"Rattlesnake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strongholds. It was a fortified village, built on the summit of a mountain, and accessible only at one point. The battle lasted three hours, the Indians being finally driven off with the loss of sixty men. It was reported in San Jose that the Indians had surprised a company of seventy-two men, on Rattlesnake Creek, and murdered them all. In consequence of these occurrences, the Governor dispatched Col. Johnson to the scene of disturbance, ordered out 200 men, and applied to Gen. Smith for the assistance of the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the Sagamore said so innocently had two meanings. He might have meant that the cawing of the crows indicated that they were objecting to a rattlesnake sunning on some rock. Also he might have meant to say that their short, querulous cawing betrayed the presence of ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... shop in connection with his printing office, where he sold a strange variety of goods: legal blanks, ink, pens, paper, books, maps, pictures, chocolate, coffee, cheese, codfish, soap, linseed oil, broadcloth, Godfrey's cordial, tea, spectacles, rattlesnake root, lottery tickets, and stoves—to mention only a few of the many articles he advertised. Deborah Read, who became his wife in 1730, looked after his house, tended shop, folded and stitched pamphlets, bought rags, and helped him to live economically. "We kept no idle servants," says Franklin, ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... I want to foller Cleopatra's fashion and commit suicide, I will hire a rattlesnake and take my pizen as she did, ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... with the Uhlans! Up with the black flag! Killed four Uhlans before breakfast this morning. Uhlans wear baggy sky-blue breeches. Give 'em sky-blue fits! BOURBAKI dined with me yesterday. American fare. Gopher soup; rattlesnake hash; squirrel saute; fricasseed opossum; pumpkin pie. That's your sort! Blue coat and brass buttons. White Marseilles waistcoat. France saved by Marseilles waistcoat. Organize earthquake to swallow London. JOHN BULL trembles. Tours trembles. Italy trembles. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... of us a diamond-back rattlesnake must have awaited the attack he sensed, though we could not yet see him. Time after time the king snake swept by in front of us, decreasing the circles and, I thought, increasing his speed. After each revolution we stepped ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... them," said Dick, who looked mightily relieved when, the head having been skinned, it was cut off and thrown into the bay. After that he became interested and helped Johnny with his work until he held in his hand the beautiful skin of a diamondback rattlesnake, ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... corn grow, to frighten away storms, and to drive off witches; prayers for long life, for safety among strangers, for acquiring influence in council and success in the ball play. There were prayers to the Long Man, the Ancient White, the Great Whirlwind, the Yellow Rattlesnake, and to a hundred other gods of the Cherokee pantheon. It was in fact an Indian ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... phone went off like an annoyed rattlesnake. Walters scooped it up, spoke into it, listened for a moment, and handed ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... after the change had come to you, a change definite and enduring, which left your inner processes forever different from what they had been, you turned sharp to the west and rode five miles along the knife-edge Ridge Trail to where Rattlesnake Canon led you down and back ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... he has lured his victim to ruin!" retorted Ned, bitterly. "Beware of him, lady, for he is a rattlesnake in the ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... so familiarised with the fact, the possession of poison might well seem a wonderful gift. That a fluid, harmless in one animal itself, should yet prove so deadly when transferred to others, is certainly very remarkable; and though the venom of the Cobra or the Rattlesnake appeal perhaps more effectively to our imagination, we have conclusive evidence of concentrated poison even in the bite of a midge, which may remain for days perceptible. The sting of a Bee or Wasp, though somewhat similar in its effect, is a totally different ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... kinds: one snake (a Trigonocephalus, or Cophias, subsequently called by M. Bibron T. crepitans), from the size of the poison channel in its fangs, must be very deadly. Cuvier, in opposition to some other naturalists, makes this a sub-genus of the rattlesnake, and intermediate between it and the viper. In confirmation of this opinion, I observed a fact, which appears to me very curious and instructive, as showing how every character, even though it may be in some degree independent of structure, has ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Jim and George Girty, his brothers, are p'isin rattlesnake Injuns. Simon Girty's bad enough; but Jim's the wust. He's now wusser'n a full-blooded Delaware. He's all the time on the lookout to capture white wimen to take to his Injun teepee. Simon Girty and his pals, McKee and Elliott, deserted from that thar fort right afore yer eyes. ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... dead a rattlesnake, And off his scaly skin to take, And through his head to drive a stake, And every bone within him break, And of his flesh mincemeat to make, To burn, to sear, to boil, and bake, Then in a heap the whole to rake, And over it the besom shake, And sink it fathoms in the ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... country is settling up, the people walk down the bands and the stallions escape, and in drifting about find our range. They're wiry rascals, and our old stallions don't stand any more show with them than a fat hog would with a javaline. That's why I take as much pride in killing one as I do a rattlesnake." ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... business; he put his little head out of the door of the kennel, and was just about to creep out, when right in front of him in the path he saw a snake. He knew in a moment just what sort of a snake it was, and how dangerous it was; he knew it was a rattlesnake, and that if it bit Ada or him, they would probably die. For Marland had spent two summers on his papa's big ranch in Kansas, and he had been told over and over again, if he ever saw a snake to run away from it as fast as he could, and ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... clear he wished to address me, and without extreme rudeness I could not avoid him. I, in my turn, uncovered myself, made my obeisance, and stood still with a bare head, in the sunshine, as if rooted there. I shook with terror while I saw him approach; I felt like a bird fascinated by a rattlesnake. He appeared sadly perplexed, kept his eyes on the ground, made several bows, approached nearer, and with a low and trembling voice, as if he were asking alms, ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... in folds, with its head darting out in a menacing attitude, and the tail, with its rattle appeared below. The whole was gilded, and had a very good effect; but after the dock-yard men had completed the repairs, and the brig was painted, one night the head of the rattlesnake disappeared. It had been sawed off by some malicious and evil disposed persons, and no traces of it were to be found. I was obliged to report this to the captain, who was very indignant, and offered twenty pounds for the discovery of the offender; but had he offered twenty thousand he never ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... north of the city of Leavenworth, Kan., situate on Rattlesnake Hills, was first occupied as a cantonment in 1827, and became a regular fort of the U. S. ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell
... It was a Tuesday that we had that talk. Well, after dinner Friday we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of the ridge, and got out of tobacco. I went to the cavern to get some, and found a rattlesnake in there. I killed him, and curled him up on the foot of Jim's blanket, ever so natural, thinking there'd be some fun when Jim found him there. Well, by night I forgot all about the snake, and when Jim flung himself down on the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Williamsburg. Among them were the "minute men" of Culpeper, a famous band of frontiersmen, wearing green hunting-shirts and carrying knives and tomahawks. "Liberty or Death," Patrick Henry's stirring words, were on their breasts, and over their heads floated a significant banner. On it was a coiled rattlesnake, with the warning motto, "Don't tread ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... instantly threw it out of its mouth, and went about jerking its head as if trying to throw off some unpleasant taste.* (* Probably the strongly contrasted colours of the spotted salamander of Southern Europe and the warning noise made by the rattlesnake may be useful in a similar manner, as ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... the serpent is a well-known Indian dish. Previous to the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, the rattlesnake itself found its place at their highest festivals. Dioscorides[M] prescribed the flesh of the viper as a tonic, and it formed one of the component parts of theriaca, the great panacea of our ancestors, ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... upon Maximilian's features; and the excitement of the moment gave to them the benefit of their fullest expression. Prostrate on the ground, and abandoning his dagger without an effort at retaining it, the man gazed, as if under a rattlesnake's fascination, at the young soldier before him. Suddenly he recovered his voice; and, with a piercing cry of unaffected terror, exclaimed, "Save me, save me, blessed Virgin! Prince, noble prince, forgive ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... generally. I naturally thought of a mouse, and not being afraid of them, I went on in and closed the door. I doubt if Mrs. Hunt saw me, she was so intently watching the man, who kept on upsetting things. He stopped finally, and then held up on the wood a snake—a dead rattlesnake! We measured it, and it was ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... my dear. You have never been poor," replied Mr. Sheldon, coolly. "I don't suppose I am as much afraid of a rattlesnake as the poor wretches who are accustomed to see one swinging by his tail from the branch of a tree any day in the course of their travels. I have only a vague idea that a cobra de capello is an unpleasant customer; but depend upon it, those foreign fellows feel their blood stagnate and turn ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... fish in the stream near by, we made our dinner of its good water, and after a troubled night had the same fare for breakfast. For once in my life I knew hunger. To the nearest ranch was half a day's journey, and we lost no time in heading for it. On the way I had an encounter with a vicious rattlesnake. The outcome was more satisfactory than it might have been. At noon, when we found a cattleman whose Indian mate served venison and hot bread of good quality and abundant quantity, we were appreciative and happy. The remainder of ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... echoed joyously. "But I haven't heard that name for twenty years. And you're the boy whose father was a doctor, and who helped us build our Indian camp, and who had the frog, and fell off the roof, and killed the rattlesnake." ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... scraggy, sandy beard, and chewed "long green" tobacco continually and viciously. But he was shrewd enough to know that ugly talk on his part wouldn't mend matters, but only make them worse, so he stood around in silence while we took his corn, but he looked as malignant as a rattlesnake. His wife was directly his opposite in appearance and demeanor. She was tall, thin, and bony, with reddish hair and a sharp nose and chin. And goodness, but she had a temper! She stood in the door of the dwelling ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... black-eyed. She was not uncomely of feature, nay, had been handsome, nor was her look at first sight forbidding, especially if she did not turn upon you those small basilisk eyes of hers, full of fire and glare as the eyes of a rattlesnake. But truly those thin, cruel lips of hers never smiled spontaneously, or affected to smile upon you unless she had an object to gain by assuming a disguise as foreign to her as light ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... varieties of this large family; some, like the rattlesnake, cannot climb or swim, but crawl along the ground, the terror of unwary travellers who may tread upon them in the dim forest-paths; others are Water-snakes; some, like the Boa and Python, are dreaded, although not venomous, because, of their ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... coyotes, the dogs sometimes made prizes of rabbits and hares, which are plentiful here, and numbers of which we often shot for our dinners. Among the other animals there was a reptile I was not so much disposed to find amusement from, the rattlesnake. These snakes are very abundant here, especially during the spring of the year. The latter part of the time that I was on shore, I did not meet with so many, but for the first two months we seldom went into "the bush'' without one of our number starting some of them. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... will regale the traveller with most acceptable stories about the Prairie-dog, Rattlesnake, and the Burrowing Owl, all living in the same den on a basis of brotherly love and Christian charity; having effected, it would seem, a limited partnership and a most satisfactory division of labour: the Prairie-dog is ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... hiss; partly of the little melancholy German frog which says "Mu, mu, mu," all summer-day long, with its nose out of the pools by Dresden and Leipsic; and partly of the deadened quivering and intense continuousness of the alarm of the rattlesnake. ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... it has been a myriad of years on its way. For that Supreme One is not a God of pity or mercy—not as we recognize these qualities. Think of a God of mercy who would create the typhus germ, or the house-fly, or the centipede, or the rattlesnake, yet these are all His handiwork. They are a part of the Infinite plan. The minister is careful to explain that all these tribulations are sent for a good purpose; but he hires a doctor to destroy the fever germ, and he kills the rattlesnake when ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... answered. The older people knew the sound: it was that of an angry rattlesnake out of doors shaking ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... remote and indefinite, the agitation must be drooping, and virtually we may repeat that the game is up. But the last moves have been unusually interesting. Not unlike the fascination exercised over birds by the eye of the rattlesnake, has been the impression upon Mr O'Connell from the fixed attention turned upon him by Government. What they did was silent and unostentatious; more, however, than perhaps the public is aware of in the way of preparation for an outbreak. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... with the motion of the works, apparently to salute the spectators, and present to the idea persons dancing; while every passing of the shuttle produces a noise which may be assimilated to that of the Rattlesnake, accompanied with sounds something like those of a dancing-master beating time to his scholars. 272 his stock. At this moment, besides what we have just seen, there is one in Gracechurch Street, and another in Shoreditch, where the passengers are constantly assailed by a little boy, who stands ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... at Philadelphia, from which city, one morning in January, 1776, a fleet of eight vessels set sail. As they were about to weigh anchor, John Paul Jones, a lieutenant on the flagship, flung to the breeze a yellow silk flag on which were a pine tree and a coiled rattlesnake, with this motto: "Don't tread on me." This was the first flag ever ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... him as I would a rattlesnake. Because I wish to ruin him so that he will be left in my debt. So that I can hound him from this place by holding that debt over his head. It is worth two thousand to me to possess that power. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... been progressing for some time before the captain's arrival. In front of the bluff of rock blazed a fire made of birch and maple, and on a spit before this a huge piece of venison was roasting. A hideous old woman, with eyes like a rattlesnake, and draggled hair coloured like the moss upon an aged fir, stood by the spit, which every few moments she turned. Silent Poll had some lard in a cup, and a small quantity of this she put upon the meat each time that the hag turned ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... on his huge strength to kill his enemies; but other snakes, such as vipers and rattlesnakes, are. Even when the head of a viper has been cut off it still remains poisonous, and may cause death. The rattlesnake is so called because it makes a funny rattle with its tail before it strikes. It is about five feet long sometimes, and the sound of its rattle sends terror into the heart of anyone who is near, as he knows that at any moment the snake may dart out upon him with its ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... of the villain Love.' Such love as it was—the love of the privileged butcher for the lamb. The burden of the letters, put in epigram, was rattlesnake and bird. A narrative of Anastasia's sister, Elizabeth, signed and sealed, with names of witnesses appended, related in brief bald English the history of the events which had killed her. It warmed pathetically when dwelling on the writer's necessity to part with letters and papers ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... honorable with the boss, standing up to what you've done like you was a trooper at your gun, and he'll deal square and honorable with you. But go to hoodwinking and imposing on him and instead of a lamb you'll find you've got a rattlesnake at your heels. Now you have an idea, I guess, what you're going to be up against here," concluded the caretaker, taking out his pipe and cramming it with tobacco. "If there's anything else you want to know now's your chance, for after to-day I am never going to open my lips again ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... river; there was a grove in front, and beneath its shadows the ruins of an old trading fort of logs. The grove bloomed with myriads of wild roses, with their sweet perfume fraught with recollections of home. As we emerged from the trees, a rattlesnake, as large as a man's arm, and more than four feet long, lay coiled on a rock, fiercely rattling and hissing at us; a gray hare, double the size of those in New England, leaped up from the tall ferns; ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... owner of a tract of some thirteen thousand acres of forest, including the greater portion of Mount Mitchell, a wilderness well stocked with bears and deer, and full of streams abounding in trout. It is also the playground of the rattlesnake. With all these attractions Big Tom's life is made lively in watching game poachers, and endeavoring to keep out the foraging cattle of the few neighbors. It is not that the cattle do much injury in the forest, but the looking after them is made a pretense for roaming around, and the roamers are ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to hear Madam Farnham hear you call her that; she'd just tear your eyes out. But Lord-a-mercy, she hain't got animation enough for anything of the sort; if she had, a rattlesnake wouldn't be more cantankerous to my thinking. She's got all the pison in her, but only hisses it out like a cat; in my hull life I never did see ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... forests of Villa Nova I saw a rattlesnake for the first time. I was returning home one day through a narrow alley, when I heard a pattering noise close to me. Hard by was a tall palm tree, whose head was heavily weighted with parasitic plants, and I thought the ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... beef and onion stew by its local name), I will proceed to business, and we will talk about California. By the way, I shall only conduct the exercises, for I feel rather embarrassed by the fact that I've never killed, or been killed by, a bear, never been bitten by a tarantula, poisoned by a rattlesnake, assaulted by a stage- robber, nor anything of that sort. You have all read my story of crossing the plains. I even did that in a comparatively easy and unheroic fashion. I only wish, my dear girls and boys, that we had with us some one of the brave and energetic men and ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and sure as the rattlesnake's black, forked tongue. He seemed not to aim—he appeared to shoot from his fist rather than from the extended weapon, and when ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... Just as we were finishing, news came through the telephone that Bailloud's Brigade had been driven in by a big Turkish counter-attack, with a loss of 400 men and some first class officers. Most of us showed signs, I will not say of being rattled, but of having stumbled against a rattlesnake. Gouraud remained unaffectedly in possession of himself as host of a lunch party. He said, "We will not take the trenches by not taking the coffee. Let us drink it first, and then we will consider." So we drank our coffee; lit our smokes, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... attract long-tongued bees and flies (especially Exoprosopa fasciata) and butterflies, which, as they sip from the corolla tube, receive the pollen carried out and exposed on the long divisions of the style. Some people have pretended to cure rattlesnake bites with applications of the globular tuber of this and ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... enemies—he knew that. Had one of them chosen this fantastic method of declaring war on him? In that case he could certainly afford to ignore the letter as coming from a source unworthy of serious consideration. A worth-while enemy does not give a warning; he strikes. The cheapest thing about a rattlesnake is its rattle. Varr started to run over a list of recognized foemen who might have done this ill-natured deed, but presently desisted; their name ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... one of which represents a woman, the other, judging from the character of the posterior extremity of the body, a reptilian conception in which a single foreleg is depicted, and the tail is articulated at the end, recalling a rattlesnake. Upon the head is a single feather;[128] the two eyes are represented on one side of the head, and the line of the alimentary tract is roughly drawn. The figure is represented as standing before that ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... famous as a bon vivant and gourmet. Indeed, even yet, in turning old pages we come upon records of his dinners. Bartram, the Philadelphia botanist, whom the Muscogee Indians quaintly called Puc-Puggy (the Flower Hunter) details the great size of a rattlesnake, "six feet long and as thick as the leg of an ordinary man" which he chanced to kill in his bosky researches near Fort Picolata in Florida, and not the least surprising feature of the incident was a message from the commandant inviting both combatants to dinner, "Governor Grant being ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... circumstance attracted the attention of the mother, who desired her husband to follow the child, and observe what she did with it. On coming to the child, he found her engaged in feeding several snakes, called yellow heads, a species of rattlesnake. He immediately took her away and proceeded to the house for his gun, and returning, killed two of them at one shot, and another a few days after. The child called these reptiles in the manner of calling chickens; and when her father observed, if she continued the practice they would bite ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... couldn't expect it to sprout up in this open place. This is a different thing from the Seneca rattlesnake-root; there's more cure in an ounce of this than in a pound of that. I'll wager five shillings to a sixpence that I can name you nine out of ten of the medicines and dyestuffs growing ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... the evacuation of Fort Mifflin, after the British had passed the chevaux-de-frise on the Delaware, was left with fifteen men to destroy the works, which he did, and brought off his men successfully. He had, before that, been commander of the Rattlesnake sloop of war, and had much annoyed the British trade; Being bred a seaman, he ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... getting purple in the face under the impression of a contradiction. "That's what I said—Metsican. Used to call him Black Peter. I've seen him eat rattlesnake. Swallow him clean down. Like this, he would—Gollop!" Here Mr. Wells goes off into a quiet chuckle of scepticism, one finger crooked over his pipe-stem, his sightless eyes blinking at the coals. "Great big bull ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... mountaineers and surveyors who took everything for granted, and spared each other the most wearisome bore of English and Scotch life, the stories of the big game they killed. A bear was an occasional amusement; a wapiti was a constant necessity; but the only wild animal dangerous to man was a rattlesnake or a skunk. One shot for amusement, but one had other matters to ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... once doubted that it was so. Whenever any of the Happy Family found anything in the hills that was nice, they always thought of Buck, and they always brought it to him. You would be amazed at the number of rattlesnake rattles, and eagle's claws, and elk teeth, and things like that, which the Kid possessed and kept carefully stowed away in a closet kept ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... I want to follow up Cleopatra's fashion, and commit suicide, I am goin' to hire a rattlesnake, and take my poison as she ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... and death among the women of my people? Whence comes the whisky that is the curse of the red men of the North? Would you warm the rattlesnake in your bosom, to die from its poisoned tooth? All men die! Lacombie, who was good, is dead. And this one who, being a man of logs, is bad, will die also. Come away while yet ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... neighbouring countries, are deer, panthers or tigers, bears, wolves, foxes, squirrels, racoons, and creatures called opossums, with an infinite variety of beautiful birds, and a diversity of serpents, among which the rattlesnake is the most remarkable. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... to the lake I met a little rattlesnake; I fed him with some jelly-cake, Which made ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... person hardened to all manner of flavours, and able to eat caviar or liquid Camembert, would have found the cloudy brown liquor virulently repulsive. It contained in solution, with other things, the vital element of surprise, for it was comparatively odourless, and, unlike the chivalrous rattlesnake, gave no warning of what it was about to do. In the case of Penrod, the surprise was complete and ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... rustle behind him, which sounded to him like the gliding of a rattlesnake over the leaves, caused him to start and turn round. But he was too late. A crushing blow on the head from a club in the hand of a brawny Indian laid him senseless ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... that the Indians, about whom he had been dreaming, were upon him; his next that a rattlesnake clung to his finger; and finally, finding it to be the kitten bestowing some scratches on the hand that sought to bereave it of its prize, he uttered the latter exclamation, first in rage; but pleased that his condition ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... Colonel Stevens, "Old Pecksniff," as the irreverent youngsters called him, the commander at Fort Emory on the outskirts of Gate City, telling of a tremendous storm that had swept the Laramie plains and the range of the Medicine Bow and Rattlesnake Hills, just after Lieutenant Dean had been sent forth with a small party of troopers to push through to Warrior Gap with a big sum of money, ten thousand dollars in cash, for the payment of contractors and their men ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... what's mine is yours, and what's yours is your own, and there's a good big sum that'll be yours, concerning which later. But take care of yourself, Gladney. You can't drown a mountain with the squirt of a rattlesnake's tooth; you can't flood a memory with cognac. I've tried it. For God's sake don't drink any more. What's the use? Smile in the seesaw of the knives. You can only be killed once, and, believe me, there's twice the fun in taking bad luck naked, as it were. Do you remember the time you and I and ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... in Loudoun are the rattlesnake root, Seneca snakeroot (also called Virginia snakeroot), many varieties of mint, liverwort, red-root, May apple, butterfly-weed, milk weed, thorough-stem, trumpet-weed, Indian-physic, lobelia inflata, and lobelia cardinalis, ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... by itself in River Street, and all the trees near it have been killed, and stand up all dead and white, because nobody has time to cut them down. It looks very dismal, but Ave says it will be very nice by and by, and, Rufus Muller says it has mammoth privileges. I send you a bit of rattlesnake skin. They found fifteen of them asleep under a stone, just where our house is built, and sometimes they come into the kitchen. I do not know the names of the other things I send; and I could not ask Ave, for she said you would not want to be bothered with a little girl's letter, and I was not ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... picking up papers apprehensively—much as one would lift a desired blanket which he had some idea might have a rattlesnake under it. One day this ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... high or low, according as that rises or sets in the heavens. At Martinique, where at noonday it darts its devouring rays perpendicularly upon the cane-fields, and every one flies into the shade to escape its scorching heat, the rattlesnake traverses the country, monarch of all he surveys; he strikes rapidly with a vigorous tail upon the calcined ground; and woe then to any one who receives his bite! All the fire of the atmosphere ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... had another queer bout with some thieves. They were not after the land this time, but they planned to get at the ore and carry off as much of the gold as they could lay hands on. Our old friend, Rattlesnake Mike, caught them red-handed, and now they are serving a term in prison ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... said, aside to me. "That single trail I found back yonder day before yesterday was Santan's running on ahead of us to poison the water for us and then steal a horse and make his way back to the mountains. An Apache can live on this cactus-covered sand the same as a rattlesnake. He fixed the upper spring and came down here to drink. Only Beverly's conscience saved him here. Heaven knows how Fred Ramer got out here. He may have come with some Mexicans on ahead of us and left them ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... was dead. A rattlesnake had given her its fatal sting, and the outcast, dreading all men and the coroner not the least, had, silently and alone, buried her ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... to cross the ridge into a deep ravine that leads here where I am. You'll be out of sight all the way up once you hit the ravine. I'd—I'd worm along pretty spry if I was you, going down as far as the scrub oak—say, about as swift as a rattlesnake strikes—and pray any little prayers you happen to remember. And say, Pringle, before you go ... I'm rather obliged to you for coming up here; risking taking cold and all. If it'll cheer you up any I'll undertake ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... noise like peas rattling in a box. I could not see what made it, so finally ran in and told father. He came out and lifted up a wide board over two stones. He jumped back and called to me to run in the house, then grabbed an ax and cut the head off a huge rattlesnake. It had ten rattles. We never saw ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... creature is so absolutely graceful as a rattlesnake, and none more gentle in intention. It is only against imposition that he protests. Our forefathers had learned a not unworthy lesson from their contact with nature in the New World when they put upon the first flag of the colonies a rattlesnake, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, commanded by the late Captain Owen Stanley, during the years 1846-50, including Discoveries and Surveys in New Guinea, the Louisiade Archipelago, &c. &c. By John Macgillivray, F.R.G.S., Naturalist to the Expedition. London: ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... to be lifted up and placed on the sofa, and sat down like a child. Even at the instant came a flash of recollection bringing back the time, long past, when Winthrop had lifted her out of the rattlesnake's way. She ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... risen and poised above the mesa, then with fluttering wings darted downward. There was a rattling brr, and the girls knew what was happening. The road runner was attacking a rattlesnake. ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... self-portraiture which, as he well knows, are to be given to the public in next week's illustrated paper. The feathered end of his shaft titillates harmlessly enough, but too often the arrowhead is crusted with a poison worse than the Indian gets by mingling the wolf's gall with the rattlesnake's venom. No man is safe whose unguarded threshold the mischief-making questioner has crossed. The more unsuspecting, the more frank, the more courageous, the more social is the subject of his vivisection, the more easily does he get at his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... clusters in the mossy woods, along the trail or government road above Longmire Springs. It is very common all around the mountain at an altitude of 3,000 to 4,500 feet. With it, grow two tway-blades and the rattlesnake plantain. In bogs, two species of piperia, with long spikes of greenish flowers, are abundant. In drier situations, a small form of the ladies' tresses is easily recognized by its spiral spike of small ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... to crack away at a bear, if you were lucky enough to have the chance; or to kill a rattlesnake, if you had a big heavy stone close at hand; or to scramble about among crags and precipices, if you felt certain of the steadiness of your head and the strength of your muscles. But he did not realize ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of concocting weird dishes was a standing joke at Enterprises, and already had led to such dubious triumphs as armadillo stew and rattlesnake soup. ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... until they had buried themselves, head and ears, in the marshes on the other side, where they all miserably perished to a man; and their bones being collected and decently covered by the Tammany Society of that day, formed that singular mound called Rattlesnake Hill, which rises out of the center of the salt marshes a little to the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... for little folks, hit mought be a butterfly. Miz. Prairie-Dog ain't find no fliers what wants to live un'neath de ground. But crawlers—bugs an' worms an' sich-like—dey mostly does live un'neath de ground, anyhow, an' de fust pusson what come seekin' house-room with Miz. Prairie-Dog was Brother Rattlesnake. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... assented Bell, heartily. "He reminds me of a rattlesnake that's been poisoned by the ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... rolling his "bushee," and with true frontier woman's pluck, ran and snatched up the bare-footed Fernando, when only within two feet of the deadly serpent, carried him to the house, and with the stout staff assailed and killed the rattlesnake. ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... household melodies be sung, The pleasant pictures on the wall be hung— So let us hold against the hosts of night And slavery all our vantage-ground of light. Let Treason boast its savagery, and shake From its flag-folds its symbol rattlesnake, Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in tan, And carve its pipe-bowls from the bones of man, And make the tale of Fijian banquets dull By drinking whiskey from a loyal skull,— But let us guard, till this sad war shall cease, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... puts on the rattles." Mr. Bearfoot writes, "Ohstawensera seems to have been a general name for anything denuded of flesh, but is now confined to the rattles of the rattlesnake." ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... their belief of it. "These men do certainly play strange tricks and very dexterously." The same writer also observes, "One of the negroes whom I had hired with the plantation of Jaguaribi, had one leg much thicker than the other. This was occasioned, as he told me, by the bite of a rattlesnake; he said he had been cured from the bites of snakes by a certain curador de cobra, or Mandingueiro, and had therefore not died; but that as the 'moon was strong,' he had not escaped receiving some injury ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... doubtless noted," began the larger creature, "I am an A-B-Sea Serpent. I am employed in the nursery of the Mer children to teach them their letters. My friend, here, is a Rattlesnake, and it is his business to amuse the Mer babies while the Mermaids are mer-marketing. Once a year, we take a vacation, and proceeding from the sea depths up a strange river, we came out upon this shore. Perhaps you, Sir, will be able to tell ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... slaves, two men and a girl, fled from near Maysville, Kentucky, into Ohio. Were pursued by their owners and assistants, five men armed, and were overtaken, says the Maysville Weekly Express, "at the bridge over Rattlesnake Creek, on the Petersburg and Greenfield road, about ten o'clock at night," the slaves being, armed, and accompanied by a white man. Both parties fired, the negro girl was wounded, but still fled; one of the negro men was also wounded, and, says the Maysville paper, they "were tracked ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... as the season progressed, coastwise operations in this quarter became increasingly hazardous for both parties. On October 22, Hull wrote that neither the "Enterprise" nor the "Rattlesnake" could cruise much longer. The enemy still maintained his grip, in virtue of greater size and numbers. Ten days later comes the report of a convoy, with one of the brigs, driven into port by a frigate; that the enemy appear almost every day, and never without ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... this region were very tame, for they had not learned to fear men. Yet among them the explorers found some dangerous enemies. One was the grizzly bear, and another the rattlesnake. But the greatest scourges of all were the tiny, buzzing mosquitoes, which ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... been struck with a peculiarity about the reptile— its weird look—the superior cunning exhibited in its mode of escape— and not less peculiar the fact of its having stung me unprovoked—a rare thing for the rattlesnake to do! All these points rushing simultaneously into my mind, produced the conviction that for the fatal wound on my wrist I was indebted, not to chance, ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... in the chasm. He hastened with all speed to escape from so frightful a neighbourhood. His imagination was full of this new horror; he saw an adder in every curling vine, and heard the tail of a rattlesnake in ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... thing; do you reckon I want 'er to scratch my eyes out? Huh! She hates me like a rattlesnake, an' has jest come heer so she kin devil me to death. I see it now. She seed she wusn't worryin' me much over thar in 'er ol' cabin, an' she's ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... had found a bed of that exceptionally poisonous mushroom named Pallida something or other ... the book said its poison was kin to that of the poison in the rattlesnake's bite. My eyes met with Hildreth's ... we needed say no word, both thinking the same thought that frightened us!... "how easy it ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... was about to assail faced him in a crouching posture, both hands resting on his knees, while his ugly countenance was bisected by a tantalizing grin which showed the molars of both jaws. His black eyes gleamed like those of a rattlesnake, and his whole attitude and manner showed that he was seeking to goad the ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... natives teeth, was it not that they could pull out the upper and lower incisors, file them in points, and curve them in sharp fangs like the fangs of a rattlesnake? If she has placed nails at the end of the fingers, is it not that they may grow so immoderately that the use of the hand is rendered almost impossible? If the skin, black or brown, covers the human frame, is it not so as to zebra it by "temmbos" ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... remarkably skilled in curing the bite of venomous serpents, and have found a medicine peculiarly adapted to the bite of each species. For example, the leaf of the Rattlesnake-root (Polygala senega) is the most efficacious remedy against the bite of this dreadful animal. God has mercifully granted it to grow in the greatest plenty in all parts most infested by the rattlesnake. It is very remarkable ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... to witness the ignorance and stupidity of men—their malignity and opposition to the truth—who have learned to misrepresent and abuse Calvinism with such bitterness of feeling, till, like a rattlesnake in dog-days, they have become blinded by the poison of their own minds." ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... bomb-proof, she had struck into a narrow winding path, less seen than felt in the deep gloom pervading the wood, and with light steps bounded over obstacles that lay strewed in their course, emitting scarcely more sound than would have been produced by the slimy crawl of its native rattlesnake. Not so, however, with the less experienced tread of her companion. Wanting the pliancy of movement given to it by the light mocassin, the booted foot of the young officer, despite of all his precaution, fell heavily to the ground, producing such a rustling among the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... one wore white badges bearing the letters: "Welcome, Fighting 15th," or had pennants upon which stood out the regimental insignia—a coiled rattlesnake of ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... purple grape. We had some rain this morning, attended by high wind; but generally speaking, have remarked that thunder storms are less frequent than in the Atlantic states, at this season. Snakes too are less frequent, though we killed one to-day of the shape and size of the rattlesnake, but of a lighter colour. We fixed our camp on the north side. In the evening, captain Clarke, in pursuing some game, in an eastern direction, found himself at the distance of three hundred and seventy yards from the camp, at a point of the river whence ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... the rock, to see if the emblem was the sign of hidden treasure or relic, he unearthed a rattlesnake. ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... bald, increasing in height to the southward. On the creek were fringes of young willows, older trees being rarely found on the plains, where the Indians burn the surface to produce better grass. Several magpies (pica Hudsopica) were seen on the creek this afternoon; and a rattlesnake was killed here, the first which had been seen since leaving the eastern plains. Our camp to-night had such a hungry appearance that I suffered the little cow to be killed, and divided the roots and berries among ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... dismounted and rusted, lay half buried in ashes, a sudden whir-r-r caused him to spring back as though he had received an electric shock. Only his quickness saved him from the living death held in the fangs of a rattlesnake that had evidently just crawled from the black muzzle of the gun. The snake instantly re-coiled to repeat its venomous stroke, and though Donald could easily have killed it as he had scores of its kind, the presence of this ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... was a strong contributing force to the general belief among his neighbors that he was deranged. They said he imagined that he was repelling invaders from his claim, which would be valuable, maybe, to a man who wanted to start a rattlesnake farm. But Slavens had a motive, more weighty than the pastime that this seemingly idle pursuit afforded. There was a time of settlement ahead between him and Jerry Boyle for the part the Governor's son had borne in his assault. When the day for that adjustment ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... aware of the cause. A few feet before them was a huge rattlesnake still twisting and turning ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... rare upon the Llano Estacado, although the prong-horn antelope—true denizen of the desert—is there found, as also its enemy, the Mexican jackal, or coyote. To the rattlesnake and horned lizard (agama) it is a congenial home; and the singular snake-bird (paisano) may frequently be seen running over the arid waste, or skulking through the tortuous stems of the nopals. In the canons of the stream the grizzly bear makes his haunt, and in times not long gone by ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... of the same date, 1775. It was a yellow flag with the representation of a rattlesnake coiled, ready to strike, in green, and the motto below it: ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... you will be exposed, by a dilute solution of itself, and supply it only with what it particularly dislikes. For an already established tubercle requiring rapid action of the blood, such as may well exist among the birds and vertebrates of Jupiter and Saturn, I suggest a hypodermic rattlesnake injection, while hydrocyanic acid and tarantula saliva may also come in well. The combinations that so long destroyed us have already become our panacea." "I see you have these poisons at your fingers' ends," said Ayrault, "and we shall feel the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... feeling of a life-prisoner emerging from the Bastille, he began to crawl stiffly forward: and it was just then that the first of the disturbing events occurred which were to make this night memorable to him. Something like a rattlesnake suddenly went off with a whirr, and his head, jerking up, collided with the piano. It was only the cuckoo-clock, which now, having cleared its throat as was its custom before striking, proceeded to cuck eleven times in rapid succession before ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... it would spoil all my fun. I have noticed that men avoid a fiancee as they would a—a rattlesnake." ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... mades met together in the village milliner shop, where the Sore-eye-siss society held meetin's once a week, and their false teeth trembled like a rattlesnake's tail, when they read ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... once a year make a great mourning for them, and the coyote prevailed. So, presently when a deer died, they burned his body, as the coyote had decreed, and after a year they made a great mourning for him. But the moon created the rattlesnake and caused it to bite the coyote's son, so that he died. Now, though the coyote had been willing to burn the deer's relations, he refused to burn his own son. Then the moon said unto him, 'This is your own rule. You would have it so, and now your son shall be burned like the others.' So he ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... the French were determined to hold the country. They drove the few English out of their new post, fortified the spot, and called it Fort Duquesne. The crisis seemed to Benjamin Franklin so momentous that at the end of his printed account of the capture of the post he added a rude woodcut of a rattlesnake cut into thirteen pieces, with the motto, addressed to the colonies, ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... five feet, and shines in the dark; so that fortunately a warning is given of the vicinity of these animals in different ways; in some by the odour they exhale, in some by the light they emit, and in others, like the rattlesnake, by the sound they ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca |
