"Flat-bottomed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 I'll break ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... with monks' 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 her ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... erred apparently as to the novel qualities of Sam Redding's speed craft. She was about twenty-five feet long, narrow and painted black. She was perfectly flat-bottomed, her underside being deeply notched at frequent intervals. On the edge of those notches she was supposed to glide over the water when driven ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... beside the house, and sweet peas on her wire fence. But at the lane's end, where the water of the Salt Pond laps the pier, you may see another old boat put to humbler uses, now that its seafaring days are over, and uses sometimes no less romantic than the Cap'n's garden. It is a flat-bottomed boat, and lies bottom side up just above the little beach made by the lap of the waves, for the tide does not affect the Salt Pond back here three miles from the outlet. The paint has nearly gone from this aged craft, though a few flakes of green still cling ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... the sea that 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 the newly opened Ethiopian provinces, take up ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... he was fond of fishing. He used to go out in an old scow, or flat-bottomed boat, on a river near his home. He and another boy would push the scow along with poles. But Robert said, There is an easier way to make this boat go. I can put a pair of paddle-wheels on her, and then we can sit comfortably on the seat and turn the wheels ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... 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 ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... of the town is an extensive basin surrounded by quays, the heaps of fresh soil around showing it to be a recent excavation from the banks of the Liane. The basin is crowded with the flotilla, consisting of hundreds of vessels of sundry kinds: flat-bottomed brigs with guns and two masts; boats of one mast, carrying each an artillery waggon, two guns, and a two-stalled horse-box; transports with three low masts; and long narrow pinnaces arranged ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... 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. ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... as are also the 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)
... swelling tide had circled 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. As soon ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... first rush of '58 in the month of April, I sat on the banks of the Fraser at Yale and punted across the rapids in a flat-bottomed boat and swirled in and out among the eddies of the famous bars. A Siwash family lived there by fishing with clumsy wicker baskets. Higher up could be seen some Chinamen, but whether they were fishing or washing we could not tell. Two transcontinental railroads skirted the canyon, ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... due west through the North Bight. But we had 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 ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... 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 pointed, black heads, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... morning the first rays of the sun lighted up Sego, the capital of Bambarra, which could be recognized at once by the four towns that compose it, by its Saracenic mosques, and by the incessant going and coming of the flat-bottomed boats that convey its inhabitants from one quarter to the other. But the travellers were not more seen than they saw. They sped rapidly and directly to the northwest, and the doctor's anxiety ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... 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 ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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, and grasping successively the wooden ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... after Chebacco, an ancient settlement of sea-faring men, who have foolishly changed the old Indian name of their place to Ipswich. The Mackinaw navigators have also given their name to a boat of peculiar form, sharp at both ends, swelled at the sides, and flat-bottomed, an excellent sea-boat, it is said, as it must be to live in the wild storms that surprise ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... and he was authorized to raise a 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
... all good, strong swimmers, but their chief delight seems to lie in each one "paddling his, or her, own canoe." The river canoe is not quite the same as those which we derived from the Red Indians, though that kind of craft is also seen about. The popular canoe is a very small flat-bottomed concern with pointed stem and stern, is generally gaily painted and named appropriately "Water Bubble," "Fairy," or something equally ingenious. It looks easy when you see a lass gracefully paddling herself along with a double oar; it is anything but as easy as it looks. This class ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... 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 ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... 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 against the ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... days they reach Honda, on the Magdalena River, where, until lately, they were embarked on rafts for a voyage of fourteen days to Savanilla. At the present time, an American company has established a service of flat-bottomed steamers which cover the distance in seven days, thus reducing the risks of the journey by one-half. But they are still terrible. Not a breath of wind stirs the air at that season, for the collector ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... surrounding network of pools and streams—holding its communications and carrying its produce by water instead of by land—began to present themselves in closer and closer succession. Nets appeared on cottage pailings; little flat-bottomed boats lay strangely at rest among the flowers in cottage gardens; farmers' men passed to and fro clad in composite costume of the coast and the field, in sailors' hats, and fishermen's boots, and plowmen's smocks; and even ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the first consul appeard to intimate, preparations were resumed on the French coast for the invasion of Great Britain. Boulogne and every harbour along the coast was crowded with flat-bottomed boats, and the shores covered with camps of the men designed apparently to fill them. We need not at present dwell on the preparations for attack, or those which the English adopted in defence, as we shall ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... Abrahamson 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 on ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... 