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Brackish   /brˈækɪʃ/   Listen
Brackish

adjective
1.
Distasteful and unpleasant; spoiled by mixture.
2.
Slightly salty (especially from containing a mixture of seawater and fresh water).  Synonym: briny.  "The briny deep"



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"Brackish" Quotes from Famous Books



... would have been perhaps more easy to believe in the saint's agency in the matter had there been less wind; for in addition to the danger of being ingulfed by the heavy sea, their clothing, which they spread to collect the rain, was so deluged with salt spray as to make the water exceedingly brackish. Bad as it was, however, it served to maintain life until they reached a little rocky, uninhabited island ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... Sabbatia tribe keep close to the Atlantic Coast in salt meadows and marshes, along the borders of brackish rivers, and very rarely in the sand at the edges of fresh-water ponds a little way inland. From Maine to Florida they range, and less frequently are met along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico so far as Louisiana. How bright ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... taken place in the ice of the harbour on its upper surface, it being covered with innumerable pools of water, chiefly brackish, except close in-shore, where the tides had lifted the ice considerably above the level of ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... the professor began, "there is a great deal of hesitation among them sometimes before they go up the river to spawn, and we want to find out whether they go back to the sea again, whether they swim directly up the stream, or whether they remain in the brackish water at ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... until the 7th of that month, when finding that it distributed itself by various outlets, of which the more easterly were not navigable, for their boats, they chose a middle one, and that night got into brackish water, with an open view of the sea, in lat. 69 deg. 29 min. N., long. 133 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 278, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various

... soldiers, who carried off the journals of Say and Lieutenant Swift with a number of other valuable effects. Both parties also suffered from want of provisions in the sandy deserts, whose streams yield nothing but brackish and muddy water. The expedition brought to Washington sixty skins of wild animals, several thousands of insects, including five hundred new species, four or five hundred specimens of hitherto unknown plants, numerous views of the scenery, and the materials ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... been an ancient coral-reef, or an accumulation of social shells, like Oysters. Lastly, if we find the deposit to contain the remains of marine shells, but that these are dwarfed of their fair proportions and distorted in figure, we may conclude that it was laid down in a brackish sea, such as the Baltic, in which the proper saltness was wanting, owing to its receiving an excessive supply of ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... runs about it are very extensive; the natives few and inoffensive, and the stock-yard etc., left there, renders it very complete. I must not omit, however, to mention, that the water had become slightly brackish, but not so as to be unpalatable, or even, indeed, perceptible, except to persons unused to it. The large reach had fallen two feet since the party first occupied that station. In other reaches lower down, that we passed during ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... bottom of the sea. It is eaten out into holes and furrows, plainly by the gnawing of the waves; and on it lie, in many places, large rolled flints out of chalk which has been destroyed, beds of shore-shingle, beds of oysters lying as they grew, fresh or brackish water-shells standing as they lived, bits of lignite (fossil wood half turned to coal), and (as in Katesgrove pits at Reading) leaves of trees. Proof enough, one would say, that the chalk had been raised till part of it at least became ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley

... the other islands, a few hundred yards away—for the rest of the party slept late this first morning, and we took to the canoe—we discovered a spring of fresh water untainted by the brackish flavour of the Baltic, and having thus solved the most important problem of the Camp, we next proceeded to deal with the second—fish. And in half an hour we reeled in and turned homewards, for we had no means of storage, and to clean more fish than may be stored or eaten ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... the harbour higher up, and found the ground softer, and the water not so deep; yet the wind continued to blow so hard that we could not venture to change our station. We had found a small spring of water about half a mile inland, upon the north side of the bay, but it had a brackish taste; I had also made another excursion of several miles into the country, which I found barren and desolate, in every direction, as far as the eye could reach. We had seen many guanicoes at a distance, but we could not get near enough to have a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... Cordaites, and Ferns-plants which could not have grown in water. Again, with the exception perhaps of some Pinnularioe, and Asterophyllites, there is a remarkable absence from the coal measures of any form of properly aquatic vegetation. (7) The occurrence of marine, or brackish-water animals, in the roofs of coal- beds, or even in the coal itself, affords no evidence of subaqueous accumulation, since the same thing occurs in the case of modern submarine forests. For these and other reasons, some of which ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... as we now learnt that over the vast plain before us for seventy miles in that arid region no water could be found but such as was brackish and fetid, and no kind of food but southernwood, wormwood, dracontium, and other bitter herbs, we filled the vessels which we had with sweet water, and having slain the camels and the rest of the beasts of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... naturalium, speaking of the source and spring of Nilus. But they were deceived, for, the procession being ended, when everyone went about to gather of this dew, and to drink of it with full bowls, they found that it was nothing but pickle and the very brine of salt, more brackish in taste than the saltest water of the sea. And because in that very day Pantagruel was born, his father gave him that name; for Panta in Greek is as much to say as all, and Gruel in the Hagarene language doth signify thirsty, inferring hereby that at ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... That's our anchorage—over there," and he pointed to the mouth of a narrow channel between South Point and the Ile des Fregates, the latter a tiny islet that almost blocks the entrance to a shallow bay into which runs a rivulet of good but slightly brackish water. ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... buttresses metalled with water rolled stones, and showing traces of graves. Possibly here may have been the site of an ancient settlement. The Arabs call the southern anchorage, marked by a post and a pit of brackish water, El-Musaybah or Musaybat Sharm. Its only present use seems to be embarking bundles of rushes for mat-making in Egypt. The north-eastern end of the little gulf is the Gd (Jd), or Mers of El-Khuraybah, before described as the port ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... all too hungry to refuse the bread or the water, which, in spite of its brackish taste, quenched the thirst from which they had long ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... and emptying his lungs in diver fashion, Grief turned over and went down through the water. Salt it was to his lips, and warm to his flesh; but at last, deep down, it perceptibly chilled and tasted brackish. Then, suddenly, his body entered the cold, subterranean stream. He removed the small stopper from the calabash, and, as the sweet water gurgled into it, he saw the phosphorescent glimmer of a big fish, like a sea ghost, ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... strip of cotton from her single petticoat. Then she picked her barefooted way swiftly to the creek-bed, where she drenched the cloth for bathing and bandaging the wound. It required several trips through the littered cleft, for the puddles between the rocks were stale and brackish; but these journeys she made with easy and untrammeled swiftness. When she had done what she could by way of first aid, she stood looking down at the man, and shook her ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... of unbleached cotton cloth and other protective gear. The place to study him to advantage is the bowrie, or station well, in a little hollow at the foot of a hill. Of course there are many wells, but some have a bad reputation for guineaworm, and some are brackish, and some are jealously guarded by the Brahmins, who curse the Bheestee if he approaches, and some are for low caste people. This well is used by the station generally, and the water of it is very "sweet." Any native in the place will tell you that if you drink of this well you ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... carried on without a smart boat. The gondola is a source of continual expense for repairs. Its oars have to be replaced. It has to be washed with sponges, blacked, and varnished. Its bottom needs frequent cleaning. Weeds adhere to it in the warm brackish water, growing rapidly through the summer months, and demanding to be scrubbed off once in every four weeks. The gondolier has no place where he can do this for himself. He therefore takes his boat to a wharf, or squero, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... make shift for themselves, and to learn from the hardship of their lot repentance for the act of piracy they had committed in stealing our ship. On searching the island they found it to contain no water except a brackish liquid, to be had by digging, The only food obtainable was shell-fish, and occasionally the rank flesh of sea birds. They had neither the tools nor materials to build habitations, and were forced to shelter themselves from the scorching sun in summer ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... Highly folded marine and brackish water strata younger than the Jurassic, but more especially those of ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... chloride, or of calcium chloride, in water, diminishes its power of dissolving sulphate of lime, while the presence of sodium chloride increases that power. As an instance of the latter fact, we find a boiler works much cleaner which is fed alternately with fresh water and with brackish water pumped from the Tyne when the tide is high than one which is fed with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various

... looked about. The damp sea air fanned his long hair and caused him to look in the direction of the fleecy white clouds which were creeping upward from the horizon. Soon there would be fog. Then he could continue on his way to the brackish spring on the bluff-side overlooking the south shore. From there it was only a stone's throw to the beach where the mussels and abalones clung ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... eye—the other was a closed and sunken lid—and how he told us with a stiff affectation of ease his incredible story of this great heap of quap that lay abandoned or undiscovered on the beach behind Mordet's Island among white dead mangroves and the black ooze of brackish water. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... been so ludicrously misnamed the Malayan Caviare. It needs all the violence of the fresh, strong, monsoon winds to even partially purge these villages of the rank odours which cling to them at the end of the fishing season; and when all has been done, the saltness of the sea air, the brackish water of the wells, and the faint stale smells emitted by the nets and fishing tackle still tell unmistakable tales of the one trade in which every member of these communities is more or ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... would hold water. In about an hour, and not sooner, the water began to come dropping through the bottom of the bag, and, to our great surprise, was perfectly fresh and sweet, and this continued for several hours; but in the end the water began to be a little brackish. When we told him that, "Well, then," said he, "turn the sand out, and fill it again." Whether he did this by way of experiment from his own fancy, or whether he had seen it done ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... large and irregular lumps at Portland to small polished stones at the western extremity. It is said that a local seafarer landing on the beach in a fog can tell his whereabouts to a nicety by handling the shingle. For about half the distance, that is to Abbotsbury, the Fleet makes a brackish ditch on the landward side. Behind this barrier is a country of low hills and quite out-of-the-world hamlets seldom visited or visiting. Chickerell, the nearest of them to Weymouth, has a manufactory of stoneware and a golf-course, so that it is not so quiet and remote ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes

... then returns. In less than two years he has sailed as far as the entire circumference of the globe, and he has seen land but once. It is true that during a voyage of eight or ten months he has drunk brackish water, and lived upon salt meat; that he has been in a continual contest with the sea, with disease, and with the tedium of monotony; but, upon his return, he can sell a pound of his tea for a halfpenny less than the English merchant, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... off and put in the bumper, and held over the fire. The water thus obtained and cooled with ice was not salt exactly. Still it was not, as has sometimes been affirmed, pure fresh water, by any means: it had a brackish taste. ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... do report strange things of the head of the river, which was thirty days' voyage; that it springs out of a great rock, and makes a most violent stream; and that this rock stands so near unto the South Sea, that in storms the waves beat into the stream and make it brackish.' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... heaving, surging, and hissing, threw itself upwards into broken spray, which flew to leeward at a sharp angle, blown from the summit of the wave like froth from an over-filled tankard. After a night of squally restlessness, accompanied by a driving rain that tasted brackish, things had settled down with the dawn into a steady, roaring gale of wind. In the growing light sea-gulls rose triumphantly with smooth breasts bravely facing ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... in which I was well aware the chances of death were at least as five to one. I caught and contrived to smoke a quantity of fish sufficient to last me for a fortnight, and filled a small cask with brackish but still drinkable water. In this vessel, thus stored, I embarked about a fortnight after the day of the mysterious shock. On the second evening of my voyage I was caught by a gale which compelled ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... saddled up, and, at first leading their horses, passed down the coulee into the more precipitous depths of the narrow canyon. This proved hardly more than a gash cut through the rolling prairie, rock strewn, holding an insignificant stream of brackish water, yet was an ideal hiding-place, having ample room for easy passage between the rock walls. The men mounted, and Hampton, with a wave of his hand, bade the old ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... this time were successful: in a few minutes we found a pool of brackish water which appeared, under the present circumstances, to afford the most delicious draughts, and, having drunk, we lay down by the pool to rest ourselves. Being however doubtful as to which was the best route to lead us out of the ravine we were now ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... passing herds for the convenience of owners. None of ours were due, yet we looked over the "arrivals" with interest, and continued on down the trail to Red Fork. The latter was a branch of the Arkansas River, and at low water was inclined to be brackish, and hence was sometimes called the Salt Fork, with nothing to differentiate it from one of the same name sixty miles farther north. There was an old Indian trading post at Red Fork, and I lay ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... to the species. Some authors use the term "variation" in a technical sense, as implying a modification directly due to the physical conditions of life; and "variations" in this sense are supposed not to be inherited; but who can say that the dwarfed condition of shells in the brackish waters of the Baltic, or dwarfed plants on Alpine summits, or the thicker fur of an animal from far northwards, would not in some cases be inherited for at least a few generations? And in this case I presume that the form would be ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... took my way back to the road made by the Jayhawkers and found it quite level, but sandy. Following this I came to a campfire soon after dark at which E. Doty and mess were camped. As I was better acquainted I camped with them. They said the water there was brackish and I soon found out the same thing for myself. It was a poor camp; no grass, poor water and scattering, bitter sage brush for food for the cattle. It would not do to wait long here, and so they ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... from and love the broken coral, whence they grow with that wonderful verdancy that makes the beauty of the atoll from the sea. The coco-palm in particular luxuriates in that stern solum, striking down his roots to the brackish, percolated water, and bearing his green head in the wind with every evidence of health and pleasure. And yet even the coco-palm must be helped in infancy with some extraneous nutriment, and through much of the low archipelago there is planted with each nut a piece of ship's ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... become in regard to flesh, this eastern coast of that extensive country seems very defective in regard to fresh water; for as the land is generally of a nitrous and saline nature, the ponds and streams are frequently brackish. However, as good water has been found, though in small quantities, it is not improbable but this inconvenience may be removed, on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... the sun hung a dull blaze. There were tracks of the fleeing drovers having paused for a rest in the same place. It was a pebble bottom hot and dry. Wayland scooped under with his Service axe and an ooze of clay water seeped slowly up forming a brackish pool. He had to hold the little mule back from fighting the horses for that water. When the animals had drunk, he filled the water bag with the settlings. Towards three in the morning, the soft velvet pansy blue Desert ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... sources were disturbed by the depth of the new cellar, or whatever subtler cause might lurk at the bottom, it is certain that the water of Maule's Well, as it continued to be called, grew hard and brackish. Even such we find it now; and any old woman of the neighborhood will certify that it is productive of intestinal mischief to those who ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... against the iron cliffs and thundered up the coombs, now striking a shriller note as the huge waves, ever beaten off, retreated, dragging beach and shingle with them. It had been an ocean gale, and the very air was salt and brackish with flavours of the sea. Here and there great piles of seaweed had been carried in a heterogeneous mass to their feet, and the ground beneath them was soft and sandy. But the storm had died away as suddenly as it had come. The tall, stark pine trees, ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... James Grant, who received orders to return to the relief of Carolina. Early in the year 1761 he landed at Charlestown, where he took up his winter quarters, until the proper season should approach for taking the field. Unfortunately during this time many of the soldiers, by drinking brackish water, were taken sick, which afforded the inhabitants an opportunity of showing their kindness and humanity. They considered themselves, and with reason, under the strongest obligations to treat men with tenderness, who ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt

... to amount to thirty thousand; and marks of opulence and independency appear in every quarter of this commercial city, which, however, is not without its inconveniences and defects. The water of their public pumps is generally hard and brackish, an imperfection the loss excusable, as the river Clyde runs by their doors, in the lower part of the town; and there are rivulets and springs above the cathedral, sufficient to fill a large reservoir with excellent water, which ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... long, however, when a big wave almost washed him away. He was not yet safe. Still he lacked the rest and refreshment which he so sorely needed. For the raindrops were soon turned brackish by the waves which dashed upon the reef from all sides, and the Bluebird had to keep hopping up and down to avoid being drowned in the tossing spray. He was more tired than ever, and this continuous exercise made him even more thirsty. Once more ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown

... I was really a 'big chief' in England. He dines with us sometimes, and sends up a cook for a share of our meals when he does not come himself. This sounds like high living! alas, undeceive yourself. Salt junk is the mainstay; a low island, except for cocoanuts, is just the same as a ship at sea: brackish water, no supplies, and very little shelter. The king is a great character - a thorough tyrant, very much of a gentleman, a poet, a musician, a historian, or perhaps rather more a genealogist - it is strange to see him lying in his house among ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... six men imported from Europe fell speedy victims to disease. "I," he said, "on my view of Virginia, disliked Virginia, most of it being seated scatteringly ... amongst salt-marshes and creeks, whence thrice worse than Essex, ... and Kent for agues and diseases ... brackish water to drink and use, and a flat country, and standing waters in woods bred a double ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... yard of a warehouse occupied by a friend of mine in Orford-street, the soil was always damp previous to a change of weather, and a well therein was of no use whatever, except for cleansing purposes, so brackish was the water. ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... stream to its source, the Fountain of Elisha, so called as being probably that healed by the Prophet. If so, the healing was scarcely complete. The water, which gushes up strong and free at the foot of a rocky mound, is warm and slightly brackish. It spreads into a shallow pool, shaded by a fine sycamore tree. Just below, there are some remains of old walls on both sides, and the stream goes roaring away through a rank jungle of canes fifteen feet in height. The precise site of Jericho, I believe, has not been fixed, but "the city of the ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... less, until finally they were living on three dry biscuits a day each. The water, too, was getting lower and lower in the one cask that remained, and it had a warm, brackish taste. Still it was the most precious ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster

... brick below and wood above, of very lonesome and commanding appearance in its gaunt solitude. There were no houses near it, no cattle grazed about its foot; it was a dead thing in a dead landscape. To the left, but separated from it by a wide and slimy dyke, whence in times of flood the thick, brackish water trickled to the plain, stretched an arid area of sand-dunes, clothed with sparse grass, that grew like bristles upon the back of a wild hog. Beyond these dunes the ocean roared and moaned and whispered hungrily as the wind and weather stirred its depths. In front, not fifty paces ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... and placed the firewood in her, with the stock of flour, frozen meat, and the bears' flesh; then with the kettle and frying-pan they baled eight or ten buckets of water into her, for Godfrey did not know how soon the river would become brackish. They spread the bear-skin over all, then having carefully repacked the canoe, they put her also into the water, stepped the mast, took their places in her, hoisted the sail, and with the boat in tow ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... pints of cool sweet water. Why it is called milk I cannot understand, for it is as clear as crystal, and is always cool and refreshing, though the nut in which it is contained has generally been exposed to the fiercest sun. In many of the coral islands, where the water is brackish, the natives drink scarcely anything but cocoa-nut milk; and even here, if you are thirsty and ask for a glass of water, you are almost always presented with ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... For he grasps me now by the hair! The loud ocean heard, To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer[,] And under the water The Earth's white daughter Fled like a sunny beam, Behind her descended Her billows unblended With the brackish Dorian stream:— Like a gloomy stain On the Emerald main Alpheus rushed behind, As an eagle pursueing A dove to its ruin, Down the streams ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley

... located twenty miles northwest from St. Simons and ten above Frederica, and situated on the mainland, close to a branch of the Alatamaha river, on a bluff twenty feet high, then surrounded on all sides with woods. The soil is a brackish sand. Formerly Fort King George, garrisoned by an independent company, stood within a mile and a half of the new town, but had been abandoned and destroyed on account of a want of supplies and communication with Carolina. The village was ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... been brought from the Mauvaises Terres belong to a species that became extinct before the period when the Mastodon inhabited this country. The strata in which these animals are imbedded indicate that the water was fresh or brackish. It is the most desolate and barren prospect one could lay his eyes on; and if the place for bad people is like this, when they come to die, may no boy have to go there and be frightened all his life-long for his wicked and cruel ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle

... occupying the valley which lay to the west of us." ... "At the end of a mile in a south by east direction, we found ourselves on the banks of a river, the Hutt, from forty to fifty yards wide, which was running strong, and was brackish at its mouth," etc. Such was the appearance of the estuary and of the Hutt River in the eyes of ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... rivers; one from the north-east, which is properly the Swan River; the other from the south-east, called Canning's River. Captain Stirling examined them both: the former to its source, the latter beyond the point where the water ceased to be brackish. They are both sufficiently convenient for boat navigation, even at the end of the dry season; and any obstruction might easily be removed to make them more so, by which the productions of an immense extent of country might ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various

... as I have felt, or be what I have been, Or weep as I could once have wept o'er many a vanish'd scene,— As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be, So midst the wither'd waste of life, those ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... when poured into a brazen or silver vessel, does not produce a blackish sediment. Hippocrates says, "Water which is easily warmed or easily chilled is alway lighter." But that water is bad which takes a long time to boil vegetables; and so too is water full of nitre, or brackish. And in his book 'On Waters,' Hippocrates calls good water drinkable; but stagnant water he calls bad, such as that from ponds or marshes. And ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... following a buffalo path, reached a salt-spring in what is now Floyd County, in the extreme eastern section of Kentucky. Here Boone beheld great droves of buffalo that visited the salt-spring to drink the water or lick the brackish soil. After spending the winter in hunting and trapping, the Boones and Hill, discouraged by the forbidding aspect of the hill-country which with its dense growth of laurel was exceedingly difficult to penetrate, abandoned all hope of finding Kentucky by ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson

... of getting my fingers to tingle by handling the snow; but it was frozen so hard I could not scrape up with my nails as much as a half-dozen of flakes would make. What I got I dissolved in my mouth and found it brackish; however, I suspected it would be sweeter and perhaps not so stonily frozen higher up, where there was less chance of the salt spray mingling with it, and I resolved when the light came to fill my empty beer-bottles as with salt or pounded sugar for use hereafter—that is, if it should prove sweet; ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... when he would scent water. This was sometimes very easy to smell, however, for it was almost impossible to drink out of a waterhole without holding the nose and straining the liquid through my closed teeth. Chaco water at best is very brackish, and on drying off the ground a white ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... piled in heaps among the ruins of their former habitations. For leagues beyond, the channel began to widen, and at length became so vast that one shore was no longer visible from the other. The water was now brackish, and beautiful sea-shells were seen strewn along the shore. They had reached the mouth of the Mississippi, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... same common embouchure. Mitchell's experience too proved that the pastoral country through which the Darling ran was by no means unfit for habitation, nor was the river a salt one; true some of his men had noticed that the water was brackish in places, but this brackishness, it was seen, had a purely ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... which are strained through ashes. The schools of Plato, that the element of water being compacted by the rigor of the air became sweet, but that part which was expired from the earth, being enfired, became of a brackish taste. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... granite wall of his mountain-top retreat. He rose in leisurely fashion—henceforth there would be plenty of time, years of it, running to waste with useless days. After eating and partaking sparingly of the brackish water of the keg, he nailed together two long sideboards of the dismembered wagon; and having secured these end to end, he fastened in parallel strips to the surface short sticks as steps to his ladder. This finished, he made a rope-ladder. The ladder of boards was for ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... couple seldom develop any flowers. The mosses, too, were in great part without fruit, with the exception of those which grew on the margin, formed of hard clay covered with mud, of a pool, filled with brackish water and lying close to the sea-margin. A large number of pieces of driftwood scattered round this pool showed that the place was occasionally overflowed with sea-water, which thus appears to have been favourable to the development ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... on our preserved meats, we proceeded up the river in a light canoe to visit the salt springs, leaving a party behind to attend the nets. This river is about one hundred yards wide at its mouth. Its waters did not become brackish until we had ascended it seven or eight miles but, when we had passed several rivulets of fresh water which flowed in, the main stream became very salt, at the same time contracting its width to fifteen or twenty yards. At a distance of twenty-two miles, including the windings ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... main effects of the metropolitan complexities, the widening brackish and salt portions of the Potomac estuary form a generally healthy body of water, though changes loom as the metropolis moves inexorably outward from its center and as hitherto remote Tidewater areas are brought more and more under the influence of modern ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... repose. So she began in her usual fashion to build up a false repose on the hither side of belief. She might as well have tried to float on the Dead Sea. Peace eluding her, she tried to resign herself to tumult. She drank deep at the well of self-pity, but found its waters brackish. People are apt to think that they may temper the penalties of misconduct by self-commiseration, just as they season the long aftertaste of beneficence by a little spice of self-applause. But the Power of Good is a more grateful master than the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... orchards of pomegranate and fig trees, and some vine plantations. The place is supplied with vegetables from Rieha, and from Aere, a village two hours distant, lying between Darkoush and Djissr Shogher. There is a single spring in the town of brackish water, which is never used but in seasons of great drought; a man who had cleansed the bottom of the deep well in which the spring issues, told me that he found two openings in the rock, near each ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... had before passed through the Loudon Branch, we now followed the main stream, and on our way landed on the south bank, upon a piece of open forest land, abundantly clothed with luxuriant grass and moderate-sized timber. The water here began to taste brackish, but it was quite fresh about a quarter of a mile higher up, above a spit of rocks which nearly crosses the channel, leaving a passage of ten feet water, over which there is a trifling fall. About three-quarters of ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... natives of the lake. Discovery of the Jerboa in Australia. Different habits of the savage and civilized. A range visible in the south. Peculiarities in the surface of the country near the river. Water of the lakes brackish, or salt. Natives fly at our approach. Arrival in the dark, on the bank of a watercourse. Dead saplings of ten years growth in the ponds. Discovery of Mount Hope. Enter a much better country. Limestone. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... hill country one expects to find springs, but not to depend upon them; for when found they are often brackish and unwholesome, or maddening, slow dribbles in a thirsty soil. Here you find the hot sink of Death Valley, or high rolling districts where the air has always a tang of frost. Here are the long heavy winds and breathless calms on the tilted mesas where dust devils dance, whirling up ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... main admirably well supplied, but there was a deficiency of drink. The water as they advanced became brackish and intolerably bad, and there was great difficulty in procuring any substitute. At Male three cows were given for a pot of beer, and more of that refreshment might have been sold at the same price, had there ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... man, and don't be a fool. You'll be glad of it long before you get there. Sun's hot yet, and the water's salt for miles, and then for far enough brackish." ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn

... shallow, and contains numerous shoals and islands. It is properly an estuary, immense volumes of fresh water flowing into it from the south. The tides are felt through its entire length of one hundred and sixty miles, but the water is only slightly brackish. It has a dingy orange-brown color. A narrow blue line on our left, miles away, was all that was visible, at times, of the island of Marajo; and as we passed the broad mouth of the Tocantins, we were struck with the magnificent ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... do...[we] set sail in the pinnace, and on this day touched at two separate islands, where we found at best some brackish water, which had collected in the cavities of the rocks on the beach after the rain, but it was largely mixed with seawater. On the 7th do. we remained here, in order to repair our pinnace with a plank, ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres

... oysters are not best when quite fresh from their beds, and that their flavour is too brackish and harsh, and is much ameliorated ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... not like to make your mother anxious; but the fact is, I am very anxious myself as to whether there is any water on this island; if there is not, we shall have to quit it sooner or later, for although we may get water by digging in the sand, it would be too brackish to use for any time, and would make us all ill. Very often there will be water if you dig for it, although it does not show above-ground; and ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat

... and the whole party started down the Darling (the CALLA-WATTA of the natives) on the 8th June. During their progress they found the tree marked H. H. by Hume, at Sturt's limit, and they now noticed that in places the river water was salt or brackish. On the 11th of July, after following the course of the river for three hundred miles, and ascertaining beyond all doubt that it must be identical with the junction in the Murray, noticed by Captain Sturt, Mitchell determined to return; the unvarying sameness of the country they had travelled over ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... was about two miles distant to the eastward, and the crews gave way with good will, for the prospect of having a drink of pure water after the brackish and ill-smelling stuff we had been drinking for a fortnight, was very pleasing. Although but a little past nine o'clock in the morning the day was intensely hot, and windless as well, and the perspiration was streaming down the naked chests and backs of our sturdy native ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke

... debating societies! Vain dream! My hideous Pocahontas marched stolidly on, dragging me like a frightened calf, at the rope's end. My throat was dry as ashes. I guess the redskins suffered for want of water, too. We came to a little brackish stream after sunset, and here they camped. They had taken from me Miss Spitfire's revolver, or I ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... Quaffing a brackish cup, With all of his chariots, wagons — He never could quite ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... all the fish? In such a deluge the rivers and seas must have mingled their waters, and this, in conjunction with the terrific outpour from the windows of heaven, must have made the water brackish, too salt for fresh-water fish, and too fresh for salt-water fish; and consequently the aquatic animals must all have perished, unless, indeed, they were miraculously preserved—a contingency which anyone is free to conjecture, out no one is at liberty to assert, seeing that the inspired ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... which came the fashion and beauty of England, had fallen, through the silting of the estuary and the broadening of the "Sands of Dee," to the level of a hamlet in the time of Dr. Grenfell's boyhood. The broad stretch of seaward trending sand, with its interlacing rivulets of fresh and brackish water, made a tempting though treacherous playground, alluring alike in the varied forms of life it harbored and in the adventure which whetted exploration. Thither came Charles Kingsley, Canon of Chester, who married a Grenfell, and who coupled ...
— Adrift on an Ice-Pan • Wilfred T. Grenfell

... as a 'gentle river,' is characterized as 'christall Thamis,' and is lauded for its 'pure streames' and 'sweete waters.' Chapman, in his 'Ovid's Banquet of Sense,' discourses eloquently of the 'wanton Thamysis that hastes to greet The brackish coast of ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... square mile of crags and cliffs. The great spirit of cheery optimism, the light-hearted, careless good fellowship, and the muscle and grit of the invaders looked lightly at all this. Regiments might dwindle sadly from dysentery and shrapnel, the water-supply might be short and brackish, the flies might be getting more persistent; but reinforcements would come some day soon, the British at Cape Helles would get Achi Baba, and ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... considered only the question of relieving the danger with pure and wholesome water; and, although the large capitalisation aroused suspicion in the Senate, and Chief Justice Lansing called it "a novel experiment,"[157] the bill passed. Thus the Manhattan Bank came into existence, while wells, brackish and unwholesome, continued the only sufficient source ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... settled down around them—sounds indicative of a Florida coast camping ground began to make themselves manifest—mullet jumped up out of the brackish water where some stream emptied its tide straight from the Everglades into the gulf, to fall back again with resounding splashes. Now and then there was a rush, and a great deal of agitation of the water ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... not hold out kindly hands, smile with sympathetic eyes; and yet their very help might weaken us. When we have beaten our way across with the roar of the distant waves still in our ears, the shadows of the black, fierce, jagged cliff hardly faded, the taste of the brackish spray still lingering on our lips, an exultant thrill speeds through every nerve as we clasp a hand that has had to buffet ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... valley of El-Hasee is sandy, like all those of Fezzan. It is bounded on the north by the perpendicular buttresses of the Hamadah, and on the south by sandy swells. The well is not copious, but affords a regular supply of slightly brackish water. The people descend to the bottom, thirty or forty feet, and fill their gerbahs. The blacks are very troublesome, and require a good deal of patience. This morning they would not fetch water from ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... them to go away. The island being very dry and barren, without either trees or springs, the wretched sick inhabitants have no other sustenance, and are entirely without employment, and they are necessitated to drink of the thick and brackish water of certain wells, there being none else to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... old man set before him some mouldy bread on a trencher and said, 'Eat,' and some brackish water in a cup and said, 'Drink,' and when he had eaten and drunk, the old man went out, locking the door behind him and fastening it ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde

... thought he. "We can't depend on the bottled supply. Of course, there's the Hudson; but it's brackish, if not downright salt. I've got to find some fresh and pure supply, close at hand. That's ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... condition made her hesitate for a moment, but only for a moment. Her thirst was too great to allow niceties to interfere with it. She picked up one of the clean coffee-cups that had rolled to her feet, rinsed it several times, and then drank. The water was warm and slightly brackish, but she needed it too much to mind. In spite of being tepid it relieved the dry, suffocating feeling in her throat and refreshed her. The Nubian went away again, leaving the woman still ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... longer known to stay Than from the smooth wave it had swept away The new divorced leaves, that from each side Left the thick boughs to dance out with the tide. At further end the creek, a stately wood Gave a kind shadow (to the brackish flood) Made up of trees, not less kenn'd by each skiff Than that sky-scaling peak of Teneriffe, Upon whose tops the hernshew bred her young, And hoary moss upon their branches hung; Whose rugged rinds sufficient were to show, Without their height, what time they ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... a very pleasing variety of aspect to the eye. He found here a spring of fresh, clear, cool water, which was a source of great satisfaction to him, as the water of the lake, being in direct communication with the sea, was somewhat brackish, too much so at all events to render it a desirable liquid for drinking and culinary purposes; and the presence of this spring would avert all necessity for a search on the mainland and a possible difficulty of securing a ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... the besieged was gloomy enough. True their provisions still held out, but they suffered greatly from want of water, that within the enclosure being quite brackish, until a fresh spring was suddenly discovered in the courtyard. Even then the fact that scarcely a man had escaped unwounded, and that they had no prospect before them but a lingering death by famine, or one more dreadful still upon the altar of sacrifice, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... used for drinking—so long as it lasted. When we were mustering the other side of the run, it came to our camping at a sandy creek where we could dig in the sand and get just enough for horses and men. The water of the Bore I'd made, was a bit brackish, but it kept the grass alive round about and was all the cattle had to depend on. You can think of the job it was shifting the beasts over there from other parts of the run which was what we tried to do, so long as they were ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... the bright green apples, Full of disappointment and of rain, Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the yellow dapples Of autumn tell the withered ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... to my charge, for the haemorrhage of the day before had returned, and she was fast drifting into unconsciousness. "Water, water!" was the only intelligible cry that left her lips, and that we had to give was warm and brackish, from the occasional lapping of the sea against the barrels, into ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... a soldier asks in regard to his camping-place is, Where is water to be got? One's first impression would be that on this flat tongue of sand covered only with a sparse growth of pines and scrub live-oak, with the ocean on one side and a tidal river on the other, fresh water would be scarce and brackish. But we were agreeably disappointed to find that near us, in the middle of the sands, was a juniper swamp and pond of which the water was sweet and wholesome, though from the juniper roots it had the bright brown ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... dried up in the body, the brain became inflamed, followed by delirium, coma, death. It was impossible for the white soldiers to perspire unless they were near marshes where they might quench their intolerable thirst in the brackish waters. Owing to the lack of fresh vegetables and improper food, the rations of bully beef and hard-tack, and the assaults of blood-sucking insects, many deaths occurred. Even the Northwest Indian troops, accustomed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... never to be washed with soda; the washing of napkins with soda is apt to produce excoriations and breakings-out. "As washerwomen often deny that they use soda, it can be easily detected by simply soaking a clean white napkin in fresh water and then tasting the water; if it be brackish and salt, soda has been employed." [Footnote: Communicated by Sir Charles Locock to ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... project from the opposite side; a kind of Birket has thus been formed, which formerly supplied the garrison with water. In the castle is a deep well, and many of the private houses also have wells, but their water is brackish; others have cisterns, which save the inhabitants the trouble of fetching their water from the Wady below. There are no antiquities in the town, excepting a few fragments of granite columns. A good mosque, ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... chain of lagoons which skirt the coast of Brazil. M. Gay has stated that he found in the neighbourhood of Rio shells of the marine genera solen and mytilus, and fresh-water ampullariae, living together in brackish water. (2/2. "Annales des Sciences Naturelles" for 1833.) I also frequently observed in the lagoon near the Botanic Garden, where the water is only a little less salt than in the sea, a species of hydrophilus, very similar to a water-beetle common in the ditches ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... rather brackish, but not sufficiently so to be of consequence. All night the boat was tossed heavily on the waves. Vincent dozed off at times, rousing himself occasionally and bailing out the water, which came in the shape of spray and rain. The prospect in the morning was not cheering. ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... condition; raw or cooked, digestible or not, he swallowed it silently and greedily, and thought it quite unnecessary when I wanted the boys to cook some rice for me, or to wash a plate. The tea was generally made with brackish water which was perfectly sickening. George had always just eaten when I announced that dinner was ready, and for answer he generally wrapped himself in his blankets and fell asleep. The consequence was that each of us lived his own life, and the companionship which ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... the lie of the land and our positions there—coming up from the beach at Suvla there were fully two miles of flat country before you reached the foothills. The northern part of this plain was a shallow lake dry in summer but with a few feet of brackish water in winter called Salt Lake, and the southern part a few feet higher stretched down to "Anzac," where spurs running down from Sari Bahr to the sea terminate it abruptly. Our front line, generally speaking, was just off the plain, a few hundred yards up the slopes ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie

... miles in uncovered wagons. Many nights we shared a one-room cabin with all the members of the family. But the greatest hardship we suffered was the lack of water. There was very little good water in the state, and the purest water was so brackish that we could hardly drink it. The more we drank the thirstier we became, and when the water was made into tea it tasted worse than when it was clear. A bath was the rarest of luxuries. The only available fuel was ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw

... is this affair?' 'You must go and kill a man named Hatim-Thai, who lives on the confines of Syria.' To this I replied: 'O my lord, king of the world, I am only a Bedouin, a poor robber, wandering in the forests and the plains. For drink I have but the brackish water of the marshes. For food I have only rats and locusts.' On account of my wretchedness, I obeyed the wishes of the King, and promised to execute this affair. But here I am, in a very embarrassing situation, for I do not know this Hatim-Thai, and I ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors

... so, Ned, who had quickly guessed what Jimmy meant, found that there was indeed a brackish taste to the water, as though the influence of the great tides of Hudson Bay might be felt this far up the stream; it would have gone much further only for the numerous rifts that told of a descent of several feet in the drop ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson

... at Tinian, filling water took up the whole of their time, the well not affording more than three tons a day, sometimes only two tons: the water was rather brackish, but otherwise not ill tasted. They found the fowls and hogs very shy, and the cattle had quite deserted the south part of the island, owing, as was imagined, to the alarm the Charlotte's people had ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... N. saltiness. niter, saltpeter, brine. Adj. salty, salt, saline, brackish, briny; salty as brine, salty as a herring, salty as Lot's wife. salty, racy (indecent) 961. Phr. take it with ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... dung of some, which we judged to be of the deer kind. The fish in the bay are scarce; those we caught were mostly sharks, dog-fish, and a fish called by the seamen nurses, like the dog-fish, only full of small white spots; and some small fish not unlike sprats. The lagoons (which are brackish) abound with trout, and several other sorts of fish, of which we caught a few with lines, but being much encumbered with stumps of trees, we ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... ourselves, and felt for a few minutes the blessed shade of the ancient buildings. We were out of water, but the two or three scowling Arabs, with their long guns, who were idling about the place, said they had none and that there was none in the vicinity. They knew there was a little brackish water in the pit, but they venerated a place made sacred by their ancestor's imprisonment too much to be willing to see Christian dogs drink from it. But Ferguson tied rags and handkerchiefs together till he made a rope long enough ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... sycamore, under which, so tradition says, the Holy Family rested in their flight to Egypt. The present tree was planted in 1672, but the credulous still believe it to be a direct descendant of the original one. A fine spring which flows in the vicinity is also supposed to have lost its natural brackish taste on account of the infant Jesus having been bathed in it. A half-mile farther on is Heliopolis, the old City of the Sun. It is now marked by the solitary obelisk, which alone remains to remind us of a past that stretches ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... misfortune to lose one of their four pack-mules, which strayed away. Pressing on in a northwesterly direction they passed through a series of deep valleys and gorges where the only water they could find was brackish and bitter, and reached the edge of the California desert. They had meanwhile lost another mule which had been dashed to pieces by falling down a caon. Mr. Whitley's strength becoming exhausted his wife gave up to him the beast she had been riding, and pursued her way ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the sea-harvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight and gayclad lightclad figures of children and girls and voices childish ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... every flood its waters overflow, and are unable to escape to the sea when left behind the bar. Sometimes, in like manner, in a gale of wind on shore, the waves are carried over the bar, and there are left as a brackish pool, unable to return ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... allowed to spread out so much, the educational stream is confined between narrow banks, it will show a deep and full current. If allowed to spread over the marshes and plains, it becomes sluggish and brackish. Our course of study for the common schools in recent years, has been largely added to and has been extended over the whole field of knowledge. History, geography, natural science lessons and drawing have been added to the old reading, writing, arithmetic, ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... great numbers, and of the finest quality, but now almost forgotten, is also returning. This is the lampern. Lamperns, unlike eels, come into the rivers to spawn, and go back to the sea later or to the brackish waters. Men employed in scooping gravel out of the river at Hammersmith, lately noticed numbers of lamperns coming up on to the gravel-beds at low-water, and moving the gravel into little hollows, previously to dropping their spawn. Twelve ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... as to turn the waters of the sea by means of it into these aqueducts. This plan he carried into effect. The consequence was, that the water in the cisterns was gradually changed. It became first brackish, then more and more salt and bitter, until, at length, it was wholly impossible to use it. For some time the army within could not understand these changes; and when, at length, they discovered the cause the soldiers were panic-stricken ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... on this occasion was decidedly eccentric. On reaching a village he would tell his coachman where to go next but he never told him more than one stage in advance. Every morning he would consume one of his rolls and wash it down with the lukewarm brackish water of the Maros—and bitter enough he found the taste of it too. He never quitted the carriage for more than two or three minutes at a time, and he presented his pistols point blank at everyone who ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai



Words linked to "Brackish" :   unpalatable, salty



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