"Flat-bottomed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had commenced. Da Souza and Trent took their places side by side on the broad, flat-bottomed boat, and soon they were off shorewards and the familiar song of the Kru boys as they bent over their oars greeted their ears. The excitement of the last few strokes was barely over before they sprang upon the beach and were surrounded by a little crowd, on the outskirts ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... learned through Johnny Spreen, it was possible to navigate a fair portion of the swamp with a boat. They had several flat-bottomed skiffs that were used for that purpose, usually by the boy in his fur-hunting expeditions during ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... resenting the interruption. "It was during a boat race on Point Judith Pond in Rhode Island. My pal, who was a surfman, had been assigned to duty there. Naturally, he was watching the races. On the other side of the pond a small flat-bottomed skiff, carrying one sail, capsized. There were three men in her. Streeter, that's the fellow I know, saw the boat capsize, but he knew that the water was shallow and noted that it was near shore. Just the same, he kept an eye on the boat. As soon as he saw two men clinging to the sides of the skiff, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... a hard pull across the rough lake against the wind (a dangerous sheet of water for flat-bottomed rowboats, I was told afterward), but the boy was equal to it, protesting that he didn't feel tired a bit, now we had got the "purples;" and if he did not catch the fever from drinking some quarts of river water (a big bottle of coffee having ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... mountains. There are no traces of volcanic formation, though thermal springs exist in Malacca. The rivers are numerous, but with one exception small, and are seldom navigable beyond the reach of the tides, except by flat-bottomed boats. It is believed that ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... not long before he found the boat quite unmanageable. The long oar crowded him nearly off the seat, as he tried to hold her straight out into mid-water. She was flat-bottomed, and as she got into the region of whitecaps, she began to be blown bodily with ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... husbandry; and even such cumbrous articles as wagons, or, if he was rich and ambitious, the lumber wherewith to build a frame house. All kinds of craft were used, even bark canoes and pirogues, or dugouts; but the keel-boat, and especially the flat-bottomed scow with square ends, were the ordinary means of conveyance. They were of all sizes. The passengers and their live stock were of course huddled together so as to take up as little room as possible. Sometimes the immigrants built or bought their own ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... and W. 144 m.; is traversed by the Blue Mountains (7400 ft.), whose slopes are clad with luxuriant forests of mahogany, cedar, satin-wood, palm, and other trees; of the numerous rivers, only one, the Black River, is navigable and that for only flat-bottomed boats and canoes; there are many harbours (Kingston finest), while good roads intersect the island; the climate is oppressively warm and somewhat unhealthy on the coast, but delightful in the interior highlands; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... shore a curious flotilla bears down upon us. There is one boat, two or three canoes; but the bulk of the craft are simply wooden frames,—flat-bottomed structures, made from shipping-cases or lard-boxes, with triangular ends. In these sit naked boys,—boys between ten and fourteen years of age,—varying in color from a fine clear yellow to a deep reddish-brown ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... O'Shea's boat, a heavy flat-bottomed thing, was already half launched upon the beach, furnished with stout boat-hooks for pushing among the ice, as well as her oars and sailing gear. He was glad to find that such speedy departure was to be his. He had no thought ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... or Neiba River, receives several copious affluents, the largest one being the San Juan River. Much of the lumber exported at Barahona is floated down the Yaque and the river is navigable about 20 miles for flat-bottomed boats, though rapids and rocky ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... in the yokes; the drivers wading alongside cracked their whips and uttered strange cries; the carts rocked and swayed as the huge wheels churned through the mud and water. As the last light faded we reached the small patches of dry land at the landing, where the flat-bottomed side-wheel steamboat was moored to the bank. The tired horses and oxen were turned loose to graze. Water stood in the corrals, but the open shed was on dry ground. Under it the half-clad, wild-looking ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... accelerate the ruin of the few English who had hitherto been able to preserve their rank or fortune during the past convulsions. William employed all his endeavours to subdue the Isle of Ely; and having surrounded it with flat-bottomed boats, and made a causeway through the morasses to the extent of two miles, he obliged the rebels to surrender at discretion. Hereward alone forced his way, sword in hand, through the enemy; and still continued his hostilities by sea against the Normans, till at last William, charmed with his ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... narrow, long, flat-bottomed craft, capable of carrying two persons if they were sober and careful. I took my place in the bow of the boat, behind and rather under the jack. I rested upon my knees, holding my gun in such a position that I could use it at short notice. While we were crossing ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... bill". That craft, so familiar to frequenters of the reaches of the Thames, and examples of which may be seen in Boulter's Lock any Sunday in summer, is, as everybody knows, a thing of straight lines, flat-bottomed, flat-sided—in fact, an open box, with its two ends sloping instead of perpendicular; and we quickly decided that anyone with enough of the carpenter's skill to knock a box together ought to be able to build a punt. Later on we discovered ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... Marjorie yelled back, and beginning to realize the situation, Carter went into the boathouse and began to take out the other boat. This was an old flat-bottomed affair, which had been unused since Uncle ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... French army threatened the shores of England. At Havre and Dunkirk huge flotillas of flat-bottomed boats lay at their moorings; 18,000 French veterans were ready to embark. A great fleet under the command of Conflans—one of the ablest seamen France has ever produced—was gathered at Brest. A French squadron was to break out of Toulon, join Conflans, sweep ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... wood and hill, the winding Neckar, and the blue, distant valley of the Rhine. Then, presently, they came to Switzerland, to Ouchy-Lausanne, by lovely Lake Geneva, and here Clemens left the family and, with a guide and a boatman, went drifting down the Rhone in a curious, flat-bottomed craft, thinking to find material for one or more articles, possibly for a book. But drifting down that fair river through still September days, past ancient, drowsy villages, among sloping vineyards, where grapes were ripening in the tranquil sunlight, was too restful and soothing ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... A number of flat-bottomed boats came alongside to convey us on shore. They have a broad seat and an awning for passengers, and are propelled by two men with paddles in the bows, and steered by another in the stern. Fairburn and I engaged one of these to convey the widow and Maria on shore. Captain Cloete very kindly ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... he shrieked, livid with rage—"latitude and season! Why, you junk-rigged, flat-bottomed, meadow lugger, don't you know any better than that? Didn't yer little baby brother ever tell ye that southern latitudes is colder than northern, and that July is the middle o' winter here? Go below, you son of a scullion, or ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... the palate: hunger is as thoroughly satisfied with the one as the other; and headaches as well manufactured out of the beautiful, bright, and taper glasses which bear the foam of France to the lip, as from the coarse, flat-bottomed tumblers of an inn that reek with punch. At the dinner there was the same tender solicitude on the part of the carvers as to "Where would you like it?" and the same carelessness on the part of those whom they questioned, who declared they had no ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... themselves, and with their neighbours, but traded both by sea and land, to very remote countries. There they found the conveniences of seeing many countries on all hands, for no ship went any voyage into which he and his companions were not very welcome. The first vessels that they saw were flat-bottomed, their sails were made of reeds and wicker woven close together, only some were of leather; but afterwards they found ships made with round keels, and canvas sails, and in all respects like our ships; and the seamen understood both astronomy and navigation. ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... where a well had been bored and natural-oil struck the year before. This proved a very profitable investment. When I first visited this famous well, the oil was running into the creek where a few flat-bottomed scows lay filled with it, ready to be floated down the Allegheny River on an agreed upon day each week, when the creek was flooded by means of a temporary dam. This was the beginning of the natural-oil business. We purchased the farm for forty thousand dollars, and so small ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... old "slicker." Henry cut it into suitable shape and nailed and lashed it securely to the runners and to the table top. Now he had a flat-bottomed sled with a rising front to it that would serve. He smiled as he looked at the queer contrivance and said aloud: "I wish Mr. ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... perpetual ice. Fortunately, it was now frozen hard, and the surface was fit to bear the horses. But for this the party must have halted and waited for a severe frost. The rivers were not frozen when large in volume, and the Aldana had to be crossed in the usual flat-bottomed boat kept for travelers. At night they halted, and with a bush and some deer-skins made a tent. Kolina cooked the supper, and the men searched for some fields of stunted half-frozen grass to let the horses graze. This was the last place where even this kind ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... forty years old, with keen black eyes and curling dark hair and beard, and a great fisherman with line and net. He lived near the inlet, and had the kind of boat commonly used in these shallow waters—flat-bottomed, broad in the beam, with centre-board and one mast set well forward. He had dug a peck or two of the large round clams, and two or three throws of his cast-net as we came through the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... river had to be done in light marching order. Not much baggage could be carried, so as not to burden too heavily the three or four "bonnes," as they call the long, light, flat-bottomed boats peculiar to lumbermen, which had been all winter awaiting the time when their services would be required. The shore work being beyond his strength, Frank was given a place in one of the bonnes along with Baptiste, Laberge, and ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... the boat landing. All traces of the warming house which had sheltered so many numbed skaters during the winter had been removed. In its stead, were piled rows upon rows of yellow, flat-bottomed boats, one on top of another, with boards ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... facing Lake Leman. He decided to make a floating trip down the Rhone, and he engaged Joseph Very, a courier that had served him on a former European trip, to accompany him. The courier went over to Bourget and bought for five dollars a flat-bottomed boat and engaged its owner as their pilot. It was the morning of September 20, when they began their floating-trip down the beautiful historic river that flows through the loveliest and most romantic ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... pushed with all speed. A large, flat-bottomed boat, the Willing, was fitted out with four guns and was sent down the Mississippi with forty men to ascend the Ohio and the Wabash to a place of rendezvous not far from the coveted post. By early February the depleted companies were ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... The flat-bottomed skiff that Bessie had despised proved handy for carrying the Eleanor's crew out to her. While the others climbed aboard, Dolly, who insisted upon attending to everything herself when she possibly ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... time came for school to begin, there were many closed cottages, for the happy careless freedom of the beach was gone; there is no happiness in floating across a placid lake in a flat-bottomed boat if you find yourself continually turning your head toward the shore, thinking that you hear ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... sash round his waist, with holster thrust in it, containing the horse-pistol with which PITT armed himself when he sat at the window of Walmer Castle, looking across the Channel, momentarily expecting to discover BONEY crossing in a flat-bottomed boat. The trousers are of scarlet, with broad braid of gold lace on outer seams. Finally there is a truculent cocked hat, which OLD MORALITY persists in putting on with the peak astarn. The dress is picturesque, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... stream when his legs touched something, and a low, rattling sound startled him. Then he remembered. A skiff was moored there, and he had brushed against the chain that led from the bow of the boat to the stump of a willow higher up on the bank. The man had seen the skiff,—a rude, flat-bottomed little craft, known to the Ozark natives as a John-boat,—just before sunset that evening. But there had been no boat in his thoughts when he had come to answer the call of the river, and in the preoccupation of his mind, as he stood there in the night beside the stream, he had not noticed ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... twenty) feet of water, to go into the harbour, as there are twenty-one feet on the barr. Ships that draw twenty feet must be towed in. By this we see, that ships of sixty guns may go into this harbour: and even seventy gun ships, the largest requisite in that country in time of war, if they were built flat-bottomed, like the Dutch ships, might pass every ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... body of volunteers in Tennessee and to report with them at New Orleans. He found no difficulty in collecting about sixteen hundred men, and in January, 1813, took them down the Cumberland, the Ohio, and Mississippi to Natchez, in such flat-bottomed boats as he could collect; another body of mounted men crossed the country five hundred miles to the rendezvous, and went into camp at Natchez, Feb. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... broad river, with the water broken into foaming wavelets by rocks which were everywhere showing their vicious heads above the surface; a string of nuggars, or half-decked boats, fifteen feet broad, forty-five feet long, flat-bottomed, each with a thick rope attached to the bows, and a string of men on the bank towing it under ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... did not last long enough to serve our turn as we hoped. The Governor trusted it would have destroyed the whole fleet; but from what I can learn, nothing was really lost except a few of the flat-bottomed landing boats used in the disembarkation of the troops. The English are certainly notable sailors; but it is with her soldiers that we shall have more directly to deal. Still, I wish we could have sunk her ships; it would have placed ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... point had been kept between banks, expanded into a vast marsh. That marsh was the best shooting ground I ever saw. It was my cousin's chief care, and he kept it as a preserve. Through the rushes that covered it, and made it rustling and rough, narrow passages had been cut, through which the flat-bottomed boats, impelled and steered by poles, passed along silently over dead water, brushing up against the reeds and making the swift fish take refuge in the weeds, and the wild fowl, with their ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... the canal which connected Vehnemoor with Oldenburg. Peat sheds, where the peat was put to dry after it was cut, were scattered along the canal, and we passed several flat-bottomed canal-boats carrying the peat into Oldenburg. They were drawn by man-power, and ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... kept the flat-bottomed boat in which he went fishing some distance down the shore, and in the neighborhood of the old wreck that had been sunk on the Shoals. This was the usual fishing ground of the settlers, and here old Matt's boat generally lay drawn up ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... the sample in a 200-cc. flask, add water to the mark, and allow the mass to infuse for eight hours, with occasional shaking; let stand 16 hours longer without shaking, filter, evaporate 50 cc. of filtrate to dryness in a flat-bottomed dish, dry at 100 deg. C., cool ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... something aloud, and presently two men appeared rowing a large, flat-bottomed punt from a dock where it was hidden. Into this boat the horses and pack-beast were driven, much against their will. Hugh and Dick having followed them, the three Italians began to punt them along the canal, which was bordered with tall houses. A mile or so farther on it entered another ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... himself willing to guide us. The water in these fiord channels is generally deep and safe, and though at wide intervals rocks rise abruptly here and there, lacking only a few feet in height to enable them to take rank as islands, the flat-bottomed Cassiar drew but little more water than a duck, so that even the most timid raised no objection on this score. The cylinder-heads of our engines were the main source of anxiety; provided they could be kept on all might yet be well. But in this matter there was evidently ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... shoulders to the bows of the old, flat-bottomed rowboat, with incredible exertions uprooting it from its ancient bed, and at length had ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... great apple-tart. The things were mostly passed about from hand to hand, but the old butler kept a benignant eye upon the proceedings, and saw that I was well supplied. There was a good and simple claret in large flat-bottomed decanters, which most of the men drank. There was a good deal of talk of a lively kind. Father Payne was rather silent, though he struck in now and then, but his silence imposed no constraint on the party. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... another face, and on other shoulders too. The sea-gulls and the loons, and I, had now all one trade; we skimmed the crested waves and sought our prey beneath them, the man with as keen enjoyment as the birds. Always, when the east grew purple, I launched my dory, my little flat-bottomed skiff, and rowed cross-handed to Point Ledge, the Middle Ledge, or, perhaps, beyond Egg Rock; often, too, did I anchor off Dread Ledge, a spot of peril to ships unpiloted; and sometimes spread an adventurous sail ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by a steady increase in the size of ships and a broadening of the knowledge of the navigators. The flat-bottomed vessels of the Nile and the Euphrates were replaced by the sailing vessels of the Phoenicians, the AEgeans, the Greeks, the Carthaginians and the Romans. These in turn were discarded for the square rigged vessels of the Portuguese and the Spaniards. And the latter were driven from ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... officials, and they were not numerous. The former often took passage on sailing vessels or batteaux, and if engaged in the lumber trade, as many of them were, they went down on board their rafts and returned in the batteaux. "These boats were flat-bottomed, and made of pine boards, narrowed at bow and stern, forty feet by six, with a crew of four men and a pilot, provided with oars, sails, and iron-shod poles for pushing. They continued to carry, in cargoes of five tons, all the merchandise that passed to Upper ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... back, there was going to be a change. She repeated that to herself with determination. Between whiles she rambled about in the littered clearing, prowled along the beaches, and paddled now and then far outside the bay in a flat-bottomed skiff, restless, full of plans. So far as she saw, she would have to face some city alone, but she viewed that prospect with a total absence of the helpless feeling which harassed her so when she first took train for her brother's camp. She had passed through what she termed ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... awaited the party at the water's edge,—square-ended, flat-bottomed punts, sharp-bowed bateaux, long, graceful, dug-out canoes, and a commodious push-boat, with cabin and awning, whose motive power was poles. Elk River craft are as abundant as the log cabins on its banks, and their pilots are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... boats expressly constructed for the navigation of these perilous channels. The largest of these, called, it is not known why, the Durham boat, is used both here and in the rapids of the Mohawk. It is long, shallow, and nearly flat-bottomed. The chief instrument of steerage is a pole ten feet long, shod with iron, and crossed at short intervals with small bars of wood like the feet of a ladder. The men place themselves at the bow, two on each side, thrust their poles into the channel, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... was at this time engaged in the siege of Boston. During the first week in September, orders came to draft men for Quebec. For the purpose of carrying the troops up the Kennebec River, a force of carpenters was sent ahead to build two hundred bateaux, or flat-bottomed boats. To Arnold, as colonel, was given the command of the expedition. For the sake of avoiding any ill feeling, the officers were allowed to draw lots. So eager were the troops to share in the possible glories of the campaign that several ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... was not uncomfortable. She was a flat-bottomed river-boat, and carried cargoes of hides and other Saladero produce. There were some live pigs with immense tusks, and some tasajo in the hold, and a raft of pipes of tallow which a hawser towed behind. The boat was supposed to draw only two feet ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... Euphrates was crowded by a fleet of eleven hundred ships, destined to attend the motions, and to satisfy the wants, of the Roman army. The military strength of the fleet was composed of fifty armed galleys; and these were accompanied by an equal number of flat-bottomed boats, which might occasionally be connected into the form of temporary bridges. The rest of the ships, partly constructed of timber, and partly covered with raw hides, were laden with an almost ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... is not a river boat, and she is not a flat-bottomed craft," I tried to explain. "Her keel does not take kindly to the levee. I must stay here and look out for her; but I will call ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... connected with Lat. baris, Gr. [Greek: baris], a boat used on the Nile), formerly a small sailing vessel, but now generally a flat-bottomed boat used for carrying goods on inland navigations. On canals barges are usually towed, but are sometimes fitted with some kind of engine; the men in charge of them are known as bargees. On tidal ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... was landed at Courbevoie from a flat-bottomed barge that had been constructed to bring it up the Seine. Courbevoie is about two miles from the Arch of Triumph, which is again nearly the same distance from ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... preferred a brazen levity to this humble confession. "'Twas me boast," he sadly asserted, "that no man ever caught me with me eyes full of sand and me tongue twisted—and now look at me! 'Tis what comes of having nothing to do but trade lies with a lot of flat-bottomed loafers in a gaudy bar-room. But don't worry, darlin', right here old Mart pulls up. You'll not see anny more of this. Forget it, dear-heart—won't ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... careful, therefore, with whom he dealt, and he expected to be cheated in making his bargain for a boat and a supply of provisions. As it was, he was skilfully skinned by the rascal with whom he finally ventured to open negotiations, and Constans thought himself lucky to exchange it for a leaky, flat-bottomed tub and fifty pounds weight of absolute necessaries, chiefly sun-dried strips of beef and ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... is lacking," interrupted the Jew; "Memphis trades only with Egypt, and we with the whole world. The merchant who sends his goods here only load camels, and wretched asses, and flat-bottomed Nile-boats, while we in our harbors freight fine seagoing vessels. When the winter-storms are past our house alone sends twenty triremes with Egyptian wheat to Ostia and to Pontus; and your Indian and Arabian goods, your imports from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... both in its nearness and in the distance, when a blue gleam from its surface, among the green meadows and woods, seems like an open eye in Earth's countenance. Pleasant it is, too, to behold a little flat-bottomed skiff gliding over its bosom, which yields lazily to the stroke of the paddle, and allows the boat to go against its current almost as freely as with it. Pleasant, too, to watch an angler, as he strays along ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... establishment, with a store, warehouse, hotel, blacksmith shop, carpenter shop and several dwelling houses. Possibly notable was the launching at that time of the barge "Arizona," fifty feet long and ten feet wide, sharp at both ends and flat-bottomed. ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... dragoon could not answer, but which he nevertheless liked to be asked. William Tremlett, who had not enjoyed a sound night's rest since the First Consul's menace had become known, pricked up his ears at sound of this subject, and inquired if anybody had seen the terrible flat-bottomed boats that the enemy were ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... was about the same as the first, except that it righted the craft. We were buried, choked, and half drowned; but when the wave had passed on, the main and mizzenmasts, unsupported by the rigging that I had cut away, snapped cleanly about three feet above the deck, and the broad, flat-bottomed craft straightened up, lifting the weight of the foremast and its gear, and lay on an even keel, with foresail, staysail, and jib set, the fore gaff-topsail, flying jib, and jib-topsail clewed down and the wreck of the masts bumping ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... to a wide, flat-bottomed coulee with high ragged bluffs shutting it in upon every side. The Kid dimly remembered that coulee, because that was where Andy got down to tighten the cinch on Miss Allen's horse, and looked up at her the way Daddy Chip looked at Doctor ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... warriors on the handle with the shaven Sumerians and Elamites upon steles from Telloh and Susa, for their loin-girdles are African and quite foreign to the Euphrates Valley. And his suggestion that two of the boats, flat-bottomed and with high curved ends, seem only to have navigated the Tigris and Euphrates,(1) will hardly command acceptance. But there is no doubt that the heroic personage upon the other face is represented in the familiar attitude of the Babylonian hero Gilgamesh struggling with ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... other vessels, broad and shallow, were sailing here and there over the lake, their sails either red brick or saffron-coloured, reflected on the violet-tinted waters, which contrasted with the silvery hue of the sky, and a green ribbon of land bordering the lake. These flat-bottomed, bulging round vessels were employed in distributing the produce of the neighbouring farms to all ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... forts, which were stationed upon the low grounds, they persevered in the blockade. But there was another purpose to be served by the inundation of the country beside that of washing away the Spaniards, and the Prince of Orange made preparations for effecting it. He had caused two hundred flat-bottomed boats to be built, and loaded with provisions; these now began to row toward the famished city. The inhabitants saw them coming; they watched them eagerly advancing across the waters, fighting their way past the Spanish forts, and ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... take place between the temperatures of 15 C. and 20 C. Evaporation to dryness shall take place between 98.5 C. and 100 C. in shallow, flat-bottomed basins, which shall afterwards be dried until constant at the same temperature, and cooled before weighing for not less than twenty minutes in air-tight desiccators over ...
— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser
... contrasting beautifully with the dark motsouri, or moyela, now covered with pink plums as large as cherries. The rapids, having comparatively little water in them, rendered our passage difficult. The canoes must never be allowed to come broadside on to the stream, for, being flat-bottomed, they would, in that case, be at once capsized, and every thing in them be lost. The men work admirably, and are always in good humor; they leap into the water without the least hesitation, to save ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... died in 1035, is estimated at 800,000 souls, we may judge from their fleets how large a portion of the men were engaged in these piratical pursuits. The ships on which they prided themselves so highly were flat-bottomed craft, with little or no keel, the sides of wicker work, covered with strong hides. They were impelled either by sails or oars as the changes of the weather allowed; with favourable winds they often made the voyage in three days. As if to favour their designs, the north and north-west blast blows ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... became necessary to descend a staircase, which led to a deep hollow chamber, shaped like a bell, and echoing like one. A pool of intensely black water filled it, reflecting the lights on its surface, that only enhanced its darkness, while there moved on a mysterious flat-bottomed boat, breaking them into shimmering sparks, and John Eyre intimated that the visitors must lie down flat in it to be ferried one by one over a space of about ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the canoes, flat-bottomed and tip-tilted like Turkish slippers; where the land is low and floods are high, each is mounted upon four posts. Fronting and outside the village stands a wall-less roof of flat matting, the palaver-house. The ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... live here (which could not be long I think) he should forget the use of sleep; for what with the market folks bringing up the boats from Terra Firma loaded with every produce of nature, neatly arranged in these flat-bottomed conveyances, the coming up of which begins about three o'clock in a morning and ends about six;—the Gondoliers rowing home their masters and ladies about that hour, and so on till eight;—the common business of the town, which it is then time ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... and hardly any ruts. It is really surprising to think London is only 16 miles off. The house stands very badly, close to a tiny lane and near another man's field. Our field is 15 acres and flat, looking into flat-bottomed valleys on both sides, but no view from the drawing-room, which faces due south, except on our flat field and bits of rather ugly distant horizon. Close in front there are some old (very productive) cherry trees, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... next. We were at the Umbagog chain of lakes, and while it rained the damster had purveyed us a boat and crew. At sunrise he despatched us on our voyage. We launched upon the Androscoggin, in a bateau of the old Canadian type. Such light, clincher-built, high-nosed, flat-bottomed boats are in use wherever the fur-traders are or have been. Just such boats navigate the Saskatchawan of the North, or Frazer's River of the Northwest; and in a larger counterpart of our Androscoggin bark I had three years before floated down ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... a typical boarded dounga. Upon a long, low, flat-bottomed hull, which tapered to a sharp point at bow and stern, was raised a light wooden superstructure with a flat roof, upon which the passengers could sit. The interior was divided off into some half-a-dozen compartments, a vestibule or outer cabin held boxes, &c., and through it one passed into the ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... of Ceylon are navigable, and these only by canoes and flat-bottomed paddy boats, which ascend some of the largest for short distances, till impeded by the rapids, occasioned by rocks in the lowest range of the hills. In this way the Niwalle at Matura can be ascended for about fifteen miles, as far as Wellehara; the Kalu-ganga can ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... that you had settled all that matter, with your friends in England and Scotland. He assured me that the intentions of the King and his Ministers were unalterable as to their fixed resolution to serve you, but that they met with difficulties in regard to the transports and flat-bottomed boats which retarded the affair longer than they imagined, and that though they had already spent twenty four million every thing was not ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... Forks, where there is a Hudson Bay Company's trading post, a billiard saloon, hotel, general store, and post-office all in one, and a few smaller houses, the ferry is a large flat-bottomed sort of platform, railed on either side and fastened to a long thick rope stretched across the river. When there is a load to ferry over, this platform is let loose from the shore, and the current carries it across, the rope keeping it from going down ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... Cornwall Canal was also undertaken, but work was stopped when it was certain that Lower Canada would not respond to the aspirations of the West and improve that portion of the St. Lawrence within its direct control. Flat-bottomed bateaux and Durham boats were generally in use for the carriage of goods on the inland waters, and it was not until the completion of a canal system between the lakes and Montreal, after the Union, that ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... We shortly afterwards passed one of the large boats called bungos, that carry down to Greytown the produce of the country and take up merchandise and flour. This one was laden with cattle and india-rubber. The bungos are flat-bottomed boats, about forty feet long and nine feet wide. There is generally a little cabin, roofed over at the stern, in which the wife of the captain lives. The bungo is poled along by twelve bungo-men, who have usually only one suit of clothes each, which they do not wear during the day, but ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... a knife, a file, and an awl obtained from the stores of the Hudson's Bay Company. In the use of these tools they were so dexterous that everything they manufactured was done with a neatness which could not be excelled by the most expert mechanic. These northern canoes were flat-bottomed, with straight, upright sides, and sharp prow and peak. The stern part of the canoe was wider than the rest in order to receive the baggage. The average length of the canoe would be from twelve to thirteen feet, and the breadth in the widest part about two feet. Generally but a single ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... in a flat-bottomed boat, enjoying the soft melancholy Italian evening. Not a human did I see; nor had I encountered one on my slow voyage from the Middle Seas. In meditation I pondered the ultimate wisdom of Confucius and smiled at the folly of the white barbarians who had ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... barges make the finest little hospitals that you could desire. They are the ordinary flat-bottomed square-ended Dutch barges, roofed in, and when the interior has been cleared out they form elongated covered floating boxes. Skylights in the roof give a splendid light, and the barges are wide enough to allow of two rows of beds with an aisle down the middle. ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... the Veneti of Brittany threw off the yoke and detained two of Crassus's officers as hostages. Caesar, who had been hastily summoned from Illyricum, crossed the Loire and invaded Brittany, but found that he could make no headway without destroying the powerful fleet of high, flat-bottomed boats like floating castles possessed by the Veneti. A fleet was hastily constructed in the estuary of the Loire, and placed under the command of Decimus Brutus. The decisive engagement was fought (probably) in the Gulf of Morbihan and the Romans gained the victory by cutting down the enemy's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the sluggish river to the seaboard in the flat-bottomed, stern-wheel steamer lasted all day and most of the night. During the first half-day, the boat grounded now and then upon a sand-bank, and the half-naked negro deck-hands toiled with ropes and poles to release ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... round through some unseen channel, and was creeping now into the land by many creeks and narrow ways. She herself was upon an island, cut off from the dry land by a smoothly flowing tidal way more than twenty yards across. Along it a man in a flat-bottomed boat was punting his way towards her. She stood and waited for him, admiring his height, and the long powerful strokes with which he propelled his clumsy craft. He was very tall, and against the flat background his height seemed almost abnormal. ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... traverses. Here was once a busy settlement much frequented by shipping, which thus escaped harbour dues. The mosquito-haunted stream, clear in the dries, and, as usual, muddy during the rains, supports wild duck, and, carried some ten miles in "dongos" or flat-bottomed boats, supplies the capital of Angola with ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... cowls and golden croziers and white-robed acolytes in its streets; with the subtle smoke of incense coming out from the cathedral door to mingle with the odours of the fruits and flowers in the market-place; with great flat-bottomed boats drifting down the river under the leaning eaves of its dwellings; and with the galleries of its opposing houses touching so nearly that a girl leaning in one could stretch a Provence rose or toss an Easter egg across to ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... of a dollar each per month for liberty to wear their hair, which is not permitted in their own country ever since the Tartar conquest. There generally come here every year from China, fourteen or sixteen large flat-bottomed junks, of from three to five hundred tons burden. The merchants come along with their goods, which are lodged in different partitions in the vessels, as in separate warehouses, for each of which they pay a certain price, and not for the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... who commanded the army that was to be embarked from the Netherlands, was counted the best general of the day, and his 30,000 Spanish regular infantry were the most formidable body of troops then in Europe. His orders from the King were to build or collect a flotilla of flat-bottomed barges to ferry his army across the straits under the protection of the Armada, and for months thousands of shipwrights had been at work in fishing ports and creeks, canals and rivers along the coast between Calais and Ostend. The Dutch rebels held Flushing and the mouth of the Scheldt, and ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... announce the Prince's approach, and in about half an hour afterwards he was brought in a closed sedan-chair to the boat, through a concourse of people, to whom he seemed as much a show as to us. The state boat was a large flat-bottomed barge, covered with an awning of dark blue, with white stars on it, the whole having much the appearance of a hearse. It was preceded by two boats bearing flags with an inscription upon them, having ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... river "Sutlej," and exchanged our horse for four fat and humpy bullocks, who managed, with very great labour and difficulty, to drag us through the heavy sands of the river-bed down to the edge of the water. Here we were shipped on board a flat-bottomed boat, with a high peaked bow; and, after an immensity of hauling and grunting, we were fairly launched into the stream, and poled across to the opposite shore. The water appeared quite shallow, and the coolies were most of the time in the ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... the product of their rice-fields, is carried on by boats. The brakes are more impenetrable than the thickest underwood, but the natives have cut alleys through them, along which they impel their large flat-bottomed teradas with poles.[23] Sometimes a sudden rise of the river will raise the level of these generally stagnant waters by a yard or two, and during the night the huts and their inhabitants, men and animals together, will be sent adrift. Two or three villages ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... craft, unpainted, flat-bottomed, but light enough, and not badly formed for speed. Susannah stepped into it without much hope, scarcely caring what she did, but still provoking the young boatman to ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... personal note in the pattern of her baskets. Not that she does not make all kinds, carriers, water-bottles, and cradles,—these are kitchen ware,—but her works of art are all of the same piece. Seyavi made flaring, flat-bottomed bowls, cooking pots really, when cooking was done by dropping hot stones into water-tight food baskets, and for decoration a design in colored bark of the procession of plumed crests of the valley quail. In this pattern she had made cooking pots in the ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... guidance of some ancient foresters, who knew every woodland path, and hastened to my brethren, who had been duly forewarned, and were awaiting my arrival. I found them prepared for immediate departure. We had a large flat-bottomed boat on the river which washes the monastery garden; they had placed all the sacred vessels and the treasure of the priory therein, and had sent the novices and lay brethren to seek their safety with the rest in the ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... force in the spring of 1798 at the sluice-gates near Ostend. Its surrender under untoward circumstances was, perhaps, nearly counterbalanced by the destruction of canal works necessary for the assembly of the flat-bottomed boats ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... to make a carefully concerted attack upon this stronghold as soon as summer weather conditions permitted. For this purpose he had strengthened his squadron at Syracuse by purchasing a number of flat-bottomed gunboats with which he hoped to engage the enemy in the shallow waters about Tripoli while his larger vessels shelled the town and batteries. He arrived off the African coast about the middle of July but encountered adverse weather, so that for several weeks he ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... this on the authority of Dr. E. Dieffenbach, in his German translation of the first edition of this Journal.), the reckless destruction of which has caused here, as at St. Helena, and at some of the Canary islands, almost entire sterility. The broad, flat-bottomed valleys, many of which serve during a few days only in the season as watercourses, are clothed with thickets of leafless bushes. Few living creatures inhabit these valleys. The commonest bird is a kingfisher (Dacelo Iagoensis), which tamely sits on the branches of the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... eye instantly, detected the flaw which might soon be fatal. In the very same night of the loss of Liefkenshoek, he sent as strong a party as could be spared, with plenty of sappers and miners, in flat-bottomed boats across from Kalloo. As the morning dawned, an improvised fortress, with the Spanish flag waving above its bulwarks, stood on the broken end of the dyke. That done, he ordered one of the two captains who had commanded ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... over. The stream was to have a breathing spell of air and sunlight before its great plunge into sixty miles of twilight canon. With a quick turn of his rudder oar the boatman in the stern brought the flat-bottomed craft round, and in a jiffy she lay beached on the shingle at Tokimata. It was now ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... without growing weary, it was impossible to make them advance out of a steady walk. We proceeded northward, having the mighty Mississippi on our left, until we reached the banks of the Illinois river, which we crossed in flat-bottomed boats, and then proceeding several days' journey westward, entered the wide prairies of Missouri, the vast river from which the state takes its name being to the south of us. We were now truly in the wilderness, but "Westward ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... the south bank of the Tumbuddra, and of its suburb Annegundi on the northern bank, is occupied by great bare piles and bosses of granite and granitoidal gneiss, separated by rocky defiles and narrow rugged valleys encumbered by precipitated masses of rock. Some of the larger flat-bottomed valleys are irrigated by aqueducts from the river.... The peaks, tors, and logging-stones of Bijanugger and Annegundi indent the horizon in picturesque confusion, and are scarcely to be distinguished from the more artificial ruins of ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... over to Morocco from Gibraltar in a flat-bottomed cattle-tug, only fit for a river; and as the sea was exceedingly heavy, and the machinery had stopped, the sailors said for want of oil, the seas washed right over the boat, and the passage was prolonged from two hours to five. They made many excursions round about Tangiers; ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... short, when we expect an invasion, you would chide, or be disposed to chide me, if I were quite silent-and yet, what can I tell you more than that an invasion is threatened? that sixteen thousand men are about Dunkirk, and that they are assembling great quantities of flat-bottomed boats! Perhaps they will attempt some landing; they are certainly full of resentment; they broke the peace, took our forts and built others on our boundaries; we did not bear it patiently; we retook two forts, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... on we went, steaming, smoking, and splashing, after the most orthodox fashion of fire-boats in general. I had now time and opportunity to look around me. Every available spot of the deck and paddle-boxes of the small, flat-bottomed iron steamer, was crowded with as motley a set of passengers as ever sailed since the days of Captain Noah. Sepoys returning from furlough to join their regiments; lascars, or enlisted workmen belonging to ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... as usual, very industrious and having erected the iron magazines, they were now engaged in building a flat-bottomed barge to assist in transporting corn from the islands south of Regiaf. They had not been in the best health, but they nevertheless continued to work with an energy and spirit that were a delightful contrast to the sluggishness ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... is the North. Heaven bless the rhymster who first penned those words. Spring is stealing hack to the prairie, and our world is a world of beauty. The sky to-day is windrowed with flat-bottomed cumulus-clouds, tier beyond tier above a level plane of light, marking off the infinite distance like receding mile-stones on a world turned over on its back. Occasionally the outstretched head of a wild ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... guide and coolie, and having much to think out, and sure thinking being anything but a rapid process with him, also because he did not wish to draw too much attention to his movements, he chose as a means of conveyance the ugly flat-bottomed public paddle-boat which floats unconcernedly down the Hoogli from Calcutta, through the bigger creeks of the Sunderbunds, and up the Pusaka River ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... spent too much time with the good Father, and in various pottering about—making another landing at a lone cabin in search of fresh vegetables and further loading up our much-enduring craft with three flat-bottomed skiffs, for duck-shooting, marvellously lashed to the sides of the cabin deck—to do much more sailing that day. So at sunset we dropped anchor under the lee of Big Wood Cay, and, long before the moon rose, the whole boat's crew was ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... plainly perceive something that had motion in it; and, after firing on and destroying the chasse-maree, I stood towards the object which had engaged my attention, and found it to be a small punt, about eight feet long, flat-bottomed, and shaped more like a butcher's tray than a boat. In it were a young man about eighteen years of age, and a boy about twelve, who had got into the punt to amuse themselves, and, happening to lose one of their oars, ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... matter of awful noise and perspiring confusion. I have travelled, in so-called comfort, as a first-class passenger to Africa. I know all about it. Generally, the ship cannot get within quarter of a mile of the shore. On one side of it lies a fleet of flat-bottomed lighters manned by glistening and excited negroes. On board is a donkey-engine working a derrick with a Tophetical clatter. Vast bales and packing cases are lifted from the holds. A dingily white-suited officer stands by with greasy invoice sheets, while another at the ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... an isolated sea. Over this inland waterway the conflict raged bitterly. The Italians had a "lagoon fleet" ranging from the swiftest of motor boats, armed with machine guns, small cannon, and torpedo tubes, to huge, cumbersome, flat-bottomed British ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... about half a mile to the eastward of Sillery; and the light troops were fortunately, by the rapidity of the current, carried lower down, between us and Cape Diamond. We had in this detachment thirty flat-bottomed boats, containing about 1600 men. This was a great surprise on the enemy, who, from the natural strength of the place, did not suspect, and consequently were not prepared against, so bold an attempt. The chain of sentries which they had posted along the summit of the heights, galled us a little and ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... splattered down into the big hand. "What, crying, Mae?" "No, dear—that is, yes. I believe I am a little bit homesick. I wish I could go back behind my teens again. Do you remember the summer that I was twelve—that summer up by the lake? I wish you and I could paddle around in one of the old flat-bottomed tubs once more, don't you, Eric? We'd go for lilies and fish for minnows—that is, we'd fish for perch and catch the minnows—and talk about when you should go to college and pull in the race, and I should wear a long dress and learn all ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... huge armada was making ready in the southern ports of the Spanish dominions, the Prince of Parma, with almost incredible toil and skill, collected a squadron of war-ships at Dunkirk, and his flotilla of other ships and of flat-bottomed boats for the transport to England of the picked troops, which were designed to be the main instruments in subduing England. Thousands of workmen were employed, night and day, in the construction of these vessels, in the ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... by thorough plowing, making it decidedly mellow. Mark it out four feet apart each way, if to be planted in hills, by plowing broad, flat-bottomed furrows about three inches deep. At the crossings drop three pieces of potato, cut, as directed, in sections of two or three eyes each. Place the pieces so as to represent the points of a triangle, each piece being about a foot distant from each of the other two. If the cut side ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... but their sister called them, and after the accustomed cup of coffee and rusks they went out to fish on the Gudenaa. Of late Hardy had hired a flat-bottomed boat, and a man called Nils Nilsen rowed or punted it with a pole, as on the Thames, or he went ashore on the towing-path and pulled it up the river with a towing rope, while a minnow ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... bank of the Shenandoah. The negro had told him that he was about thirty miles from Harper's Ferry, which he knew was in possession of General Patterson's forces. Attached to a tree on the shore was a small flat-bottomed boat, which attracted the attention of the soldier boy. Tom was accustomed to boats, and the sight of this one suggested a change of programme, for it would be much easier to float down the stream, than to walk the ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... in sight of the river. There were comparatively few craft on the stream, and none of these looked as if it might be occupied by the young man they were after. But presently they reached a small creek flowing into the Rio Grande, and on this saw two flat-bottomed rowboats. ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... bent on building boats; seeing that everybody seemed reluctant to help him he went to work himself; he made an immense flat-bottomed bulrush boat of great thickness, and to propel it made two large wheels worked by hand: in fact he had invented a paddle steamer, only the locomotive agent was deficient. We saw it several times on the water; the wheels were rather high up and it required ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... in places where the sluicing rains had driven hard across the hills; soft with sand in places where the fierce winds had swept the open. For awhile the thin, wobbly track of a wagon meandered along ahead of him, then turned off up a flat-bottomed draw and was lost in the sagebrush. Some prospector not so lucky as he, thought Casey, with swift, soon forgotten sympathy. A coyote ran up a slope toward him, halted with forefeet planted on a rock, and stared at him, ears perked like an inquisitive dog. Casey ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... shade of flowering osiers and willows, which, as they bent down their green heads, dipped the extremities of their branches in the blue waters, a long and flat-bottomed boat, with ladders covered with long blue curtains, served as a refuge for the bathing Dianas, who, as they left the water, were watched by twenty plumed Acteons, who, eagerly, and full of admiration, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... there, you, Jean!" I pulled open the gate of the rail, and ran out the landing stage, on which the flat-bottomed skiff sat. With an oar I pushed it across at right angles as nearly as possible when she cleared. "Quick! Get in, both of you," I called. I was holding the inboard end of the plank under a wedged oar shaft, thrust below the sill of the forward cabin ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... breach of her light gun with a couple of No. 8 cartridges, and warily skirted the brink. In places the pools were so shallow that a man might have waded knee deep from island to island; but the soft mud was treacherous, and flat-bottomed canoes were generally hired at Panipara by sportsmen who went duck-shooting. As Honor was after snipe, she kept to the banks and picked her way fearlessly along the tangled paths, her high boots a protection from ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... easy job, I can tell you. We worked like beavers to get the cave the way we wanted it; but when it was done, it was what you may call hunky-dory. Bill Drake's father had a flat-bottomed boat that we got into and rowed along shore. We rigged up a sail; but there was something the matter with it, and it kept flopping about, and wasn't much good, but anyhow it looked nice. We never went far from shore. We weren't afraid, but we didn't care to. Smugglers ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... refraction from the wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I found it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying apparition. It seemed, however, to be a man standing upright in a sort of flat-bottomed boat, steering with a long oar, and being carried down the opposite shore at a tremendous pace. He apparently was looking across in our direction, but the distance was too great and the light too uncertain for us ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... of the long war with France there was here, as well as everywhere else around the coast, fear of a landing of the French. The flat-bottomed boats to bring the French over were actually ready at Boulogne, and the troops mustered to come across in them. On our side, volunteers were in training in case of need, and preparations were made for sending off the women and children inland on the first news of the enemy ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... voyage of thirteen days, we came to anchor a mile or so off Port Isabel, at the mouth of the Colorado River. A narrow but deep slue runs up into the desert land, on the east side of the river's mouth, and provides a harbor of refuge for the flat-bottomed stern-wheelers which meet the ocean steamers at this point. Hurricanes are prevalent at this season in the Gulf of California, but we had been fortunate in not meeting with any on the voyage. The wind now freshened, however, and beat the waves into angry ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... There they were in the road before me, three of them, and tailless, brown, speckled birds, with dark-blue necks and ragged crests. They stepped archly over the filigree snow, and their bodies moved with slow motion, like small, light, flat-bottomed boats. I admired them, they were curious. Then a gust of wind caught them, heeled them over as if they were three frail boats, opening their feathers like ragged sails. They hopped and skipped with discomfort, to get out of the draught of the wind. And then, in the lee of the walls, they resumed ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... converted into French provinces, from which we should draw immense resources; and we should be compelled to realize that empire of the Gauls which is ceaselessly held up as a terror to Europe. And what would happen if the First Consul, quitting Paris for Lille or St. Omer, collecting all the flat-bottomed vessels of Flanders and Holland, and preparing the means of transport for 100,000 men, should plunge England into the agonies of an invasion—always possible, almost certain? Would England stir up a continental war? But where would ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... of sea-coale. A keel was a flat-bottomed boat, used in the northeast of England, for loading and carrying coal. Afterwards the word was also used of the amount of coal a keel would carry, i. e. 8 chaldrons, or 21 tons 4 cwt. Sea-coal was the original term for the fossil coal borne from Newcastle ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... would be by the return of these Hudson Bay Company's boats to Red River. In them they could travel as far as to Fort Garry. From that point they would take the overland trail on the great plains to St. Paul, and there, boarding the flat-bottomed steamers on the Mississippi, would once more begin travelling in ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... week thereafter she kept her house and brooded. Then one day she sallied forth all dressed in deepest mourning and attended by a train of servants, and, embarking upon a flat-bottomed barge, was borne up the river Scheldt towards Antwerp. Bruges was her ultimate destination, of which she left no word behind her, and took the longest way round to reach it. From Antwerp her barge voyaged on ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... acquisition of a superfluous waste of fertile soil, the conquerors obtained the command of a naval force, sufficient to transport their armies to the coast of Asia. [102] This ships used in the navigation of the Euxine were of a very singular construction. They were slight flat-bottomed barks framed of timber only, without the least mixture of iron, and occasionally covered with a shelving roof, on the appearance of a tempest. [103] In these floating houses, the Goths carelessly trusted themselves to the mercy ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... little man in gray, with a chuckle. "She may be all right to row round in on a troubled sea, but she'll tip quicker'n scat if you step up on the side of her. This one near spilt me into the drink after I was alongside here. What I want is a flat-bottomed scow or raft. I hope this yacht is good and steady, for I'm going to take ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish |