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 ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... halves under the whip-cracking of their own headman and the fatherly advice of an R.E. corporal. Looking up the Canal the fatigue party, already late for their dinners, perceive a P. & O. liner about four miles away majestically crawling south. Their only hope is now the horse-ferry, an aged flat-bottomed contrivance wound across by a squad of natives and a chain. With the assistance of a friendly military policeman, the headman of this gang is discovered some hundred of yards away lying asleep with his feet in the Sweet-Water Canal, ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... 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 ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... which I had seen from below hung in a flat-bottomed lantern just beyond the head of the stairs, and outside the entrance to one of two passages which appeared to lead to the back part of the house. Suspecting that M. de Bruhl's business had lain with mademoiselle, I guessed that the light had been placed for his convenience. With this clue and the ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... authors; and I am persuaded if one were to 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 ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... anywhere in the world has been so often painted as that of Scheveningen—ever since the painting of landscape seemed a worthy pursuit. James Maris' pictures of Scheveningen's wet sand, grey sea, and huge flat-bottomed ships must run into scores; Mesdag's too. Perhaps it was the artists that prevailed on the fishermen to wear crimson knickerbockers—the note of warm colour ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... of baking soda. Leave in soak all night. In the morning wash well all over, using your coarse cloth, and a little scouring soap, then rinse well in tepid water, followed by a second rinsing in cold water, drain, and wipe dry. A flat-bottomed boiler is best—with one rounding, there is greater risk of scorching. Set a rack on the bottom else an old dish or earthen pieplate, pour in an inch of water, set over the fire, lay the ham upon the rack, skin side down, and fill up with cold ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... to have two pairs of hands and a head of cast-iron, for, not content with blowing through a big conch-shell, he must needs stand up to it, swaying with the sway of the flat-bottomed dory, and send a grinding, thuttering shriek through the fog. How long this entertainment lasted, Harvey could not remember, for he lay back terrified at the sight of the smoking swells. He fancied he heard a gun and a horn ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... over which the British Army fought. The Aisne valley runs generally east and west, and consists of a flat-bottomed depression, of width varying from half a mile to two miles, down which the river follows a winding course to the west, at some points near the southern slopes of the valley and at others near the northern. The high ground, both on the north and south ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... rutted 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, ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... anchored and remained quiet until yesterday about noon, when several of the ships got under way, and proceeded towards Portsmouth, which place I have no doubt they intend to attack by water or by land or by both, as they have many flat-bottomed boats with them for the purpose of landing their troops. As I too well know the weakness of that garrison, I am in great pain for the consequences, there being great quantities of merchandise, the property ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... children—and the crisp yard-long loaves carried away in shallow baskets on many a fine Norman head in the old seaport of Dieppe. And always the Little Trout was by his side, even when the great-uncle placed him in one of the huge flat-bottomed bread baskets and drew the two up and down in front of the shop. Then all was dim again; so dim that except for the lap and backward sucking of the waters against the sea wall, whereon he leaned, he had scarcely recalled a ship at the old pier of Dieppe, and the Little Trout standing ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... it was not long before we decided that the Thames punt "filled the 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 ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... 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 ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... toward a lake and a white road where the sun shines hotly. Some of its branches should trail over an old, lichened and weather-stained stone wall, dropping their fruit into the highway for thirsty pedestrians. There should be a little path running athwart it, down toward the lake and the old flat-bottomed boat, whose bilge is scattered with the black and shriveled remains of angleworms used for bait. In warm August afternoons the sweet savor of ripening drifts warmly on the air, and there rises the drowsy hum of wasps exploring the windfalls that are already rotting on the grass. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... safely on the mud. The population were sailors and fishermen. They were ingenious and industrious, and they carried on a considerable trade in the Bay of Biscay and in the British Channel. They had ships capable of facing the heavy seas which rolled in from the Atlantic, flat-bottomed, with high bow and stern, built solidly of oak, with timbers a foot thick, fastened with large iron nails. They had iron chains for cables. Their sails—either because sailcloth was scarce, or because they thought canvas too weak for the strain of the winter storms—were manufactured out of leather. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... opened the sluices, and inundated the country to the very borders of the dyke, so as to intercept Marlborough's communication with Ostend, and prevent the arrival of stores from it. But the English general defeated this device by bringing the stores up in flat-bottomed boats from Ostend to Leffinghen, and thence conveying them in carriages, mounted on very high wheels, to the camp. Cadogan greatly distinguished himself in this difficult service. Overkirk died at this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... after a 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
... better. "Yes," said he, "when I was a young man I used to go to Battersea on holidays, I and some others, and nothing would suit us but outrigged gigs, randans, and such like; but now I'm growing old, and a flat-bottomed tub suits us better, my missus and me. Shall we get ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... purchased the now famous Story farm, on Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, 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 ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... regrets. His quick 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 in Liefkenshoek ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... crossed rivers in their wagon boxes and very few lost their lives in doing so. The difference between one of these prairie-schooner wagon boxes and that of a scow-shaped, flat-bottomed boat is that the wagon box has the ribs on the outside, while in a boat they are on ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... the blue. And then I saw the peacocks. 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, ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... our tourists found absolutely novel; they could clearly or dimly recall from the past every other feature but the houseboats, which they instantly and gladly naturalized to their memories of it. The houses had in common the form of a freight-car set in a flat-bottomed boat; the car would be shorter or longer, with one, or two, or three windows in its sides, and a section of stovepipe softly smoking from its roof. The windows might be curtained or they might be bare, but apparently there was no other distinction among the houseboat dwellers, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... out of the rolling ship into some huge flat-bottomed boats, like coal-barges, and even so, were grated and ground several times by the churning waves on the ragged reefs beneath us: and, just as I was enjoying the see-saw, and trying to comfort two poor drenched women-kind who were terribly afraid ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... not argue the point. They went to the shore where their little flat-bottomed boat was drawn up. Perota Lake, on which the tiny frame cottage stood, was a shallow, reedy pond, connecting by sluggish brooks with a number of other lakes. The shore on this side of the lake was ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... 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 ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... crept along the cables, carrying tow ropes to which flat-bottomed boats were attached. When the flood became so fierce that the boats no longer were able to make way against it, men and women crept along the cables to safety. Others, less daring, saw darkness fall and gave up hope ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... subdued, and in some cases their people were sold wholesale into slavery. In 56 B.C. the Veneti threw off the yoke and retained two of Caesar's officers as hostages. Caesar advanced upon Brittany in person, but found that he could make no headway while he was opposed by the powerful fleet of flat-bottomed boats, like floating castles, which the Veneti were so skilful in manoeuvring. Ships were hastily constructed upon the waters of the Loire, and a desperate naval engagement ensued, probably in the Gulf of Morbihan, which resulted in the decisive ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... 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 ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... name is forgotten—happened to be sailing for Bordeaux with a general cargo, which included some thousands of tulips, and a few almost priceless ones, for a rich purchaser who wished to introduce tulip-culture into the Gironde. The Dutchman's vessel was a flat-bottomed galliot, fitted with lee-boards, but liable to fall away from the wind; and, encountering a strong southerly gale as he attempted to round Ushant, he was blown northward into the fogs, and, through the ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of some 6,000 men. As the whole population of Denmark, in the reign of Canute who 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 ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... doubtless been duly boiled, a hundred thousand years ago, by the intelligent producer of those identical sun-dried fleshpots; and M. Joly, of Toulouse, has in his possession portions of an irregularly circular, flat-bottomed vessel, from the cave of Nabrigas, on which the finger-marks of the hand that moulded the clay are still clearly distinguishable on the baked earthenware. That is the great merit of pottery, viewed as an historical document; ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... and tobacco gave vigorous promise of a noble harvest. The water also teemed with life and a shiftless out-at-elbow energy. Shabby looking fishing smacks, with dirty white wings, like birds too indolent to plume themselves, passed constantly, and flat-bottomed canoes, manned by good-humored negro oystermen, plied a lazy, thievish ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... they apparently do not know the use; and the one basin in which she washed her hands serves for various other domestic purposes. Almost the only household appliances are two ovens, as they are called—two flat-bottomed, shallow iron kettles, with iron covers, and legs a few inches long. Under these kettles, out of doors, the fire is made, and coals put upon the flat covers. In this way the hoe-cake is baked in one, ...
— American Missionary, Volume 50, No. 8, August, 1896 • Various
... gallons per hour. Mr. Plumacher says that the petroleum is of very good quality, its density being that which the British market requires in petroleum imported from the United States. The river, up to the junction of the Tara and Sardinarte, is navigable during the entire year for flat-bottomed craft ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... down the coast, and 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 the different ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... of the Seine is always laden with queer, picturesque craft, and just below the window by which she sat was moored a flat-bottomed barge which evidently served as dwelling place for a very happy little family. One end of the barge had been turned into a kind of garden, there was even a vine-covered arbour, under which two tiny children were now playing some ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... succulent leaves close to the stalk; these are placed upright in the tubs, side by side, so that the sap may flow out of the wound. Sometimes a longitudinal incision is made from top to bottom of the leaf, to facilitate the discharge. The crude juice thus obtained is placed in shallow flat-bottomed receivers, and exposed to the sun until it has acquired sufficient consistency to be packed in gourds for exportation. In preparing the coarser kind, or horse aloes, the leaves are cut into junks and thrown into the tubs, there to lie till the juice is pretty well ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... plan 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 ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... 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 naturally ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... when the yacht came to an anchor, her deck was encumbered with two long canoe-shaped craft, each measuring six feet beam by thirty feet in length. They were practically flat-bottomed, to ensure light draught, and were built in sections, to provide the maximum of portability, which quality was further ensured by the fact that the material of which they were constructed was an amalgam largely composed of aluminium. They were completely ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... seagulls 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 and tracked across the bay to South Shore, casting ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... great variety, and all are chanted to the measured movement of the oars, now stronger, now weaker, and each stanza followed by a chorus. Their A-ri-ra-cha always produces great effect on the rowers, and is mingled more or less with shouts, screams, and a mad-like laughter, while the long flat-bottomed canoe flies through the water driven ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... Orn's boat comin' under the shadders of the trees?" queried Longman, rising to his feet and wiping his long jack-knife on his blue-jeans breeches. "Yep, it air him," he added, getting a closer look at the approaching flat-bottomed boat in which sat a big round-shouldered individual working vigorously away at the oars. Orn Skinner was called the "Giant Fisherman," because even in his bare feet he was seven inches above every other man in the settlement. Two enormous humps stood side ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... out fishing in the fjord with some friends; of course they all enjoyed themselves—and I pretended that I did. No, I did not enjoy myself! We sat in a flat-bottomed, broad, ugly boat, that they called a "pram," a contrivance resembling a washtub, and fished the whole afternoon in muddy water a few feet deep, with a fine line, catching altogether seven whiting—and then rowed quite satisfied to land! I felt nearly ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... family at the Hotel Beau Rivage, Ouchy, Lausanne, 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 region of France. He ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with the current and upstream by means of poles, sails, oars, or ropes; keel boats for upstream work, with long, narrow, pointed bow and stern, roofed, manned with a crew of ten men, and propelled with setting poles; flatboats which went downstream with the pioneer never to come back—flat-bottomed, box-shaped craft manned by a crew of six, kept in the current by oars 30 feet long called "sweeps" and a steering oar 50 feet long at the stern. Those intended to go down the Mississippi were strongly built, roofed over, and known ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... 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 ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... 