"Perpendicular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... question whether that portion of the world on the equinoctial line is or is not an inaccessible desert. The Spaniards affirm that it is inhabited by numerous peoples,[3] while the ancient writers maintain that it is uninhabitable because of the perpendicular rays of the sun. I must admit, however, that even amongst ancient authorities some have been found who sought to maintain that that part of the world was habitable.[4] When I asked the sailors of the Pinzons if they had seen the polar star to the south, they said ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... portion near the summit. The stage road from Truckee to the summit runs along the base of a moraine close by the margin of the lake on one side, while on the other side, along the apparently almost perpendicular rocky face of the amphitheater, 1000 feet above the surface of the lake, the Central Pacific Railroad winds its fearful way to the same place. In the upper portion of this amphitheater large patches of snow still ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... fastened above the knee, which, as they stamped in unison, made a loud switching noise. These natives were painted from shoulder to hip, with five or six stripes rising from the breast, their faces streaked with white perpendicular lines, making it appear as the dancing of dead men's bones. For some time the dancers continued to stamp to and fro, and then, assembling at a fire that burned close by, they simultaneously sat down. Other dancers then took their places, dressed in fur cloaks, and ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... one of these wheels, or where the bank is too high, the water must be raised by the labour of man or beast. The commonest method, which is the one employed generally on the Tigris, is to raise it in skins, which are drawn up by horses, donkeys, or cattle. A recess with perpendicular sides is cut into the bank, and a wooden spindle on wooden struts is supported horizontally over the recess. A rope running over the spindle is fastened to the skin, while the funnel end of the skin is held up by a second rope, running over ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... Like swords of azure fire, or golden spears With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined, Embleming heaven and earth united now, Vast beams like spokes of some invisible wheel Which whirl as the orb whirls, swifter than thought, 275 Filling the abyss with sun-like lightenings, And perpendicular now, and now transverse, Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass, Make bare the secrets of the earth's deep heart; Infinite mine of adamant and gold, 280 Valueless stones, and unimagined ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... inner peridium ashen or bluish, remote from the calcareous crust, which is extremely fragile, easily shelling off; columella indistinguishable from the base of the sporangium, thin, alutaceous; capillitium of short, generally colorless, delicate, sparingly branching or anastomosing threads perpendicular to the columella; spores black in mass, by transmitted ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... searched the tangle and must have been looking directly at the bird several seconds before cutting it out from the stalks and branches. It was a least bittern, a female. She was clinging to a perpendicular stem of elder, hand over hand, wren fashion, her long neck thrust straight into the air, absolutely ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... covered with a grassy sod, and large trees arose from its sloping sides. The horizontal passage was kept in a safe state by a lining of bricks, and I walked through it into the heart of the Indian sepulchre. It was a damp, dark, weird interior; but the perpendicular shaft, which ascended to the apex, kept up an uninterrupted current of air. I found it anything but a pleasant place in which to linger, and soon retraced my steps to the boat, where I once more embarked upon the ceaseless current, and kept upon my winding ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... not, maladroits," 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 of ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... aisles, visibly in the form of a cross, though with its arms clipped down to the trunk, with a separate chancel, with a large square short tower, and with a bell-shaped spire, covered with lead and irregular in its proportions. Who does not know the low porch, the perpendicular Gothic window, the flat-roofed aisles, and the noble old grey tower of such a church as this? As regards its interior, it was dusty; it was blocked up with high-backed ugly pews; the gallery in which the children sat at the end of the church, and in which two ancient ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... surmounting crags and delving into valleys, so that it can be seen topping height after height as it climbs the mountain range until it becomes a mere thread and finally is lost to view in the far distance. Walking along it for some little way I found that it scaled almost perpendicular cliffs, up one of which I passed, the top of the wall here taking the form of steps, while down the opposite side the descent was so steep that for greater security I made it backwards on hands ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... surface ran the main artery of the nest. Halfway up, a flat board projected, and here the column divided for the last time, half going on directly into the nest, and the other half turning aside, skirting the board, ascending a bit of perpendicular canvas, and entering the nest from the rear. The entrance was well guarded by a veritable moat and drawbridge of living ants. A foot away, a flat mat of ants, mandibles outward, was spread, over which every passing individual stepped. Six inches farther, and ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... Generally instant death is their portion, though I recall an instance, while on an expedition against the hostile Indians thirty years ago, where a number of mules of our pack-train, loaded with ammunition, tumbled nearly five hundred feet down an almost perpendicular chasm, and yet some of them got on their feet again, and soon rejoined their companions, without having suffered ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... their branches not 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 fastened ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... higher of the two without much trouble except for a laborious scramble over large, rough stones, but the ascent of the other threatened to be difficult. It rose in front, a wall of splintered crag, seamed by deep gullies, for the strata was tilted up nearly perpendicular. All the gullies were climbed by expert mountaineers, but this needed a party and a rope, and the other way, round the shoulder of the great rock, was almost as hard. Festing knew the easiest plan was to descend a neighboring ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... Face, then, 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 enormous giant, or a Titan, had sculptured his own likeness ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... much occupied with seeing how right it is. Good Lord, my dear, in a world given over to the first person perpendicular, can't you see the amazing beauty and rarity of your child's soul? Every day and all day long she gives herself,—to you, to me, to the kiddies, to her friends. She is the eternal mother." Mildred Lorimer was not the eternal ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... don't mean this as general, but particular Examples may be found of such pursuits: Though several also keep their perpendicular Like poplars, with good principles for roots; Yet many have a method more reticular— 'Fishers for men,' like sirens with soft lutes: For talk six times with the same single lady, And you may get ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... many of the latter were so hot that meat could be boiled in them. Salt existed in all directions in abundance and of good quality. A sulphurous spring was also discovered, bubbling out from the base of a perpendicular rock three hundred feet high, the waters of which were dark-blue and tasted like gunpowder. In short, the land presented every variety of feature calculated to charm the ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Baillet tells us that this method of studying had been formed entirely from his own practical knowledge and hard experience: at a late period of life he had commenced his studies, and at length he imagined that he had discovered a more perpendicular mode of ascending the hill of science than by its usual circuitous windings. His work has been compared to the sounding of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... have no connecting sequence for the other players. Too restless to lose more than one bet in the place he had chosen, Judson tried to rise, tangled his feet in the chair, and fell down, laughing uproariously. When he struggled to the perpendicular again, after two or three ineffectual attempts, he was fairly behind ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... 11, the difference between a natural and distorted spine will be readily perceived. In Fig. 10, the curved line shows the course of the spine, occasioned by distortion; the perpendicular line, in this and Fig. 11, indicates the true direction of the spine; the horizontal lines show that one shoulder and hip are forced ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... words passed till they got back to the trees, and then turned off where the horses had previously done so. Two minutes' walk brought them to a roughly-made shed, built against the almost perpendicular side of the hill. It was built of logs, and there was nothing to show that it was inhabited. No smoke curled up from the chimney. The door and shutters were closed. Anyone who, passing through the valley, had turned among the trees and accidentally come upon it, would have taken it ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... This is a variety of the previous lace, being worked in the same way, but on four lines of threads, instead of two, namely, one diagonal from left to right, one from right to left, one horizontal, and one perpendicular. The spots are worked on the last line made. The distance of the lines is ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown
... crooked characters, disposed in columns, and had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him at the time a book containing various alphabets. Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman letters inverted, or placed sideways, were arranged and placed in perpendicular columns; and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle, divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks, and evidently copied after the Mexican Calendar, given by Humbolt, but copied in such a way as not to betray the source whence it was, derived. I ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... fog at the rate of fifty feet a second, had hurled itself at an iceberg. Had the impact been received by a perpendicular wall, the elastic resistance of bending plates and frames would have overcome the momentum with no more damage to the passengers than a severe shaking up, and to the ship than the crushing in of her bows and the killing, to a man, of the watch below. ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... or five hundred yards wide, and down its centre ran the stream. Close to the water's edge rose abruptly a steep rock. It was some fifty feet in height and but four or five yards across at the top. On the north and west the rocks were too perpendicular to be climbed, but the other sides had crumbled down, the stones being covered with brushwood. From the point where they were looking they could see the six horses lying among the bushes. They were evidently tightly roped, and had probably been led up there when ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... broad, formed by the confluence of the St. Lawrence on the right, and the smaller river, St. Charles, on the left. Far away the united streams are again divided into a northern and southern channel by the picturesque Isle of Orleans. To the right hand is seen Point Levi, and the almost perpendicular banks of the St. Lawrence; on the left the more gradually sloping shore presents a long line of intrenchments and redoubts, reaching to a distance of seven or eight miles, ending at the great chasm into which the Montmorency River hurls down its waters in a ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... Dinsmore and Ramona had long since been picked out by the outlaws as a defensible position in case of need. The ledge that ran up to it on the right offered no cover for attackers. It was scarcely three feet wide, and above and below it the wall was for practical purposes perpendicular. In anticipation of a day when his gang might be rounded up by a posse, Pete Dinsmore had gone over the path and flung down into the gulch every bit of quartz big enough to shelter ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... in error touching this matter, except perhaps by those who know how perseveringly these little Eels make their way up every stream, ditch, and driblet of water into which they can gain access. They penetrate into the water-pipes and pumps; they climb up the perpendicular faces of the rocks and weirs which obstruct the course of the rivers, even when they are only moist—adhering to the moss ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... the stile. The footprints of the two men were here very clearly impressed in the thin but soft soil, and they all took care not to trample on the tracks. They followed the prints closely, and found that they led straight to the edge of a cliff forming a sheer precipice, almost perpendicular, at the foot of which the sea, some two hundred feet below, ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... system of signals and passwords, and with a retreat in the mountains, known as the 'Pocket,' so inaccessible to any but themselves that no one as yet has been able even to definitely locate it—a sort of basin walled about by perpendicular rocks. The leader is a man of mixed blood, who has travelled in all countries and knows many dark secrets, and whose power lies mainly in the mystery with which he surrounds himself. No one knows who he is, but many of his men believe him to be the ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... you think 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 ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... two steep hills, one of which is crowned with the woods of Blaise Castle, and the other with a group of buildings consisting of the parish church, a charming little Gothic structure known as "The Hall," and the national schoolhouse. The church is a fine perpendicular edifice of considerable antiquity, with a square tower surmounted, in true West of England style, by a small turret, having a tiny Gothic spire at one corner. The parishioners are proud of their church, and with justice. It contains some good stained-glass windows, two interesting mediaeval monuments, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... meet or are "coupled" at the ridge, this coupling being managed not by rusty iron, but by great solid pins of oak. A roof of oaken wattles was laid across these, till within eleven or twelve feet of the ground, and from the ground upwards a stone wall was raised, as perpendicular as was found practicable, towards these overhang-wattles, this wall being roughly "pointed" with sand and clay and lime. Now into and upon the roof was woven and intertwisted a covering of thatch, that defied all winds and weathers, and ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... help fixing myself on the banks of the lake for several minutes, till this apparition was lost, and confounded with the shades of night. Looking round, I shuddered at a craggy mountain, clothed in dark forests and almost perpendicular, that was absolutely to be surmounted before we could arrive at Wallersee. No house, not even a shed appearing, we were forced to ascend the peak, and ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... roads is that which leads from the province of Aconcagua in Chili to Cujo, running along the deep ravines of the rivers Chillan and Mendoza, bordered on one side by deep precipices overhanging these rivers, and on the other by lofty and almost perpendicular mountains. Both of these rivers derive their origin from the Alpine vallies of the Andes, the former running westwards to the Pacific; while the latter takes a much longer course towards the Southern Atlantic. This road requires at least eight days journey to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... extent, or about three hundred and fifty yards in diameter. In the center was a lake, also circular. The broad belt of shore around this lake was covered with rich grass, level as a bowling green, and all this again was surrounded by a nearly perpendicular cliff, down which indeed he had fallen. This cliff was thickly clothed with ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... geologists, as well as the uniform material of which it is composed. It is all of a calcareous nature, but differing in condition from any of the other islands of the same substance. The strata are exposed in the perpendicular cliffs on the sea-shore in numerous precipices, from a hundred feet to minor altitudes, and are composed either of the most minute shells, or of parts of shells so triturated that they scarcely indicate their origin. In some places, however, there are laminae ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... made little progress. The bars fitted so closely into the holes that there was but a small quantity of lead, and without a hammer and chisel it seemed impossible to make the hole sufficiently large to move the bars so as to allow Brown to exert his strength upon them. If the two centre perpendicular bars could be got out, the lowest horizontal bar might be sent up. This would afford ample room for the stoutest of ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... at him in admiration, leaned out of the perpendicular, and promptly drew from his trousers' pocket a roll of stupendous proportions. Wetting his thumb, he began to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... which may be used for bad purposes, and says, "Somehow, when I take a little, it don't seem to go right." Again he gives a vacant look at his friends, gets up, resting his hands on the table, endeavours to keep a perpendicular, but declares himself so debilitated by his sleep that he must wait a little longer. Sinking back upon the settee, he exclaims, "You had better send that nigger to his cabin." This was carrying the amusement a little beyond Marston's own "gauge," and it being declared time to adjourn, preparations ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... of Herman Mordaunt's sleigh, on the other side of the barrier, but could see nothing. The broken cakes, pressed upon by millions of tons weight above, had risen fully ten feet, into an inclination that was nearly perpendicular; rendering crossing it next to impossible, even to one a-foot. Then came Herman Mordaunt's voice, filled with paternal agony, and human grief, to increase the ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... admitted, the cannon ought to be pointed to the zenith of the place. Its fire, therefore, will be perpendicular to the plane of the horizon; and the projectile will soonest pass beyond the range of the terrestrial attraction. But, in order that the moon should reach the zenith of a given place, it is necessary that the place ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... formation, may be conveniently given here. On the south side of the harbour, there is a nearly level plain (mentioned in the First Chapter) about seven miles long, and three or four miles wide, estimated at ninety feet in height, and bordered by perpendicular cliffs, of which a section is represented ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... weight, in addition to its own, but he pushed with his hands against the ceiling, increasing the downward pressure on the rod, which was only acted upon as a powerful spring would have been, but still maintaining its perpendicular position concentric to the inner surface of the helices. I held,' says the reporter, 'an iron rod in my hand, with the end of which I touched that of the suspended rod. I could not detach it by pulling or jerking, and could only alter its position so as to cause ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... means of accomplishing his designs. He invited the entire Mam-luk corps to a banquet, which he proposed to give in the Citadel Palace in honour of the departure of Tussun Pasha for Mecca. This palace is built upon a rock, and is reached by perpendicular paths. On May 1st, the day fixed upon for the festivity, Mehemet Ali received his guests in great splendour and with a cordiality calculated to dispel any suspicions the Mamluks might have entertained. At the conclusion of the banquet, as they were returning home, they were fired upon ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... appreciable mutual disturbance, thus plainly showing that at an interval of only 157,250 miles their attractive power was virtually inoperative. Signs of internal agitation, however, were not wanting. Each fragment threw out a short tail in a direction perpendicular to the line joining their centres, and each developed a bright nucleus, although the original comet had exhibited neither of these signs of cometary vitality. A singular interchange of brilliancy was, besides, observed to take place between the coupled objects, each of which alternately ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... results. The horizontal arrangement of the prisms, which we had found to prevail in vertical columns, was here modified to suit the altered conditions of the case, and the axes of the prisms changed their inclination so as to be always perpendicular to the surface on which the ice lay, as far as could be determined by the eye. Thus, in following the many changes of inclination of the wall, the axes of the prisms stood at many different angles with the vertical, from a horizontal ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... the hands of his bitterest foes. We pushed on as fast as the rugged nature of the country would allow us to move; crossing valleys and streams, and climbing mountains, till we arrived at the foot of a lofty and perfectly perpendicular precipice, along the foot of which we moved for some distance. As I looked up, I saw that stones hurled from the summit would completely have annihilated us. Almost at right angles from the cliff arose another hill, up which we now began to climb. On reaching the summit, we turned ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... letter, recognizing the characteristic broad margins and the repressed rounded perpendicular hand with its supreme effort after significance, and his thought reflected a tinge of his old amused curiosity. It was only a reflection, and yet it distinctly embodied the idea that he might be on the brink of a further discovery. He glanced at Janet again: her hands ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... in Zazen—that is to say, the crossed-leg sitting, and the half crossed-leg sitting. Seat yourself on a thick cushion, putting it right under your haunch. Keep your body so erect that the tip of the nose and the navel are in one perpendicular line, and both ears and shoulders are in the same plane. Then place the right foot upon the left thigh, the left foot on the right thigh, so as the legs come across each other. Next put your right hand ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... one axis on which it can revolve in equilibrio. Suppose the axis of the earth to shift forty-five degrees; then cut it into one hundred and eighty slices, making every section in the plane of a circle of latitude, perpendicular to the axis: every one of these slices, except the equatorial one, would be unbalanced, as there would be more matter on one side of its axis than on the other. There could be but one diameter drawn ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... far back and low down on their heads, and the outer rims are very much crumpled; also they have very high and prominent cheek-bones, whilst one side of the face is different from the other. The backs of many murderers' heads are nearly perpendicular, or, if anything, rather inclined to recede than otherwise—they seldom project—whilst the forehead is ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... first two fingers. (TWO) Without changing the grasp of the right hand, place the piece on the right shoulder, barrel up and inclined at an angle of about 45 deg. from the horizontal, trigger guard in the hollow of the shoulder, right elbow near the side, the piece in a vertical plane perpendicular to the front; carry the left hand, thumb and fingers extended and joined, to the small of the stock, tip of the forefinger touching the cocking piece, wrist straight and elbow down. (THREE) Drop the left hand by ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... put off however, the water had reached the fires; there was a violent lurch, the ship had heeled completely over, washing many overboard, and of course causing a great confusion among those who had been steady before, and making the deck almost perpendicular. The captain, however, succeeded in lowering another boat, and putting into it, as he trusted, the few remaining women, the Bishop, and most of the men. This was, of course, that which had safely reached Corncastle, and of which he only now heard. The last boat ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... no human right to go before supper," said Ivan Petrovitch as he saw him off. "It's extremely perpendicular on your part. Well, now, perform!" he added, addressing Pava in ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to their journey's end, on the "Flyer," and then rest in some palatial hotel at last. Each mounted his horse, taking with them by way of baggage all that was necessary for the trip,—tent, provisions, clothing and Bibles. They plodded through miry swamps, they climbed up and down almost perpendicular ledges, and cut their way through canebrakes with a hatchet. When they had creeks to cross they swam their horses. At night they camped, often in the rain and sometimes without food. More than once they ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... is impossible. A study of the map, with the figures showing elevations, will give you a better idea of it than a long verbal description. It is an extraordinarily desolate scene. A few wild goats scramble over the rocks, or rush down the nearly perpendicular cliff; occasionally a solitary bird raises its harsh note; the wind howls fiercely; and as you lie under the lee of a mass of lava, taking in the scene and picking out the details as the rising sun brings them ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... every point of the surface, we have what is called an equipotential surface. The difference of potential between any two points is called an electromotive force. The lines of force are necessarily perpendicular to the surface. When the lines of force and the equipotential surfaces are straight, parallel, and equidistant, we have a uniform field. The intensity of the field is shown by the number of lines passing through unit area, and the rate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... terrace-form just below on the bluff, and protected by solid walls. From this curious pueblo another transition takes us to the extraordinary cliff-houses found in the Chelly, Mancos, and McElmo canons, and elsewhere,—veritable human eyries perched in crevices or clefts of the perpendicular rock, accessible only by dint of a toilsome and perilous climb; places of refuge, perhaps for fragments of tribes overwhelmed by more barbarous invaders, yet showing in their dwelling-rooms and estufas marks of careful building and ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... enemies of value in keeping these species in control. This collection was arranged in a specially designed case having a series of three nearly horizontal trays thirty-seven and one-half inches by eighteen and one-half inches upon each side, and an elevated central portion bearing two nearly perpendicular ones upon each side, the middle being occupied by a glass case containing an attractive natural group. A brief account of the exhibit under appropriate heads is ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... Charmian, judicially, "but you have not been false, and I am not going to let you say so. If you don't promise not to, I will tell Mr. Ludlow myself that you were always perfectly true, and you couldn't help being true, any more than a—a broomstick, or anything else that is perpendicular. Now, will ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... ascend, the grander and wilder the mountains become. Sometimes the road is blasted out of perpendicular walls of rock, and heavy masses of mountain hang like a vault above us. At dangerous slopes, where the road is exposed to avalanches in spring, it runs through tunnels of masonry. When an avalanche ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... forewoman, a pinched perpendicular figure, dropped the condemned structure of wire and net on the table at Lily's side, and passed on to the next figure in ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... shrewdest species of all those I know personally. It has the strange habit of digging out deep and spacious burrows for concealment, in the perpendicular sandy banks of southern Florida rivers where the deep water comes right up to the shore. Starting well under low-water mark, the crock digs in the yielding sand, straight into the bank, a roomy subterranean chamber. In this ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... more considerable at these islands, than at any other of my discoveries in this ocean, that lie within the tropics. At Annamooka it is high water, on the full and change days, nearly at six o'clock; and the tide rises and falls there, upon a perpendicular, about six feet. In the harbour of Tongataboo, it is high water on the full and change days, at fifty minutes past six. The tide rises and falls on those days, four feet nine inches, and three feet six inches at the Quadratures. In the channels between the islands, which lie in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... nearly to the end of Great Island, which is about four miles across, he sees rising before him, from the sea, a bold romantic point of land, uplifting a crown of rich evergreen and forest trees over shores of perpendicular rock. This is ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... standard is an oily, shining black, and as far as the conformation of the head and face is concerned and the relative proportion of nervous matter outside of the cranium to the quantity of cerebral matter within it, is found between the simiadiae[257] and the Caucasian. Thus, in the typical negro, a perpendicular line, let fall from the forehead, cuts off a large portion of the face, throwing the mouth, the thick lips, and the projecting teeth anterior to the cranium, but not the entire face, as in the lower animals and monkey tribes. When all, or a greater part of the face is thrown anterior to the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... and unique instrument, horizontal and perpendicular Grand, five octaves, hammerless action, including keyboard, pedals, gong, peal of bells, ophicleide stop, and all the newest improvements, can be seen at Messrs. SPLITTE AND SON's Establishment, High Holborn, and purchased ON THE FIFTY YEARS' ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... off with a sirocco from the south-west, ('a Boston east wind boiled,' and the only unpleasant summer wind on the coast,) after which it stopped short; the sand and the orange blossoms settled again, and every thing hung perpendicular. The next morning a puff came up from the south in a very blustering manner, as though it had an immense capital to back it, but proved very short-winded. Our little craft thinking to beat us, shook its sails out right and left, and dashed out of the harbor, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... absolutely remote in their kind. Let it be observed, the more remote in their nature, the greater is the excellence of these pieces. As a proof of this, I remember a famous caricatura of a certain Italian singer, that struck at first sight, which consisted only of a straight perpendicular stroke, with a dot over. As to the French word outre, it is different from the rest, and signifies nothing more than the exaggerated outlines of a figure, all the parts of which may be, in other respects, a perfect and true picture of nature. A giant or a dwarf may be called ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... room stood an iron camp-bed without curtains. There, on a worn mattress, lay King Friedrich, the terror of Europe, without coverlet, in an old blue roquelaure. He had a big cocked-hat, with a white feather [hat aged, worn soft as duffel, equal to most caps; "feather" is not perpendicular, but horizontal, round the inside of the brim], ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... square portion over the fire-place, which was once adorned with a gay paper, but whose brilliancy has long been defaced by smoke and grease. A broken pipe or two, a couple of irons, and a brass candlestick whose shaft leans considerably out of the perpendicular, occupy the mantelpiece. An old rocking-chair and two or three common ones extremely infirm on their legs, complete the furniture. The walls are nearly bare of ornament; the exceptions being a highly-coloured print of a horse-race, and a sampler worked by Betty, ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... of earth for a few minutes and then passed off the sun again, now broke upon them in a heavy shower. They saw the rain first falling on Chellaston Mountain, which was only about a quarter of a mile distant, falling in the sunshine like perpendicular rays of misty light; then it swept down upon them; but so bright was the sunshine the while that it took them a few minutes to realise that this dazzling shower could actually be wet. Its drenching character was made apparent by the sight of field labourers running to a great spreading ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... at our fiery chariot—so strange a development of the world for them; not the dogs that yelp, and are furious if we don't realize that they're frightening us. No, but the horrid little jeering boys, who run beside the car at their best speed when we're forging up perpendicular hills on our lowest. These are the creatures I would wipe out of existence with one fierce wish, if I had it in me. To think that they—they—should have the power to humiliate us. I don't get back my self-respect till we're on a level, or my joie de vivre until we're shooting downhill, ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... countless deep-worn ravines. The centre of the island has been hollowed out by the crater of the volcano into a capacious basin, almost circular, and, excepting to the south, where there is a huge cleft or rent, its sides or edges rise almost perpendicular full eight hundred feet from the base. After some trouble, carefully backing in with the swell, a landing was effected on the south side, when a most extraordinary sight was displayed to our view. Before us, in the hollow of the basin, was a lake of yellow liquid, smoking hot, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... strands of a wild grapevine, severed by his knife, hung dangling below his eyrie, betraying his mode of ascent. He had gone up hand over hand, aided by his powerful shoulder muscles and by his feet, which must have stuck like the feet of flies to the perpendicular ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... accompanied with snow and sleet, that they were steering directly towards it, and did not see it till it was at a less distance than that of a mile. Captain Cook judged it to be about fifty feet high, and half a mile in circuit. It was flat at the top, and its sides rose in a perpendicular direction, against which the sea broke to a great height. The weather continuing to be hazy, the captain, on account of the ice islands, was obliged to proceed with the utmost caution. Six of them were passed on the 12th, some of which were nearly two miles in ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... 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 shorn of its spire. The eastern transept, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... 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 rock face. ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... the "Latter-Day Pamphlets" he likened Christianity to a great tree, sprung from the seed of Nazareth, and since fed by the opulences of fifty generations; which now is perishing at the root, and sways to and fro ever farther and farther from the perpendicular; and which in the end must come down, and leave to those who found shelter beneath it and thought it infinite, a wholesome view of the upper eternal lights. And his contempt for controversial or dogmatic theology may be gauged by his reply to one who asked ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... 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
... she could not have been more helpless against the argument that lay in it. But she was permitted to move now, and her husband never again made any reference to what had occurred this morning. He knew the force of his own words. If this white-handed man with the perpendicular profile had been sent to govern a difficult colony, he might have won reputation among his contemporaries. He had certainly ability, would have understood that it was safer to exterminate than to cajole superseded ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... short distance from Fort Bridger; the overland road passes by their side. They consist of a sandstone bluff, reddish-brown in color, rising with the abruptness of a pile of masonry from the perfectly level plain, carved along its perpendicular face into a series of partially connected religious edifices, the most remarkable of which is a cathedral as colossal as St. Peter's, and completely relieved from the bluff on all sides save the rear, where a portico joins it with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... looked up brightly at the Prince. Brightly, but the perpendicular line of perplexity between his brows was not smoothed away. He laughed, and even then it did not. But he accepted ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... there are whole symphonies of sound. The winds smites the tree-tops over our heads, a surf-like roar comes up the slope, and the yellow pine-needles fall across the deepest darks as motes sail down a sunbeam. One wearies of the constant perpendicular, always these stiff, columnar lines, varied only by the melancholy incline where some great pine-chieftain is leaning to his fall supported in the arms of his comrades, or by the tragic prostration of the 'down timber'—beautiful ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... I saw the moon appear. It grew brighter and brighter, and I saw the land, dead to leeward of us, not three hundred yards away. It was a cruel sight—black rock and bitter snow, with cliffs so perpendicular that the Elsinore could have laid alongside of them in deep water, with great gashes and fissures, and with great surges thundering and spouting along ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... in the dark, narrow streets, where the rivers flow under the windows of empty dwellings; he might see them tottering, and threatening downfall upon each other—leaning over and casting shadows, black and mysterious upon the water—no line perpendicular, no line horizontal, the very beau-ideal of picturesque decay—buildings of which Longfellow might have sung ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... bad, but remained quite silent, occupied with her own thoughts. At length Tozer stopped and put her down. It was a place upon the edge of a cliff on the shore of the lake, and as much as a mile from the house. The cliff was almost fifty feet high, and was perpendicular. All around was the thick forest, and it was unlikely that such ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... the most strenuous days I ever had in the islands, as the road—and what a road!—constantly led up and down the steepest slopes. It seemed to me we were climbing perpendicular mountains all day long, and I had many an opportunity of admiring the agility of my companions. I am a fair walker myself, but I had to crawl on my hands and knees in many spots where they jumped from a stone ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... is thirty-five feet wide and thirty feet high, and is situated at the foot of a perpendicular cliff, and far above the water-level of Bryant. Just within the entrance it expands to sixty or seventy feet, with a height of about fifty feet; and this part of the cave has been used by the citizens of the county as a place for holding camp-meeting. I estimated ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... an explorer of unknown regions, a beauty-worshipper at a shrine whose pearly, sun-kissed portals open to him alone. People travel thousands of miles horizontally to rest their eyes on scenes infinitely less novel, beautiful and grand than one perpendicular mile of vantage would open to them, little matter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... body of water, which comprehends, with constant accumulations from the tributaries on the way, the overflowings of Lakes Erie, Superior, Michigan, and Huron. The astonishing effect of such a body of water, dashed abruptly over a precipice of 150 perpendicular feet, may be conceived; such is the momentum of this immense volume of fluid, that, when it strikes the rocky bed at the base of the cataract, it rebounds in a thick cloud of vapour—and when the sun's rays intercept it, as was the case when I arrived there, a beautiful ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... Welsted sink, His merits balanced, you shall find The laureate leaves him far behind; Concannen, more aspiring bard, Soars downwards deeper by a yard; Smart Jemmy Moor with vigour drops; The rest pursue as thick as hops. With heads to point, the gulf they enter, Linked perpendicular to the centre; And, as their heels elated rise, Their heads attempt ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... or five villages could be made out; their attention, however, was chiefly directed to the object of their journey. Some three hundred feet below the spot where they stood a rock jutted out from the hillside, and extended some five or six hundred feet into the valley. Its sides were perpendicular save where it stood out from the hill. Here a strong wall some forty feet high ran across it; two square towers stood at the angles, but there was no gateway visible. The wall was continued right round the top of the rock, which was crossed by two other walls each defended by flanking ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... sunbow's rays still arch The torrent with the many hues of heaven, And roll the sheeted silver's waving column O'er the crag's headlong perpendicular, And fling its lines of foaming light along, And to and fro, like the pale coursers tail, The Giant steed, to be bestrode by Death As ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... further heed to them, Roger and his companion now directed their whole attention to the work of climbing. At times they came on perpendicular precipices, and had to make long detours to surmount them. After some hours' labor they reached the snow. They were now near a shoulder between two lofty peaks, and after an hour's climbing stood on its crest. The Aztecs were now mere ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... 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. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... 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
... had lingered in the school yard until the other girls were out of sight, then climbing the almost perpendicular hill so rapidly that she arrived on the crest with little breath and a pain in her side, she had sauntered deliberately up and down before the imposing homes of her schoolmates, staring at them with ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... ISLAND OF LAMBAY.—In the Irish Sea, a few miles from the southeast coast of Ireland, is the Island of Lambay, owned by Cecil Baring, Esq. The island is precisely one square mile in area, and some of its sea frontage terminates in perpendicular cliffs. In many ways the island is of unusual interest to zoologists, and its fauna has been well set forth ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... a wide lagoon, which narrowed towards the southern end, where a perpendicular cliff of some extent rose directly out of the water, its summit covered with trees. Both Owen and Dan were of opinion that this formed one end of the channel leading to the sea. No boats or canoes could be discovered on the beach. Further along it to the northward ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... myself on the projecture of a rock. Above and below, the hill-side was nearly perpendicular. Opposite, and at the distance of fifteen or twenty yards, was a similar ascent. At the bottom was a glen, cold, narrow, and obscure. This projecture, which served as a kind of vestibule to the cave, was connected with a ledge, by which, though not without peril and toil, I was conducted ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... about twelve degrees, it will become necessary to fill the antarctic reservoir in June and the Arctic Ocean in December, in order to check the straightening, since otherwise it might get beyond the perpendicular and swing the other way. When this motion is completely arrested, I suggest that we blow up the Aleutian Isles and enlarge Bering Strait, so as to allow what corresponds to the Atlantic Gulf Stream in the Pacific to enter the Arctic Archipelago, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... which habitually swim in large bodies of water, having need of seeing laterally, have, in fact, their eyes placed on the sides of the head. Their bodies, more or less flattened according to the species, have their sides perpendicular to the plane of the water, and their eyes are placed in such a way that there is an eye on each flattened side. But those fishes whose habits place them under the necessity of constantly approaching the shores, and especially the shelving ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... any prospect of a termination to the storm. Chilled through, my tattered clothing saturated, I saw before me a night of horrors unless I returned to my fire. The scramble up the side of the rocky canyon in many places nearly perpendicular, was the hardest work of my journey. Often while clinging to the jutting rocks with hands and feet, to reach a shelving projection, my grasp would unclose and I would slide many feet down the sharp declivity. It was night when, sore ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... for any Sunday—whence the eyes and mind of Cosmo turned to the remnants of night that banded the street, and from them he sank into metaphysics, chequered with the champing clank of the bits, the voices of the ostlers, passengers, and guard, and the perpendicular silence of the coachman, who sat like a statue ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the fine perpendicular church standing back from the road, with its churchyard about it; and just beyond it, he turned, his pace involuntarily slackening, to look at a small gabled house, surrounded by a garden, and overhung by a splendid lime ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... miles of the main valley, which varies in width from three quarters of a mile to a mile and a half, the walls on either side are from two thousand to nearly five thousand feet above the road, and are nearly perpendicular. From these walls, rocky splinters a thousand feet in height start up, and every winter drop a few hundred tons of granite, to adorn the base of the rampart with ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... on their return,' continued Beltran, 'reported that they had followed the river till they came to a large mountain of perpendicular rocks, which it was impossible to climb, and over these rocks fell the water. And it seemed to them that on the top of this mountain were many trees; and they saw strange wild beasts, such as lions, elephants, and other sorts, which came ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... among it that overtopped the firs, and yet its diameter was so small that it looked no larger than a pole; and the supporting boughs of the firs being now removed it could not uphold itself, but bent so much from the perpendicular as to appear incapable of withstanding a gale. The bark of the oak, when stripped and stacked, requires fine weather to dry it, much the same as hay, so that a wet season like 1879 ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... figure; old indeed, and grey-haired, but with every muscle rendered as tough as whip-cord by constant exercise. He was dressed carelessly, and more like a Frenchman than an Englishman of the period, while, from his hard features and perpendicular rigidity of stature, he bore some resemblance to a Swiss officer of the guards, who had resided some time at Paris, and caught the costume, but not the ease or manner of its inhabitants. The truth was, that his language and ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... didn't know anything, how to get out of it then, so I piled in, "for," says I to myself, "never let on to any one that you don't know anything, but make them believe that you do know all about it." So says I to him, takin' up me shillalah this way (holding a very crooked stick perpendicular), "We'll take that for the straight line of the earth's equator"—how's that for gehography? (to the audience). Ah, that was straight till the other day I bent it in an argument. "Wery good," says he. "Well," says I, "now the sun rises ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... covered with nothing but flowering thyme and rounded pebbles. There was ample scope for every imaginable polygon; trapezes and triangles could be combined in all sorts of ways. The inaccessible distances had ample elbow-room; and there was even an old ruin, once a pigeon-house, that lent its perpendicular to the graphometer's performances. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... event when Cutty arrived there would be no Kitty Conover. Something that would sound unusual to Cutty and accidental to Karlov. She hit upon it. She seized a plank from her barricade, raised it to a perpendicular position, then flung it down violently. Would Cutty hear and comprehend that she was warning him? As a matter of fact, Cutty never heard the crash, for at that particular minute he was standing up to get the kinks ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... Barbara by steamer and greatly enjoyed the sail. Finding no pier upon our arrival, we had to descend an almost perpendicular ladder to a small boat. In this apparently perilous process, the boatmen were actively assisted by Captain Johnson, whose mellow toned voice softened and cheered the transit. In the descent, a woman dropped her baby ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... object that I have ever seen, either abroad or at home. Neither the Acropolis of Athens, nor the Larissa of Argos, nor even Gibraltar, can enter into the remotest competition with this gigantic citadel.' Indeed, when a man is aware of the impression produced by a perpendicular rock over six hundred feet high, he may judge of the stupendous effect from a citadel rising almost insulated in the centre of a plain, sloping to the sea, and ascending to the height of nineteen ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... that are not screened in this manner by trees planted between the stream and them. But as he drifted farther down, before he reached the bridge, the west front would have burst upon him, quite new, exceedingly rich and proud, a strict example, one may believe, of the Perpendicular, and of what was for the first time, and for a moment only, a true English Gothic. It would have stood out before him, catching the sun of the afternoon in its maze of glass. It would have seemed a thing to endure; within his lifetime it was to ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... variability in the degree and 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
... growing dim and indistinct, the sun was sinking, and the cloud, that had at first shown only a golden border, was lifting tall perpendicular masses, while the tossing of the little boat became more and more distressing. Anxiety and sense of responsibility kept Hubert from feeling physical discomfort; but Vera began to cry, and to declare that it would be the death of her if she ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... vertical &c adj.; stand up, stand on end, stand erect, stand upright; stick up, cock up. render vertical &c adj.; set up, stick up, raise up, cock up; erect, rear, raise on its legs. Adj. vertical, upright, erect, perpendicular, plumb, normal, straight, bolt, upright; rampant; standing up &c v.; rectangular, orthogonal &c 216.1. Adv. vertically &c adj.; up, on end; up on end, right on end; a plomb [Fr.], endwise; one one's legs; at ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... very bluff through which the river had cut its bed was formed of the debris it had thrown off, and constituted a bulwark protecting its flank. Farther up-stream the slope, became steeper, then changed to a rugged perpendicular face showing marks of recent cleavage. This palisade extended on and on, around the nearest bend, following the contour of the Salmon as far as they could see. The sun was reflected from its myriad angles and facets in splendid iridescence. Mammoth caves and caverns gaped. In spots ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... line 545. Many of the houses in Old Edinburgh are built to a great height, so that the common stairs leading up among a group of them have sometimes been called 'perpendicular streets.' Pitch, meaning 'height,' is taken from hawking, the height to which a bird rose depending largely on the pitch ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... been bent." Most travellers must remember the entrance to the valley of Cluse, from the plain of Bonneville, on the road from Geneva to Chamouni. They remember that immediately after entering it they find a great precipice on their left, not less than two thousand feet in perpendicular height. That precipice is formed by beds of limestone bent like a rainbow, as in Fig. 10. Their edges constitute the cliff; the flat arch which they form with their backs is covered with pine forests and meadows, extending for ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... place make a round hole through which a stem of corresponding diameter can be firmly introduced. If a similar opening is made in a second upright, the horizontal stem can be run through both. Gates, closing perpendicularly or horizontally in frames moving without friction on a perpendicular or horizontal axis, can be ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... melancholy scenes with him; I feel that. Do you remember, when we were in Switzerland together, how, as we wound down the Susten and the Grimsel passes, with the perpendicular cliffs some thousand feet above us, and a torrent as many feet below, we used to shudder at the thought of two men, wrestling upon that dizzy verge, and striving to throw each other over! I almost imagine that I am about to engage in such a strife now, with the additional horror that the contest ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Eh? (He disengages 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
... convenience dear. He had begged a dust-sheet from the housekeeper with which to cover his bed during the day, and regularly, before retiring, shook an ounce of soot out of his window. The bed, by the way, was overhung by the wall, which, for some reason best known to those who built it, deserted the perpendicular for an angle of forty-five, three inches from Anthony's nose. The candlestick had seen merrier days: that there might be no doubt about the matter, it said as much, announcing in so many words that it was ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... "General Staff," and adorned with an atmospheric double column of facetious Japanese. Anthony always handed them to Tana without a smile; hours afterward the recipient could be found puzzling over them in the kitchen and declaring earnestly that the perpendicular symbols were not ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... canoe-rest, on which the daubs of red-ochre, and the roots of trees used to fasten or tie it together appeared fresh. A canoe-rest is simply a few beams, supported horizontally, about five feet from the ground, by perpendicular posts. A party with two canoes, when descending from the interior to the sea-coast, through such a part of the country as this, where there are troublesome portages, leave one canoe resting, bottom up, on this kind of frame, to protect it from ...
— Report of Mr. W. E. Cormack's journey in search of the Red Indians - in Newfoundland • W. E. Cormack
... the seven heavenly planets by the ancient Chaldaeans; and that the meanest capacities might be informed of this, just at the central perpendicular line, on the chapter of the first pillar, which was of sapphire, stood the image of Saturn in elutian (Motteux reads 'Eliacim.') lead, with his scythe in his hand, and at his feet a crane of gold, very artfully enamelled, according to the native hue ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... in connection with the keyboard, are attached to a loop of wire called the pallet-eye, fastened to the movable end of the pallet. A piece of wire is placed on each side of every pallet to steady it and keep it in the perpendicular during its ascent and descent, and every pallet is covered at top with soft leather, to make it fit closely and work quietly. When P is pulled down (Fig. 1) the pallet C descends, and air from the wind-chest A rushes through D into the pipe over it. But the slider f is a narrow strip ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... forms grand masses of foliage which turn a beautiful golden yellow in autumn; and the Black Poplar with its perpendicular leaves, rustling and trembling with every breath of wind, towers over ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... and one soon becomes familiar with the very low platforms of the stations that are raised scarcely above the rails. The porters wear blue smocks and trousers of the same material, secured at the waist by a belt of perpendicular red and black stripes. The railway carriages have always two foot-boards, and the doors besides the usual handles have a second one half-way down the panels presumably for additional security. It is really in the nature of a bolt that turns on a pivot and falls into ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... terrific gorge over a thousand feet deep, where the purple shadows look like shrouded phantoms hastening out of sight. This abyss is crossed by means of extraordinary engineering skill, much of the roadway along the nearly perpendicular side of the ravine having been hewn out of the solid rock. To accomplish this it was necessary at first to suspend workmen by ropes over the brow of the cliffs, lowering them down until they were opposite the point to ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... scarcely fifty years, and the tower of Magdalen had just risen to rival its beauty; Duke Humfrey's Library and the Divinity School were still in their first glory, and the monks of St. Frideswide were contemplating transforming the choir of their church into the splendid Perpendicular such as Bray had achieved at Westminster and Windsor for Henry VII. But Erasmus tells us nothing of what he saw; only what he heard and said. This lack of enjoyment in Nature, lack of interest in topography and archaeology, was ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... same straight line are parallel." The evidence given is: "If they are not parallel, they will, if sufficiently produced, meet at some point, which is impossible, because from a given point without a straight line but one perpendicular can be drawn." Is this evidence sufficient to constitute proof? Does it convince you? Why, ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... observes the Rev. Mr. Nightingale, "I should conceive would now be required to repair this venerable part of St. Saviour's Church in such a manner as is absolutely necessary. The pillars have in a great degree lost their perpendicular position: the mouldings and mullions of the windows are distorted in the most shameful manner; the walls are rapidly hastening to their final decay; and the whole place appears to be destined to become once more ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... neat geometrical pattern of little scars, perpendicular on the forehead, horizontal on the cheeks and in concentric circles on the chest (done with loving care and a knife, in his infancy, by his papa) said only "Ptwack" as he chewed a mouthful of coffee-beans and hide. ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... or Tarpei'us Mons, a hill at Rome, about eighty feet in perpendicular height, whence the Romans ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... made a detour to avoid some bare, rocky island. Several of these islands were quite columnar,—being evidently the emerged capitals of basaltic prisms, like the other uplifts on the banks. A fine instance of this formation was the stately and perpendicular "Rooster Rock" on the Oregon side, but not far from Cape Horn. Still another was called "Lone Rock," and rose from the middle of the river. These came upon our view within the first hour after breakfast, in company with a slender, but graceful stream, which fell ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... of Clyde, 10 m. W. of Girvan, Ayrshire, Scotland. It is of conoidal form, with an irregular elliptic base, and rises abruptly to a height of 1114 ft. The only side from which the rock can be ascended is the east; the other sides being for the most part perpendicular, and generally presenting lofty columnar forms, though not so regular as those of Staffa. This island is composed of micro-granite with riebeckite, of great interest on account of the rare occurrence of this type in Britain. It is comparatively ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... you have no doubt already surmised to be a clear-cut line of dense fog, due to the fact that a perpendicular plane of extremely cold air in that situation cuts through an atmosphere which, on both sides of this sheet of frigid air, is exceedingly warm, and laden with moisture to the saturation-point. This curtain of ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... Weapons and bits of weapons and pieces of human bodies are scattered through it like plums. The so-called trench may be no more than a yoked line of shell holes converted with dainty toil and loss to a more perpendicular angle. And the tangled pattern of craters is itself pocked with the smaller dents of bombs. There are three grades of holes—great mine craters that look like an earth convulsion themselves, pitted with shell holes, which in turn are dimpled by bombs. Imagine a place like the Ypres salient, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... of vegetation or animal life, or by the efforts of man, by gravitation constantly tends to the common centre of attraction; and the great reason of the duration of the pyramid above all other forms is, that it is most fitted to resist the force of gravitation. The arch, the pillar, and all perpendicular constructions, are liable to fall when a degradation from chemical or mechanical causes takes place in their inferior parts. The forms upon the surface of the globe are preserved from the influence of gravitation by the attraction of cohesion, or by chemical attraction; but if their ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... it Mount Royal. The city of Hochelaga is round compassed about with timber, with three courses of rampires [stockades], one within another, framed like a sharp spire, but laid across above. The middlemost of them is made and built as a direct line but perpendicular. The rampires are framed and fashioned with pieces of timber laid along on the ground, very well and cunningly joined together after their fashion. This enclosure is in height about two rods. It hath but one gate of entry thereat, which is shut with piles, ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... there we found that the only way onto the roof was by a long perpendicular ladder leading to a trap door. We all scrambled up this—all but the Minister of Justice, who remained behind in the garret ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... a weakness was observable in her knees; and when she saw me she was not so far gone as not to know who I was. She tried to make a curtsy, and in doing so very nearly lost her balance, and it took her some ten yards to recover her perpendicular. With a little struggling, stuttering, and stumbling, she got right, and pursued ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... favorite seat 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, ferns, and thistles, and whose summits were crowned with thickets of hazel, pine, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... intricate puzzles of intersecting lines, sacred devices, anagrams, and, among others, the device of a bar across a tun, indicating the name of Barton. Most of the carving, however, is less elaborate and intricate than these specimens, being in a perpendicular style, and on one pattern. Before the wood grew so very dark, the beauty of the work must have been much more easily seen than now, as to particulars, though I hardly think that the general effect could have been better; at least, the sombre richness that overspreads ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sir, that an ordinary robin is perfectly aware that while squirrels and cats are able to ascend the perpendicular trunk of a tree, they cannot climb the painted pillar of a piazza; and consequently it is perfectly safe to build a nest at the top ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... a horse wading into a pebbly stream. That was enough. A minute later I was struggling to reach the stone I had fought to gain before; and by its help I got upon my feet, when I saw Sandho some twenty yards away, standing in a depression by the side of a perpendicular mass of rock, down whose side a spring of water gushed and ran off below the rock, to sink out ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... down, and just opposite the catafalque so that it is perpendicular to the direction of vision, stand the central powers of our government, its President and counsellors. President Johnson is facing the middle of the coffin upon the lowest step; his hands are crossed upon his ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... and cut into pens, and Indian ink was rubbed, whole weeks passed, without the least bit having been done. With just as much ado he always set about his writing, and really, by degrees, put together a most charming manuscript. The title of the poems was in German text; the verses themselves in a perpendicular Saxon hand; and at the end of every poem was an analogous vignette, which he had either selected somewhere or other, or had invented himself, and in which he contrived to imitate very neatly the hatching of the wood-cuts and tail- pieces which are used for such purposes. To show me these things ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... 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 ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... that similar aid could have been afforded to Warburton and others who attempted to trace the south-coast line. But for hundreds of miles along the shores of the Bight no vessel could reach the shore or lie safely at anchor. Long ranges of perpendicular cliffs, from 300 to 400 feet high, presented a barrier effectually forbidding approach by sea. About 1867, however, an excellent harbour was discovered about 260 miles to the west of Fowler's Bay. The South Australian Government at once undertook a survey of this ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... longitude from latitude now; and I'm always puzzled as to which is perpendicular ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Bill Talpers who had evolved the neat little plan of changing the ID brand of the Interior Department to the "two-pole pumpkin" brand, which was done merely by extending another semicircle to the left of the "I" and connecting that letter and the "D" at top and bottom, thus making two perpendicular lines ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... between the ledge and the shore, and in a moment more the boat struck heavily upon the gravelly beach, which was, at this time of tide, not more than ten feet wide, and the waves already rolled over it against the perpendicular rocks. With one consent, the four men leaped from the boat into the surf. The mate carried the painter on shore with him, and endeavored to swing around the boat, which had come stern foremost to the beach. Burns imprudently moved out into the surf to assist him, when the ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic |
