"Tree trunk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... desperately hoping to gain some post of vantage whence to get home at least two or three good blows before the end. But the moment he moved, the grizzly fairly hurled himself downwards. The hunter jumped aside and wheeled, with his knife lifted, his disabled left arm against the tree trunk. But in that same instant, a miracle! Noiselessly the puma's tawny length shot out overhead and fell upon the bear in the very mid-rush ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... is naturally about August or September. It is reaped with a short knife called ani-ani, with which the reaper cuts off each separate ear with a few inches of the stem; and the ears are then threshed by being placed in a hollow tree trunk and there stamped with a toemboekan, a heavy piece of wood with a broad end. The lands are ploughed, harrowed, and weeded by the men, but the transplanting, reaping, and ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... to the edge of the quai des Subsistances, so-called because of the naval depot. The craft was dubbed out of a breadfruit-tree trunk, and had an outrigger of purau wood, a natural crooked arm, with a small limb laced to it. The canoe was steady enough in such smooth water, and I paddled off to Motu Uta. That islet is a rock of coral upon which soil had been placed unknown ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... off his jacket, and, by means of a lift from Fred, got upon one of the great horizontal boughs, and soon contrived to reach the one to which the kite tail was fluttering. But Harry was at the thick end, by the tree trunk, and the tail was twenty feet further off, at the thin end; and, as those who have tested the wood in their lead pencils well know, cedar is very brittle. Now, Harry was no coward, but he knew that he would be laughed at if he did not succeed, so, in spite of the danger, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... doon too deep, lassie," he said. "Sae deep ye canna reach them. There's little ye can dae for tree or man, Marcella, but juist not hinder them. All we can do, the best of us, is to put a bit of soil an' watter half-way up a tree trunk an' ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... her sphynx and pyramids; Greece an artistic series of pictures of her famous statues and ruins. Fiji shows a pirogue, the native canoe, rudely shaped from a tree trunk and hollowed out by fire. Labuan has a piratical looking native dhow. The stamps of Rhodesia and the Congo Free State depict the advance of civilization on the dark continent. History is sumptuously illustrated in the series of stamps issued by our Government to commemorate the 400th anniversary ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... head toward the top of the tree and calling.] Mr. Woodpecker! [To CHANTECLER.] We will ask the learned gentleman in the green coat. [To the WOODPECKER the upper half of whose figure appears at a round hole high up in the tree trunk; his coat is green, his waistcoat buff, and he wears a red skull-cap.] Do you say ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... second volley. As this second volley crashed out I, having reloaded my weapon, stepped forward to take my place at a loophole just vacated by some one else, and as I did so I observed that the whole party had been thrown into great confusion by the second volley, the tree trunk having fallen to the ground, or been dropped. That, however, was not all; the negro dressed in Spanish infantry uniform had come to the front and was standing stock still, with his back toward the house, haranguing the battering-ram contingent and apparently urging ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... nearest thicket, and seizing the most convenient ammunition, which chanced to be in great plenty that day upon the braes of Balmaghie, pursued his insulter along the glade with such excellent aim and good effect that the black unadorned armour of the horseman showed disks of defilement all over, like a tree trunk ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... same way we can snatch a brand from the fire at any stage of its decomposition, or analyze a decaying tree trunk during any month of its existence, and thus manufacture as many chemical formulae as we like, and give them specific names; but it is evident that this is child's play, not science. The truth is, the slowly decomposing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... green jungle-growth fringing the meadow. The gorgeous bloom seemed to rise out of a black, curiously gnarled elbow of branch or trunk which thrust itself out through the leafage. Grom's eyes dwelt for a time, unheeding, upon this piece of misshapen tree trunk. Suddenly he saw the blackness wink. His startled vision cleared itself instantly, and revealed to him the hideous, two-horned mask of a black rhinoceros, peering forth ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... went to the hearth. Thence he took an iron cauldron, and hoisted it on the great round of tree trunk that served as table in the midst ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... them away, but not before they had trampled down a border of pinks and lilies in the cruellest way, and made great holes in a bed of China roses, and even begun to nibble at a Jackmanni clematis that I am trying to persuade to climb up a tree trunk. The gloomy gardener happened to be ill in bed, and the assistant was at vespers—as Lutheran Germany calls afternoon tea or its equivalent—so the nurse filled up the holes as well as she could with mould, ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... very old, Milo wandered out alone into a forest where some woodcutters had been at work. The men had gone away, leaving their wedges in an unusually large tree trunk. ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... through the leaves as through the chequers of stained glass windows; through the two shafts before him stretched the pillared aisles of Ashley Church! He was riding as in a dream, and when a figure suddenly slipped across his pathway from a column-like tree trunk, he woke with the disturbance and sense of unreality of a dream. For he saw Lady Elfrida standing ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... pulled him back. The Martian seemed to acquiesce. His single eye closed to a mere slit. He moved to a position between Forepaugh and the tree trunk, braced his feet. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... she walked slowly across the garden and the lane, and found her way to a little seat she had made on the side of the bluff overlooking the water. Here, her back to a tree trunk, she sat immobile, trying to still the turmoil of memories ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... who was at that moment watching from the tree trunk, leaped down; the second joined him, and both paced back and forth excitedly. They had heard the sounds of a coming that were too fine for my ears. A stir in the underbrush, and Mother Lynx, a great savage creature, stalked out proudly. She carried a dead hare gripped ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... the Friendly Forest Pool Is the Woodland Singing School. Little Squirrel Bushy Tail Sings the Do, Ray, Mee, Fa scale. Uncle Bullfrog sings "Ker-chunk" From his floating elm tree trunk. And a big good-natured bear Sings ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory
... forwards to a distance of from 2 to 5 feet. The approach from the ground to this platform in the case of a high-built emone is a rudely constructed ladder, but when the building is only low and near the ground it is generally merely a rough sloping piece of tree trunk, or even only a stump. The two gable ends are enclosed with walls made of horizontal tree branches, two or three of which are, at both the front and rear ends of the building, discontinued for a short distance in the centre, so as to leave openings. These openings are, say, 2 feet or more ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... trees from fir, by the sharp, prickly spires of the former, and so he was never at a loss which trees to search. No sooner had he begun, than he was surprised at the quantities that he found. To an ordinary observer the trunk of the spruce tree seems like any other tree trunk—no rougher, and perhaps somewhat smoother than many; but Tom now found that on every tree almost there were little round excrescences, which, on being picked at with the knife, came off readily, and proved to be gum. Vast quantities of a substance which goes by the name of spruce ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... that flashed in the firelight, was open in front, showing the smooth skin and splendid swell of chest. He glanced around—at the blankets bowered in a green screen and waiting, at the campfire and the blackened, battered coffee pot, at the well-worn hatchet, half buried in a tree trunk, and lastly at Saxon. His eyes embraced her; then into them came a slow expression of inquiry. But ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... tapping of the sapsucker, the rat-tat-tat of the bold red-headed woodpecker inviting insects in the rotten limb to look out, and he gobbled up, the frisking of the red squirrel as he darted like a flash around to the other side of a tree trunk—-all these and more he noted as he ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... third day, too, he uttered his first genuine woodpecker cry of "pe-auk!" He had not the least embarrassment before me. I think he regarded me as a part of the landscape,—the eccentric development of a tree trunk, perhaps; for while he never looked at me nor put the smallest restraint upon his infant passions, let another person come into the wood, and he was at once silent and on his guard. All this time he had become more and more fascinated with the view without ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... of an hour, twenty minutes, surprised, not understanding what could be keeping them. She had dismounted. She sat there, leaning against a tree trunk. Suddenly a thought came to her as she glanced again at the glove, the whips and the two horses left tied there, and she sprang to her saddle with an irresistible ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the night was spent as our former one had been. The next morning we rode forward to visit the pound which I will briefly describe. It consisted of a large circle of stout stakes, driven into the ground perpendicularly, close together. There was one opening, at the entrance of which a strong tree trunk was placed about a foot from the ground, and at the inner side an excavation was made sufficiently deep to prevent the buffalo from leaping back when once in the pound. From this entrance, on either side, gradually widening, extended two rows of ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... Dick. I want to be out early with the men. They came upon a great tree trunk this afternoon, and I want to examine it when it is dug out. Is ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... felt a little awed at the outburst, and possibly Lance a little ashamed, for he suddenly started from his tree trunk, crying, 'I'm sure we ought to go home. However there are Jack and Mettie on beyond ever so far.' And he elevated his voice in a coo-ee, after what he believed to be Australian fashion; but his weakness prevailed, and he laughed ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... believe it!" cried Billy Mink. "I don't believe any cousin of Jerry Muskrat's ever built such a dam as this. Why, just look at that great tree trunk at the bottom! No one but Farmer Brown or Farmer Brown's boy could ever have dragged that there. You're crazy, Grandfather Frog, just plain crazy." Billy Mink sometimes is very ...
— The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat • Thornton W. Burgess
... fell in a slow drizzle, but Henry still watched at the loophole, and soon he caught a glimpse of two parallel rows of men bearing something heavy, and approaching the cabin. They had secured a tree trunk, and would batter down the door; but they must come within range, and Henry smiled to himself. Then he beckoned to Paul to come ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... tent, and I followed him into the woods. Beneath the overhang of the cliff he stopped, his piercing eyes flashing in the darkness as I advanced with the torch. Patiently he waited beneath a leaning tree trunk. Ten feet from him I knelt upon the velvet needles of the forest, and with torch held aloft, steadied the six-shooter, aimed ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... first master who applied all the developed qualities of the Dutch School to the treatment of landscape painting. In general his prevailing tone is clear and bright, more especially in the green of his trees and plants, which in many cases, merges into blue. One of his characteristics is a fallen tree trunk in the foreground, as may be seen in three out of the six examples in the National Gallery. The carefulness of his execution explains how it was that in so long a life he only produced a moderate number of pictures. Smith's catalogue contains ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... wide a curve, and before I knew the car was over the far edge. I slapped on the brakes, but to avoid turning turtle I had to leave the road altogether. I slithered down a steep bank into a meadow, where for my sins I ran into a fallen tree trunk with a jar that shook me out of my seat and nearly broke my arm. Before I examined the car I knew what had happened. The front axle was bent, and the off front ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... had reached him. He was braced in the crotch of a limb, leaning against the tree trunk still holding his hunting knife. His coat was wet and I guessed at rather than saw the pallor of his face Below were the sounds of the ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... what I found, but the tent covering was always of felt, not linen, and there were often two tents, one for the men and one for the women, instead of a tent with two divisions; and alas, more often than not, the hollow tree trunk was replaced by Standard Oil tins. But as the Mongol lived in Marco Polo's time, and Huc's, so he does still, and so he will continue to live until Chinese colonization or Russian rule forces him to give ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... beeves: these he wore hanging from his neck. The fellow leaped up straightway when he saw me drawing near. I do not know whether he was going to strike me or what he intended to do, but I was prepared to stand him off, until I saw him stop and stand stock-still upon a tree trunk, where he stood full seventeen feet in height. Then he gazed at me but spoke not a word, any more than a beast would have done. And I supposed that he had not his senses or was drunk. However, I made bold to say to him: 'Come, let me know whether ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... the Rhone to the other where it was two hundred yards wide. And lastly, he could throw a knife backwards while running at full speed with such strength and precision of aim that this new kind of Parthian arrow would go whistling through the air to hide two inches of its iron head in a tree trunk no thicker than a man's thigh. When to these accomplishments are added an equal skill with the musket, the pistol, and the quarter-staff, a good deal of mother wit, a deep hatred for Republicans, against whom he had vowed vengeance at the foot of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of rivers. They mostly irrigate by a dhekli or dipping lift, from temporary wells or from water-holes in rivers. The pole of the lift has a weight at one end and a kerosene tin suspended from the other. Another form of lift is a hollowed tree trunk worked on a fulcrum, but this only raises the water a foot or two. The Marars do general cultivation as well; but as a class are not considered skilled agriculturists. The proverb about ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell |
