"Albatross" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... respecting new discoveries...You will carefully examine...all within 6 miles round the island to ascertain whether a vessel may anchor. Having completed the survey...you will ascertain the time of bearing...between the south westernmost point and Albatross Islands, the northernmost of Hunter's Islands and the Pyramid. Having completed...your survey thus far you will ascertain to what distance soundings may be got to the westward of the Norfolk's and Lady ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... they do the business for which scavengers are employed. Vultures are very greedy and ravenous; they will often eat so much that they are not able to move or fly, but sit quite stupidly and insensible. One of them will often, at a single meal, devour the entire body of an albatross (bones and all), which is a bird nearly as large as the vulture itself. They will smell a dead carcass at a very great distance, and will soon surround and ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... this problem of aerial flotation as if it were of the nature of a miracle—something not to be explained. Explanations which have been advanced have, it is true, been in many cases altogether untenable. For instance, some have asserted that the albatross, the condor, and other birds which float for a long time without moving their wings—and that, too, in some cases, at great heights above the sea-level, where the air is very thin—are supported by some gas within the hollow parts of their bones, as the balloon is supported ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... Then followed the Albatross, with Mark Powers giving the orders. Then the Privateer, another fast one, but going sluggishly now because of a stove-in seine-boat wallowing astern. Then the North Wind, with her decks swept clear of everything but her house and hatches. Seine-boat, ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... tropic bird, which is a remarkable occurrence, for I never saw the latter bird before so far without the tropic; but here was one nearly five hundred miles to the southward of it, and at least three hundred leagues from the nearest land; an albatross (Diomedea exulans, Linn.) was shot, but did not measure more than nine feet nine inches across the tips of ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... deputation of Falmouth Whigs, headed by their Mayor, came on board to wish Macaulay his health in India and a happy return to England, nothing occurred that broke the monotony of an easy and rapid voyage. "The catching of a shark; the shooting of an albatross; a sailor tumbling down the hatchway and breaking his head; a cadet getting drunk and swearing at the captain," are incidents to which not even the highest literary power can impart the charm of novelty in the eyes of the readers ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... coast, but nobody imagined it was merely a sort of backwater from the Gulf Stream that formed a great circular mill-race around the cone of a subterranean volcano, and rejoined the Gulf Stream off Cape Albatross. But it is! That is why papa bought a yacht three years ago and sailed about for two years so mysteriously. Oh, I did want to go ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... muffled shrieks of a better-known variety of the same mystic plant, that tell us of Maupassant's growing progress to his fate. As you explore the time and the space of the interval you come across wonderful things. There are the micro- macrocosms of Hugo, where, as in Baudelaire's line on the albatross quoted above, he is partly hampered because he has come down from the air of poetry to the earth of prose; of Balzac, where there is no such difficulty, but where the cosmos itself is something other than yours; of Dumas, where half the actual history of France ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... value, though I stood by clinging to the bulwarks, to lend a hand in case I should be required. While glancing to windward, as I did every now and then, in hopes of seeing signs of the abatement of the gale, I caught sight of what seemed the wing of an albatross, skimming the summit of a tossing sea. I looked again and again. There it still was as at first. I pointed it out to the captain. "A sail running down towards us," he observed; "it is to be hoped that she is a friend, for we are in ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... interesting study in the accompanying illustration. Note that the surface area of the albatross is much smaller than that of the vulture, although the wing spread is about the same. Despite this the albatross accomplishes fully as much in the way of flight and soaring as the vulture. Why? Because the albaboss is quicker and more powerful ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... Ligeia! My beautiful one! Whose harshest idea Will to melody run, O! is it thy will On the breezes to toss? Or, capriciously still, Like the lone Albatross, [23] Incumbent on night (As she on the air) To keep watch with delight On ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... between Russian and German squadrons in the Baltic, between the Island of Oeland and the Courland coast; after a brief engagement the German squadron, outnumbered and outmatched in strength, flees; the German mine layer Albatross is wrecked by Russian gunfire and is beached by her crew; the Russian squadron then sails northward, sighting another German squadron, which is also outmatched in strength; the German ships flee after a thirty-minute fight, a German torpedo boat being damaged; Dutch lugger Katwyk ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... skies, with a brief glint of sunshine now and then—for it was nominally summer time in low latitudes. Days of gloomy calm, presage of a fiercer blow, when the Old Man (Orcadian philosopher that he was) caught and skilfully stuffed the great-winged albatross that flounders helplessly when the wind fails. Days of strong breezes, when we tried to beat to windward under a straining main-to'gal'nsail; ever a west wind to thwart our best endeavours, and week-long gales, that we rode out, ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... we climbed to a less dangerous height. Again we became the target for a few dozen H.E. shells. We broke away and swooped downward. Some little distance ahead, and not far below, was a group of five Albatross two-seaters. V. pointed our machine at them, in the wake of the ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... its knife-like fin just showing above the water. It was Sunday, too, when no fishing was allowed—a fact of which he was evidently aware. These fellows are proverbially stupid, and will go at a bait again and again, even though they must know it to be a lure. Only once, too, did we catch an albatross, the bird of the Southern Ocean. That was by a line baited with a small piece of pork. This was fastened to a round ring of iron, in which the hooked beak of the bird caught, and so it was dragged on board. The captain knocked it on the head, and it was ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... pour, Dropping their liquid light o'er Hadrian's glowing tower: Or tell what crowds on Easter-day repair To see their Pontiff-bird, in high-swung chair Upborne magnificent; when, rising slow, Th' emerging figure stands, all white as snow, Like some large albatross his arms outspreads, O'er all that mighty, silent, sea of heads! Thrice waves his wings, the voiceless blessing sends Far, far away to earth's remotest ends! The joyous news th' impatient cannon tells, Louder and louder, as the discord swells, Of clashing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... This desperate enterprise consisted of four ships, and three gunboats, the latter being lashed to the port side of the ships. But only the Hartford, which flew the Admiral's dauntless blue, and her consort, the little Albatross, succeeded in running past the batteries. The other ships were disabled by the enemy's fire and dropped down stream. The Mississippi, which had no consort, grounded and to save the lives of her ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... made a gesture that wasn't far from despair—and in that gesture, such as only those can make who know in their hearts that they have shot the albatross, this preface brings itself to a close and at ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... ranged on a circular grass plot between the churchyard and the house. It was a lovely still summer evening, and I stayed out, climbing among the chairs and sofas. Falling on a large bone or skull, I asked what it was. Part of an albatross, auntie told me. 'What is an albatross?' I asked, and then she described to me this great bird nearly as big as a house, that you saw out miles away from any land, sleeping above the vast and desolate ocean. ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... nothin'. Stave me, Rollins, but the first thing I'll be running foul of some of these Dagos, and I don't want a fracas until I see the lay of the old man. He's a queer one for sure, hey? Did you ever see a skipper with such a look? Sech bleeding eyes—an' nose, hey? Like the beak of an old albatross. He hasn't come out to lay the course yet, but let her go. She'll head within half a point of what she's doin' now. Sink me, but I don't believe there's three bloomin' beggars in my watch as can steer the craft, and she's got a new wheel gear on her too. Call me if the old man comes on deck." As ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... 30th of June the capture was effected, not without difficulty, of an albatross, which a shot from Herbert's gun had slightly wounded in the foot. It was a magnificent bird, measuring ten feet from wing to wing, and which could traverse seas as wide as ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... know it, and wheeling albatross, Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross. What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare, Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... their bodies and outstretched wings and tails at various angles to the wind, and literally sail. How often, when becalmed on southern seas, when not a breath of air was stirring and the sails idly flapped against the mast, have I seen the albatross, the petrel, and the Cape-pigeon resting on the water, or rising with difficulty, and only by the constant motion of their long wings able to fly at all. But when a breeze sprang up they were all life and motion, wheeling in graceful circles, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... the epochs in its growth are finely treated by Coleridge in "The Ancient Mariner" and by Tennyson in "In Memoriam." The Ancient Mariner felt only selfish affection. He had no love for "being as being." He killed the albatross with as little heed as he disregarded his fellow-men; but the ministries of his misery were multiplied until, at length, he was able to see something beautiful even in the writhing green sea-serpents that followed the ship of death on which he sailed. That was the first ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... exemplary Christians than those that sprinkled the turf under the birch-trees where Gelert was sleeping. It could not free the Ancient Mariner from the remorse that clung to him like a poisoned garment till it made him a "world's wonder," because, when he shot the albatross, he thought he was benefiting his fellows. Not less accusingly did the voices of the sea wail in the ears of the desolate Viking, because, when the bitter arrow went aside, he was fighting hard to save Oriana. Nothing could be more correct than the conduct of Virginius, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... then all was bare, bald, swelling sea and empearled sky, darkening in lagoons of azure down to the soft mountainous masses of white vapour lying like the coast of a continent on the larboard horizon. But one living thing there was besides myself: a grey-breasted albatross, of a princely width of pinion. I had not observed it till the hull went down, and then, lifting my eyes with involuntary sympathy in the direction pointed to by the upraised arms of the sailor, I observed the great royal bird hanging like a shape of marble directly over the ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... tongue was quite small for so large an animal. It was almost incapable of movement, being somewhat like a fowl's. Certainly it could not have been protruded even from the angle of the mouth, much less have extended along the parapet of that lower mandible, which reminded one of the beak of some mighty albatross or stork. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... subdued and musical laughter, which told that Alma had flown straight at some luckless quarry. She held in one hand a cluster of crimson anemones, and purple stars of periwinkle, and walking between two English gentlemen, whose yacht, the "Albatross", lay anchored close to the "Cleopatra" in the harbor below, slowly approached ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... did cross an Albatross, Thorough the Fog it came; And an it were a Christian Soul, We hail'd it in ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... edge of the evening she smelt the sea to southward and sheered thither like the strong-winged albatross, to circle enormously amid green flats fringed by ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... good an appetite as usual. I measured a very large male condor, and the width from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other was fourteen English feet and two inches—an enormous expanse of wing, not equalled by any other bird except the white albatross. (Diomedea exulans, Linn.). The snipes (Scolopax frenata, Ill.) found on the little plain between the bay and the light-house are in color precisely like those of Europe, from which, however, they ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... words, a man of about forty, tall and sinewy, clad in a short cape of white albatross feathers, and with a girdle of nautilus shells interspersed with red coral tied around his waist, came forth to ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... cross an Albatross, Thorough the fog it came; As if it had been a Christian soul, We hailed it in ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... situated. There was only one egg, but parental affection is not influenced by numbers. There is always love enough for the largest family, and everything that could be desired in an only child, and Mother Albatross was as proud as if she had been a hen ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... degs. south of Cape Horn, the net was put astern several times; it never, however, brought up anything besides a few of two extremely minute species of Entomostraca. Yet whales and seals, petrels and albatross, are exceedingly abundant throughout this part of the ocean. It has always been a mystery to me on what the albatross, which lives far from the shore, can subsist; I presume that, like the condor, it is able to fast long; and that one good feast on the carcass of a putrid ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... condition of the adjacent land, it could hardly be a matter of surprise that all the sea-birds, the albatross, the gull, the sea-mew, sought continual refuge on the schooner; day and night they perched fearlessly upon the yards, the report of a gun failing to dislodge them, and when food of any sort was thrown upon the deck, they would dart down and ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... not himself more poetical than any of his productions. They are emanations of his essence. He himself is, or has been, all that he truly and touchingly, i.e., poetically, describes. Wordsworth, indeed, never carried a pedlar's pack, nor did Byron ever command a pirate ship, or Coleridge shoot an albatross; but there were times and moods in which their thoughts intently realised, and identified themselves with the reflective wanderer, the impetuous Corsair, and the ancient mariner. They felt their feelings, thought their thoughts, burned with their passions, dreamed their ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... aunt; poor, ill-used, ill-treated, innocent Amabel; blameless, suffering Amabel, we await your words,' that fluttering, tiresome butterfly-thing inside her seemed suddenly to swell to the size and strength of a fluttering albatross, and Amabel got up from her seat of honour on the throne of ivory and silver and pearl, and said, choking a little, and extremely ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... weather—some beautiful, some very rough, but always contrary winds—and got within 200 miles of the coast of South America. We now have a milder breeze from the SOFT N.E., after a BITTER S.W., with Cape pigeons and mollymawks (a small albatross), not to compare with our gulls. We had private theatricals last night—ill acted, but beautifully got up as far as the sailors were concerned. I did not act, as I did not feel well enough, but I put a bit for Neptune into the Prologue and made the ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... given way! Part of the left hand plane had broken loose. Drunkenly, whirling head over like an albatross shot in mid-air, the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the change of the course to the north were uneventful, only marked by an occasional success of the naturalists in obtaining a fresh specimen, some of which were experimented on by the cook; an albatross, skinned, soaked all night in salt water, was stewed, served with savoury sauce, and was preferred to salt pork; a cuttle-fish of large size, freshly killed by the birds, and too much damaged for classification, was made into soup, of which Banks says: "Only this I know ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... "cooler temperatures on the slopes of the mountains." As for the political portion, it is difficult even now to contemplate calmly the blundering fatuity of that bigoted medieval brand of "patriotism" which led the decrepit Philippine government to play the Ancient Mariner and shoot the Albatross ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... in heavy weather, save the motor and strain on the forebody. Will not send to leeward. "Albatross" wind-hovers, rigid-ribbed; according to h.p. ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... barque put in here to-day with four men picked up from an open boat south of New Guinea, who reported that the Government survey vessel Albatross has run ashore in a storm on Ysabel Island, one of the Solomon group. The crew and passengers, including Dr. Thesiger Smith, the famous geologist, were saved, but the vessel is a complete wreck, and the unfortunate people were compelled to camp ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... "The albatross—its docility was charming—soon occupied a splendid isolation on the tarpaulined covered hatchway platform.... I shall in future read Keats' 'Ancient Mariner' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... of all birds dares to enter a white torrent. And though strictly terrestrial in structure, no other is so inseparably related to water, not even the duck, or the bold ocean albatross, or the stormy-petrel. For ducks go ashore as soon as they finish feeding in undisturbed places, and very often make long flights over land from lake to lake or field to field. The same is true of most other aquatic birds. But the Ouzel, born on ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... swayed up to their cranes—the two parts of the wrecked boat having been previously secured by her—and then hoisting everything to her side, and stacking her canvas high up, and sideways outstretching it with stun-sails, like the double-jointed wings of an albatross; the Pequod bore down in the leeward wake of Moby Dick. At the well known, methodic intervals, the whale's glittering spout was regularly announced from the manned mast-heads; and when he would be reported as just gone down, Ahab would take ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the albatross, whence come those clouds of spiritual wonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom sails in all imaginations? Not Coleridge first threw that spell; but ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... song, who gazes with royal disdain down over the spray, who wonders why the breakers have been there for thousands of years pounding against gates that never open, who soars at this moment with outspread wings over Cape Horn—who but the albatross, the largest of all storm birds, the boldest and most unwearied of all the winged inhabitants of the ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... their glorious estate. Oh, what a fall was there! It was the fall of innocence and purity; it was the fall of happiness into the abyss of woe; it was the fall of life into the arms of death. It was like the fall of the wounded albatross, from the regions of light, into the sea; it was like the fall of a star from heaven to hell. When the jasper gate forever closed behind the guilty pair, and the flaming sword of the Lord mounted guard over the barred portal, the whole life-current of the human race was shifted into ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... to the formation either of close friendships or of deadly enmities as an Indiaman. There are very few people who do not find a voyage which lasts several months insupportably dull. Anything is welcome which may break that long monotony, a sail, a shark, an albatross, a man overboard. Most passengers find some resource in eating twice as many meals as on land. But the great devices for killing the time are quarrelling and flirting. The facilities for both these exciting pursuits are great. The inmates of the ship are thrown ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fiery scroll resolved itself into the characters of the "Covenant Sign" ("The Mark of the Beast.") With a swoop, like that of some crimson Albatross, the thing descended until it seemed almost to touch the platform where the challenger "Conrad" stood. Then, to the amaze and delight of the vast audience in "The Fan," out from convolutions of the central sign of the "Mark," Apleon stepped ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... facts upon which De Quincey bases his hinted charge against Coleridge in his Lake Poets. It was not Coleridge who had been reading Shelvocke's Voyages, but Wordsworth, and it is quite conceivable, therefore, that the source from which his friend had derived the idea of the killing of the albatross may (if indeed he was informed of it at the time) have escaped his memory twelve years afterwards, when the conversation with De Quincey took place. Hence, in "disowning his obligations to Shelvocke," he may not by any means have intended to suggest that the albatross ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... before; The halcyons{1} brood around the foamless isles; The treacherous ocean has forsworn its wiles; The merry mariners are bold and free: Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me? Our bark is as an albatross whose nest Is a far Eden of the purple east; And we between her wings will sit, while Night And Day and Storm and Calm pursue their flight, Our ministers, along the boundless sea, Treading each other's heels, unheededly. It is an isle under Ionian{2} skies, Beautiful as a wreck of paradise; And, ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... Kaumualii, the last King of Kauai, visited Honolulu in the ship Albatross, Capt. Nathan Winship, in order to have an interview with Kamehameha. It was then arranged between the two chiefs that Kaumualii should continue to hold his Island in fief of Kamehameha during his life-time, ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... good deal out of our course during the night. At noon we were in lat. 26 deg. 44' S., long. 103 deg. 50' E. I managed to go to the deck-house to-day for lunch, and remained on deck a little afterwards. Just before sunset we saw several sea-birds, and a splendid albatross with a magnificent spread of wing. It was wonderful to watch its quick turns and graceful skimming flight, so swift, and yet with ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... stout heart and a steady arm, when—don't be afraid—a Catamaran caught me! If you haven't fainted (bless those pretty eyes of your's, my Emmy!) read on; and you will find that this alarming sort of animal is neither an albatross nor an alligator, but simply—a life-boat with a Triton in the stern. Yes, God's messenger of life to me and happiness to you, my girl, came in the shape of a kindly, chattering, blue-skinned, human creature, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Somaliland were searched with glasses for signs of habitations. So desolate, however, appeared the country, and so few the signs of life, that, as a diversion, the men cheered whenever an occasional school of porpoises or a solitary albatross came more closely under view. Cape Guardafui was passed soon after lunch, and the following evening the ship stopped her engines for half an hour in order to exchange messages with Aden, which was dimly visible through the thick bluish ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... Caspian's reedy brink Down winding to the Green Sea beach. Around its base the bare rocks stood Like naked giants, in the flood As if to guard the Gulf across; While on its peak that braved the sky A ruined Temple towered so high That oft the sleeping albatross[225] Struck the wild ruins with her wing, And from her cloud-rockt slumbering Started—to find man's dwelling there In her own silent fields of air! Beneath, terrific caverns gave Dark welcome to each stormy wave That dasht ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... about two miles and three-quarters, the latter about four miles. A maiden steeple, a hurdle race and a hunters' flat race filling up the programme. The best horse at the meeting that year was named Albatross, a jet black, curiously enough, and the property of a good sport, Mick Morris, a Government stock inspector. Albatross had been heavily backed to win the double, the Drag and Hunt Club Cups. I think it was Bob Turner who rode ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... length was now between the boat and the struggling swimmer. Not a shark was to be seen on the water, nor beneath it—no fish of any kind—nothing whatever in the sea. Only, in the sky above, a large bird, whose long scimitar-shaped wings and grand curving beak told them what it was—an albatross. It was the great albatross of the Indian seas, with an extent of wing beyond that of the largest eagle, and almost equalling the spread of the South ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... birds were sitting upon their nests, and almost covered the surface of the ground, nor did they any otherwise derange themselves for the new visitors, than to peck at their legs as they passed by. This species of albatross is white on the neck and breast, partly brown on the back and wings, and its size is less than many others met with at sea, particularly in the high southern latitudes. The seals were of the usual size, and bore a reddish fur, much inferior in quality to that ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... their bodies were oiled, and all were completely armed; their muskets were loaded, their cartouch boxes were fastened round their waists, and their patoo-patoos were fixed to their wrists. Their hair was tied up in a tight knot at the top of their heads, beautifully ornamented with feathers of the albatross. As the opposite party landed, ours all crouched on the ground, their eyes fixed on their visitors, and perfectly silent. When the debarkation was completed I observed the chief, Ta-ri-ah, put himself at their head, and ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... the water, he completed a voyage which never lost its charm to him, notwithstanding the rude hardships. He wished to make all kind of inquiries into natural history, and when the weather fell calm he would go off in a boat and shoot sea birds. Not the airy albatross, perhaps, for in it he realised the melody of motion, and it was not rare to naturalists. To shoot, from a boat, ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... brow; There is a path on the sea's azure floor, 410 No keel has ever ploughed that path before; The halcyons brood around the foamless isles; The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles; The merry mariners are bold and free: Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me? 415 Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest Is a far Eden of the purple East; And we between her wings will sit, while Night, And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight, Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, 420 Treading each other's heels, unheededly. It is an isle under ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... baited hook which we floated astern upon a shingle. Their long, flapping wings, long legs, and large, staring eyes, give them a very peculiar appearance. They look well on the wing; but one of the finest sights that I have ever seen was an albatross asleep upon the water, during a calm, off Cape Horn, when a heavy sea was running. There being no breeze, the surface of the water was unbroken, but a long, heavy swell was rolling, and we saw the fellow, all white, directly ahead of us, asleep upon the waves, with ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... see a thicket of masts on the river. But in the prints to be There will be lake boats, With port holes, funnels, rows of decks, Huddled like swans by the docks, Under the shadows of cliffs of brick. And who will know from the prints to be, When the Albatross and the Golden Eagle, The flying craft which shall carry the vision Of impatient lovers wounded by Spring To the shaded rivers of Michigan, That it was the Missouri, the Iowa, And the City of Benton Harbor Which lay huddled like swans by ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... became strangely restless as they neared their goal. He had come thousands of miles and had seen nothing fresh with the exception of a few flying-fish, an albatross, and a whale blowing in the distance. Pacing the deck late one night with Captain Brisket he expressed mild ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... belonged. It was White-Jacket that loosed that main-royal, so far up aloft there, it looks like a white albatross' wing. It was White-Jacket that was taken for an albatross himself, as he flew ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... rocks, and the shores of the different islands, had an appearance of volcanic origin, though the rocks themselves told a somewhat different story. The last was principally of trap formation. Cape pigeons, gulls, petrels, and albatross were wheeling about in the air, while the rollers that still came in on this noble sea-wall were really terrific. Distant thunder wants the hollow, bellowing sound that these waves made when brought in contact with the shores. Roswell fancied that it was like a groan of the ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... July, in the evening, the sailors saw innumerable birds going from the south-west to the north-east, which flight of birds was a sign that land was not far off. For several successive days birds were seen, and an albatross perched upon the admiral's vessel. Still the fleet went on without seeing land, and, as it was in want of fresh water, the admiral was thinking of changing his course, and, indeed, on Thursday, ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... as a bird in the air Despot man doth dare! His humbling cumbersome body at length Light as the lark upsprings, Buoyed by tamed explosive strength And steel-ribbed albatross wings!" ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... trades behind me an' I'd leave the Southern Cross, An' the mollymawks an' flyin'-fish an' stately albatross, An' I'd come through wind an' weather an' the fogs as white as wool, Till I sighted old Point Lynas an' the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... one or two with a baited hook which we floated astern upon a shingle. Their long, flapping wings, long legs, and large, staring eyes, give them a very peculiar appearance. They look well on the wing; but one of the finest sights that I have ever seen, was an albatross asleep upon the water, during a calm, off Cape Horn, when a heavy sea was running. There being no breeze, the surface of the water was unbroken, but a long, heavy swell was rolling, and we saw the fellow, all white, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... atmosphere as well as from the water in which it is dissolved. They pass a great part of their life in the air; but if they escape from the sea to avoid the voracity of the Dorado, they meet in the air the Frigate-bird, the Albatross, and others, which seize them in their flight. Thus, on the banks of the Orinoco, herds of the Cabiai, which rush from the water to escape the crocodile, become the prey of the jaguar, which awaits ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... where it has its effect, as it were antipathetically, in the vivid realisation of the serpentine element in Geraldine's nature; and in The Ancient Mariner, whose fate is interwoven with that of the wonderful bird, at whose blessing of the water-snakes the curse for the death of the albatross passes away, and where the moral of the love of all creatures, as a sort of ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... convenient starting place. They required a special sort of swift car to throw them into the air, but such a car was efficient in any open place clear of high buildings or trees. Human aeronautics, Graham perceived, were evidently still a long way behind the instinctive gift of the albatross or the fly-catcher. One great influence that might have brought the aeropile to a more rapid perfection had been withheld; these inventions had never been used in warfare. The last great international struggle had occurred before ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... birds the albatross is the most skillful in the art of sailing in the air. It is a large sea-bird, about the size of a swan, and has very long and powerful wings. It lives far out upon the open ocean, hundreds of miles from land, and spends nearly all of its life in the air, very seldom ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... nor albatross, nor flying-fish?" continued Cap, who kept his eye fastened on the guide, in order to see how far he might venture. "No such thing as a fish that ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... toy canoes from Kamchatka and the Southern seas; wooden masks from the burial places of the Alaskan Indians and the Theban Tombs of the Nile Kings; rude fish-hooks that had been dropped in the coral seas; sharks' teeth; and the strong beak of an albatross whose webbed feet were tobacco pouches and whose hollow wing-bones were the long jointed stem of a pipe; spears and war-clubs were there, brought from the gleaming shores of reef-girdled islands; a Florentine lamp; a ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... of whirlpools, in a land of moors where no stranger came, unless it should be a sportsman to shoot grouse or an antiquary to decipher runes, the presence of these small pedestrians struck the mind as though a bird-of-paradise had risen from the heather or an albatross come fishing in the bay of Wick. They were as strange to their surroundings as my lordly evangelist or the old Spanish grandee ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the picture-gallery, hung with the works of modern masters; then, through the room filled with specimens of stuffed animals. The lion and the tiger, the vulture of the Alps and the great albatross, looked like living creatures threatening me, in the supernatural light. I entered the third room, devoted to the exhibition of ancient armor, and the weapons of all nations. Here the light rose higher, ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... traveler, albatross raiser. Gathered fame by making a voyage with some dead ones. His feat has frequently been duplicated on liners out ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... Port Stanley. There were seven warships, besides the Canopus. The Invincible and the Inflexible had left Plymouth on November 11, and had proceeded to the West Indies. Their mission was to avenge Coronel. They had picked up at Albatross Rock the Carnarvon, Cornwall, Bristol, Kent, Glasgow, now repaired, and Macedonia, an armed liner. All had then steamed southwards towards the Falklands. The vessels started coaling. Officers came ashore to ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... from which several pieces had broken, we hoisted out two boats, and took on board as much as filled all our empty casks, and the Adventure did the same. While this was doing, Mr Forster shot an albatross, whose plumage was of a colour between brown and dark-grey, the head and upper side of the wings rather inclining to black, and it had white eye-brows. We began to see these birds about the time of our first falling in with the ice islands; and some have accompanied us ever ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... over a Japanese fleet off Midway in 1942 was one of the turning points of World War II. The islands continued to serve as a naval station until closed in 1993. Today the islands are a National Wildlife Refuge and are the site of the world's largest Laysan albatross colony. Palmyra Atoll: The Kingdom of Hawaii claimed the atoll in 1862, and the US included it among the Hawaiian Islands when it annexed the archipelago in 1898. The Hawaii Statehood Act of 1959 did not include Palmyra Atoll, which is now partly privately owned ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Fight in England Against the Use of Plumage Young Egrets, Unable to Fly, Starving Snowy Egret Dead on Her Nest Miscellaneous Bird Skins, Eight Cents Each Laysan Albatrosses, Before the Great Slaughter Laysan Albatross Rookery, After the Great Slaughter Acres of Gull and Albatross Bones Shed Filled with Wings of Slaughtered Birds Four of the Seven Machine Guns The Champion Game-Slaughter Case Slaughtered According ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... Atlantic abounds in aquatic birds. We were followed continuously by clouds of them, low flying, skirting the water, of varied yet sober plumage. The names of these I cannot pretend to give, except the monarch of them all, in size and majesty of flight, the albatross, of unsullied white, as its name implies—the king of the southern ocean. Several of these enormous but graceful creatures were ever sweeping about us in almost endless flight, hardly moving their wings, but inclining them wide-spread, now ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... the meridian of Albatross Island, and by midnight cleared the Strait, when we steered a course for ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... of clothing, the men have not much difficulty, as they barter with the sailors on passing ships, giving in exchange the skins of albatross and mollyhawks, the polished horns of oxen, small calf-skin bags and penguin mats made by the women, and occasionally wild-cat skins. They usually wear blue dungaree on week-days, and broadcloth ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... never came, and shoals of porpoises danced around us at sunset, and we saw huge whales pursuing their solitary path through the bosom of the great deep, and we breakfasted off flying fish, and caught Cape pigeons, and wondered at the majestic flight of the albatross; and we often saw lightning without hearing thunder, and heard thunder without seeing lightning; and in due course we heard the thrilling shout from aloft of 'Land ho!' and heard the officer of the watch ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... responsibility out into the orchard. But the glory was all in the treetops, and Mary soon grew restless under her mother's explicit directions. "Up and down the walks" meant imprisonment, despair. Theodora should have tried to make her role of Albatross as acceptable as it might be made to the long-suffering mariner about whose neck she hung, but she showed a callousness and a heartless selfishness which nothing could excuse. Mary would sometimes plead with all gentleness ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... landward sides, they lay out the remaining part of the interior into equal little quadrangles, separated from each other by narrow foot-paths, crossing at right angles. In each crossing of these paths an albatross builds his nest, and in the middle of each quadrangle, a penguin, so that every albatross is surrounded by four penguins, and every penguin has albatross on four sides as neighbors. In this way the whole place is regularly occupied, and only at some ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... little to say about his mysterious companion in the air. He thought it was a "French laddie." Nor had he any story to tell about the driving down of the baron's machine. He could only say that he "kent" the baron and had met his Albatross before. He called him the "Croon Prince" because the black crosses painted on his wings were of a more elaborate design ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... spread both her great wings like an albatross, and leaped and plunged, and flew before ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... be the impassioned expression which is in the face of science; for Wordsworth's knowledge is a mystic insight wholly estranged from erudition; his celandine, his White Doe, belong to no fauna or flora. When Leconte de Lisle, on the other hand, paints the albatross of the southern sea or the condor of the Andes, the eye of a passionate explorer and observer has gone to the making of their exotic sublimity. The strange regions of humanity, too, newly disclosed by comparative religion and mythology, he explores ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... their holiday in the stormy gale. The lordly and graceful Albatross, whose motion is a very melody, swept screaming by upon the blast. The smaller Cape pigeons followed us fast, passing and repassing across the vessel's track. At last one of them spies a fragment on the waters, which has been thrown ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... come from Mr. Day, giving even worse accounts of the state of things at Balaclava; but it is too late for hesitation now. My plans are perfected, my purchases made, and passage secured in the "Albatross"—a transport laden with cattle and commissariat officers for Balaclava. I thought I should never have transported my things from the "Hollander" to the "Albatross." It was a terrible day, and against the strong current and ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... by greeting the trade winds so cherished by the hearts of mariners. We sailed many leagues south of the Cape of Good Hope and much too far away even to catch a glimpse of it, but we realized its proximity by the presence of the Cape pigeons which hovered around our vessel. The albatross was also our daily visitor and one or two of them were caught by the sailors, regardless of the superstition of possible calamity attending such an act. Our only stop during the long voyage was at the Moluccas or Spice Islands, in the Malay Peninsula, ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... albatross and the tropic-bird, forever on the wing, For them nor night nor breaking morn may peace nor shelter bring. All drooping from the weary cruise or shattered from the fight, No dear home-haven opes to them its ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... to the outskirts of a village situated on a railroad and a small stream. The location of enemy aviation fields was also shown pictorially, each one represented by a minute sketch, very carefully made, of an Albatross biplane. We noticed that there were several aerodromes not far distant ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... in his notes to his translation of Marco Polo's Voyages, supposes the roc to be a description of the albatross or ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... at the wheel and the guard at the quarter-railing, he was alone on the deck. A few birds flew round about the vessel, and seemed to pass under her stern windows only to appear again at her bows. A lazy albatross, with the white water flashing from his wings, rose with a dabbling sound to leeward, and in the place where he had been glided the hideous fin of a silently-swimming shark. The seams of the well-scrubbed deck were ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... he saw an Albatross That fluttered round the Lamp: He looked again, and found it was A Penny Postage-Stamp. "You'd best be getting home," he said: ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... owners. I don't think Mr. Peter Reid was kind, though perhaps he meant to be. Jean is such a conscientious, anxious pilgrim at any time, and I'm afraid the wealth will hang round her neck like the Ancient Mariner's albatross. ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... the country within it Natural productions Animals Sagacity and numbers of the black swan Inhabitants; inferior to those of the continent Range of the thermometer Pass Table Cape Circular head Three Hummock Island Albatross Island Hunter's Isles Proceed to the southward ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins |
