"Declivity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... turned to the left instead of the right. After resting a few minutes on the brow of the hill, we began our descent by a steep and narrow pathway. When we were midway down the glen, the ruins of the ancient Chartreuse suddenly burst upon the view! At this moment all the terrors of the declivity, and the momentary expectation of meeting some of the wolves with which the forest abounds, vanished from my mind before the feelings of delight which the enchanting scene called forth. The almost perpendicular view of the Vale beneath, ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... opening formed a little bay of smooth water, just deep enough for our boat. I cautiously entered it, and landed at a place where the coast was about the height of our tubs, and the water deep enough to let us approach. The shore spread inland, forming a gentle declivity of a triangular form, the point lost among the rocks, and the ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... Canadian otter has a peculiar habit in winter of sliding down ridges of snow, apparently for amusement. It, with its companions, scrambles up a high ridge, and then, lying down flat, glides head-foremost down the declivity, sometimes for a distance of twenty yards. "This sport they continue apparently with the keenest enjoyment, until fatigue or hunger induces them ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... of vessels of various sizes lay along the beach, moored by their hawsers or cables to the houses. Passing after my leader, Lieutenant Steele, at a great rate, one of those ropes took me under the chin, and cast me head long down, a declivity of at least fifteen feet. The place appeared to be either a dry-dock or a saw-pit. My descent was terrible, gun and all was involved in a great depth of snow. Most unluckily, however, one of my knees received a violent contusion on a piece of scraggy ice, which was covered ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... should not be lost sight of in the discussion, viz, the very low elevation of the ditch above the river. The Verde is, as already stated, a typical mountain stream, with an exceptionally high declivity, and consequently it is rapidly lowering its bed. If, as already conjectured, the water for the ancient ditch was taken from the river but a short distance above the point where remains of the ditch are now found—and this ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... down the steep declivity beyond goes your mule, slipping a little. He is reared back until his rump almost brushes the trail; he grunts mild protests at every lurching step and grips his shoecalks into the half-frozen path. You reflect that thousands of persons have already done this thing; ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... of the New York comics, which appeared after the mail arrived from London with the particulars of the simplicity of the bank officials in their dealings with the mysterious F. A. Warren. This full-page cartoon represented a young dude, seated on a mule, riding down a steep declivity. ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... imagination that brief exploratory climb. The broken body seemed at least a hundred feet long; the mangled shoulders and chest filled the great torn hole in the cliff. I climbed over the litter. Indescribable, horrible scene! A river of warm blood was flowing down the declivity outward.... ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... watched beside it for an hour and a quarter, and then heard, for the first time, a low undulating sound, somewhat resembling that of a humming top, which rose and fell, and ceased and began, and then ceased again; and in an hour and three quarters after, when in the act of climbing along the declivity, he heard the sound yet louder and more prolonged. It seemed as if issuing from under his knees, beneath which the sand, disturbed by his efforts, was sliding downwards along the surface of the rock. Concluding that the sliding sand was the cause ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the bridges. On the 19th of August, before day, Ney crossed the river by the light of the suburb, which was on fire. At first, he saw there no enemies but the flames, and he began to climb the long and rugged declivity on which it stands. His troops proceeded slowly and with caution, making a thousand circuits to avoid the fire. The Russians had managed it with skill: it met our men at every point, and obstructed ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... from the side of the cone, and watching them bound down the steep declivity, dashing the scori like spray before them, and bearing down the dwarf trees in their path like grass beneath the mower's scythe, until they rumbled away with many a crash in the depths of the forest at the base of the mountain, and after making over to the grateful old ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... deklami. Declaration deklaracio. Declaration (of love) amesprimo. Declare sciigi, anonci. Declension deklinacio. Decline ekfinigxo. Decline (health) ekmalfortigxi. Decline (refuse) rifuzi. Decline (grammar) deklinacii. Decline (in price) malplikarigxo. Declivity deklivo. Decompose dismeti. Decorate ornami. Decorator ornamisto. Decorum dececo. Decorous bonmora. Decoy trompi, delogi. Decoy kaptilo. Decrease malkreski. Decree dekreto. Dedicate dedicxi. Dedication dedicxo. Deduce depreni. Deduct ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... unless the more opulent of them, seem to care little; and outside the dwelling of a blue nose there is little to be seen, unless it be a cucumber bed among the chips, or a patch of Indian corn. Again, the Scotch settlers may be known by the taste shown in selecting a garden spot—a gentle declivity, sloping to a silvery stream, by which stand a few household trees that he has permitted to remain—beneath them a seat is placed, and in some cherished spot, watched over with the tenderest care, is an exotic sprig of heath or broom. About the Hibernian's dwelling may be a mixture of all ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... thee, dadda," protested the girl, as she guided the mare over the let-down bars of the fence, through which her father put Joggles, and in a moment both horses were climbing the declivity under the bare apple-trees. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the end of that reach I found myself. The channels gather below, you remember, and pour down a steep declivity under a natural causeway. But the charm and grandeur were lost on me that day. I wanted to reach the old trail from the falls on the opposite shore, and I knew that stone bridge fell short a span, so I began to work my ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... location seemed to be Lapithos, a large village on the northwestern shore, two days' journey from Larnica. The village had a charming location, rising from the base of the mountain, and ascending the steep declivity a thousand feet. From thence perpendicular precipices arose, which sheltered it from the hot south winds. The coast of Caramania was in full view on the north, and refreshing breezes crossed the narrow channel ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... feeling of imprisoned longing. But for the man who had been breathing street dust and street sweepings for four months, it was good to breathe the strong, pure air, and at last see once more the clouds floating about and beating against the mountain sides, leaning, exhausted, against a declivity and resting on their journey. Little children of eight or ten were guarding cattle, children such as we know so well in the North, when they come with their marmots; they looked, without exception, like tiny rascals, charming though ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... piece to all these features and influences, John winding up the brae, keeping his captain's eye upon all sides, and breaking, ever and again, into a spasm of bellowing that seemed to make the evening bleaker. It is thus that I still see him in my mind's eye, perched on a hump of the declivity not far from Halkerside, his staff in airy flourish, his great voice taking hold upon the hills and echoing terror to the lowlands; I, meanwhile, standing somewhat back, until the fit should be over, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gentle declivity into the delightful park at Windsor, at the foot of which it looks so sombrous and gloomy that I could hardly help fancying it was some vast old Gothic temple. This forest certainly, in point of beauty, surpasses everything of the kind you can figure ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... around with an air of inexpressible benignity. The beauty of the day was of itself sufficient to inspire philanthropy. Notwithstanding the frostiness of the morning, the sun in his cloudless journey had acquired sufficient power to melt away the thin covering of snow from every southern declivity, and to bring out the living green which adorns an English landscape even in mid-winter. Large tracts of smiling verdure contrasted with the dazzling whiteness of the shaded slopes and hollows. Every sheltered bank, on which the broad rays rested, yielded ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... rose steeply till, so far as he could judge, it reached a pass which lay some two miles off, at the base of that main peak, on whose snows the priests had watched the breaking of the dawn. Part of this declivity was covered with blocks of green ice, but here and there appeared patches of earth, on which grew stunted trees, shrubs, and even grass and flowers. Being very hungry, it occurred to Otter that he might find edible roots among ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... like the cases of plague, and were left to hobble up the terraced street as best they might. Even mothers, after dragging them at their own sides till fearful of being too late, abandoned their young in the highway, certain of finding them rolled to the foot of the declivity, should they fail of scrambling to its summit. In short, it was a scene of confusion in which there was much to laugh at, something to awaken wonder, and not ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... murderously on the steep, treeless declivity. The sound of shells bursting off at a distance, of tattooing machine guns, and roaring artillery on their own side was now mingled with the howling sound of shots whizzing through the air and coming closer and closer. And still the ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... told them he meant to charge the moment the Arabs were at the bottom of the hill, so as to overthrow them by the impetus before they could get any pace on, and trotting quietly on with this object, he got within thirty paces, and then, cramming his spurs in, went at them as they got clear of the declivity. And he showed good judgment, in spite of his inexperience; for he bowled one enemy over with the force of the shock, and a Bashi- Bazook on his right served another the same, and got a slice at him as he rolled over, which made the number of ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... asked to name the most romantic which has been known to me as a visitor, and the most agreeable in the way of an ancestral dwelling, I should, I think, begin with Powis, as it stands with its rose-red walls, an exhalation of the Middle Ages, on a steep declivity among the mountainous woods of Wales—woods full of deer and bracken. Much of its painted paneling had never been, when I stayed there, touched or renovated since the time of the battle of Worcester. In a bedroom which had once ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... rocky ravine, heavy with shadows, led downward. He came to a tunnel opening, advancing more cautiously now. And then, as he turned an angle ahead of him, down a little subterranean declivity a luminous cave was visible. Groff's hideout. At one of its entrances here Lee stood for an instant gasping. The five men were here—Groff and four of his ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... rays streamed down in the slope in one vast flood of golden glory, which was checkered only by the interminable length of shadows which were projected from every single tree, or scattered clump, from every petty elevation of the soil, down the soft glimmering declivity. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... pines that Kit always loved. The back of the house looked directly out over the lake, and the land here was frankly left to nature. Trees, grass and underbrush rioted at will, until they suddenly ended on the brow of the bluff, where there was a sheer declivity of sand to the beach. Looking at it from below, Kit afterwards thought it was like a miniature section of the Yosemite, the sand had hardened into such fantastic shapes, and the strata in places ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... leave with manifest proofs of gratitude, and departed from Malaga, for that was the native city of his masters, without further delay. Descending the declivity of the Zambra on the road to Antequera, he chanced to encounter a gentleman on horseback, gaily accoutred in a rich travelling dress, and attended by two servants, also on horseback, whose company he joined; their journey thenceforward lay in the same direction, and the gentleman accepted Thomas ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... following volume. After quitting the capital of Peru, Dr. Tschudi went over ground previously untrodden by any European traveller. He visited the Western Sierra, the mighty chain of the Cordilleras, the boundless level heights, the deep mountain valleys on the eastern declivity of the Andes, and the vast primeval forests. Whilst recounting his wanderings in these distant regions, he describes not only the country and the people, but every object of novelty and interest in the animal, vegetable, and ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the Orders I had receiv'd from the Earl of Peterborow, to go upon the erecting a new Battery between the Castle and the Town. This was a Task attended with Difficulties, neither few in Number, nor small in Consequence; for it was to be rais'd upon a great Declivity, which must render the Work both laborious and precarious. However, I had the good Fortune to effect it much sooner than was expected; and it was call'd Gorge's Battery, from the Name of the Governor then commanding; who, out of an uncommon Profusion of Generosity, wetted that Piece of Gossiping ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... by whom it was carried. But the light was seen and gone in an instant, and though De Valence concluded that the hostile warrior had hardly room to avoid his career, yet he could take no aim for the encounter, unless by mere guess, and continued to plunge down the dark declivity, among shattered stones and other encumbrances, without groping out with his lance the object of his pursuit. He rode, in short, at a broken gallop, a descent of about fifty or sixty yards, without having any reason to suppose that he had met the figure which had appeared to him, although ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... not too near the wave, and on a sylvan declivity, was along, pavilion-looking building, painted in white and arabesque. It was backed by the forest, which had a park-like character from its partial clearance, and which, after a convenient slip of even land, ascended the steeper country and took ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... the stick with which he had forced Ruth to the edge of the path. She fell sideways, dizzy and faint, clinging to the rough rock with both hands. As it was, she came near rolling over the declivity after all. ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... work, often took a short cut homeward from the lower slope to the road just below the power-house, by crossing this gentle declivity of the ledge. Evidently Billy McCann with this in mind had twisted the injunction to "go straight home" into a chance to "cut across"; for surely this way would be the "straightest." Besides, there was the added inducement of close proximity to the wonderful new ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... she would fear to pass under the eyes of a watchman or other servant who might be in her way. He stamped nervously, and turned to look for a moment in the outward direction. This little villa stood on the edge of a declivity falling towards the sea; a thicket of myrtles grew below. At the distance of half a mile along the coast, beyond a hollow wooded with ilex, rose a temple, which time and the hand of man had yet spared; its whiteness glimmered against a sky whose ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... unperceived, within a proper distance. Here leveling his rifle he took so sure an aim, that the bighorn fell dead on the spot; a fortunate circumstance, for, to pursue it, if merely wounded, would have been impossible in his emaciated state. The declivity of the hill enabled him to roll the carcass down to his companions, who were too feeble to climb the rocks. They fell to work to cut it up; yet exerted a remarkable self-denial for men in their starving condition, for they contented themselves ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... was soon speeding over the snow and in a few minutes was at the edge of the declivity in which lay the penguin rookery. Gazing down into it the boys could ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... writer, a multitude of the dilapidated outhouses found in farm-yards in England, of the rickety old wooden tenements, the cracked, shutterless structures of planks and tiles, the sheds and stalls, which our bye lanes, or fish-markets, or river-sides can supply; tumble them down on the declivity of a bare bald hill; let the spaces between house and house, thus accidentally determined, be understood to form streets, winding of course for no reason, and with no meaning, up and down the town; the roadway always narrow, the breadth never uniform, the separate houses bulging ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Sibylline Leaves. I dipped into a few of these with great satisfaction, and with the faith of a novice. I slept that night in an old room with blue hangings, and covered with the round-faced family-portraits of the age of George I and II, and from the wooded declivity of the adjoining park that overlooked my window, at the dawn ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... classe, and which was destined to attain a sinister celebrity during his proprietorship. One of the straightest and steepest of the stairways had been cut close to the terre which the mason owned, and a massive wall, destined to bound the high-road at the foot of the declivity, was in ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... situated on the shores of Table Bay, which is the chief harbor of the Cape of Good Hope, and is exceedingly commodious; and close by rises a mountain of the same name, to the height of 3582 feet, by a declivity so gradual, that it has been ascended on horseback. I do not wish to detract from the general goodness of the inhabitants of Cape Town, but I must say they are an eager money-getting race. On the arrival ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... down the steep declivity that day, loomed a very different Torn from that which he had approached sixteen years before, when, as a little boy he had ridden through the darkening shadows of the night, perched upon a great horse behind the little old woman, ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a somewhat hazardous thing to break cover, at such a moment, and under such circumstances; but it was absolutely necessary to incur its risks. My first leap carried me half-way down the declivity, and I was soon on the level land. In my front were two men, one of whom seemed to me to be in the grasp of the other. As they were moving, though slowly, in the direction of the house, I ventured to ask 'Who ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... his diocese, awaited the royal envoy at the top of Mountain Hill, which was then the only practicable highway between the Lower and the Upper Town. To-day the visitor landing at the quay reaches the terrace by the same route; but the present graceful declivity of Mountain Hill is little like the tortuous pathway of corduroy by which De Tracy and his glittering retinue made their toilsome way to the public square by the Jesuits' College. First came a company of guards in the royal livery, then four pages and six valets, and by the side ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... down the steep declivity on the Tibetan side, to get away quickly from the bitterly cold, windy pass. Describing a wide arc of a circle, and then making straight down across several long snow-beds, we at last reached the river level and pitched our tents on snow at an altitude of 16,900 feet. There was no wood, no yak or ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the valley is covered by a thick forest. In this shady and solitary spot, on the declivity of a steep mountain, the cavern of Ataruipe opens to the view. It is less a cavern than a jutting rock in which the waters have scooped a vast hollow when, in the ancient revolutions of our planet, they attained that height.* (* I saw no vein, no hole (four) filled with crystals. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... strong, but which proved to be an exaggeration, for the village is small, containing only about three or four hundred inhabitants. The master-of-camp having arrived, as I have said, at that port, the Indians were drawn up on a declivity before the village, and made signs that they intended to prevent the entrance of the Spaniards. The master-of-camp, with all his soldiers, leaped ashore in front of the village on a little plain, and, approaching ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... a lofty, square stone building, with a turret at each angle, standing on the declivity of the hill, a little below the armoury, and disengaged from the other buildings, where some thousand barrels of powder were formerly kept; but great part of the public magazine of powder is now distributed in the several ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... done; the passage being, as I imagined, only practicable for birds: however, I promised him a crown reward, if he did. Never could the leaps of the most dexterous of rope-dancers be compared to those of this daring fellow: I saw him sometimes jumping from rock to rock, sometimes rolling down a declivity of snow like a ninepin, sometimes running, sometimes hopping, skipping; in short, he descended like lightning to the verge of a torrent, where he found the hat. He came up almost as quick, and appeared as little fatigued, as if ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... of Ay wine. The village of Ay lies right before us at the foot of the vine-clad slopes, with the tapering spire of its ancient church rising above the neighbouring hills and cutting sharply against the bright blue sky. The vineyards, which spread themselves over a calcareous declivity, have mostly a full southern aspect, and the predominating vines are those known as golden plants, the fruit of which is of a deep purple colour. After these comes the plant vert dor, and then ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... Limbs and saplings lay in confusion, larger trees showed long wounds upon their bark, and here and there pieces of metal—a gray mud-guard, a car door, a wind-shield frame, with shattered plate glass still clinging to it—lay scattered on the precipitous declivity. Beside these, hanging to a branch, Gabriel saw a gaily-striped auto robe; and, further ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... a long time down the declivity of the rocky beach above the sands. She stepped forward cautiously, one hand on the wall of the house, and peered down into the smooth darkness of the empty bay. ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... social workshops will differ from those of the fields; and many other things besides. I know well that you will answer: By the specific virtue of the law! And if your government, your State, knows not how to make it? Do you not see that you are sliding down a declivity, and that you are obliged to grasp at something similar to the existing law? It is easy to see by reading you that you are especially devoted to the invention of a power susceptible of application to your system; but I declare, after reading you carefully, that in my opinion ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... an awful price they considered this flight to be. Alone, they would have preferred to have fought it out to the last drop of blood in their veins, but had yielded to the expedient because the girl's safety was dearer to them than their most cherished wish. At the foot of the declivity, the entire force reunited before finally ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... back (if a circle has a back) of our mansion, as the kitchen, while the other at a greater distance formed the "servants' hall." We all worked hard for several days in beautifying our house and grounds. In the lovely short grass that resembled green velvet, we cut walks to the edge of a declivity, and surrounded the house with a path of snow-white sand, resembling coarsely pounded sugar; this we obtained from some decomposed sandstone rock which crumbled upon the slightest pressure. We collected curiously-shaped blocks of rock, and masses of fossil wood that were imbedded ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... at the head of a long, evenly graded declivity, had taken on three or four good trucks heavily laden. Owing to some carelessness in the coupling these wagons became detached on the very crest of the descent, and falling to the rear came almost to a halt. ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... came at us like a swarm of assailants, swooping downhill on us, swerving, recoiling, and falling away, rising swiftly above us again for a charge, and then careering at us with abandon on the next declivity of glass. A boat would hesitate above us, poised and rocking on the snowy ridge of an upheaval, and vanish as the Windhover canted away. Then we rolled towards her, and there she was below us, in a smooth and transient hollow. ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... has but to imagine an impeachment to-day with the dominant personages in it chosen from the strike leaders and labour delegates of the proletariat, assisted by promoted railway porters and ennobled grocers, to perceive what a distance, and down what a declivity we have travelled since those days when it was impossible for any great public function to take place without its becoming naturally and without conscious effort the occasion for a manifestation of the pomp, circumstance, and splendour inseparable from the solemn acts of a great people performed ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... you can see gliding over the pebbles long adders which disappear in the grass. Hence this well-deserved appellation of Snake Mountain. On certain days, the reptiles seem to spring into existence under your feet when you climb the declivity exposed to the rays of the sun. They are so numerous that you no longer venture to go on, and experience a strange sense of uneasiness, not fear, for those creatures are harmless, but a sort of mysterious terror. I had several times the peculiar sensation ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... festal garlands, adorned and over-hung this ascent, the discordant "hoot" of a motor-horn sounded on the stillness, and sheer down the winding way came at a tearing pace the motor vehicle itself. It was a large, luxurious car, and pounded along with tremendous speed, swerving at the bottom of the declivity with so sharp a curve as to threaten an instant overturn, but, escaping this imminent peril by almost a hairsbreadth, it dashed onward straight ahead in a cloud of dust that for two or three minutes entirely blurred and darkened the air. Half-blinded and choked by the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... flat-topped rampart there was a deep, narrow notch, on the eastern side of which I could see with a glass a huge grayish-stone building, elevated a little above the level of the table-land on one side and extending down the steep declivity of the notch in a series of titanic steps on the other. I hardly needed to be informed that the notch was the entrance to the harbor of Santiago, and that the grayish-stone building was Morro Castle. Between us and the land, in a huge, bow-shaped ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... the autumn of 1853, a camp of immigrants had encountered grave difficulties. A short way out from the camp, a steep mountain declivity lay squarely across their track. One of the women of the party exclaimed, when she first saw it, "Have we come to the jumping-off place at last?" It was no exclamation for effect, but a fervent prayer for deliverance. They could not ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... the town of Troy as a base, lying north and south, this sign-post forms the apex of a triangle which has two high-roads for its remaining sides—the one road entering Troy from the north by the hill which Sam had just ascended, the other running southwards and ending with a steep declivity at no ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rose high in the heavens: it was a bright and glorious morning in spite of the intense cold, and the amount of oxygen we inhaled was enough to elevate the spirits of the most dyspeptic of mankind. Presently, after descending a slight declivity, our Jehu turned sharply to the right; then came a scramble and a succession of jolts and jerks as we slid down a steep bank, and we found ourselves on what appeared to be a broad high-road. Here the sight of many masts and shipping which, bound in by the fetters of a relentless ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... moment from the dense underbrush near the auto there came a loud cry, and some one fairly tumbled down a little declivity into the road—the figure of an old man with long, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... was fast going down the declivity of life in all the darkness of heathenism; but a ray of heavenly light darted across his path, arrested his attention, and soon kindled to a flame. Now, I may say, he is a 'burning and a shining light;' one to whom we often point ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... arrived at a little waterfall, and here occurred a break in the woods, causing him to stand entranced by the view which presented itself. Down the declivity the forest lasted for some distance, then it gave place to ever-descending vineyards, with here and there a house showing among the vines. At the foot of this hill ran a broad blue ribbon, which he knew to be the Rhine, although he had never seen it before. Over it floated a silvery ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... quickly came to a place where Elizabeth was weeping bitterly, while Katherine was descending the steep declivity as if ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... talking about their flowers, until at length they reached the bridge. Just beyond it was the rocky precipice, with shrubs and evergreens growing upon the shelves and in the crevices, and spaces between the rocks. It towered up pretty high above the road, and the declivity extended also down to the brook below the bridge, forming one side of the deep ravine across which the bridge was built. There was a very large, old hemlock-tree growing upon a small piece of level ground between the ravine and the higher part of ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott
... which General Joffre had planned to swing his army into Belgium in a sweeping attack upon the advancing Germans—a brief survey of the city and fortifications will be necessary. The situation of the city is not as imposing as that of Liege. For the most part it sits on a hillside declivity, to rest in the angle formed by the junction of the Sambre and Meuse. It is a place of some historic and industrial importance, though in the latter respect not so well known as Liege. To the west, however, up the valley of the Sambre, the country presents the usual ...
— 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
... Murat. The work was started in many places at once, and the laborers, advancing one after the other, penetrating and cutting the hill, followed the line of the streets, which they cleared little by little before them. In following the streets on the ground-level, the declivity of ashes and pumice-stone which obstructed them was attacked below, and thence resulted many regrettable accidents. The whole upper part of the houses, commencing with the roofs, fell in among the rubbish, along with a thousand ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... madly, furiously, as if rejoicing in the work of destruction, while the white foam of its eddies presents a fearful contrast to the prevailing blackness of the surface. Over the last declivity it leaps, hissing, foaming, crashing like an avalanche. The stone wall for a moment opposes its force, but falls the next, with a mighty splash, carrying the spray far and wide, while its own fragments roll onwards with the stream. The trees of the orchard are uprooted in an instant, and an ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... summer day, long gone among the summer days that come but to go, a lad of twelve years was idly and recklessly swinging in the top of a tall hickory, the advance picket of a mountain forest. The tree was on the edge of a steep declivity of rocky pasture-land that fell rapidly down to the stately chestnuts, to the orchard, to the cornfields in the narrow valley, and the maples on the bank of the amber river, whose loud, unceasing murmur came to the lad on ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... taken by surprise, the ground seemed to him to sink under his feet. He instinctively caught hold of some branches to keep himself from falling, pricking his hands with the thorns, and breaking a slender bough, finally rolling in company with dust and earth, torn-out bushes and stone, down a steep declivity of several feet to a little grass plot at the bottom. He heard a slight scream near him, and a girlish form sprang up and cried ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... take it by sheer audacity. But the troops inside were held ready, and at the proper moment issued forth; the assailants found themselves in their turn assailed, and, fighting at a disadvantage on the slope, were soon driven down the declivity. The battle was renewed in plain below, where the mailed horse of the Parthians made a brave resistance; but the slingers galled them severely, and in the midst of the struggle it happened that by ill-fortune Pacorus was slain. The result ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... keep it alight so long as the wheel was trundling down the hill. The great object of the young men who guided the wheel was to plunge it blazing into the water of the Moselle; but they rarely succeeded in their efforts, for the vineyards which cover the greater part of the declivity impeded their progress, and the wheel was often burned out before it reached the river. As it rolled past the women and girls at the spring, they raised cries of joy which were answered by the men on the top of the mountain; and the shouts were echoed by the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... companion, however, at length espied a thin wreath of smoke issuing from a small clay-built hut thatched with furze, built against the steepest part of the hill, of which it seemed a mere excrescence, about half way down the declivity; and, on calling aloud, two children, who had been picking up dry stumps of heath and gorse, and collecting them in a heap for fuel at the door of their hovel, first carefully deposited their little load, and then came running to ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... days the artillery duel continued, and while it was going on a considerable number of troops were at work in the village of Oberndorf, which lay in a declivity near the river, hidden from the sight of the Imperialists, constructing a bridge. For that purpose a number of strong wooden trestles of various heights and with feet of unequal length for standing in the bed of ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... started the wagons down the hill. The wheel-horses, or rather the wheel-mules, were good on the hold back, and we got along beautifully till the wagon had nearly reached the bottom of the declivity. Then the wagon crowded the mules so hard that they started on the run and came galloping down into the valley to the spot General Carr had selected for his camp. There ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... came to the frail railing. Once they missed it, and staggered a foot away from it. Then they came back to it again, and lurched against it. The woodwork snapped, and the two men fell over the edge on to the sloping bank below. Still locked together they rolled over and over, down the declivity towards the edge of the cliff. A great cry from Hayle reached our ears. A moment later they had disappeared into the abyss, while we stood staring straight before us, too terrified to speak ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... Maltebrun's valuable System of Universal Geography. "It is only the sloping of the land which can at first cause water to flow; but an impulse having been once communicated to the mass, the pressure alone of the water will keep it in motion, even if there were no declivity at all. Many great rivers, in fact, flow with an almost interruptible declivity. Rivers which descend from primitive mountains into secondary lands, often form cascades and cataracts. Such are the cataracts of the Nile, of the Ganges, and some other great rivers, which, according to Desmarest, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... the gateway of the "Sign of the Broom Pod," singing, shouting, and jostling in rough good-fellowship. The sight of the tall thin figure of Chandos brought order amongst them, and a few minutes later the horses were ready and saddled. A breakneck ride down a steep declivity, and then a gallop of two miles over the sedgy plain carried them to the outer harbor. A dozen vessels were lying there, ready to start for Bordeaux or Rochelle, and the quay was thick with sailors, laborers and townsmen and heaped with wine-barrels ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fine, penance. bott|en (-nen, -nar), bottom. bottenls, bottomless. bra, good, well. bragd (-en, -er), achievement. brak (-et), crash, loud noise. brand (-en, brnder), firebrand, fire. brandgul, flame-colored. brann, see brinna. bras|a (-an, -or), fire, blaze. brant (-en, -er), precipice, edge, declivity. brant, steep. bred, broad. breda (bredde, brett), to spread. bredvid, beside. bring|a (-an, -or), chest of a horse or other animal. bring|a (-ade or bragte, -at or bragt), to bring. brinna (brann, pl. brunno, brunnit, brunnen), to burn. brista (brast, pl. brusto, brustit, brusten), to ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... our course was a declivity which dropped an estimated depth of sixty to one hundred feet below the narrow, stony flat on which we stood, down into a depressed valley. Abrupt ridges of broken stone formation were on our right and ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... knoll, on which the huts were situated, was a slight declivity. "Let us go down the hill for several hundred feet," said George, as he led the way through the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... shivers itself upon the rocks like tyranny against free hearts; whenever the ruins of an Austrian fortress darken with the remains of frowning walls the round eminences of Uri or Claris; and whenever a calm sunbeam gilds on the declivity of a village the green velvet of the meadows where the herds are feeding to the tinkling of bells and the echo of the Ranz des Vaches—so often the imagination traces in all these varied scenes the hat on the summit of the pole—the archer ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... of barrenness, that never, never, never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and fade and faint into vague perspective; that melancholy ruin of Capernaum; this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal plumes of palms; yonder desolate declivity where the swine of the miracle ran down into the sea, and doubtless thought it was better to swallow a devil or two and get drowned into the bargain than have to live longer in such a place; this cloudless, blistering sky; this ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... heard again the dismal groans and wailing, but much louder than before, and coming to the door, saw it opened on a steep declivity of rock wherein were rough steps or rather notches that yet gave good foothold; so I began to descend this narrow way, my candle before me, and taking vast heed to my feet, but as I got lower the rock grew moist and slimy so that I was half-minded to turn back; but having come this far, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... Mexico. It lies westward of Chapultepec, the old palace of the Aztec kings, and from the nature of its position, and the careful manner in which it was fortified, was a position of great strength. It lay at the foot of a rapid declivity, enfiladed by the fire of Chapultepec, and so situated, that not a shot could be discharged but must fall ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... telling him that since her father had decided on making so great a change in his ways, she and her mother hoped at last to persuade him to give up that "foolish little house" he had been so obstinate about; and she checked herself abruptly on this declivity just as she was about to slide into a remark concerning her own preference for a "country place." Discretion caught her in time; and something else, in company with discretion, caught her, for she stopped short ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... step Gale got the two injured men down the uneven declivity and then across the narrow lava bridge over the fissure. Here he bade them rest while he went along the trail on that side to search for Laddy. Gale found the ranger stretched out, face downward, a reddened hand clutching a gun. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... walls of the sharp, irregular declivity reflected many cold, prismatic lights, and down, far down where the eye could no longer distinguish shapes and outlines, there lay a shadow like steam from some vast, subterranean cauldron, blue, dense, impenetrable. It fascinated Pearl and she stood there ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... of sustaining her position suitably in the new quarter to which she had emigrated had made her docile to all suggestions of comfort and elegance. But the day on which occurred the scene we are about to witness, an apparently trivial detail had revealed to her the danger of the declivity on which she stood. The greater number of the new guests, recently imported by Thuillier, knew nothing of his sister's supremacy in his home. On arrival, therefore, they all asked Thuillier to present them to Madame, and, naturally, Thuillier could not say to them that his wife ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... recovered my legs when a shot struck my shako and grazed my temples. I quickly threw myself to the ground, and creeping on for some yards, reached at last some rising ground, from which I rolled gently downwards into a little declivity, sheltered by the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Juan had got out on Shooters' Hill Sunset the time, the place the same declivity Which looks along that vale of good and ill Where London streets ferment in full activity; While everything around was calm and still Except the creak of wheels which on their pivot he Heard—and that bee-like, babbling, busy hum Of ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... or principal kiva of Shupaulovi, illustrated in Pl. XXXIII, is scarcely a foot above the ground level on the side towards the houses, but its rough walls are exposed to a height of several feet down on the declivity of the knoll. The view of the stone corrals of Mashongnavi, shown in Pl. CIX, also illustrates a kiva of the type described. This chamber is constructed on a sharp slope of the declivity where a natural depression favored the builders. On the upper ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... admired, proved to be nothing more than old gummy stumps, with their few branches, entwisted with thorns; so that their inaccessible shade spread out on every side. They very soon after observed us upon the declivity of a little hill, which led us to the dwelling of ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... our feet. By throwing stones and chips in different directions, we made him spring his rattle again, and began another attack. This time we drove him into the clear ground, and saw him gliding off, with head and tail erect, when a stone, well aimed, knocked him over the bank, down a declivity of fifteen or twenty feet, and stretched him at his length. Having made sure of him by a few more stones, we went down, and one of the Kanakas cut off his rattle. These rattles vary in number, it is said, according to ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... a gentle declivity, a slope of laterite and diluvium washed down from the higher levels. The ground is good for drainage, but the soft and friable soil readily absorbs the deluging torrents of rain, and as readily returns them to the air in the shape of noxious vapours. The ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... down which we looked into the fiery river which rushed madly under our feet. These fiery vents were frequent, some of them measuring ten, twenty, fifty or one hundred feet in diameter. In one place we saw the river of lava uncovered for thirty rods and rushing down a declivity of from ten to twenty-five degrees. The scene was awful, the momentum incredible, the fusion perfect (white heat), and the velocity forty miles an hour. The banks on each side of the stream were red-hot, jagged and overhanging. ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... be upon my guard. Indeed, I thought that this halt would mark the termination of our walk; but I was mistaken, for, instead of returning to the Nautilus, Captain Nemo continued his bold excursion. The ground was still on the incline, its declivity seemed to be getting greater, and to be leading us to greater depths. It must have been about three o'clock when we reached a narrow valley, between high perpendicular walls, situated about seventy-five fathoms deep. Thanks to the perfection ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... opulent province. The city of Durham appears like a confused heap of stones and brick, accumulated so as to cover a mountain, round which a river winds its brawling course. The Streets are generally narrow, dark, and unpleasant, and many of them almost impassible in consequence of their declivity. The cathedral is a huge gloomy pile; but the clergy are well lodged. — The bishop lives in a princely manner — the golden prebends keep plentiful tables — and, I am told, there is some good sociable company in the place; but the country, when viewed from the top of Gateshead-Fell, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... from Mogodor. I sent my horses by land; and on our 59 approach to the shore, I discovered them approaching the mountain on which Santa Cruz stands. Soon after we came to anchor in the road, the boats came off, and the battery, which is situated about half-way up the mountain on the western declivity, saluted me with 8 guns, (the Muhamedans always saluting with an even number.) This compliment being unexpected, we were about half an hour preparing to return it, when we saluted the battery with 9 guns. The captain of the port received me with great courtesy, and was ordered by the bashaw ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... days; but, mira-bile dictu! in the majority of cases it rose to its feet. Then, after giving it a few moments' respite, the packers would strap the cargo again on its back, unless they deemed it proper to take a part of it upon themselves, so that the beast might more safely climb the declivity. The men really seemed indefatigable. One of them once took upon his head a large case of honey and carried it up the ridge on a run. Strange as it may sound, on my first journey across the Sierra Madre I did not lose one animal by ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... runs beneath the declivity between the two points of the Palatine, and by tortuous ways under the temple of Jupiter Victor on its highest summit, did connect the house which Dea Flavia now occupied with the Palace of Augusta. The latter, since the death ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... name——! During four nights after the burning I slept in a house—French as I saw by the books, &c., probably the Ambassador's, for it has very large gardens and a beautiful view over the sea, situated on the rapid east declivity of Pera; it is one of the few large houses which, for my safety, I had left standing round the minaret whence I had watched, this minaret being at the top of the old Mussulman quarter on the heights of ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... miles, till it is two thirds lost in a lake and the residue in a reedy slough or sink, a hundred miles from the Sierra Nevada and forty from the similar sink of the Carson, a larger and less impulsive stream which drains a considerable section of the eastern declivity of the Sierra Nevada only to meet this inglorious end. Doubtless, the time has been when a large portion of western Nevada formed one great lake or inland sea, whereof Pyramid and Mud Lakes, and the sinks ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... during his stay on Monte Amiata, in the summer of 1462, when plague and heat made the lowlands uninhabitable. Half way up the mountain, in the old Lombard monastery of San Salvatore, he and his court took up their quarters. There, between the chestnuts which clothe the steep declivity, the eye may wander over all Southern Tuscany, with the towers of Siena in the distance. The ascent of the highest peak he left to his companions, who were joined by the Venetian envoy; they found at the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... battle, in order that, if their friends are overpowered by numbers, they may have a secure retreat to the chariots. Thus they act with the celerity of horse, and the stability of foot; and by daily use and exercise they acquire the power of holding up their horses at full speed down a steep declivity, of stopping them suddenly, and turning in a short compass; and they accustom themselves to run upon the pole, and stand on the cross-tree, and from thence with great agility to recover their place in the chariot."—Bell. ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... wild lost country beyond the Adriatic headlands. There was the approach to Cattaro for example, through an arm of the sea, amazingly beautiful on either shore, that wound its way into the wild mountains and ended in a deep blue bay under the tremendous declivity of Montenegro. The quay, with its trees and lateen craft, ran along under the towers and portcullised gate of the old Venetian wall, within clustered the town, and then the fortifications zigzagged up steeply to a monstrous fantastic fortress perched upon a ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... on either side of the eminence, which, without offering any features of extraordinary beauty, were generally pleasing, and exercised a soothing influence upon his mind. At that time Stamford Hill was crowned with a grove of trees, and its eastern declivity was overgrown with brushwood. The whole country, on the Essex side, was more or less marshy, until Epping Forest, some three miles off, was reached. Through a swampy vale on the left, the river Lea, so dear to the angler, took its slow and silent course; while through ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth |
