"Boa" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at present taking their periodical doze like a great boa constrictor. The engineer—a native of Philadelphia—has gone home for the holidays, and will not return till October or November, when the cane harvest begins and his indispensable services will be required. He has unscrewed all the ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... great python[1] (the "boa," as it is commonly designated by Europeans, the "anaconda" of Eastern story), which is supposed to crush the bones of an elephant, and to swallow the tiger, is found, though not of so portentous dimensions, in the cinnamon ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... surmised that serpents have no sense of taste, because the boa-constrictor in the Zoological Gardens swallowed his blanket. Chemistry may, however, assist us in solving the mystery, and induce us to draw quite an opposite conclusion from the curious circumstance alluded to. May not the mistake of the serpent be attributed to the marvellous ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... celebrated watch-dog of Hell. It completely filled their wide expanse. Who but Pluto could have viewed without horror that enormous body covered with shaggy spikes, those frightful paws clothed with claws of steel, that tail like a boa constrictor, those fiery eyes that blazed like the blood-red lamps in a pharos, and those three forky tongues, round each of which were entwined a vigorous family of ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... though the wind blew from the storm quarter, and Applehead sniffed it and made predictions, and Compadre went with his remnant of tail ruffed like a feather boa. Immediately after supper Luck attached his new hose to the tank faucet and developed the corral scenes which he had taken, with the thin youth taking his first lesson in the dark room. The thin youth, who said his name was Bill ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... bear—scandalised as it may be by its name—might even be deemed a creature of moderate appetite in comparison: with their human reason in addition, these people, could they always command the means, would doubtless outrival a glutton and a boa-constrictor together.' ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... can improve my own, and other people's individ- uality, health, and morals; whereas, the opposite image of man, a sinner, kept constantly in mind, can no more improve health or morals, than holding in thought the [5] form of a boa-constrictor can aid an artist ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... smiled as she looked about for a feather boa that she had laid down on descending from her room—"if it isn't it will have had but THAT ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... women were insufficiently clad; and so the coat was given to an Irish girl with pretty auburn hair standing near, leaning against the gunwale—with an "outside berth" and so more exposed to the cold air. This same lady was able to distribute more of her wraps to the passengers, a rug to one, a fur boa to another; and she has related with amusement that at the moment of climbing up the Carpathia's side, those to whom these articles had been lent offered them all back to her; but as, like the rest of us, she was encumbered with a lifebelt, she ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... vegetation that nothing less than an army of men with axes could penetrate them. The land is one great, wild, untidy, luxuriant hot-house, "built by nature for herself." The puma, jaguar and wildcat are here at home, besides the anaconda and boa constrictor, which grow to enormous lengths. The Yaci Ret, or Island of the Moon, is the ideal haunt of the jaguar, and as we passed it a pair of those royal beasts were playing on the shore like two enormous cats. As they caught sight of us, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... make to her fellow-passengers. Two porters accompanied her, carrying her smart bags, and, even with so much assistance, she was draped with extra garments, which hung from her arms in varying and seductive shades of green. She herself was in green of a subtle olive shade, and her plumes and boa, her chains and chatelaine, her hand-bags and camera, marked her as the traveler triumphant and expectant. Like an Arabian princess, borne across the desert to the home of her future lord, she came panoplied with splendor. ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... things beautiful should be terrible and deadly' The eye of the boa-constrictor, while fascinating its prey, is lovely. No royal crown holds such a jewel; it is a ruby with the emerald's green light playing ever upon it. Yet the deer that sees it loses all power of motion, and trembles, and awaits his death and even so, to compare hearing with ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... his pace to keep step with hers. Miss Nugent with her chin sunk in a fur boa looked neither to the right nor the left, and turning briskly into the alley, turned the handle of Mr. Wilks's door and walked in, leaving her ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... of the Boa has a silky sheen, like that of the finest Rep, and, when taking a nap in the sun, his Damascened appearance may remind the pious spectator of a scene damned by the intrusion of a similar ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... tree was bound to the next by vines like tangled ropes, some drawn as taut as the halyards of a ship, and others, as thick as one's leg; they were twisted and wrapped around the branches, so that they looked like boa-constrictors hanging ready to drop upon one's shoulders. The moonlight gave to this forest of great trees a weird, fantastic look. I felt like a knight entering an enchanted wood. But nothing disturbed ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... said to dread greatly the boa-constrictor or an enormous serpent resembling it; "and being influenced by certain superstitious notions they even fear to kill it. The man who happened to put it to death, whether in self-defence or otherwise, was formerly required to lie in a running stream of water during the day for several ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... was by this time salting and peppering his roast beef, glaring at it the while like a boa-constrictor contemplating a fresh victim in anticipation of the joys of deglutition. Millard saw the importance of letting Masters know about this new move, and feared that Meadows would attempt to put him under bonds of secrecy. So, as he rose to go, like a prairie traveler protecting ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... Mr. Wedgwood follows Richardson, who follows Vossius in a fanciful etymology from the Greek [Greek: derkomai blepein] to see. Sharpness of sight, it is true, was attributed to the mythologized reptile, but the primitive draco was nothing but a large serpent, supposed to be the boa. This sense must accordingly be comparatively modern. The eagle is the universal type of keenness of vision. The reptile's way of moving himself without legs is his most striking peculiarity; and if we derive dragon ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... contents of which he has been often seen to contemplate with deep interest. This, to be sure, might proceed from a provident regard to health, for it is a well-known fact that he has frequently returned home in the evenings, distended like a Boa-Constrictor after a gorge; yet no person was ever able to come at the cause of his inflation. There were, to be sure, suspicions abroad, and it was mostly found that depredations in some neighboring orchard or garden had been committed a little before the ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... came first—very large, submerged in a feather boa and a feathered hat! salmon pink as to the bust, cream silk as to the skirt. The kids came next, two of the sweetest, merriest girls I know. Miss Fifteen simply tumbled with brown curls and smiles; she was of The Gay Glowworms, ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... a new silk dress and fur boa, my daughter bestowed a fine pair of No. 6 kid gloves, and each of my sons contributed a pair of skates and a sled. There is nothing like having Santa Claus remember you well, is there?" ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... country near Rio there are great snakes called the anaconda, a sort of boa-constrictor on a large scale. Once, while walking in the woods with some friends, we found a little Indian boy dead on the ground, one of these big snakes lying within a foot or so of him, also dead; the snake had a ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... "my own invention," that phrase! The bodily wants of a reptile are elastic. If an alligator or a boa-constrictor catches a dog he can swallow him whole and enjoy that one meal in unriotous bliss for weeks. Thereafter if he must put up with no more than a minnow or a mouse he can do that for weeks in unriotous patience. ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... the lunulites and corals, favour the idea of a warm climate having prevailed, which is borne out by the discovery of a serpent, Palaeophis typhoeus (see Figure 193), exceeding, according to Professor Owen, twenty feet in length, and allied in its osteology to the Boa, Python, Coluber, and Hydrus. The compressed form and diminutive size of certain caudal vertebrae indicate so much analogy with Hydrus as to induce Professor Owen to pronounce this extinct ophidian to have been marine. (Palaeontological Society Monograph Reptiles part 2 page 61.) Among ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... in the Old World is quite as formidable as the boa in the New. Perhaps it is even more to be dreaded; for, notwithstanding its great length—twenty-five to thirty feet—it is exceedingly nimble and its muscular strength is immense. There are numerous authentic stories on record of its having crushed the buffalo and the tiger ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... and the children were well. The overpowering mother had taken utter possession of this poor little thing. Rosey's eyes followed the Campaigner about, and appealed to her at all moments. She sat under Mrs. Mackenzie as a bird before a boa-constrictor, doomed—fluttering—fascinated—scared and fawning as a whipt ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... miles before reaching it, we used to look out for the wooded park, with its herds of mottled deer, and the great lake, where the sight of the swans always brought up that story of the big pike, choked like a boa, with a swan's neck. A story that seems to belong ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... waist. Landless felt the motion and intercepted it. Then the figure, with an angry guttural sound, began to put forth its full strength. The arms encircled Landless with a slowly tightening iron band; the great dark shoulder came forward with the force of a battering-ram; the limbs twined like boa-constrictors around the limbs of the other. Locked together, the two reeled into a little fairy glade, where the short grass, pearled with dew, lay open to the moon. Here, borne backwards by the overwhelming force of his assailant, Landless fell heavily to ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... else to say, proposed—the breakfast being now finished, and the Major gorged, like any Boa Constrictor—that they should start. A barouche being in waiting, according to the orders of that gentleman, the two ladies, the Major and himself, took their seats in it; the Native and the wan page mounted the box, Mr Towlinson being ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... known to any person to whose lot it should fall to rescue a person from the crushing folds of a boa-constrictor, that it is no use pulling and hauling at the centre of the brute's body; catch hold of the tip of his tail,—he can then be easily unwound,—he cannot help himself;—he "must" come off. Again, if you wish to kill a snake, it is no use hitting and trying to crush ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... turned on her as she entered the restaurant—a radiant figure in white, with black hat and black chiffon boa, and a deep red rose in her bosom. The maitre d'hotel, in the pride of reflected glory, conducted her to a table near the window. Septimus trailed inconclusively behind. When he seated himself he stared at her silently in a mute surmise as the gentlemen in the poem ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... the lion house, on the other side, is the reptile house, where live snakes, crocodiles, and lizards, and all sorts of curious animals. The most interesting are the enormous snakes, called boa-constrictors, with bodies nearly as thick as a child's, and many yards in length. They are not in cages, but in glass houses, like glass boxes. The glass is very thick and strong, and the snake does not dash himself ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... now, since it has not yet been explored, nor is this known to the inhabitants themselves. Some suppose it to be a mainland, [forming part] of the land called Terra incognita, which would then extend hitherward from beyond the C de boa Esperanca but of this there is no certitude hitherto, so that it ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... his ankle, and not a venomous serpent; for Noodles confessed that if he dreaded anything on the face of the earth it was just snakes, any kind of crawling varmints, from the common everyday garter species to the big boa constrictor to be seen in the menagerie that came with the annual circus ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... has a name, form without substance, a being without life, or life without action. She was under the spell of that timid curiosity which impels women to seek perilous excitement, to gaze at chained tigers and boa-constrictors, shuddering all the while because the barriers between them are so weak. Although the little old man's back was bent like a day-laborer's, it was easy to see that he must formerly have been of medium height. His excessive thinness, the slenderness of his limbs, proved ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... descend into the ground and root themselves, and so on, growing smaller and smaller as the process is repeated, till they disappear in the general level of the plain, or lose themselves among the rocks, like the knots and convolutions of a huge family of boa-constrictors. The branches, which almost completely fill the upper part of the picture, are done with such truth to general Nature, are so admirable in color, so wonderful in the treatment of their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... we all ready?" asked Mona, looking over the group. "Mrs. Greene, I fear you won't be warm enough, though your jacket is thick, isn't it? But I'm going to throw this boa round your neck, by way of precaution. Please wear ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... were up early in the morning. There were dolls and toys for the little ones, with hoods and mittens, and for me a lovely squirrel muff, lined with blue, with a soft little boa for my neck. I was a happy girl that Christmas, I can ...
— The Night Before Christmas and Other Popular Stories For Children • Various
... by God himself, and it may be presumed, quite securely fastened. Talk about the Black-hole of Calcutta, why it was nothing to this! What a scramble there must have been for that solitary window and a mouthful of fresh air! Lions, tigers, jackals, hyaenas, boa-constrictors, kangaroos, eagles, owls, bees, wasps, bluebottles, with Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, and their wives, all in one fierce melee. But the contention for the precious vital air must, however violent, have soon subsided: fifteen minutes would have settled them all. Yet curiously enough ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... not (as ghosts oft use) To be 'dearheaven'd!' and 'oh'd!' But briskly said: "Good-evenin'; what's the news? Consumption? After boa'd? ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... counsellor in the midst of an affecting appeal in Court on a slander case delivered himself of the following flight of genius. "Slander, gentlemen, like a boa constrictor of gigantic size and immeasurable proportions, wraps the coil of its unwieldy body about its unfortunate victim, and, heedless of the shrieks of agony that come from the utmost depths of its victim's soul, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... do, Miss Cardinal?" They shook hands, Miss Avies standing over Aunt Elizabeth like the boa constrictor raised above ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... country is torn in the toils, While the wild boar is raging to raven the spoils, While the boa is spreading around us the coils Which would strangle the freedom our ancestors gave; But each soul must be quickened until it o'er-boils, Every muscle be ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... outposts were forced, and the army of Wallace was enveloped in the embrace of a hideous boa-constrictor—tightening, closing, crushing every semblance of life from the victim enclosed in his toils. The flanking parties of horse were forced in upon the centre, and though, as even Turner grants, they fought with desperation, a general flight ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be beautiful and admired. I want two new dresses; a hat with plumes, and a silk petticoat that rustles. I want some new kid gloves and a feather boa (a long one made of ostrich feathers). I wish——" The small, blunt pencil had been lifted in air for the space of three minutes before it again descended; then, with cheeks that burned, Miss Philura had written the fateful words: "I wish to have a ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... means—what the earliest romances, the Norse myths, and the superstitions of the peasantry in many parts of England to this day assert them to have been—"mighty worms," huge snakes? All will agree that the Python, the representative in the old world of the Boa-constrictor of the new, lingered in the Homeric age, if not later, both in Greece and in Italy. It existed on the opposite coast of Africa (where it is now extinct) in the time of Regulus; we believe, from the traditions of all nations, that it existed to ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the swamps and rivers of the dense forests of tropical South America. It is the largest of all modern snakes, said to attain over 30 ft. in length. The Eunectes murinus (formerly called Boa murina) differs from Boa by the snout being covered with shields instead of small scales, the inner of the three nasal shields being in contact with that of the other side. The general colour is dark olive-brown, with large oval black spots arranged in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... achranton eikona sou proskynoumen}, 25 {deute agalliasometha to kyrio}—(Stichera Idiomela), 26 {Christos gennatai}, 28 {ti soi prosenenkomen, Christe}, 30 {ho ouranos kai he ge semeron prophetikos euphrainesthosan}—(Stichera Idiomela), 32 {doxa en hypsistois theo}, 33 {semeron ho Hades stenon boa}—(Stichera Idiomela), 35 {kai ten phloginen rhomphaian}—(Contakion), 37 {ho monogenes Hyios kai Logos tou theou}, 38 {kyrie, anabainontos sou en to stauro}, 39 {dia Lazarou ten egersin Kyrie}—(Antiphon), ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie
... except in the evening, so while at her own flat in the afternoon she was photographed in a decolletee tea-gown, this evening she was dressed as if for Ascot, except for the hat, with an emaciated feather boa and a tired embroidered crepe de Chine scarf thrown over her shoulders, also a fan, long gloves, and a rose in her hair by way of hedging. To these ornaments she added a cold, of which she complained as soon as she saw the other guests. ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... disgusting than the flies; when they inadvertently touched a dead body, clouds of wet, buzzing flies flew up into their faces, into their eyes and nostrils. Under their feet the earth worked and moved as if boa constrictors were wriggling down there soft bodies, lightly covered. When they had found their way up to the Snout they came upon a pile of corpses, a dozen or more, thrown one on top of another like sacks ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... vehicle! This is living to some purpose; one day dining on barbecued pigs in Otaheite; the next in danger of perishing amidst the snows of Terra del Fuego; then to have a lion cross my path in the heart of Africa; to run for my life from a wounded rhinoceros, and sit, by mistake, on a sleeping boa-constrictor;—this, this, said I, is life! Even the dangers of the sea were but healthful stimulants. If I met with a tornado, it was only an agreeable variety; water-spouts and ice-islands gave me no manner of alarm; and I have seldom been more composed than when catching a whale. In ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... that the door of the chateau will be opened for me at this hour; and as for spending the night upon this branch, I possibly might not object to do so, but I declare it is impossible for any other animal than a boa-constrictor to do it." ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... broken, twisted; in a wild spirit of sport the men had borne some of the heated rails to trees near the road; twisted them three or four times around the trunks; and there, as I passed, were the unfortunate trees with their iron boa-constrictors around them—monuments of the playful humor of the ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... tottered forward and fell upon his neck, weeping bitterly. "My son, my boa, my only one now; I have lost all—everything—wife, sons, home; all swept away, nothing left to ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... his chair and was standing between the parted blinds gazing down into the dull neutral-tinted London street. Looking over his shoulder, I saw that on the pavement opposite there stood a large woman with a heavy fur boa round her neck, and a large curling red feather in a broad-brimmed hat which was tilted in a coquettish Duchess of Devonshire fashion over her ear. From under this great panoply she peeped up in a nervous, hesitating fashion at our windows, while her body oscillated backward ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... after dining at a friend's house, or after a ball, picnic, or any other party. These visits should be short, a stay of from fifteen to twenty minutes being quite sufficient. A lady paying a visit may remove her boa or neckerchief; but ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... feet, only a few steps from the church door, is a stone in which are carved fourteen rings: they announce that fourteen farms were given to the cloister, in order that he who moulders here might have this place, fourteen feet within the church door. It was Boa Johnson Grip, a great sinner; but the cloister's power was greater than that of all sinners: the stone on his grave records it with no ordinary ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... eat, and after dinner feels herself sleepy, like a boa constrictor, eructs loudly, drinks water, hiccups, and, by stealth, if no one sees her, makes the sign of the cross over her ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... has a rule in dis house dat nobody can use huh chiny or fo'ks or spoons who ain't boa'ding heah, and de odder day when yuh asked me to bring up a knife and fo'k she ketched me coming upstairs, and she says, "Where yuh goin' wid all dose things, Annie?" Ah said, "Ah'm just goin' up to Miss Laura's room with dat knife and fo'k." Ah said, "Ah'm goin' up for nothin' ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... he could see the forest and jungles of South America. He saw a sluggish river flowing along between rank green banks, while, from the overhanging trees, long festoons of moss hung down, writhing now and then as the big water anacondas or boa constrictors looped their sinuous folds over ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... and feasting is almost incredible. He will go for days without a mouthful, and then, when an abundance of food is presented, will gorge himself to an extent that would be sure death to an ordinary human being, after which he will smoke, blink, and doze for several days more, just as the famous boa constrictors of ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... subsists on the fallen fruits of the forest. When an enemy approaches he never thinks of moving, but quietly draws himself under his shell and there awaits his doom in patience. He only seems to have two enemies who can do him any damage: one of these is the boa-constrictor—this snake swallows the tortoise alive, shell and all. But a boa large enough to do this is very scarce, and thus there is not much to apprehend from that quarter. The other enemy ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... this moment Agnes opened the door and saw what appeared to be an animated feather-boa dashing about the kitchen, with the bulk of the ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... admire her audacity and her steel-trap quickness of mind. She has a dead white skin, green eyes, and most wonderful hair, hair the color of a well-polished copper samovar. She is an extremely thin woman who affects sheathe skirts and rather reminds me of a boa-constrictor. She always reeks of Apres londre and uses a lip-stick as freely before the world as an orchestra conductor uses a baton or a street-sweeper a broom. She is nervous and sharp-tongued and fearless and I thought, at first, that she was making a dead set at my Duncan. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... they are something beyond all conception! Perfect epistolary Boa Constrictors. I speak with feeling, for I have myself ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... great bird's thoughts. It could easily now have darted away, but it felt that it was driven to bay, and began to show fight in the most vicious fashion, snapping its flat beak, hissing, snorting, rattling its plumage, and undulating its long neck, as it danced about, till it looked like a boa constrictor which had partially ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... From Bua (Bavo or Boa), an island used by the Romans as a place of exile, a comprehensive view of Trau may be obtained, with towers and campanile breaking the line of the houses, with the strait in the foreground, and with boats drawn up on the shore. In a private garden is a palm-tree said to be the most northerly ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... was not a lovely lady, with a dress of soft gray cloth and a great chinchilla muff and boa. Not at all. Mrs. Chinchilla was a beautiful cat, with sleek fur like silver-gray satin, and a very handsome tail to match, quite long enough to brush the ground when she walked. She didn't live in a house, ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... great pains to equip this brilliant but inexperienced young man with everything he could by any possibility need during his absence. The great trunk filled itself until it bulged with its contents like a boa-constrictor who has swallowed his blanket. Best clothes and common clothes, thick clothes and thin clothes, flannels and linens, socks and collars, with handkerchiefs enough to keep the pickpockets busy for a week, with a paper of gingerbread and some lozenges for gastralgia, ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... whatsoever nation that the right of trade and navigation from Cape Verde to the Cape of Good Hope belonged exclusively to the king of England. Holmes ordered the Dutch to vacate their forts and to abandon the coast within six or seven months[8]. Thereupon he seized the island of Boa Vista, one of the Cape Verde group claimed by the Dutch since 1621. Later he sent a frigate into the mouth of the Gambia. Otto Steele, the Courland commander of Fort St. Andre, unable to discern whether friend or foe was approaching, fired upon the frigate. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... commander of the fortress, the thunder of whose footsteps, as he approached the house with uncommonly fierce strides, had perhaps broken his slumbers. A frown was on his brow, and the grasp of his hand, in which every finger seemed doing the duty of a boa-constrictor, spoke of a spirit up in ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... let some gentleman send me a buggy or a single gig—you shall see how myself and wife will take pleasure, going from town to town—throw the harness in too—any gentleman that feels like it—white or coloured—and I will try to send him a boa constrictor to take his comfort; I know how to take the gentleman without any danger. My oxen I was working them yesterday; and as for goats and sheep, we have a plenty. We have a plenty to eat, every man that will half work. I give you this; you are all writing to me to tell you about Liberia, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... performance with his pets in one of the leading theatres. He put his lions, tigers, leopards and hyenas through their part of the entertainment, awing the audience by his awful nerve and his control over them. As a closing act to the performance, he was to introduce an enormous boa-constrictor, thirty feet long. He had bought it when it was only two days old, and for twenty years he handled it daily, so that it was considered perfectly harmless and completely under his control. He had seen ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... Bandy-legs, "I'm real glad it wasn't a snake, because they always give me the creeps, you remember, I hate 'em so. Just think what a fine pickle we'd be in now if a monster anaconda or a big boa constrictor or python, broke loose from a show, should climb up on our bridge boat, and start to chasin' us all overboard. Things look bad enough as they are without our takin' on a bunch of new trouble. So, Toby, please ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... account: a transaction which, to quote his own words as he gallantly drank her health in acknowledgment of the gift, "enabled him to provide for one of the loveliest of her sex—she who graces our boa'd—and to enrich her declining days not only with all the comforts, but with many of the luxuries she was bawn ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... cracked three of mine. Maybe you don't know how husky you are, but you've got a squeeze like a full grown boa constrictor!" He held her off at arms' length and studied her with admiration. "Gee, it's fine to see you again, Sis. You're looking great, too—I think I'll bring my girl out here to live. You always were a knockout, ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... was in her attitude, holding up the end of her boa as a visionary tambourine, and Mr. Walker, who was looking at her, and in his amusement at the mother's performances had almost forgotten the charms of the daughter—both turned round at once, and looked at her with many expressions of sympathy, while ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on their elephants through a deep marsh in pursuit of a tiger, the chasseurs suddenly stumbled upon a pleasant family party—"a labyrinth of huge boa-constrictors or pythons, sound asleep, floating on a bed of crushed nurkool, (a gigantic species of reed,) the least of them twenty feet long, and two feet in circumference. A more beautiful natural mosaic cannot be imagined: they appeared, from being wet, as if recently ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... took in her sister's defiant smiling ease and the stranger's embarrassment; then she went on to find Catherine. The two left behind exchanged a few banal questions and answers. Langham had only allowed himself one look at the dazzling face and eyes framed in fur cap and boa. Afterwards he stood making a study of the ground, and answering her remarks in his usual stumbling fashion. What was it had gone out of her voice—simply the soft callow sounds of first youth? And what a personage she had grown in these twelve months—how formidably, consciously brilliant in look ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... noise; looked up; it was pitch dark. I cocked my pistol, and fired into the corner where the noise was made, and went to sleep again! In the morning my aides-de-camp came in, and on groping in the cave, what do you think we found?—but you will never guess it: a boa-constrictor— an immense animal—thicker than stepfather's body. I had shot him right through the eye, for I never missed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... crowds above their heads, and made grimaces like the fiendish spirits of these solitudes; while hideous reptiles, engendered in the slimy depths of the pools, gathered round the footsteps of the wanderers. Here was seen the gigantic boa, coiling his unwieldy folds about the trees, so as hardly to be distinguished from their trunks, till he was ready to dart upon his prey; and alligators lay basking on the borders of the streams, or, gliding under the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... persons, the chief young lady asked what Mr. and Mrs. Fitz would like, and named a thousand things, each better than the other, to all of which Fitz instantly said yes. The wretch was in such a state of infatuation that I believe if that lady had proposed to him a fricasseed elephant, or a boa-constrictor in jelly, he would have said, "O ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... herself out on the opposite side, and had come round to assist somebody out on this. Was it a ghost, or was it a man? His cheeks were hollow and hectic, his eyes were glistening as with fever, his chest heaved. He had a fur boa wrapped round his neck, and his overcoat hung loosely on his tall, attenuated form, which seemed too weak to support itself, or to get down the fly steps ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... however, and not the road. If there's a more solid road in the country, Ben, than the South Midland, I've got to hear of it. It's big, but it's growing—swallowing up everything that comes in its way, like a regular boa constrictor. Think what it was when I came into it immediately after the war; and to-day it's one of the few roads that is steadily increasing its earnings in spite of this ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... not quite, the ugliest and most poisonous creature, and the strangest and unaccountablest, and the hardest to fight with, and the most difficult to run away from, that ever came out of the earth's inside. It had a tail like a boa-constrictor; its body was like I do not care what; and it had three separate heads, one of which was a lion's, the second a goat's, and the third an abominably great snake's. And a hot blast of fire came flaming ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... unmoor; and as soon as it was light, Oreo, his son, and some of his friends, came aboard. Many canoes also came off with fruit and hogs, the latter they even begged of us to take from them, calling out Tiyo boa atoi.—I am your friend, take my hog, and give me an axe. But our decks. were already so full of them, that we could hardly move, having, on board both ships, between three and four hundred. By the increase of our stock, together with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... and wound up by practically demanding of the proprietor of the Express that I be either muzzled or fired. And all this time the Catholic priests said never a word—and San Antonio is a Catholic city. But the Baptist ministers were running a sneaking boycott! Yet the Church of Rome is the boa-constrictor that's trying to throttle the American ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... beaming from among her tumbled curls, at once turned happy and expectant, and when her hat had been straightened and her boa removed so that her necklace could gleam resplendently about her fair, round throat, she was seated against a tree-trunk and listened with all her ears to ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... crowned a face that was beautiful, were it not that it was marred by its many adornments. Gilt earrings glistened in the ears, a dark curly fringe covered forehead and eyebrows, and the chin was embedded in a tawdry feather boa of a muddy hue. An excited flush lay on her cheeks as she looked at the gay crowd within, ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... covering consists of a hood embroidered with beads, over which in severe cold is drawn an outer hood bordered with dog-skin. The outer hood is often quite close under the chin, and extends in a very well-fitting way over the shoulders. To a complete dress there also belong a skin neckerchief or boa, and a neck covering of multiple reindeer-skins, or of different kinds of skins sewn together in chess-board-like squares. In summer and far into the autumn the men go bareheaded, although they clip the hair on the crown of the head close ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... liked the horses. She was fond of cats and had a favourite smoke-blue Persian, between whom and the Poms there was an armed neutrality. The cat's name was Cleopatra, and she deserved it. Her green eyes shone like emeralds when she curled boa-fashion about her mistress's white neck and ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... thought of that, and guarded against it. I shall fill the jungles with animated life—elephants, lions, tigers, panthers, leopards, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, giraffes, zebras, crocodiles, boa constrictors, and other specimens of natural history indigenous ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... senors," said our guide, "straight down. The ground is soft and bad for the mules, and I go back. You will find a gentleman to take you over the great river; but I would look about me; there are little snakes, the great water-boa, and ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... to managing' she told him confidently, and mentally resolved to buy herself, so soon as she was married, a black feather boa, such as she had coveted ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... the pride of the family seemed to be monopolized by his daughter Miriam, a girl whose very nose Heaven had fashioned scornful. Miriam had accompanied him out of contemptuous curiosity. She wore a stylish feather in her hat, and a boa round her throat, and earned thirty shillings a week, all told, as a school teacher. (Esther Ansell was in her class just now.) Probably her toilette had made old Hyams unpunctual. His arrival was the signal for the commencement ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... proudest of?" said Mattie to Bertie. "I'm proudest of my new red-top boots," said Bertie. "I'm proudest of my new black hat," said Clay. Mattie was proudest of her muff and boa. Little Bell was ...
— The Nursery, May 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... behind her heavy flabby bust, and her ungainly knees seemed to come straight out of her groin. She looked like a seated cow. Her companion was like a terrapin, with her little black evil-looking head at the end of a neck which was too long and very stringy. She kept shooting it out of her boa and drawing it back with the most incredible rapidity. The rest of her body bulged out flat. These two delightful persons were the dressmakers sent for by the Custom-house to value my costumes. They glanced at me in a furtive way, and gave a little bow full of ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... who win prizes with takes of four-and-a-half ounces would have recoiled in affright from the monster, even as he lay dead in the entrance hall of the Greville Arms. Old women stand at the street corners with silver eels like boa-constrictors, for which they wish to smite the Saxon to the tune of sixpence each. I vouch for the pike and eels, but confess to some dubiety re the story of a fat old English gentleman, who said, "I don't care for fishing for the sake ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... drowsily into his eyes. "You don't have to be such a boa-constrictor," she suggested. "You are not a cave-man, after all, you know, if you are taking a lady without asking her." Then she contentedly whispered: "I'm going to sleep." And ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... lies passive, or slowly whirled in a careless circle—the next its noose darts out like the head of a striking cobra, the coil falls and fastens, and then it draws tighter and tighter, remorselessly as a boa constrictor, paralyzing life. ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... (concelhos, singular—concelho); Boa Vista, Brava, Fogo, Maio, Paul, Praia, Porto Novo, Ribeira Grande, Sal, Santa Catarina, Santa Cruz, Sao Nicolau, Sao Vicente, Tarrafal note: there may be a new administrative structure of 16 districts (Boa Vista, Brava, Maio, Mosteiros, Paul, Praia, ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Mr. Chalk, sitting open-mouthed, was regarding him with the fascinated gaze of a rabbit before a boa-constrictor. Captain Bowers was listening with an appearance of interest which in more favourable circumstances ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... on the Boulevard, and a few steps brought us in view of the stately white shrine on Claremont Heights. But I looked instead at her brilliant face against the velvety background of black hat and feather boa. ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... it had scooped out a spiral trough with overhanging rim. I felt sorry that I had not been there to watch it, because after all, what I saw, was only the dead record of something that had been very much alive and vociferatingly noisy. And in another place it had reared and raised its head like a boa constrictor, ready to strike at its prey; up to the flashing, forked tongue it was there. But one spot I remember, where it looked exactly as if quite consciously it had attempted the outright ludicrous: it had thrown up the snow into the semblance of some formidable animal—more like a gorilla ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... and dear protector," replied Jondrette placing his elbows on the table and contemplating M. Leblanc with steady and tender eyes, not unlike the eyes of the boa-constrictor, "I was telling you, that I have a picture ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... like a cut of pie and; I tell you, it looks gay. That's what it does. It looks gay. Some of the hook-and-ladder trucks are just one mass of golden-rod and hydrangeas, and some of them are all fixed with this red-white-and-blue paper rope, sort of chenille effect, or more like a feather boa. Everybody has on white cotton gloves, and those entitled to carry speaking trumpets have bouquets in the bells of them, salvias, and golden-rod, and nasturtiums, and ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... The men who dance on Sixth Avenue hire their dress suits on Third Avenue—it all goes together. Heavens," she sighed, breaking off abruptly, "have we built up a Frankenstein monster? Is that dress suit of yours going to prove as voracious as the fabled boa constrictor?" ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... his money's worth. Blandly and with conscious pride the Professor directs the young man's attention to his fine collection of living snakes. Lithely the blacksnake uncoils in his sight. Voluminously the bloated boa convolves before him. All horrent the cobra exalts his hooded head, and the spanning jaws fly open. Quivers and chitters the tail of the cheerful rattlesnake; silently slips out the forked tongue, and is as silently absorbed. The fangless adder ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... fact," sais I, "Doctor. But what do you suppose was the object Providence had in view in filling the world with beasts of prey? The east has its lions, tigers, and boa-constrictors; the south its panthers and catamounts; the north its bears and wolves; and the west its crocodiles and rattle-snakes. We read that dominion was given over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the beast of the ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... he was only a trifle slower and more fastidious in his speech. It was midnight when he left Clifford peacefully slumbering in somebody's arm-chair, with a long suede glove dangling in his hand and a plumy boa twisted about his neck to protect his throat from drafts. He walked through the hall and down the stairs, and found himself on the sidewalk in a quarter he did not know. Mechanically he looked up at the name of the street. The name was not familiar. He turned and steered his course toward ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... strings of bells that jangled sweet music every step he took, drove up to the door of Judge Bernard. A young man stepped out, whom we recognize as Pownal. He entered the house, and in a few minutes returned with Anne Bernard, muffled in cloak and boa, and carrying a muff upon her arm. Health glowed in her cheek and happiness lighted up her eyes. Pownal assisted her into the sleigh, and carefully disposing the robes about her, took his seat by her ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... responsibility. Above all she was dowered with an overwhelming power of enthusiasm. Eleanor dressed well and had a handsome, commanding profile with small, compressed lips and large, prominent, melancholy eyes that wickedly reminded Gregory of the eyes of a beetle. Beneath the black feather boa that was thrown round her neck, her thin shoulder-blades, while she talked to Mrs. Forrester and sketched with pouncing fingers the phrasing of certain passages, jerked and vibrated oddly. Mrs. Forrester nodded, smiled, acquiesced. She was rather fond of Eleanor. Their talk ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... certainly broadens one. Every day I have been in the Congo, I have been assimilating new ideas." Upsher nodded vigorously in assent. An older man could have told Everett that he was assimilating just as much of the Congo as the rabbit assimilates of the boa-constrictor, that first smothers it with saliva and then ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... "Yes, they are the big boa-constrictor-like chaps that half live in the water, and lay hold of anything that goes in. No, it's all stuff, Ned. They don't live here; they're in South America. ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... with her usual Boston probity she was really all the while holding herself. She wore her "handsome" felt hat, so Tyrolese, yet some how, though feathered from the eagle's wing, so truly domestic, with the same straightness and security; she attached her fur boa with the same honest precautions; she preserved her balance on the ice-slopes with the same practised skill; she opened, each evening, her "Transcript" with the same interfusion of suspense and resignation; she attended her almost daily concert with the same expenditure of patience and the ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... you that you had boa-constrictor habits," she gasped. "Why, Tom Cameron! you must have swallowed ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... a full-fledged circus and menagerie, but merely a show on its way from one county fair to another. In one cage there was a boa constrictor, untruthfully advertised to be thirty feet long, which a Fat Lady exhibited at each performance, the monster coiled round her neck. In another cage were six performing ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... form of a young woman lay on a couch. Horror was depicted upon her countenance, and she was frantically but vainly struggling to free herself from the great boa-constrictor which had coiled his ugly thick body about her. Standing beside her and looking on with a dreadful expression of devilish satisfaction was a representation of Satan, whilst coming in at the open door reeled a young man in a woeful ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... 28. The Boa Bidarra, or Rhamnus Jujuba of Linnaeus. This is a round yellow fruit, about the size of a gooseberry; its flavour is like that of an apple, but it has the astringency ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... which was 'The Garland of Frien'ship,' and had poems in it about the bleeding of hearts, and so forth. Father was n't expectin' anything, but you left him a new pair of mittens, and mother got a new fur boa to ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... hooped and pleated skirt of green silk, surmounted by a bustle, to sway like a lime-tree in a breeze, wore a bodice open in front, with short sleeves, the fag end of some other fashion, but the long draggled-tailed feather boa belonged to the eighties, as did the Marie Stuart bonnet. Her blackened eyebrows and a thickly painted face attracted Dick's attention from afar, and when she approached nearer he was struck by the dark, brilliant, restless eyes. 'A strange and exalted being,' he said to himself. 'An authoress ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... have been a quaint spectacle to the Lowestoft fishermen, for Posh assures me that he always went to sea in a silk hat, and generally wore a "cross-over," or a lady's boa, round his neck. Now a silk hat and a lady's boa aboard a longshore punt would be about as incongruous as a court suit in a shooting field. But FitzGerald was not vain enough to be self-conscious. He knew when he was comfortable, and that was enough for his healthy ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... headlong with fear and exhaustion upon the turf, had not a gentle female caught the slender youth in her arms, and embraced him with all the energetic affection of a boa-constrictor. ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... expressed himself gratified with the perusal of Jane Eyre. Mr. Thackeray is a keen ruthless satirist. I had never perused his writings but with blended feelings of admiration and indignation. Critics, it appears to me, do not know what an intellectual boa-constrictor he is. They call him "humorous," "brilliant"—his is a most scalping humour, a most deadly brilliancy: he does not play with his prey, he coils round it and crushes it in his rings. He seems terribly in earnest in his war against the falsehood and follies of "the world." I often wonder ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... a blue woollen gown. On your head, a toque with red leaves on it. Round your neck, a feather boa. No gloves. No rings. ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc |
