"Scrubby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... left the dam; in his hand was a large wooden post covered with carvings, at which he worked. Doss lay before him basking in the winter sunshine, and now and again casting an expectant glance at the corner of the nearest ostrich camp. The scrubby thorn-trees under which they lay yielded no shade, but none was needed in that glorious June weather, when in the hottest part of the afternoon the sun was but pleasantly warm; and the boy carved on, not looking up, yet conscious of the brown serene earth ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... spiteful! All along, Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it; Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: The river which had done them all the wrong, Whate'er that was, rolled ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... A lone, scrubby tree was at hand, and to that Humphrey made fast the horses and dog. "No fire to-night. Thy cloak must be thy protection from the damp," he said. "But the swamp is not so damp as the king's dungeon, nor so dismal. So ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... by first-line troops and strong reserves, thanks to this intricate system of galleries on Sabotino's crest. The attack was watched by countless observers, who, on other mountains, were hanging breathless on the result of this hour's work. Innumerable patches of scrubby undergrowth had been set on fire by the Italians to prevent their serving Austrian snipers and were now wrapped in low-hanging clouds of black smoke. Between these black patches the Italians crept ahead when the signal came. The assault of the Austrian positions was of incredible ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... his scrubby moustache from his lips, replied that he and Missonier had been in Rose Feral's tavern, alongside the Bancal house, that night. "Had I heard a noise, sir," he said boastfully, "I should have gone to the rescue, for I ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... necks." "Oh! murther! murther!" cried the poor boy, "shure, it was not me, plase your honour, only the parrot, Captain." "What parrot, you lying rascal?" "There, Captain, Sir, look forenenst you." The captain did look up, and saw me perched on the branch of a scrubby hawthorn-tree. Surprised and amused, he exclaimed, "By Jove! how odd! What a magnificent bird! Why Poll, what the deuce brought you here?" "Eh, sirs," I replied at random, "it was aw' for the love of the siller." The captain, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... across, completely encircled the Island, which was not a quarter of a mile in diameter. Inside this regular ridge was a small sandy plain. The encircling ridge was occupied by a belt of small trees, while on the plain grew only a short scrubby vegetation, a foot or two in height. Some vegetable soil was found, a few inches in thickness, the result of the decomposition of vegetable matter and birds' dung. On the weather side of the island was a coral reef of two miles in diameter, enclosing a shallow lagoon. In this lagoon were both ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... and the torrid Kalahari plains, down to the 34th parallel at Cape point, a great diversity of climatic conditions is met with. To the north and north-east are the steaming, death-breeding low lands, abounding with dank virgin forests and scrubby stretches; and to the north-west extend the arid, sandy, and stony levels. There are the temperate and fruitful inland reaches along the southern and south-eastern littoral, and again further inward the vast plateaux at 2,000 to 6,500 ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... fortitude] Anthony: I adopt you as my father. Thats the talk! Give me a man whose whole life doesnt hang on some scrubby woman in the next street; and I'll never let him go [she slaps him heartily ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... dainty Zette coming in contact with such abomination. He hated Bondon with a murderous hate. He drank a great gulp of absinthe and wished it were Bondon's blood. Great tears rolled down Bocardon's face, and gathering at the ends of his scrubby moustache dripped in splashes ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... cheerless courtyard, surrounded by grim and massive walls, so high that I could scarcely see the top of them. At noontime in summer the sun visited one little corner, where there was a stone bench; but in winter it never showed itself at all. There were five or six small, scrubby trees, with moss-grown trunks and feeble branches, which put forth a few yellow leaves at springtime. We were some thirty children who assembled in this courtyard—children from five to eight years old, all clad ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... her lace skirt and frilled petticoat, she vaulted into the man's saddle without more ado, and took the heavy reins in her small gloved hands. Her horse was scrubby, but she rode well, as do all Marquesans, her supple body following his least movement and her slim, silk-stockinged legs clinging as though she were riding bareback. When the swollen river threatened to wet her varnished slippers, she perched herself on ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... that come upon the ear during the night in a far off place like this, are peculiar. The old owl hoots mournfully, the frogs bellow hoarsely along the reedy shore, while the tree toads are quavering from among the branches of the scrubby trees that grow along the rocky banks; the whippoorwill pipes shrilly in the forest depths; the breeze murmurs among the foliage of the tall old pines, while the everlasting roar of the waters, as they go tumbling down the rocks, is always heard. However diversified these sounds may ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... weather and daylight it is not that. For the first two miles it winds and twists its sandy way over bare hills, with cranberry swamps and marshy ponds in the hollows between. Then it enters upon a three-mile stretch bordered with scrubby pines and bayberry thickets, climbing at last a final hill to emerge upon the bluff with the ocean at its foot. And, fringing that bluff and clustering thickest in the lowlands just beyond, is the village ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... down annually, it does not despair; but, putting forth two short twigs for every one cut off, it spreads out low along the ground in the hollows or between the rocks, growing more stout and scrubby, until it forms, not a tree as yet, but a little pyramidal, stiff, twiggy mass, almost as solid and impenetrable as a rock. Some of the densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have ever seen, as well on account of the closeness and stubbornness of their branches ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... Island, and during the summer they continued to arrive, until about 5,000 had settled between Parrtown (St. John) and St. Anne's. The peninsula now occupied by the city of St. John was then almost a wilderness, covered with shrubs, scrubby spruce, and marsh. Large numbers of emigrants also arrived at Annapolis, Port Roseway, and other points; and Governor Parr, in a letter to Lord North in September, 1783, estimates the whole number that had arrived in Nova Scotia and ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... into the north and which includes much of Texas. Before them lay another and great change in the country. They were now to enter a land of little rain, where they would find the ragged yucca tree, the agave and the cactus, the scrubby mesquite bush and clumps of coarse grass. But they had passed through so much that they did ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the shoulder, from whence I had a peep that made me long for more, but, determined not to spoil the effect, I pushed resolutely on after my guide through a low scrubby jungle, along a barely perceptible woodcutter's path, until the crisp snow crunching beneath our feet betokened our great elevation. I was glad to halt for a moment and cool my mouth with the snow, a luxury I had ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... inches long; often called "Fool Quail" because of its eccentric and clownish markings, streaks and spots of black, white, buff, gray and chestnut. It is met with in small flocks on the mountains and less frequently in the valleys. It frequents scrubby wooded places rather than open hill sides and is very easy to approach and kill; this confidence or stupidity together with its clownish appearance are the reasons for its commonly used local name. Their nests are hollows in the ground, ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... Scrubby coat and trousers, dirty shirt, scarf, and cap, socks more like anklets for holes, and a pair of split boots; bedraggled hat, frowsy jacket, blouse and skirt, squashy boots, and perhaps a patchy "pelerine" or mangy "boa"—such is ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... a recess not unlike a kiosk, was opened by a man-servant who might easily have been mistaken for a waiter from Delmonico's or Sherry's. He did not have the air or aplomb of a butler, nor the smartness of a footman. On the contrary, he was a thick-set, rather scrubby sort of person with all the symptoms of cafe servitude about him, including the never-failing doubt as to nationality. He might have been a Greek, a Pole, ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... take their lunch, and spend the day on the beach, or in the scrubby woods, not far away, taking to a boat if they felt ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... the first light of dawn that we saw, close on board, the metropolitan island of Hawaii. We held along the coast, as near as we could venture, with a fresh breeze and under an unclouded heaven; beholding, as we went, the arid mountain sides and scrubby cocoa-palms of that somewhat melancholy archipelago. About four of the afternoon we turned Waimanolo Point, the westerly headland of the great bight of Honolulu; showed ourselves for twenty minutes in full view; and then fell again to leeward, and put ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... melancholy," and "wearing on her head a fantastic cap or turban;"—by No. 11, a bearded man, "wearing a conical Phrygian cap, his mouth wide open," and his expression "obstreperously animated;"—and by No. 12, "a middle-aged or old man, with a snub nose, high forehead, and thin, scrubby hair," we will go on to the fairer examples of Divine heads ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... to the left, so as to get nearer to the snow, and where it seems easy walking we'll take to it; but for the most part I shall keep to the division-line between the snow and the scrubby growth. It will be rough travelling; but we shall not have to cut our way through briars. I'll lead ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... could be no further exploration for us until the morrow, and I began to look about in search of a suitable spot whereon to pitch our camp for the night. And to choose seemed difficult. The western shore of the bay, with its broken ground and scrubby vegetation looked uninviting to say the least of it, in addition to which it was on the other side of those same hills, at a spot only a few miles distant, that we had, that afternoon, witnessed the terrific fight between those two horrible, unknown creatures; ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... Plaza, since called Portsmouth Square. At that time it was a wind-swept, grass-grown, scrubby enough plot of ground. On all sides were permanent buildings. The most important of these were a low picturesque house of the sun-dried bricks known as adobes, in which, as it proved, the customs ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... here,—only fields. An odd tone is given to the lanes by a local custom of planting hedges of what are termed roseaux d' Inde, having a dark-red foliage; and there is a visible fondness for ornamental plants with crimson leaves. Otherwise the mountain summit is somewhat bare; trees have a scrubby aspect. You must have noticed while ascending that the palmistes became smaller as they were situated higher: at Morne Rouge they are dwarfed,—having a short stature, and ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... walking with her most of the days. Isabelle was conscious of the odd figure Vickers made, in his ill-fitting Italian clothes, with an old Tyrolean cloak of faded green hanging about him, his pale face half hidden by a scrubby beard, his unseeing eyes, wandering over the great steamer, a little girl's hand in his, or reading in a corner of ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... alone, lay still in the hut, and his thoughts wandered backwards. He looked out over the bare, scrubby stretch of land which had been cleared for this encampment to the mass of bush and flowering shrubs beyond, mysterious and impenetrable save for that rough elephant track along which he had travelled; to the broad-bosomed river, ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... going up. It was curiously lonely, with great reaches of stunted pines and scrubby hemlocks, then a space of rather sandy shore and wiry grasses that reared themselves stiffly. There was nothing to read. And now she wished for some sewing. She was glad enough when night came. The next morning the sky was overcast and there was ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... often been struck with the great general similarity between the barren and sandy tracts of this district, and many parts of New South Wales, where sandstone is the prevailing rock. In both countries there are the same low scrubby bushes, at the Cape consisting of Heaths and Proteae, and in Australia of Epacridae and Banksiae—the last the honeysuckles of the Colonists. Even the beautiful sunbirds of the Cape, frequenting especially the flowers of the Proteae, are represented by such of ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... bread-fruit trees, extends as far as Tangalle, fifty miles. A few miles beyond this village the wild country begins, and Hambantotte is the next station, nearly ninety miles from Yalle. The country around Hambantotte is absolutely frightful-wide extending plains of white sand and low scrubby bushes scattered here and there; salt lakes of great extent, and miserable plains of scanty herbage, surrounded by dense thorny jungles. Notwithstanding this, at some seasons the whole district is alive with game. January and February are the best months for elephants and buffaloes, ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... grub was dere, suah," put in the negro cook, with great dignity. "I'se feel mean as a pore white if yer was ebbah come to my galley an' fin' sich a scrubby lot tings! Dere was nuffin' fit fo' a decent culler'd pusson ter eat—dat feller Morris Jones ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... rubbed at his close, scrubby beard, and bared his teeth viciously. Behind him, from the distant sandbank, the rebel bullets rapped unceasingly at the launch's iron plating. "But I am the senior in rank," he repeated again. "Officially I could not resign ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... a podgy young man with small eyes and a scrubby moustache, wearing a tailless evening-coat and a wrinkled white ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... "Pretty scrubby-looking cars," commented Armorer; "but get our new ordinance through the council, we can save enough to afford some fine new cars. Has Lossing said anything to you about the ordinance and our petition to be allowed to leave ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... fallen would not be necessarily fatal, and below the ledge there were low scrubby trees that might have broken the impetus of his descent. She called in tones that might have evoked an answer even from the lips of death; then, with a resolution in her pallid face which nothing could daunt, she ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... two miles in the course of the day; and yet to find the track by which we did succeed in crossing the range had cost me many successive hours' walking under a burning sun. The character of the country we passed through was the same as these sandstone ranges always present; namely, sandy scrubby plains, and low ranges of ruinous, rocky hills, in trying to scramble over which the ponies received numerous and severe falls. We however had a very beautiful halting-place, shaded by lofty pines and affording fair feed for ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... stubs, that commonly make gaps for cattle: Such should be cut so near the earth, as till you can lay them thwart, that the top of one may rest on the root or stub of the other, as far as they extend, stopping the cavities with its boughs and branches; and thus hedges which seem to consist but only of scrubby-trees and stumps, may be reduced to a tolerable fence: But in case it be superannuated, and very old, 'tis advisable to stub all up, being quite renewed, and well guarded. We have been the longer on these ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... Wales's fault. He simply would put that blamed sun-dial of his right in the middle of this plot,—and these doggoned gravel-walks running every which way give me the blind-staggers. Why, A. A., you got more gravel walks here than they've got in Central Park. And all these scrubby hedges, stone walls, fountains, flower-beds, cedar freaks,—my God, Perce, I'd hate to come home a little squiffed if I lived in that house of yours, 'specially at night. Look at old Pedro and Philippa over there, setting out that stuff that looks like ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... looks like snow, and is so dry and light that it is lifted about by the wind. Some places it will drift several feet deep. The railroad company kept men employed all the time shoveling sand from the track. Nothing but some scattering, scrubby bushes grows in the deserts. Almost any time looking from the cars there seems to be smoke away off in the distance. This is nothing but the dry sand being blown ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... space upon the top of a low knoll rounded like a skull, and dry, dusty, and without vegetation, except some scrubby hyssop. The boundary of the space was a living wall of men, with men behind struggling, some to look over, others to look through it. An inner wall of Roman soldiery held the dense outer wall rigidly to its place. A centurion kept eye upon the soldiers. Up to the very line ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Laramie we left the Platte River, and, bearing northwesterly, entered the Black Hills, a region of low, rolling uplands, sparsely grown with scrubby pine trees; the soil black, very dry; where little animal life was ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... incantations in his third-floor-front. Pleasantly fagged in those slight neat legs, after his walk, Mr. Wrenn sat in the wicker rocker by the window, patting his scrubby tan mustache and reviewing the day's wandering. When the gas was lighted he yearned over pictures in a geographical magazine for a happy hour, then yawned to himself, "Well-l-l, Willum, guess it's time to crawl ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... landscape is scrubby, littery; ill-tilled, scratched rather than ploughed; physiognomic of Czech Populations, who are seldom trim at elbows: any beauty it has is on the farther side of the Dobrowa, which does not concern Prince Leopold, Prince Karl, or ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... overlooked the woods. I had one fair view of the country before the sun went down, but I was too thirsty to waste any light in viewing the prospect, and set out directly to find water. First, going down a well-beaten path for half a mile through the low scrubby wood, till I came to where the water stood in the tracks of the horses which had carried travellers up, I lay down flat, and drank these dry, one after another, a pure, cold, spring-like water, but yet I could not fill my ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... slippery when wet. The weather was overcast, and there was usually no oppressive heat even at noon. At intervals along the trail we came on the staring skull and bleached skeleton of a mule or ox. Day after day we rode forward across endless flats of grass and of low open scrubby forest, the trees standing far apart and in most places being but little higher than the head of a horseman. Some of them carried blossoms, white, orange, yellow, pink; and there were many flowers, the most beautiful being ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... I thought I heard a sound of crying. We both listened, and it came again. Leaving our tasks we followed the sound and behind a scrubby willow tree came upon a most beautiful young woman crouched on the ground weeping and moaning, and at the same time digging into the earth with a small wand as if in search of something. She did not appear ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... Lake Umbagog, attaining a height of 50-60 feet, with a diameter of 10-15 inches. Extremely variable in habit. In thin soils and upon bleak sites the trunk is for the most part crooked and twisted, the head scrubby, stunted, and variously distorted, resembling in shape and proportions the pitch pine under similar conditions. In deeper soils, and in situations protected from the winds, the stem is erect, slender, and tapering, surmounted ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... flourishing great capital of the greatest colony of Great Britain, the town with the harbour, as you say of a feller who has a large handle to his face, the man with the nose, that place that is destined to be the London of America, which is a fact if it ever fulfils its destiny. The little scrubby dwarf spruces on the coast are destined not to be lofty pines, because that can't be in the natur of things, although some folks talk as if they expected it; but they are destined to be enormous trees, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the next day, forded the Vilcabamba River and soon had an uninterrupted view up the valley to a high, truncated hill, its top partly covered with a scrubby growth of trees and bushes, its sides steep and rocky. We were told that the name of the hill was "Rosaspata," a word of modern hybrid origin—pata being Quichua for "hill," while rosas is the Spanish word for "roses." Mogrovejo said his Indians ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... prisoners. We saw boys fifteen years old, whose voices had not changed. We saw men past fifty. We saw slope-shouldered, hollow-chested, pale-faced men of the academic type, wearing glasses an eighth of an inch thick. We saw scrubby looking men who seemed to "be the dirt and the dross, the dust and the scum ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... to say respecting the relative standing of the individual among the members of his kind—whether or not he shall be a blighted or a perfect specimen. A fine, sweet, juicy crabapple is more desirable than a scrubby, diseased Jonathan. ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... anxious appearance. She wears a blue silk dress with five flounces, a lace cap, and a watch and chain; and her name is Mrs. Charles Augustus Montague. Her husband, Mr. Charles Augustus, is a china doll with a crop of rather scrubby flaxen hair, which can be combed and brushed as much as Lina chooses. Although he is so rich, he has only one suit of clothes, and must even go to parties in a pair of checked gingham trowsers, a red vest, and a blue coat with brass buttons! ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow
... the land was distant five miles, and of a very different aspect to that of Cape Jervis. As far as six leagues from the cliffy southern extremity of the Cape the land is high, rocky and much cut by gullies or ravines; a short, scrubby brush-wood covers the seaward side, and the stone appeared to be slaty, like the opposite cliffs of Kangaroo Island. But here the hills fall back from the sea, and the shore becomes very low with some hummocks of sand upon it; and the same description of coast prevailed as ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... us with resinous-flavored talk. The voyage was unexcitingly pleasant. We passed an archipelago of scrubby islands, and, turning away from a blue vista of hills northward, entered a lovely curve of river richly overhung with arbor-vitae, a shadowy quiet reach of clear water, crowded below its beautiful surface with reflected ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... the horny-handed men of the Bush, and to rope in the best of them. For these men of the Never-Never Land are soldiers born and heroes in the toughest job. They think deep and know the way of things. If they appear wild and uncouth, they carry beneath that scrubby exterior the will of men and the open heart of ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... the native path which we had quitted yesterday; but it now became wide, well beaten, and differing altogether by its permanent character from any I had seen in the southern portion of this continent. For the first five miles we traversed scrubby stony hills, thickly wooded with banksia trees; but the limestone here again cropped out and we entered a very fertile valley, running north and south and terminating in a larger one which drained the country from east to west. This valley is remarkable ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... oak also thinly scattered over large portions of fertile prairie. To a casual observer these oaks, from their stunted appearance, would be taken as evidence of poor soil. But the soil is not the cause of their scrubby looks. It is the devouring fires which annually sweep over the plains with brilliant though terrific aspect, and which are fed by the luxuriant grass grown on that same soil. If the oaks did not draw uncommon nourishment from the soil, it must be difficult for them to survive such scorchings. ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... so much of the forest as the beech. On the verge of woods the oaks are far apart, the ashes thin; the verge is like a wilderness and scrubby, so that the forest does not seem to begin till you have penetrated some distance. Under the beeches the forest begins at once. They stand at the edge of the slope, huge round boles rising from the mossy ground, wide fans ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... said. "We have been driving through lanes lined by dogwood and yet that little tree below and the scrubby bit of hillside make a more perfect picture than ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... and deserted, and the town more than ordinarily dull, as most of the inhabitants are out planting. The court has gone to Buonavista, on account of the unhealthiness of Porta Praya, at this season of the year. A few dozen scrubby trees have been planted in the large square, but, though protected by palings and barrels, have not reached the height of two feet. In the centre stands a marble monument, possibly intended for a fountain, but ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... the bottom of Sonho, or Diogo's Bay, which Barbot calls "Bay of Pampus Rock." Thence we entered Alligator River, a broad lagoon, the Raphael Creek of Maxwell's map, not named in the hydrographic chart of 1859. Leading south with many a bend, it is black water and thick, fetid mud, garnished with scrubby mangrove, where Kru-boys come to cut fuel and catch fever; here the dew seemed to fall in cold drops. After nine miles we reached a shallow fork, one tine of which, according to our informants, comes from the Congo Grande, or Sao Salvador, distant a week's march. Leaving ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... night lay cold and still over the Base. Floodlights spilled brilliance over the dunes and the scrubby earth, high fences casting laced shadows across the burning white expanses ...
— The Hills of Home • Alfred Coppel
... on Epsilon. Everywhere the trees are a riot of scarlet and ocher, the scrubby bushes are shedding their leaves. Once we came upon a field of thistlelike plants with spiny seed-pods that opened as we watched, the purple spores drifting afield in an eddy of tinted mist. Max said it reminded him of ...
— Competition • James Causey
... ruddy urchins ran shouting around our carriage wheels and scrambled in the dust for the sous we threw them, my hostess pointed laughing to a scrubby little girl with tomato-colored cheeks and tousled dark hair, remarking, “I looked like that twenty years ago and performed just those antics on this very road. No punishment would keep me off the highway. Those pennies, ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... As we came near he made a sign to speak. Blantyre drew the rein a little. "To the common, to the common, sir; she has turned off there." I knew this common very well; it was for the most part very uneven ground, covered with heather and dark-green furze bushes, with here and there a scrubby old thorn-tree; there were also open spaces of fine short grass, with ant-hills and mole-turns everywhere; the worst place I ever knew ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... glittering surface of the river Bystryanka, sprinkled here and there with snow, stand two peasants, scrubby little Seryozhka and the church beadle, Matvey. Seryozhka, a short-legged, ragged, mangy-looking fellow of thirty, stares angrily at the ice. Tufts of wool hang from his shaggy sheepskin like a mangy dog. In his ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... over the mountains that separate its drainage from the main fork of the Koyukuk. The cold had given place to wind, and though the gale did not approach the fierceness of last year's storm, it gave great trouble in following the track. These high headwater basins are always windy; the timber is scrubby spruce with many open places, and in such open places the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... it to our aristocracy to take up his other ideas, or reject them on pain of the forfeiture of their caste and headship with the generations to follow, and a total displacing of them in history by certain notorious, frowzy, scrubby pamphleteers and publishers, Lord Ormont thought amazingly comical. English nobles heading the weavers, cobblers, and barbers of England! He laughed, but he said, 'Charlotte would ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... remained looking after them. But I, from my elevation, noticed that they had suddenly crouched behind some scrubby bushes growing on the edge of the sand. Then Castro, too, passed out of my sight in the opposite ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... John Rex had fallen was shaped like a huge funnel set up on its narrow end. The sides of this funnel were rugged rock, and in the banks of earth lodged here and there upon projections, a scrubby vegetation grew. The scanty growth paused abruptly half-way down the gulf, and the rock below was perpetually damp from the upthrown spray. Accident—had the convict been a Meekin, we might term it Providence—had ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... passed through long dry grass with scrubby box; then flooded box flats to Paul Cooroogannie and reached depot at 6.5 p.m. It blew quite a gale of wind during the day from south-south-west with dust and ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... served as a road toward the blue waters of Cape Cod Bay. It was early June, and the strong breath of the sea filled the rough little house, bringing with it the fragrance of the wild cherry blossoms and an odor of pine from the scrubby growths on the low line of hills back of ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... incredible. The great barrier of mountain-range, that cut it off from the rest of the world, seemed also to cut it off from light and air. The atmosphere hung lifeless, the occasional bellow of range-cattle sounded far-off and muffled. Vegetation was scant, the sage-brush grew close and scrubby, even the brilliant cactus flowers seemed to have abandoned the valley to its fate. A lone group of dead cotton-woods grew like sentinels close to the rocky walls. Their twisted branches, gaunt and bare, writhed upward as if in dumb supplication. There was about them a something that made Judith ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... There is nothing of the grandeur of snow, or glaciers, or deep forests, to excite curiosity or adventure; no trace of gardens or waterfalls. From base to summit all seems gray, barren, silent—dead, bleached bones of mountains, overgrown with scrubby bushes, like gray moss. But all mountains are full of hidden beauty, and the next day after my arrival at Pasadena I supplied myself with bread and eagerly set out to give myself to ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... not much to see at first; the banks are lined by scrubby bushes, and on them, in a sandy open patch, we see a man falling and bowing at his evening devotions; a few camels pass along the raised bank, looking like gigantic spiders against the illuminated sky, and there comes faintly to us the ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... right—clear the low hedge—and then disappear over the crest of the hill. Twenty or thirty pioneers, who had been carried forward behind as many of the cavalry, were now seen busily employed in filling up the ditch, and cutting down the short scrubby hedge; and presently, the artillery coming up also, filed off sharply to the right, and formed on the very summit of the hill, distinctly visible between us and the grey cold streaks of morning. By the time we had noticed, this, the clatter in our immediate neighbourhood was renewed, and ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... able yet, during the several hours of their journey, to take any pleasure in the scenery or in her mount. For in the first place there was nothing to see but scrubby little gnarled cedars and drab-looking rocks; and in the second this Indian pony she rode had discovered she was not an adept horsewoman and had proceeded to take advantage of the fact. It did not help Carley's predicament to remember that Glenn had decidedly advised her against riding this particular ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... ELLEN,—I have been expecting you to write to me; but as you don't do it, and as, moreover, you may possibly think it is my turn, and not yours, though on that point I am far from clear, I shall just send you one of my scrubby notes for the express purpose of eliciting a reply. Anne was very much pleased with your letter; I presume she has answered it before now. I would fain hope that her health is a little stronger than it ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... this beautiful scene, the eye wanders next over some jungle-clad slopes on the western side of the main falls, to dwell on a series of cascades and racing waters which descend through channels flanked on either side by scrubby plants and trees—a series which arises from a branch which diverges about a mile higher up the river, and the cascades and runnels of water of which are scattered round precipitous slopes right up to, and immediately below, the point ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... remember what we've just heard. He's been used to comfort and to having someone to look after him. How long do you think it'll be before he gets tired of a scrubby room in a scrubby hotel? Besides, he hasn't any ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... and on he went. Suddenly the horse stopped. Ben doubled up the reins to give him a cut, when "WHOA!" he roared so loud that the horse in very astonishment gave a lurch that nearly flung him headlong. But he was over the wheel in a twinkling, and up with a bound to a small thicket of scrubby bushes on a high hill by the road-side. Here lay a little bundle on the ground, and close by it a big, black dog; and over the whole, standing guard, was a boy a little bigger than Ben, with honest gray eyes. And the ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... right, but his pistol never wavered. His thin lips were pinched close, so tight the scrubby beard on his chin stood straight out in front; his chest was heaving, and the angry blood stood darkly red under his tanned cheeks. Altogether, he looked as if his trigger finger might crook without warning. It was one of those long moments that makes a fellow draw his breath sharp when ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... little house lived her adopted son, Prokofyi, a butcher, a huge, clumsy fellow, of about thirty, with ginger hair and scrubby moustache. When he met me in the hall, he would silently and respectfully make way for me, and when he was drunk he would salute me with his whole hand. In the evenings he used to have supper, and through the wooden partition I could hear him snorting ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... implements needed, some one had to make a trip across a small pasture-field from which the scrubby timber had not been cleared. Will had hitched a team of young mules to one of the wagons and gone on this errand. The mules were frisky fellows and enlivened this little journey by running away. Wilbur ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... solitude, rises before my eyes. I see the frozen, snow-covered waste of the Lake of the Woods, the surrounding evergreen forests and towering hills, the low leaden sky overhead. Along the edge of the scrubby-timbered shore, five husky dogs come at a trot, harnessed in single file to a sledge. The dogs are short-legged and very hairy, with long snouts, sharp-pointed ears, and the tails of wolves; the sledge is a simple toboggan made of two pieces of birch nine feet in length, their ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... the horse in grace or beauty, the ass, in his wild condition, is a handsome, swift, and powerful animal, so different to the degenerated, ill-used, and scrubby creatures of this country, that they would scarcely be recognized as belonging to the same stock, if placed side by side. In Spain, and other parts of Southern Europe, and the Cape de Verde Islands, they are very superior; but they are even surpassed by those of the East. All acquainted ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... come up with us at about four o'clock, and being anxious to find water before dark, we proceeded along a narrow open valley covered with long grass and large pandanus trees, skirted on each side by rather scrubby forest land. At dark we reached a large waterhole. One of the men left behind shortly arrived, and stated that the rest had halted for the night. Mr. Kennedy being anxious to bring all the horses to water, and to have the party together, sent me back to conduct them to the camp, which ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... of the hoofs behind. I stepped over the horse, and drew my sword. A short distance ahead was a clump of scrubby pines; there I would turn and make ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... march from this landmark, the country was covered with scrubby bush abounding in gazelles and guinea-fowl. Here, for the first time, I saw the secretary bird, known to the Arabs as the "Devil's horse." A pair of these magnificent birds were actively employed in their useful avocation of hunting reptiles, which they chased ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... said Ching, pointing to where there was a patch of low, scrubby woodland, on either side of which stretched out what seemed to be rice fields, extending to the hills which backed the plain. ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... before closin' time and mingles with the Jersey commuters in a lovely hot ride across the meadows. It's a scrubby station where I gets off, too; one of these fact'ry settlements where the whole population answers the seven o'clock whistle every mornin'. There's a brick barracks half a mile long, where they make sewin' machines or something, ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... find him quite so scrubby as he sounds. He's very proper and clean-shaven, with a good pair of dark, Dutch eyes, which he gets from his mother; and I wish he had got her business ability with them, and her horse sense, if the lady will excuse me. She runs the property and he spends it, as far as she'll let him, on ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... some truth in that, my friend," remarked the Brown Bear. "And to think that I, who was considered the handsomest Scarecrow in the world, am now condemned to be a scrubby, no-account beast, whose only redeeming feature is that ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... retailed under the name of butter; its destiny hovered between avoirdupois and the measure of capacity. A literature of advertisements hung around; ginger-beer, blacking, blue, &c., with a certain 'Samaritan salve,' proclaimed themselves in many-coloured letters. One descried, too, a scrubby but significant little card, which bore the address of ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... glad enthusiasm, the negro ran towards his own steed, holding out his right hand, and exclaiming, "Come along, Ole Scrubby." ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... For instance, a scrubby little terrier followed him home from Twin Palms one day and Ethel let him keep it. He fed the pup and washed it and named it Dugan, and after that he never said anything more about going to Michigan to find Charlie. It was only natural, of course, because kids—normal ...
— To Remember Charlie By • Roger Dee
... them, his new tone was no doubt a trifle patronising, but still, quite tolerable. Ewen Hooper, he vowed, was "a magnificent scholar," and it was too bad that Oxford had found nothing better for him than "a scrubby readership." But "some day, of course, he'll have the regius professorship." Nora was "a plucky little thing—though she hates me!" And he, Falloden, was not so sure after all that Miss Alice would not land her Pryce. "Can't ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to match was hired to convey us and our belongings to the city, which has since become so celebrated as the abode of saints. Our first outspan was in the valley of the Zwartkops River, close to a big vlei, which was surrounded by dense, scrubby jungle. I had a small single-barreled rifle, so I loaded this and went off in search of big game. In anticipation of our translation to Africa I had done a good deal of rifle practice at Springfield, and had thus become a ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... Jacques. "Those scrubby little pine trees hide us from the sight of the German observation posts. Their artillery ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... covered an area of forty acres—broken, scrubby, uncertain side-hill acres, at that. In brief, a worked-out farm among the mountain slopes of the North Jersey hinterland; six miles ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... miserable cur came sniffing along the gutter on the opposite side of the street. His ribs showed plainly through his dirty yellow coat, the scrubby hair along his back stood on end, and his tail was held closely between his legs. And so he tipped along, half-starved, vainly seeking some morsel of food. He stopped and looked up, shivering visibly as the cold wind pierced him through and through, ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... railway workshops. This image fixed his wavering purpose. He would try to find old Giorgio if he could. God knows what might have happened to him! He made a few steps, then stopped again and shook his head. To the left and right, in front and behind him, the scrubby bush ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... of the river. It was a good-sized creek frozen solid, and already deep buried under snow. Without a pause they crossed to the other side and broke their way through the scrubby snow-laden bush on ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... they had an addition to their small family. A little, wiry-haired, scrubby, melancholy Irish terrier followed O'Connell for miles. He tried to drive him away. The dog would turn and run for a few seconds and the moment O'Connell would take his eyes off him he would run along and catch him up and wag his over-long tail and look up at ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... were no trees in the meadow, but only a few scrubby bushes along the stone wall, one might naturally make the mistake of thinking that there could not possibly be a nook of any kind that would suit Solomon Owl, who could never sleep soundly unless his bedroom was ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the camp awoke to the new life. Whether or not they had a country, these soldiers did not know. Home to many, when they reached it, was graves and ashes. At any rate, there must be, somewhere on earth, a better place than a muddy, smoky camp in a piece of scrubby pines; better company than gloomy, hungry comrades and inquisitive enemies, and something in the future more exciting, if not more hopeful, than nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep, nothing to do, and nowhere to go. The disposition to start was apparent, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... house itself one had to skirt the wall and climb to the Place du Tertre, where one found the facade and the entrance. Some children were playing on the Place, which, planted as it was with a few scrubby trees, and edged with humble shops,—a fruiterer's, a grocer's and a baker's,—looked like some square in a small provincial town. In a corner, on the left, Guillaume's dwelling, which had been whitewashed during the previous spring, showed its bright frontage and five lifeless windows, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Nan's advertisement from his pocket; "we had come down here to surprise you girls, and to have a little fun and tennis; and I meant to have treated you to the public ground at the hotel, as I knew you had only a scrubby little bit of lawn; and this is what has met my eyes this morning! You have deceived mother and me; you have let us enjoy our holiday, which I didn't a bit, for I had a sort of nasty presentiment and a heap of uncomfortable thoughts; and all the while you were slaving away at this hideous dressmaking,—I ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... follower of these events, the importunate tout, also mingled with the crowd, plainly in evidence by the pronounced character of his dress, the size of his diamond studs or cravat pin, and the massive dimensions of his finger rings. No paltry, scrubby track cadger was this resplendent gentleman, but a picturesque rogue, with impudence ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... on which he sat. In front O'Shea was like an image carved of the same wood as the cart, so firmly he held to it. Well, such hours pass. After a while they came out upon the soft, dry sand beyond the scrubby flat, and the horse, ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... organization to sponsor a program for nut tree planting, unless the growers are provided with proper cultural directions. The tendency in the past has been to plant nut trees in out-of-the-way places, and let nature take her course. Nature took her course; the result, scrubby trees ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... in the nakhil, or grove. Nothing at all was to be found in the few scrubby fields about the well now choked with masses of the insects. Whoever the people of this squalid settlement had been, all were gone. The place was almost as bare as if the sun's flames, themselves, had flared down and licked the village ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... The men did not like these reversals of their sex, and the greater part of them were in the worst possible humor on these occasions, because they felt themselves to be hideous in such disguises. The women looked like scrubby little boys, while the more aged among them had thick short legs which were any thing but ornamental. The only woman who looked really well, and completely a man, was the empress herself. As she was very tall and somewhat powerful, male attire suited her wonderfully well. She ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... grown when I first laid my eyes upon him. He was sitting in the sun, on top of a rail fence, blinking at me consideringly. The fence skirted a little trail that led from my back yard down to Calapooia Creek. It seemed trying to push back a fringe of scrubby underbrush which ran down a hillside; a fringe which was, in truth, but a feeler from the great forest of Douglas fir which one saw marching, file upon file, row upon row, back and back to the snows of the ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... Nursery. He found noxious weeds, rather, and brambles galore. And they were planted there, not by his father or mother, but by those who have a lien upon the souls of these poor people. For the priest here is no peeled, polished affair, but shaggy, scrubby, terrible, forbidding. And with a word he can open yet, for such as Khalid's folk, the gate which Peter keeps or the other on the opposite side of the Universe. Khalid must beware, therefore, how he conducts himself at home and ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... second day Stair was finding himself unfit for human society, because he had not been able to shave since he left the prison. Of course he had brought nothing with him. There was no time. His hand went unconsciously every other minute to his scrubby chin. In truth, his Norse blondness did not allow it to show as much as he supposed. But that did not detract from the pervading ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... no shade. Years ago, prospectors hunting for minerals had started forest-fires to level the ridges. The result was the burning-over of perhaps a hundred square miles of magnificent forest. The second growth which has come up is scrubby, a wilderness of young trees and chaparral, through which progress was difficult ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... certain other individuals who found out very soon that Hiram was plowing, too. Those were the hens. There were not more than fifteen or twenty of the scrubby creatures, and they began to follow the plow and ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... being bricks at second hand,) Now move, and now in order stand. The building, as the Poet writ, Rose in proportion to his wit— And first the prologue built a wall; So wide as to encompass all. The scene, a wood, produc'd no more Than a few scrubby trees before. The plot as yet lay deep; and so A cellar next was dug below; But this a work so hard was found, Two acts it cost him under ground. Two other acts, we may presume, Were spent in building each a room. Thus far advanc'd, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... moments they had secured their ambuscade, each lying on the ground at full length, concealed by low, scrubby trees. By a slight turn of the head, each could command a view up the gorge for a ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... the enthusiastic reception offered to him by a stare of grim surprise. He was a dry, hard old man, with a scrubby white beard, a narrow wrinkled forehead, and an obstinate lipless mouth; fitted neither by age nor temperament to be the intimate friend of any of his younger brethren among the Community. But, at that saddest time of his life, the heart ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... There did apparently exist a handful of artistes to whom Miss Verepoint had no objection, and these—a scrubby but confident lot—were promptly engaged. Sallow Americans sprang from nowhere with songs, dances, and ideas for effects. Tousled-haired scenic artists wandered in with model scenes under their arms. A great cloud ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... skirmishers thrown out, and an advance ordered. Our skirmishers had not penetrated far into the thicket before they were met by a volley from the enemy's line of battle. The balls whistled over our heads and through the tops of the scrubby oaks, like a fall of hail. It put chills to creeping up our backs, the first time we had ever been under a musketry fire. For a moment we were thrown into a perfect fever of excitement and confusion. The opening in the rear looked temptingly inviting ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... only folks in a hurry, who swiftly crossed the Boulevards. And on the broad, dark, deserted footway, where the sound of the revelry died away, women were standing and waiting. They remained for long intervals motionless, patient and as stiff-looking as the scrubby little plane trees; then they slowly began to move, dragging their slippers over the frozen soil, taking ten steps or so and then waiting again, rooted as it were to the ground. There was one of them ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... intermediate between the two main ranges, and then took up our quarters for the night. We were now in the republic of Mendoza. The elevation was probably not under 11,000 feet, and the vegetation in consequence exceedingly scanty. The root of a small scrubby plant served as fuel, but it made a miserable fire, and the wind was piercingly cold. Being quite tired with my days work, I made up my bed as quickly as I could, and went to sleep. About midnight I ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... is right,—great happiness in an English post-chaise properly driven; more exhilarating than a palanquin. 'Post equitem sedet atra cura,'—true only of such scrubby hacks as old Horace could have known. Black Care does not sit behind English posters, eh, my boy?" As he spoke this, the gentleman had twice let down the glass of the vehicle, and twice put it ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cliff. Overhead, forty or fifty feet of rock bulged into the great masses characteristic of chalk, but at the end of the ledge a gully, a precipitous groove of discoloured rock, slashed the face of the cliff, and gave a footing to a scrubby growth, by which Eudena and ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... Jose threw himself upon a bench near the door, and waited torpidly. A few moments later came a voice, and then the soft patter of bare feet in the thick dust without. Carmen was talking as she approached. Jose rose in curiosity; but the girl was alone. In her hand she held a scrubby flower that had drawn a desperate nourishment from the barren soil at the roadside. She glanced up ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... was brightening in the east, as the steamer approached Toronto. We rounded the point of the interminable, flat, swampy island, that stretches for several miles in front of the city, and which is thinly covered with scrubby-looking trees. The land lies so level with the water, that it has the appearance of being half-submerged, and from a distance you only see the tops of the trees. I have been informed that the name of Toronto has been derived from this circumstance, which ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... island, two miles from the shack. It was there that the flock was accustomed to graze, shepherded by the wise dog, Jock. Their way led along the rocky northern slope, where the sheep had already worn well-defined paths among the scrubby grass and juniper patches, then up across a steep knoll and through a belt of fir and hemlock. When at length they came out from among the trees, the pasture lay before them. There in a hollow a hundred yards away the flock was huddled. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... leader; and when he looked as he did then, he usually resented advice. The mouth of the bay grew wider, until Carroll could see most of the forest-girt shore on one side of it; but the surf upon the point was growing unpleasantly near. Wisps of spray whirled away from it and vanished among the scrubby firs clinging to the fissured crags behind. The sloop, however, was going to windward, for Vane was handling her with nerve and skill. She had almost cleared the point when there was a rattle and a bang inside of her. ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... ground was strewn with boulders, among which grew thorns and rank grass, impracticable for men on foot at night. I looked behind me, meditating retreat, and there, some hundreds of yards away behind low, scrubby mimosas mixed with aloe-like plants, I saw something brown toss up and disappear again that might very well have been the trunk of an elephant. Then, animated by the courage of despair and a desire to know the worst, I began to descend the elephant track towards the ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... bank of earth. Scho, she. Scone, a soft flour cake. Sconner, disgust. Sconner, sicken. Scraichin, calling hoarsely. Screed, a rip, a rent. Screed, to repeat rapidly, to rattle. Scriechin, screeching. Scriegh, skriegh, v. skriegh. Scrievin, careering. Scrimpit, scanty. Scroggie, scroggy, scrubby. Sculdudd'ry, bawdry. See'd, saw. Seisins, freehold possessions. Sel, sel', sell, self. Sell'd, sell't, sold. Semple, simple. Sen', send. Set, to set off; to start. Set, sat. Sets, becomes. Shachl'd, shapeless. Shaird, shred, shard. Shanagan, a cleft ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... seen bearing from E. by S. to S. The well cultivated country continued as far as Aggidiba, but a considerable change then took place in its general aspect. The road led through a wood of low, stunted, scrubby trees, on a soil of gravel and sand, and the destructive ravages of the Fellatas now became apparent, in the half deserted towns and ruined villages. Akkibosa, the next town, was large, and surrounded inside the walls with ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... mixed with the pines and spruces. In northwestern Minnesota and in northern Dakota the oaks are near their northern limit, but even there the burr oak drags on a bare existence among the pines and spruces. In the Black Hills, in Dakota, poor, forlorn, scrubby burr oaks are scattered through the hills among the yellow pines. In Colorado we find them as shrubs among the pines and Douglas spruces. In New Mexico we find them scattered among the pinons. In Arizona they grow like hazel bushes among the yellow pines. On the Sierra Nevada the oak ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... her mother were cast upon a desert island, she would thank God for her deliverance, make a garden, and find something to preserve. Preserving was almost a mania with Mrs. Bergson. Stout as she was, she roamed the scrubby banks of Norway Creek looking for fox grapes and goose plums, like a wild creature in search of prey. She made a yellow jam of the insipid ground-cherries that grew on the prairie, flavoring it with lemon peel; and she made a sticky dark conserve of garden tomatoes. She had experimented ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... whole world is transformed! Around us a little while ago stretched a scrubby, gloomy forest, but it is now magnificent and cheerful. I never saw finer oaks and beeches. That sky which was black and sinister has all the gorgeous golds and reds and purples of a benevolent sunset. The wind, lately cold ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... winter and summer, this coachman had driven this monotonous, uninteresting route, with always the same sandy hills, scrubby firs, occasional cabins, in sight. What a time to nurse his thought and feed on his heart! How deliberately he can turn things over in his brain! What a system of philosophy he might evolve out of his consciousness! ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... "I have lost faith in Southern manor-houses. Ever since I came South I have sought them vainly. All the way from Atlanta I risked my life, putting my head out of the car windows, to see the plantations. At every scrubby-looking little station we passed, the conductor would say, 'Mighty nice people live heah; great deal of wealth heah before the wah!' Then I would recklessly put my head out. I expected to see the real Southern mansion of the novelists, with enormous piazzas and Corinthian ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... for his friend's verses, given up to such ferocious executioners. But these literary murderers, ready to destroy a comrade's book, are more pitiless than the Inquisition. There were two inquisitors more relentless than the others; first, the little scrubby fellow who claimed for his share all the houris of a Mussulman's palace; another, the great elegist from the provinces. Truly, his heartaches must have made him gain flesh, for very soon he was obliged to let out the strap ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... sir, he ain't even one o' the shoe-brigade. He 'ain't got a red coat. Bless my soul! he 'ain't even got a box—nothin' but a scrubby pair o' brushes as I'm alive! He ain't no shoeblack. He's a thief as purtends to black shoes, ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... the most faithful, attached, and affectionate animal that I have ever known; and that is saying much. He seems to think it necessary to atone for his ugliness by extra good conduct, and does so dance on his lame leg, and so wag his scrubby tail, that it does any one who has a taste for happiness good to look at him—so that he may now be said to stand on his own footing. We are all rather ashamed of him when strangers come in the way, and think it necessary ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... twenty to thirty feet high, composed of reddish earth and sand, having considerable portions of ironstone in it. A few small tea-trees of the colonists grew in the sand that formed the dry bed of the stream. Our course continued afterwards uninterrupted, over a gradually rising plain, of a sandy scrubby nature, until reaching the foot of Mount Fairfax, when we crossed another small watercourse, trending South by West where, for the first time, we noticed a solitary stunted casuarina. Mount Fairfax is the southern and most elevated part of an isolated block, forming Moresby's Flat-topped Range. It ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... noticed where the Mercutian Light had burned off the scrubby desert vegetation. As we got closer I could see it now in the sunlight, standing vertically up in the air, motionless. There were signs all about now where the light had burned. We were passing along a little gully—the country here was somewhat rough ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... the wildest bit of forest I had seen anywhere in this neighbourhood. At one side, not far off, rose a huge gray rock, partly covered on one side with moss, and round about were oaks and a few ash trees of a poor scrubby sort (else they would long ago have been cut out). The earth underneath was soft ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... root-hold to giant furze bushes, its summit a series of rocky and boggy terraces, trending down at one end into a ravine, and at the other becoming merged in the depths of an aboriginal wood of low scrubby oak trees. It seemed as feasible to ride a horse over it as over the roof of York Minster. I hadn't the vaguest idea what to do or where to go, and I ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... fog held Cartier. When it lifted the tide had borne his ships across the straits to Labrador at Castle Island, Chateau Bay. Labrador was a ruder region than Newfoundland. Far as eye could scan were only domed rocks like petrified billows, dank valleys moss-grown and scrubby, hillsides bare as slate; "This land should not be called earth," remarked Cartier. "It is flint! Faith, I think this is the region God gave Cain!" If this were Cain's realm, his descendants were "men of might"; for when ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Dog then. She hugs him; and he, who has subsisted on a bone and a pat till there he squats decrepit, he turns his grateful old eyes up to her, and has not a notion that she is hugging sad memories in him: Hero, Poet, Painter, in one scrubby one! Then is she buried, and the village hears languid howls, and there is a paragraph in the newspapers concerning the extraordinary fidelity of an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... giddiness, and at last compelled him, much against his will, to halt for a couple of hours' repose. Glancing round, in order to select a suitable camping ground, he soon observed such a spot in the form of a broad, overhanging ledge of rock, beneath which there was a patch of scrubby underwood. Here he lay down with the seal blubber for a pillow, and was quickly buried in deep, untroubled slumber. In little more than two hours he awoke with a start, and, after a second application ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... they're cleaner than Crosby Pemberton's. He's got a tan shirt on, plaited in front, and every time Aunt Anne moves he's up like a jumping-jack till she gets sat down again. He says 'My word!' and 'in the States'—like that. He's got a mustache the color of your hair, Split, a scrubby, stiffy little mustache. His eyes are little twinkling things, and I believe—" she paused in her indictment to give the criminal the benefit of the doubt—"I do believe he had gloves on when he first came! I won't be sure; ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Captain Bowline had caused a narrow bridge, of two planks in width, to be built, protected on the outside by a light railing. On the side next the hill, it was sufficiently guarded by the crooked branches of a knurly and scrubby oak tree, that grew on the very ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... a minute!" called the fat man. As they approached, the aviators with him turned from their work. One, a slender fellow with swarthy skin and a scrubby black mustache, scowled when he looked at John Ross, and as Bob Giddings and Tom Meeks got their eyes on him, they gave an involuntary start, for they recognized in the man the fellow they had seen hanging around ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser |
