"Great circle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stones, and within this two circles each containing a smaller concentric circle. Two avenues of stones led to the two entrances to the space surrounded by the fosse. It must have been a vast and imposing edifice, much more important than Stonehenge, and the area within this great circle exceeds twenty-eight acres, with a diameter of twelve hundred feet. But the spoilers have been at work, and "Farmer George" and other depredators have carted away so many of the stones, and done so much damage, that ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... when the robbers reached their cave. The bundles were laid in a great circle on the floor, and, at a given signal, they were opened. For a moment each robber gazed blankly at the contents of his bundle, and then they all began to fumble and search among the piles of articles upon the cloths; but after a few minutes, ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... time nearly to this the literary relations between England and America have been growing more and more intimate, until every English writer of repute reckoned upon his great circle of readers in the United States, and every native author of a certain distinction depended upon a welcome, more or less cordial, but still a welcome, from a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... slope that climbed to the cornfield, there was, faintly marked in the grass, a great circle where the Indians used to ride. Jake and Otto were sure that when they galloped round that ring the Indians tortured prisoners, bound to a stake in the centre; but grandfather thought they merely ran races or trained horses there. Whenever one looked at this slope against ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... fortifications in North America is perhaps that near Newark, in the valley of the Scioto. It includes an octagonal ENCEINTE eighty acres in area, a square ENCEINTE of twenty acres, with two others, one twenty the other thirty acres in extent. The walls of the great circle are still twelve feet high by fifty feet wide at the base. They are protected by an interior fosse seven feet deep by thirty-five feet wide. According to measurements carefully made by Colonel Whittlesey,[235] the total area ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... Torrens itself, act as a kind of barrier against the progress of inland discovery at the back of the colony of South Australia, since it is impossible to penetrate very far into the interior, without making a great circle either to the east or to the west. The portion of the bed of the lake which is exposed is thickly coated with particles of salt; there are few trees or shrubs of any kind to be found near, nor are grass ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... a time, the little meadow people crept out from their hiding places and formed a great circle around the old dead stump. With old Mother Nature there they felt sure that no harm could come to them. Then they began to laugh at the funny sight of fierce old Mr. Owl hopping from one foot to the other on top of the old dead stump. ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... schoolboy can say them. The old man seemed to continue looking at me earnestly while the birds called out thus; but I feigned not to notice it, and had in truth no time to attend to him, for I could easily perceive that we went round and round, and that this shaded space was in fact a great circle, which enclosed another much more important. Indeed, we had actually reached the small door again, and it seemed as though the old man would let me out. But my eyes remained directed towards a golden railing, which seemed to hedge round the middle of this wonderful garden, and which ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... modifies character. In 1864 I found a compact community; whatever was going on seemed to interest all. We now have a multitude of unrelated circles; then there was one great circle including the sympathetic whole. The one theater that offered the legitimate drew and could accommodate all who cared for it. Herold's orchestral concerts, a great singer like Parepa Rosa, or a violinist like Ole Bull drew all the ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... show the ethnical relations of these facts, the question naturally occurs whether any of these waifs ever found their way back from the American coast. On observing the course of the great circle of the Kuro-Shiwo and the course of the trade winds, one inclines to the belief that such a thing is not beyond the range of possibility. Indeed, several well-authenticated instances are mentioned by Mr. Brooks; and in connection with the subject ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... he advances to them. But this discovery is not altogether so easy when they discount their bills sometimes with one banker, and sometimes with another, and when the two same persons do not constantly draw and redraw upon one another, but occasionally run the round of a great circle of projectors, who find it for their interest to assist one another in this method of raising money and to render it, upon that account, as difficult as possible to distinguish between a real and a fictitious bill of exchange, between a bill drawn by ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... it was a great measure for Rome. At night the Corso in which, we live was illuminated, and many thousands passed through it in a torch-bearing procession. I saw them first assembled in the Piazza del Popolo, forming around its fountain a great circle of fire. Then, as a river of fire, they streamed slowly through the Corso, on their way to the Quirinal to thank the Pope, upbearing a banner on which the edict was printed. The stream, of fire advanced slowly, with a perpetual surge-like sound of voices; the torches ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of the row of great ring-plains, which, beginning on the W. with Autolycus, and followed by Archimedes, Timocharis, and Lambert, extends almost in a great circle from the N.W. to the S.E. side of the Mare Imbrium. It is about 19 miles in diameter, and is surrounded by terraced walls, which, though of no great height above the Mare, rise 6000 feet above the floor. There is a distinct little gap in the S. wall, easily glimpsed when it is close to ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... many hundred gauges or counts of stars visible in a field of about one-quarter of the area of the moon, Herschel found that the average number of stars increased toward the great circle which most nearly conforms with the course of the Milky Way. Ninety degrees from this plane, at the pole of the Milky Way, only four stars, on the average, were seen in the field of the telescope. In approaching the Milky Way this number increased slowly at first, and then more and ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... was for the fleet to revolve in a great circle or ellipse before the delivering their fire from starboard and port batteries alternately. The first shot from the "Olympia" was a 250-pound shell, aimed at the Cavite fort, and discharged with a shout from all hands, "Remember the Maine!" After ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... one tenth of the visible heavens, contains nine-tenths of the visible stars, and seems a vast zone-shaped nebula, nearly a great circle of the sphere, the poles being ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott
... held. Here they found the dwarf and his guests, numbering a hundred, having a truly jolly time. The dwarf, who was dressed in white (to make him look larger), was seated on a high red velvet cushion at the end of the hall, and the company sat cross-legged on rugs, in a great circle before him. He was drinking out of a huge bottle nearly as big as himself, and eating little birds; and judging by the bones that were left, he must have eaten nearly a whole flock of them. When he saw the five magicians entering, he stopped eating, and opened his eyes in amazement, ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... plains, riding without saddles, and carrying no equipment, the Indians had little trouble in avoiding the soldiers. Leaving the reservation, the Apaches would commit some outrage, and then, swinging on the arc of a great circle, would be back to camp and settled long before the soldiers could overtake them. Hampered by orders from the War Department, which, in turn, was molested by the sentimental friends of the Indians, soldiers ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... stood out against the intense blue sky. But look as she might she could not find it. It was there no more. It had been for long; but now was not. Clean as though drawn by a crayon on a freshly washed blackboard, the unbroken horizon line stretched out in a great circle before her eyes. With no watcher save the grey wolf staring forth from the stable doorway, she was ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... Canovas, be forgotten, yet let men of genius of every description spring up, and poetry, music, painting, architecture, sculpture, and all the arts and sciences will again shine out in all their glory. Twice within the records of history has the human race traversed the great circle of its entire destiny, and twice has the rudeness of barbarism been followed by a higher degree of refinement. It is a great mistake to suppose one people to have proceeded from another on account of their conformity of manners, customs, and arts. The swallow of Paris builds its nest ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... tilting his body on the blast, he carelessly veered clear of collision. His head and neck were rimed with age or frost—we could not tell which—and his bright bead-eye noted us as he passed and whirled away on a great circle into the snow ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the publication of these letters had received the cordial approval of General Grant's son, the late General Frederick D. Grant, and it is only because of his sudden death, which has brought sorrow upon a great circle of friends and upon the community at large, that the publishers are prevented from including with the volume a letter from the General as the head of the Grant family, giving formal expression to his personal interest in ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... its journey round the sun the earth travels in an orbit which measures about one hundred and eighty-five millions of miles across, so he resolved to take observations of the stars when the earth was at one side of this great circle, and again, six months later, when she had travelled to the other side. Then indeed he would have a magnificent base line, one of one hundred and eighty-five millions of miles in length. What was the result? Even with ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... dawn. It was now ten o'clock and they were just beginning to climb. The Hill, that looked so near to the mesa above Hudson's yard, still stood aloof. It had towered there ahead of them as they jerked and toiled across the interminable flat in their accompanying cloud of dust. The great circle of the world had dwarfed them to a bitter insignificance: a team of crickets, they seemed, driven by a gnome. The hushed tone of Thatcher's voice made unconscious tribute ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... water enough in the strait to let her through in this season of the year. The sails flapped in the puffing breeze, and he began to calculate her tonnage, certain that if he had such a boat he would not be sailing her on a lake, but on the bright sea, out of sight of land, in the middle of a great circle of water. As if stung by a sudden sense of the sea, of its perfume and its freedom, he imagined the filling of the sails and the rattle of the ropes, and how a fair wind would carry him as far as the cove of Cork before morning. The run from Cork to Liverpool would be ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... with his face in his hands, utterly wretched, beginning already to see the great circle of confusion that he had caused. Mrs. Parsons looked at him and looked at her husband. Presently she went up ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... fireside when the winter wind blew cold from the cruel sea and the heaped faggots sent the red glow of fire-warmth athwart the thick shadows of the great farm kitchen, and old and young from grandsire to herd-boy made a great circle to hearken to the creepy tales so ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... flood with credit; nay, the examiner himself was obliged at times to assume a knowledge which he did not possess, for, if Stump knew how to con a ship from port to port, Royson could give reasons for great circle sailing which left Stump gasping. At last, the stout captain could no longer conceal his amazement when Royson had recited correctly the rules of ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... the altar of the Buonaventuri, gentlemen of Urbino; wherein the Virgin is represented with most beautiful grace as having received the Annunciation, standing with her hands clasped and her face and eyes uplifted to Heaven. Above, in the sky, in the centre of a great circle of light, stands a little Child, with His foot on the Holy Spirit in the form of a Dove, and holding in His left hand a globe symbolizing the dominion of the world, while, with the other hand raised, He gives the benediction; and on the right ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... spectacles and entertainments of many classes, but all measuring up to a certain standard of excellence insisted upon by the Exposition. The Aeroscope, a huge steel arm that lifts a double decked cabin more than two hundred and fifty feet above the ground and then swings it around in a great circle over the Zone, is one of ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... consider, he retraced his steps, having apparently had some scheme in mind when diverted by the sight of the rabbit. The latter, being young and properly harebrained, and aware of his present advantage, now came back by a great circle, and fell to browsing again on the birch-twigs. As he fed, however, he kept a sharp ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... country had but few settlers, and it was still full of wild beasts. When the men got tired of work and wanted a frolic, they had a grand wolf-hunt. First, a tall pole was set up in a clearing;[6] next, the hunters in the woods formed a great circle of perhaps ten miles in extent. Then they began to move nearer and nearer together, beating the bushes and yelling with all their might. The frightened wolves, deer, and other wild creatures inside of the circle of hunters were driven to the ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... to the retrograde exertion of the ventricules and auricles; because it seems to be affected by its association with the capillaries, the actions of which, with those of the arteries and veins, constitute one great circle of associate motions. Now when the capillaries of the skin become torpid, coldness and paleness succeed; and with these are associated the capillaries of the lungs, whence difficult respiration; and ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... a great circle about the periphery of the circular platform. We were assigned seats with our backs toward a small platform in the exact centre of the larger one. This placed us facing the judges and the audience. Upon the smaller platform each would take his ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Heaven's mercy to implore, For ne'er a woman's will she win! But then, beholding her sweet mien, Were Marvel and Pascal, eyeing her fondly o'er; She saw them with her glances, dark as night, Then shrinking back, they left her all alone, Midway of a great circle, as they might Some poor condemned one Bearing some stigma ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... few thousand of the formidable archers, hired for fourpence a day, made an army with which a short campaign could be carried on. Such were the materials of the Prince's force, some eight thousand strong, who were now riding in a great circle through Southern France, leaving a broad wale of blackened and ruined ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... parallel planes, indefinitely extended every way, but at a given considerable distance from each other; and calling this a sidereal stratum, an eye placed somewhere within it will see all the stars in the direction of the planes of the stratum projected into a great circle, which will appear lucid on account of the accumulation of the stars, while the rest of the heavens, at the sides, will only seem to be scattered over with constellations, more or less crowded according to the distance of the planes, ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... people and the bearers whom we had wrung out of Hassan, we were now a party of seventeen, namely eleven Zulu hunters including Mavovo, two white men, Hans and Sammy, and the two Mazitus who had elected to remain with us, while round us was a great circle of savages which closed ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... his antagonist were his equal. Austria, indeed, but holds together the motley and inharmonious members of its vast domain on either side the Alps, by a general character of paternal mildness and forbearance in all that great circle of good government which lies without the one principle of constitutional liberty. It asks but of its subjects to submit to be well governed—without agitating the question "how and by what means that government is carried on." For every man, except the politician, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigour, and industry which began long since in the east; they will finish the great circle. The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which has ever appeared, and which will hereafter become distinct by the power of the different climates they inhabit. The American ought therefore to love this country ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... changed to a yell. The drum beat quickened, and the great circle of dancing Indians broke and charged the crowd of whites. A number of them drew revolvers and began firing them into the air. Others drew taut the great bows they carried. ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... whether you were ever Lord Chancellor, Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition, or even a member of the House of Commons. An author hopes to find readers far beyond that very egregious but very limited segment of the Great Circle. Were you ever a busy man in your vestry, active in a municipal corporation, one of a committee for furthering the interests of an enlightened candidate for your native burgh, town, or shire,—in a word, did you ever resign ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... diameter, walled round with loose stones, perhaps to the height of nine feet. The walls were very thick, diminishing a little toward the top, and though in these countries, stone is not brought far, must have been raised with much labour. Within the great circle were several smaller rounds of wall, which formed distinct apartments. Its date, and its use are unknown. Some suppose it the original seat of the chiefs of the Macleods. Mr. Macqueen thought ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... was not altogether wrong in this statement, for his thorough knowledge of mathematics stood him in good stead in navigation. Questions such as "Great Circle Sailing" he ate alive, and a well known problem of "Equations of Equal Altitudes" was, to use his own expression, nuts ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... of the skipper is utilized by the aviator in volplaning,—that is, where the power of the engine is cut off, either by accident, or designedly, and the machine descends to the earth, whether in a long straight glide, or in a great circle. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... more wood on the fires. What a blessed thing fire was! It saved them from the freezing night and it saved them from the teeth of the wild beasts, which he knew were gathering in a great circle, mad with hunger. The flames leaped higher, and he caught glimpses of dusky figures hovering among the bushes, wolves, bears and he knew not what, because imagination was very lively within him then and he had traveled back to a ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... attitude, both hands raised to hold the glass, displayed to perfection the virginal outline of her white-robed form. She wore a straw hat of the plain masculine fashion; her brown hair was plaited in a great circle behind her head, not one tendril loosed from the mass; a white collar closely circled her neck; her waist was bound with a red girdle. All was grace and purity; the very folds towards the bottom of her dress hung in sculpturesque smoothness; ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... star. His quiver is at his back; his tall lance in his hand, the iron point flashing against the declining sun, while the long scalp-locks of his enemies flutter from the shaft. Thus, gorgeous as a champion in his panoply, he rides round and round within the great circle of lodges, balancing with a graceful buoyancy to the free movements of his war horse, while with a sedate brow he sings his song to the Great Spirit. Young rival warriors look askance at him; vermilion-cheeked girls gaze ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... close to another fine relic of the past, though this cannot claim to have any Celtic or pre-Celtic foundation. The great circle of Maumbury Rings was the original stadium or coliseum of the Roman town; the tiers of seats when filled are estimated to have held over twelve thousand spectators. The gaps at each end are the ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... engraved on the blade: she made the sultan, the little slave, and myself, descend into a private court of the palace, and there left us under a gallery that went round it. She placed herself in the middle of the court, where she made a great circle, and within it she wrote several ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... islander can, from his own shores, with "unwet feet," behold the natural barrier of his continental neighbour, he knows but little more of his real character and habits, than of those of beings, who are more distantly removed from him, by many degrees of the great circle. ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... did not exist—and we had simply the fact to build on that the stars appeared to increase rapidly in number towards a certain circle (almost a great circle) spanning the heavens—then the disc theory might have a good deal in its favour. But the telescopic study of the Milky Way, and even more the marvellous photographs of its complicated structure ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... course, according to the custom of skippers and mariners, and moreover I took the sun's altitude several times with a quadrant and other instruments, and in agreement with Alfragan I found that each degree [i. e. of longitude, measured on a great circle] answers to 56-2/3 miles. So that one may rely upon this measure. We may therefore say that the equatorial circumference of the earth is 20,400 miles. A similar result was obtained by Master Joseph, the physicist [or, perhaps, physician] and ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... thinking. Then a Duckling who stood near him exclaimed, "Look at his train! Oh, look at his train!" Everybody looked and saw all those beautiful long feathers rising into the air. Up and up they went, and spreading as they rose, until there was a wonderful great circle of them back of his body and reaching far above his head. The Gobbler's spread tail looked as small beside this as a Dove's egg would beside ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... the geometry of their universe as being plane geometry and their rods withal as the realisation of " distance " ? They cannot do this. For if they attempt to realise a straight line, they will obtain a curve, which we " three-dimensional beings " designate as a great circle, i.e. a self-contained line of definite finite length, which can be measured up by means of a measuring-rod. Similarly, this universe has a finite area that can be compared with the area, of a square constructed ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... Goncharov (1812-1891) was one of the leading members of the great circle of Russian writers who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, gathered around the Sovremmenik (Contemporary) under Nekrasov's editorship—a circle including Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Byelinsky, and Herzen. He had not the marked genius of the first three ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... northern seas. By 1st June he had reached a region where there was no night, and a few days later a strange sight startled the whole crew, "for on each side of the sun there was another sun and two rainbows more, the one compassing round about the suns and the other right through the great circle," and they found they were "under 71 degrees of the height ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... not the immediate effect of differences of temperature, but a secondary effect induced by the friction of the earth's surface and the continual deflection of the air's eastward motion from a great circle, (in which the air tends to move,) into the small circle of the latitude, in which the air actually does move. The force of this deflection, measured by the centrifugal force of the air as it circulates around the pole, retards ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... tangible, it is believed, is that which has been suggested with the Scandinavian mythology. That mythology is of so marked and peculiar a character, that it has not been distinctly traced out of the great circle of tribes of the Indo-Germanic family. Odin, and his terrific pantheon of war-gods and social deities, could only exist in the dreary latitudes of storms and fire, which produce a Hecla and a Maelstrom. These latitudes ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... are few trees, no running water, no romantic ruins, but an extraordinary width of sea-view, seen as from the deck of a gigantic ship; and yet the island is so small that one can look around it all, and take the sea-line in one great circle. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... them, whose civilisation had built itself many habitations and was making roads and streets on the green-brown plain, where herds of buffalo had stamped and streamed and thundered not long ago. The town was a mile and a half away, and these two were alone in a great circle of storm, one of them battling against a tempest which might yet overtake her, against which she had set her face ever since she could remember, though it had only come to violence since her father died two years before—a careless, strong, wilful white man, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... all joined hands and made a great circle round the high grass. The pushmi-pullyu heard them coming; and he tried hard to break through the ring of monkeys. But he couldn't do it. When he saw that it was no use trying to escape, he sat down and waited to see ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... was piercing the water with its sharp spur, after having accomplished nearly ten thousand leagues in three months and a half, a distance greater than the great circle of the earth. Where were we going now, and what was reserved for the future? The Nautilus, leaving the Straits of Gibraltar, had gone far out. It returned to the surface of the waves, and our daily walks on the ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... Alamo, we made a great circle through the desert, swinging first north toward the Sierra Mojada, then south, and ultimately eastward toward Monclova. The trip proved to be one of great hardship and danger, but only from scarcity of water; for while at isolated springs we found recent ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... to the mercy of Christ; but it is your business to assist them, encourage them, and instruct them; and if you give me leave, and God His blessing, I do not doubt but the poor ignorant souls shall be brought home to the great circle of Christianity, if not into the particular faith we all embrace, and that even while you stay here." Upon this I said, "I shall not only give you leave, but give you a thousand ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... from Anoroc upon the east to Sari upon the west, and from the river south of the Mountains of the Clouds north to Amoz. As soon as I had explained it to him he drew a line with his finger, showing a sea-coast far to the west and south of Sari, and a great circle which he said marked the extent of the Land of Awful Shadow in ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... side, by circuitous trails and stiff climbing, one may gain the Saddle. Against the slope of the Dome the Saddle leans like a gigantic slab, and from the top of this slab, one thousand feet in length, curves the great circle to the summit of the Dome. A few degrees too steep for unaided climbing, these one thousand feet defied for years the adventurous spirits who fixed yearning eyes upon the ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... in building a certain railroad, she might go, and carry peace, also, with her. The Government would scout the idea of running the Cunard line to Canada alone, and would not touch even at Halifax, except that the ships are compelled to go in sight of the place; as the "great circle" on which they sail nearly cuts the city. Great Britain runs that line because her trade with the United States requires it. That trade is worth to her every year twenty of her Canadas, as that of the West-Indies is worth a dozen of ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... drove them back at once, and probably feeling' pretty well satisfied that his enemies did not want to spear him, he stuck his doubled fists in his sides and went slowly round the great circle that had collected, strutting insultingly, as if daring them to come on, and ending by striding into the middle of the circle and squatting down, as if treating his foes with ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... the companions; for they had quitted Evil-budget, and arrived at the ninth great circle of hell, on the mound of which they passed along, looking quietly and steadily before them. Daylight had given place to twilight; and Dante was advancing his head a little, and endeavouring to discern objects in the distance, when his whole attention was called to one particular spot, by a blast ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... figure went round the great circle of gazers, ministering obediently to their pleasure, waiting patiently till their curiosity was satisfied. And now, her weary pilgrimage was well nigh over for the night. She had arrived at the last group of spectators who had yet to ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... came upon the little town suddenly—so suddenly that both appeared bewildered. Only a hillock had separated them from the sight of it the night before. They looked and looked. It lay beneath an upward sweep of land, in a cosy indenture of a great circle that swept far around and away, fringed with cocoanut trees. Small wisps or corkscrews of smoke defiled the blue of the sky; a wharf, with a steamer at the end, obtruded abruptly upon the curve of the shore. Mr. Heatherbloom regarded the boat—a link from Arcadia to the mundane ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... uncle, to our marriage. But he put aside the proposition with anger and scorn. He thought that Claude Dubois was neither distinguished nor rich enough to match his niece. In his heart, he had reserved me for some conspicuous position in the great circle at Paris, while I had given myself to an ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... the surface of a planet would leave behind it after its demise. You might think that the satellite revolving round and round the planet must simply describe a circle upon the spherical surface of the planet: a "great circle" as it is called; that is the greatest circle which can be described upon a sphere. This great circle can, however, only be struck, as you will see, when the planet is not turning upon its axis: a condition not likely ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... the Wangoni was that of a reserve force, in the event of the enemy carrying any given point, and thus necessitating hand-to-hand conflict. The slaves, firmly secured, were placed in the center of the great circle. ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... places which made excellent points of observation, and here we watched and marveled. Careful measurement of the great circle showed a circumference of twelve hundred feet. We timed the laden Ecitons and found that they averaged two to two and three-quarter inches a second. So a given individual would complete the round in about two hours and a half. ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... underworld the inhabitants began moving in a great circle, travelling from the north to the east, then to the south, then to the west. When any found a spot that pleased them, they settled there, and Chunnaai and Klenaai gave them a language of their own. Four times the land was thus ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... cheer. It was not much, but it was enough; and while our scientific staff were congratulating themselves that electric-wave telegraphy was not inhibited by long distance, or by the earth's curvature over an arc of a great circle, I was thinking of my dear one—that one way or another my message would reach her and she would ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... out upon the midday air with startling suddenness, and immediately they were off on a fine start to the accompaniment of the cheering of the crowd which lined the whole track in a great circle. The first round ended with the runners much as they had started, the interval between each being fairly equally maintained. Semple, however, dropped out, not caring to overstrain himself as he had some heavy racing next day at another gathering, ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... and friend of human kind" will find the only sure means of carrying forward that particular reform to which he is devoted. In whatever department of philanthropy he may be engaged, he will find that department to be only a segment of the great circle of beneficence of which Universal Education is the center and circumference; and that he can most successfully promote the permanent advancement of his most cherished interest in securing the establishment of, and attendance upon, IMPROVED SCHOOLS ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... they see the decoys, and, warned simultaneously by an ancestral suspicion, they swing outward in a great circle, without apparent effort on ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... which has made the swordfish the most famous of all fish—he rose two-thirds out of the water, I suppose by reason of the enormous power of his tail, though it seemed like magic, and then he began to walk across the sea in a great circle of white foam, wagging his massive head, sword flying, jaws wide, dorsal fin savagely erect, like a lion's mane. He was magnificent. I have never seen fury so expressed or such an unquenchable spirit. Then he dropped ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... where it riseth is placed by Polomeus in 11. degree of the South latitud, but by latter & more exact geographers in the 14. degree of the Southern latitud, so that the distance betweene the founts & Ostia i.e. betweene (C) and (B) is 45. degrees of a great Circle, which after the vsuall account makes 2700. one eight part of the earths compasse. The quaestion now is, whether the runninge from (C) to (B) runne continually downward in a streight line; or circularly in a crooked line. If it runne in a streight line, ...
— A Briefe Introduction to Geography • William Pemble
... and sizes, form a great circle, perching in tiers on the branches, the briers, the stones; the CAT crouches in the grass; the BLACKBIRD hops hither and thither on ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... view ahead. Dorothea's eyes, avoiding the wind, were fixed on the tor to the left, when Endymion touched her hand and pointed towards the base of the other. There, grey—almost black—against the white hillside, a mass of masonry loomed up through the weather; the great circle of ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dead and weltering in their blood on the trampled sand of the arena, and the victorious gladiator stood near their prone bodies triumphant, amid the deafening cheers of the crowd. Wreaths of flowers were tossed to him from the people, who stood up in their seats all round the great circle to hail him with their acclamations, and the Emperor, lifting his unwieldy body from under his canopy of gold, stretched out his hand as a sign that the prize which the dauntless combatant had fought to win was his. He at once obeyed the signal;—but now ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... this is a ditch, and close on the inner edge of this was a circle of about a hundred upright stones. Within this circle were two pairs of concentric circles with their centres slightly east of the north-and-south diameter of the great circle. The diameters of the outer circles of these two pairs are 350 and 325 feet respectively. In the centre of the northern pair was a cover-slab supported by three uprights, and in the centre of the southern a single menhir. All the stones used are sarsens, ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... zone, Effuse their blended lustres round her throne; Suns call to suns, in lucid clouds conspire, And light exterior skies with golden fire; 365 Resistless rolls the illimitable sphere, And one great circle forms the unmeasured year. —Roll on, YE STARS! exult in youthful prime, Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time; Near and more near your beamy cars approach, 370 And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach;— Flowers of the sky! ye too to age must yield, Frail as ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... itself wherein Ruth Bellenden lived. No picture from the gallery of a high tower could have been more beautiful than that strange land with the wild reefs lying about it and the rollers cascading over them, and the black glens above which we stood, and the great circle of the water like some measureless basin which the whole earth bounded. I did not wonder that old Clair-de-Lune was silent when he looked down upon a scene so grand. It seemed a crime to speak of food and drink in such a place; and yet it was of these ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... been set up in the Blackfeet winter camp. Evening was closing over the travel-tired people. The sun had dropped beyond the hills not far away. Women were bringing water from the river at the edge of the great circle. Men gathered in quiet groups, weary after the long march of the day. Children called sleepily to each other, and the dogs ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... murder has been done, and many an innocent virgin has lifted her white arms, beseeching its aid in her extremity, and all in vain; so that, though Providence is infinitely good and wise, and perhaps for that very reason, it may be half an eternity before the great circle of its scheme shall bring us the superabundant recompense for all these sorrows! But what the lover asked was such prompt consolation as might consist with the brief span of mortal life; the assurance of Hilda's present safety, and her ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by means of their itineraries and the journals of trading voyages. But a fundamental error pervades all his calculations, inasmuch as he assumed that there were but 500 stadia (about fifty geographical miles) instead of sixty miles to a degree of a great circle of the earth; thus curtailing the globe of one sixth of its circumference. Once apprised of this mistake, and reckoning Ptolemy's longitudes and latitudes from Alexandria, and reducing them to degrees of 600 stadia, his positions may be laid down on a more correct graduation; otherwise "his ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Carew an' his Dawn 'ave won past, the way we're sailin'! And the old man reckons seventy days, outside, afore 'e makes 'is landfall o' Fire Mountain. Coming 'ome, now, will be different. We'll sail the great circle, the course the mail-boats follow, an' we'll likely make the passage in 'alf the time. We'll run the easting down, up there in the 'igh latitudes with the ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... the way became smoother. All this neighbourhood was quite unknown to Evan of course, and his point of view was somewhat restricted, being directed solely towards the rear. He watched the stars and made out that the car was choosing roads that were gradually bringing it around in a great circle. He supposed that it was bound back for town—for the "club-house," if he ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... Aguadores ravine, and it was perfectly evident that something was expected to happen. Under such circumstances, the thing for us to do was to get back, as speedily as possible, to Siboney. Turning in a great circle around the Iowa, we steamed swiftly eastward along the coast, passing the New York, the Suwanee, and the Gloucester, which were lying, cleared for action, close under the walls of the Aguadores fort; exchanging greetings with ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... half moon that shone dimly through the scudding clouds lay on her back, with a great circle of light ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... a ploughed field, and the rich brown earth heaved in a great circle against the sky and in the depth of its furrows there were mysterious velvet shadows—the brown hedges stood back against the sky line. The world was so fresh and clean and strong this morning that the figure and voice of his ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Friederich Nietzsche, the mad philosopher of the nineteenth century of the Christian Era, who caught wild glimpses of truth, but who, before he was done, reasoned himself around the great circle of human thought ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... duty lies in not going beyond our measure—in being contented with what we are—with what God makes us. They who seek after forbidden knowledge, of whatever kind, will find they have lost their place in the scale of beings in so doing, and are cast out of the great circle of God's family. ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... had grown louder and wilder, the wails in chorus more piercing and thrilling, and the heavy stamping of the bare feet more heavy and deep-toned, so that all round the great circle in which the slaves were stamping, the earth vibrated more thunderously ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... their quarters in any part of the district or country. Then the huntsman promised to procure as much game for him as he could possibly use at the royal table. So he summoned all the huntsmen together, and bade them go out into the forest with him. And he went with them and made them form a great circle, open at one end where he stationed himself, and began to wish. Two hundred deer and more came running inside the circle at once, and the huntsmen shot them. Then they were all placed on sixty country carts, and driven home to ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... pour a motley throng, Slow measures chanting of a dirge-like song. In one great circle dizzily they swing, A squaw and chief alternate in the ring. Coarse raven locks stream over robes of white, Their deep set orbs emit a lurid light, And as through pine trees moan the winds refrains, So swells and dies ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... opposite the ships in token of their friendship. When Cartier and his men came ashore, Donnacona made all his people stand back from the beach. He drew in the sand a huge ring, and into this he led the French. Then, selecting from the ranks of his followers, who stood in a great circle watching the ceremony, a little girl of ten years old, he led her into the ring and presented her to Cartier. After her, two little boys were handed over in the same fashion, the assembled Indians rending the ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... the centre of a great circle of remembrance. One of Constable's famous paintings represents the Cathedral of Salisbury outlined against a storm-swept sky, with a lovely rainbow arched beyond it. So stands the Church athwart the landscape of our lives. In each community the church ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... said he, "we must leave them to the mercy of Christ; but it is our business to assist them, encourage them, and instruct them; and if you will give me leave, and God his blessing, I do not doubt but the poor ignorant souls shall be brought home into the great circle of Christianity, if not into the particular faith that we all embrace; and that even while you stay here." Upon this I said, "I shall not only give you leave, but give you a thousand thanks for it." What followed on this account I shall mention also ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... observation were supplied by the caliph Almamon, and the land of the Chaldaeans still afforded the same spacious level, the same unclouded horizon. In the plains of Sinaar, and a second time in those of Cufa, his mathematicians accurately measured a degree of the great circle of the earth, and determined at twenty-four thousand miles the entire circumference of our globe. [61] From the reign of the Abbassides to that of the grandchildren of Tamerlane, the stars, without ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... old man said never a word. First of all he drew a great circle with strange figures, marking it with his finger upon the ground. Then out from under his red gown he brought a tinder-box and steel, and a little silver casket covered all over with strange figures ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... unexplored regions. The success of the Spaniards kindled a generous emulation in their Portuguese rivals, who soon after accomplished their long-sought passage into the Indian seas, and thus completed the great circle of maritime discovery. It would seem as if Providence had postponed this grand event, until the possession of America, with its stores of precious metals, might supply such materials for a commerce with the east, as should bind together the most distant quarters of the globe. The impression made ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... upon a bank of sweet-smelling grasses, and about me were the great oaks. The organ, or the waves, spoke on. I looked up, up, into the great circle of the sky, so far, so blue, so kind in its bending over, so pitying it seemed to me, yet so high in its up-reaching. I looked upon the glorious pageant ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... one of those writers whose hap it generally is to be overpraised by friendly reviewers, and unduly castigated by those who appreciate their short-comings. Incurably limited to a certain range of ideas, totally incapable of mastering the great circle of thought, unpleasantly egotistical, jaunty, and priggish, he is any thing but attractive to the large-hearted cosmopolite and scholar of broad views, while even to many more general readers, he appears ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... more, and a deep groan burst from the great circle. He was playing with the utmost skill upon their emotions, and now every face clouded as he recalled their failures and losses to them, failures and losses that ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to the salon she found that the Abbe Gondrin had become the centre of a great circle formed by nearly the whole company, and as she approached, she ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... could pay for a seat in the play-house—so I may well be a judge of women—and have lived gayly myself about the Court. But there is one—this moment at Camylott Towers—there is one," describing a great circle with his pipe as if he writ her name, "and may the devil seize and smite me, if there was ever a lady with such a body and face ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... know which is north, which is south, which is east, which is west; and if he did know, he is so confused that he would not know in which of those directions his goal lay. Therefore, following his heart, he walks in a great circle from right to left and comes back to where he started—to himself again. To my mind that is a picture of the world. If you have lost sight of other interests and do not know the relation of your own interests to those other interests, then you do not understand ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... took note of the diurnal course, the alternation of day and night, the number of the seasons, and their regular successions. They found the points of the compass by determining the recurrence of the equinoxes and solstices; but they had no conception of the ecliptic—of that great circle in the heaven, formed by the sun's annual course, and of its obliquity when compared with the equator. Like the Egyptians and Babylonians, they ascertained the length of the year to be three hundred and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... staircase, a wonderful inclined plane, so wide and gradual that a coach and four may be driven to the top. This colossal cylinder has to-day no visible use; but it corresponds, happily enough, with the great circle of the prospect. The gardens of Amboise, lifted high aloft, covering the irregular remnants of the platform on which the castle stands and making up in picturesqueness what they lack in extent, constitute of course but a scanty domain. But bathed, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... the desert fighters from which he had sprung, Achmet Zek led his followers at a gallop in a long, thin line, describing a great circle which drew closer and closer in ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Rome, you know, was saved by the cackling of a goose. And when I tell you that Washington, the capital city of this great nation was saved by the too free use of a barrel of whisky, you must not be surprised. When its great circle of fortifications, now bristling with cannon, and filled with busy soldiers, shall become so many grassy mounds, their history must still live to excite the patriotism of those ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams
... pink wreaths and his white robe, and watched the quickening pinkiness of the East. And slowly the great circle of the temple filled with white-robed folk, all carrying in their hands the faint pinkiness of the flowers which we nowadays ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... the Tablets of Aeth a great circle was seen, in the center a head, a faint shimmer above the head, as if the light were about to dawn; a dull, lurid glow beneath, as if of chaos or hell; the hair around the head like floating clouds, the beard ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... the signal. A tremendous cry burst from the vast ring of the thousands, and it was taken up by the shrill voices of the women on the flat roofs of the houses. The great circle of cavalrymen shook their lances and ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler |
