"Flat-topped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arched gateway, turrets, watch-towers, ramparts, etc., and to right and left palaces, obelisks, and pyramids fairly fill the gulf, all colossal and all lavishly painted and carved. Here and there a flat-topped structure may be seen, or one imperfectly domed; but the prevailing style is ornate Gothic, with many hints ...
— The Grand Canon of the Colorado • John Muir
... Insurgent and seeker of an ideal girl with gray eyes, but as plain, every-day Mr. Brown, whom Providence had sent as a June guest. Decatur was thankful for it. The barren verandas were grateful in his sight. When he had been installed in a corner suite, spread out his writing things on a flat-topped table that faced the sea, filled his ink-well, and lighted his pipe, he seemed to have escaped from a ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... named for Hugh Miller. We rowed up its fiord and landed to make a slight examination of its grand frontal wall. The berg-producing portion we found to be about a mile and a half wide, and broken into an imposing array of jagged spires and pyramids, and flat-topped towers and battlements, of many shades of blue, from pale, shimmering, limpid tones in the crevasses and hollows, to the most startling, chilling, almost shrieking vitriol blue on the plain mural spaces from which bergs had just ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... to Labu, to give some account of the channel between the reefs; as, from the appearance of the charts, it would seem impossible to navigate the western side of the bay. Having passed Tanjong Labu at a distance of 3 1/2 or 4 miles, get the flat-topped hill called Bulu Tanna ahead. Close to the Bulu Tanna, in the foreground, is another smaller hill, with two remarkable tufts on the top: this hill, just open to the eastward of Bulu Tanna, is the leading mark for Songi, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... Thirty Years' War had constitutionally unsettled the Hollanders to such a degree that their descendants, emancipated from European ideas, became prone to restlessness, for in a generation or two they began to trek; or perhaps the magic of the spacious veld, with its clear sky and the mountains and flat-topped kopjes sharply defined on the horizon, irresistibly lured them on. In the land they had quitted the air was dense with moisture; scarcely a hill was to be seen; they were hemmed in by sluggish rivers and by the sea, which leaned heavily against the dykes ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... wasn't the sergeant,' replied Dick. 'The man had a cloth cap on, and the sergeant had a flat-topped ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... set in a sapphire sea. Lorna had left the winding highroad, and was taking a short cut up flights of steep steps between the flowery gardens of villas, where geraniums grew like weeds, and every bush seemed a mass of scented blossoms. She was passing a small flat-topped eastern house, whose gatepost bore the attractive title of "La Carina," when she suddenly heard her own name called, and turning round, startled and surprised, what should she see peeping over the cactus hedge but the smiling face and blonde bobbed ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... a man carrying my theodolite, for Mount Red Cap, distant from our camp about six miles. This little red cone had a very singular appearance, as we approached it from the east. A dark tinted scrub of flat-topped trees enveloped its base, on the outside of which the light and graceful Acacia pendula also grew on the grassy plain. I found the red rock to be the common one of the country, in a state of decomposition. It was hollowed out by some burrowing animal, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... The flat-topped bills were draped and folded in the opal haze of distance; the sky was perfect turquoise; the rounded kopjes shone like pink topaz, unclothed as yet with the young pale green bush. To the south there was a veld fire leaping and dancing, with swirling columns ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... coastal plain backed by flat-topped hills and rugged mountains; dissected upland desert plains in center slope into the desert ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... faded, and the first faint flush of the invisible moon was pervading the air. The undulating ridge of the Sabine mountains stood softly denned against the horizon, and here and there a great, flat-topped stone pine was seen looming up along the edges of the landscape. Cranbrook ate hurriedly the frugal dinner which was served him from a neighboring trattoria, then lighted a cigar, and walked out into the garden. He sat for a while on ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Of human form, crowned with a flat-topped cap and two long, straight plumes; clothed in the schenti; his flesh sometimes painted blue. There are various forms of this god (there were almost as many varieties of Ammon in Egypt as there are varieties of the Madonna in Italy or Spain), ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... in Egypt another form of pyramid called the mastaba, which, like the Mexican, was flattened on the top; while in Assyria structures flattened like the Mexican are found. "In fact," says one writer, "this form of temple (the flat-topped) has been found from Mesopotamia to the Pacific Ocean." The Phoenicians also built pyramids. In the thirteenth century the Dominican Brocard visited the ruins of the Phoenician city of Mrith or Marathos, and speaks in the strongest terms of admiration of ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... sort, and weird bric-a-brac. Two large modern safes stood at one side, behind a long show case spread with ancient coins. At the end of this case was a carpeted space, railed in and furnished with a great flat-topped desk. Upon the floor at the foot of the desk, and with three separate streams of blood creeping away from it, lay the huddled, ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... shoulders squared, he put up his head. Free and in the open, if only for twenty-four hours. And with a horse, a real horse, between his knees. He looked off to the left to Barlow's three peaks; the sun was gilding the top of the tallest and it was unquestionable that it was flat-topped. But he did not dwell long upon buried gold nor yet on the query which suggested itself: "Where were Barlow and Zoraida riding so early?" The immediate present and the immediate surroundings were all that he cared to interest himself in on a ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... him and they presently stopped beneath the alder branches by a sparkling shallow. Tall brush grew up the shady bank and briars trailed in the stream. A row of flat-topped stones ran across, but there were gaps where the current foamed over some that were lower than the rest. Grace's foot was getting worse, and sitting down on a slab of the slate stile, ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... where the wind harped his wild anthem upon the heathery waste, and where roaring streams filled the lonely cloughs with drowsy uproar. It was a striking scene, and it was an impressive hour. The bold, round, flat-topped height of Musbury Tor stood gloomily proud, on the opposite side, girdled off from the rest of the hills by a green vale. The lofty outlines of Aviside and Holcombe were glowing with the gorgeous hues of a cloudless October sunset. Along those wild ridges ...
— Th' Barrel Organ • Edwin Waugh
... hundred yards, the appearance was that of a beautiful pearly-white cloud resting upon the earth. Many fogs had I seen, but never one like this, so substantial-looking, so sharply defined, standing like a vast white wall or flat-topped hill at the foot of the green sunlit slope! I had the fancy that if I had been an artist in sculpture, and rapid modeller, by using the edge of my hand as a knife I could have roughly carved out a human figure, then drawing it gently out of the mass proceeded to press and work it ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... except that the lower flowers have longer stems, making the cluster somewhat flat-topped; the outer ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... she saw that I did surely live; and a great hope to spring in her heart. And oft, as she had eased me, she had lookt about, and there did be naught to the sight, save the body of the Humpt Man anigh, and the others dead about and upon the flat-topped rock, ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... "measureless distances" and the showy problems, including the rapid moving of a ray of light and the long years of its travel between star and star, and smiled incredulously. Why, the stars were just above our heads, were not much higher than the flat-topped hills that barred the horizons. Venus was a yellow lamp hung in a tree; Mars a red lantern ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... you right away," said Mr. Herrick. "That long, flat-topped box on the side car serves several purposes. When you want to take an unconscious person to the emergency hospital over on Beach Avenue you can use the box as a stretcher. Just put your patient on to the top of it and while the man on the tandem seat holds him fast the driver can rush the machine ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... feature in the scene was an isolated flat-topped hill, having all the appearance of a bastion or fortress, rising abruptly from the surrounding plain, to an elevation of 650 feet, the upper part being a line of cliffs, greatly adds to the appearance ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... fall strikes on flat-topped slabs, forming a kind of ledge about two-thirds of the way down from the top, and as the fall sways back and forth with great variety of motions among these flat-topped pillars, kissing and plashing notes as well as thunder-like detonations are produced, like those ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... not at all disturbed, the colonel did not interrupt them for a while. But when the lady at length rose, holding Phil by the hand, the colonel, fearing that the boy, who was a child of strong impulses, prone to sudden friendships, might be proving troublesome, left his seat on the flat-topped tomb of his Revolutionary ancestor ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... background of black, star-flecked sky. From the facade before me down to the spot where I stood by the water, came a flight of half a dozen terraces, each balustraded in white marble, ending in square, flat-topped pillars of Florentine design. What moon there was revealed the quaint architecture of that stately edifice and glittered upon the mullioned windows. But within nothing stirred; no yellow glimmer came to clash with the white purity of the moonlight; ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... Turkish rugs, whose walls were covered with Oriental hangings, and in one corner was a great, wide divan, canopied, also with Oriental hangings at head and foot, serving presumably for a bed; but, striking a somewhat incongruous note, others of the appointments were modern enough—the flat-topped desk in the centre of the room with its revolving chair, for instance, and a large, ponderous safe that stood back against the ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... some fine old trees, lindens, acacias, chestnuts, a flat-topped Lombardy pine, a darkling ilex, besides the willow that overhung the river, and the poplars that stiffly stood along its border. Then there was the peacock-blue river itself, dancing and singing as it sped away, with a thousand diamonds flashing on its surface—floating, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... our mouths, we see behind our canines a long row of broad, flat-topped, square-looking teeth, which fill up the largest part of our jaws. Again their shape tells what they are used for. They are not sharp enough to cut with, or pointed enough to tear with, but are just suited for crushing and grinding into a pulp, between their broad, flat tops, any food ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... irregularities of the Gothic erections. It was somewhat disguised from the road in passing it by yews and evergreen oaks, but it was visible enough up here. The wicket from which the pair had lately emerged was in the wall of this structure. From the middle of the building an ugly flat-topped octagonal tower ascended against the east horizon, and viewed from this spot, on its shady side and against the light, it seemed the one blot on the city's beauty. Yet it was with this blot, and not with the beauty, that the ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... pretty good horse. He was an elderly, bearded man, very portly, and wore the brown garb of the Capuchins, which I certainly had no reason to love. His bald head, gleaming in the sun, was of the steep and flat-topped shape of our English quartern-loaves; and it came upon me with a shock that here was that Fra Palamone, whom I had last seen extended, shot by my hand, in the Piazza Santa Maria at Florence. This alarming discovery was verified ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... east, there was an empty throne, or tribune, in which the head of the college, or dean of the chapter of dervishes, located himself on his haunches. He was a handsome, powerful man, of about forty, with a fine black beard, dressed in a flowing gown, and covered by a flat-topped ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... keeping to a hedge-side or by means of the furze-bushes, she would sometimes come upon them with disconcerting suddenness. On this occasion just where the boys had been playing there was a low, stout furze-bush, so dense and flat-topped that one could use it as a seat, and his mother taking off and folding her shawl placed it on the bush, and sat down on it to rest herself after her long walk. "I can see her now," said Caleb, "sitting on that furze-bush, in ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... large stone fireplace; in a corner stood a grand piano; the center was dominated by a simple, flat-topped desk, across which much of the traffic of the ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... had passed, which was full of sand-hills. The country continued hilly, and the northernmost land, the same which we saw from the lagoon island, appeared like downs, sloping towards the sea. To the southward of this is a flat-topped hill, which, on account of its shape, I called Pudding-pan hill, and a little to the northward two other hills, which we called the Paps; and here was a small tract of country without sand, the eastern part of which forms a cape, whence ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh
... let's have a little talk about this business," the Cross-Triangle man said in a matter-of-fact tone, as he seated himself on a large, flat-topped stone near the little fire. "You know you can't get away, so ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... mouth of the bathing-pool, her crew idly spanking the water with the flat of their oars. A red-coated militia-man, rifle in hand, sat at the bows, and a petty officer at the stern. Between the snow-white cutter and the flat-topped, honey-coloured rocks on the beach the green water was troubled with shrimp-pink prisoners-of-war bathing. Behind their orderly tin camp and the electric-light poles rose those stone-dotted spurs that throw heat ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... Dawn lighted the flat-topped kopjes that lay in a huge semicircle in the distance, and men clambered up the sides of the spruit to ascertain the camp of the enemy. The white smoke-stack of the Bloemfontein waterworks appeared against the black background of the hills in the east, but it was still too dark to distinguish objects ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... next office stood open. Sarah walked in, that is, she stepped just inside the doorway and stood there as though glued to the floor. The thin, gray-haired man who was stooping over the flat-topped desk, looking at a card file, glanced up at her and smiled. This was the ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... river which was spating from the recent rains, but great flat-topped rocks made it always possible to cross; she ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... however, and seemed to know that no harm would reach them there. Later on in the morning we saw other herds, but invariably at long range, sometimes teetering along the sky line or appearing and disappearing behind the flat-topped umbrella acacias. ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... a big, flat-topped tent was pitched, which bore over the low door a signboard on which was painted, Triage No. 1. Malades et Blesses Assis. This meant that those assis, able to travel in the ambulances as "sitters," were to be deposited ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... twain into the midst of the Mote, and there bade them go up on to a wide, flat-topped stone, six feet above the ground, just over against the ancient chieftain; and they mounted it by a rough stair, and stood there before that folk; Walter in his array of the outward world, which had been fair enough, of crimson cloth and silk, and white ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... clambering carefully around the face of a big rock Pete suddenly whispered that he smelt a "Painter," and upon peering around the corner we found ourselves face to face with a large cat; the animal was crouching upon a flat-topped projecting stone immediately in our path. That it was not the puma of the low-lands, its reddish-colored coat and great size proclaimed. It was a so-called mountain lion and a ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... Dealing first with the correction for the lifting power of the gas, this, according to Pole, is a deduction of h(1 - d)/828 where d is the specific gravity of the gas and h the height (in inches) of the top of the gasholder above the water level. This strictly applies only to a flat-topped bell, and hence if the bell has a crown with a rise equal to about 1/20 of the diameter of the bell, the value of h here must be taken as equal to the height of the top of the sides above the water-level ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... front glittered with gold-and-black sign-lettering. The chairs and sofas were upholstered in black leather. On the walls hung several decorative advertisements of fire-insurance companies, and maps of the town, county, and state. Rolls of tracing-paper and blueprints lay on the flat-topped tables, reminding one of the office of an architect or civil engineer. A thin young man worked at books, standing at a high desk; and a plump young woman busily clicked off typewritten matter ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... from it, is a ledge of rocks on which the sea constantly breaks. We passed close round the reef, and hauled into a very considerable opening about six or seven miles wide, and at least five or six leagues deep. At the bottom of this inlet was some higher land than usual, and among it two flat-topped hills were very conspicuous. The eastern shore of the port, for such it proved to be, is formed by a succession of rocky points, between which were ranges of red cliffs, much higher than any we had yet seen, and, if possible, more ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... and gold, and darkened here and there into shadows of porphyrine amber. Amidst the grey and green of the olive and acacia foliage there will arise the low pale roofs and flat-topped towers of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... foot of a vast flat-topped mass of granite unique among the natural elevations of the world. She is another melting pot. Here mingle Kaffir and Boer, Basuto and Britisher, East Indian and Zulu. The hardy rancher and fortune-hunter from the North Country rub shoulders with the globe-trotter. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... doubt of its being salt, from the nature of the country, and the fact of finding the water very salt in one of the creeks draining into it from the hills. Beyond this lake (which I distinguished with the name of Colonel Torrens) to the westward was a low, flat-topped range, extending north-westerly, as far as ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... this loop were some thirty thousand acres of very rich, low-lying soil, almost treeless and clothed with luxuriant grasses where game was extraordinarily numerous. At the head of it rose a flat-topped hill, from the crest of which, oddly enough, flowed a plentiful stream of water fed by a strong spring. Half-way down this hill, facing to the east, and irrigable by the stream, was a plateau several acres in extent, ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... fields; pretty brown villages on hillsides clustering round graceful campaniles (a word I've practised lately with several other difficult ones); green-black cypresses (which Maida says seem like sharp notes in music); and wonderful, flat-topped trees that Mr. Barrymore calls ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... George the Third's Sound, and commence the survey of the West Coast at Rottnest Island. Another remarkable effect of mirage. Anchor under, and land upon Rottnest Island. Break an anchor. Examine the coast to the northward. Cape Leschenault. Lancelin Island. Jurien Bay. Houtman's Abrolhos. Moresby's Flat-topped Range. Red Point. Anchor in Dirk Hartog's Road, at the entrance of Shark's Bay. Occurrences there. Examination of the coast to the North-west Cape. Barrow Island. Heavy gale off the Montebello Isles. Rowley's ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... western or truncated peak, which gives its name to the mass (koro "cut off at the top"; puna "a cold, snowy height"), was the highest point of the range, and higher than all the eastern peaks. Yet behind the flat-topped dome we could just make out a northerly peak. Tucker wondered whether or not that might prove to be higher than the western peak which we decided to climb. No one knew anything about the mountain. There were no native guides to be had. The wildest opinions were expressed ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... cast upon Inkpen in the handing to the neighbouring Walbury Hill Camp of an additional five feet by these interfering Ordnance surveyors. The new maps now read—Walbury Camp 959 feet; Inkpen, 954. But the loss of 18 yards or so does not seem to have altered the glorious view from the flat-topped Down or to have made its air less sparkling. The grand wooded vista down the Kennet valley toward Newbury is a sharp contrast to the bare uplands north and south. Walbury Camp, a fine prehistoric entrenchment, is ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... a wilderness of little hills and valleys, flat-topped benches and sandy gulches threaded minutely with winding trails and cow paths, green with the illusion of drought-proof giant cactus and vivid desert bushes, one vast preserve of browse and grass from ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... Astrolabe, a series of long flat-topped ridges parallel with the coast, but were unable clearly to identify the Cape Passy of D'Urville where his running survey terminated, and where the Astrolabe and Zelee bore away to the westward ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... of a guard, they were marched rapidly up the street to where a few larger flat-topped houses stood on slightly higher ground. Through an open door they were driven along a passage and out into a courtyard open to the sky, with a fountain in ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... country, and the fact of finding the water very salt in one of the creeks draining into it from the hills. Beyond this lake (which I distinguished with the name of Colonel Torrens), to the westward, was a low, flat-topped range, extending northwesterly as far ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... would. And they came breathless to the rocky outcropping through which the pack trail wormed its way farther down the hill. There he let her stop, for he knew that they had passed around the upper edge of the fire, and were safe unless the wind changed. He helped her upon a high, flat-topped boulder that overlooked the balsam thicket and manzanita slope, and together they faced the debauchery of ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... came out of a deep, broad ravine that had caused us much delay and difficulty, we caught sight of an attractive town situated on a steep, flat-topped hill. Upon drawing near, a fine-looking, white-bearded Arab rode up on a small gray mare. He said that he was the head man of the town; that he hated the Turks, and would like to be of any assistance ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... valley. The last cliff before one reaches the level country is known as Cape Sverbef, a bold promontory that projects into the river and is nearly a thousand feet high. Not far from this cliff is a flat-topped mountain remarkable for several crevices on its northern side, from which currents of cold air steadily issue. Ice forms around these fissures in midsummer, and a thermometer suspended in one of them fell in an hour ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... exhibits another Fleury Ray, but inverted and more green than violet. Its function is to shunt the lift out of the gas, and this it will do without watching. That is all! A tiny pump-rod wheezing and whining to itself beside a sputtering green lamp. A hundred and fifty feet aft down the flat-topped tunnel of the tanks a violet light, restless and irresolute. Between the two, three white-painted turbine-trunks, like eel-baskets laid on their side, accentuate the empty perspectives. You can hear the trickle of the liquefied gas flowing from the vacuum into the bilge-tanks and the ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... on his flat-topped red cap and touched the visor smartly with his right hand, in a ...
— The Tale of Major Monkey • Arthur Scott Bailey
... immense, flat-topped cone of metal, upon the top of which was situated the power plant. Twelve massive pillars supported a flat roof, but permitted the air to circulate freely throughout the one great room which housed the machinery. They climbed a flight of stairs, passed between two ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... came to, it was with an excruciatingly painful struggle that left him shrinking and nerveless, lying in a corner, blinking at the light of a kerosene lamp. Corrigan sat on the edge of a flat-topped desk watching him with an ugly, appraising, speculative grin. It was as though the man were mentally gambling on his chances ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... through the streets of Jaffa, past the low, flat-topped Oriental houses, the queer little open shops, the orange-groves in full bloom, the palm-trees waving their plumes over garden-walls, and rolled out upon the broad highroad across the fertile, gently undulating Plain of Sharon. On each ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... variable in relative length, often becoming almost equal, while sometimes the upper radials are very much reduced. The figure referred to in Cact. Mex. Bound. is not satisfactory as to the general habit of the plant, which is flat-topped rather than hemispherical. ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... any other time. After each meal, it was his custom to take what he called "four draws" in his study. Kit found at these times that he was in his best humor. Relaxed and thoughtful, he would lean back in the deep Morris chair between the flat-topped desk and the fireplace, and smoke leisurely. Even his pipe had come from Persia, its amber stem very slender and beautifully curved, its ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... genius invented the "A" frame, a really wonderful labour saving device. Hitherto floorboards had been supported on piles and crossbars, while further and longer stakes were driven in to carry the rivetment. The new frame shaped like a flat-topped letter "A," was put in the floor of the trench upside down. The legs held the revetment against the sides, the floorboards rested on the cross-piece, and the space between the cross-piece and the flat top formed a good drain. These were first used in communication trenches only, ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... rested oftener and more affectionately on the Campanile of Giotto, or on the simple tower and spire of Santa Maria Novella?—and whether, in the backgrounds of Perugino, he would willingly substitute for the church spires invariably introduced, flat-topped campaniles like the unfinished ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... noted book-thief Libri. This manuscript is attributed to the tenth century by Merrill, and by Chatelain in his description of the book. But Chatelain labels his facsimile page "Saec. IX."[20] The latter seems the more probable date. The free use of a flat-topped a, along with the general appearance of the script, reminds me of the style in vogue at Fleury and its environs about the middle of the ninth century. A good specimen is accessible in a codex of St. Hilary on the Psalms (Vaticanus Reginensis 95), written at Micy between 846 and 859, of which ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... then climbed a shoulder of fell between Long Whindale and the next valley. Descending a sunny mountainside, they crossed some water meadows, and mounted the hill beyond, to a spot that Mary had marked in her walks. Beside a little tumbling stream and beneath a thicket of holly, lay a flat-topped rock commanding all the spectacle of flood and fell. Mary guided him there; and then stood silent and flushed, conscious that she herself had brought the supreme moment to its birth. The same perception rushed ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it with a main line. Then for four days he travelled across the scorching plains of India, shut up in stuffy carriages with violet-hued glass windows and Venetian wooden shutters meant to exclude the heat and glare. Over bare plains broken by sudden flat-topped rocky hills, through closely-cultivated fields and stretches of scrub-jungle, by mud-walled villages, he journeyed day and night. The train crossed countless wide river-beds in which the streams had shrunk to mean rivulets; but when it clattered over the Ganges at Allahabad the sacred ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... things foldable. The great-coat, for instance, must at the finish of its foldings, when it is placed upon the exactly middle spot above your bed's end, present to the eye of the beholder a kind of flat-topped pyramid whose waist-line (if a pyramid can be said to own a waist) is marked by the belt with the three polished buttons peeping through. The belt must bulge neither to the right nor to the left; the pyramidal edifice ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... for attacking the next day, so there was only a little skirmishing, in which the Americans had the advantage. Baum improved the delay by throwing up a redoubt of logs and earth on a rather high, flat-topped hill, rising behind the little Walloomsac River. In this he placed his two field-pieces. His Canadians and loyalists took up a position across and lower down the stream, in his front, the better to cover the road by which his reenforcements must come, or the Americans ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... vertically downward, and it became evident that Nevia was neither entirely aqueous nor devoid of intelligent life. For the blunt nose of the space-ship was pointing toward what was evidently a half-submerged city, a city whose buildings were flat-topped, hexagonal towers, exactly alike in size, shape, color, and material. These buildings were arranged as the cells of a honeycomb would be if each cell were separated from its neighbors by a relatively narrow channel of water, and all were built of the same white metal. Many bridges ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... semicircular basin toward the west, at the hub of which stood bolt-upright a tall, snowy flagstaff, its shred of bunting hanging limp and lifeless from the peak, and in the dull, dirt-colored buildings of adobe, ranged in rigid lines about the dull brown, flat-topped mesa, a thousand yards up stream above the pool, drowsed a little band of martial exiles, stationed here to keep the peace 'twixt scattered settlers and swarthy, swarming Apaches. The fort was their soldier home; the solitary girl a ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... not to destroy this clan, but to force it into submission to his marquis. So, when he had persuaded them to throw down their swords, he put off his flat-topped helmet and seated himself ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... successive crops. Multiple warts appear to result from some contagion, the nature of which is unknown; they sometimes occur in an epidemic form among school-children, and show a remarkable tendency to disappear spontaneously. The solitary flat-topped wart which occurs on the face of old people may, if irritated, become the seat of epithelioma. A warty growth of the epidermis is a frequent accompaniment of moles and of that variety of ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... numerous, small, dull, white heads of tubular florets only, crowded in a scaly involucre and borne in spreading, flat-topped terminal cymes. Stem: Stout, tall, branching above, hairy, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, often united at their bases, or clasping, lance-shaped, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... buildings with which we are acquainted is the absence—save in a few and unimportant cases—of the pyramidal form. The Egyptians knew at least the worth of the obelisk; but the Greeks and Romans hardly knew even that: their buildings are flat-topped. Their builders were contented with the earth as it was. There was a great truth involved in that; which I ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... of the room was a stone sarcophagus of the early, broad, flat-topped pattern. In one corner was a two-seated bari, in another a mattress of woven reeds. Leaning against the sarcophagus was a wooden rack containing several earthenware amphorae; on the floor about it was a touseled litter of waxed ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... or so ago I witnessed a Sokol display on that flat-topped height called Letna; it is, as it were, an eastward prolongation of the Castle Hill. Here is a large recreation ground for the use of such bodies as Sokol societies. In the arena, before a large and appreciative but critical public, the Socialist ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... flat-topped desk, of mahogany, with two pedestals of drawers, all locked. Maitland determined this latter fact by trying to open them without a key; failing, his key-ring solved the difficulty in a jiffy. But the drawers seemed undisturbed; nothing had been ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... triple gables, also, the three central aisles which distinguish the interior show in the outer structure. Under the gables the huge clerestory windows above the entrances relieve the great expanse of the end walls. Similar windows open up the walls above the flat-topped wings. In the main entrance, the gables are deepened to form a huge triple vestibule where the row of columns is repeated. The long side walls are relieved by pairs of decorated columns flanking the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... Kennedy was ready to begin. He took his position behind the long, flat-topped table which he used for his demonstrations before his classes. "I realize, ladies and gentlemen," he began formally, "that I am about to do a very unusual thing; but, as you all know, the police and the coroner have been completely baffled by this terrible mystery and have requested ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... minister in state, coming to do him honour. First marched a Malay, with a staff and a large flag waving above his head; then came two spearmen with their shields; and next the minister, another man holding above his head a canopy of state, a huge flat-topped umbrella, of scarlet silk, fringed with gold. Next followed a band of musicians, two with drums, and two with pipes; and last, a large body of spearmen, ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... of them, and there painted in the air they saw the picture of a great mountain, standing by itself upon a plain, but with other mountains visible to the north and south of it. This mountain was flat-topped, with precipices of red rock, and down its eastern slope ran five ridges shaped like the thumb and fingers of a mighty hand, while between the thumb and the first finger, as it were, a stream gushed out, upon the banks of which grew ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... The immense, flat-topped, gray Gothic spire which dominated the picturesque line of low, red-tiled roofs showing here and there above the clustering, dark-green masses of trees in level meadows, was that of St. Rombauld, designated by Vauban as "the Eighth Wonder of the World," constructed ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... a mile or so they came upon the former campsites of the castaway, each marked by a flat-topped cairn of small stones three or four feet in height. DeCastros was at a loss to explain this. Mr. Wordsley supposed that it was one of the marks of a ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... heavy-set person with sandy, mutton-chop whiskers set bias on a vacuous, round, florid countenance. His braid-trimmed uniform was cut to fit him like the skin of an exceedingly well-stuffed sausage, and from his comfortable seat behind a flat-topped desk he gazed upon us with the wisdom of a tree-full of owls and the dignity of a ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Beyond the crater the country sloped away in a continuous descent to the skyline. Behind them, a narrow path channelled its way up through the rocks toward the towering summit of the pyramid. Miles away, in the north-east quarter, a long, flat-topped plateau raised its head far above all the surrounding country. It was Sant—and there and then he made up his mind that that should be his ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... and over against the foaming beach, lies a rock that the swoln waves beat and drown what time the [127-159]north-western gales of winter blot out the stars; in calm it rises silent out of the placid water, flat-topped, and a haunt where cormorants love best to take the sun. Here lord Aeneas set up a goal of leafy ilex, a mark for the sailors to know whence to return, where to wheel their long course round. Then they ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... northern parts of Zululand and trade there until the weather was better. Our private arrangement, however, was that on the night of the next full moon, which happened about four weeks later, we should meet at the eastern foot of a certain great, flat-topped mountain known to both of us, which stands to the north of Zululand ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... get into the house, go straight through the vestibule and hall to the door at the end. On the big, flat-topped desk in the middle of the room you'll find a telephone. Do you know how to ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... low stone roofs of its flat-topped dwellings, the silver spread of lake showed a green-clad island some three miles off shore. The distance made its white stone houses seem small. But as I gazed, I realized that they were large compared to their environment, all far larger than ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... sheet of lava, extending, east and west, from Nagpur to Bombay, a distance of about five hundred miles, was then, in succeeding millenniums, subjected to the denuding forces of air and water, until gradually huge tracts of it were worn away, forming beds of conglomerate, gravel, and clay. The flat-topped hills have been carved out of the basaltic surface by the agencies which wore away the massive sheet of lava. The basaltic cappings of the hills certainly cannot have 'formed part of continued flat beds of great lakes'. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... afraid.' We went out of the tent and presently I could see the sheep, a small one about four years old. We went up toward it, and I saw the sheep moving about. It went out to a little flat place on the slide rock, where the slide rock had pushed out a little further, making a little low butte, or flat-topped table; it was loose rock, with snow. ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... Soon out on the broad, brown veldt, far-distant hills showing finely cut in the exquisitely clear air. Such an atmosphere I have never seen for purity. The sun was rising into a cloudless sky from behind a kopje. The flat-topped kopje is now the regular feature. They are just like miniature Table-mountains, and it is easy to see how hard to capture they must be. Water, feed, and breakfast at a tiny roadside place, with the inevitable couple of tents and khaki men. We were at whist when we steamed up to a big, ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... formality, and we followed our host into the room adjoining the hall on the right. It looked like the study of a man of science; charts and globes and plaster-of-Paris casts were everywhere, while the far end of the apartment was occupied by a huge, flat-topped table covered with papers, test-tubes, and glass-slides. But even more remarkable than its contents was the room itself, and its singular architectural proportions at ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... of the bay of Zanzibar with bellying sails. Towards the south, above the sea line of the horizon, there appeared the naked masts of several large ships, and to the east of these a dense mass of white, flat-topped houses. This was Zanzibar, the capital of the island;—which soon resolved itself into a pretty large and compact city, with all the characteristics of Arab architecture. Above some of the largest houses lining the bay front ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... valley behind us, while before us it shelves gradually into the lake; forty yards out, as you know, there is not ten feet water; and then a steep bank, the edge whereof we and the big trout know well, sinks suddenly to unknown depths. On the opposite side, that flat-topped wall of rock towers up shoreless into the sky, seven hundred feet perpendicular; the deepest water of all we know is at its very foot. Right and left, two shoulders of down slope into the lake. ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... further down, at Rowley's Cove. About three hundred yards from the shore was the peculiar formation known as Island Rock. This was a large rock that stood abruptly up out of the water. Below, about the usual water-line, it was seamed and fissured, but its summit rose up in a narrow, flat-topped peak. At low tide twenty feet of it was above water, but at high tide it was six feet and often more ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to and from the forest I cast many a wistful look at a solitary flat-topped hill, almost a mountain in height, which stood two or three miles from the house, north of it, on the other side of the river. From its summit I felt sure that a very extensive view of the surrounding country ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... polished crimson sheen, Long streaks of black, the under lacquer, shine out clean. Four desks, adjustable, to suit the heights of players Sitting to viols or standing up to sing, four layers Of music to serve every instrument, are there, And on the apex a large flat-topped golden pear. It burns in red and yellow, dusty, smouldering lights, When the sun flares the old barn-chamber with its flights And skips upon the crystal knobs of dim sideboards, Legless and mouldy, and hops, glint to glint, on hoards Of scythes, ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... when I sent in my name, for he didn't of course expect to see me yet—nobody expected me. He advanced soft-footed down the room. With his jutting nose, flat-topped skull and sable garments he recalled an obese raven, and when he heard of the disaster he manifested his astonishment and concern in a most plebeian manner by a low and expressive whistle. I, of course, could not share his consternation. My feelings in that connection were of a different order; ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... bulk of it out of the water. Then he set to work to pound it down into the mud and stones at the bottom of the river with such a persistent thoroughness, that he gave us time to reach the other bank and climb up a stout tree which grew there, a sloping, flat-topped kind of tree that was fortunately easy to ascend, at least for a man. Here we sat gasping, perhaps about thirty feet above the ground ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... the lad's forelock to make sure that it was still fast. Schonholz had passed a year at Heidelberg and carried his diploma on his cheek—two crisscross slashes that had never healed—spoke battered English, wore a green flat-topped cap, and gray bobtailed coat with two rows of horn buttons ("Come to shoot chamois, have you?" Marny had asked when he presented his credentials.)—laughed three-quarters of the time he was awake, and never opened his kit or set a palette while he was in ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and its thickness varied from three hundred feet or more at the center, to a few feet at each end. Roughly, then, its basic outline was that of an irregular parallelogram, while its profile was that of a flat-topped cone. For some moments the little group stood in silence as they gazed up at the yellowish-gray ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... walked to the only door in sight. He opened it, and stepped inside. A white-headed, scowling man, clean shaven, and with close-shut, thin, hard lips, looked up over a pile of letters and accounts laid before him on a cheap, flat-topped desk. ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... back deep in thought, and made up his mind to see the wise woman again. So he passed down into the valley, crossed the river to the new village built on a small flat-topped hill, and found the chief's mother ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... on the Ungwempisi River, also called "Joubert's Beacon," and known to the natives as "Piet's Beacon" (Bea. IX.); thence to the highest point of the N'Dhlovudwalili or Houtbosch, a hill on the northern bank of the Umqwempisi River (Bea. VIII.); thence to a beacon on the only flat-topped rock, about 10 feet high and about 30 yards in circumference at its base, situated on the south side of the Lamsamane range of hills, and overlooking the valley of the great Usuto River, this rock being 45 yards north ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... penetrated about a hundred yards, and stood upon a flat-topped rock, looking down at the roaring, swishing water, while before us everything appeared of a dark forbidding grey, in strange contrast to the bright slit of mossy green we could see when we looked back, in the midst of ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn |
