"Ravine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the gap where they expected to look over the pass, but it was blotted out by a mist, not in itself visible though hiding everything, and they were turning to go home when, in the ravine near at hand, the white ruggedness of the Wildstrube glacier gleamed on ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of a small frame house that stood near the edge of a ravine near the town of Winesburg, Ohio, a fat little old man walked nervously up and down. Across a long field that had been seeded for clover but that had produced only a dense crop of yellow mustard weeds, he could see ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... Boislaurier led and placed their men. Hiley hid in ambush with Minard, Cabot, and Bruce at the right of the Chesnay forest; Boislaurier, Grenier, and Horeau took the centre; Courceuil, Herbomez, and Lisieux occupied the ravine to the left of the wood. All these positions are indicated on the ground-plan drawn by the engineer of the government survey-office, which is ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... forests dwindle, till on the immediate coast they wholly disappear. At Caribou Island, which, the reader will remember, is south of the Strait of Belle Isle, I found in a ravine some sadly stunted spruces, firs, and larches, not more than three feet high,—melancholy, wind-draggled, frightened-looking shrubs, which had wondrously the air of lifelong ill-usage. The tangled tops were mostly flattened and pressed over to one side, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... the doorway of Sunny Creek Cottage watching a clumsy vehicle as it laboured slowly up the hill. I was alone that day, old Mrs Liston, Eve, and "Aunt Temple" having gone off in the waggon for a long drive to visit a relative with hunting proclivities, who had built himself a log-hut in a ravine of the neighbouring mountains, that he might be in closer proximity to ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... north a lovely plain that rises a few miles away into a long low ridge which forms the sharp and clear horizon. To the south and east a narrow valley that is little more than a deep ravine, the sides of the precipitous hills covered with forest to the brink of the stream, which twists and turns at sharp angles like a wounded snake, shining as burnished silver when one catches glimpses of it through the trees, and playing an important part in a landscape which at brief distance ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... Water, the cattleman thought of a short-cut, through a little used timber-trail, which would save him several miles; but it was crossed by a ravine cut by a winter avalanche like the slash of a gigantic knife. To descend into this ravine and ascend on the farther side would be a tortuous process, which would take more time than to continue by the longer route. But if the gelding could jump the narrow cleft in the trail, the distance saved ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... a driving party; it was to drive out of town to Purgatory, a pretty place, where there is a brook in a deep ravine with a verdant meadow-floor; and there they were to take food and drink, as is the way of humanity in pretty places. Now it so happened that the Austins, Miss Warfield, Breeze, and Pinckney were going to drive in a party, the Austins and ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... about his own affairs. He slept badly; but Vanno was accustomed to taking little sleep, therefore it did not occur to him to be tired because he woke finally at seven, after having lain awake till the ringing of Ste. Devote's five o'clock bells, down in the ravine. Instead, he felt a kind of burning energy which forced him to activity of some sort. After his cold bath he dressed quickly, and went out to walk, wishing himself back in the Libyan desert, where he had not seen or thought of ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... did not know which way to turn. Up the track a big cut in the rocks blocked his way, and down was a deep ravine. ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... of birds, and nightingales may be heard in plenty in the spring. The situation is magnificent. The town stands upon the summit of a promontory spreading out like the fingers of a hand, and at its base the river foams and rushes, entering a deep winding ravine and plunging beneath a rocky precipice several hundred feet high, on the top of which a few houses appear. The steep sides are green with trees to a certain height, and then the grey rock appears scantily covered with grass in places; ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... at Marathon on the night of our arrival, conducted me on the following day, to the spot selected by her as the treasure house of Raymond's dear remains. It was in a recess near the head of the ravine to the south of Hymettus. The chasm, deep, black, and hoary, swept from the summit to the base; in the fissures of the rock myrtle underwood grew and wild thyme, the food of many nations of bees; enormous crags protruded into the cleft, some beetling over, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... them—but to me they are almost valueless. Its depth is beyond human comprehension in figures, and so is its width. And the eye of the best trained man in the world cannot grasp all its features of wall and butte and canyon, of winding ridge and curving ravine, of fell precipice and rocky gorge, in a week, a month, a year, or a lifetime. Hence words can but suggest; nothing can describe the indescribable; nothing can picture what no man ever ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... Point, Thornton said to Mrs. Bagshaw, "Do you know, there are some such splendid ferns grow in a little ravine you can see there on the side of that hill. Do let ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... open with fools losing their money, no English passants looking after amusement, no valetudinarians drinking the poupon, no Spa boxes crowding every window: we are now as a Spa should be, a coterie of houses in a ravine, surrounded by the mountains of the Ardennes, crowding and shoving up together in mutual protection against the deep snow and the forest wolves. There is something new in this: most of the houses are shut up; the shop-windows are ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the opening, walking with difficulty over the large, loose stones, rounded by the flow of the stream. The ascent was steep, and the torrent of water that poured down through the ravine increased the trials of its passage. But the wrecked wanderer felt that he was safe from the fury of the savage waves. When he came to a flat rock, only a few feet above the beach, upon which he could step out of the little torrent, he paused to rest and recover his breath. Then he thought of his ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... and Sirikol, to avoid the Tangi-Tar and Shindi defiles. As the season advances, these passes become free from snow, while the defiles are rendered dangerous and difficult by the rush of the melting snow torrents. From the Chichiklik plain we proceeded down the Shindi ravine, over an extremely bad stony road, to the Sirikol River, up the banks of which we travelled to Tashkurgan, reaching it on the tenth day from Yangi-Hissar. The total distance is 125 miles.' Then Tashkurgan ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... to the middle of September the storms are terrific; every ravine becomes a raging torrent; trees are rooted up by the mountain streams swollen above their banks, and the Atbara becomes a vast river, bringing down with an overwhelming current the total drainage of four large rivers—the ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... till we came to that place where one sees the foot path on the other side of the ravine, then we crossed over and took that. For a good while we were in a dense forest and judged we were lost, but met a native women who said we were all right. We fooled along and got there at 6 p.m.—ate supper, then followed down the ravine to the foot of the falls, then struck into a blind ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you're right," he answered. "Well, here's the plan. There's a deep ravine that runs clear across the frontier. I spent an hour in it. They've built a plank bridge across the top just this side of the line, and the patrol comes to the ravine about every three minutes. It is practically impossible to get out of sight and sound along ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... our speech was cut short, as from out of the ravine before us into which the road dipped there suddenly emerged one of the troopers I had sent on ahead. As the man came galloping up to us I thought at first that he bore ill tidings, but it turned out that ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... over what was apparently a ravine, and then came a flat bit with long grass at the sides and more flowers. They felt the grass flicking wet against their stockings, and the invisible flowers were everywhere. Then up again through trees, along a zigzag path with ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... some instances of their doing so; and I have known of one instance in my neighbourhood where a tiger after killing a bullock took it into the jungle and carried the carcase along the trunk of a tree which had fallen across a ravine. But considering its size, the dragging power of a panther is much more remarkable, and it seems to carry off a bullock as easily as a tiger does. On one occasion a panther killed a donkey close to my bungalow, and carried it off, and ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... bank was barren of bushes, sometimes gliding swiftly through a friendly covert of alder or sumach. The hills closed in upon them, and became more precipitous. The stream made another bend, and they were in a ravine where the water flowed over a rocky bed between banks too steep to afford them secure foothold. The Susquehannock swung himself down into the shallow water, and motioned to his companion to do likewise. "Monakatocka smells ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... the Castle Rocks by the path that now loses and now finds itself among the fastnesses of the forest, stretching to the loftiest outlook on the bay. The savage woodland is penetrated only by this forgetful path, that passes now and then aver the bridge of a ravine, and offers to the eye on either hand the mystery deepening into wilder and weirder tracts of solitude. The party resolved itself into twos and threes, and these straggled far apart, out of conversational reach of one another. Mrs. Pasmer ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... handlebars, Mausers slung over their shoulders, pedaling heavily through the mud and slush of a cold September storm. A few mitrailleuses, known as the Minerva type, and mounted on armored motor-cars, were trained on the ravine through which the road dipped a thousand yards ahead of us. They had sighted the German outposts on the crest of a hill opposite us about three quarters of a mile away. In a very poor kind of trench, hastily constructed in the beet-fields, ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... foster-brother, to share in the golden profits of the enterprise; for fifty cents a day, and a contingent dividend of twenty dollars apiece, seemed like a promise of immediate opulence to the boys. In the spring, when the rivers broke up and the melting snows began to pour in torrents down every ravine and gully, the three young men paddled down the Sangamon in a canoe to the point where Jamestown now stands; whence they walked five miles to Springfield, where Offutt had given them rendezvous. They met him at Elliott's tavern and far from happy. Amid the multiplicity of his engagements ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... of vegetation for ages by the countless passing buffalo; blackened by rain and sun; only the more desolate for a few dwarfish cedars and other timber scant and dreary to the eye. Encircling this hill in somewhat the shape of a horseshoe, a deep ravine heavily wooded and rank with grass and underbrush. The Kentuckians, disorderly foot and horse, rushing in foolhardiness to the top of this uncovered expanse of rock; the Indians, twice, thrice, their number, engirdling its base, ringing them round with hidden death. The whole tragedy repossessed ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... statues of stone, yet even there a hope lingered among a few that some day their old heroes would come again, for certainly none had ever seen them die. Now it had been the wont of these six warriors of old, as each received his last wound and knew it to be mortal, to ride away to a certain deep ravine and cast his body in, as somewhere I have read great elephants do, hiding their bones away from lesser beasts. It was a ravine steep and narrow even at the ends, a great cleft into which no man could come by any path. There rode Welleran alone, panting ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... The capricious ravine of streets did not cut this block of houses into too disproportionate slices. The forty-two colleges were scattered about in a fairly equal manner, and there were some everywhere. The amusingly varied crests of these beautiful edifices were the product of the same ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... on the south side, at the spot on which in better days the Valley Gate had stood, a gate which was so called because it opened into the Valley of Hinnom, he turned into the ravine, and went eastward. No doubt there was a moon, and by its quiet light he could see the heaps of rubbish, and the work of the fire which had destroyed the gates 150 years ago. How sad and forsaken it all looked ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... foot it over a trestle-bridge that sagged in the swift current of a swollen stream; and gladder still when our locomotive began to puff and blow and slaken its pace as we climbed up into the mouth of a ravine fragrant with the warm scents of summer—albeit we could boast but a solitary brace of cars, and these small ones, and not ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... widow. I never knew whether she received it, for all the address I had was Saarlouis. Eckenstein I saw buried with two officers in a soldier's grave under the hawthorn. Any one taking the ascent up the fourth ravine Forbach-ward from the bluff of the Spicheren, may easily find it about halfway up. It may be recognised by the wooden cross bearing the rude inscription: "Hier ruhen in Gott 2 Officiere, 1 Feldwebel, 40ste Hohenzol. ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... now in sight of Monte Moro, which, as the name denotes, was once a fortress of the Moors; it is a high steep hill, on the summit and sides of which are ruined walls and towers; at its western side is a deep ravine or valley, through which a small stream rushes, traversed by a stone bridge; farther down there is a ford, over which we passed and ascended to the town, which, commencing near the northern base, passes over the lower ridge towards the north-east. The town is exceedingly picturesque, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... open ground, the vetch, and comfrey, and mezereon, and the small sapphire buds of the Polygala Alpina, and the wild strawberry, just a blossom or two all showered amidst the golden softness of deep, warm, amber-coloured moss. I came out presently on the edge of the ravine: the solemn murmur of its waters rose suddenly from beneath, mixed with the singing of the thrushes among the pine boughs; and, on the opposite side of the valley, walled all along as it was by grey cliffs of limestone, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... morning to see El-Beer, or "the well," the real fountain of life in these countries. Was much pleased with the visit; and found it at the bottom of a deep ravine, bubbling out from beneath the shade of palms and olives, amidst wild scenery of rugged steeps and hanging rocks. There are indeed, four springs, but all apparently from the same source. They are not deep, and have near them troughs for watering ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... thus cooped up, not knowing at what minute they might be taken, and almost hopeless of escape. Fortunately, they discovered a deep and dark ravine that led down from the mountains through the line of sentries. The posts of two of these reached to the edges of the ravine, on opposite sides. Down this gloomy and rough defile crept noiselessly the fugitives, hearing the tread of the sentinels above their heads as ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... made active use of the hours since he parted from Toussaint. He must have sent messengers in many directions; for, from beneath the shadow of every cacao grove, from under the branches of many a clump of bamboos, from the recess of a ravine here— from the mouth of a green road there, beside the brawling brook, or from their couch among the canes, appeared negroes, singly or in groups, ready to join the travelling party. Among all these, there were no women and children. ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... four individuals, so as to make what seems like quite a little troop of bears. A small ranchman who lived a dozen miles from me on the Little Missouri once found a she-bear and three half-grown cubs feeding at a berry-patch in a ravine. He shot the old she in the small of the back, whereat she made a loud roaring and squealing. One of the cubs rushed towards her; but its sympathy proved misplaced, for she knocked it over with a hearty cuff, either out of mere temper, ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... a long ridge on its farther shore. At a spring of cool water in a deep ravine they halted to drink and rest. Suddenly they heard a sound of men approaching; and when the latter had come near, a voice, deep, vibrant, and musical as a harp-string, in ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... are, and you know them, too," he said, slowly. "Perhaps nobody else knows, but we know that my Lord and Lady Saxondale and the two Americans were your abductors. The man I dumped into the ravine ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... were well rested, the vettura again started, as the first faint light of day shone in the east. About two miles from Valmontone, they commenced the ascent of the mountains, and shortly had two oxen attached to help drag their vehicle upward. The road wound along a mountain side—a ravine far below them—and from its base arose a high conical mountain opposite to them, as they slowly toiled upward. Again and again they pulled through heavy clouds of mist hanging around the mountain side, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and Aggie was giving a squeal with every peal. We were too far gone for pride. I helped her out of her sleeping-bag and we started after Tish and the donkey. The rain poured down on us. At every step torrents from Thunder Cloud and the Camel's Back soaked us. The wind howled up the ravine and the lightning ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... stands at the head of a landlocked arm of the sea, surrounded by forest-clad hills, and approached through narrow ravine-like straits. Cervera had come there to obtain coal and supplies. If he had made it only a temporary base, and had been able to coal immediately, and put to sea to attack the American cruisers scattered over the Caribbean waters, he might have scored successes for a while. But he ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... the Oberinnthal still nearer—twelve mountain goats and a cow her undisputed property. She found him out, though he had strayed through the court of the inn, and down a hanging garden to the borders of a torrent that drenched the air and sounded awfully in the dark ravine below. He embraced her very mildly. 'One scream and you go,' he said; she felt the saving hold of her feet plucked from her, with all the sinking horror, and bit her under lip, as if keeping in the scream with bare stitches. When he released her she was perfectly mastered. 'You do play tricks,' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and in five minutes more Doctor Chowne came scrambling down the side of the ravine upon his pony, with Bob hanging on to ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... meadows brought us to the head of the first rapids, the scene of our two days' upward struggle. These rapids extend about twelve miles as the river runs, alternating between rattling, rocky plunges and swift, smooth water, for the most part through a densely-wooded ravine cleft through low but abrupt hills, and as lonely and cheerless as the heart of Africa. The solitude is of that sort which takes hold upon the very soul and weaves about it hues of the sombrest cast. From our parting with the Indians on first reaching the river we had neither seen nor heard ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... a judicious system of zig-zagging, convert the channel, so far as he is himself concerned, into a sort of rough staircase, some two thousand feet or so in length. The torrent itself takes a more direct course; and he who has descended by the ravine may well look up with wonder at what has the appearance of a continuous cataract, which, falling a large mass of waters at his feet, seems as if it diminished and disappeared in the heavens. The Staubbach, or Fall of Dust, in Lauter Brunen, is beyond question a fine object. The water ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... the shade of the wall, I will take care to cross the open spaces when his back is turned. I will then come straight here for you, and we will make for the wall behind the governor's house. There is no sentry on that side, for that steep ravine covers it from attack there. However, there are six or eight feet of level ground between the foot of the wall and the edge of the ravine. The walls are twenty feet in height. With fifty feet of that rope I will make a ladder, and will get hold ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... to look down upon, and the boy saw a good deal of it, because the eagle was trying to find the old fiddler, Clement Larsson, and flew from ravine to ravine ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... rises, steep on three sides as a castle wall, to the height of a hundred and twenty-five feet above the river. In front, it overhangs the water that washes its base; its western brow looks down on the tops of the forest trees below; and on the east lies a wide gorge, or ravine, choked with the mingled foliage of oaks, walnuts, and elms; while in its rocky depths a little brook creeps down to mingle with ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... This was no stranger, no intruder. He knew every inch of both house and grounds, and, after having set the house on fire, he had selected the only line of retreat, but a safe one, through the thick and lofty vegetation of the garden, which ran down to the edge of the ravine in the rear, where he could slip quietly under the fence, drop through the thick grass into the ravine unseen by the pickets, and escape at his leisure in ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the cliffs for half a mile. Then Howard turned Sanchia's horse loose, driving the animal down into a dark ravine where there would be no finding it ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... each other even at that distance; he uttered a low exclamation of satisfaction, sprang from his saddle, and led his horse down among the mossy rocks of the water-course to the shelf of rock overhanging the ravine where she stood as motionless as one of the ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... want to go to the Academy, do you, Jack?" asked Percival. "You can run in as far as the ravine. You came down ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... arrived on the scene, and is making its bivouac for the night, some of the later regiments not having yet come up. A dropping fire of musketry from skirmishers ahead keeps snapping through the air. The Emperor's tent stands in a ravine in the foreground amid the squares of the Old Guard. Aides and other ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... to be filled delayed Raymond, who succeeded, by paying a small sum to every one who would throw three stones, in building, in three days, a good path across the ravine. This done, the signal was given ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... tents are pitched upon abroad shelf half-way down a considerable hill. Behind us the hill rises a hundred feet or more, shutting us in from the south; in front, to the north, the hill inclines to a ravine which separates us from other less lofty hills. Our camp is upon open ground, but there is a fine forest to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... hours, and the thin, spiry, mountain pine trees stand each stock-still and loaded with a shining burthen. You may drive through a forest so disguised, the tongue-tied torrent struggling silently in the cleft of the ravine, and all still except the jingle of the sleigh bells, and you shall fancy yourself in some untrodden northern ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... before Constantine, and we had to defile before the enemy's guns. At one portion of the road, men and horses were tumbled over by their fire; the caisson that I was riding upon was upset by a ball, and thrown down the ravine, dragging the horses after it. I lay among the horses' legs—they kicking furiously; it was a miracle that my life ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... serious and a more striking display was still to follow. The artillery were to exhibit their powers; and the crowd rushed out, and scattered over the hill to see its practice. A sheet was attached to the opposite face of the ravine, the valley rang to the roar of the guns; and as the white cloth flew in shreds to the wind, under a rapid discharge of round shot, canister, and grape, amid the crumbling of the rock, and the rush of falling stones, shouts ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... pleasure and success, of which we commonplace mortals scarcely taste a drop. When my peasant-maiden Rosa gives me a smile, I am at the summit of bliss; but my bliss-mountain is not so high that I fear a fall from it. If it were the princess that gladdened me so, I should expect a tumble into the ravine now and then, and would not mind the hard scramble up again, to reach the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... picnicking in the ravine below there. They used to be rigidly excluded, but we can't stand that; and this is the first experiment of admitting them on condition that they ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... clambered up a narrow gully, apparently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended, Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for a moment, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder-showers which often take place in mountain heights, he proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... folk-song would float through the forest and echo among the crags above him. It was a good three hours' walk whither he was bound, but in less than an hour he stopped where a brook tumbled noisily from a steep ravine and across the road—stopped and looked up the thick shadows whence it came. Hesitant, he stood on one foot and then on the other, with a wary look down the ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... rear-platform; now the solid crash of coal shot into the tender; and now a beating back of noises as they flew past a waiting train. Now they looked out into great abysses, a trestle purring beneath their tread, or up to rocks that barred out half the stars. Now scaur and ravine changed and rolled back to jagged mountains on the horizon's edge, and now broke into hills lower and lower, till at last ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... every step, and turned out of our way to see wild pine-apples in a sandy spot, or 'Arenal' in a valley beneath. The meeting of the stiff marl and the fine sand was abrupt, and well marked by the vegetation. On one side of the ravine the tall fan-leaved Carats marked the rich soil; on the other, the sand and gravel loving Cocorites appeared at once, crowding their ostrich plumes together. Most of them were the common species of the island {202a} in which the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the art of war, they had garbed themselves in white furs, presenting an almost impossible target for the men inside the hut. A spokesman had come forward demanding the body of Shanks, and was told to go to blazes. They now crept along the deep ravine spread out over the ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... bank, overshadowed by trees, from which it peeped forth upon the Great Tappan Zee, so famous among early Dutch navigators. A bright pure spring welled up at the foot of the green bank; a wild brook came babbling down a neighboring ravine, and threw itself into a little woody cove, in front of the mansion. It was indeed as quiet and sheltered a nook as the heart of man could require, in which to take refuge from the cares and troubles ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... ascertain in what this inclined plane terminated. Daggett, however, insisted that he knew the spot; that they had passed up it. There was a broad shelf a short distance below them; and once on that shelf, it would be necessary to make a considerable circuit in order to reach a certain ravine, down which the path would be reasonably easy. All remembered the shelf and the ravine; the question was merely whether the first lay beneath them, and as near as Daggett supposed. A mistaken confidence ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... distance from his camp, he cut out the tongue and some of the choice bits, made them into a parcel, and slinging them on his shoulders by a strap passed round his forehead, as the voyageurs carry packages of goods, set out on his way to the camp. In passing through a narrow ravine, he heard a noise behind him, and looking round, beheld, to his dismay, a grizzly bear in full pursuit, apparently attracted by the scent of the meat. Cannon had heard so much of the strength and ferocity of this fierce animal, that he never attempted to fire, but slipping the strap from his ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... fence eating apples. We were wondering why that ravine place wasn't cleaned up, when everywhere else was, and then Leon said there might be a reason. He told about having seen a black man, and that he was hidden some place, and we hunted there and found it. We rolled back the stone, and opened the door, and Leon ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... valley are outside, having come to see the wahine haole: only one white woman, and she a resident of Hawaii, having been seen in Waimanu before. I am really alone, miles of mountain and gulch lie between me and the nearest whites. This is a wonderful place: a ravine about three miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide, without an obvious means of ingress, being walled in by precipices from 2000 to 4000 feet high. Five cascades dive from the palis at its head, and unite to ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Solid Muldoon, of Ouray, The Tombstone Epitaph, of Nevada, The Jimplecute, of Texas, and The Bazoo, of Missouri. Shirttail Bend, Whiskey Flat, Puppytown, Wild Yankee Ranch, Squaw Flat, Rawhide Ranch, Loafer's Ravine, Squitch Gulch, Toenail Lake, are a few of the names of places in ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... did a ravine open from this basin, winding its way up the entire ascent, but a copious stream of water ran through it, foaming and roaring amid its glens. At first, Mark supposed this was sea-water, still finding its way from some lake on the Peak; but, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... owing to a succession of small elevations such as in 1822. With these certain proofs of the recent residence of the ocean over all the lower parts of Chili, the outline of every view and the form of each valley possesses a high interest. Has the action of running water or the sea formed this deep ravine? was a question which often arose in my mind and generally was answered by finding a bed of recent shells at the bottom. I have not sufficient arguments, but I do not believe that more than a small fraction of the height of the Andes has been formed within the Tertiary ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... month of August, nearly two months after the death of Justine, that miserable epoch from which I dated all my woe. The weight upon my spirit was sensibly lightened as I plunged yet deeper in the ravine of Arve. The immense mountains and precipices that overhung me on every side, the sound of the river raging among the rocks, and the dashing of the waterfalls around spoke of a power mighty as Omnipotence—and I ceased to fear or to bend before ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... case t' be tried, which I remember, was that o' the Ophir against McCall. The court met in a stable, an' each side come armed. One witness was shot at several times as he was ridin' homeward, down a ravine at nightfall. Party spirit ran too high, an' the danger o' bringin' in a unanimous verdict was too great for any jury t' risk their lives by comin' to an agreement. There was no justice; so there was nothin' left but to fight it out, the same as when nations go to war. An' what were they goin' ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... the roar of water and pushing on faster came to a foaming creek that plunged down a stony ravine. A bridge crossed the gorge, and leaving the track he clambered down the rocky bank. Where the spray had fallen there were patches of ice, but Foster felt that he must get a drink. When he was half-way ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... had crossed close to the boulevard at the moment the break occurred, had leaned far out of his cab as the train thundered by at right angles to the "fill," and with cupped hands to his mouth, had hurled this yell into the ravine: ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... he had been wearing, and threw it over his arm; while Don folded his, and laid it down, so that he could peer over the edge of the shelf, and command the entrance to the ravine. ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... leave the forest, ambling quietly on horseback through the green ways, when he roused a mighty bear. The limehound was slipped and the bear lumbered off, pursued by Siegfried and his men. They dashed into a ravine, and here Siegfried thought to run the beast down, but the sides were too steep and the knight could not approach it on horseback. Lightly he sprang from his steed, and the bear, seeing his approach, once more took flight. So swift, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... breath of air, his rays warmed me and began to dry my outer garments. I must have had a very draggled look, and I had no wish to be seen by any one at home in that condition. In little more than a quarter of an hour we came in sight of a cottage situated below a cliff on the side of a ravine, opening out towards the sea. A stream which flowed from the Squire's ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... beautiful as a dream, and now to me almost as indistinct. I am so tired;—for, though healthy, I have not the strength I possessed but a few years ago. At Montbovon we breakfasted; afterwards, on a steep ascent, dismounted; tumbled down; cut a finger open; the baggage also got loose and fell down a ravine, till stopped by a large tree; recovered baggage; horse tired and drooping; mounted mule. At the approach of the summit of Dent Jument[1] dismounted again with Hobhouse and all the party. Arrived at a lake in the very bosom of the mountains; left our quadrupeds with a shepherd, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... one-story house with a high-peaked roof in which were set three small dormer windows. There was a little dooryard in front, a Dutch hall door with an iron knocker, a well near by with the old oaken bucket General Morris had immortalised, and back of the house a picturesque ravine through which ran a clear stream of water that presently found its way out to the Passaic. Willows bent over it, elms and maples stood, tall ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... an instant, pensive, to see a cart drawn by oxen pass at a great distance above him. The cowboy who drove the slow team sang also; through a bad and rocky path, they descended into a ravine bathed in shadows ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... caste Here herte upon such wrong to winne, Wher no beyete mai ben inne, And doth desese on every side: Bot whan reson is put aside And will governeth the corage, The faucon which that fleth ramage 2430 And soeffreth nothing in the weie, Wherof that he mai take his preie, Is noght mor set upon ravine, Than thilke man which his covine Hath set in such a maner wise: For al the world ne mai suffise To will which is noght resonable. Wherof ensample concordable Lich to this point of which I meene, Was upon Alisandre sene, 2440 Which hadde set al his entente, So as fortune with him wente, ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... them. But this did not last long. In a very few seconds, we created a commotion among them. One or two, which were knocked over by the balls, jumped up and ran off into the hills; and they began to retreat slowly along a broad ravine to the river, fighting furiously as they went. By the time they had reached the bottom, we had pretty well dispersed them, and the old bull hobbled off to lie down somewhere. One of his enemies remained on the ground where ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... horseman disappeared as she closed the soliloquy. He had not, however, at all slackened his pace, but, on the contrary, evidently increased it, as she could hear by the noise of his horse's feet. At this moment she reached the brow of the ravine, and our readers may form some conception of what she felt when, on looking down it she saw her lover, young Dalton, toiling up towards her with feeble and failing steps, while pressing after him from the bottom, came ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... and following Mr. Rose's direction they climbed down a rocky ravine and, sure enough, found themselves right beside the little tumbling brook. Dolly sat on a rock and gazed upward at the precipice, looking at the very spot where she had ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... was lovelier than before. The road crept and curled down the hill, now covered from side to side with the interlacing boughs of grand old chestnuts; now barriered on the edge of a ravine with broken fragments and boulders of granite, garlanded by heavy vines; now skirting orchards full of promise; and all the way companied by a tiny brook, veiled deeply in alder and hazel thickets, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... was protected by a deep ravine; their rear by a rivulet; their front was lined with their seventy-five guns, chained together so as to protect the artillerymen from a charge of horse. The ground in front of them was covered with deep grass, ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... about three miles, but not a man present was able to obtain a shot, because their riding animals were so completely frightened as to be almost unmanageable; consequently, the bears made good their escape. The last that was seen of them was their dim outlines as they traveled leisurely up a deep ravine.] ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... his eyes from this and looked out eastward where the road fell away below us. The sunset sky was a vault of rich velvet, fading away into mauve and silver round the edges of the dark mountain amphitheatre; and between us and the ravine below rose up out of the deeps and went up into the heights the straight solitary rock we call Green Finger. Of a queer volcanic colour, and wrinkled all over with what looks undecipherable writing, it hung there like a Babylonian pillar ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... a hill, a sort of ravine with steep high banks on either side, and stately pines stretching their blue-green foliage up against the evening sky. A red glow of sunset made the dark stems look like fiery pillars, and presently as they reached ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... eyes and a glowing face. The snow-tipped mountains far above and away, the fir-covered, cedar-ranged foothills, and, lower down, the wonderful maple and ash woods, with their hundred autumn tints, all merging to one soft, red tone, the roar of the stream tumbling down the ravine from the heights, the air that braced the nerves like wine—it all seemed to be part of her, the passion of life corresponding to the passion of ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the sea is greatest, but it narrows towards either extremity, the mountains coming close down to the water at the horns of the bay. There is a valley trending inwards from the middle of the plain, and a ravine comes down to it to the southward. Elsewhere it, is closely girt round on the land side by rugged limestone mountains, which are thickly studded with pines, olive-trees, and cedars, and overgrown with ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... Twigs and crackling leaves seemed to evade his feet; eye and ear were ever alert. Though he knew he was alone in the bush, the way of a lifetime refused to sleep within him. By a circuitous route he approached a tangle of trees that hung out from a steep projection in the rising sides of the ravine. His eyes were flitting now about at his feet, and sometimes he carefully passed a boot over marks only he could detect. Once, whistling in soft surprise, he scattered a handful ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... the ground and ran to the side of the ravine. He left his blanket on the back of the horse, and leaned his rifle against the base of the rocks, up which he began climbing with the nimbleness of a sailor ascending the rigging of a ship. His intention was to reach the level ground above, from which he could gain a view that would ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... guard, his proud green helmet stretched up into the sky so that he might be the more able to see any approaching danger. A great smoke-stained rock lay just at the end of the house, before which was built a primitive fireplace. An assortment of tin cans, lying in the little ravine, told the simple tale of bygone campfire suppers and of hunters and explorers ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... have afforded; and having spent the night quietly, we proceeded on to the upper courses of the M'yombo river, which trends its way northwards to the Mukondokua river. The scenery was most interesting, with every variety of hill, roll, plateau, and ravine, wild and prettily wooded; but we saw nothing of the people. Like frightened rats, as soon as they caught the sound of our advancing march, they buried themselves in the jungles, carrying off their grain with them. Foraging parties, of necessity, were sent ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... still suddenly, so suddenly that Pocahontas behind him could not stop quickly enough and fell against him and almost down into a ravine that lay beneath, but Nautauquas caught her on ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... live while he spent so generously on his own expensive interests. Shortly after their marriage, he had built a home for Beryl and himself in an exclusive suburb, on a hilly bit of land with a deep ravine at the back. But it was small and Beryl had not even been allowed maids except when they entertained, which was seldom. Soon he would change all that, Stern told himself. They had not dared to while ...
— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel
... door. Our steed was a very lank, bony, long-eared mule, and the vehicle a rather disreputable looking old delivery wagon, kindly loaned to us by our grocer; but we were thankful for anything that would take us safely. We soon came to a deep, ugly-looking ravine, that must be crossed. I walked over the log that spanned it, while Dominie "rattled his bones over the stones," down the steep descent, and up the farther side in safety, thanks to the sure-footed mule. Just beyond was a small rude ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 9, September, 1889 • Various
... neighbourhood of the hotels. The whole of the steep rocky gorge of that tiny torrent the Canneto is full of mills, each emitting a whirring sound which mingles with the continual plash of the water as it descends in miniature cascades the full length of the ravine, providing in its headlong course towards the sea the motive power required to turn all this quantity of machinery. Bridges span the Canneto at several points, whilst either bank is occupied by tiny factories of paper or soap, and by winding stone stair-ways that lead upward to terraces contrived ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... some time on one of the West India Islands informs us that while he was once travelling along the bed of a deep ravine overhung with thick vines, he was actually startled by the immense numbers of humming birds which hovered over and about him. They hovered about him as if actuated by curiosity alone. They were of various kinds and colors, some of them ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... young man shrank in his seat. His vision was not of Democracy, but of a freezing night—of a ragged old voice rising from the blackness of a steep ravine— ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... indicated by the speaker. In front of the ravine in which we were, extended the line of the Indian camp, not a hundred yards distant from the rocks that lay around its entrance. There was an Indian sentinel still nearer; but it would be impossible to pass out, even were he asleep, without encountering ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... Harutsch, a long range of dreary mountains, the mons ater of the ancients, through the successive defiles of which they found only a narrow track enclosed by rugged steeps, and obstructed by loose stones. Every valley too and ravine into which they looked, appeared still more wild and desolate than the road itself. A scene of a more gay and animated description succeeded, when they entered the district of Limestone Mountains, called the White Harutsch. The rocks and stones here appeared as if glazed, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the precipice descends, Loud the torrent roars unseen; Thirty feet from side to side Yawns the chasm; on air must ride He who crosses this ravine, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... implements for gathering the leaves, in the third of the selection of the leaves. According to him the best quality of the leaves must have "creases like the leathern boot of Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr, and be wet and soft like fine earth newly swept ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... over here a little closer I'll point out the tree. See? Right down the ravine there? See the big limb swaying? That's the place. The old lady is carrying her joke too far. That's pretty close home. Stand right there, please. I won't let ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... one for West Africa. Every village has its chief, but the whole tribe obey one great chief or king who lives in the crater-ravine at Riabba. This individual is called Moka, but whether he is now the same man referred to by Rogoszinsky, Mr. Holland, and the Rev. Hugh Brown, who attempted to interview him in the seventies, I do not feel sure, for the Bubis are just the sort of people to keep a big king going with ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... and heroism, resembled that of the 23rd Light Dragoons at Talavera. The fall into the ravine, on that occasion, was much deeper than that into which the Lancers dashed; but it was not occupied by a desperate force, and although many were injured by the fall, it was in their subsequent charge, against a whole French division, that ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... he overtook her. Rather, he sighted her in the trail, saw her duck in amongst the rocks and scattered brush of a small ravine, and spurred after her. It was precarious footing for his horse when he left the road, but John Doe was accustomed to that. He jumped boulders, shied around buckthorn, crashed through sagebrush and so brought ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... were shot, and the village was burned. Artillery is continuously shooting—the village lies in a large ravine. Just now, 6 o'clock in the afternoon, the crossing of the Meuse begins near Dinant. All villages, chateaux and houses are burned down during the night. It is a beautiful sight to see the fires all around us ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... day, walking with a stranger, who inquired where Indian arrow-heads could be found, he replied, "Everywhere," and, stooping forward, picked one on the instant from the ground. At Mount Washington, in Tuckerman's Ravine, Thoreau had a bad fall, and sprained his foot. As he was in the act of getting up from his fall, he saw for the first time the leaves of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... by this time reached the ravine, which was bordered with brambles and hedges. I had already seen a movement on its farther side, like the motion of a cornfield in the wind, and the thought struck me that the Russians, with their lances and sabres, were there, although I could scarcely believe it. ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann |