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 of saying good-bye ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... twenty elephants, three thousand horse, and twenty thousand foot, with two thousand archers, and twenty thousand slingers. When all was ready, Pyrrhus put these troops on board a large fleet of galleys, transports, and flat-bottomed boats, which had been sent over to him from Tarentum by Cineas for the purpose, and at length set sail. He left Ptolemy, his eldest son, then about fifteen years old, regent of the kingdom, and took ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... runs generally east and west, and consists of a flat-bottomed depression of width varying from half a mile to two miles, down which the river follows a winding course to the west, at some points near the southern slopes of the valley and at others near the northern. The high ground both on the north ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... before we catch them. A bugle sounds, and a hundred and twenty forms plunge from the bathing-stage and quay into the water. The bright harbour is dotted with the heads of swimmers. Some backward boys are being taught to swim in a "swimming-tray," a thing like a flat-bottomed barge, sunk with its bottom about four feet below the surface. A capital place it is for teaching youngsters to swim. But all soon learn, and are free to join the others in sporting about and cutting capers in the water. A warning bugle of one note says "it ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... wash alone costs about $150 a machine. The seaplanes too—or hydroaeroplanes as purists call them—present a curious illustration of unexpected and, it would seem, unexplainable expense. Where the flyer over land has two bicycle wheels on which to land, the flyer over the sea has two flat-bottomed boats or pontoons. These cost from $1000 to $1200 and look as though they should cost not over $100. But the necessity of combining maximum strength with minimum weight sends the price soaring as the machine itself soars. Moreover there is not yet the demand for ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... While I was looking at the river, a boat shot into view round a bend of the gorge and came down like an arrow over the rapids. It contained a small party of tourists and two boatmen, who stood in. the flat-bottomed craft with poles in their hands, with which they kept it clear of the rocks. I understood at once the delicious excitement of coming down the Tarn in this fashion. Bucketfuls of water are often shipped where the stream rushes furiously between walls of rock; but the men have ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... shoulders to the bows of the old, flat-bottomed rowboat, with incredible exertions uprooting it from its ancient bed, and at length ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... 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 she find ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... approved manuals of geography the Don figures as one of the principal European rivers, and its length and breadth give it a right to be considered as such; but its depth in many parts is ludicrously out of proportion to its length and breadth. I remember one day seeing the captain of a large, flat-bottomed steamer slacken speed, to avoid running down a man on horseback who was attempting to cross his bows in the middle of the stream. Another day a not less characteristic incident happened. A Cossack passenger wished to be set down at a place where there was no pier, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... were similar heaps, but these were of bleached bones on which the moonlight shone brightly—mementoes of former sacrifices. Quite close to the first pile of dead was a mooring-place where at least a dozen flat-bottomed boats had been secured, for their impress could yet be seen in the sand. Now they were gone with the exception of the canoe, which was kept there, evidently to facilitate the loading and launching ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... while the rugged peaks of Penllwyd and Penglaslyn frowned in majesty of clouds beyond. The ferry itself was one of those delightful survivals of mediaevalism which linger here and there in a few fortunate corners of our isles. A large flat-bottomed boat was slung on chains which spanned the river, and could be worked slowly across the water by means of a small windlass. Though it was perfectly possible, and often even more convenient, to drive to the school direct from Llangarmon Junction, so great was the popular feeling in favour of ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... triangular shape of these boats approaches that of a salmon-fisher's punt used on certain British rivers. Being floored gives them the appearance of being absolutely flat-bottomed; but, though they tilt readily, they are very safe, being heavily built and fitted together with singular precision with wooden bolts and a few copper cleets. They are SCULLED, not what we should call rowed, by two or four men with very heavy oars made of two pieces ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... of steps to the beach, and stumbled across the soft sand towards the sea. One or two boats were lying out in the surf—heavy Dutch fishing-boats, known technically as "pinks," flat-bottomed, round-prowed, keel less, heavy and ungainly vessels, but strong as wood and iron and workmanship could make them. Some seemed to be afloat, others bumped heavily and continuously; while a few lay stolidly on the ground with the waves breaking ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... is all right," said Alfy again. "It will take us both. Why, these flat-bottomed things float in ever such a little water. Try once more, Mansy dear, and then I can give you ...
— The Island House - A Tale for the Young Folks • F. M. Holmes
... oars was heard among the rushes, and they started up as from sleep. The next moment a flat-bottomed boat appeared, heavy, hollowed out with no skill and with oars as small as sticks. A young girl, who had been picking water-lilies, rowed it. She had dark-brown hair, gathered in great braids, and big dark eyes; otherwise ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... 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 ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... have, and a dandy one to shoot out of, being flat-bottomed and steady as a church floor. But I only use it to retrieve the game generally; because you see, we can shoot from the land as the ducks fly ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... and the falls, and thence had a good bridle-road to our destination, which we reached. in another hour. The hills had closed in around us as we advanced; and when we reached a ruinous shed which had been erected for the accommodation of visitors, we found ourselves in a flat-bottomed valley about a quarter of a mile wide, bounded by precipitous and often overhanging limestone rocks. So far the ground had been cultivated, but it now became covered with bushes and ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... and there was no danger of a lengthy operation being interrupted by a change of policy at home, it would appear that the efforts of commanders should be, to induce the tribesmen to assume the offensive. On this point I must limit my remarks to the flat-bottomed valleys of Swat and Bajaur. To coerce a tribe like the Mamunds, a mixed brigade might camp at the entrance to the valley, and as at Inayat Kila, entrench itself very strongly. The squadron of cavalry could patrol ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... the time 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 ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their journey by the tides: lest, finding low water in the rivers, they should have to wade to the ferry-boats waist deep in mud; and going down the steep hillside, through oak and ash and hazel copse, they entered, as many as could, a great flat-bottomed barge, and were rowed across some quarter of a mile, to land under a jutting crag, and go up again by a similar path ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... 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 to make out very plainly what he was about. It seemed to me that he ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... 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 ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... It rippled passively between its banks, for it was yet seven months before the first showing of the June rise. Here were the frail papyrus bari, constructed like a raft and no more concave than a long bow; the huge cedar-masted cangias, flat-bottomed and slow-moving; the ancient dhow with its shapeless tent-cabin aft; the ponderous cattle barges and freight vessels built of rough-hewn logs; the light passenger skiffs; and lastly, the sumptuous pleasure-boats. These were elaborate ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... accompanied 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 ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... 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
... 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 brink, sometimes sheltering himself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... 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 ledges ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... in clean bottles or fruit cans, filling to a uniform level, closing bottles tightly with a cork or cover. If pint and quart cans are used at the same time, an inverted bowl will equalize the level. Set these in a flat-bottomed tin pail and fill with warm water to same level as milk. An inverted pie tin punched with holes will serve as a stand on which to place the ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... this kind are supported on some projecting portion of the basement; but at Lyons, owing to other arrangements of the architecture into which I have no time to enter, they are merely projecting tablets, or flat-bottomed brackets of stone, projecting from the wall. Each bracket is about a foot and a half square, and is shaped thus (fig. 13), showing to the spectator, as he walks beneath, the flat bottom of each bracket, quite in the shade, but within a ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... state robes and hatchee-matchees, came to 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 in the bow an officer ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... we travelled down the River Danube, in a very pleasant and agreeable manner, in a kind of Wooden House mounted on a flat-bottomed Barge, and not unlike a Noah's Ark. 'Twas most convenient, and even handsomely laid out, with Parlours, and with Drawing-Rooms, and Kitchens and Stoves, and a broad planked Promenade over all railed in, and with Flowering Plants in pots by the sides, quite like a garden. They ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... a whole plantation of lily-pads and spatterdocks,—or things like them,—and she would scrape over a sunken log as easily as a wagon-wheel rolls over a stone. She drew only two feet of water, and was flat-bottomed. When she made a very short turn, the men had to push her stern around with poles. Indeed, there was a man with a pole at the bow a good deal of the time, and sometimes he had more pushing off to do than he could manage ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... 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 drinking water ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... and spread on the slices of beef. Make a roll of each slice, folding in the edges to retain the dressing, and tie up securely with cord. Have beef suet on the fire; after rendering and straining, add a little water to prevent scorching and bring to a boil in a flat-bottomed pot or kettle. Drop in the roulards, rolled and tied; stir with a spoon until well browned; then set back on the stove and let simmer gently for two hours with pot tightly covered. Drain well on napkin ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman
... 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 as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... 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
... quietness. 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, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... 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 thirty miles. This was a point which needed no argument; ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... and the temperature mild, the ground covered with grass and shrubs and flowers, over which hovered clouds of bright-winged butterflies. Low down in the hollow was a still and silent pool, and though, so far as I could make out, it had no exit, two large flat-bottomed boats and a couple of canoes were made fast to the side. Hard by was a hut of sun-dried bricks, in which were slung three ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall |
