, yet affords a very beautiful sight. When swollen by the addition of all the waters of the valley, the river, a little above the Falls, is 175 feet wide, but on entering the defile which appears to have been ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... tumbling like a swollen river, bearing along in its current large rocks that made the lava foam as it dashed down the precipice and through the valley into the sea, surging and roaring throughout its length like a cataract, with a power and fury perfectly indescribable. It was nothing else than a river of fire from 200 to 800 feet wide and twenty deep, with a speed varying from ten to twenty-five miles an hour. From the scene of these fire fountains, whose united length ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... not a little that was much worse. A young fellow of two or three and twenty has as good a right to spoil a magazine-full of essays in learning how to write, as an oculist like Wenzel had to spoil his hat-full of eyes in learning how to operate for cataract, or an ELEGANT like Brummel to point to an armful of failures in the attempt to achieve a perfect tie. This son of mine, whom I have not seen for these twenty-five years, generously counted, was a self-willed youth, always ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... false and counterfeit peace in which so many are content to live, and content to die! The world's peace is all well, so long as prosperity lasts—so long as the stream runs smooth, and the sky is clear; but when the cataract is at hand, or the storm is gathering, where is it? It is gone! There is no calculating on its permanency. Often when the cup is fullest, there is the trembling apprehension that in one brief moment it may be ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... Cathuria, but a swift-rushing resistless sea, over which our helpless barque was borne toward some unknown goal. Soon to our ears came the distant thunder of falling waters, and to our eyes appeared on the far horizon ahead the titanic spray of a monstrous cataract, wherein the oceans of the world drop down to abysmal nothingness. Then did the bearded man say to me with tears on his cheek, "We have rejected the beautiful Land of Sona-Nyl, which we may never behold again. The gods are greater than men, and they have conquered." And I closed my eyes before ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... whole material world was under the influence of innumerable mysterious {126} powers. In the stirring of the leaves, in the glint of the sunbeam amid the foliage, in the shadow on his path, in the flash of the lightning, in the crash of the thunder, in the roar of the cataract, in the colours of the rainbow, in the very beat of his pulse, in the leap of the fish, in the flight of the birds, he saw some supernatural power to be evoked. The Indian companions of Champlain, we remember, threw tobacco to the genius or Manitou of the great fall ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... splintered bulks the decks were strewn anon, While the rigging, torn and tangled, hung the shattered yards upon; Like a cataract of fire outpoured the steady cannonade, Till the strongest almost wavered and the bravest were dismayed. Like an endless swarm of locusts sprang they up our vessel's side, And scaled her burning bulwarks or fell backward in the tide, 'Twas a fearful day of carnage, such as ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... rocks and spreading out into its deep and beautiful pools, and where once stood the widow Casey's little house,—which was built on the side of a bank, so that the Caseys went into the second story when they entered by the front,—now leaped a beautiful cataract over that very bank, scattering its spray upon the trunks of the two big chestnuts, one of which used to stand by the side of Mrs. Casey's house, and the other at ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... intelligences which sit upon her horns, plotting mischief to mortals, by liberal gifts of petun, or collars of beads, or ears of maize, or skins of animals. When their feet stood upon the edge of the mighty cataract, then was the most valued dog precipitated, then was the most valued drink poured into the overwhelming torrent, to appease the angry spirit of the abyss. And thus, performing their duties to the Great Master and their fellow-creatures, lived the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... at the head of Holmes's Fall, a splendid ravine down which the river rushes in two foaming leaps. Here in the gray of the morning we lugged our canoes and our camp-kit around the cataract, and then launched away for the end of our voyage. It was full of variety, for the river was now cutting its course through a series of ridges, and every mile was broken with rapids and larger falls. ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... Coping with mad waves and more mutinous spirits, Battled he with the dreadful ache at heart Which tempts, with devilish subtleties of doubt, The hermit, of that loneliest solitude, The silent desert of a great New Thought; Though loud Niagara were to-day struck dumb, Yet would this cataract of boiling life Rush plunging on and on to endless deeps, And utter thunder till the world shall cease,— A thunder worthy of the poet's song, 120 And which alone can fill it with true life. The high evangel to our country granted ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the one little feathery clump of dom palms in all that great wilderness of black rocks and orange sand. It stood high on the bank, and below it the brown Nile swirled swiftly towards the Ambigole Cataract, fitting a little frill of foam round each of the boulders which studded its surface. Above, out of a naked blue sky, the sun was beating down upon the sand, and up again from the sand under the brims of the pith-hats of the horsemen with the scorching ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... into it. Nor is this the worst. As soon as he ceases to write trifles, he begins to write lies; and such lies! A man who has never been within the tropics does not know what a thunderstorm means; a man who has never looked on Niagara has but a faint idea of a cataract; and he who has not read Barere's Memoirs may be said not to know what it is to lie. Among the numerous classes which make up the great genus Mendacium, the Mendacium Vasconicum, or Gascon lie, has, during some centuries, been highly esteemed as peculiarly ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... consecrated by their own Hierarchy and by none other, or, in default of this, we should have no water-works at all, the case would be substantially parallel to this. Or if there were in some city a hundred children, whose parents were of diverse creeds, all blind with cataract, whom it was practicable to cure altogether, but not separately, and these rival Priesthoods were respectively to insist—"They shall be taught our Creed and Catechism, and no other, while the operation is going on, or there shall be no operation ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... of Iris Island, every step presenting a new scene, impressing the mind with the greatness of God and the insignificance of man, while "the voice of many waters" proclaimed to erring reason "there is a God:" also, here, under the shade of a noble oak, in full view of the great Cataract, sat a small group of ladies; in their midst, a gentle girl reading aloud from one of the many works that "charm the greedy reader on, till done, he tries to recollect his thoughts and nothing finds—but dreamy emptiness." ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... water, the marvelous forest. He brought cassava cake, fruit, fish from the sea. He brought me for entertainment a talking parrot, and there lived in a seam of the rock a beautiful lizard with whom I made friends. The air was balm, balm! A steady soft wind made cataract sound in the forest. Sunrise, noon, sunset, ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... water, that threw up its white spray high in the air as it received them, and returned a sullen sound, which the echoes of the mountains prolonged. Under the bridge was seen a perspective of the valley, with its cataract descending among the rocks, and a cottage on a cliff, overshadowed with pines. It appeared, that they could not be far from some small town. St. Aubert bade the muleteer stop, and then called to the children to enquire ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... archdukes and the king would treat with the United Provinces as with countries to which they made no pretensions; and to spend the best part of another year in futile efforts to recal that phrase; if all this had been recklessness and haste, then, surely, the most sluggish canal in Holland was a raging cataract, and the march ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the great cataract sends up to heaven Its sprayey incense in perpetual cloud, Thy wings in twain the sacred bow have riven, And onward sailed irreverently proud! Unflinching bird! No frigid clime congeals The fervid blood that riots in thy veins; No torrid ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... steeds had Fin, Within lost Almhaim's fairy hall, A thousand steeds as sleek of skin As ever graced a chieftain's stall. With gilded bridles oft they flew, Young eagles in their lightning speed, Strong as the cataract of Hugh,[88] So swift ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... gaze, with rapt interest, upon the river when it leaps wildly over the cataract, or sweeps foaming down perilous rapids, or rushes through mountain gorges; but turn away from its quiet beauty when it glides pleasantly along through green savannahs. Such is our interest in life. And so we drop the curtain, ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... each other, some awfully barren, others cloathed with verdure, to shew that fertility and desolation, like joy and grief, are at his disposal. He, through fringed rocks, hollowed a cavern, whence burst the majestic cataract, whose course no mortal hand shall divert or restrain. So should man submit to the dispensations of Omniscient wisdom. While thus meditating, I despise the insignificance of worldly cares, I become almost spiritualized, and am in danger of losing social affections, as well as earthly ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Vandals; wild invaders: Goths and Arabs; stern Crusaders: Each, like some terrific torrent, Rolled above a ruined world; Till a cataract abhorrent Seemed the ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... made common cause with Mistress Judy Pettit, and the gentle lady of Mr. Wheelwright was in turn discomfitted, and compelled to descend headlong down stairs, in rather too quick time for her comfort, with a cataract of Irish women tumbling after her. Wheelwright ran to the rescue of his help-meet, and pulling her through the door, endeavored to shut it on the instant, to keep out the foe; in doing which the proboscis ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... In his own throat already began a passionate rising of sound that he knew was the "note" he had to utter attempting to escape, summoned forth automatically by these terrible vibrating Letters in the air. A cataract of sound seemed to fill the building and made it ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... to the realm of fantasy, some fairy-land forlorn; an effect the more marked as the wrapper she appeared hastily to have caught up, and which was somehow both voluminous and tense (flowing like a cataract in some places, yet in others exposing, or at least denning, the ample bed of the stream) reminded me of the big cloth spread in a room when any mess is to be made. She apologized when I said I had come to inquire for Miss Talbert—mentioned (with ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... then, spilling a cataract of water from his hat brim in a chill trickle down the back of his neck, and barked a shrilly staccato command at the placid horse. The creaking buggy came ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... sunshine fall through it again, fitfully, as it does now. Would it be any wonder if we were to see angels hovering there, partly in and partly out, with genial, heavenly faces, not intercepting the light, but only transmuting it into beautiful colors? Look at that broad, golden beam—a sloping cataract of sunlight—which comes down from the aperture and rests upon the shrine, at the right hand ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seen her in boyhood) gives description. Big staring black eyes, with rim of circular eyebrow, like a coach-wheel round its nave, very black the eyebrows also; vast red face; cheeks running into neck, neck blending indistinguishably with stomach,—a mere cataract of fluid tallow, skinned over and curiously dizened, according to Walpole's portraiture. This charming creature, Kielmannsegge by German name, was called "Countess of Darlington" in this country—with excellent ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle |
