"Rafts" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the midst of the seas, With thy rafts of cedar trees, Thy merchandise and thy ships, Thou, too, art become as naught, A phantom, a shadow, a thought, A name ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... trouble, sir, than it was worth. Better have built himself some kind of a boat at once. Look at his raft! Always a-sinking, or fouling, or shooting off its cargo, or trying to navigate itself. I don't believe in rafts. They're no use unless you want to use one to get washed ashore. ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... falling to pieces. The mules, donkeys, and ponies gave the best results, but do not abound in sufficient quantities to enable an army in Afghanistan to dispense with camels. A successful experiment in rafting, from Jelalabad to Dakka, was tried. The rafts consisted of inflated skins lashed together with a light framework; between June 4-13, seven thousand skins were used, and, in all, 885 soldiers and one thousand tons of stores were transported forty miles down the Kabul River, the journey taking five hours. A great deal of road-making and repairing ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... (Lachen-Lachoong) is materially different from what it is lower down; becoming a boisterous torrent, as suddenly as the Tambur does above Mywa Guola. Its bed is narrower, large masses of rock impede its course, nor is there any place where it is practicable for rafts at any season; the only means of passing it being by cane bridges that are thrown across, high ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... it out soon. Get your floating mines ready," ordered Captain Blaise. That was my work, and in anticipation of it I had knocked together two small rafts loaded with explosives and a large one with explosives and combustible stuff to burn brightly for half an hour ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... which flows into the Tigris near a town now called Senn. During the first of these five days, they saw on the opposite side of the Tigris a large town called Kaenae, from whence they received supplies of provisions, brought across by the inhabitants upon rafts supported by inflated skins.[27] ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... one of our rafts, watching the installation of a new ray machine. A storm was raging, but the great raft, a thousand feet long, and five hundred wide, was as steady as a rock. We were 700 miles out; the great push of '92, that drove us back to within 150 miles of our coast and almost ended ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... soon got into, through the off-settings and point- currents of the stream, made the likelihood of our being drowned, alone,—to say nothing of our being retaken—as broad and plain as the sun at noonday to all of us. But, we all worked hard at managing the rafts, under the direction of the seamen (of our own skill, I think we never could have prevented them from oversetting), and we also worked hard at making good the defects in their first hasty construction—which the ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... and are connected even to the houses scattered over the country; smaller canals surround the fields and orchards, pastures and kitchen-gardens, serving at once as boundary wall, hedge, and road-way; every house is a little port. Ships, boats, rafts, move about in all directions, as in other places carts and carriages. The canals are the arteries of Holland, and the water her life-blood. But even setting aside the canals, the draining of the lakes, and the defensive works, on every side are seen the traces of marvelous undertakings. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to believe their extraordinary story. The brilliant if wayward actress, with her fine carriage and white hands, could never have belonged to that derelict of a man, lower even than the rough Frenchmen from the rafts and chantiers now demanding more "visky blanc". Yet in youth many things are possible, and the recital of Mme. Poussette's history seemed to prepare the way for Pauline's. Meanwhile Dr. Renaud had spoken to madame, and within an ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... pieces the rafts which bring down the wood. Quite as aquatic as the preceding operatives, the labor of ravageurs has a very different object. Advancing in the water as far as they can, they are enabled, by means of long rakes, to drag the ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... defence and their weakest point. It was difficult sufficiently to guard so many miles of water; above all because, as I say, its course was so much clearer, and its depth so much greater, that a flotilla of rafts or cutters could ascend it from its mouth as far as this town in the Middle Ages; in fact, more than once, corsairs from the Levant and from Morocco did so ascend it, and though they were driven back by the culverins of the citadel, they every time carried off to slavery some of the ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... speronare, American off-shore sail, Mississippi steam-boats, Sorrento lug-schooners, Rhine punts, yawls, old frigates and three-deckers, called to novel use, Stromboli caiques, Yarmouth tubs, xebecs, Rotterdam flat-bottoms, floats, mere gunwaled rafts—anything from anywhere that could bear a human freight on water had come, and was here: and all, I knew, had been making westward, or northward, or both; and all, I knew, were crowded; and all were tombs, listlessly wandering, my God, on the ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... it to behold a multitude of wretches, who all wanted to escape death, and all sought to save themselves, either in the boats or upon the rafts! The frigate's ladder was insufficient for so many: some threw themselves from the vessels, trusting to the end of a rope, which was scarcely able to bear a man's weight; some fell into the sea, and were recovered; what ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... warmth. Outside the sand holes, {213} where the Russians crouch, scream hurricane gales and white billows and myriad sea birds. The ships have been wrecked. The Russians are on an unknown island. Day dawn, December 8, lying half buried in the sand, Bering breathes his last. On rafts made of wreckage the remnant of his crew find way back to Asia, but they have discovered a trail across the sea to a new land. Fur hunters are moving from the east, westward. Fur hunters are moving from the west, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... which threatened the two rafts: I perceived it on looking back toward burning the vessel: the blacks were threatening to swim after, and seek refuge upon the rafts. Large numbers of them showed that they had formed this intention. It was apparent from their movements and attitudes. They were swarming ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... stopped his miserable thoughts to watch a steamboat coming down the current. Its smoke-stacks were folded back for passing under the bridge, and its great paddlewheel scarcely moved except to get steerageway. It was pushing a dozen rafts, all lashed together into a spreading sheet. The smell of the fresh planks pierced the acrid odor of soot that was settling down with the night mists. On one of the rafts was a shanty of newly sawed pine boards; it had no windows, but it was evidently a home, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... general intelligence of the country, did we not know that they were due to the necessities of "Our Own Correspondent." At one time, it is Fort Sumter that is to be bombarded with floating batteries mounted on rafts behind a rampart of cotton-bales; at another, it is Mr. Barrett, Mayor of Washington, announcing his intention that the President-elect shall be inaugurated, or Mr. Buchanan declaring that he shall cheerfully ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... streets laden with barrels of petroleum or piled as high as possible with charcoal and coal. That fine river, the Ohio, carried along with it steamers, barges, loads of timber fastened together and forming enormous rafts, which floated down the river alone, to be stopped on the way by the owner for whom they were destined. The timber is marked, and no one else thinks of taking it. I am told that the wood is not conveyed in this way now, ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... they leaped high wantoning in the air, or, with sudden flounce, returned again, wild darting through their lucid element. Our work went on in joy. The palmetto trees were brought to us by the blacks, in large rafts, of which we constructed, for our fort, an immense pen, two hundred feet long, and sixteen feet wide, filled with sand to stop the shot. For our platforms, we had two-inch oak planks, nailed down with iron spikes. With glad hearts we then got up our carriages and mounted our guns, of which ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... lumber port," said Mr. Fluxion. "Those great rafts which float down the Rhine from Switzerland are mostly brought to this place. I hope the boys will have a chance to see one of those rafts, for they are stupendous affairs. One of them sometimes contains a hundred and fifty thousand ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... the highest, widest outlook into the world of nature and of man she had ever had. Monotonous?—when one felt oneself a year older to-day than yesterday and growing half a month's growth every hour? In yesterday's childishness she had begun at Post Forty-six to keep count of all the timber rafts and flatboats met, and here in this long stretch came three more of the one and five of the other, with men hurrahing to her from them—men as wild as the wilderness, yet with homes and families away back ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... found several good-sized trees, stripped and bare, which had been brought down stream by the spring floods, and left stranded upon the bank. With considerable difficulty he managed to fashion these into a rude raft, binding all together with strong, pliable willow withes. As a boy he had often made rafts, and the knowledge acquired then served him in good ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... and the sound of oars splashing in the water, and unfurling of sails, reaches our ears. The washerwomen of the Rhine spread their clothes on the bushes; and those of the Nahe, their legs and feet naked, beat their linen upon floating rafts, and laugh at some poor artist as he ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... in numbers have found the land they have settled on not equal to their wants. The natural result has been the emigration of part of the colony. The emigrants, having surmounted pathless mountains and crossed unbridged rivers on extemporized rafts, have found a new place to settle in, and have felt no inclination to undertake such a journey again to revisit their ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... same interval. He had determined that in the next battle his army should march across the Danube as safely and as rapidly as it could march along the streets of Vienna. Two solid bridges were built on piles across the broad arm of the river; no less than six bridges of rafts were made ready to be thrown across the narrow arm when the moment arrived for the attack. By the end of June all the outlying divisions of the French army had gathered to the great rallying-point; a hundred and eighty thousand men were in the island, or ready to enter it; every movement, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... pine logs, securely nailed together, while upon that was reared another some two feet in height. This upper framework was intended to bear their outfits, over which were fastened rubber cloths. The Alaskan lakes are often swept by terrific tempests, the waves sometimes dashing entirely over the rafts and boats, and wetting everything that is not well protected. The upper deck serves also partially ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... but Zinkstukken are sunk far off in the sea, which by squeezing down the shifting bottom avert those sudden displacements which bring about such disasters. The Zinkstukken—enormous constructions in wicker work—are square rafts, made of reeds and boughs twisted together, sometimes two or three hundred feet long on a side. They are made on the edge of the coast and pushed into the sea; and no sooner is one afloat than it is surrounded ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... sorrow. As soon as the Kuru prince met those beauteous ones deprived of the protection of Krishna and of their sons as well, he was unable to look at them, his vision being obstructed by tears. The Dwaraka river had the Vrishnis and the Andhakas for its water, steeds for its fishes, cars for its rafts, the sound of musical instruments and the rattle of cars for its waves, houses and mansions and public squares for its lakes. Gems and precious stones were its abundant moss. The walls of adamant were the garlands of flowers that floated on it. The streets and roads ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... their heads. These were principally third-class passengers, who were, happily, not troubled by the prospect of a long return voyage. The Caucasus passed numerous boats being towed up the stream, carrying all sorts of merchandise to Nijni-Novgorod. Then passed rafts of wood interminably long, and barges loaded to the gunwale, and nearly sinking under water. A bootless voyage they were making, since the fair had been abruptly broken up ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... Rafts could not come down the river, so the mills had no work to do, for the logs on hand at the beginning of the cold snap had been sawed into long rough planks, and piled in the lumber-yards, ready to be rafted as soon as the thaw came. The ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... the stream, and with a strong current, toward an opening in the dam. This was the long flume, a steep, long incline, down which the water of the stream raced with great velocity. It was built to carry rafts of logs through from time to time—a chute, planked in on either side, with the entrance formed by the cutting down of the top of the dam there a few feet. There was no great depth of water in the flume—no one seemed to know just how much. It depended on ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... contributes its myriads of brown cylinders to the millions that go bobbing down rivers with jaw-breaking names. And when the river broadens to a lake, where these impetuous voyagers might be stranded or miss their way and linger, they are herded into vast rafts, and towed down by boats, or by steam-tugs, if the lake is large as Moosehead. At the lake-foot the rafts break up and the logs travel again dispersedly down stream, or through the "thoro'fare" connecting the members of a chain of lakes. The hero of this epoch is the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... the villages, and uniting the villages themselves, as they lie with their homesteads scattered over the plain. Smaller canals surround the farms, the meadows, and the kitchen-gardens, taking the place of walls and hedges; every house is a little port. Ships, barges, boats, and rafts sail through the villages, wind round the houses, and thread the country in all directions, just as carts and carriages do in ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... movement is a feint, though this is not perceived by the Austrians as yet. The real movement is on the right hand of the foreground, behind a spur of the isle, and out of sight of the enemy; where several large rafts and flat boats, each capable of carrying three hundred men, are floated out from ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... 1st of October to the 24th. All these days entirely spent in many several voyages to get all I could out of the ship; which I brought on shore, every tide of flood, upon rafts. Much rain also in these days, though with some intervals of fair weather: but, it seems, this was ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... you can exterminate the mosquitoes of any locality by covering with a film of kerosene all stagnant water surfaces therein. The larvae die on rising to breathe; and the adult females perish when they approach the water to launch their rafts of eggs. And I read, in Dr. Howard's book, that the actual cost of freeing from mosquitoes one American town of fifty thousand inhabitants, does not exceed ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... them in sight of the Tigris, at Beshabor. The next day they crossed on rafts supported by inflated goat-skins, and, on the 30th, rode six and a half hours to a Yezidee village. Next morning, after riding an hour, Mrs. Mitchell became too ill to proceed, and she lay four days in a mud ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... and a strict watchfulness for their rights and comfort, I was able in a short time to make them obedient and the detachment cohesive. In the past year they had made long and tiresome marches, forded swift mountain streams, constructed rafts of logs or bundles of dry reeds to ferry our baggage, swum deep rivers, marched on foot to save their worn-out and exhausted animals, climbed mountains, fought Indians, and in all and everything had done the best they could for the service and their commander. ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... than sixty feet above the flood tide was a great fleet of barges and rafts of logs, which had borne heavy blocks of cut stone from far to the southward down on the tide to construct our ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... last resort the shrewd king had rafts made of boards and barrels and put on these the high-born women he held as captives. These rafts were set afloat one after another, and the pursuers, on seeing these hapless fair ones and hearing their ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... cattle.[418] Even yet the fires are said to be lighted all over Norway on the night of June the twenty-third, Midsummer Eve, Old Style. As many as fifty or sixty bonfires may often be counted burning on the hills round Bergen. Sometimes fuel is piled on rafts, ignited, and allowed to drift blazing across the fiords in the darkness of night. The fires are thought to be kindled in order to keep off the witches, who are said to be flying from all parts that night to the Blocksberg, where the big witch lives.[419] In Sweden the Eve of St. John ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Boats and rafts appear more and more frequently on the river. From some of them men are catching fish in nets; on others they bring the harvest to granaries, or bellowing cattle to their stables. With other boats visits are made to acquaintances to inform them amid shouts ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... were being brought up in strict Teutonic fashion, which made a sort of super-religion out of obedience. At the mere sound of his father's voice, Adolph trembled and stiffened up like a recruit under training. Once the two boys and Marie strayed beyond bounds to a place where some timber rafts were tied up along the shore. Adolph led the way onto the rafts and the two others followed. It was great fun jumping from log to log where two rafts met, until Marie suddenly slipped into the water and began to sink like a stone. Quick as ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... marquis, stalked up and down before the gate with two guards at his heels. All day long birch canoes and log dugouts and tubby pirogues and crazy rafts of loose-lashed pine logs drifted to our water-front with bands of squalid Indians bringing their pelts. Skin tepees rose outside our palisades like an army of mushrooms. Naked brats with wisps of hair coarse as a horse's mane crawled over our mounted cannon, ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... the necessary information for making many worthwhile articles in which boys delight, such as (p. 199) windmills, water-wheels, aeroplanes, boats, rafts, toboggans, and snow-shoes; illustrated with working diagrams. There are also directions for camping out. The compiler of this List hopes that the article on trapping small animals may be passed over, as the little creatures ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... serviceable friends, that the account of his college days mainly comes. He especially remembered, besides such matters of fact as have been recounted, their walks and rambles together in the pine woods that stretched about the college unbroken for miles, and by the river with its rafts of spring logs, and over to the little bay sent up by a far-reaching arm of the sea; and he recalled the confidences of Hawthorne in speaking of his hopes of being a writer, in repeating to him verses as they leaned in the moonlight ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... All these things were an additional provision for the comfort and convenience of passengers, and there is no more reason why they should not be provided on these ships than in a large hotel. There were places on the Titanic's deck where more boats and rafts could have been stored without sacrificing these things. The fault lay in not providing them, not in designing the ship without places to put them. On whom the responsibility must rest for their not being provided is another matter and must ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... Chipewyan chant joined the age-old melodies of French and half-breed. Countless canoes drove past the slower and mightier scow brigades; huge York boats with two rows of oars heaved up and down like the ancient galleys of Rome; tightly woven cribs of timber, and giant rafts made tip of many cribs were ready for their long drift into a timberless country. On this two-thousand-mile waterway a world had gathered. It was the Nile of the northland, and each post and gathering place along its length was turned into a metropolis, ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... height, are formed of one block or piece, and must have been cut in the quarry with incessant labor. They abound in Egypt, and were a common decoration of its immense temples. Later, several of them were transported on great rafts or ships to the city of Rome. There are in all twelve in that city. One of them is one hundred and nine feet high without the base—a solid piece of red granite. Europe has despoiled Egypt of its obelisks. Paris has one; London another, crumbling away on the banks of the Thames; and ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the heavy years and go down into eternity with all that is ours our thoughts like small lost rafts float on awhile upon Oblivion's sea. They will not carry much over those tides, our names and a phrase ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... must never bawl again over anything. I'll take care of you. You shall see what fun we'll have. In summer, we'll go to the Glaciere with Navet, one of my pals, we'll bathe in the Gare, we'll run stark naked in front of the rafts on the bridge at Austerlitz,—that makes the laundresses raging. They scream, they get mad, and if you only knew how ridiculous they are! We'll go and see the man-skeleton. And then I'll take you to the play. I'll take you to see Frederick Lemaitre. I have ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of June the caravan reached Erbil, anciently Arbela, the scene of one of Alexander the Great's most famous victories. Two days later they crossed the great river Sab upon rafts of inflated skins, fastened together with poles, and covered with reeds, canes, and planks. Rapidly traversing the Mesopotamian wastes, they arrived at Mosul on the 1st of July, and thence Madame Pfeiffer proceeded to inspect the ruins ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... for the second time, and entered the narrow gorge of the Piave. The road was cut out of the face of the rock. Below us the long lumber-rafts went shooting down the swift river. Above, on the right, were the jagged crests of Monte Furlon and Premaggiore, which seemed to us very wonderful, because we had not yet learned how jagged the Dolomites can be. ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... After laying out a bower anchor, and hauling the ship off, we set about preparing the boats to weigh it in the usual way. But the master-attendant of Porto Novo, who had come off to our assistance with a fleet of canoes and rafts, suggested to Sir Samuel Hood that it might he a good opportunity to try the skill of the natives, who were celebrated for their expertness in raising great weights from the bottom. The proposal was one which delighted the Admiral, who enjoyed everything that was new. He posted himself ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... which we were penetrating filled me with an indefinable dread. I almost trembled, as the unfriendly clouds drove out the lingering tints of day. Here were the strange floating city, with its stranger people on all the open porches, quays, and jetties; the innumerable rafts and boats, canoes and gondolas, junks, and ships; the pall of black smoke from the steamer, the burly roar of the engine, and the murmur and the jar; the bewildering cries of men, women, and children, the shouting of the Chinamen, and the barking of the dogs,—yet no one seemed troubled but ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... plantin' a crop, dat when de fightin' starts all over 'gain, killin' men and burnin' homes and stealin' stock and food. Den dey sends me out to help clear roads and build temp'rary bridges. We walks miles on muddy ground, 'cross rivers, wadin' water up to our chins. We builds rafts and pole bridges to git de mules and hosses and cannons 'cross, and up and down hills, and ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... fight at Cardenas in the Spanish-American War, went down in seventeen minutes after she was struck. Gunner Harry R. Hood was killed by the explosion, but the remainder of the company got safely overside in rafts and boats. The submarine appeared after the sinking and took one of the survivors aboard as a prisoner. Lieutenant-Commander Bagley, with five others, landed in a small boat on the Scilly Islands while other survivors reached shore in various ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... priests intoned their Latin prayers! could he have snuffed up the cloud of frankincense, and felt that he was in the great ark which holds the better half of the Christian world, while all around it are wretched creatures, some struggling against the waves in leaky boats, and some on ill-connected rafts, and some with their heads just above water, thinking to ride out the flood which is to sweep the earth clean of sinners, upon their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... evidence that under the Assyrians rafts floated on inflated skins were employed for the transport of heavy goods, and these have survived in the keleks of the present day. They are specially adapted for the transportation of heavy materials, for they are carried down by the current, and are kept in the course by means of huge ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... of 1793, the bloody reign of the monster Carrier and his infamous noyades. The most hideous episode of the Revolution was enacted at Nantes, where hundreds of men and women, tied to- gether in couples, were set afloat upon rafts and sunk to the bottom of the Loire. The tall eighteenth-century house, full of the air noble, in France always reminds me of those dreadful years, - of the street-scenes of the Revolution. Superficially, the association is incongru- ous, for nothing could be more formal ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... canoes and boats which he could obtain up and down the river. He built large rafts, attaching to them the skins of beasts sewed together and inflated, to give them buoyancy. When all was ready, they began the transportation of the army in the night, in a place where the enemy had not expected ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of that. Yes, there are flat boats that at ordinary times go down to Dresden, with the rafts of timber; but whether you would find anyone willing, now, to make such a journey is more than I ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... Jacobins do by forcibly commanding the services of all sorts of laborers,[4243] "all who help handle, transport and retail produce and articles of prime necessity," "country people who usually get in the crops," and, more particularly, thrashers, reapers, carters, rafts men, and also shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths and the rest.—At every point of the social organism, the same principle is applied with the same result. Substitute everywhere an external, artificial and mechanical constraint for the inward, natural and animating stimulant, and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... continuing problem; Cubans attempt to depart the island and enter the US using homemade rafts, alien smugglers, direct flights, or falsified visas; Cubans also use non-maritime routes to enter the US including direct flights to Miami and ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... work to make a very strong stockade at Kummeroot, five miles from the great pagoda; and also fortified a point on the river above Kemmendine—the stockade that had been captured by the British—and intended from this point to send down fire rafts to destroy the British shipping and, at the same time, made continuous attacks at night ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... but to walk to the river bank, where we were met with many apologies. A bamboo bridge had been built across the stream a few days before so that our cars might cross, but yesterday's rain had washed it down, and would we try to cross on rafts? We looked at the rafts, bamboo platforms built over large bancas (canoes, double-enders cut out of a single log), the bamboos being lashed together with bejuco (rattan, the native substitute for nails), and decided that no self-respecting motor would stand such ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... five miles, when he found a spot where the river was smooth and favourable for the passage. The troops set to at once to cut trees; rafts were formed of these, and the troops passed over. The Spanish corps, accustomed to the passage of rivers, simply stripped, and putting their broad shields of hides beneath them, passed the river by swimming. ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... those gladsome little children, those aged men and women, who, listening to those voices of childhood, would fain have believed themselves young again? Ah! where are they? Wringing their hands in wild despair! clambering over the sides of the ship, endeavoring to save themselves on rafts, spars, or articles affording ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... the only lady seated in the European group, could say whether the Tabo was not lazy, disobedient, and capricious—Dona Victorina, who, nervous as ever, was hurling invectives against the cascos, bankas, rafts of coconuts, the Indians paddling about, and even the washerwomen and bathers, who fretted her with their mirth and chatter. Yes, the Tabo would move along very well if there were no Indians in the river, no Indians ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... landward has no attraction in comparison with the seaward expansion of commerce. The result is often a relative dearth of local land-grown food stuffs. King Hiram of Tyre, in his letter to King Solomon, promised to send him trees of cedar and cypress, made into rafts and conveyed to the coast of Philistia, and asked in return for grain, "which we stand in need of because we inhabit an island." The pay came in the form of wheat, oil, and wine. But Solomon furnished a considerable part of the laborers—30,000 ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... was spent in preparing bamboo rafts on which to float down the tortuous, winding river to the sea. The next night they all slept well; and on the following morning, just after they had gotten up and begun to saunter around, everybody present was suddenly shocked by the shrill ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... minutes altogether, and through it all the little destroyers—don't forget them—were weaving in and out among the big ships; and on the big ships were thousands of troopers, white life-belts around their olive-drab uniforms, standing steadily by life-boats and rafts. ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... Euphrates, found the stream swollen and muddy, owing to the winter season, and he was vexed on considering that it would cause loss of time and some trouble if he had to get together boats to take his army across and to build rafts. However, in the evening the water began to subside, and it went on falling all through the night, and at daybreak the bed of the river was empty. The natives observing that some small islands in the river had become visible, and that the stream near ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... icy fastnesses of Grand Calumet Island all alone by his mother—an old dame now about seventy. He himself was about thirty he judged, though he was far from sure. He was a good Catholic in intention, though very ignorant of all ritual. From his youth he had been employed on the rafts and lumber-slides of the Ottawa river until his four years' session at the mill, where he had picked up the English he knew. He had made no friends he told me. The more I conversed with him the more I was impressed with his simple and polite manners, his innate good breeding, and ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... McKane, a carpenter, came forward and proposed to return with any two of the men and the native Tommy to meet the party coming after us upon the Goulburn; and to construct there such rafts of casks and other gear as might enable Mr. Stapylton to cross that river and the Ovens and so come forward to the Murray; an arrangement which would render it unnecessary for me to send back any cattle or the boat as intended. I was much pleased with the proposal ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... that and the strong sea which struck it broadside, the vessel went to pieces. The ship's boat had already been lost, and in order to save their lives before the ship was completely wrecked they were obliged to make rafts and prepare framework and planks on which Don Luis and the religious and crew—in all one hundred and twenty Spaniards—went ashore. They brought away from the said ship a few of the most valuable objects, the weapons, and the most manageable pieces of artillery, abandoning the ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... look out of our huts. But that was not all, for the rivers were so swelled with the land-floods, that we scarce knew the little brooks and rivulets from the great navigable rivers. This had been a very good opportunity to have conveyed by water, upon rafts, our elephants' teeth, of which we had a very great pile; for, as we always gave the savages some reward for their labour, the very women would bring us teeth upon every opportunity, and sometimes a great tooth carried between two; so that our quantity was increased ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... a tennis ball, a broom stick and four rafts— one large and three small. The batsman and catcher stand on the big raft. On a small raft, ten yards away, stands the pitcher and the other two rafts are placed at easy swimming distance for bases. In striking, everything counts—bunt, swat or foul tip. The moment bat and ball come in contact the ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... good work in this direction, and at the recent meeting of the Institution of Naval Architects, Mr. Copeman showed several models of the latest types of their life saving apparatus, both for use on torpedo boats and passenger steamers. Our illustration (Fig. 1) represents the kind of rafts supplied to her Majesty's troop ships, while Figs. 2 and 3 show deck seats convertible into rafts, which are intended for ordinary passenger steamers. The raft shown in Fig. 1 consists of two pontoons, joined by strong cross beams, and fitted with mast, sail, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... road, at a much lower level, ran the stream which fed the lake in the grounds of the chateau. The elevation of the road giving us fair protection from the enemy's shots, we were able, by stringing a number of boards together and making rafts, to indulge in bathing; until the water became so dirty from the earth dislodged from its banks by the shells that it was repugnant for us to indulge in ablutions in it any longer—none of us having been ordered mud bath treatment by ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... miles about, and then they did not stop entirely, but slid by and tossed ropes to the people on the raft, dragging them aboard one by one. A seaman standing near Jimmie explained this procedure; it appeared that the submarines were accustomed to lurk near rafts and life-boats, preying upon those vessels which came to their rescue. Distressed castaways were bait—"live bait", explained the seaman; the U-boats would lurk about for days, sometimes for a week, watching the people in the life-boats struggle ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... themselves through the trackless forests, and along the shores of nameless lakes and unknown streams, to cut the pine or oak lumber,—such being the name they give to the felled stems of trees,—which are then hewn, and in the winter dragged out upon the ice, where they are formed into rafts, and in spring floated down the waters till they reach the great St. Lawrence, and are, after innumerable difficulties and casualties, finally shipped for England. I have likewise known European gentlemen voluntarily leave the comforts of a civilized home and associate themselves ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... and schooners, boldly attacked the enemy, but though, as Washington wrote, "our officers and men, during the whole affair, behaved with great spirit and bravery," neither side sustained serious damage. On the night of the 16th two fire-rafts were directed against the ships, which were successful so far as to destroy one of the tenders; and on the 18th the enemy weighed anchor and returned to the Narrows as readily ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... have dry wood to keep the steam up to the adequate pressure, and on that day the poop, cabins, bunks, and the spare deck were sacrificed. On the next day, the 19th of December, the masts, rafts, and spars were burned; the crew worked lustily, keeping up the fires. Passepartout hewed, cut, and sawed away with all his might. There was a perfect ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... plains, tearing up the clay with their mighty floods, and year after year changing their channels, until they are sometimes an hundred miles from their ancient beds. Here they are found gurgling for many leagues under ground—under vast rafts formed by the trees which they have borne downward in their current. There you find them winding by a thousand loops like the sinuosities of a great serpent, rolling sluggishly along, with waters red and turbid as though they were rivers of blood! Such are ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the water. When we had no ponies, we often had swimming matches of our own, and sometimes made rafts with which we crossed lakes and rivers. It was a common thing to "duck" a young or timid boy or to carry him into deep water to struggle ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... experts had already felled, stripped, and sawed into logs the huge trees. To Dennis and others remained the arduous labour of guiding, with the help of windlasses, these immense logs to the river, whence they would descend in due time to the inlet, there to be joined together into vast rafts, later on again to be towed to their destination. Of all labour, this steering of logs through dense forest to their appointed waterway is the hardest and roughest. Dennis, of course, wore thick gloves, ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Drammen, which is situated upon an arm of Christiania Bay, the country became more hilly. About noon they reached the city with its two interminable streets, lined with gayly painted houses, and its wharves where the countless rafts left but a meager space for the vessels that come here to load with the products of ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... nothing to him. At best he regards it as a means to an end—to make a living. All this must surely be of great consequence for the rise of a mental outlook that cares only for gain; and who will deny that colonial activity generates it? "Our rivulets and streams turn mill wheels and bring rafts into the valleys, as they do in Scotland. But not one ballad, not a single song, reminds us that on their banks men and women live who experience the happiness of love and the pangs of separation; that under each roof in ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... manner as to produce the most striking and splendid effect. Some of these trees were of seventy and others of eighty years growth. Being skilfully taken up they were placed carefully in carriages, conveyed over a space of from three to four miles in extent, transported on rafts across both the rivers, and on being replanted in the island, so favourable were both soil and vegetation in that genial climate, that they immediately struck root, and even bore fruit during the first year ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... there anything to market? Yes; as the development went on, the settlers found a market for two surplus products, timber and potash. The larger pine trees were hewn into timber and floated down the streams to some convenient point where they were collected into rafts, which were taken down the St Lawrence to Montreal and Quebec. Black salt or crude potash was obtained by concentrating the ashes that resulted from burning the brush and trees that were not ...
— History of Farming in Ontario • C. C. James
... food, and we called the place Pueblo de los Corazones. It is the entrance into many provinces on the South Sea. They who go to look for them, and do not enter there, will be lost. On the coast is no maize: the inhabitants eat the powder of rush and of straw, and fish that is caught in the sea from rafts, not having canoes. With grass and straw the women cover their nudity. They are a timid and ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... Rafts as generally constructed, are not capable of much speed, and though Nick Ribsam got out all there was in the one which he had managed, it was not to be expected that he could compare with the velocity ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... an Expedition Outfit Medicine Surveying Instruments Memoranda and Log-Books Measurements Climbing and Mountaineering Cattle Harness Carriages Swimming Rafts and Boats Fords and Bridges Clothing Bedding Bivouac Huts Sleeping-Bags Tents Furniture Fire Food Water for Drinking Guns and Rifles Gun-fittings and Ammunition Shooting, hints on Game, other means of capturing Fishing Signals Bearings by Compass, ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... that in four days they only advanced about thirty miles, and they now began to suffer from hunger. They also met with many rapid foaming streams, to cross some of which they had to stop and build rafts. ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... temples and habitations of the Brahmins, in situations remote from the busy haunts of men. Here the mistaken devotees of a barbarous faith spend their time in weaving garlands for their altars, or to deck the rafts which they ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... the wreck of shattered homes—but yesterday as beautiful and bright as ours—the pallid faces of hundreds floating as corpses in the stately streets turned into rushing rivers by the relentless floods—brothers and sisters of ours, freezing and starving in homes turned suddenly into broken rafts and battered houseboats amid the muddy deluge, while the pitying stars look down at night upon thousands, wet, weeping, shivering, hungry, helpless and homeless, with the host of their unrecognized and unburied dead, in this frightful ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... was practically a promoter, and he blew companies like bubbles, and when he wasn't in the Maritime Provinces he was in Boston and New York raising money and floating loans, and when they had no money left in New York he floated it in London: and when he had it, he floated on top of it big rafts of lumber on the Miramichi and codfish on the Grand Banks and lesser fish in the Fundy Bay. You've heard perhaps of the Tidal Transportation Company, and Fundy Fisheries Corporation, and the Paspebiac Pulp and Paper Unlimited? Well, all of those were Pupkin senior under ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... Atkinson. Not altogether a very veracious book, but a fascinating book for all that. In it were alluring pictures of the broad, placid river. Rich forests came down to the water's edge. And on its surface were depicted delightful rafts and canoes. To glide down such a river, to camp on its banks and plunge into the forests which clothed them, seemed a joy second only to the joy of scrambling about the Himalaya. So with Mr. H. E. M. James—now Sir Evan James—I went to Manchuria, not, indeed, to reach ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... upon the balcony. The river lay along the bottom of the valley, irradiated with a silver shine. Little rafts of pinewood floated on its surface like tiny splinters, the men who steered them ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Our own fate drew near. The ship struck and immediately sunk! Shrieks of horror and dismay were heard from all quarters, while the merciless waves tore from the wreck many early victims. Day-light appeared, and we beheld the shore lined with people who could render us no assistance. At low water, rafts were constructed, and the boats were got in readiness to be hoisted out. The dusk arrived, and an awful sight ensued. The dawn of the second day brought with it still severer miseries than the first, for the wants of nature could scarcely be endured ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... sensations of Beta and Allan as they beheld the flambeaux gleaming silently along the pool or over the surface when the Folk put forth on the rude rafts Allan had helped ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... of the Ural and Siberia. Now and then, the men on a float heavily laden with iron bars, which was being towed to the Fair at Nizhni Novgorod, would shout a request that we would slacken speed, lest they be swamped with our swell. Huge rafts of fine timber were abundant, many with small chapel-like structures on them, which were not chapels, however. Cattle steamers passed, the unconfined beasts staring placidly over the low guards of the three decks, and uttering no sound. We had already ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... of subject kings, the captains of his host, he set forward in the spring of 451 for the lands of the Rhine. The trees which his soldiers felled in the great Hercynian forest of Central Germany were fashioned into rude rafts or canoes, on which they crossed the Rhine; and soon the terrible Hun and his "horde of many-nationed spoilers" were passing over the regions which we now call Belgium and Lorraine in a desolating stream. The Huns, not only ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... Connoway would tell of the Golden Hind having been seen out in the channel, of rafts of "buoyed" casks sunk to within three foot of the bottom, to be fished up when on a dark night the herring craft slipped out of Balcary or the Scaur, ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... to us were that we should with all speed construct rafts by tying together the planks of which we had abundance, and that we should embark upon these rafts and so try to make the shallop and the skiff, which would bear us ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... time he had long ago violated, and, certain of a large booty, did not hesitate to add another sacrilege to his numerous crimes. On his arrival before Metraha, he at once ordered his people to make rafts. Whilst Theodore was occupied in their construction, a priest came in a boat, and approaching within speaking distance, inquired of the Emperor what it was that he desired. Theodore told him the grain that they had in store. The priest replied that they would send ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... however, the little Queen!" "Long live the good Duc de Bouillon, who is coming to us! He has a hundred thousand men with him, all on rafts on the Seine. The old Cardinal de la Rochelle is dead! Long live the King! Long ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... way among the blind bridle-paths that lead to Louisa and to Prestonburg. If he stops to ask a night's lodging at one of the farm-houses that are to be found at the junction of the creeks with the rivers, log-houses with their primitive out-buildings, their half-constructed rafts of lumber ready to float down-stream with the next rise, their 'dug-outs' for the necessities of river-intercourse, and their rough oxcarts for hauling to and from the mill, he will see before him such a home ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... jumping overboard to rescue a drowning person is very great. Many expert swimmers shrink from it. Ellerthorpe has encountered this risk under almost every variety of circumstance. He has followed the drowning, unseen in the darkness of the night, in the depth of winter, under rafts of timber, under vessels at anchor or in docks, from great heights, and often to the bottom in great depths of water, and what is very remarkable, never in vain. Fortuna fortes favet (fortune favours the brave), is an adage true in his case. He never ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... splashing them with waves. The beams are in continual motion under the blows of the waves; the men on the rafts in blue shirts, staggering, look at the steamer and laugh and shout something. The big, beautiful vessel goes sidewise on the river; the yellow scantlings with which it is loaded sparkle like gold and are dimly reflected in the muddy, vernal water. ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... your flesh, of your old self! Good! Now keep still: the pilgrims are coming on their wooden rafts to celebrate the ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... bridge was finished, about four hundred men were carried part of the way across the river on two miserable rafts, which could hardly sustain themselves against the current; and we saw them from the bank rudely shaken by the great blocks of ice which encumbered the river. These blocks came to the very edge of the raft, where, finding an obstacle, they remained ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... is absolutely no need of taking to the boats. Later on, if there should be, I will give you ample warning, and I might add that we carry a sufficient complement of boats and life rafts to accommodate all. And should we take to the boats, the weather is in our favor. So you see you should ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... that led from their home to the Machias River. It was a pleasant May morning in 1775, and the air was filled with the fragrance of the freshly cut pine logs that had been poled down the river in big rafts to be cut into planks and boards at the big sawmills. The river, unusually full with the spring rains, dashed against its banks as if inviting the little girls to play a game with it. Usually Anna and Rebecca were quite ready to linger at the small coves ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... directed that land should be cleared for the building. The work of evacuating Ste Marie began early in May, and on the 15th of the month the buildings were set on fire. The valuables of the mission were placed in a large boat and on rafts; and, with heavy hearts, the fathers and their helpers went aboard for the journey to their new home twenty ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... folded arms while the work proceeded, the fabric, when completed, would be at the mercy of the ice-floods of the winter and the enormous power of the ocean-tides. The Prince of Orange himself, on a former occasion, when Antwerp was Spanish, had attempted to close the river with rafts, sunken piles, and other obstructions, but the whole had been swept away, like a dam of bulrushes, by the first descent of the ice-blocks of winter. It was witless to believe that Parma contemplated any such measure, and utterly monstrous to believe ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with careful hands in them, were kept astern of the ship; a small quantity of bread, water, and other necessary articles, were put into them; two canoes, which we had on board, were lashed together and put into the water; rafts were made, and all floating things ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... soon they begun to pass us, driftin' down the river in canoes an' rafts. They was pullin' out. We kept track of them. When a hundred an' ninety-four had passed, we didn't see no reason for keepin' on. So we turned tail and started down. A cold snap had come, an' the water was fallin' ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... with bitumen, often of a size sufficient to carry five or six horses and a dozen men. These boats have been employed from the remotest antiquity through all this region, and are often depicted on the old Assyrian monuments. Equally ancient are the rafts called kellek, constructed of inflated goat-skins, covered with a framework of wood, often supporting a small house for passengers, which descend the Tigris from above Diarbekr. The wood of these rafts is sold in Bagdad, and constitutes, in fact, the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... the South was thrilled by the feat of General McGruder in Galveston harbor. The daring Confederate Commander had seized two little steamers and fitted them up as gun boats by piling cotton on their sides for bulwarks. With these two rafts of cotton cooeperating on the water, his infantry waded out into the waters of Galveston Bay and attacked the Federal fleet with their ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... of our house and led off at right angles one could find refreshment of spirit in the pictures that presented themselves, step by step, as one followed the course of the river. Here ran out from the sloping bank into the river a number of board rafts, some smaller, some larger, floating benches upon which, from early morning on, one saw maids at work washing clothes, always in cheerful conversation with one another, or with the sailors who leaned lazily over the street wall watching them. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... cruiser rose high in the air, and she dived with sickening suddenness into the grey vortex of waters. Pitiful cries for help sounded on all sides. Two cutters and a few hastily constructed rafts were piled with survivors; others swam to and fro, looking for floating debris, or floated, ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... to glance over these works, which I had not approached near enough to inspect much, before the beavers from below, and above came tugging along, by dozens on a side to the lower edges of their embankment, with the loads or rafts of trees which they had respectively drawn to the spot. Lodging these on the solid ground, with the ends just out of water, they relinquished their holds, mounted the slopes, paused a minute to take breath, and then, seizing ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson |
