"Earthwork" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... daring feat was seen by the whole Confederate line, and a yell went up from the men along the railroad, "Don't kill him! don't kill him!" But while the cry went up horse and rider fell in one limp mass across the earthwork, and the gallant Northerner was dragged under shelter by his ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... summit is far above the reach of spade or shovel throw, and crowned by a platform firmly knit and held together by well-spliced timbers. As to its object we are somewhat dubious, but think it the beginning of an earthwork fortress, built high in order that guns may be depressed and brought to bear on the turrets of any Monitors which might possibly come down upon ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... further end. In former assaults the attacks had always been on the north, the Catholic side, as it might be called; but now the enemy had crossed the river above the fort, and were investing the place on both sides. Long foreseeing this, the old commandant had guarded the bank of the river with the earthwork, a long mound sloped irregularly on either hand, over which numerous little paths had since been worn by the women within, when on their way to the river with their washing; but he had been setting every one to work to destroy and fill up these, so that the rampart was smooth and slopping, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... almost as constantly assailed, was held. Men know now that it was not by strength, but by sleepless watch and dogged endurance, that less than 30,000 worn men—so dotted along works extending near forty miles, that at points there was one soldier to every rod of earthwork—held their own, even against the earlier onsets. Men now realize why the Federal general—failing in every separate effort to buy a key-position, even at the cost of six lives for one—was forced to sit down sullenly and wait the slow, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Dunkirk of America," must stand no longer as a menace. An army of workmen laboured for months with pick and spade and blasting-powder upon those vast fortifications; yet nothing but an upheaval of nature itself could obliterate all traces of earthwork, ditch, glacis, and casemate, which together made up the frowning fortress of Louisbourg. To-day grass grows on the Grand Parade, and daisies blow upon the turf-grown bastions; but who may pick his way over those historic mounds of earth without a sigh for ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... a low marshy island near the mouth of the Schuylkill. Its very situation, surrounded as it was by mud and water, made it impregnable to any land attack. While the fort itself was a fairly strong earthwork, laid out upon approved principles of engineering, its outer works of defence added greatly to its strength. In the main channels of the river were sunk heavy, sharp-pointed chevaux de frise, or submarine palisades, with sharp points extending just above the surface ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... clouds yon earthwork shrouds Where, steeped in battle to the lips, The French amain pour fiery rain On town, ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... almost painfully, alive to it—painfully, because it makes such constant and insistent demands upon one's attention. Some days, again, it is almost unheeded, and one passes through it blind and indifferent. It is an expression, I cannot help feeling, of the very mind of God; and yet the ancient earthwork in which I stand, bears witness to the fact that in far-off days men lived in danger and anxiety, fighting and striving for bare existence. We have established by law and custom a certain personal security nowadays; is our sense of beauty born of that security? I cannot ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... were told not to throw away the firing-pins, but to put them in their pockets, to be turned in and used over again. The day after this order went into effect a company of newly arrived recruits were being put through their bomb-throwing tests. Man after man walked up to the protecting earthwork, jerked loose the firing-pin, hurled the bomb, and put the firing-pin in his pocket. At last it came the turn of a youngster who was obviously overcome with stage fright. To the horror of his comrades, he threw the firing-pin and put the live bomb in his pocket! In three seconds that bomb was due ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... along towards this combe on foot, as though I were going bird's nesting. I beat along by the hedges, keeping out of sight behind them, till I was actually on the combe's north slope, climbing up to the old earthwork on the top. I took care to climb the slope at a place where there was no sentry, which was, of course, not only the steepest bit of the hill but covered with gorse clumps, through which I could scarcely thrust my way. Up towards the top the gorse was ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... some places are manifestly imitations of the shapes of beasts, birds, and human beings. There are districts where hundreds of these mounds appear within a limited area. Sometimes—as at Aztalan, in Wisconsin, and at Newark, in the Licking Valley—a vast series of earthwork enclosures is discovered, sometimes with embankments twelve feet high and fifty broad, within which are variously shaped mounds, definitely formed avenues, and passages and ponds. These enclosures amply prove, aside from the geological evidences of their ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... you look through the trees southward upon ships moving up or down Channel in the blue distance and the white water girdling Menawhidden; northward upon downs where herds of ponies wander at will between the treeless farms, and a dun-coloured British earthwork tops the high sky-line. Dwellers among these uplands, wringing their livelihood from the obstinate soil by labour which never slackens, year in and year out, from Monday morning to Saturday night, are properly despised ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of the battlefield covered by the enemy's lines. These photographs are developed and studied and diagrams drawn from them of the enemy's system of trenches. These diagrams are reproduced far behind the front in elaborately prepared earthwork and trenches which are an exact replica of the enemy's lines. The divisions which are to take part in the attack are sent back to rehearse their exact duties at just the point corresponding to that which they ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... this earthwork, firing as we advanced, and the French cleared out as we were climbing over ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... houses. The destruction in Bondy commenced by the French artillery has been completed by the Prussians. From three batteries in the park of Rancy they have destroyed the wall of the cemetery, behind which one battery was posted and an earthwork. What remained of the church has been literally reduced to dust. Except sentinels hid in the interior of the houses, all our troops had been withdrawn. Some few persons, out of curiosity, had adjourned ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... the fact that over the churchyard wall on the west, in a small grass field, traditionally called the Castle Field, there is the well-preserved plan of a Saxon lordly mansion. The circuit of the earthwork is almost complete, and at a point in the enceinte there rises the mound on which was pitched the garrison of the little castle. I use the term castle, as the habits of the language now require, and as it is ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... the earliest Norman castle was a motte fortified by a stockade, an earthwork protected with timber palings. That is the latest theory amongst antiquaries, but there are not a few who maintain that the Normans, who proved themselves such admirable builders of the stoutest of stone churches, would not long ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... ruins of the Guards' triangular fort at Gubat. The place was still capable of defence, and the trenches and rifle-pits were much as we left them on 13th February with General Buller. As for the graves, they were intact. The big earthwork we all helped to raise near the river was covered with water, except a corner of the western parapet. It was, however, partly thrown down, and the ditch and slopes were overgrown with grass and bushes. Then I rode away to Abu Kru battle-field and ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... Soon as the enemy, hard pressed by Truchsz, Reeling broke cover, had brought up his troops To the attack of Wrangel on the plain; Two lines he'd pierced and, as they broke, destroyed, When a strong earthwork hemmed his way; and thence So murderous a fire on him beat That, like a field of grain, his cavalry, Mowed to the earth, went down; twixt bush and hill He needs must halt to mass his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... They stood together on a high place, an earthwork of the stone-age men, watching for the light. It came over the land. But the land was dark. She watched a pale rim on the sky, away against the darkened land. The darkness became bluer. A little ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... knew his voice, and, weakened, though not dispirited, they gallantly responded to the appeal. Once more the line pressed forward. The short space between them and the earthwork was quickly traversed. Before the artillery could deal out a second salvo, the Royal Picts were over the parapet and in the thick of the Russians, bayoneting them as they stood at ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... Saturday. On Sunday morning the contest was renewed, and kept up with great energy during the whole day, chiefly within the suburbs of the town of Winchester. In the afternoon a sudden and unexpected attack was made upon an unfinished earthwork on Flint Ridge, which, as it commanded the Pughtown and Romney roads, was occupied by Battery L of the 5th regular artillery, supported by the 110th and part of the 116th Ohio volunteer infantry, all under command of Colonel Keifer, of the former regiment. A reconnaissance had been previously ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... little copse. Almost suddenly the creek wound round under a low chalk cliff, and in a moment Felix found himself confronted by another city. This had no wall; it was merely defended by a ditch and earthwork, without ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... been trained to execute works of excavation and embankment. These old practitioners formed a nucleus of skilled manipulation and aptitude, which rendered them of indispensable utility in the immense undertakings of the period. Their expertness in all sorts of earthwork, in embanking, boring, and well-sinking—their practical knowledge of the nature of soils and rocks, the tenacity of clays, and the porosity of certain stratifications—were very great; and, rough-looking though they were, many of them were as important ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... gunners were utterly ignorant of the art of handling the pieces, and the scattering bullets all went over the heads of the loyal cavalrymen. The captain did not give them time to repeat the experiment, for he ordered his lieutenant to charge over the earthwork before they had time to load again. The fort had been constructed in a very rude manner, without the help of an engineer; and it was only a sort of windrow of earth, as hay is raked up in a field, and the mounted men had no difficulty in riding ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... could be seen by an advancing foe. Two large trees felled and stripped of their boughs were placed across the road in front of the guns, being, when placed, just high enough for the gunners to look over them. A strong party were then set to work to cut sods, and with these an earthwork was thrown up across the road, four feet high. Embrasures were left for the guns, and these were made very narrow, as the fire would be directly in front. On either side trees were felled with their boughs outward, so as to form ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... during war, and one can imagine that when the river was low in summer, and perhaps fordable, the spit of land before it, which formed an exception to the marshes round about, needed to be protected as a sort of bastion beyond the stream. This theory will at least account for the two great ridges of earthwork going from one water to the other and completely cutting off the peninsula, since it is agreed these works are earlier than the Roman invasion. Whatever its origin, the part which Dorchester plays in the early history ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... of earthwork has the outline of gigantic men or animals. An embankment in Adams County, Ohio, represents very accurately a serpent 1000 feet long. Its body winds with graceful curves, and in its wide-extended jaws lies a figure which the animal ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... Penitentiary of West Virginia, a solemn-looking pile of dark gray stone, with the feeble battlements and towers common to American prison architecture. But the chief feature of the place is the great Indian mound—the "Big Grave" of early chroniclers. This earthwork is one of the largest now remaining in the United States, being sixty-eight feet high and a hundred in diameter at the base, and has for over a century attracted the attention of travelers ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... coast near Rivermouth. A strong fort defended the harbor, and a regiment of minute-men, scattered at various points along-shore, stood ready to repel the boats, should the enemy try to effect a landing. Captain Nutter had charge of a slight earthwork just outside the mouth of the river. Late one thick night the sound of oars was heard; the sentinel tried to fire off his gun at half-cock, and couldn't, when Captain Nutter sprung upon the parapet in the pitch darkness, and shouted, "Boat ahoyl" A musket-shot immediately embedded itself in ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... to the line and bullet-proof! The Cyclopean doors that we hung, with sliding bolts fit to be "the mast of some great admiral"! And when we had "made the pile complete" some marplot of the Regular Army came that way and chatted a few moments with our commander, and we made an earthwork away off on one side of the road (leaving the other side to take care of itself) and camped outside it in tents! But the Regular Army fellow had not the heart to suggest the demolition of our Towers of Babel, and the foundations remain to this day to attest the genius of the American ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... a number of men were set to work with spades, picks, and shovels, to throw up an earthwork. When it had assumed sufficiently large dimensions to attract the attention of the French, a body of men, with blue jackets, and caps with bits of red flannel hanging down the sides, were marched up behind it at the double, and ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... in part. The wagons were drawn up in a great circle in an open space, where they could not be reached by a rifle shot from the trees, and then more than two hundred men, using pick and spade, speedily threw up an earthwork three feet high that inclosed the wagons. Henry Ware regarded it ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and out of soldiers, and to guard the cattle and booty. The principal street was one hundred feet wide, and was called Principia. The defenses of the camp consisted of a ditch, the earth from which was thrown inwards, and strong palisades of wooden stakes upon the top of the earthwork so formed. The ditch was sometimes fifteen feet deep, and the vallum or rampart ten feet in height. When the army encamped for the first time the tribunes administered an oath to each individual, including ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... consisted of a knoll, on three sides of which trenches had been dug. Within the entrenchment stood ten guns that were being fired through openings in the earthwork. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... were the other men I had seen? In a moment I guessed the truth, for I caught the dull sound of digging and delving in the earth below—thud, thud, thud—as of many spades and picks, and beyond the angle of the wall I saw the earthwork piled with new earth in many places. So my young eyes peered curiously and cautiously out through the leaves, and a flood of feelings struggled in my heart, and the digging went on—thud, thud, thud—beneath my very feet, and the two strange men trod ever ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... his head, and grunted at a red blur very low in the mist. A fire was burning on the low point of land where Nichols—the Nova Scotian—had planted the battery which had worked such havoc with Admiral Rowley's boats. It was a mere earthwork and some of the guns had been removed. The fire, however, warned us that there were some people on the point. We ceased rowing for a moment, and Castro explained to me that a fire was always lit when any of these thieves' boats were stirring. There would be three or ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... bullocks, and the 50 pack-horses swam the Ohio, and just above the Big Hockhocking (the site of the present Hockingport) erected a blockhouse and stockade, which they called Fort Gower, in honor of the English earl of that name. A part of the earthwork can still (1894) be seen in the garden of a Hockingport residence. Dunmore's party, in 100 canoes and pirogues, arrived a few days later. While at Fort Gower, he was joined by the Delaware chiefs, White Eyes and John Montour, the former of ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... mortars." The mortar I may explain to my unmilitary readers is a short carronade of large bore and with a comparatively short range. The mortar with a heavy charge throws its missile at a sharp angle upwards, so that, instead of attempting to go through an earthwork, it is thrown into the enclosure. The recoil from a mortar is very heavy, necessitating the construction of a foundation called a mortar-bed which is not only solid but which possesses a certain amount of elasticity ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... fighting-blood. He turned his head over his right shoulder, his cheeks became flushed, and a sudden flash of the eye showed with what reluctance he retired before the fire directed upon him. No other course was left him, however, and he continued to ride slowly toward his inner line—a low earthwork in the suburbs of the city—where a small force was drawn up, ardent, hopeful, defiant, and saluting the shell, now bursting above them, with cheers and laughter. It was plain that the fighting-spirit of the ragged troops remained ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... vales of Sligo instead of the hungry hills of Leitrim. If some have greatness thrust upon them, some in the same way inherit lands. Out of the town we went, and climbed up a grassy eminence; with some difficulty got upon the "topmost tow'ring height" of an old earthwork—blamed on the Danes of course; everything unknown is laid on them. The square shape, the remains of the ditch that surrounds it look too much like modern modes of fortification not to have a suspiciously British ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... was, however, by such light as remained he could crawl upon the coping of the stonework which was still held in place with old struts of timber that, until they had been denuded by the slow and constant leakage, were buried and supported in the vanished earthwork. It was not a pleasant bridge, for to the right lay the mud-bottomed gulf, and to the left, almost level with his feet, were the black and peaty waters of the rain-fed dyke ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... westward of the bungalow, he came upon what at first glance seemed a very long, straight, level Indian mound or earthwork; but in a moment his trained eye told him it was a ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... did not go, and Harry, who was not far behind them in an earthwork, watched them with painful anxiety. He had seen the sudden uprising of the Northern skirmisher in the weeds and the flame from the muzzle. The man might not have known that it was Jackson, but he must have surmised from the gorgeous ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... night fell, and the battle ceased, save for the fitful boom of cannon along the lines, Dick sank against an earthwork, exhausted. He panted for breath and was without the power to move. He regarded vaguely the moving lights that had begun to show in the darkness, and he heard without comprehension the voices of men and the fitful fire of ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... part, dared not push out against a vastly superior force; his only chance was a ruse. Accordingly, putting a bold face on the matter, he manned a small earthwork with cannon, and played upon the enemy, with little or no actual injury, beyond the all-important effect of making Doria hesitate still more. Meanwhile, in the night, while his little battery is perplexing the foe, all is prepared at the southern extremity of the strait. Summoning ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... ravines. Just west of Government House, and close to the water, was a blockhouse or tower used as powder magazine, mounted with cannon to command the landing from the lake. Some accounts speak of yet another little outer battery or earthwork farther {352} westward. North of the Government House road, or what is now King Street, were dense woods. General Sheaffe, who had succeeded Brock at Queenston Heights, chanced to be in Toronto in April with some six hundred men. Just where the snug quarters of the Toronto ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... sails; and at the next, spread far below them, range on range of fertile park, stately avenue, yellow autumn woodland, and purple heather moors, lapping over and over each other up the valley to the old British earthwork, which stood black and furze-grown on its conical peak; and standing out against the sky on the highest bank of hill which closed the valley to the east, the lofty tower of Kilkhampton church, rich with the monuments and offerings of five centuries of Grenvilles. A yellow eastern haze hung ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the Boro Budur—which means the collection of Buddas—is not a building in the sense that we speak of St. Paul's or St. Peter's. A small hill has been cut down and the earthwork surrounded by masonry, uncemented, unjointed, layer upon layer, and there is no column, pillar, or true arch. It is supposed that it was built by some of the first Buddhist settlers from India as the resting place (dagaba) of one of the urns containing ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... to attack Fort Donelson, but he had none forbidding him to do it. He straightway moved nearly his whole force over the eleven miles of dreadful roads, and on the 12th began investing the stronghold, an earthwork inclosing about 100 acres, with outworks on the land and water sides, and defended by more than 20,000 men commanded by General Floyd, who had been President Buchanan's Secretary of War. The investing force had its right near the river above the fort. The weather ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... open up most interesting avenues of speculation; many of them were undoubtedly built as defences, some few—such as the small earthwork on the din's edge at Martinhoe—as beacons or signalling stations, and some are conjectured to have been built for burial purposes, not the mere barrows for single internment, but in connection with sepulchral ceremonies ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... fog in the early light revealed the long scarlet lines of British veterans, in battle array. Surely it was only something to whet their appetites for breakfast, for such well-trained fighters to carry that low, mud earthwork. ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... Comprising Engineering Surveys, Earthwork, Foundations, Masonry, Carpentry, Metal Work, Roads, Railways, Canals, Rivers, Waterworks, Harbours, &c. With Numerous Tables and Illustrations. Crown 8vo. ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... picture of this to yourselves. A great herd of volunteers, some of whom had never been under fire, the rest of whom had bolted miserably at Verdun a few days before, men not yet soldiers and almost without discipline: the batteries banging away in the wood behind them, in front of them a long earthwork at which the enemy were lobbing great round lumps of iron and exploding shells, and along the edge of this earthwork an elderly gentleman from Norfolk, in England, walking up and down undisturbed, occasionally giving ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... heavy shutters for windows and doorways, and loop-holes for fire-arms had been made at regular four-foot intervals. These the proprietor had not considered ample, and had constructed, twenty yards from the house, an ingenious earthwork which could be entered by means of a subterranean passage from the cellar. This miniature fort was in the form of a circular pit, sunk four feet and a half in the ground, and covered by a nearly flat roof, the edges or eaves of which were but a foot and a half above the surface of the earth. In the ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... from the ruin the Atlantic is seen, gleaming in the sun. Patches of bog with diggers of turf, are close by the untouched portions covered with white bog-bean blooms, which at a short distance look like a snowfall. On a neighbouring hill is a fine old Danish earthwork, a fort, called by the natives "The Rath," fifty yards in diameter, the grassy walls, some ten feet high and four yards thick, reared in a perfect circle, on which grow gorse and brambles. The graveyard is sadly neglected. Costly Irish crosses ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... St. Louis of the Illinois. Storehouses and quarters for a garrison rose around its edges, protected by a palisade. A windlass was rigged to draw water from the river below. On the northeast corner of the rock a low earthwork remains to ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... The lessening pasturage also reduced the herds which formerly fed in the vicinity, and at last we caught the tinkle of the cow-bells only as the cattle were driven past to remoter meadows. And one autumn afternoon two laborers, hired by the city, came and threw up an earthwork on the opposite side of the street, which they said was a sidewalk, and would add to the value of property in the neighborhood. Not being dressed with coal- ashes, however, during the winter, the sidewalk vanished next summer under a growth of rag-weed, and hid the increased ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... coming boldly into the light, and no more shots were fired at them. They ran up the slope to the crest of the bluff, leaped over a fresh earthwork, and fell among a crowd of soldiers in blue. Dick quickly raised himself to his feet, and saw soldiers about him, many of them wounded, all of them weary and drawn. Others were hard at work with pick and spade, ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... one hundred feet wide, and was called Principia. The defences of the camp consisted of a ditch, the earth from which was thrown inward, and of strong palisades of wooden stakes driven into the top of the earthwork so formed; the ditch was sometimes fifteen feet deep, and the vallum, or rampart, ten feet in height. When the army encamped for the first time the tribunes administered an oath to each individual, including slaves, to the effect that they would ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... Shawanoe camp, or village, is placed on the south side of the river, behind the fort. The country is here hilly, broken, and now, as in La Salle's time, covered with wood, which, however, soon ends in the open prairie. A short time since, the remains of a low, irregular earthwork of considerable extent were discovered at the intersection of two ravines, about twenty-four hundred feet behind, or south of, Starved Rock. The earthwork follows the line of the ravines on two sides. On the east, there is an opening, or gateway, leading to the adjacent ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... it merely indicated how far the prisoners might venture to go. Whoever crossed it must expect to be struck down by an arrow from the wall. This earthwork, it is true, menaced those held captive here, but they also owed it a debt of gratitude, for it shut from their eyes the horrible incidents on the sandy plain between the sea and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... stopped. The Indian position could be plainly seen. The crest of the earthwork was lined with fierce, dark faces, and here and there among the brown Iroquois were the ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... mortar, with wide embrasures for 8-inch guns, and the other on the crest of the rocky eminence which juts out into the waters of the gulf at the point. The upper battery mounted modern 10 and 12-inch Krupp guns, behind a six-foot stone parapet, in front of which were twenty feet of earthwork and ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... Messenger carried him after a few months to the center of power in the land, to Tara with its fortresses, its earthworks, its great banquet-halls and granaries and well-adorned dwellings of chief and king. A huge oval earthwork defended the king's house; northward of this was the splendid House of Mead,—the banquet-hall, with lesser fortresses beyond it. Southward of the central dwelling and its defence was the new ringed fort of Laogaire ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... sufficient to defend the town. It was not till later that Gage began to consider the heights of Dorchester and Charlestown, which, to the south and north, threatened Boston. Now he set to work upon an earthwork at the Neck, brought cannon there, and began to build block-houses. It was reported that he was to cut a ditch across the Neck, and confine traffic to a narrow bridge; but at the objection of the selectmen such an idea, if he had considered it, was given up. Protest against ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... their eyes, and choking words are whispered as they file round the casket, and look upon the calm dead face, that no more on earth will meet them with its wonted smile, and the pale hands that have done all their rough earthwork. His welcome we did not hear. Ah, it is well that the sound of harps and the silvery peals from the chiming bells of the city of God reach us not, or perchance we should "stand all the day idle." For are we not all entered Apprentices in this strange world of ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... is crowned with the grassy mound and trenches of an ancient earthwork, from whence there is a noble view of hill and plain. The inner slope of the green fosse is inclined at an angle pleasant to recline on, with the head just below the edge, in the summer sunshine. A faint sound as of a sea heard in a dream—a sibilant ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... and panes of colored glass, the same little machine-made iron gate, the same low red wall and iron railing and privet hedge; so indistinguishably, so maddeningly alike were all these diminutive houses. Each roof had the same purple slates, each roof tree the same red earthwork edging it like a lace; the same red tiles roofed each porch and faced each gable and the space between the stories. Only when your eyes became accustomed to the endless running pattern could you trace it clearly, grasp the detail, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... to find it; well we knew who stood behind it, Though the earthwork hid them from us, and the stubborn walls were dumb Here were sister, wife, and mother, looking wild upon each other, And their lips were white with terror as they said, THE ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of all the space bomb-proof, an apology for an intrenchment such as "an active cow might jump over." The imagination has to do much work here, for most of the landmarks are gone. The outline of the world-famous earthwork is almost wholly obliterated; only in places is it to be dimly recognised by brick-discoloured lines, and a low raised line on the smooth maidan. The enclosure now existing has no reference to the outlines of the intrenchment. That enclosure ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... town was an elevated green spot surrounded by an ancient square earthwork—earthworks square and not square, were as common as blackberries hereabout—a spot whereon the Casterbridge people usually held any kind of merry-making, meeting, or sheep-fair that required more space than the streets would afford. On one side it ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... inclosed by a stone wall and a shallow ditch, once useful as a defence against the Indians, but no protection in the face of serious assault. At the lower end of the city, covering the landing-place, rose a high earthwork crowned with cannon. ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... had come to Olaf of what should be done, Eadmund had gone ashore with all his warriors, and had fallen on the Southwark earthwork. It was Olaf's first thought to follow him, but he ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... 20-24). Gilgal, the first encampment, lay defenceless in the open plain, and the first thing to be done would be to throw up some earthwork round the camp. It seems to have been the resting-place of the ark and probably of the non-combatants, during the conquest, and to have derived thence a sacredness which long clung to it, and finally led, singularly enough, to its becoming a centre of idolatrous worship. The rude circle of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in a park watered by the river Avon, here famous for its trout. Stonehenge (q.v.), the greatest surviving megalithic work in the British Isles, is a mile and a half distant; and on a hill near the village is Vespasian's Camp or the Ramparts, a large earthwork, which is undoubtedly of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to hold, commanded as it was by several houses outside the inclosure. Commanding the extreme north point, which was in itself very weak, was the Redan Battery, a well-constructed work. From this point, facing the river, was a strong earthwork, and outside the sloping garden served as a glacis, and rendered attack on this side difficult. Near the eastern angle stood the hospital, a very large stone building, formerly the banqueting-hall of the British residents at the court of Oude. Near the hospital, but on lower ground, ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... was on deck by daybreak next morning, and the bustle of the day commenced. The Alligator was rather a late arrival, and the shore was already white with tents, large and small, circular and square, the camp being protected by an earthwork and a trench, which came down to the sea on each side, entirely enclosing it on that of the land, while on the other it was protected by ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... the pursuit. On the north side of the bridge of boats was a tete de pont, redoubt or hornwork, a strong work of pentagonal shape, well portrayed in Tiffeny's plan of the Siege Operations before Quebec. This hornwork was-partly wood, defended by palisades, and towards Beauport, an earthwork—covering about twelve acres, the remains (the round or ring field), standing more than fifteen feet above the ground, may be seen to this day surrounded by a ditch, three thousand [289] men at least must have been required to construct, in a few weeks, this extensive entrenchment. In ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... good deal that is fanciful; but they give, probably, a fair idea of the general character of the so-called "triple wall" of certain Phoenician cities. The outer line, or {proteikhisma}, was little more than an earthwork, consisting of a ditch, with the earth from it thrown up inwards, crowned perhaps at top with a breastwork of masonry. The second line was far more elaborate. There was first a ditch deeper than the outer ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... prairie, and indescribably wild and deserted, the plain stretched before us. At some distance to our right a long and narrow mound rose five hundred feet from the plateau, a hill that did not mar the vast level expanse, but seemed instead a great earthwork piled upon it by man. Its green terrace was a wild garden of flowers and fruit growing in luxuriant confusion, watered by a stream that leaped sparkling among ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... recently been seen in the neighbourhood of Hackney. The name of Castle Street is said to commemorate a rampart at Southampton House, in Holborn, whilst Mount Street is believed to take its name from a large earthwork known as "Oliver's Mount."—Loftie, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... them daily before dawn, and remained there eighteen hours, as any attempt to leave would have meant a hail of bullets from the enemy, distant only about 600 yards. They were dug deep enough to require very little earthwork for protection; hence they were more or less invisible by the enemy in their larger trenches. These latter were constantly subjected to the annoyance of bullets coming, apparently, from the ground, and, though other foes might have acted differently ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... important object. Its form is circular, having an internal diameter averaging from forty to two hundred feet, encompassed by a mound and outer fosse or ditch. In some localities, where stone is abundant and the soil shallow, rude walls have been formed: the raths, however, are principally earthwork alone. Forts were erected for defence, and the surrounding fosse was filled with water. They were, in fact, the prototypes of the more modern castle and moat. These forts were sometimes of considerable ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... at a big dam which an enterprising landowner was constructing. Three hundred women were consolidating the earthwork by means of round, flat blocks of granite about twice the size of a curling stone. Round each block was a groove in which was a leather belt with a number of rings threaded on it. To each ring a rope was attached. When these ropes were extended ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... on his breast and began to repeat the simple words of the 'Our Father' over the dying man. The hollow roar of the Swedish siege-guns outside, and the constant dull thud of the cannon-balls striking the great earthwork that covered the gallery, formed a strange contrast to the solemn little service within, beside one whose ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... of eleven miles, to the Upper Works, which seem to have been the only works in operation. At the Lower Works, besides the remains of the dam, the only vestige I saw was a long low mound, overgrown with grass and weeds, that suggested a rude earthwork. We were told that it was once a pile of wood containing hundreds of cords, cut in regular lengths and corded up here for use ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... our position. We were on a commanding ridge looking to the southwest. A section of our battery was to occupy embrasures in the fort. The other two sections were outside and to the right of the fort. This fort was an unfinished rebel earthwork, which commanded the Loudon road, and was named by them Fort Loudon. Col. Orlando Poe was the engineer in charge, and we soon had staked out for us works to be raised to protect our guns. As our men were so wearied out, it was difficult for them to accomplish much in the digging on this 17th ...
— Campaign of Battery D, First Rhode Island light artillery. • Ezra Knight Parker
... Naboth's field. Only when leaves fall and the light is low and slant, one sees the long clean flanks of the jackrabbits, leaping like small deer, and of late afternoons little cotton-tails scamper in the runways. But the most one sees of the burrowers, gophers, and mice is the fresh earthwork of their newly opened doors, or the pitiful small shreds the butcher-bird hangs on ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... was held by Captain Ransome's battery of six guns. Provided always with intrenching tools, his men had labored with diligence during the night, and now his guns thrust their black muzzles through the embrasures of a really formidable earthwork. It crowned a slight acclivity devoid of undergrowth and providing an unobstructed fire that would sweep the ground for an unknown distance in front. The position could hardly have been better chosen. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... by, determined to force an entrance by them. The traverse having been rushed by the 4th Punjab Infantry gallantly led by a Dogra Subadar,[19] a Punjabi Mahomedan of this distinguished corps behaved with the most conspicuous bravery. The enemy, having been driven out of the earthwork, made for the gateway, the heavy doors of which were in the act of being closed, when the Mahomedan (Mukarrab Khan by name) pushed his left arm, on which he carried a shield, between them, thus preventing their being shut; on his hand being badly wounded by a sword-cut, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... observatory of Montmartre, and more near at hand by the bivouac fires extended along the banks to the left of the Marne, while everywhere about the field flitted the lanterns of the Frere Chretiens. Suddenly, in the dimness of a spot cast into shadow by an incompleted earthwork, he observed a small sinister figure perched on the breast of some wounded soldier, evidently not to succour. He sprang forward and seized a hideous-looking urchin, scarcely twelve years old, who ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... time in protecting the station by a ditch and earthwork, so that I could leave a garrison without risk, and I would then attack the country ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... trenches are so cleverly constructed in a waving line like a succession of S's, that even if a shell does succeed in pitching into one bit of the curve it makes things uncomfortable only for the two or three men who occupy that portion of the earthwork. No, the real value of artillery in attack is to shake the enemy and keep down his rifle fire. If shells are accurately fired the tops of trenches may be swept by a constant rain of shrapnel bullets, under which the enemy's riflemen ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... by the high-road which after climbing out of Lostwithiel runs along a narrow neck of land dividing our valley from Tywardreath Bay. This ridge comes to its highest and narrowest just over the chimneys of Lawhibbet, and there the old Britons once planted an earthwork overlooking the bay on one hand and the river-passage on the other. Castle Dore is its name; a close of short smooth turf set within two circular ramparts and two fosses choked with brambles. Thither we children climbed, whether to be alone with our games—for I do not suppose ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... in the old way. And so for the fifth time Eadmund strove to gather all England to him, and his summons was well obeyed. The thanes and their men gathered in haste, savage with hope deferred, and Cnut shrank back again to Ashingdon on the Crouch, and there built himself an earthwork on the south side of the river, while his ships lay on the further shore at Burnham, and in the anchorage, and along the mud below the earthworks, seeming countless. And there he waited for us, and there we knew that ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... Zangeia, once—judging from its extent and the ruined walls still standing—an important place, near the end of the Douchi chain of hills; Girkoua, with a finer market-place than that of Tripoli; and Souchwa, surrounded by an imposing earthwork. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... alone, to consider, to focus his thought; he went off for a walk by himself among the hills, past the spring, up the valley, till he came to a place where the down ran out into the plain, the bluff crowned with a great earthwork. An enormous view lay spread out before him. To left and right the smooth elbows of the uplands ran down into the plain, their skirts clothed with climbing woods and orchards, hamlets half-hidden, with the smoke going up from their chimneys; further ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in the cloisters of S. Lorenzo was the feeding of cats; but it has long since been dropped. If you look at Mr. Hewlett's "Earthwork out of Tuscany" you will find an entertaining description of what it used to ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... island the resident's house and the barrack fort looked more like some ornamented set of buildings for summer pleasure, than a couple of places designed as a stronghold and retreat in case of danger. For the ditch and the earthwork were now carpetted with verdant growth, while the abattis, having been made of green wood, was putting forth ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... portion of the English defences from the adjacent bastilles. All around the fight raged, and Joan was soon in the hottest of the engagement, encouraging her soldiers, her flag in her hand. Dismounting, she stood on the edge of the earthwork, beyond which the English were ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... holds highest carnival. They keep in the Senate-chamber of the Capitol, nailed over the entrance doorway in full sight of the Speaker's chair, a drum, a musket, and a mitre-shaped soldier's hat-trophies of the fight fought in front of the low earthwork on Bunker's Hill. Thus the senators of Massachusetts have ever before them visible reminders of the glory of their fathers: and I am not sure that these former belongings of some long-waistcoated redcoat are not as valuable ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... investment opposite to the Spanish line of detached works throughout their entire extent; and on the particular road called the "Calle Real," passing along the front of General Greene's brigade camp and running through Malate to Manila, the insurgents had established an earthwork or trench within 800 yards of the powder-magazine fort. They also occupied as well the road to the right, leading from the village of Passay, and the approach by the beach was also in their possession. This anomalous state of affairs, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... and without your being able to prevent him, he dislodges you, and you are forced to quit your defences and deliver battle: as happened to the Spaniards at the battle of Ravenna. For having posted themselves between the river Ronco and an earthwork, from their not having carried this work high enough, and from the French having a slight advantage of ground, they were forced by the fire of the latter to quit their entrenchments come ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... of the causeway, I found my men couched, like black statues, behind the slight earthwork there constructed. I expected that my proposed immersion would rather bewilder them, but knew that they would say nothing, as usual. As for the lieutenant on that post, he was a steady, matter-of-fact, perfectly disciplined Englishman, who wore a Crimean medal, and never asked a superfluous ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... somewhat disordered by the entanglement as well as by their losses, and came to the ditch. No doubt its depth and the high face of the parapet surprised them, for they had no scaling ladders. They jumped into the ditch and tried to scramble up the slope of the earthwork. Some got to the top, only to be shot down or captured. The guns flanking the ditch raked it with double charges of canister. Shells were lighted and thrown as hand-grenades into the practically helpless crowd below. Those who had not entered the ditch soon wavered and fell back, at first ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... but the fort failed to reply, and a storming-party sent ashore found it empty. Hoisting the stars and stripes above the deserted bastions, the ships went on. Soon they reached Fort Ellis. Here the firing was sharp on both sides. The fort was a powerful earthwork, well armed with rifles ranging from thirty-two to eighty pounders. The Confederates did but little damage with their guns; their aim being bad for want of practice, and their powder of poor quality. Still, they fought on with ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... to Dick that his orders held him, and they stood in silence gazing at the appalling scene in the crater. A tunnel had been run directly under the Confederates, and then a huge mine had been exploded. All that part was successful, but the Union army had made a deep pit, more formidable than the earthwork itself. ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... young Breton sailor, not more than seventeen years old, seeing men armed with swords collecting one night for a rush, jumped down among them from the top of an earthwork, and shot and bayonetted three or four of them before they had time to defend themselves. Then it took him half an hour to get back to safety by creeping from one hole in the ground to another and ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... but their bayonets gleamed and flashed in the sunlight. In the face of a murderous fire he charged and actually drove our men out of an entrenchment. We concentrated our guns on him as he crouched behind this earthwork. Our own men lay outside in scores, dead, dying, and wounded. When the fire slacked, we could hear their cries ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... rest of the outfit. Common black stuff, large grained, coarser even than blasting powder. Once they got a bag open it did not take them long to lay the train to the lantern, which Ken placed in a little excavation kicked out right under the front wall of the earthwork. ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... the world, went out. The red sparks in the water vanished together with the stains of blood in the black mantle draping the sombre head of the Placid Gulf; a sudden breeze sprang up and died out after rustling heavily the growth of bushes on the ruined earthwork of the fort. Nostromo woke up from a fourteen hours' sleep, and arose full length from his lair in the long grass. He stood knee deep amongst the whispering undulations of the green blades with the lost air of a man just born into the world. Handsome, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... before one head and then another appeared peering through the embrasures of the earthwork, then a mounted officer upon a lively sorrel cantered as if for observation a short distance to the left of the work. Some sharpshooters in our front, protected slightly by the ground which rose gently towards ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... soon got up to the place, when Green pulled away to perform his part of the undertaking; while Higson steered for the shore. As he did so, a rattling fire of musketry was opened on him from behind a small fort, or earthwork, which he had hitherto not perceived. Probably the Russians had only just then discovered that the approaching boats belonged to their enemies. Not a man, however, was hit, though several bullets ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... the young General, the great guns were brought and set upon it in such masterly fashion, and in such a commanding way, that La Hire, Dunois and Xantrailles, who came to see, marvelled at it, and we could note from the top of this earthwork that within the city great commotion reigned, and that it was as busy as a hive ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... these ramparts to a great majesty. They were old friends of his, and while keeping up the heat through the long darkness, as it was sometimes his duty to do, he would imagine the dancing lights and shades about the stupendous earthwork to be the forms of those giants who (he supposed) had heaped it up. Often he clambered upon it, and walked about the summit, thinking out the problems connected with his business, his partner, ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... erecting a battery in the French settlement, proceeded to bombard the rebels on one side of the city while the imperialists attacked it on another. Although the bombardment was vigorous and effective, the loss inflicted on the insurgents was inconsiderable, because they had erected an earthwork behind the main wall of the place, and every day the Triads challenged the French to come on to the assault. At last a breach was declared to be practicable, and 400 French sailors and marines were landed to carry it, while the imperialists, wearing blue sashes to distinguish them ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... this episode was spent by the Fifty-fourth in disembarking on Morris Island in the rain, and at noon Colonel Shaw was able to report their arrival to General Strong, to whose brigade he was assigned. A terrific bombardment was playing on Fort Wagner, then the most formidable earthwork ever built, and the general, knowing Shaw's desire to place his men beside white troops, said to him: "Colonel, Fort Wagner is to be stormed this evening, and you may lead the column, if you say Yes. Your men, I know, are worn out, but do as you choose." Shaw's face brightened. "Before ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... precipice, than of an establishment which, out of Snargate street, can be reached, without drawing breath, by a winding stair of some 170 steps; making the slope beside them more like the side of Skiddaw than what it really is, the earthwork of an ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin |
