"Blue Ridge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... social way, as viewed from the lofty top of the hill at Sommerton Place; indeed, all of his kinspeople were mountaineers, honest, it is true, but decidedly woodsy, who tilled stony acres in a pocket beyond the first blue ridge yonder. His education seemed good, but it had been snatched from the books by force, with the savage certainty of grip which ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... down side by side upon the warm pine needles that carpeted the sand, and she made a mothering fuss about my petty wound, and bound it in my handkerchief. We looked together across the steep gorge at the blue ridge of trees beyond. "Anyone," she said, "might have ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... activity Washington grew up. Washington was a born soldier, engineer, and surveyor with the topographical instinct peculiar to that temperament. As early as 1748 he was chosen by Lord Fairfax, who recognized his ability, though only sixteen years old, to survey his vast estate west of the Blue Ridge, which was then a wilderness. He spent three years in this work and did it well. In 1753 Governor Dinwiddie sent Washington on a mission to the French commander on the Ohio, to warn him to cease trespassing on English territory, a mission ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... old when I began life as the owner of a vineyard in western Virginia. I bought a large tract of land, the greater part of which lay upon the sloping side of one of the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge, the exposure being that most favorable to the growth of the vine. I am an enthusiastic lover of the country and of country life, and believed that I should derive more pleasure as well as profit from the culture of my far-stretching vineyard than I ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... families, named, respectively, Stone, Cutler, and Roberts. They were all respectable people, of more than ordinary wealth; having succeeded, by an early emigration and judicious selection of lands, in rebuilding fortunes which had been somewhat impaired east of the Blue Ridge. Between the first and second there was a relationship, cemented by several matrimonial alliances, and the standing of both had been elevated by this union of fortunes. In each of these two, there were six or seven children—the ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... 'property' a thousand times."[335] The people, too, were in mortal fear of a slave insurrection, and therefore dared not go far from home.[336] Meanwhile a panic reigned along the border. Captain Waggoner, passing a gap in the Blue Ridge, could hardly make his way for the crowd of fugitives. "Every day," writes Washington, "we have accounts of such cruelties and barbarities as are shocking to human nature. It is not possible to conceive the situation and danger of this miserable country. Such numbers of French ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... the duty of locating two thousand acres of lands in the western country for a third party, he set out from Richmond, on March 31, alone, on horseback. Following the course of the James River he crossed the Blue Ridge at the Peaks of Otter, and reached Greenbrier Court House on April 18. On the 29th he arrived at Clare's, on George's Creek, where he was joined by Savary. Their surveying operations were soon begun, each taking a separate course. An Indian rising broke up ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... men, pile on the rails; Stir up the camp fires bright. No matter if the canteen fails, We'll make a roaring night. Here Shenandoah brawls along, There lofty Blue Ridge echoes strong To swell the brigade's rousing song ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... half an hour enraptured with its grandeur. Two great rivers, the Potomac and the Shenandoah, rushing through rock-hewn gorges to the sea, unite here to hurl their tons of foaming waters against the last granite wall of the Blue Ridge Mountains. ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... the woods, and the rest were scattered along the edges of a piece of close timber. I climbed a lookout-tree by means of cross-strips nailed to the trunk, and beheld from the summit a long succession of hazy hills, valleys, and forests, with the Blue Ridge Mountains bounding the distance, like some mighty monster, enclosing the world in its coils. This was the country of the enemy, and a Lieutenant obligingly pointed out to me the curling smoke of their ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... big battle dey fought for four days on de plantation. That was de battle of Bull Run. I heard shootin' and saw soldiers shot down. It was one of de worst fights of de war. It was right between Blue Ridge and Bull Run mountain. De smoke from de shootin' was just like a fog. I saw horses and men runnin' to de fight and men shot off de horses. I heard de cannon roar and saw de locust tree cut off in de yard. Some of de bullets ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... all the streams round the Chesapeake, in spite of their being perpetually "thrashed," and never preserved, abound in small trout; but farther afield, in Northwestern Maryland, where the tributaries of the Potomac and Shenandoah flow down the woody ravines of Cheat Mountain and the Blue Ridge, there is room for any number of fly-rods, and fish heavy enough to bend the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... a good, wholesome story that will appeal to every mother as the sort of book she would like her daughter to read. In the homy McBirneys of Mt. Tennyson, down in the Blue Ridge country, and their hearty mountain neighbors, girl readers will find new friends they will be glad ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... made a yet more fortunate acquaintance on a night of especial discomfort and privation, after they had crossed the Pennsylvania boundary and were well into the semi-wilderness of the Blue Ridge Mountains. A washed away bridge so delayed their morning progress that they had advanced only a little over five miles, and were still four miles from their appointed camping ground, when the first snowstorm of the season set in, and compelled them to bivouac along the road-side. The ration ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... approached a shrine with greater earnestness. So eager was he that he did not fully appreciate the glorious beauties of the landscape. The Rivanna River looked like a ribbon of silvery satin laid on green velvet, all in striking contrast with the red soil of the tilled fields. The Blue Ridge mountains, nearly fifty miles distant, were, in the clear air, a massive and misty blue background for the picturesque Ragged Mountains ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... has been called "a Virginia realist." To him, receiving his first views of life from the foot of the Blue Ridge, one realism of the external world was too beautiful to admit of his finding in the ideal anything that could more nearly meet his fancy-picture of loveliness than the scenes which opened daily before his eyes. Years later a memory of his early home returns to ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... should then have run with the James River and the line of Richmond and Lynchburg, or if, ascending higher to the Chesapeake Bay and the Rappahannock, we were to run with the line of Fredericksburg, we should reach either the Blue Ridge or the Alleghany Mountains, as in the case of power on our part, we might have chosen. With these mountains, sweeping in a southwesterly direction into Northern Georgia and Alabama, runs the line of division between the 'true-blue' Southern ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... recommended to the traveler who makes Poughkeepsie for a time his central point; chief among these, Chestnut Ridge, formerly the home of the historian Benson J. Lossing, lying amid the hill country of eastern Dutchess. Its mean altitude is about 1,100 feet above tide water, a fragment of the Blue Ridge branch of the Appalachian chain of mountains, cleft by the Hudson at West Point, stretching away to the Berkshire Hills. It is also easy of access by the Harlem Railroad from New York to Dover Plains with three miles of carriage ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... "Tooth Dentist" who became the first Republican county judge in more than a quarter of a century at the mouth of Big Sandy and whose unique sentences have become legendary throughout the Blue Ridge ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... his father, pointing toward the north-east. "The air is wonderfully clear now, and perhaps you can see what I do—that faint blue ridge that looks like a layer of cloud low ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... squad of gray-clad horsemen Came thundering o'er the bridge, Where peaceful cows in the meadows browse, At the feet of the great Blue Ridge; ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... SCOUTS IN THE BLUE RIDGE; or, Marooned Among the Moonshiners. This story tells of the strange and mysterious adventures that happened to the Patrol in their trip among the moonshiners of ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... to the inclination of the strata of rocks, I had observed them between the Blue Ridge and North Mountains in Virginia, to be parallel with the pole of the earth. I observed the same thing in most instances in the Alps, between Cette and Turin; but in returning along the precipices of the Apennines, where they hang over the Mediterranean, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... passes of the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, a youth is seen employed in the manly and invigorating occupation of a surveyor, and awakening the admiration of the backwoodsmen and savage chieftains by the strength and endurance of his frame and the resolution and energy of his character. In his stature and conformation ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... had fought our losing fight, was now softening into less strong, but more graceful outlines as we approached the pine-clad, sandy plains of the seaboard, upon which Richmond is built. We were skirting along the eastern base of the great Blue Ridge, about whose distant and lofty summits hung a perpetual veil of deep, dark, but translucent blue, which refracted the slanting rays of the morning and evening sun into masses of color more gorgeous than a dreamer's vision of an enchanted land. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... and children! Now I fly Forth from my soldier camp to you! Blue ridge and river hurry by My weary eyes, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... then Ralph bade his kindly friends farewell, and resumed his journey as the sun was peeping over the easterly summits of the Blue Ridge. ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... on the opposite hills; and the air was dark and thick with fog and exhalations, with the smoke of camp-fires and premonitory death. There was little sleep that night, and as the morning sun rose bright and beautiful over the Blue Ridge and dipped down into the Valley, the firing on the right was resumed. Reinforcements soon began to move along the rear to Hooker's support. Thinking the place of danger was the place of duty, Miss Barton ordered ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... and said, 'Where is my spy glasses? Le'me have a look.' He went out and there was a mountain called the Blue Ridge Mountain. He looked but he didn't see nothin'. I went out and looked too. I said, 'Look down the line beside those two big trees,' and I handed the glasses back to him. He looked and then he hollered, 'My God, look yonder' and handed the spy glasses ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... a distance of about one hundred miles. When Ewell came in sight of Winchester, Hill was still opposite Fredericksburg, and Longstreet half-way between the two in Culpepper. Between the middle and rear corps was interposed the Rapidan River, and between the middle and advanced corps the Blue Ridge Mountains. General Hooker's army was on the north bank of the Rappahannock, well in hand, and comparatively massed, and the situation of Lee's army seemed excellent for the success of a sudden blow ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... live in his plain but beautiful house, in sight of the Blue Ridge, with Charlottesville and the university at his feet. He rode daily for ten miles until he was eighty-two. He died July 4, 1826, full of honors, and everywhere funeral orations were delivered to his memory, the best of which was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... had been founded on the upper Schuylkill, and Bethlehem in the valley of the Lehigh (map, p. 78). In Virginia population had gone westward up the York, the Rappahannock, and the James rivers to the foot of the Blue Ridge; and Germans and Scotch-Irish from Pennsylvania had entered the Great Valley (map, p. 50). In North Carolina and South Carolina Germans, Swiss, Welsh, and Scotch-Irish were likewise moving toward ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... had promptly advanced, and his army lay in Culpepper, the right reaching toward the Blue Ridge, and the left extending ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... is now in session. It is at present occupied in discussing the question of the basis of representation. The section of the State east of the Blue Ridge, with about four-ninths of the free population, pays nearly two-thirds of the taxes. They desire that one half of the representatives should be apportioned in the ratio of the voters; and the other half in that of taxation; which would secure the preponderance to the eastern section. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... bend as it emerged from the hills and flowed westward for six miles before it turned south again. Beyond this six-mile sweep of its broad channel loomed the three ranges of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the first one dark, rich, distinct, clothed in eternal green, the last one melting in dim lines into the clouds and soft ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... the settled area. In the first half of the eighteenth century another advance occurred. Traders followed the Delaware and Shawnese Indians to the Ohio as early as the end of the first quarter of the century.[5:1] Gov. Spotswood, of Virginia, made an expedition in 1714 across the Blue Ridge. The end of the first quarter of the century saw the advance of the Scotch-Irish and the Palatine Germans up the Shenandoah Valley into the western part of Virginia, and along the Piedmont region of the Carolinas.[5:2] The Germans in New York pushed the frontier of settlement up the Mohawk ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... energy and enterprise of a pioneer. In the foot-hills of the mountains he came to the small stream of English colonists that was then trickling slowly southward through the wonderful valleys that stretch from Pennsylvania to Georgia, between the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge and the great Cumberland Range. Here, perhaps for the first time, the je, vous, nous of France met in conflict the "ah yi," the "we uns" and the "you uns" of the English-Pennsylvania-Georgians. The conflict was brief. There was but one Gerard Petit, and, ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... of the old South in the days of the Revolution, had gradually moved westward and southwestward until the larger tobacco area of the Piedmont region extended from Petersburg, Virginia, to Greensboro, North Carolina, and from the falls of the rivers to the slopes of the Blue Ridge. Instead of running away from their slaves, as John Randolph had feared Southern gentlemen would be compelled to do, the tobacco planters found their business increasingly prosperous as the great cotton area south of them opened larger ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... hickory occurs about anywhere on the poor, acid, clay soils of the south, its vigor depending on fertility. Shagbark does not occur on the acid (granitic) Blue Ridge mountains, but is found on the limestone Alleghanies running parallel only a few miles away. I have never seen a shagbark hickory between Roanoke and the coast, more than 200 miles away, but it occurs freely to within two or ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... pleasant. From above, one has the pain always attendant to me upon looking down into an abyss, but at the same time one obtains a better conception of the depth of the valley. It is well worth seeing, partly for itself, partly because it can be reached only by a ride among the hills of the Blue Ridge." ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... first battalion that crossed the Rappahannock. Matters were now assuming a warlike aspect. The Valley of the Shenandoah groaned beneath the tramp of the main army of the Confederacy, under Lee. The Federal general, Pleasanton, and the Confederate general, Stuart, were in fierce conflict among the Blue Ridge mountains. ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Dorn, of South Carolina, had faith in a bush, of unrecorded name, as betokening gold-bearing veins beneath it. That his faith was not without foundation is proved by the large fortune he won as a gold miner in the Blue Ridge country—his guide the bush aforesaid. Mr. Rossiter W. Raymond, the eminent mining engineer of New York, has given some attention to this matter of "indicative plants." He is of the opinion that its unwritten lore among practical miners, prospectors, hunters, and Indians is well worth ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... across the South in a great semi-circle, and now new objects rose upon the surface of the earth. He saw distinctly the long chain of the Blue Ridge rising on the west, then blurring in the distance into a solid black rampart. In the south he saw a long curving line of rising blue plumes. It did not need Colonel Newcomb to tell him that these were ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... whose character is adequately expressed by the title. Evening Rest is the name given to a little hamlet in the Blue Ridge region of Pennsylvania, remarkable for the beauty of its surroundings and the lovely character of its people. Thither goes a young man from the East to visit an uncle whom he has never before seen, and his experiences during the stay make ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... the tracks grew very muddy, and the horses side-slipped a good deal. At the top of a pass we halted to get coffee from a leafy hut. Before us were the mountains of Voynik, a blue ridge with shadowy, strange crevasses and cliffs; behind us Dormitor was still visible, a faint stain on the sky, as though that great canopy had been dragging edges ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... Pennsylvania (1500-1800 ft.), and in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia higher (3000 ft.-4473 ft). and with broader crests. Another usage applies to the ridges ( "the Alleghany Ridges'') parallel to the Blue Ridge; the north-western part of this region is sometimes called the Alleghany Front or the Front of the Alleghany Plateau. The Alleghany Plateau is the north-westernmost division of the Appalachian system; it is an eroded mass of sedimentary rock sloping north-westward ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... lovely summer weather," said the Princess, "as the Spaniards passed through the length of Cofachique; the mulberry trees were dripping with ripe fruit, the young corn was growing tall, and the Indians were friendly. They passed over the Blue Ridge where it breaks south into woody hills. Glossy leaves of the live-oak made the forest spaces vague with shadows; bright birds like flame hopped in and out and hid in the hanging moss, whistling clearly; groves of pecans and walnuts along the river hung ropy with ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... were and what was the object of their journey. It was a romantic one, as you will learn,—a journey of adventure into the unknown wilderness. At that time Virginia had been settled more than a hundred years, yet its people knew very little about it beyond the seaboard plain. West of this rose the Blue Ridge Mountains, behind which lay a great mysterious land, almost as unknown as the mountains of the moon. There were people as late as that who thought that the Mississippi ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... about home, thinking of the great problem of human life. He would walk out of town near sunset and, taking his seat on some grassy knoll would gaze on the Blue Ridge mountains. The light would fade out of the sky and the gloom of evening gather, but the mountains would maintain their same bold appearance. Whenever he cast his eyes in their direction, there they ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... incorporated town of about eleven hundred inhabitants. Endowed by State law with the name of town when a mere hamlet, it is still "the village" to its citizens. It is situated on the Bluemont branch of the Southern Railway 9 miles from Alexandria, and 45 miles from Bluemont at the foot of the Blue Ridge. An electric railway connects it with Georgetown, D. C., 6 miles distant, and it is 13 miles over the Southern Railway to the business center of Washington. Located originally in Fairfax County its growing ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... blood made their appearance, with wooden bowls of cherries and huckleberries for sale. These bowls were neatly carved and painted. They were evidently held in high value; for I had great difficulty in purchasing one. We moved slowly, on account of the many skeleton bridges; but presently a long blue ridge, which for an hour past had followed us in the south-east, began to curve around to our front. I now knew that it must mark the course of the Oka River, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... distinguished citizen of Virginia wrote three months later to the Hon. W.B. Seabrook of South Carolina,—"From all that has come to my knowledge during and since that affair, I am convinced most fully that every black preacher in the country east of the Blue Ridge was in the secret." "There is much reason to believe," says the Governor's message on December 6th, "that the spirit of insurrection was not confined to Southampton. Many convictions have taken place elsewhere, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... Sea of Wan lies a high mountain called Kraput-Koch ("Blue Ridge," from its blue color). Probably there was a dukedom or kingdom of Kraput-Koch which served as a city of refuge for the wandering Assyrian princes. Perhaps the legend has preserved in the person of the King of Kraput-Koch the memory of the ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... tobacco, for which the colony had long been famous and which was the basis of her wealth. Her boundaries were still indefinite, for though, by, the king's charter, the colony was supposed to stretch clear across the continent to the Pacific, the country beyond the Blue Ridge mountains was still a wilderness where the Indian and the wild beast held undisputed sway. Even in Virginia proper, there were few towns and no cities, Williamsburg, the capital, having less than two hundred ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson |
