"Configuration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lie all the Great Lakes. The origin of these large troughs, holding such immense sheets of fresh water, remains still the subject of discussion and investigation among geologists. It has been supposed that in the primitive configuration of the globe, when the formation of those depressions at the poles in which the Arctic seas are accumulated gave rise to a corresponding protrusion at the equator, the curve thus produced throughout the North Temperate Zone may have forced up the Canada granite, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... stades, et la largeur de la chlamyde du Cap Sacre (Cap Saint Vincent) a l'extremite de la grande ceinture de Taurus, pres de Thinae a 70,000 stades. En prolongeant la distance vers le sud est jusque au cap des Coliaques qui, d'apres les idees de Strabon sur la configuration de l'Asie, represente notre Cap Comorin, et avance plus a l'est que la cote de Thinae, la combinaison des donnees d'Eratosthene offre 74,600 et meme 78,000 stades. Or, en reduisant, par la difference de latitude, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Strabo compared the configuration of the world, as then known, to a cloak or mantle (chlamys). 77. Atomists or familists were a Puritanical sect who appeared about 1575, founded by Henry Nicholas, a Dutchman. They considered that the doctrine of revelation was an allegory, and believed ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... This physical configuration of the country explains the existence at a very early date of those gigantic serpents which ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... stations, you get an insight into the configuration of the whole Western Highlands. By the dip of the mountains, you discover at a glance all the openings in the panorama around you into other regions. Follow your fancies fearlessly wherever they may lead; and if the blue aerial ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... that moment to take down the outlines of the great stones and the configuration of lake and hill beyond, but by and by he would give another sort of atmosphere to this wild scene. He would have rain and darkness spread over the island, with the low hills in the south grown desolate and remote, and the waters of the sea ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... earth will take place all over the world. The whole configuration of the earth shall be changed. Mountains and islands, well ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... of the places of the stars is the foundation of astronomy.[62] Their configuration lends to the skies their distinctive features, and marks out the shifting tracks of more mobile objects with relatively fixed, and generally unvarying points of light. A more detailed and accurate ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... horizon, presenting their dark sides to you, exhibited to the imagination all the gorgeous and picturesque appearances of arches, obelisks, mouldering towers, magnificent gardens, cities, forests, mountains, and every fantastic configuration of living creatures, and of imaginary beings; while the finely stratified clouds a little higher in the atmosphere, might really be imagined so many glorious islands of the blessed, swimming ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... cries, leapt into the corridor from the street without. His figure was that, more or less, of a Greek god, while his face, although at the moment inflamed with anger, was of an entirely moral and permissible configuration. ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... acquainted with the interior configuration of bodies; or has shown the existence of a vegetation and of plants, the existence of which we ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... was not far-fetched. They had reached a part of the glacier where the slope and the configuration of the valley had caused severe strains on the ice in various directions, so that there were not only transverse crevasses but longitudinal cracks, which unitedly had cut up the ice into blocks of all ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... enormous cotton-tree. Several gigantic vines, in whose powerful and enervating embrace the mighty trunk had perished, still clasped the magnificent colossus with their shining red tendrils, whilst the interior of the tree, hollowed by the tooth of time, was of a fantastical configuration, not unlike a Gothic chapel, and sufficiently spacious to contain twenty men. The care with which the hollow had been swept out, and the neighbourhood of a salt spring, showed that it was used by the Indian hunters as a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... streaked with grey. The forehead was large, round, without protuberances, and very gently receding to where thin black curls, that had once been redundant, began to tumble down to the ears. The entire configuration of the head and face seemed to me singularly noble, and from the eyes upwards, full of beauty. He wore a pair of spectacles, and, in reading, a second pair over the first: but these took little from the sense of power conveyed by those ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... configuration of land and sea been less familiar, I should none the less have known that I stood on the planet whose ruddy hue is at once the admiration and puzzle of astronomers. Its explanation I now recognized in the tint of the atmosphere, a coloring comparable to the haze of Indian summer, except ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... the shore of the lake, and, like all the roads in Switzerland, is very narrow; in some spots, in consequence of the configuration of the hilly ground, there is scarcely space for two ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... ahead of the traveller, like a white boundary line between cliff and wave. You wonder at first if the road was made merely to gladden the tourist, for it does not seem likely that there could be much traffic other than that of pleasure-seekers thus along the margin of the sea. The configuration of this part of the County Antrim, however, explains the position of the road, and justifies the engineer who was so happily enabled to combine the utilitarian with the romantic. A series of deep cut gorges, locally known as "The Glens," intersect the ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... the bookbinder's crude ornamentation—ungraceful arabesques of vine leaves which wreathe about broken columns, a rising sun caught in a spider's web of rays—all that configuration begins to spread and distend until it fills the room. The vine leaves tremble in a morning wind; a soft blowing shakes the columns, and higher and higher mounts the sun. Like a dance of flickering torches ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... twice Raraka headed us again—again, in the sea fashion, the quite innocent steersman was abused—and again the Casco kept away. Had I been called on, with no more light than that of our experience, to draw the configuration of that island, I should have shown a series of bow- window promontories, each overlapping the other to the nor'ard, and the trend of the land from the south-east to the north-west, and behold, on the chart it lay near east and ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Turkey seems to have a distinct and individual class of rugs; and this is not surprising, for there are a number of different tribes, each of which impresses its individuality upon the work. The surface configuration and the climate of a place have much to do with the quality of the rugs manufactured within it. Naturally, in the rocky, mountainous regions the flocks consist of goats instead of sheep. The sheep would be injured among the steep, sharp crags, and much ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... students, accompanied by their teacher guides repair to the open at night when the canopy of God's Heavens is ablaze with scintillating points of light. The different constellations as viewed from our planet present the same general appearance as to configuration as they do to the dwellers on your Earth; but the view is decidedly more vivid by reason of a more ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... La Roquette, "he has laid down and systematized the principal scientific results of his expedition in Asia, and has recorded some ingenious speculation as to the shape of the continents and the configuration of the mountains of Tartary, giving special attention to the vast depression which stretches from the north of Europe to the centre of Asia beyond the Caspian Sea ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... eye for you; by the same token, as the night's could, warm your tooth, avick; there's waker wather nor this in Lough Mecall. Sorra sup of it over I keep for my own use at all, barrin' when I take a touch o' configuration in my bowels, or, may be, when I'm too long at my prayers; for, God help me, sure I'm but sthrivin', wid the help o' one thing an' another, to work out my salvation as well as I can! Your health, any how, an' a merry Chris'mas to you!—not forgettin' myself," he added, putting ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... been objected to a common origin for all the American nations, and even for those of Mexico, that their monuments should present so great a variety in the configuration of the head and face; a fact which forcibly impresses every one who examines the numerous effigies in baked clay in the collection of the American Philosophical Society; yet they are all made of the same material and by the same national artists. The varieties are indeed endless; and Mr. ...
— Some Observations on the Ethnography and Archaeology of the American Aborigines • Samuel George Morton
... author spans three centuries in discussing the specialization, configuration, and change of woodworking tools in ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... he now hasten to carry into execution the plans which he had originally formed only with the view to aggrandizement. He had delayed too long, either because the favourable configuration of the stars had not yet presented itself, or, as he used to say, to check the impatience of his friends, because THE TIME WAS NOT YET COME. The time, even now, was not come: but the pressure of circumstances ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... by a fishing boat. Under its guidance the Seafowl lay off the shores of what seemed through the glasses to be an earthly paradise, a perfect scene of verdant beauty, with waving trees and cultivated fields, sheltered by a central mountain the configuration of which suggested that it must at one time have been a volcano, one side of which had been blown away so that a gigantic crater many miles across formed a lake-like harbour. Into this deep water, after careful soundings had been taken, the sloop glided and dropped anchor, the pilot with his two ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... proportionately affects the structural properties of the derived compounds, both sulphocarbonates and esters. This is at least an indication that the properties of the visible aggregates are directly related to the actual configuration of the chemical units. But it appears that we are barred from the present discussion of such a problem in absence of any theory of the solid state generally, but more particularly of those forms of matter which ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... this the secret of that glory which so often enwraps the brow and countenance of those who are newly dead? If so, death would be like the arrival of a traveler at the top of a great mountain, whence he sees spread out before him the whole configuration of the country, of which till then he had had but passing glimpses. To be able to overlook one's own history, to divine its meaning in the general concert and in the divine plan, would be the beginning of eternal felicity. Till then we ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... climate of Kamtschatka is inferior to that of other places under the same latitude, is to be found in the configuration of the country. The mountains of England, for instance, are of a very moderate height, and broken by extensive plains; here, on the contrary, intersected only by a few valleys of small extent, a single chain of mountains, its broken snow-crowned summits reaching ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... effort bring to mind examples of independent societies in tropical regions, where, these things being neglected, the resultant government is a mockery. Have we any reason to believe that the Filipino, untrained, inexperienced, occupying an undeveloped area of special configuration in a region where continuous effort is disagreeable and initiative distressing, will achieve success where others of greater original ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... nothing but the "redistribution" of these entities. The value of such an explanation for scientific purposes depends altogether on how consistent and exact it is. Every "thing" must be interpreted as a "configuration," every "event" as a change of configuration, every predicate ascribed must be of a geometrical sort. Measured by these requirements of mechanics Spencer's attempt has lamentably failed. His terms are vagueness and ambiguity incarnate, and he seems incapable ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... which illustrates [Greek omitted] the understanding of man. Epicurus says that it is an efflux emitted from things that are vocal, or that give sounds or great noises; this is broken into those fragments which are after the same configuration. Like figures are round figures with round, and irregular and triangular with those of the same kind. These falling upon the ears produce the sense of hearing. This is seen in leaking vessels, and in fullers when they ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Aisne rises in the Argonne, southwest of Verdun. Through the Champagne region its banks are of gradual slope, but shortly after it passes Rethel, on its westerly course, the configuration changes sharply, and at Craonne the bluffs overlooking the river are 450 feet high. It is easy to see what an inaccessible barrier is made by such a line of cliffs. For forty miles this line of bluffs ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... fluid bodies? If water were somewhat more rarefied, it could no longer sustain those prodigious floating buildings, called ships. Bodies that have the least ponderosity would presently sink under water. Who is it that took care to frame so just a configuration of parts, and so exact a degree of motion, as to make water so fluid, so penetrating, so slippery, so incapable of any consistency: and yet so strong to bear, and so impetuous to carry off and waft away, the most unwieldy bodies? It is docile; man leads it about as ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... on their money bags. After hearing a few words from one of them, Dante returns to Virgil, and both take their place on the croup of Geryon, who bears them downwards to the eighth circle. This (Canto xviii.), from its configuration, is known as Malebolge, or Evilpits. It is divided into ten concentric rings, or circular trenches, separated by a tract of rocky ground. From various indications we gather that each trench is half a mile across, and the intervening ground a mile and a quarter. The trenches are ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... which, wind, cannot be comprehended, the latter half, water, cannot be grasped. It may be defined as a system of geomancy, by the science of which it is possible to determine the desirability of sites whether of tombs, houses, or cities, from the configuration of such natural objects as rivers, trees, and hills, and to foretell with certainty the fortunes of any family, community, or individual, according to the spot selected; by the art of which it is in the power of the geomancer to counteract evil influences by good ones, to transform ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... walnut. The shell surface is slightly rougher and somewhat darker than most Persian nuts. The suture of the Persian parent is prominent. Black walnut parentage is exhibited by the thick shell, the interior configuration and in the flavor of the small kernel. Nut size varies somewhat with diameters ranging from 1 to 1-1/4 inches and lengths ranging from 1-1/4 to ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... west; the ice-terraces of the island lay with the wild strange gleam of their own snow radiance upon them upon the larboard quarter; around the schooner was the whiteness of her frozen seat, and her outline was an inky, exquisitely defined configuration upon it; above the crystal wall on the larboard bow rose the spume of the breaking surge in pallid bodies, glancing for an instant, and sometimes shaking a thunder into the ship when a portion of the seething water was flung ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... preceding sensible impression, but neither from within nor from without can we have received an impression from which this particular idea can have been copied. No keenest scrutiny of any portion of matter, no study of its external configuration or internal structure could, previously to experience, enable us to conjecture that it could produce any effect whatever, still less any particular effect: could enable us to guess, for instance, that flame would ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... broke upon us as we dragged wearily along. We could not have ridden less than an hundred miles since leaving the Pecos river; and yet, to our dismay, the mountain was still at a good distance before us. As the day brightened, we could trace the configuration of its base; and we observed that upon its southern face a deep ravine indented the mountain nearly to its top. On its western side—the one nearest us—there was no such feature; and we conjectured that the most likely place for water ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... for a score of miles the green-covered earth rose and fell in undulating beauty, and here again the roofs and spires of nearby villages might in fair weather be seen nestling peacefully among the trees. Due south there was a suggestion of water and some peculiar configuration, which by day seemed to have no significance other than that which attached to the vague outlines of a distant landscape. By night, however, the soft glow emanating from myriads of lights identified it as the body and ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... we must be pre-admonished concerning the Letters; that there is a great Latitude almost amongst them all, and that one and the same Character is not pronounced by one and the same Configuration of the Mouth, yea, in one and the same Language; thus [a] and [e] sometimes are sounded open, and sometimes close; also [o] hath its own Latitude, so as many other Letters also may have; yea, as many as are the divers Modes, by which the Voice and Breath can be Figured, ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... crested with radiance, you have the one blending picture, nay, the reality, of the American domain! No such soil, so varied by climate, by products, by mineral riches, by forest and lake, by wild heights and buttresses, and by opulent plains,—yet all bound into unity of configuration and bordered by both warm and icy seas,—no such domain was ever given to ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... few years, the progress of scientific knowledge has enabled man to measure the depths of the ocean, which were formerly believed to be as unfathomable as boundless in extent. From soundings which have been taken, it is ascertained that the configuration of the earth at the bottom of the sea, is similar to that portion which rises above the surface, undulating, and interspersed with hills, and valleys, and plains, and mountain ranges, and abrupt precipices. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... the genuine spirit of Marengo; the old French count picks his elastic steps with the placid and dignified philosophy of the ancien regime; while the Parisian dames, of all ranks, ages, and degrees, trip along, with one leg undraped, exactly in proportion to the shapeliness of its configuration. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... sees the configuration of the country as on a map; the high Jebel Orbata, 1170 metres, now covered with snow, coming forward to meet you on the other side of the wide valley. From this point it is easy to realize, as did the commander of that French expedition, the significance ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... were placed absolutely in the Infantry front trenches, on the sky line, no troops of any kind being in advance of them. It would have been quite useless to take up positions behind the Infantry line in the normal way, owing to the configuration of the ground, for in such cases the lowest range at which the crest could be cleared was 3,000 yards, while our targets were from 500 to 1,000 yards distant. Indeed at night, shrapnel shell with fuse set at zero was ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... what point he reached the lake. The discovery of Lake Nyassa, as well as Lake Shirwa, was of immense importance, because they were both parallel to the ocean, and the whole traffic of the regions beyond must pass by this line. The configuration of the Shire Valley, too, was favorable to colonization. The valley occupied three different levels. First there was a plain on the level of the river, like that of the Nile, close and hot. Rising above this to the east there was another plain, 2000 feet high, three ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... other igneous rocks, which are exposed in many places in the shape of massive blocks; otherwise the hill-range is covered in the upper part with sandstone, and in the bottoms with alluvial clay. This is the superficial configuration of the land as it strikes the eye; but, knowing the elevation of the interior plateau to be only 2500 feet above the sea immediately on the western flank of these hills, whilst the breath of the chain is 100 miles, the mean ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... principal cue to memory (calling it A), we must admit an ulterior influence or motive-power, itself in the nature of an accessory cue, namely a wish (B), revived along with the memory of the conversation. This wish (to substitute reflexology for histology) contributes a special configuration or phantastic, wishful arrangement to the group of successive trial apperceptions called forth by the physical stimulus (A). The corresponding motives of desire and of aversion, (concisely pictured as positive interest in the reflex ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... unbroken by any estuary, or inland sea, and intersected by a few long or easily navigable rivers; all its known chains of mountains are of moderate height, rising in terraces, down which the waters find their way in cataracts, not through deep ravines and fertile valleys. Owing to this configuration, its high table lands are without streams, a phenomenon unknown in any other part of the world; while, in the lower countries, the rivers, when swelled with the rains, spread into floods and periodical lakes, or lose themselves in marshes. According to this view of the probable structure ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... which it loses its distinctive elevation above the surrounding plains, and passes into rolling prairies. Its length is about two hundred miles, and its general direction N. N. W. and S. S. E. Its northern termination (called Tete du Couteau in consequence of its peculiar configuration) is not more than fifteen to twenty miles across; its elevation above the level of the Big Stone Lake is eight hundred and ninety feet, and above the ocean one thousand nine hundred and sixteen feet. Starting from this extremity (that is, ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... Chalk.—Although, as has been stated, the configuration of Hertfordshire is very undulating, we are able to discern a general trend in certain districts. Thus, there is a gradual slope to the S. from the N.W. and central hills, a slope which comprises the larger part of the county. This slope is formed of ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... distribution of the positive and negative charges within the sphere of the atom, since they must always exactly balance one another; and this change in the distribution of the positive and negative charges must instantly result in a corresponding change in the geometrical configuration of particles ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... with again the approach to a grin;—"'taint over easy to tell whether his Vs are one side up or 'tother. Now I'd like to know from you where the hitch is. The Squire aint likely to set the Mong in a configuration just yet—but if he's swingin' a torch round, I'd jest as lief put it ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... learned that the configuration of parallel lines agrees with the flight-formation of cranes. This was in 1880: anybody now living in New York City, for instance, would tell him that also it is a familiar formation of aeroplanes. But, because of data of focus and subtended angles, ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... the influence of that wayward and melancholy orb creates. Thus, the aspect of Herschel neutralises, in great measure, the boldness and ambition, and pride of heart, thou wouldst otherwise have drawn from the felicitous configuration of the stars around the Moon and Mercury at thy birth. That yearning for something beyond the narrow bounds of the world, that love for reverie, that passionate romance, yea, thy very leaning, despite thy worldly sense, to these ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... configuration of the theatre of operations be favorable to a movement against the extremity of the enemy's line of defence, this direction maybe best calculated to lead ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... every striking feature of the coast, the bearing of the headlands and the configuration of the many islands which stud these rock-bound and inhospitable shores. He spent a night on one of these islands, and the men found great quantities of ducks' eggs. The next day, still sailing to the west, he reached so fine an anchorage that he was ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... winter and insufferable in summer; higher up the summers are temperate and the winters barely sufferable." It is as though there were two distinct regions covering the same area, for there are marked differences throughout, except in topographic configuration, between the lowlands and the uplands or high plateaus. The lowlands present an appearance which is barren and desolate in the extreme, although the soil is fertile and under irrigation yields good crops. Vegetation is limited to a scanty growth of grass during a small part of the year, with small ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... control room, he threw on the drive, and shot through the twenty-seven thousand light years of cosmic ray fields, and then more leisurely returned to the galaxy. The star maps were strangely off. They could follow them, but only with difficulty as the general configuration of the constellations that were their guides were visibly ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... singular mortality at this time prevailed amongst the cats of Vienna, Basle, Copenhagen, and other places. Cats being so eminently an electric animal, of course he attributed this epizootic to electricity. During the same period, he persuaded himself that a peculiar configuration of clouds prevailed; this he took as a collateral proof of his electrical hypothesis. His own headaches, too, which in all probability were a mere remote effect of old age, and a direct one of an inability ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... principle is viewed in a new aspect. Gibbs and afterwards Boltzmann and Professor Planck have put forward some very interesting ideas on this subject. By following the route they have traced, we come to consider the principle as pointing out to us that a given system tends towards the configuration presented by the maximum probability, and, numerically, the entropy would even be the logarithm of this probability. Thus two different gaseous masses, enclosed in two separate receptacles which have just been placed in communication, diffuse themselves one through ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... hidden in the rocks into which the mud or sand or soil of whatever kind on which they lived has hardened in the course of time,—or the enormous chains of mountains whose upheaval divided these periods of quiet accumulation by great convulsions,—or the changes of a different nature in the configuration of our globe, as the sinking of lands beneath the ocean, or the gradual rising of continents and islands above it,—or the wearing of great river-beds, or the filling of extensive water-basins, till marshes first and then dry land succeeded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... nature is an aggregate of material and that this material exists in some sense at each successive member of a one-dimensional series of extensionless instants of time. Furthermore the mutual relations of the material entities at each instant formed these entities into a spatial configuration in an unbounded space. It would seem that space—on this theory—would be as instantaneous as the instants, and that some explanation is required of the relations between the successive instantaneous spaces. The materialistic ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... "The configuration of the ground was as follows: The road from the river after leaving Gasht brought us on to an alluvial fan, the ascent to which was short and steep; it was covered with boulders and intersected with nullahs; the road led across this fan and then ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... are destined to pursue in the future, or to account in detail for their history in the past, I do not in the least believe. We are borne along like travelers on some unexplored stream. We may know enough of the general configuration of the globe to be sure that we are making our way towards the ocean. We may know enough, by experience or theory, of the laws regulating the flow of liquids, to conjecture how the river will behave under the varying influences ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... that had been banged, and in their ignorance of the configuration of the place they did not realise that it ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... sexes towards which this change of status is leading, is social equality—that is, equality of freedom. It is not an intellectual equality, still less is it likeness. Men and women can only be alike mentally when they are alike in physical configuration and physiological function. Even complete economic equality is not attainable. Among animals which live in herds under the guidance of a leader, this leader is nearly always a male; there are few exceptions.[51] In woman, the long period of pregnancy and ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Portland was at this period singularly sharp and rugged. Nothing remains at this date of its past configuration. Since the idea of manufacturing Portland stone into Roman cement was first seized, the whole rock has been subjected to an alteration which has completely changed its original appearance. Calcareous lias, slate, and trap are still to be found there, rising ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... are less than those of language. No one has denied that the Malay configuration is a modification of the Mongolian—at least in some of ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... detect in the configuration of the district a certain identity with our own county of Essex, in England, where a cousin of Bill's had a cottage, and where, some day, we were to have a cottage too. Our home is called Wigboro' House, after the cousin's, and we have settled it that, just ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... sea-shore for multitude, and every individual orb thereof rotating or revolving in strictest accordance with inflexible mathematical principles, and evidently owing to the previous influence of those same principles its characteristic configuration. Near at hand we discern organic forms innumerable, each with its own special arrangement of component parts admirably apt for the performance in ordinary circumstances of special functions, admirably, as circumstances ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... work to wash and dry the slimy deck, but waited until the little admiring crowd had looked their fill, the foremost men seeming to take a vast amount of interest in fishology, making several highly intellectual remarks about the configuration of the denizen of the deep. Before long though the real reason of their interest escaped them, for one made a remark or two about what a fine thick cut could be got from "just there," while another opined that a boneeter of that there size ate tenderer ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... The topographical configuration of Greece gave an impress to her political condition. It divided her people into distinct communities having conflicting interests, and made them incapable of centralization. Incessant domestic wars between ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... sense of literature, and he had known many of the famous people of the Victorian era. True to my plan of asking questions, I asked him whether he had ever seen Cardinal Newman. He replied by a story which was revealing as to a certain fierceness in Newman's character and mental configuration. In any case, it had both rhetorically and intellectually a ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... next, in F minor, has a more elegiac ring. Brief and not difficult of matter or manner is this dance. The third, of winning beauty, is in C sharp minor—surely a pendant to the C sharp minor Valse. I defy anyone to withstand the pleading, eloquent voice of this Mazurka. Slender in technical configuration, yet it impressed Louis Ehlert so much that he was impelled to write: "A more perfect canon in the octave could not have been written by one who had grown gray in the ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... fact, I shall go up a little, first, in order to get an exact idea of the configuration ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... of the group into northern and southern portions, which has been made by some writers, is clearly shown on the map; but this division is more apparent than real. The contour interval on the map is one foot—a sufficiently small interval to show the surface configuration closely and to bring out some of its peculiarities. Depressions are shown by dotted contours. It will be noticed that while most of the mounds which mark the sites of former structures rise but 10 feet or less above the surrounding level, the profiles vary considerably, ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... lofty cliffs and pinnacles, twelve or thirteen hundred feet high. Where the igneous rocks prevail, the coast is finely indented; where the sandstones abound, it is gently curved. Lake Superior occupies an immense depression, for the most part excavated out of the soft and yielding sandstone. Its configuration on the east and north has been determined by an irregular belt of granite, which forms a rim, effectually resisting the further action of its waters. The temperature of the water in summer is about ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... for a decisive contest, building parapets, mounting guns, and strengthening the position by every device of modern warfare. Their infantry had the advantage of being armed with repeating rifles, and the configuration of the ground offered little cover for an attacking army. Against this strong position the Japanese moved in two columns; one marching northward from Seoul, the other striking westward from Yuensan. Forty days elapsed before the Japanese forces came into ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... was dictated by the configuration of the frontier and of the obstacles and communications in Northern Natal. The various columns to the north of the Biggarsberg had only to move forward in order to effect their junction on the Newcastle-Dundee road, and their advance southwards on that road would enable them at Dundee ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... us seemed to draw together into an immense and towering configuration that included trees and air and the sweep of open park—the looming and overwhelming beauty of one of these very gods survived—Pan, the eternal and the splendid ... a mood of the Earth-life, a projection clothed with the light of stars, the cloudy air, ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... on the twenty-fourth, in line-ahead (that is, one after another) because Farragut found the opening narrower than he thought it should be for two columns abreast, at night, under fire, and against the spring current. Owing to the configuration of the channel the starboard column had to weigh first, which gave the lead to the 500-ton gunboat Cayuga. This was the one weak point, because the leading vessel, drawing most fire, should have been the strongest. The fault was Farragut's; ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... that all its inhabitants lived on an equal footing,—as far as accommodations for living were concerned. There are no special quarters, no spacious halls. The few rooms of somewhat larger size are naturally explained by the mode of construction, adapting the house to the configuration of the rock, and not conversely as we do. It was, therefore, a large joint-tenement structure, harboring, perhaps, when fully occupied, ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... other chief manufacturing and commercial centres of the country. Its railway facilities, too, are so complete that there is not a manufacturing town in the whole island that is not within fifteen hours of freightage from it. Then, too, the peculiar configuration of the coast-line of Great Britain makes every point on the island within an hour or two of carriage from a seaport. Finally, all British seaports are in trade connection with London by a coasting service ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... of the terrible events of 1883, everything connected with the islands lying on either side of the Straits of Sunda is of the highest interest. Those appalling disasters which swept away part of Sumatra and Java and altered the configuration of the whole volcanic group surrounding Krakatoa took place only a few weeks after Mr. and Mrs. Forbes sailed for home. This widespread destruction seemed to the inhabitants the culmination of a series of calamitous years of drought, wet, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... during my absence. It had been nothing but dream work and enchantment. I should seek in vain for the old farmhouse, and for the greensward, the potato-fields, the root-crops, and acres of Indian corn, and for all that configuration of the land which I had imagined. It would be another spot, and ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... account given in the Chronicle of Marius of what is called "an earthquake or landslip in the valley of the {510} Upper Rhone," is evidently that of a sudden debacle destructive of life and property, but not such as to effect any permanent change in the configuration of the country. That an antiquary like Montfaucon should have fallen into the blunder of supposing that the Lacus Lemanus was then formed, may well excite surprise. The breadth of the new-formed lake, as given by Marius, is impossible, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... the forest. Each, as he arrives at his station, or "stand," as it is called, dismounts, ties his horse in a thicket, and takes his stand, "covering" himself behind a log or tree. The stands are selected with reference to the configuration of the ground, or by paths which the deer are accustomed to take; and as soon as all have so arranged themselves, the dogs at a distant point are set loose, ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... The general arrangement and configuration will be at once understood by a reference to the annexed figure (fig. 3), which is a transverse section of a wagon boiler. The line b represents the top of the grate or fire bars, which slope downward from the front at an angle of about 25 deg., giving the fuel a tendency ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... great absurdities, and greater to my mind than those it would fain avoid. We conceive clearly that matter is divisible, and capable of motion; but we do not conceive that it is capable of thought, nor that thought can consist of a certain configuration or a certain motion of matter. And even could thought depend on an arrangement, or on a certain subtility, or on a certain motion of matter, as soon as that arrangement should be disturbed, or the motion interrupted, or this ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... cabin's fittings were not remarkable. By the configuration of the ship I guessed that two of the staterooms must be rather large. I could ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... celebrated a change occurred in the European situation which profoundly affected the policy of France. The revolt broke out in the Netherlands, the real revolt, which was not the work of Belgian nobles, but of the Water Beggars, who took advantage of the maritime configuration, and accomplished the deliverance ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... on the appointed morning finds us on the ramparts at the Gulaek Gate, on the north side of the city. A cold breeze is blowing off the snowy mountains to the northeast, and we decide to commence our novel walk toward the west. Following the zigzag configuration of the ramparts, we find it at first somewhat rough and stony to the feet; on our right we look down into the broad ditch, and beyond, over the sloping plain, our eyes follow the long, even rows of kanaat mounds stretching ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... species man; and yet how far men determine of the sorts of animals rather by their shape than descent, is very visible; since it has been more than once debated, whether several human foetuses should be preserved or received to baptism or no, only because of the difference of their outward configuration from the ordinary make of children, without knowing whether they were not as capable of reason as infants cast in another mould: some whereof, though of an approved shape, are never capable of as much appearance ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... the Mason-bee of the Shrubs is very nearly a sphere. Of all shapes, the spherical shape is the strongest. Now these two nests require an exceptional power of resistance. Without protection of any kind, they have to brave the weather, one on its pebble, the other on its bough. Their spherical configuration ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... officials in disposing of city land to themselves, to political accomplices and to favorites (who, it is probable, although not a matter of proof, paid bribes) took two forms. One was the granting of land under water, the other the granting of city real estate. At that time the configuration of Manhattan Island was such that it was marked by ponds, streams and marshes, while the marginal lines of the Hudson River and the East River extended much further inland than now. When an individual got what was called a water grant, ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... stared hard at the low ridge of an outlying island where a cow had been put to pasture. The hillocky back of that lone ruminant grew black as ink in the glow of sunset. The creature exhibited a strange fixity of outline, as if it had been a chance configuration of rocks. Rackby in due time felt a flaming impatience shoot upward from his heels. Water soughed and chuckled at the foot of the crab-apple tree, but these eager little voices could no longer soothe or even detain him with ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... same is true. And if the reason be Unable to unravel us the cause Why objects, which at hand were square, afar Seemed rounded, yet it more availeth us, Lacking the reason, to pretend a cause For each configuration, than to let From out our hands escape the obvious things And injure primal faith in sense, and wreck All those foundations upon which do rest Our life and safety. For not only reason Would topple down; but even our very ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... the town itself we now pass to what would seem to have been the extent of territory dependent upon her. The strongest argument of this discussion is based upon the natural configuration of the land. To the west, the domain of Praeneste certainly followed those long fertile ridges accessible only from Praeneste. First, and most important, it extended along the very wide ridge known as Le Tende ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... as a standard geometric figure, a familiar symbol, an emblem, or a motif, or another shape, pattern, or configuration which has become standard, ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... down after a maximum velocity flight, you feed a set of landing coordinates into the computer, and you wait for the computer to punch out a landing configuration and the controls set themselves and lock into pattern. Then you just sit there. I haven't yet met a pilot who didn't begin to sweat at that moment, and sweat all the way down. We weren't geared for that kind of flying. ...
— What Need of Man? • Harold Calin
... parted links, l. 398. As our ideas consist of successive trains of the motions, or changes of figure, of the extremities of the nerves of one or more of our senses, as of the optic or auditory nerves; these successive trains of motion, or configuration, are in common life divided into many links, to each of which a word or name is given, and it is called an idea. This chain of ideas may be broken into more or fewer links, or divided in different parts of it, by the customs of different people. Whence the meanings of the ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... accept the general configuration of the earth's surface as permanent a continuous and progressive dispersal of species from the centre to the circumference, i.e. southwards, seems inevitable. If an observer were placed above a point in St George's Channel from which one half of the globe was visible ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... give evidence that, long before the dawn of authentic history, man lived there. Indeed, as the islands which gem that ocean, from their configuration and position, seem to be but the elevated plateaus and mountain peaks of a continent that has gone down beneath the blue wave of the Pacific, so, throughout Polynesia can be traced the fragmentary remains of a civilization, the greater portion of which has been completely buried by the waters ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... all of one character, it seldom is so on any one farm in this country, but it is all good class. Most of it is a rich black humus, resting on clay and mountain limestone. In configuration it is of the roughest, like the country generally, being an abrupt succession of ranges, gullies, and basins, in every variety of form ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... on the Save, the ruins of which may still be seen about eighty miles west of Belgrade, had once belonged to the Western Empire and had been rightly looked upon as one of the bulwarks of Italy. To anyone who studies the configuration of the great Alpine chain, which parts off the Italian peninsula from the rest of Europe, it will be manifest that it is in the north-east that that mountain barrier is the weakest. The Maritime, Pennine, and Cottian ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... he manifests to entertain suppositions, possibilities regarding the nature, form, configuration of concrete immutable matter like the earth, arises from the fact, that a man who commits himself to theories about such an untheoretical subject as Central Africa is deterred from bestirring himself to prove them by the test of exploration. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... point of giving over his quest, when the unexpected happened. Within a few hundred yards of the break in the canyon he caught sight of Motoza and Tozer holding another consultation. They had evidently just met, and the configuration of the ground enabled Hazletine to steal near enough to catch some of the ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... clear statement of their policy; a stricter concentration of the German military forces, reform of the Customs' Unions, and a number of common institutions to protect material interests against the disadvantages which arise from the unnatural configuration of ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... definition. There is no assignable reason why a rational animal should have hair on its head or a nose on its face, and yet man, as a matter of fact, has both; and generally the particular bodily configuration of man can only be regarded as an inseparable accident of his nature as a ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... like to be there already! It will be comical to have the earth for a moon, to see it rise on the horizon, to recognise the configuration of its continents, to say to oneself, 'There's America and there's Europe;' then to follow it till it is lost in the rays of the sun! By-the-bye, Barbicane, have the ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... for their visual elements—what we see in our dreams—to accidental lines, patches, etc., in the field of vision when the eyes are shut, due to the distended blood vessels of the cornea and lids, to changes in the external illumination, to the presence of dust particles of different configuration, etc. The other senses also undoubtedly contribute to the texture of our dreams by equally subconscious suggestions. There is no doubt, further, that our waking life is constantly ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... the sentence of the law pronounced upon him, in consequence of an indictment for forgery. The voice of the public has given the honour of manufacturing this speech to Dr. Johnson; and the style, and configuration of the speech itself, confirm the imputation. But it is hardly possible to divine what could be his motive for accepting the office. A man, to express the precise state of mind of another, about to be destined to an ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... companion) did not know the cause of thunder and lightning. I asked him who made the sun, the stars, the trees. He didn't know, and had never heard the subject mentioned in his tribe." But Mr. Bates admits that even Vicente had a theory of the configuration of the world. "The necessity of a theory of the earth and water had been felt, and a theory had been suggested." Again, Mr. Bates says about a certain Brazilian tribe, "Their sluggish minds seem unable to conceive or feel the want of a theory of the soul"; and he ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... bellying sails; but what to do with the great staring expanse of vacancy at the bottom their authors did not know. So they drew a crooked line across the map to represent land, and stuck upon it the label Terra Australis, or one of the other designations just mentioned. The configuration of the territory on different maps did not agree, and not one of them signified a coast with anything like the form of ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... At the end of November I left the beautiful lake of Buhi, and proceeded from its eastern angle for a short distance up the little river Sapa [103], the alluvial deposits of which form a considerable feature in the configuration of the lake. Across a marshy meadow we reached the base of the Malinao or Buhi mountain, the slippery clay of the lower slope merging higher up into volcanic sand. [Leeches.] The damp undergrowth swarmed with small leeches; I never before met with ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... Essay," explained the boy; "the subject is the effect of the physical configuration of a country upon the character ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tidal evolution in a fresh light. If the moon now departed to any considerable extent from showing the constant face to the earth, it would seem that its retreat could not have been caused by tides. Some other agent for producing the present configuration would be necessary, just as we found that some other agent than the tides has been necessary in the case ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... skull as acquired from books on craniology. Perhaps after the inspection and examination of a large collection of crania, it may be safe to pronounce upon their differential character; but whether the differences in configuration are constant or only occasional manifestations, admits of as much doubt as the exceptions in Professor Sophocles's Greek grammar, which are often coextensive with ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... their structure and composition, are but the expressions of internal atomic movements. A complex substance simply means a whirl, an intricate dance, of which chemical composition, histological structure, and gross configuration are the figures. How the atoms take hold of hands, as it were, the way they face, the poses they assume, the speed of their gyrations, the partners they exchange, determine the kinds of phenomena we ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... be said that there exists a tendency on the part of the father to transmit the external appearance, the configuration of the head and limbs, the peculiarities of the senses and of the skin and the muscular condition; while the size of the body, and the general temperament or constitution of the child, are derived from the mother. Among animals, the mule, which is the produce of the male ass ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... then a common saying, "All roads lead to Rome." From the forum of Rome a broad and magnificent highway ran out towards every province of the empire. It was terraced up with sand, gravel, and cement, and covered with stones and granite, and followed in a direct line without regard to the configuration of the country, passing over or under mountains and across streams and lakes, on arches of solid masonry. The military roads were under the pretors, and were called pretorian roads; and the public roads for travel and commercial traffic were under ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... anchored, presents very curious physical peculiarities: it is twenty-two miles in length from east to west, and fifteen miles in breadth from north to south. This sheet of water is formed into an immense bay by the configuration of the land, and its depth, in places, is from one hundred and thirty to two hundred feet. Inside it all the navies in the world might ride at anchor, were it not for the fact that the entrance is closed by a bar upon which the depth ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... diameters, and a field of view of seventy-eight minutes of arc. Two diagrams were usually drawn in the book for each of these objects, the one showing the relation of adjacent objects in the great telescope, and the other the configuration of the more conspicuous objects in the field of view of the finder. Adjacent to these "finder" diagrams are the settings—to the nearest minute of arc in declination, and of time in right ascension—as read from the large finding-circles, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... and playful followers of Kuvera, possessed of weird and ghostly appearances. Glowing with its own splendour, that mountain looks resplendent as the morning sun. And no creature with his natural eyes made of flesh, can ever ascertain its shape or configuration, and neither heat nor cold prevails there, nor doth the sun shine nor do the winds blow. And, O king, neither doth senility nor hunger, nor thirst, nor death, nor fear afflict any one at that place. And, O foremost of conquerors, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... subject that is susceptible of them. Thus the form of heat or the form of light is the same thing as the law of heat or the law of light."[64] "Matter rather than forms should be the object of our attention, its configurations and changes of configuration, and simple action, and law of action or motion; for forms are figments of the human mind, unless you will call those laws of action forms."[65] "Forms or true differences of things, which are in fact laws of pure act."[66] ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... shoaled, though for the first mile almost imperceptibly. The inlet itself resembled the estuary of a mighty river, its both sides well wooded, though very different in configuration, the northern rising quietly from shelving beaches of coral-white sand to some of the most respectable hills in the island, while that on our starboard hand presented a succession of cliff and chasm, the cliffs varying, as we judged, from two hundred to two ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... one. The configuration of Manhattan Island is such that the British could land a force from the East River, throw it across the narrow width of the island, and cut off retreat from below. The only trust lay in the shore batteries, and they ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... those wrecked instruments you threw out of Skylark I when we built Skylark II?" Having every minute detail of the configuration of Seaton's brain engraved upon his own, Dunark spoke English in Seaton's own characteristic careless fashion. Only when thinking deeply or discussing abstruse matter did Seaton employ the carefully selected ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... Portland on the south, along the coast to the pinnacles of St. Elias, ten marine leagues were supposed from time immemorial to be defined; neither the channel, the salt water line, nor the mountain's top having been materially changed as to configuration. From Mt. Elias a perpendicular line to the Frozen Ocean farther outlined the boundary between the two nations, this not being included, however, in the ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... for doing so, but they might be required to report to any reasonably convenient Custom House or official; (5) In the case of bays, mentioned in the Treaty of 1818, three marine miles are to be measured from a straight line drawn across the body of water at the place where it ceases to bear the configuration and characteristics of a bay. At all other places the three marine miles are to be measured following the ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... As they advanced, the configuration of the ground became more and more familiar to the two boys. They passed places which they had ridden over in approaching the half-hidden valley, before they fairly stumbled on ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... affections, we put the will for the deed; so that the instant the pressure of unwelcome circumstances is removed, the mind recoils from their hold, recovers its elasticity, and reunites itself to that image of good which is but a reflection and configuration of its own nature. Seen in the distance, in the long perspective of waning years, the meanest incidents, enlarged and enriched by countless recollections, become interesting; the most painful, broken and softened by time, soothe. How any object that unexpectedly brings ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... nostrils, the breadth of the frontal bone, the shape of the post-lateral processes of the frontal and squamosal bones, and the direction of the bony cavity of the ear, have all been modified. The internal configuration of the skull and the whole shape of the brain have likewise been altered in a truly ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... configuration of the farms arose wholly from the way in which the colony was first settled. For over a century after the French came to the St Lawrence all the seigneuries were situated directly on the shores of the river. This was only ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... that they come later to Nicolayevsk than to the town of Yakutsk, nine degrees further north. This is due to differences of climate and the configuration of the country. The lower Amoor is remarkable for its large quantities of snow, and at Nicolayevsk it remains on the ground till the end of May. South of the lower Amoor are the Shanalin mountains, which ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... and ages of momentous development are shrouded from our eyes. The land and the people are the two foundations of English history; but before history began, the land had received the insular configuration which has largely determined its fortune; and the various peoples, who were to mould and be moulded by the land, had differentiated from the other races of the world. Several of these peoples had occupied the land before its conquest by the Anglo-Saxons, some before ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... moan. The agony of mind I was under lest a shark should seize me I cannot express, and my strained eyeballs would come from the tall shadow of the ship to the the sea about me in a wild searching of the liquid ebony of it for the sparkling configuration of the most abhorred of all fish. I could have sworn that hours elapsed before they lowered a boat from the ship, that seemed to grow fainter and fainter every time I looked at her, so swallowing is the character of ocean darkness, ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... tint of which the reflection is absent from dark horizons. Under such circumstances, how could they distinguish the shape of the ground, the extent of the seas, the position of the islands? How could they recognize the hydrographic network of the country or the orographic configuration, and distinguish the hills and mountains from the icebergs ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... Petit-Bourbon. This hydra of towers, giant guardian of Paris, with its four and twenty heads, always erect, with its monstrous haunches, loaded or scaled with slates, and all streaming with metallic reflections, terminated with wonderful effect the configuration of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... inflections, extending from the north of Kansas to Fort Vancouver and to the coasts of the South Sea (almost 720 miles more than the distance from Madrid to Tobolsk). As I believe I was the first who attempted to represent, in geognostic profile, the configuration of Mexico, and the Cordilleras of South America,—for the half-perspective projections of the Siberian traveler, the Abbe Chappe* were based upon mere, and for the most part on very inaccurate, estimates of the falls of ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... instincts and consciousness dwell in the "sensory ganglia," that "an idea is a contradiction, a motion, a configuration of the intermediate organ of sense," that "memory is the organic registration of their effects of impressions," and that the "cerebrum" is the seat of ideas, the home of thought and reason. But when "grey-matter" that composes this thinking mechanism becomes diseased, and the cold touch ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... a fair goodly object joyous in the sun, inviting to every sense. Hanging amidst its foliage, bending the twig with its weight, it is at once a pattern in good shape, perfect in configuration, in sheen beyond imitation, in fragrance the very affluence of all choice clean growth, its surface spread with a bloom often so delicate that the unsympathetic see it not; and yet the rains do not ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... border-land—African by geographical configuration, European politically, and assuredly Asiatic in its language, its buildings, and in the manners and customs of the natives. We gave everybody on board a holiday, and the chance of a run ashore to-day to stretch their legs after their long sea voyage. Tom went on board ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... to do with the climate, the sudden changes to which we are subject are due to the configuration of the land. The Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Range rising at either edge of the continent form the immense valley through which the Mississippi takes its course; and these two factors of the high mountains and the broad plains have the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 53, November 11, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... twentieth lunar parallel. The distance of the projectile from the moon was not more than six hundred miles. Barbicane, now perceiving that the projectile was steadily approaching the lunar disc, did not despair; if not of reaching her, at least of discovering the secrets of her configuration. ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... peculiar configuration is observed in these coefficients in that a quite pronounced positive correlation exists at the central age group, but disappears with some regularity towards both extremities of life. If the mortality has any influence upon the natality ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... tide was half up. Whatever sign or trace of alien footprint or occupation had been there was already smoothly obliterated; even the configuration of the land had changed. A black cape had disappeared, a level line of shore had been eaten into by teeth of glistening silver. The whole dark surface of the Marsh was beginning to be streaked with shining veins as ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... a business and commercial character. As the Union grew in power and increased in membership, Pennsylvania lost nothing of her prestige. She held to the new States as intimate relations as she held to the old. The configuration of the country and the natural channels of communication have bound her closely to all sections. Her northern border touching the great lakes, connected her by sail and steam, before the era of the railway, with the magnificent domain which lies upon the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the elevations and depressions on each wall of the gap satisfied me that they bear at least a very striking analogy. Points on one side are frequently represented by hollows on the other, and even complicated figures occasionally find a counterpart, the configuration being always relatively convex or concave. This would seem to indicate very clearly that the mass had been forcibly rent asunder, either by the contractile process of heat, or a convulsion of the earth. The most difficult point to determine is why the bottom should be so flat and regular, and ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... RIVERS.—From the mountainous configuration of the country and the abundance of the rains, the rivers are large and numerous in the south of the island—ten of considerable magnitude flowing into the sea on the west coast, between Point-de-Galle and Manaar, and a still greater ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... elementary reflex, is determined by heredity. Because a certain configuration of the cells and fibers making up a nervous system is inherited as well as the characters of the constituent elements themselves, a worm or an insect is enabled to act as it does. A butterfly does not have to learn how to fly, ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... Lingard spoke Mrs. Travers caught sight of a red spark far away. She had looked often enough at the Settlement, as on the face of a painting on a curtain, to have its configuration fixed in her mind, to know that it was on the beach at its end ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... the Roman, to whose orderly military mind such a chain of hills seemed a series of heaven-sent earthworks. Every point in a favourable position was at once fortified by the legionaries. Standing upon these ramparts to-day, identical in general configuration in spite of the intervening centuries, one may imagine one's self a Caesarian soldier and see in fancy the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... luxuriously reposing in an immense armchair, covered with Hungary leather. His two elbows rested on the arms and enabled him to support in his hands the largest, the reddest, the fattest face that had ever ornamented the configuration of a Dutch functionary before. Mr Jansen Pyl wore at that moment the radiant look of satisfaction which only a magistrate can assume who feels conscious that he is in the full sunshine of the approbation of his sovereign. His whole ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... stared all about, studying the configuration of the meadow, crossed it to the redwood trees beyond, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... with the exception of a couple of shoals, the position of which is known, which indeed is not usually free from fast ice until the latter half of July, but, on the other hand, in consequence of the configuration of the coast, is less subject to be obstructed by drift ice than the southern straits. There are good harbours at the eastern mouth of the sound. In 1875 and 1876 both the sound and the sea lying off it were completely open in the end of August, but ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... ventricles are there in a man's head?" "Three, which contain five faculties, styled the intrinsic senses, to wit, common sense, imagination, the thinking faculty, perception and memory." Q "Describe to me the configuration of the bones."—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton |
