"Perpendicular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... closed then and there. My, but that night didn't we make the sand fly from the boat! By morning we could begin to see the end of the job. Then, while busy hands began to cut a landing on the perpendicular sandy bank of the Iowa side, others were preparing sweeps. ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... I managed to do this at last? A look at my bedraggled, lime-covered clothes may give you some idea. I cut a passage for myself up those perpendicular walls as the boy did up the face of the natural bridge in Virginia. Do you remember that old story in the Reader? It came to me like an inspiration as I stood looking up from below, and though I knew that I should have to work most of the way in perfect darkness, I decided that ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... great events, and preserve the chronology of them, the war Chief in each tribe keeps a war post. This post is a peeled stick of timber, 10 or 12 feet high, that is erected in the town. For a campaign they make, or rather the Chief makes, a perpendicular red mark, about three inches long and half an inch wide; on the opposite side from this, for a scalp, they make a red cross, thus, ; on another side, for a prisoner taken, they make a red cross in this manner, X', ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... condition of the knee is characterized by the partly flexed condition of the region. It is best observed by standing to one side of the horse (Fig. 33). Instead of the forearm and cannon regions appearing perpendicular or in line, they are directed forward. This condition may exist in varying degrees. Some individuals show it to a slight degree, the condition being accompanied by a weakness or shakiness of the knee when standing at rest. Sometimes, ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... himself) Why should I not speak to him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? (He points his finger) I'm not afraid of what I can talk to if I see his eye. Retaining the perpendicular. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... was tolerably light, though the sun was unfortunately enveloped in clouds. His disc was invisible, but we could clearly distinguish his situation through the watery barrier. The fall of the cataract is nearly perpendicular. The bank over which it is precipitated is of concave form, owing to its upper stratum being composed of lime-stone, and its base of soft slate-stone, which has been eaten away by the constant attrition of the recoiling waters. The cavern is about one hundred and twenty feet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... rendering me momentarily more helpless, I realised that the creature was beginning to ascend my legs, to climb my body. Even then what it was I could not tell,—it mounted me, apparently, with as much ease as if I had been horizontal instead of perpendicular. It was as though it were some gigantic spider,—a spider of the nightmares; a monstrous conception of some dreadful vision. It pressed lightly against my clothing with what might, for all the world, have been ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... the charge was to be blasted out of being instantly. There was but one way open. The hunter sprang straight out from the ledge with a lightning vision of thick, soft-looking bushes far below him. The slope was steep, but by no means perpendicular, and he struck in a thicket which broke the full shock of the fall. His rifle flew far out of his hands. He rebounded, clutching at the bushes; but he could not check himself. Rolling over and over, his ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... but may be, perhaps, on the average, one hundred miles wide. The line of coast on the southern side of the Channel, which forms, of course, the northern border of Normandy, is a range of cliffs, which are almost perpendicular toward the sea, and which frown forbiddingly upon every ship that sails along the shore. Here and there, it is true, a river opens a passage for itself among these cliffs from the interior, and these river mouths would form harbors into which ships might enter from ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the appearance of a fungus or great sea-mushroom, with a broad-spreading head springing from a small thick base. It is not a little singular that many of the growing islets which are nearly level with the surface of the water have a similar form, not rising from the bottom with a perpendicular side, but with broad overhanging heads resting upon a small base. In many places we passed over some of these isolated sea-mushrooms, upon which there was barely water for a small boat, where one step over the ledge would be in ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... sheep every winter; and, in the course of a conversation with him on the subject of their diving habits, he pointed to the front of a lava headland about 150 feet high, which is only eight or ten degrees out of the perpendicular. "There," said he, "I followed a band of them fellows to the back of that rock yonder, and expected to capture them all, for I thought I had a dead thing on them. I got behind them on a narrow bench that runs along the face of ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... which was found indispensable; and thus, like a party of pilgrims, we proceeded on our way; and before we had gone very far, we discovered that we were subjected to severe penance. The mountain was nearly perpendicular. In some places we had to ascend by a single piece of wood, with rough notches for the feet, resting against a rock twenty or thirty feet above our heads; and on either side was a precipice, so that a false step must have ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... sublime grove;' of the grand fountain he says that the 'ebullition is astonishing and continual, though its greatest force of fury intermits' (note the word 'intermits') 'regularly for the space of thirty seconds of time: the ebullition is perpendicular upward, from a vast rugged orifice through a bed of rock throwing up small particles of white shells.' He is informed by 'a trader' that when the Great Sink was forming there was heard 'an inexpressible rushing noise like a mighty hurricane or thunderstorm,' that 'the earth ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... relapsed into a contemplative cheek-scratching that was manifestly habitual. Before the bride arrived Mr. Polly's sense of the church found an outlet in whispered criticisms of ecclesiastical architecture with Johnson. "Early Norman arches, eh?" he said, "or Perpendicular." ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... (the streak to be studied), and which is furthermore white while that of A is bright red. B and B' are adjustable along a scale of degrees, which is not shown in the figure, so that the arc of eye-movement is variable at will. W is a thin, opaque, perpendicular wall extending from E to C, that is, standing on a radius of the perimeter. At E this wall comes to within about 4 mm. of the cornea, and when the eye is directed toward B the wall conceals ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... Lammas sky, amid the trembling air and short shadows of noon. Indoors nothing was to be heard save the droning of blue-bottle flies; out-of-doors the whetting of scythes and the hiss of tressy oat-ears rubbing together as their perpendicular stalks of amber-yellow fell heavily to each swath. Every drop of moisture not in the men's bottles and flagons in the form of cider was raining as perspiration from their foreheads and cheeks. Drought was ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... aeronaut forced the prow of the ship upwards to a sharp angle with the earth. Just at this moment the reluctant engine started up again with such vigour that for a moment the ship threatened to assume a perpendicular position, pointing straight up in the sky. A cry went up from the spectators below who feared a dire catastrophe was about to end a voyage which promised success. But with incomparable sang-froid the young Brazilian manipulated ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... His understanding, which includes no intuitive knowledge of the laws of vision, can furnish him with no reason why a line which is known and can be proved to be a horizontal line, should not appear a horizontal line; a line that made any angle with the perpendicular less than a right angle, would seem to him to indicate that his houses were all tumbling down together. Accordingly he makes the line of his houses a horizontal line, and fails of course to produce the effect demanded. Here then is one instance ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... line formed almost a perpendicular from Noyon in France north to the Belgian coast, south of Ostend. A battle raged for several days in West Flanders and Northern France and both sides claimed successes. The losses of the Allies and the Germans ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... up for you myself. Won't it make a nice contrast to the humming-bird's? Over the bed, shall I? But then, if it should drop down on your nose, you know! I think the corner over the fireplace will be best. Yes, we'll have it right up perpendicular, in the angle. The branch twists a little, you see, and the nest will run out with its odds and ends like an old banner. Might I push up the washstand to ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... midst of an immense plain one sees a kind of hut, or rather a very small roof standing above the ground. This is the entrance to the clay pit. A big perpendicular hole is sunk for twenty metres underground and ends in a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Matthew Branthwaite, the wit and sage of Wythburn, once a weaver, but living now on the husbandings of earlier life. He was tall and slight, and somewhat bent with age. He was dressed in a long brown sack coat, belted at the waist, below which were pockets cut perpendicular at the side. Ribbed worsted stockings and heavy shoes made up, with the greater garment, the sum of his visible attire. Old Matthew had a vast reputation for wise saws and proverbs; his speech seemed to be made of little else; and though the dalespeople had heard ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... up the almost perpendicular rock, and his curly hair and sunburned face soon appeared above the edge of the nest. The next moment he leaned over, seized the young birds in spite of their angry cries, transferred them one after the other to his bag, and throwing it across his shoulder, began to return on ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... which was moored to the branch of a fig-tree by a slender rope; the motion of the boat caused the branch to bend and break without our being aware of it, and we drifted out to the middle of the bay, nearly three hundred yards from the perpendicular rocks with which it is surrounded. The waters of the lake in this part were of that bronzed color and had that molten appearance and look of heavy immobility which the shade of overhanging cliffs always gives; and the perpendicular rocks which surrounded it indicated the ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... desk beating time with their legs to a rollicking catch sung by the Snake Editor. Before the muddled insects could crawl into a crack, the Mutilator was upon them, and had bolted every one. Then with a look of reproach at the Snake Editor, he drew three perpendicular red lines across that gentleman's features with his claws and departed in high scorn, nor could he ever thereafter be lured into the inner office where the serpent-sharp was laying for him with a space measure. Since that time he has lived in the room occupied by the ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... manner in which to celebrate the glorious Fourth. Consultations were numerous and all took part. The redskins, camped in plain sight, were hurrying to and fro, evidently in council like ourselves. To the right of the trail was a dense wood close to the river bank; on the left was a high perpendicular bluff, its sides unscalable, so our route was a genuine death trap, should they attack us. After grub all gathered in a circle and with pipes we proceeded with our last council. The situation was talked over from every point as to what the Indians ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... hither and thither in the midst of a medley of whirling wreckage, flying ropes'-ends, and struggling men. Opening my eyes I beheld the hull of the schooner, a short distance away, standing almost perpendicular, and slowly gliding downwards, bows first. Even as I looked she vanished into the dark profundity beneath, and then I directed my glances above me. It seemed that I was fathoms deep, for the phosphorescent foam that boiled overhead looked almost as far aloft as a frigate's lower ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... upon millions of years that had been required for this stratum and that—he liked to amaze himself with the sounding figures. I remember him expressing a wish to see the Grand Canon of Arizona, where, on perpendicular walls six thousand feet high, the long story of geological creation is written. I had stopped there during my Western trip of the previous year, and I told him something of its wonders. I urged him to see them for himself, offering to go with him. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... board were models of efficiency and quiet discipline, herding back the excited passengers and trying to keep them away from the rail, for the slant of the deck was now almost perpendicular. ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... of Berenice, Countess of Hurstmonceux, was situated about seven miles south of Edinboro', on the north banks of the Esk. It was an elegant modern edifice, raised upon the ruins of an ancient castle, overhanging a perpendicular precipice, with a sheer descent of several hundred feet to the river. It looked down upon the course of the Esk, winding between rocks of lofty height, whose sides were fringed with a tangled mass of shrubs, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... animals and hundreds of cooking fires formed a heavy haze which, covering the township as with a pall, hung half-way between the level of the valley and the overhanging brae where the advance-guard stood halted. It was not an inviting picture. The dust and vapour seemed unable to face the perpendicular violence of the midday sun; the only perceptible movement in the middle distance was the shimmer of the atmosphere, squirming as it were under the relentless heat; while the great pall of dust and smoke, as if ashamed to raise its head, mushroomed ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... climbing brought them out upon the semicircular platform which crowns the rock. Below them on the far side was a perpendicular black cliff, a hundred and fifty feet high, with the swirling, foam-streaked river roaring past its base. The swish of the water and the low roar as it surged over the mid-stream boulders boomed through ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... risen behind us; it was a distinctly perplexing moment, hard upon the nerves. The tomb was empty, except for a few bones that might have been anything huddled at the bottom, and Mrs. Portheris sat down on the lower end of it. "I really do not feel able to go any further," she said; "the ascent is so perpendicular." ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... comprehends that the third place, counting from the right, contains only figures which represent hundreds, &c. he will have conquered one of the greatest difficulties of arithmetic. If a paper ruled with several perpendicular lines, a quarter of an inch asunder, be shown to him, he will see that the spaces or columns between these lines would distinguish the value of figures written in them, without the use of the sign (0) and he will see that (0) ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... and wild olives, on either hand this gorge, quite inaccessible to any large array of armed men, though capable of being traversed by solitary foresters or shepherds. Below, the hills fall downward in a succession of vast broken ridges, in places rocky and almost perpendicular, in places swelling into rounded knolls, feathered with dark rich forests of ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... western gateway, built by Benedict, and though it has since been much altered, a considerable part of the original structure remains: "The western side has been faced with Perpendicular work, and an arch of that character has been built in front of the original Norman arch, above which is a very elegant arcade, the alternate arches of which have small windows within them; these light the chamber over the gateway which occupies the situation of the chapel of St. Nicholas. ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... beds arranged along the middle of the floor. The inspector pulled off the mattresses, and out from under each there leapt a dozen rats, which, if I may be believed, made for the walls and ran straight up them, disappearing in the rafter-holes at the top. The sight of countless rats hurrying up perpendicular walls may be familiar to some people, but I venture to call it an amazing spectacle, worthy of record. Then came the opening of one or two travelling-trunks. The inspector ran his hand through the ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... why he had said "you and I." Evidently he was wondering too, for he fell into reflection. She changed her position to ease the dull pain in her ankle, which his talk had almost driven from her mind. The rock had a perpendicular edge, so she let her feet hang over, resting the injured one upon the other. He was sitting in a similar position. The silence of the night had gathered about them, broken occasionally by the yapping of coyotes far down the valley. Segments of dull light fringed the horizon; the ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... that Rectus was to go first. This did not look very brave on my part, but I felt that I wanted to be under him, while he was climbing, so that I could break his fall if he should slip down. It would not be exactly a perpendicular fall, for the wall slanted a little, but it would be bad enough. However, I had climbed up worse places than that, and Rectus was very nimble; so I felt there was ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... sun of summer, that I whipped my leader short round, and entered the precincts of "Gurt-na-Morra." As I proceeded along the avenue, I was struck by the slight traces of repairs here and there evident,—a gate or two that formerly had been parallel to the horizon had been raised to the perpendicular; some ineffectual efforts at paint were also perceptible upon the palings; and, in short, everything seemed to have undergone a kind of attempt ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... apparent time, when it began to ebb; and at 22^h 15^m apparent time it was low water. The change, from ebbing to flowing, was very quick, or in less than 5^m. The water rose and fell seven feet four inches perpendicular; and every day the same whilst ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... were of that description denominated tub-mills. It consists of a perpendicular shaft, to the lower end of which an horizontal wheel of about four or five feet diameter is attached, the upper end passes through the bedstone and carries the runner after the manner of a trundlehead. These mills ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... rising hills; the level meadows and the little villes, with their antique perpendicular Gothic churches, which form the points around which they have clustered for centuries, even as groups of boats in the river are tied around their mooring-posts; the bridges and trim cottages or elegant ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... pulling and hauling, and by others shoving behind, we got Madame Cheesnip, as we ever after called her, into a perpendicular position; but she was too much shaken to dance again, especially with the cause of her misfortune. Indeed, for the rest of the evening the ladies fought very shy of poor Nip, and we took good care to keep out of his way. ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... having been lately thrown up; whilst on another table, at the opposite side of the left ravine, which winds round in the direction of the wall, as nearly as if it were the work of art, stands the other redoubt. Beyond this, again, there is a perpendicular precipice, the hills there abruptly ending; so that on two sides the walls of the fort skirt the extremity of a bare rock. It was along the outer ridges of these ravines, and through the churchyard of St. Etienne, ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... held down the balloon were preparing to let go the ropes; the band began to play, the men in the balloon took off their caps and waved farewell, people cheered—and the Kangaroo was off. She rose swiftly and buoyantly, remaining almost perpendicular until she was caught by a southwest current of air and sailed away towards the hills. As she rose the children could see Hugh at the edge of ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... spot on which it stood. The roof sloped nearly to the ground. It was at this time dark, brown, and ugly, but had originally been formed of blooming olive and laurel branches, brought from beyond the mountains. The house was situated in a narrow gorge, whose rocky walls rose to a perpendicular height, naked and black, while round their summits clouds often hung, looking like white living figures. Not a singing bird was ever heard there, neither did men dance to the sound of the pipe. The spot was one ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... began to descend the mountain, many sliding down on the snow, very much as they coast at the garden Beaujon, from top to bottom of the Montagnes Russes, and I followed their example. This they called "sledding." The general-in-chief also descended in this manner an almost perpendicular glacier. His guide was a young countryman, active and courageous, to whom the First Consul promised a sufficiency for the rest of his days. Some young soldiers who had wandered off into the snow were found, almost ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and mountain passes of that country her people are born and bred. To her climate her people are born and bred. The climate would take care of the rest. You can't exactly despatch motors and motor guns down swamps for a hundred miles and over cataracts and through mountain passes on the perpendicular. Canada's back country is her perpetual city of refuge. Nevertheless, the day of dependence on false security is past. National status implies national defense, and at time of writing the indications are that the whole military system of the Dominion will be put on a new basis, training ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... myself mounted in the balloon," says Guyton de Morveau, "at seven o'clock. We rose rapidly and in an almost perpendicular direction. The fall of the mercury in the barometer was scarcely perceptible when the dilation of the hydrogen gas in the balloon had become considerable. The globe swelled out, and a light vapour around the mouth announced to us that the gas was commencing to escape by ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... Stenhouse, "and found an opening leading into a large bight which jutted back to eastward into the Barrier. We endeavoured without success to scale the steep ice-foot under the cliffs, and then proceeded up the bay. Pulling along the edge of perpendicular ice, we turned into a bay in the ice-cliff and came to a cul-de-sac, at the head of which was a grotto. At the head of the grotto and on a ledge of snow were perched some adelie penguins. The beautiful green and blue tints in the ice-colouring ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... closed her eyes when every one in the vessel imagined he saw, in whatever direction he turned, a most horrible human head; it rose out of the waves, not like that of a person swimming, but perfectly perpendicular as if invisibly supported upright on the watery surface and floating along in the same course with the bark. Each wanted to point out to the other the cause of his alarm, but each found the same expression of horror depicted on the face of his neighbor, only that his hands and eyes were directed ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... way in a tour of the valley. Save where the wagon road descended and where the steep side hill of the north wall arose, the boundaries were utterly precipitous. From a narrow gorge, flanked by water-smoothed rock aprons, the river boiled between glassy perpendicular cliffs. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... extending over areas several hundred miles in length and breadth. When the periodical inundations subside, the river hollows out a channel to the depth of many yards through horizontal beds of clay and sand, the ends of which are seen exposed in perpendicular cliffs. These beds vary in their mineral composition, or colour, or in the fineness or coarseness of their particles, and some of them are occasionally characterised by containing drift-wood. At the junction of the river and the ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... did not go by the board, nor the roof come thundering down upon her head. There was not even a sound of destruction to be heard, and the sides of the house seemed to be firm and decided in their intention to maintain their perpendicular position. A few minutes later, when the committee announced to the multitude the success of their undertaking, and Fred had displayed the flag from the window, peal upon peal of stunning huzzas saluted ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... will be seen to consist of a perpendicular limb or upright, of a horizontal one or stretcher, and of a short slanting stick, as the third is called. The upright is usually cut about half an inch wide, shaved to a thin edge at top, but "High Elms" recommends it to have a forked foot to ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... light companion; but soon I too was obliged to lag, and about midday found myself alone in the solitudes of the Dalles. At last there came a gorge deeper and steeper than any thing that had preceded it, and I was forced to rest long before attempting its almost perpendicular ascent. When I did reach the top, it was to find myself thoroughly done up—the sun came down on the side of the embankment as though it would burn the sandy soil into ashes, not a breath of air moved through the silent hills, not a leaf stirred ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... on slowly. About noon he found himself threading a narrow canon, shaded by gigantic redwood tress, with steep, almost perpendicular sides, with here and there a narrow streamlet descending in a cascade, and lighting up the darkened scene with ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... fortress is always delightful to me; my destructiveness rejoices in guns and drums, and all the circumstance of glorious war. The place itself, too, is so fiercely picturesque—such crags, such dizzy, hanging heights, such perpendicular rocky walls, down to the very water's edge, and such a broad, bright bay. The scenery all round Quebec is beautiful, and we went to visit two fine waterfalls in the neighborhood, but of course to us just now there is but one waterfall ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... company, however, had soon other matters to engage their attention. The brig was now approaching that part of the river where the deep channel runs under the lofty and perpendicular cliffs of San Lorenzo. The bed is as wide as in other places, but on the eastern side is a line of islands extending for several miles, and forcing the current over to the west. It was still doubtful, however, whether ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... in front of a pretty good house. It was about five feet high, about fifteen inches through; it came close to the ground, and it was sloped a little towards the top on each side, leaving a flat about four inches wide on the top of all. It had just been clipped; and it was as perpendicular and as smooth as a wall: I put my eye and looked along the sides of the several lines near the top, and if it had been built of stone, it could not have been truer. I lament that I did not ask the name of the owner, for it does him infinite ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... unfrequently dipping into the water. In some instances they grew out in nearly horizontal lines, for thirty or forty feet. The water being uniformly deepest near the shores, where the banks were highest and the nearest to a perpendicular, Hutter had found no difficulty in letting the ark drop under one of these covers, where it had been anchored with a view to conceal its position; security requiring some such precautions, in his view of the case. Once beneath the trees and bushes, a few stones ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... emotion more searching than anything Continental. I had seen the coffee-room of the Red Lion years ago, at home—at Saragossa Illinois—in books, in visions, in dreams, in Dickens, in Smollett, in Boswell. It was small and subdivided into six narrow compartments by a series of perpendicular screens of mahogany, something higher than a man's stature, furnished on either side with a meagre uncushioned ledge, denominated in ancient Britain a seat. In each of these rigid receptacles was a narrow table—a ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... they are possessors is taken care of in an odd manner. The men cut all their hair close to the head, except a strip about an inch wide, running over the front of the scalp from temple to temple, and another strip, of about the same width, perpendicular to the former, crossing the crown of the head to the nape of the neck. At each temple a heavy tuft is allowed to hang to the bottom of the lobe of the ear. The long hair of the strip crossing to the neck is generally gathered and braided into two ornamental queues. I did not ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... of cannel-coal for the production of paraffin, it is necessary that the perpendicular tubes or retorts into which the coal is placed be heated only to a certain temperature, which is considerably lower than that applied when the object is the production of coal-gas. By this means nearly all the volatile matters pass over in ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... very best vein; and there is a truly delightful scene between Lord Anophel and his chaplain Grovelgrub, when the athletic Sir Oran has not only foiled their attempt on Anthelia, but has mast-headed them on the top of a rock perpendicular. But the gem of the book is the election for the borough of One-Vote—a very amusing farce on the subject of rotten boroughs. Mr. Forester has bought one of the One-Vote seats for his friend the Orang, and, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... levies a contribution on. It is called the Anthophora pilifera, and during the fine weather it makes a collection of honey intended to be absorbed by its own larvae, if it had not the misfortune to be watched by one of these intriguing Coleoptera. Wherever in Provence there is a perpendicular wall, natural or artificial, a little cliff, a sloping ditch, or the wall of one of those caves which the people of the country use for putting their tools in, the Anthophora hollows out galleries, at the bottom of which he builds a certain number of chambers. He fills each of them with ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... same party made a similar circuit three times—in the morning, at noon, and in the evening—that the full light might uncover what the shadows had hid, and that the shadows might show what a perpendicular light could not reveal. There is all the difference as to discovery whether a thing is lying under the shadow of another, or ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... foolishnesses, ... as they are accounted by people who say to me 'no one would ever think, without knowing you, that you were so and so.' Now if I send all my idle questions to Colburn's Magazine, with other Gothic literature, and take to standing up in a perpendicular personality like the angel on the schoolman's needle, in my letters to come, without further leaning to the left or the right—why the end would be that you would take to 'running after the butterflies,' for change of air and exercise. And then ... oh ... then, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... her horse around, reared him to almost a perpendicular height, merged herself like so much fluid khaki into his great, towering, threatening neck, reacted almost instantly to her own balance again, and went plunging off toward the wild, rough, untraveled foot-hills and—certain destruction, any unbiased onlooker would have ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... three-fourths of a mile wide, gradually narrowing to a width of less than one hundred feet at the extreme point. The long battlemented sides of this lofty triangle, like some mighty fortress, grim and frowning, are protected and supported by perpendicular cliffs of black rock, rising like some bastioned wall of terrifying proportions, two hundred feet above the shoulder of the mountain. In a sheltered nook, near the point, about five hundred feet below the base of the cliffs, stands the Sam's Point Hotel, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... the old ordinance in Boston against smoking in the streets. This will aim a blow at side stove-pipes as well as at meerschaums; but, fortunately, it will not prevent the smoking of hams or of perpendicular chimneys. ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... of stone, but in decay; it has an ancient aspect, but this applies still more to the village of Ariankot, which occupies the flat top of a low spur detached from the fort by a small stream. The spurs fall in perpendicular cliffs of some 20 feet in height, and in these are traces of numerous caves similar to those already spoken of, and some of which are still used as dwellings by the Balti people, who come to take service as porters between Dir and Chitral. ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... the American shore, the question arose as to which method would be the best to adopt in ascending the giddy height. A covered way leads to the top of the bank, which is more than two hundred feet in perpendicular height. Up this steep our ingenious neighbours have constructed on an inclined plane of boards a railway, on which two cars run in such a manner that the weight of the descending car draws up the other to the top of the bank. Both are secured by a strong cable. By the side of this ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... appearance thereon is the point a, where the visual ray passes through it. If now we trace on the floor a line AB from the nail to the spot B, just under the eye, and from the point o, where this line passes through or under the glass, we raise a perpendicular oS, that perpendicular passes through the precise point that the visual ray passes through. The line AB traced on the floor is the horizontal trace of the visual ray, and it will be seen that the point a is situated on the vertical ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... change had marched alongside the fluctuations of our temper. The circumference of the bowl was the same as at first, but imperceptibly yet swiftly the hollow had deepened, sunk farther from the sky, the walls had become almost perpendicular and to my terror I found myself looking upward from the bottom of a pit ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... drab-coloured basin, El-Majr. Based upon mighty massive foundations of brown and green trap, the undulating junction being perfectly defined by a horizontal white line, the capping of sandstone rises regular as if laid in courses, with a huge rampart falling perpendicular upon the natural slope of its glacis. This bounding curtain is called the Taur el-Shafah, the "inaccessible part of the Lip-range." Further eastward the continuity of the coping has been broken and weathered into the most remarkable castellations: you pass mile after mile of cathedrals, domes, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... means dense enough to make it possible for him to escape observation. He was confident, however, that if he could change places with the warrior, he could discern the canoe without any closer approach. He was at a disadvantage, for the bluff was perfectly perpendicular and so high that he could not reach the ground above without retreating up the river for at least a quarter of a mile, where the bluff was depressed enough to permit him to draw himself upward upon it. Had the ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... Jesse saw the band of goats apparently take alarm at something. They turned and began to disperse, some of them climbing slowly up the apparently perpendicular ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... upwards the course of a mountain stream to a spot where a small waterfall threw itself over a slab of perpendicular rock, which seemed to bar his farther progress. On a nearer view, he discovered a flight of steps, roughly hewn in the rock, on one side of the fall. Ascending these steps, he entered a narrow winding pass, between high and naked rocks, that afforded only space for a rough footpath, ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... had no crevices sufficiently large to admit our bodies; but on riding five miles southward to Oakey creek we found a low ridge extending some miles on its left bank which promised many openings. We soon found one which I considered to be of the right sort, namely a perpendicular crevice with red tuff about the sides. Being provided with candles and ropes we descended perpendicularly first, about six fathoms to one stage, then obliquely, about half as far to a sort of floor of red earth; Mr. Rankin, although a large ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... text. The result may still be seen at Mandalay in the collection of buildings commonly known as the four hundred and fifty Pagodas: a central Stupa surrounded by hundreds of small shrines each sheltering a perpendicular tablet on which a portion of this veritable bible in stone is inscribed. Mindon-min also corrected the growing laxity of the Bhikkhus, and the esteem in which the Burmese church was held at this time is shown by the fact that the monks of Ceylon sent a deputation to the Sangharaja of Mandalay ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... temple is raised on a platform exceptionally low—only a few feet above the level of the plain; the entire height, including the platform, was 156 feet in a perpendicular line. The stages—of which the four upper were lower than the first three—receded equally on three sides, but doubly as much on the fourth, probably in order to present a more imposing front from the plain, and an easier ascent. "The ornamentation of the edifice was chiefly ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... away towards the north, fed by the Yosemite Fall, a cataract unsurpassed in height by any other upon the globe. The vertical height of the fall is set down at 2,550 feet, though it is not composed of one perpendicular sheet of water. The reader will remember that the lands coming under the general term of the Yosemite Valley have been ceded by the National Government to the State of California, to be kept in its present wild and natural condition for all time. It must ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... is derived from the fact that at this place the Delaware River has forced itself through the rocky barrier," continued the Professor, "hedged in on one side by cliffs of perpendicular rock, three hundred feet high, extending some distance along the river, leaving scarcely room at some places for the river and the canal. Some quite rare plants grow here, said to be found in few other localities in the United States. You see the highest flat rock along the Narrows? ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... principal, and they are important. The noxious effects may be obviated, or rather the noxious cause will not be generated, under the following arrangement, namely, a carpet of painted canvas for the floor of the tent; a tent with a light roof, as defense against perpendicular rain or the rays of a vertical sun; and with side walls of moderate height, to be employed only against driving rains. To the first there can be no objection: it is useful, as preventing the exhalations of moisture from the surface of the earth; it is convenient, as always ready; ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... the river from bank to bank to bar the channel, nearly opposite Fort Jackson and exposed to the perpendicular fire of St. Philip, were heavy ship's chains, supported and buoyed by hulks, rafts, and logs, and half a dozen large schooners. The rebels had also established some works on the banks of the river about four miles from town, known as the McGehee and Chalmette batteries, ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... magnified rather more than twenty times in height, and some five or six times in breadth, and then placed on the ridge of a hill nearly nine hundred feet high. Viewed sideways, it assumes, as described by M'Culloch, the form of a perpendicular but ruinous rampart, much gapped above, that runs for about a mile and a quarter along the top of a lofty sloping talus. Viewed endways, it resembles a tall massy tower,—such a tower as my friend, Mr. D.O. Hill, would delight to draw, and give delight by drawing,—a tower three ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... name, but very like the gentian; and there were also the wild daphne and scarlet anemones. The lofty trees located on both sides of the road had been tapped for their sap, and little wooden spouts were conducting the glutinous deposit into small earthen jars hung on the perpendicular trunks,—reminding one of the mode of "milking" the toddy palms in India and Ceylon, by which ingenious means the natives obtain, a liquor which, when fermented, is as strong as the best Scotch or ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... manner in which chloroform renders the glands insensible to the subsequent action of meat. In the plant last referred to, which had been exposed for 2 m. to three drops of chloroform, some few tentacles curved up only to a perpendicular position, and particles of meat were placed on their glands; this caused them in 5 m. to begin moving, but they moved so slowly that they did not reach the centre until 1 hr. 30 m. had elapsed. Another ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... each of these we have many sub-divisions, and if we typify these by drawing horizontal lines to indicate the different degrees of density, there is another arrangement which we might symbolise by drawing perpendicular lines at right angles to the others, to denote types which differ in quality as well as in density. There are thus many varieties of this mental matter, and it is found that each one of these has its own especial and appropriate rate of ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... of the rockets increased and the mighty ship quivered as its plummeting descent was checked slightly. Tom quickly adjusted the stabilizer trim tabs to keep the ship perpendicular to the ground, then watched the stern scanner carefully as the huge blast-pitted concrete ramp loomed larger ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... clear to me that the insensibility which came upon Glaisher, and in a lesser degree upon Coxwell, when, in 1862, they ascended in a balloon to the height of thirty thousand feet, was due to the extreme speed with which a perpendicular ascent is made. Doing it at an easy gradient and accustoming oneself to the lessened barometric pressure by slow degrees, there are no such dreadful symptoms. At the same great height I found that even without my oxygen inhaler I could breathe without undue distress. It was ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... though not twenty years of age. The Old Turk, funny, fat and good-natured. The latter part of our journey lay thro' a pass in the mountains from the summit of which the Valley of Magnesia suddenly burst on our view, with the town on the eastern side at the foot of a perpendicular rocky mountain very like the rock of Gibraltar, but if anything higher, more craggy, and bold: the valley that lay before us, bounded on the W. by a ridge of regular round topped hills, and to the Nd. the eye could not reach the extent of this immense plain, which is covered with vines, ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... perpendicular, as you can see," responded Red with a handsome smile of welcome. "How ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... shadow is registered. The least distortion takes place when the object is in contact with the plate, and the shadow of that part of the object which lies perpendicularly under the light is less distorted than that of the parts lying outside the perpendicular. The light and the plate remaining constant, the amount of distortion varies directly with the distance between the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... said the Duke, "that your shafts and bolts fall harmless on those ozier walls? Shoot in the air; let the arrow fall perpendicular on those within—fall as the vengeance of the saints falls—direct from heaven! Give me thy bow, Archer,—thus." He drew the bow as he sate on his steed, the arrow flashed up, and descended in the heart of the reserve, within a few feet ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... terraces of gray limestone have the air of antique fortifications and watch-towers of the border. They are truly "munitions of rocks." Chariots and horsemen could find no field for their manoeuvres in this broken and perpendicular country. Entangled in these deep and winding valleys by which they must climb up from the plain, the invaders would be at the mercy of the light infantry of the highlands, who would roll great stones upon them as they passed through the narrow defiles, and break their ranks by fierce and ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... inclined at a small angle to each other. For it is certain that to an eye so situated the apparent density of the stars, supposing them pretty equally scattered through the space they occupy, would be least in the direction of the visual ray perpendicular to the lamina, and greatest in that of its breadth; increasing rapidly in passing from one to the other direction, just as we see a slight haze in the atmosphere thickening into a decided fog-bank near the horizon by the rapid increase of the mere ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Meanwhile the intermediate bars were heated and expanded, and the nuts screwed up as before. The lamps being again withdrawn, they contracted in cooling, and the walls were further drawn together. This process was continually repeated, until at length the walls were restored to their perpendicular position. The gallery may still be seen with the bars extending across it, and binding together its ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... for anything," but equally funny to the lookers-on to see the amused Chiswell, one of his mates, roll over and over on the greensward in repeated convulsions of side-splitting laughter, whilst the others, standing up, had hard work to keep their perpendicular and writhed in awful shapes as they joined in chorus with him, as Tirrell was slowly wading out of ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... the same effect when steaming through the Kyles of Bute, for there the ship seems to be going full speed for the shore of an entirely enclosed sea, and here, saving for the tell-tale railway, there seems no way out of the abyss without scaling the perpendicular walls. The rocks are at their finest at Killingnoble Scar, where they take the form of a semicircle on the west side of the railway. The scar was for a very long period famous for the breed of hawks, which were specially watched by the Goathland ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... need not marvel much at seeing the ground retreat just here. It is nearer our hand, and quite as well worth our while to enquire, why the tower at Bridgnorth in Shropshire leans exactly in the same direction, and is full as much out of the perpendicular as this ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... track to Kairouan, where strings of camels are for ever moving to and fro, laden with merchandise from the north or with desert products from the oases of Djerid and Souf. The dry bed of the torrent glows in hues of isabel and cream, while its perpendicular mud-banks, on the further side, gleam like precipices of amber; the soil at your feet is besprinkled with a profusion of fair and ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... continued his lordship, pointing to the mute pack now following the huntsman, 'you've lost us our fox, sir—yes, sir, lost us our fox, sir. D'ye call that nothin', sir? If you don't, I do, you perpendicular-looking Puseyite pig-jobber! By Jove! you think because I'm a lord, and can't swear, or use coarse language, that you may do what you like—but I'll take my hounds home, sir—yes, sir, I'll take my hounds ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... carrying a pair of pails on a yoke, deposited them upon the edge of the pavement in front of the inn, and straightened his back to an excruciating perpendicular. His remarks had been addressed to a rickety person, wearing a waistcoat of that preternatural length from the top to the bottom button which prevails among men who have to do with horses. He was sweeping straws from the carriage-way beneath the stone arch that ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... itself from my door was almost on a level with the cottage; but on coming to the end of the lane, it was discovered to be situated on a high perpendicular bank, at the foot of which run the clear waters of the Cluden, where they hasten ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and decidedly plain in design. There are shops that have a certain suggestion and imitation of old-fashioned quaintness, and there are other buildings that have a tinge of the Scotch baronial hall style of architecture. Then there is the coffee-house Gothic, the pie-shop Perpendicular, the commercial Classic, the fender and fire-grate Transitional, the milk and cream Decorated, and various ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... let the instrument stand out of the perpendicular, and do very little while standing vertically. Indeed, it is well to strike a number of half-circles, first from right to left and then from left to right, and finally draw a full circle, sloping the pen on one side, gradually raising ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... small rocky islands, on one of which we landed, and climbed its summit, but saw nothing to repay us for the trouble or the danger of the ascent: the surface was composed entirely of loose blocks of sandstone, which, when trod upon, would crumble away or roll down the nearly perpendicular face of the rock; and it was only by grasping the branches of the acacias and other trees that were firmly rooted in the interstices of the less-decomposed rocks that we were saved from being precipitated with them. On our return we passed through the channel ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... beautiful. The town was formerly walled, and has the remains of a castle built soon after the conquest, frequently the scene of border strife. The church of St Mary belonged originally to a Benedictine monastery founded early in the 12th century. The existing building, however, is Decorated and Perpendicular, and contains a fine series of memorials of dates from the 13th to the 17th century. There is a free grammar school, which till 1857 had a fellowship at Jesus College, Oxford. Breweries, ironworks, quarries, brick fields and collieries in the neihbourhood ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was oblique to the White Oak road; and on getting there, it was to swing round to the left till perpendicular to the road, keeping closed to the left. Ayres did his part well, and to the letter, bringing his division square up to the front of the return near the angle; but Crawford did not wheel to the left, as was intended. On the contrary, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... here to sleep. At the slightest sound, open the windows of the court and call me. Pay attention also to the water-side. Ten metres of perpendicular rock is ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... with the northerly wind and rises with the southerly one. When you travel over the country, you will find that the valleys are cool and the mountain tops warm. The bees have no sting, and many of the beautiful flowers have no smell. The leaves of the trees are nearly always perpendicular instead of horizontal, as in your country, and consequently one gets very little shade under ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the sea, and the soft shadows of the trees and mountain, were much the same. The Coquette lay, as before, at her anchor near the cape, and the Shrewsbury glittered towards the south, until its surface was concealed by the projection of a high and nearly perpendicular bluff. ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... lengths; and as far as my eye could stretch its wings, now on the left and now on the right side, such did this cornice seem to me. Thereon our feet had not yet moved when I perceived that bank round about, which, being perpendicular, allowed no ascent, to be of white marble and adorned with such carvings, that not Polycletus merely but Nature would be ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... ordered to assault the Koket-bir gate of the fortress. The guns from Islamgye and the Fala saddle opened fire, and continued it during the afternoon. The ascent to the fortress, or amba, as it is called, was by an excessively steep and narrow path, amidst large boulders, with perpendicular black cliffs on the right. The Koket-bir gate consisted of a rough stone gateway 15 feet deep, with folding wooden doors. On either side the approach was defended by a thick hedge with stakes. Seventy feet higher up there was a second hedge, and another gate opening on the ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... and to blast rocky embankments, we can hardly understand how a people, with such limited mechanical appliances as then existed, can have surmounted the obstacles that presented themselves to their progress. In one place the way was a plank road resting on beams, which were driven into the perpendicular face of the solid rock a few feet above the water's edge, whilst a little further on it is seen to wind along terraces cut artificially, high up on the hillsides. Hundreds if not thousands of lives must have been sacrificed in the work, for it must be remembered that the Roman generals and ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... bridge, the aspect of things at the rock was much altered. The beacon-house and building had both a naked look to those accustomed to their former appearance; a curious optical deception was also remarked, by which the lighthouse seemed to incline from the perpendicular towards the beacon. The horizontal rope-ladder before noticed was again stretched to preserve the communication, and the artificers were once more obliged to practise the awkward and straddling manner of their passage between ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the very edge of the cliff and looked straight down, to where, two hundred feet below, the perpendicular was first broken by a slope of titanic bowlders, among which the trunks of dwarfed pines twisted here and there into the light, from ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... and lower apartments are consequently extremely gloomy. The upper rooms are the most suitable to dwell in, but visitors frequently find it exceedingly fatiguing to toil up and down the stairs; and some of the stone-paved passages, miscalled streets, are almost perpendicular. Altogether, one needs extraordinary strength in this city of precipices. It is thus very unsuitable to invalids, apart from its variable climate. It is subject to very rapid changes of temperature, warm winds from the south ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... family. The crust or shell of this nest seems to be formed of such dirt or loam as comes most readily to hand, and is tempered and wrought together with little bits of broken straws to render it tough and tenacious. As this bird often builds against a perpendicular wall without any projecting ledge under, it requires its utmost efforts to get the first foundation firmly fixed, so that it may safely carry the superstructure. On this occasion the bird not only clings with its claws, but partly supports itself ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... united streams run into the lake Ontario, at the place where Oswego fort is situated. But this river is so rapid as to be sometimes dangerous, besides its being full of rifts and rocks; and about twelve miles on this side of Oswego there is a fall of eleven feet perpendicular, where there is consequently a postage, which however, does not exceed forty yards. From thence the passage is easy quite to Oswego. The lake Ontario, on which this fort stands, is near two hundred and eighty leagues ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... meadows at the head of Weber Canyon until Reed's return. They then learned that the train which preceded them had been compelled to travel very slowly down the Weber River, filling in many irregular places with brush and dirt; that at last they had reached a place where vast perpendicular pillars of rock approached so closely on either side that the river had barely space to flow between, and just here the water plunged over a precipice. To lower the wagons down this precipice ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... England, on the Oxford and Worcester line of the Great Western railway. Pop. (1901) 1542. It is picturesquely situated towards the north of the Cotteswold hill-district. The many interesting ancient houses afford evidence of the former greater importance of the town. The church of St James is mainly Perpendicular, and contains a number of brasses of the 15th and 16th centuries and several notable monumental tombs. A ruined manor house of the 16th century and some almshouses complete, with the church, a picturesque group ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... ground and the leaves; he never ascends the tall trees, but keeps low, flitting from stump to stump and from root to root, dodging in and out of his hiding-places, and watching all intruders with a suspicious eye. He has a very pert, almost comical look. His tail stands more than perpendicular: it points straight toward his head. He is the least ostentatious singer I know of. He does not strike an attitude, and lift up his head in preparation, and, as it were, clear his throat; but sits there ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... concerning the Dahomey village. But some scoffers from the South had spoiled part of the novelty of it by alleging that the men of northern Africa were really natives of Mississippi or Louisiana, and were dancing only plantation hoe-downs in slow time and increased perpendicular action. ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... contrariwise, slope up from left to right, with a single exception in the case of the letter Z, in which, if rule I be followed, the sloping line (in this case made with a down stroke) will be the only one possible to accent. III, Always accent the directly perpendicular lines, except in the N, where these lines seem originally to have been made with an up stroke of the pen; and the first line of the M, where the perpendiculars originally sloped in towards the top of the letter (see ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... because of yours. They should make a line at right angles with your horse's spinal column. Draw yourself back a little, until you can feel the pommel under your right knee. 'Draw' yourself back; don't lean, but keep yourself perfectly erect, your back perpendicular to your horse's. Sit a little to the left; lean a little to the right. Let your left shoulder go forward a little, your right shoulder backward. Now you are exactly right. Try to remember your sensations at this minute, in order to be able to reproduce them. When I say 'Careful,' pass yourself ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... the nearest end of the plate, over which the glass is slided till it lies upon the plate, having driven much of the quicksilver before it. It is then, I think, pressed upon cloths, and then set sloping to drop the superfluous mercury; the slope is daily heightened towards a perpendicular. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... the semicircular arch may be demonstrated to excel in strength the elliptical arch, which, approaching nearer to a straight line, must be constructed with stones whose diminution downwards is very little, and of which the pressure is almost perpendicular. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... pulling, and, standing up in the boat, began to examine the surroundings with keen interest. They were close to the great crag "shaped like a giant's helmet," as Valdemar Svensen had said. It rose sheer out of the water, and its sides were almost perpendicular. Some beautiful star-shaped sea anemones clung to it in a vari-colored cluster on one projection, and the running ripple of the small waves broke on its jagged corners with a musical splash, and sparkle of white foam. Below them, in the emerald mirror ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... whole in deepest shade. How that wall was ever ascended to the inland seemed the puzzle; but Drew, who had been off the place before, pointed out to them a narrow path, which wound upwards through a glen, seemingly sheer perpendicular. That was the road to the capital, if any man dare try it. In spite of the shadow of the mountain, the whole place wore a dusty and glaring look. The breaths of air which came off the land were utterly stifling; and no wonder, for La Guayra, owing to the radiation of that vast ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... presently brought out a ladder, which he carried down to the riverside, and left there. Then he returned to the tool-house, and came back bearing an armful of planks, each perhaps a foot wide by five or six feet long. Now he raised his ladder to the perpendicular, and let it descend before him, so that, one extremity resting upon the nearer bank, one attained the further, and it spanned the flood. Finally he laid a plank lengthwise upon the hithermost rungs, and advanced ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... a huge broad stone, which, lying athwart other tall perpendicular stones, made a kind of hut, approached by a pathway of upright narrow pillars, irregular and crude. Vast must have been the labour of man's hands to lift the massive table of rock upon the supporting ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Norman tower cased—can not be wholly made a matter of blame to the original builders. For it is clear that some finish, whether a crown like those at Newcastle and Edinburgh or any other, was intended. Still the proportion which is solemn in Romanesque becomes squat in perpendicular, and, if York has never received its last finish, Lincoln has lost the last finish which it received. Surely no one who is not locally sworn to the honor of York can doubt about preferring the noble central tower of Lincoln, soaring still, even tho ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... the use of the latter, in the cemetery called the Green Church Haw, on the north side of the cathedral. The people were still allowed to pass within the north side of the cathedral in their processions, and the Perpendicular doorway which exists, walled up, towards the west end of the north aisle wall, was inserted for their passage. The right that the mayor and corporation of the city still retain of entering the cathedral in their robes and with their maces, etc., borne before them, by the great ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... given his own pick to the boy and told him to dig, while he was gone, for himself. And Jason had dug. He was slipping now up the tiny branch, and where the stream trickled down the face of a water- worn perpendicular rock the boy stopped, leaned his rifle against a tree, and stepped aside into the bushes. A moment later he reappeared with a small pick in his hand, climbed up over a mound of loose rocks and loose earth, ten feet around the rock, and entered the narrow mouth of a deep, ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... contour of his features was remarkably regular, though his lips were rather full, and his nose somewhat flat, yet free from the disgusting depression and cavities of the negro race. His forehead was high and perpendicular, while his mouth glistened with ivory when he spoke or smiled. I had frequent opportunities to talk with the king afterwards, and was always delighted by the affectionate simplicity of his demeanor. As it was the country's custom to educate the first-born of royalty for the ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Eyes, standing against the perpendicular back ledge of the Council Rock, and with her heart full of love for the girls who could get so much fun out of a kite, wished success to their cause with all her soul. Then she stood up in the center of the rock and sent forth ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... had been, at the age of six, marked, like Soyera, with three perpendicular lines on the forehead—the sign ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... place the planting-board back on the pegs and place the tree at the right depth, against the notch in the side. It will then stand exactly where a stake stood, and if the stakes were in line, the trees will be also, if they are kept perpendicular while the earth is being filled in. The earth should be packed about the roots by hand, the tree being set no deeper than it ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... extreme richness and grace of line, and for which we may be most grateful to their builders. And, indeed, the superiority of the Surface-Gothic cannot be completely felt, until we compare it with the more degraded Linear schools, as, for instance, with our own English Perpendicular. The ornaments of the Veronese niche, which we have used for our example, are by no means among the best of their school, yet they will serve our purpose for such a comparison. That of its pinnacle is composed of a single upright flowering plant, of which the stem shoots up through the centres ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... with those vast gorges, the marvellous results of aqueous action, called canyons, which attain their greatest dimensions in North America; such as the Great Canyon of the Colorado, which is at least 300 miles in length, and in places 2000 yards in depth, with perpendicular or even overhanging sides; but the analogy, at first sight specious, utterly breaks down under closer examination. Some selenographers consider them to consist of long-extending rows of confluent craters, too minute to be separately distinguished, and to be thus due to some ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... sends forth a pleasing chirp: when several are together they sing in harmony on different notes. I had some difficulty in catching a specimen of this frog. The genus Hyla has its toes terminated by small suckers; and I found this animal could crawl up a pane of glass, when placed absolutely perpendicular. Various cicidae and crickets, at the same time, keep up a ceaseless shrill cry, but which, softened by the distance, is not unpleasant. Every evening after dark this great concert commenced; and often have I sat listening to it, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... till there came the man of Sweden, the great Linnaeus, till the sexes were recognised, and everything was ruled out and set in place again. A wonderful man! I think it would be true to say it was Linnaeus who set the world on its present twist of thinking, and levered our mental globe a little more perpendicular to the ecliptic. He actually gathered the dandelion and took it to bits like a scientific child; he touched nature with his fingers instead of sitting looking out of window—perhaps the first man who had ever done so for seventeen ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... himself slide over the left shoulder, and the lion's skin that was modelled over it, and Sabina followed him cautiously. By bending their heads they could now stand and walk, and there was a space fully five feet wide, between the statue and the perpendicular masonry ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... on the south side of the Missouri, one thousand six hundred and ninety-three miles from its confluence with the Mississippi. It rises to the west of the Black mountains, across the northern extremity of which it finds a narrow rapid passage along high perpendicular banks, then seeks the Missouri in a northeastern direction, through a broken country with highlands bare of timber, and the low grounds particularly supplied with cottonwood, elm, small ash, box, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... an angle, that the shock in descending is modified, and the joints and sockets protected from the injury occasioned by concussion. But in the elephant, where the weight of the body is immense, the bones of the leg, in order to present solidify and strength to sustain it, are built in one firm and perpendicular column; instead of being placed somewhat obliquely at their points of contact. Thus whilst the force of the weight in descending is broken and distributed by this arrangement in the case of the horse; it would be so concentrated in the elephant as to endanger every joint ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... and idle from the masts, yet the vessel rolled as in a storm, heaving on a tremendous swell so violently that it would seem her masts must be shaken out of her. The air was sweltering, the sky the color of burnished copper, out of which the sun beat remorselessly in almost perpendicular beams. Pitch ran from every seam of the decks, great blisters like bubbles rose upon the woodwork; the decks were no sooner swabbed than—presto!—it was as though they had not known the touch of water ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... of Nottingham Castle, by which the young King Edward III. and his loyal associates gained access to the fortress and captured the murderous regent and usurper Mortimer, Earl of March, is known to this day as "Mortimer's Hole." It runs up through the perpendicular rock upon which the castle stands, on the south-east side from a place called Brewhouse yard, and has an exit in what was originally the courtyard of the building. The Earl was seized in the midst of his adherents and retainers on the night of October 19th, 1330, and after a skirmish, notwithstanding ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... descending, the other rising, the valley narrows to a gorge. In its depths, a hundred and fifty feet or more below, the torrent is noisily roaring, and at the other side, half way up, the carriage-road is built out from the almost perpendicular wall of the Gourzy. We draw nearer, and at length I cross, high above the stream, by a rude wooden bridge, and rejoin the main road. The slope I have quitted steepens now into a precipice, and the two sides of this ravine move closer and closer together, their bare limestone brows a ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... represent the premises, and at the angles formed with them by the slanting or by the perpendicular lines the middle term occurs. The schema of Figure IV. resembles Z, the last letter of the alphabet: this helps one to remember it in contrast with Figure I., which is thereby also remembered. Figures II. and III. seem to ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... royal family of Abyssinia were imprisoned in early times, is a little to the north of Lake Haik, and beyond the Mille. It runs north and south, in length about twelve or thirteen miles, and is exceedingly high and steep, the sides thereof being almost perpendicular. Mr Krapf, amongst the most considerable rivers which he passed in this quarter, mentions the Ala, which he states runs to, and is lost in, the deserts of the country of Adel. This is important, and this river is no doubt the Wali of Bruce, which he mentions (vol. iii. p. 248) as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... turn his eyes another way; and, as he wore the helmet of invisibility, the Gorgons knew not in what direction to follow him; nor did he fail to make the best use of the winged slippers, by soaring upward a perpendicular mile or so. At that height, when the screams of those abominable creatures sounded faintly beneath him, he made a straight course for the island of Seriphus, in order to carry Medusa's head ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... assumed the perpendicular and indignantly exclaimed, "Well, I don't care if you did; ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various
... camp, and a large amount of Kaffir kraals. Every Sunday he had five services at different places, one of them eighteen miles from the nearest, a space that had to be ridden at speed in the mid-day sun. There was no house, but a couple of rooms with perpendicular sides and a verandah, one for chapel, the other for sitting-room, while Kaffir beehive huts were the bedrooms of all. For a long time blankets and plaids did the part of doors and shutters; and just as the accommodations ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... lower than 8000 feet. In these higher elevations one sees what a struggle some of the trees have for mere existence. Again and again a mountain pine will be found, a tree perhaps fifty feet high, bowed over almost to the ground. This was done by snow. Given the slightest list from the perpendicular when the heavy, wet snow falls upon it, it is bound slowly to be forced over. If it is a tough, strong tree it may sustain the weight until melting time comes, when it is released. But it never ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... the brig to assume various unseemly attitudes, and perform gymnastic exercises wonderful to behold. As the wind increased and the sea became more turbulent, the Dolphin tumbled about like an elephant dancing a hornpipe, insomuch that it was difficult for a person to keep his perpendicular. Indeed, as I was passing along from the camboose to the cabin, with a plate of toast in one hand and a teapot in the other, the brig took a lee lurch without giving notice of her intention, and sent me with tremendous force across the deck, to leeward, where ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... to have been noticed that, as every line from the surface to the centre is perpendicular, a descent by slopes, such as is represented, would really ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... presenting the most agreeable scenes, replete with the useful product of a rich soil and fine climate; the whole bounded by lofty mountains, clothed with rich and almost impervious forests of evergreens, occasionally intermixed with high and nearly perpendicular rocks, whose summits are, for a great part of the year, covered with snow;—the whole forming one of the most agreeable, picturesque, and romantic scenes that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... of El-Hasee is sandy, like all those of Fezzan. It is bounded on the north by the perpendicular buttresses of the Hamadah, and on the south by sandy swells. The well is not copious, but affords a regular supply of slightly brackish water. The people descend to the bottom, thirty or forty feet, and fill their gerbahs. The blacks are very troublesome, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... them much additional grandeur. Instances have occurred in which the fiery stream has plunged over a sheer precipice of immense height, so as to produce a glowing cascade exceeding in breadth and perpendicular descent the celebrated Falls of Niagara. In other cases, the lava, instead of at once flowing down the sides of the mountain, has been first thrown up into the air as a fiery fountain several hundred feet in height. This happens ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... volume of water of enormous proportions. Between it and the valley below there was a dam nearly 1,000 feet wide, 100 feet high, ninety feet thick at the base and twenty at the top. This barrier gave way and the water rushed into the valley in a solid wave with a perpendicular front of ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... was a work of Nature in her mood of majestic playfulness, formed on the perpendicular side of a mountain by some immense rocks, which had been thrown together in such a position as, when viewed at a proper distance, precisely to resemble the features of the human countenance. It seemed as if an ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... The ceiling was excellent; the whole building in the best repair. "What is to be done?" he asked of one of his satellites. "Well," said the man, "there is nothing for you to meddle with here, except possibly to require that the columns should be restored to the perpendicular." "Restored to the perpendicular? what do you mean?" said Verres, who knew nothing of architecture. It was explained to him that it very seldom happened that a column was absolutely true to the perpendicular. "Very good," said Verres; "we will have ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... of between sixteens and eighteen degrees in one instance, and in another between twenty-five and thirty degrees, with the horizontal line. But it is difficult to explain, by the action of water, how a large block of the white stone without strata is caused to overhang an almost perpendicular corner of one of the islands, which beneath that block consists of the dark ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... day had already reached the upper world. It was also brightest in the middle of the black pool, which showed that the opening through which it came must be directly above that point, and that the shaft must be perpendicular. ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe |
