"Freshet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or bit out a few acres of cornfield to the west and whirled the soil away, to deposit it in spumy mud banks somewhere else. When the water fell low in midsummer, new sand bars were thus exposed to dry and whiten in the August sun. Sometimes these were banked so firmly that the fury of the next freshet failed to unseat them; the little willow seedlings emerged triumphantly from the yellow froth, broke into spring leaf, shot up into summer growth, and with their mesh of roots bound together the moist sand beneath ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... them on account of their special fitness in the use of firearms. Why, Inks here couldn't have cooked for my outfit that season, let alone rode. There was no particular incident worth mentioning till we struck Red River, where we overtook five or six herds that were laying over on account of a freshet in the river. I wouldn't have a man those days who was not as good in the water as out. When I rode up to the river, one or two of my men were with me. It looked red and muddy and rolled just a trifle, but I ordered one of the boys to hit it on his horse, to see what ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... about me!" Timothy Turtle sneered. "I'll right myself as soon as there's a freshet. If there's a big enough rain the creek will rise as high as I am now. And nobody could keep me on my back in ...
— The Tale of Timothy Turtle • Arthur Scott Bailey
... like a spring freshet," he said into the mouthpiece, "and the boys want to know if I won't let up now that Reinhart is down? Go back and smother them with all they will take down to 60. That's my answer. Tell them if Reinhart had ten more wives and daughters and they were all killed, I'd rend his bastard trust ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... unfold, And Paraguay's deep channel paved with gold, Saw proud Potosi lift his glittering head, And pour down Plata thro his tinctured bed. Rich with the spoils of many a distant mine, In his broad silver sea their floods combine; Wide over earth his annual freshet strays, And highland drains with lowland drench repays; Her thirsty regions wait his glad return, And drink their future harvest from ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... horses, thinking of the Salinas and its treacherous waters. In California, when the ground is well sodden, a very small storm will create a very big freshet. At such times most rivers are dangerous to ford on account ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... was tonight a human spill-way, churning in freshet. Between its walls went up the clamor of human throats raised in talk, in shouts, in song, in laughter and in contest with the blaring of toy horns, the racket of rattlers and all those discordances that seek ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... there is no thought of art or oratory. Where the remarks are of an explanatory nature the words come slowly and carefully. When persuasion becomes the object, deliberation is thrown aside and words begin to flow like a mountain freshet, and if the speaker has natural capacity he concludes his point with a grand rush that carries ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... from the ram, and the door fell to finders. They leaped in over the table like a freshet over a dam. I darted to the window. M. Etienne was in the garret, helping hold the ladder for me. I flung myself upon it all too eagerly. Like a lath ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... wood sage all set in shining fern. Upon the boulders in midstream subaqueous mosses, now revealed and starved by the drought, died hard, and the seeds of grasses, figworts, and persicarias thrust up flower and foliage, flourishing in unwonted spots from which the next freshet would rudely tear them. Insect life did not abundantly manifest itself, for the day was sunless; but now and again, with crisp rattle of his gauze wings, a dragon-fly flashed along the river. Through these scenes the Teign rolled drowsily and with feeble pulses. Upon one bank ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... trespass," he answered (so the reader will perceive that I had been quite correct in my understanding of the law); and when I went on to explain my object in visiting his cane-swamp (for such it was, he said, but an unexpected freshet had ruined the crop when it was barely out of the ground), he assured me that I was welcome to visit it as often as I wished. He himself was very fond of natural history, and often regretted that he had not given time to it in ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... they saved no livestock at all. They just did manage to save themselves. They had a hard time getting the slaves to the mainland. Mrs. Sallie Henderson, her step-son, Jack and her son, Jim, and daughter, Lyde were in the Henderson house when the freshet came down upon them. They had to go up on the second floor of their house but the ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... however, unlike those previously encountered, were much broken by the undulations of the waves, and seldom exceeded a quarter of a mile in diameter; while thousands of them were no larger than the ordinary drift ice of our own principal rivers in the time of a freshet. Their vicinity to the track of the schooners, indeed, was first ascertained by the noise they produced in grinding against each other, which soon made itself audible even above the roaring of ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... instant later, she would have picked him off, as a bat picks a moth from a lighted window-pane, and he would never have reached the down-stream shallow. At that time the water, clearing after a summer freshet, was fairly low. Brighteye's danger in some wild winter flood would, therefore, be far greater; so, timorous from his recent experiences, and sufficiently intelligent to devise and carry out plans by which he would secure greater safety, he occupied his spare time in the ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... are therefore among those accidents of the ground which, duly improved, can seriously affect military operations. The destruction of a bridge impedes the transport of troops and supplies; a sudden freshet, occurring in the midst of an extensive movement, may imperil an army by sundering its forces; while of the utility of such natural trenches to the purposes of shelter and of defence, of awaiting attack, or resisting an advance, both the ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... for some secret panel that might open in the walls and give her escape. She must think! There was little enough time at best to bring order out of this panic-ridden confusion of her thoughts. But her mind was like a stream in freshet. It could only race and swirl along one channel, and that was ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... was moored by means of a long rope to a tree a considerable distance from the water, so that in case of one of those sudden rises that sometimes took place, it would not be carried away by the freshet. The boat was quickly launched, and a few strokes of the paddle carried the two to the ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... FRESHET. A word long used for pools or ponds, when swollen after rain or temporary inundations. It is also applied to a pond ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Dargle," or Glenislorane River, upon Lord Powerscourt's domain. This would be thought "a small specimen" of a river with us, as, except when the waters are swollen with a freshet, it is but a narrow and shallow mountain stream. But in Ireland it passes at such times for a mighty torrent, and at all times ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... I thought of that other story that Hank Simons told me,—the one about the mill back of Woodstock caving in from the freshet and burying the miller's girl. No one dared lift the timbers until Jonathan crawled in. The child was pinned down between the beams, and the water rose so fast they feared the wreckage would sweep the mill. Jonathan clung to the sills ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... or swam away or were walled up, and new ones filled their places, and the colony thrived for a long time, and had accumulated quite a stock of lime. But, one day, there came a freshet in the Menomonee River, and piles of dirt and sand and ground-up iron ore were brought down, and all the little Favosites' mouths were filled with it. They didn't like the taste of iron, so they all died; ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... pavilion. We women are sitting there, on one side, behind a screen. Triumphant shouts of Bande Mataram come nearer: and to them I am thrilling through and through. Suddenly a stream of barefooted youths in turbans, clad in ascetic ochre, rushes into the quadrangle, like a silt-reddened freshet into a dry river-bed at the first burst of the rains. The whole place is filled with an immense crowd, through which Sandip Babu is borne, seated in a big chair hoisted on the shoulders of ten or twelve ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... end to end was one seething storm of heated, typically "Southern" argument and prophecy. Friendships were being made and broken, over questions as to whether the river had risen four inches the past hour, or only one, and as to whether this freshet were more important than the ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... knees down, like a squirrel, Drew his arms back, like a cricket. "Once he leaped," said old Iagoo, "Once he leaped, and lo! above him 45 Bent the sky, as ice in rivers When the waters rise beneath it; Twice he leaped, and lo! above him Cracked the sky, as ice in rivers When the freshet is at highest! 50 Thrice he leaped, and lo! above him Broke the shattered sky asunder, And he disappeared within it, And Ojeeg, the Fisher Weasel, With a bound went in behind him!" 55 "Hark you!" shouted Pau-Puk-Keewis As he entered at the doorway; "I am tired of all this talking, Tired ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... it is a lively stream when there happens to be a freshet and both forks are pouring a flood down into it. We will try to bed down near the river and you boys can have some sport swimming. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... answered Andrew with a laugh. "Look over there on the hill—see those two old locusts? They are fern palms and those scrub oaks are palmettos. The white frost makes the meadow a lagoon and this rock is the pier of my bridge where I came out to watch one night to test the force of a freshet. Over there the light from Mrs. Matilda's fires is the construction camp and beyond that hill is my bungalow. That's the same old moon that's rising relentlessly to murder the stars again. Do you want to stay ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Stevenson wrote in a preface to "Catriona":—"I see like a vision the youth of my father, and of his father, and the whole stream of lives flowing down there far in the north, with the sound of laughter and tears, to cast me out in the end, as by a sudden freshet, on these ultimate islands. And I admire and bow my head before the romance of destiny." Does not this sentence read as if it were written in stress of some effusive febrile emotion, as if he wrote while still pursuing his idea? And so it reminds us of ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... when she come out hyear and found the place was a dance-hall, she cried all the time. She didn't add none to the hilarity of the place. An' one day Jim he strolled in, an' seem' the girl a-cryin' like a freshet and wishin' she was dead, he inquired the cause. She told him how that old harpy wrote her, an', bein' an orphant, she come out thinkin' she was goin' to a respectable place as waitress, an' Jim he 'lowed ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... opinion that the danger was not so great as might be supposed. There would be no pollution from those bodies taken from the river before decomposition set in, and the force of the freshet would tend to clear the river bed of any impurities in it rather than make new deposits. The argument which had the most weight, however, with the President was the efficiency of the local authorities. Pennsylvania has a State Board of Health and is a State with ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... middle of the stream, however, a sudden cloud-burst and freshet overtook them; the waters began to rise and roar, and although Thor leaned heavily upon his staff, he was almost swept away by the force of the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the lane yesterday; of his clean-cut face, and the look in his eyes—so vastly superior to any look that ever came into the eyes of Bream Mortimer. She was telling herself that her relations with Sam were an idyll; for, being young and romantic, she enjoyed this freshet of surreptitious meetings which had come to enliven the stream of her life. It was pleasant to go warily into deep lanes where forbidden love lurked. She cast a swift side-glance at her father—the unconscious ogre in her fairy-story. What would he say if he knew? But Mr. Bennett did not know, and ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... moisture is insured to mature the crop. In a few sections small farming is conducted by means of irrigation. In Canon de Chelly, which may be termed the garden spot of the reservation, there are diminutive farms and splendid peach orchards irrigated with freshet water. The canon drains an extensive region, and even a light rain causes the stream which flows at the base of its lofty walls to become swollen. This water the natives divert to their miniature cornfields and orchards, one or ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... faltered, breathless with exertion; then, having drawn a deep inspiration, he continued: "We're like a boat in a raging freshet, with rocks, tree trunks, and cakes of ice threatening it on all sides. But we'll get out of it. The car obeys its helm as if it appreciated the danger. Why, I got away from that last fellow by setting up atomic reaction against it, as a ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... them. Even of a very good thing one may have too much, I would go up in the spring, when the rafts are being formed in the small tributary streams, and I would come down upon one of them, shooting the rapids of the rivers as soon as the first freshets had left the way open. A freshet in the rivers is the rush of waters occasioned by melting snow and ice. The first freshets take down the winter waters of the nearer lakes and rivers. Then the streams become for a time navigable, and the rafts go down. After that comes the second freshet, occasioned by the melting of far-off ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... see her, for it had been several weeks since Grace had called, and she was eager to tell her of the great tree up in the ravine that had been blasted by the lightning, and about the beautiful little waterfall caused by the Cherry Creek freshet. ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... knows he can lecture, and thinks he can write verses. At any rate, he has often tried, and now he was determined to try again. So when some professional friends of his called him up, one day, after a feast of reason and a regular "freshet" of soul which had lasted two or three hours, he read them these verses. He introduced them with a few remarks, he told me, of which the only one he remembered was this: that he had rather write a single line which one among them should think ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... impassable. I found the bridges washed away, and the roads over-flowed; but I soon got used to wading up to my waist in water. I at length came to a stream which I found unfordable, the bridge having been destroyed by the rebels. I was told that this was the heaviest freshet that had ever been known in those parts. Having engaged a boy to pilot me across the stream, I gave him charge of one of my mail bags and cautiously followed him. We found a temporary structure crossing ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... pouring in at Philadelphia like a flood, sometimes whole parishes at once, each bringing its own pastor; and it left large traces of itself in the eastern counties of Pennsylvania, while it rushed to the western frontier and poured itself like a freshet southwesterly through the valleys of the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies. But the Presbyterian churches of eastern Pennsylvania, even as reinforced from England and New England, were neither many nor strong; the Baptists were feebler yet, although ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... fifteen courses, and if the finite mind of man could imagine anything to be desired as an addition to his present possessions on the River, he at least knows nothing of it. Already he commands ten miles of water—swift, clear water—running over stone, through a freshet bed so many hundreds of feet wide that he has forgotten what it means to guard his back cast. It is to be waded in the riffles, so that he can cross from one shore to the other as the mood suits him. One bank is apt to be precipitous, ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... Bonnet was a planter of high reputation and religious character who, from some sudden and overpowering freshet of wildness in his blood, had given up everything in order to start off pirating in the Caribbean Sea. The example was a recent one, and it had caused the utmost consternation in the islands. Governors had before now been accused of being in league with pirates, and ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the means by which the miller had originally obtained the boat. He was of a miserly nature, was Uncle Jabez Potter, and the old boat—which its first owner had never considered worth coming after, following some spring freshet—served the miller well enough to transport his goods across ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... of a day in March, when the wind howled dismally, that Boniface Willet, in Barnaby Rudge, flattened his fat nose against the window pane and made one of his famous predictions. It must have been a March freshet when the Knight Huldebrand put Bertalda into Kuhleborn's wagon and the gentle Undine saved them both. And we fancy that it was a cold night in March when Peter stood by ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... defied even the wolverine to dig its owner out, is deserted for any otter's den or chance hole in the bank where he may sleep away the sunlight in peace. The great dam, upon which he toiled so many nights, is left to the mercy of the freshet or the canoeman's axe; and no plash of falling water through a break—that sound which in autumn or winter brings the beaver like a flash—will trouble his wise little head for ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... organized to ascend the river and discover the place and circumstances of its origin. Along the banks, at intervals, whole fleets of boats and fragments had gone ashore, and were piled up in bays, like the driftwood of a subsided freshet. Efforts were made to dislodge these from time to time and set them afloat again, newly christened, with fresh paint and sails, as if they stood a better chance of the voyage than any new ones. Indeed, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... choice, Hite," laughed Holcomb. "You fellows must have been drowned out last night; the log over the South Branch is gone in the freshet; we had to get round the best way we could. Step up, Freme," he said. "I want you to know Mr. Thayor. This is Freme Skinner, Mr. Thayor, and this is Hite Holt, and there's no ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... not consider the scent disagreeable and have no occasion to consult the tastes or smell of others. The first time I visited one of their fish-curing places I thought of the western city that had, after a freshet, 'forty-five distinct and different odors beside several wards to ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... force in his front, near "Seven Pines," on the southern bank of the Chickahominy, was only a portion of the Federal army, General Johnston determined to attack it. This resolution was not in consequence of the freshet in the Chickahominy, as has been supposed, prompting Johnston to attack while the Federal army was cut in two, as it were. His resolution, he states, had already been taken, and was, with or without reference to the rains, that of a good soldier. General Johnston struck at General McClellan on the ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... of the wonder of her freshet laughter. Because to Marylin a police officer was not merely a uniformed mentor of the law, designed chiefly to hold up traffic for her passing, and with his night stick strike security into her heart as she hurried home of short, wintry ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... freely with provisions and everything necessary to carry on his timber-making—whilst Stephen worked hard and lived poor, he enjoyed long intervals of ease and fared luxuriantly. But a change came: one spring the water was too low to get his timber down, the next the freshet burst at once and swept away the labour of two seasons, and ere he got another raft to market, the price had fallen so low that it was nearly valueless. He returned dispirited to his home and tried ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... quantity of snow had lately fallen, which, having been succeeded by heavy rains, had swollen the stream to more than double its ordinary size. It was evident that, what in the language of the country is called a freshet was commencing. Such is the name given to those swellings of the water, the most formidable of which commonly occur in the month of February, or early in the Spring, when the overcharged rivers, bursting their boundaries and overflowing the neighboring lowlands, sometimes occasion great damage ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... long snow-bound, must be liberated also. After the winters of deepest drifts the spring often comes most suddenly; there is little frost in the ground, and the liberated waters, free without the expected freshet, are filtered into the earth, or climb on ladders of sunbeams to the sky. The beautiful crystals all melt away, and the places where they lay are silently made ready to be submerged in new drifts of summer verdure. These also will be transmuted in their turn, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... of the spring thaw, the river bed is filled with a freshet of water which seizes and carries the logs down stream. Many on the banks, however, have to be started on their way, and this is called "breaking out the roll ways." They often start on their water ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... me," Joyce's eyes grew dreamy, "that every one in St. Ange has something to keep still about. Every one seems to be here because he has to, not because he wants to. People seem to drift in here like logs after a spring freshet—and they ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... peaceful glory through the plains toward Columbia and the distant sea. The muffled roar of these falls, rising softly through the trees on its wooded cliff, held the daily life of the people in the spell of distant music. In fair weather it soothed and charmed, and in storm and freshet rose to the ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... a block and sold 'em to a man dat had come in on a steamboat, and he took dem off on it when de freshet come down and de boat could go back to Fort Smith. It was tied up at de dock at Webber's Falls about a week and we went down and talked to my aunt and brothers and sister. De brothers was Sam and Eli. Old Mistress cried jest ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... at Smaldeel, the Guards set out for Kroonstad on the Valsch or False River, so called because in some parts it so frequently changes its channel that after a heavy freshet one can seldom be quite sure where to find it. This march of sixty-five miles was covered in three days and a half; Smaldeel seeing the last of us on Wednesday and Kroonstad seeing the first of us about noon on Saturday. In the course of this notable march we saw, or rather heard, two artillery ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... time to discuss the circumstances—both those in our favour and against us. The water-way taken by the canoe was far from being direct. Both the creek and the larger stream curved repeatedly in their courses; and in ordinary times were of sluggish current. The freshet, however, produced by the late rain-storm, had rendered it swifter than common; and we knew that the canoe would be carried down with considerable rapidity—faster than we were travelling on horseback. On such roads, for so great a distance, fast travelling was impossible; and could only have been ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... they made their lease with the Cherokees the men of the Watauga were not troubled by their Indian neighbors. They had to fear nothing more than a drought, a freshet, a forest fire, or an unusually deep snow-fall if hunting on the mountains in mid-winter. They lived in peace, hunting and farming, marrying, giving in marriage, and rearing many healthy children. By degrees they wrought out of the stubborn wilderness comfortable homes, filled ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... clean, sweet water; every brook is a trout-brook, a mountain brook; the cold and the snow have supplied the condition of a high latitude; no stagnation, no corruption, comes downstream now as on a summer freshet. Winter comes down, liquid and repentant. Indeed, it is more than water that runs then: it is frost subdued; it is spring triumphant. No obsolete watercourses now. The larger creeks seek out their abandoned beds, return to the haunts of ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... regal mode, 340 With dishes pil'd, and meats of noblest sort And savour, Beasts of chase, or Fowl of game, In pastry built, or from the spit, or boyl'd, Gris-amber-steam'd; all Fish from Sea or Shore, Freshet, or purling Brook, of shell or fin, And exquisitest name, for which was drain'd Pontus and Lucrine Bay, and Afric Coast. Alas how simple, to these Cates compar'd, Was that crude Apple that diverted Eve! And at a ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... ponies were all drowned. The sea was undivided from the bay. Pungy boats and canoes drifted helplessly along the coast, and the Eli alone was out of danger in the harbor of New York, waiting to receive young Abraham. At last the freshet crept over the house-tops, and nothing remained but the cottage of the Jew, planted on piles, which lifting it higher than the surrounding houses, yet threatened it the more if the water should float it from its pedestal and send it to sea. Every effort was made to induce ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... which, even in a high freshet, would stop a train a single day. Again, upon this route we have an abundance of good grazing every foot of the way to Fort Kearney. The route from Nebraska City is about 100 miles shorter to Fort Kearney than that from Fort Leavenworth, ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... carcass down the river to a point below Rainbow Falls, within sight of his mother's home, where she could view daily the evidence that none might threaten her and live. And there the ungainly form lies today—a long, black-rock island known as Moo Kuna, between the rapids—where every freshet, every heavy rain, beats upon it as though in everlasting punishment for plotting the death of Hawaii's beloved ...
— Legends of Wailuku • Charlotte Hapai
... constructed and would no doubt have answered the purpose intended had it not been constructed of clayey soil that disintegrated and floated away with the muddy current the first freshet. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... enough, even through the deep snow, packing the compressible stuff in one passage as hard as ice. Nan followed in this narrow track to the very bank of the river where the logs were heaped in long windrows, ready to be launched into the stream when the waters should rise at the time of the spring freshet. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... he slackened pace, and a farmer, who was standing at the roadside, asked, in astonishment, "How did you get across? There is a freshet, and the ferryman was drowned last night." With a new thrill he spurred his horse forward, and made no other halt until he reached the tavern, where he fell in a faint on the steps, for the strain was no longer to ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... the ground here is very shaky, and the swamp beneath the shores of the trees is softer than porridge. A long time ago, during a heavy spring freshet, the river became dammed about a quarter of a mile from the lake, and the whole body of water was turned in another direction. But instead of flowing over the land, it sank into the great mass of soft bog below, and ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... till midnight, and they had not been signed till near one o'clock. Heavens and earth, and here it was five o'clock! The man must be half-way to Wilmington by this time. I sent the doctor for Lafarge, my clerk. Lafarge did his prettiest in rushing to the telegraph. But no! A freshet on the Chowan River, or a raid by Foster, or something, or nothing, had smashed the telegraph wire for that night. And before that despatch ever reached Wilmington the navy agent was in the offing ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... readily as though it had fallen upon hard ground where it would be torn to pieces by carnivorous animals. The dead body must then be covered up by a blanket of silt or sand like that which would be deposited as the result of a freshet. If a skeleton is too greatly broken up or scattered, it may be difficult or even impossible for its discoverer to piece together the various fragments and assemble them in their original relations. Very few individuals ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... climbing in midwinter to the top of the mountain there, under a heavy cross set with the bones of saints, and planting it on the summit, in fulfillment of a vow to do so if Villemarie were saved from the freshet; and then of Madame de la Peltrie romantically receiving the sacrament there, while all Villemarie fell down adoring! Ah, that was a picturesque people! When did ever a Boston governor climb to the top of Beacon hill in fulfillment ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the freshet; of the frightful loss; of the change of plans for the summer; of the weeks of delay and the uncertain financial outlook! And alas, dear reader—not a syllable, as you have perhaps noticed, of poor daddy tottering on the brink of bankruptcy; nor the slightest reference to ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... struck me as decisive of the fate of my young friend Ben Mayberry. It gave me an appreciation of the tremendous irresistibility of the freshet, which must have ended the lives of the hapless party almost on the instant. The bravest swimmer would be absolutely helpless in the grasp of such a terrific current, and in a night of pitchy darkness would be unable to make the first intelligent ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... them would strike the wooden casing of a pier, and then the whole bridge jarred and quivered, and the cake of ice, breaking and splintering, would heap itself on a long white spit that pushed up-stream through the rushing current. The river was yellow with mud torn up by a freshet back among the hills, but the last rays of the sun,—a disk of copper sinking into the brown haze behind the hills,—caught on the broken edges of the icy snow, and made a sudden white glitter almost ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... on the brink of a low bluff overlooking the broad, shallow bed of the Little Missouri, through which at most seasons there ran only a trickle of water, while in times of freshet it was filled brimful with the boiling, foaming, muddy torrent. There was no neighbor for ten or fifteen miles on either side of me. The river twisted down in long curves between narrow bottoms bordered by sheer ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... in height, ninety feet thick at the base, and twenty-five feet wide at the top, which was used as a driveway. For ten years or more this dam was believed to be a standing menace to the Conemaugh valley in times of freshet, though fully equal to all ordinary emergencies. With a dam which was admitted to be structurally weak and with insufficient means of discharging a surplus volume, it was feared that it was only a matter of time before such a reservoir, situated in a ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... put his men in motion in pursuit of Doyle. In crossing the swamp of Lynch's Creek, during the night, several of the soldiers lost their arms, in consequence of the freshet. The swamp was inundated, and it required all their dexterity and promptitude to save themselves. Snatching a hasty breakfast, the pursuit was continued all day, and resumed the next morning until ten o'clock, when they found such signs of the ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... backs up on my meadows each time the creek rises," Bransome observed at length. "The snow melts fast in hay-time, and, more often than I like, a freshet harvests my timothy grass for me. Now cutting down three-hundred-foot redwoods is good as exercise, but it gets monotonous, and a big strip of natural prairie would be considerably more useful than a beaver's swimming ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... a great wit, who overflowed our small intellectual home-lot with a rushing freshet of fertilizing talk the other day,—one of our friends, who quarries thought on his own premises, but does not care to build his blocks into books and essays,—that perhaps this world is only the negative of that better one in which lights ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... buttercups, Ranunculus multifidus, and very likely others, spread over the mud by producing runners, much after the manner of a strawberry plant. If, as in case of a freshet, the plants should be covered with water, they show their enterprise by taking advantage of the "tide"; some of the runners are quickly severed, and are then at liberty to ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... have as much daylight as was needful in order to finish his house. So he borrowed a noose from the god Itu, and, it being autumn, when the Sun gets sleepy and stupid, he easily caught the luminary. The Sun cried till his tears made a great freshet which nearly drowned the island; but it was of no use; there he ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... for you are my wife.' What would that be? That would be the difference. Do you understand, or do you not understand? If you do not understand, I can do nothing. But I will not marry you. Have you ever seen a mule go down to the ford in spring, too heavily laden, when there is freshet? He drowns, if he is driven in, because the burden is too heavy. I will not be the burden; but I should be, if I were your wife, because I am not a real signora. Now you know ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... she lifted the heavy pail and balanced it on her head. But alas! in going up the smooth, slippery, treacherous rock, the encumbrance of her cloak—it might be such a trifle as her slung hat—something at any rate, took away her evenness of poise; the freshet had frozen on the slanting stone, and was one coat of ice; poor Nest fell, and put out her hip. No more flushing rosy color on that sweet face—no more look of beaming innocent happiness;—instead, there was deadly pallor, and filmy eyes, over which dark shades seemed to chase ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... One tent, just at the foot of my dome, seemed De Boer's personal room. He went into it after leaving me, and came out to join the main group of his fellows near the center of the cave where a large electron stove, and piped water from a nearby subterranean freshet, and a long table set with glassware and silver, stood these men for ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... zigzags across the face of the steep in a way to daunt assailants. Down the hillside, past the cathedral and the college, through the heart of the city, clattered a noisy brook, which in time of freshet flooded the neighbouring streets. Part of the city was within walls, part without. Most of the houses were low, one-story buildings, with large expanse of steep roof, and high dormer windows. Along the incline leading down to the St. Charles stretched ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... had disappeared around the hill, the engineer took the frying pan and walked up into the creek bed above the dike. After going some distance over the gravel bars, he came to a place where the swirl of the last freshet had gouged a hole almost to bedrock. Scooping a panful of sand and gravel from the bottom of the hole, he went back and squatted down beside the pool within ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... her out of doors, and the poor woman would have died, if some neighbors had not taken her in, and provided for her until she could work for herself. At last she went to live on one of the hills that you can see near the iron mine. She did pretty well that winter; but one day in the spring, a great freshet ruined every thing that she had, and almost carried away her house. Afraid to stay on the hill any longer, she was about to go to the city, and ask assistance from the societies which give help to poor people, when some persons, told her to move to the ...
— The Summer Holidays - A Story for Children • Amerel
... east an open grove intervened between the dormitories and the meadows along the Remona River where bog hay was cut, and which were sometimes flooded in the freshet season. ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... to leave her fishing, but she talked saucily to him. So Aiai called upon the names of his ancestors. Immediately a dark and lowering cloud drew near and poured out a flood of water upon the stream, and in a short time the dam was broken by the freshet and all the oopu and opae, together with the child, were swept toward the sea. But the woman was not taken by the flood. Aiai then rose up and departed, without ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... gunpowder-factory out beyond the turnpike, but will that ever go up? It wouldn't if you was to toss a red-hot stove in among the powder—leastways, not while I'm coroner. There's a river down there, but nobody ever drowns in it where I can have a hitch at him; and if there's a freshet, everybody at once gets out of reach. If there's a fire, all the inmates get away safe, and no fireman ever falls off a ladder or stands where a wall might flatten him out. No, sir; I don't have a fair show. There was that ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... returning from a hard day, on which he had not only ridden his fire patrol, but had also spent a couple of hours rolling big rocks into a creek to keep it from washing out a trail should a freshet come, he found a large party of people at his camp. There was an ex-professor of social science of the old regime, his wife and little daughter, a guide, and a lavish outfit. Although the gate of Wilbur's corral was padlocked and had "Property of the U. S. Forest ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... exclaimed. "Now I'll have to wade. Why it's nearly a foot deep! There'll be the biggest kind of a freshet in the Cocahutchie. Isn't ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... points I saw rafts of hemlock lumber tied to the shore, ready to take advantage of the first freshet. Rafting is an important industry for a hundred miles or more along the Delaware. The lumbermen sometimes take their families or friends, and have a jollification all the way to Trenton or to Philadelphia. In some places the speed is ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... a spot that they thought would be all right for Mary, and not close enough to disturb the Bass and the Kingfisher, rolled two logs, and fished a board that had been carried by a freshet from the water and laid it across them, and decided that would have to serve until they could ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... It is a strange place in which to stand and to think of all that has happened since the man of our thoughts looked forth from these windows, a common little boy. The world is very much alive in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello; the little freshet of life that flows there flows loud and incessant; and yet into what oceans of death and silence has it not poured since it carried forth Christopher on its stream! One thinks of the continent of that New World that he discovered, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... the Lady Jeanne replied brokenly. "And He has placed me and my troubles in godly hands." And then she wept. And it seemed as if like a spring freshet, her thoughts, soul, and heart, ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... received therefore an immense load of passengers, probably over a thousand. At this time in the morning, it being flood tide, a strong current sets up the East river from Governor's Island, which is just now further strengthened by the freshet on the Hudson. The Hamilton, therefore, after being carried up on the Brooklyn side, and turning in the centre of the river, steamed down some distance below the New York slip, as usual, in order not to be carried beyond by the upward ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... end, for I privately reconstruct and march them all up in detachments of one. I look after the little trees, the unbent twigs; they are more interesting to me than your monsters. This nursery of saplings sprang up in a night after a freshet: here are quivering aspens trembling forever in penance for that one sin. They once were gravely pointed out by the guide of a party of tourists as "shuddering asps." He is doubtless the same who, being asked "what that ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... season the fields of this grain along the river present a beautiful aspect, the mass of deep green flecked by the white tops of the stalks resembling, at a distance, level, unruffled waters; but sometimes a freshet descends upon it and obliterates it from sight, the whole broad plain being then like a highly-discolored lake, with rafts of planks and uprooted trees floating ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... and transports of joy and admiration men welcome the patriot or hero who in times of danger held the destiny of the people in his hands and never once betrayed it. And let each intellect soar without hindrance, and the heart pour itself out before God in a freshet of divine love. Great is the genius of Plato or Bacon, revealing itself in tides of thought, but greater and richer is the genius of the heart that is conscious of vast, deep fountains of love, that may be poured forth in generous tides before the God whose throne is mercy, whose face ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the kitchen waiting for the cookies to bake or the taffy to cool, Nina used to coax Antonia to tell her stories—about the calf that broke its leg, or how Yulka saved her little turkeys from drowning in the freshet, or about old Christmases and weddings in Bohemia. Nina interpreted the stories about the creche fancifully, and in spite of our derision she cherished a belief that Christ was born in Bohemia a short time before the Shimerdas left ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... and all "looking-up," in the language of the prices current. This was long before the time when Mr. M—— made his famous gammon speeches; but the people had a presentiment of what was coming, and to crown the eventful anticipations of the season, there was quite a freshet in Salt river. The signs were all and everywhere favorable. Speculation was beginning to chink his money-bags; three hundred new banks, as many railways, were about to be established; old things were ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... adoring slave, Her surest way to strangle thought; Picturing her dread lord decree advance Into the enemy's land; artillery, bayonet, lance; His ordering fingers point the dial's to time their ranks: Himself the black storm-cloud, the tempest's bayonet-glaive. Like foam-heads of a loosened freshet bursting banks, By mount and fort they thread to swamp the sluggard plains. Shines his gold-laurel sun, or cloak connivent rains. They press to where the hosts in line and square throng mute; He watchful of their form, the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... example, the shade of the cottonwood, the greatest tree in the valley of the Upper Missouri, is supposed to possess an intelligence which, if properly approached, may help the Indians in certain undertakings; but the shades of shrubs and grasses are of little account. When the Missouri, swollen by a freshet in spring, carries away part of its banks and sweeps some tall tree into its current, it is said that the spirit of the tree cries, while the roots still cling to the land and until the trunk falls with a splash into ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... after the incidents just narrated the life of our hero rippled—but of course it must be clearly understood that a Suakim ripple bore some resemblance to a respectable freshet elsewhere! Osman Digna either waited for reinforcements before delivering a grand assault, or found sufficient entertainment to his mind, and satisfaction to his ambition, in acting the part of a mosquito, by almost ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... water rose. It reached and passed the highest mark that it had attained for many years. And then came the big freshet. The streams became torrents, hurling great masses of driftwood and even trees before them. Constant vigilance on the part of the beavers was required to keep the dam from washing away. When a drifting log or mass of brush caught, and threatened ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... same vessel, and ascended it in boats as far as Oak Point; and that he had attempted to form an establishment there; but the spot which he chose for building, and on which he had even commenced fencing for a garden, being overflowed in the summer freshet, he had been forced to abandon his project and re-embark. We had seen, in fact, at Oak Point, some traces of this projected establishment. The bold manner in which this captain had entered the river was ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... strip of land between, which in process of time came to be generally known by the name of Devil's Lane, in allusion to the bad temper that produced it. A brook formed another portion of the boundary between their farms, and was useful to both of them. But after they became enemies, if a freshet occurred, each watched an opportunity to turn the water on the other's land, by which much damage was mutually done. They were so much occupied with injuring each other in every possible way, that ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... sorrow upon that bright hour? Was not the world before us, the awakening glory of Ken's Island at our feet? Just as in the dark days all Nature had withered and bent before the death-giving vapours, so now did Nature answer the sun's appeal; and every freshet bubbling over, every wood alive with the music of the birds, the meadows green and golden, the hills all capped with their summer glory, she proclaimed the reign of Nature's God. No sight more splendid ever greeted the eyes of shipwrecked men or welcomed them to a generous shore. ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... the crick that used to run through here 'fore it was dammed a little ways up to make the ice-pond 'tween here an' Spanish Falls," supplied Peter. "Makes a durned good road, 'cept when there's a freshet. It would cost a hull lot o' money to build a road ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... that blow As over leagues of myrtle-blooms and may; Bevies of spring clouds trooping slow, Like matrons heavy bosomed and aglow With the mild and placid pride of increase! Nay, What makes this insolent and comely stream Of appetence, this freshet of desire (Milk from the wild breasts of the wilful Day!), Down Piccadilly dance and murmur and gleam In genial wave on wave and gyre on gyre? Why does that nymph unparalleled splash and churn The ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... inundation, overflow, cataclysm, freshet. Associated Words: antediluvial, antediluvian, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... work trying to meet death by that route. Some quicker way must be found. They leave the saloon and plunge again into the mist. The sidewalks are mere flanges at the base of the houses; the street a cold ravine, the fog filling it like a freshet. Not far away is the Mexican quarter. Conducted as if by wires along the heavy air comes a guitar's tinkle, and the demoralizing voice of some ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... Deacon Handy's, at fifteen years old, because the Deacon would not send him to school as he had agreed. Ask uncle if he remembers Ira Breck, who lived over at Ash Swamp, near the old Ingersol place. He was drowned saving timber in a freshet. He left two children, and this Joseph is the elder. The other was a girl, her name Rhoda, six or eight years younger than Joseph; she must be now, he says, not far from sixteen or seventeen. Joe has had a hard row to hoe, but now that he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... Christianity," we advertised, in behalf of the American churches, a universal want—Enthusiasm. In her brief Exeter-Hall address, Mrs. Booth discloses the source of the supply. Holiness is the well-spring of enthusiasm. Hence it is not a spring freshet, but an overflowing river of power in all its possessors, and, notably in the Salvation Army, bearing the unchurched masses of England on its bosom. A holy enthusiasm is contagious and conquering. We cannot touch the ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... closely by mountain and forest, looked like a temporary encampment; passed under the Pacific Railroad; and then for twelve miles followed the windings of the Truckee River, a clear, rushing, mountain stream, in which immense pine logs had gone aground not to be floated off till the next freshet, a loud-tongued, rollicking stream of ice-cold water, on whose banks no ferns or trailers hang, and which leaves no greenness ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... Spoon River. It is a tributary of the Illinois. Now, though the county is named Fulton, none of the inhabitants knew anything about the inventor of steam navigation, and doubted that a steamboat existed near them. Hence the snorting, puffing, and clangor of the vessel as she surged against the freshet, alarmed all the population in hearing when she ascended ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... high and leaves begin to fall, And the wan sunlight flits before the blast; When fields are brown and crops are garnered all, And rooks, like mastered ships, drift wide and fast; Maid Artemis, that feeleth her young blood Leap like a freshet river for the sea, Speedeth abroad with hair blown in a flood To snuff the salt west wind and ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... in a shoe, When the freshet came, Didn't know what to do: One went on deck, Just to watch the weather, While down below ...
— The Nursery, March 1878, Vol. XXIII. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... tardy thaw set in. The icy covering of the river split into whirling blocks, the snow grew soft and bally, the crust rotted and picked up. Soon the tempering sun drove the drifts from south exposures. When a freshet coursed down the coulee, and the low spots on the prairie filled until they were broad ponds, around which the migrating wild-fowl alighted with joyous cries. Now eaves dripped musically; slushy wagon ruts ran like miniature ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... as he could to make up for lost time, when he came to the edge of a stream. He had crossed it easily a few days before; but a sudden spring freshet had changed it into a raging torrent, which no one else ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... me so serious as he has now. I guess the whole show would breathe easier if I should fall off the train some dark night, when it was stormy, and we were crossing a high bridge over a stream that was out of its banks on account of a freshet. ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... a very practical woman. Knowing nothing of the freshet in Murder Creek, she was amazed as well as ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... boats in common; and as the men of the settlement were not particularly busy during the freshet season, we could easily persuade or hire them to load our skiffs on their wagons, and haul us eight or ten miles up the Sioux or Ocheyedan, for half a day's run down home, in which scarcely the stroke of an oar was necessary, after getting out into ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... sections of the formation may be seen in their deeply-cleft banks, broad, light- coloured bands of pumice, with a few inches of rich, black, vegetable soil above, and several feet of black sea-sand below. During a freshet which occurred the first night I was at Shiraoi, a single stream covered a piece of land with pumice to the depth of nine inches, being the wash from the hills of the interior, in a course ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... went to smash. A terrific squall, partly deflected from the forest, hurled the launch into the swamp, now all boiling in shallow foam; and there she stuck in the good, thick mud, heeled over and all awash like a stranded razor-back after a freshet. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... that hotel. But at last Mr. Lea came with a party of ladies and gentlemen. A small steamboat was secured, and we went up the Ohio. The voyage was agreeable and not without some incidents. There was a freshet in the river, and one night, taking a short cut over a cornfield, the steamboat ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... well started now; he seemed ready enough with information to-day, and Yan knew enough to "run the rapids on the freshet." ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... her, her gentle spirit might have gone on another flight, whither he could not follow her. He was full of foreboding. He fell at length into a restless doze. There was a noise in his ears as of a rushing torrent when a stream is swollen by a freshet in the spring. It was like the breaking up of life; he was struggling in the consciousness of coming death: when Ruth stood by his side, clothed in white, with a face like that of an angel, radiant, smiling, pointing to the sky, and saying, "Come." He awoke with a cry—the train was ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... first place, the whole army was hurried up to Batten-Kill in order to cover Breyman's and Frazer's retreat,[34] for Frazer had been ordered to recross the Hudson at once. Frazer's position was most critical; his bridge had been broken by a freshet, and for one whole day he was cut off from ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... Ann's old pap has his location jest across the Hawgthief from me. Besides him an' Sarah Ann, thar ain't nobody but the old woman in the fam'ly, the balance of 'em havin' been swept away in a freshet. Shore, old man Bender—that's Sarah Ann's pap's name—has fourteen children once, Sarah Ann, who's oldest, bein' the first chicken on the domestic roost. But the other thirteen is carried off one evenin' when, what with the rains an' ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... freshet. The Ohio was on a rampage—a turbulent, coffee-colored stream, it had risen far beyond its usual boundaries, washed out the familiar land-marks, and, still insolent and greedy, was licking the banks, as if preparatory to swallowing up the whole country. Trees torn up ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... early afternoon they reached the ford. Harshaw trailed the cattle across in a long file. He watched the herd anxiously, for the stream was running strong from the freshet. After a short, hard swim the ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... which Hugh always created about him. His arrival upon any scene was never in the smallest degree uproarious, and still less was it in the least mild or serene; yet he came into a settled circle like a freshet of tumbling ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... gelatinous sea-water sinks weighted to the bottom, and over it flows the fresh river-water. If the latter is darkened with sediment, it obscures the silent depths with a heavy, gloomy cloud. In seasons of freshet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... distress. The English lightships fire guns to attract the attention of the lifeboat crew when shipwrecks take place in sight of the ships, but out of sight of the boats; and guns are used as signals of approaching floods at freshet times in various countries. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... returning flood. But most of them were lying where they had been built, or left by the preceding tide, along high-water mark, as hopelessly stranded, for the next two hours, as a birch log after a freshet. As the old women with children arrived, Bawr rushed them down the wet beach to the rafts which were afloat, appointing to each clumsy raft four men, with long, rough flattened poles, to manage it. For the moment, all these men had to do was hold their charges in place that ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... farms, patches of woods, sloping hillsides, and now and then little hamlets. Once they passed what seemed to be a lumber camp, at which some sturdy men were at work, getting logs ready to float down the river with the usual Spring freshet. ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Romany." It was I rakli adro o lolo gad (The girl in the red chemise), as well as I can recall his words,—a very sweet song, with a simple but spirited chorus; and as the sympathetic electricity of excitement seized the performers we were all in a minute "going down the rapids in a spring freshet." ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... like a spring freshet; it overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path. We cannot dwell side by side. Only seven years ago we made a treaty by which we were assured that the buffalo country should be left to us forever. Now they threaten to take that from us also. My brothers, ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... by high military authority that but for the providential freshet, Sheridan would have succeeded in crossing the James River, and cutting the Danville Railroad, which would have deprived Lee's army of supplies. The freshet rendered his pontoon bridge too short, etc. This may be claimed as a direct interposition ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... craziness, he assumed a steady, common sense exterior and offered himself as a green-hand candidate for the Jeroboam's whaling voyage. They engaged him; .. but straightway upon the ship's getting out of sight of land, his insanity broke out in a freshet. He announced himself as the archangel Gabriel, and commanded the captain to jump overboard. He published his manifesto, whereby he set himself forth as the deliverer of the isles of the sea and vicar-general of all Oceanica. The unflinching earnestness with which he declared these ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the very least, 17,000,000 square miles; that is to say, they cover an area, in round numbers, seven times that of the snow-cap. Only one-seventh of a foot of water, accordingly, could possibly be made available for their fertilisation, supposing them to get the entire advantage of the spring freshet. Upon a stint of less than two inches of water these fertile lands are expected to flourish and bear abundant crops; and since they completely enclose the polar area they are necessarily served first. The great emissaries for carrying off the surplus of their aqueous riches, ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the coin came into the box like a spring freshet in the hill country, and Cap. must have kept the bank working after hours; at any rate, he sat around and smoked with a smile so angelic, that, to look at him, one wondered how he could wear it and not drift away into the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... Ship, how brave and fair, That fought so oft and well, On open decks you manned the gun Armorial.[4] What cheering did you share, Impulsive in the van, When down upon leagued France and Spain We English ran— The freshet at your bowsprit Like the foam upon the can. Bickering, your colors Licked up the Spanish air, You flapped with flames of battle-flags— Your challenge, Temeraire! The rear ones of our fleet They yearned to share your place, Still vying with the Victory Throughout that ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... above this lowest level is between seven and eight fathoms. If we consider the average width of the Amazon two miles, we shall have a surface of at least five thousand square miles raised fifty feet by the inundation. An extraordinary freshet ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... spring wherein advance seems as passive as is the progress of a log down the race of a spring freshet. Then there are other days wherein it seems that every mote must feel to the full its sentient life, and its swelling towards development or fulfilment. On a day like the latter, everything and everybody bestirs. The dust motes spin in whirling columns, the gnats dance for their ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Greenbackers among them. In the letters of General Washington we find a great many requests to Congress for a kind of money that would pass current anywhere, and suffer no deterioration at the bottom of a river in a freshet. He preferred gold as being the "most portable." He wrote in 1778 ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... gray old miner's gaze went wandering. So undisturbed had been the surface of the earth since he had owned the claim that a shallow channel, sluiced in the earth by a freshet of the spring long past, remained as the waters had cut it. Slowly up the course of this insignificant cicatrice old Jim ascended, his hands still held beneath his arms, his long mustache and his grizzled beard blown awry in the breeze. The pick he ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels |
