"Red clay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yet have never seen a native. ... The features of these people are any thing but pleasing: a large flat nose, with immense nostrils; lips particularly thick; a wide mouth, with a tolerably good set of teeth; the hair long and woolly, which, as if to confer additional beauty, is besmeared with red clay (similar to our red ochre) and grease. Their limbs are badly proportioned; the women appear to be generally better formed than the men. Their only covering is a few kangaroo skins, rudely stitched, and thrown over the shoulders; but more frequently they appear in a state of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various
... he had a way of subsiding when customers appeared, and retreating to his office in the rear of the building. He spent most of his time in this office. It was a very pleasant one, overlooking the river, on which steamboats and canal-boats travelled to the city. From Anderson's office the bank of red clay soil sloped to the water's edge. He could see the gleam of the current through the shag of young trees which found root in the unpromising soil. Now and then the tall mast of a sailing-vessel glided by, now the smoke-stack ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... reputation to live up to as a man of parts and valor. They let the boat ground on the smooth sand and one of them lighted a torch of pitch-pine splinters. The fine young gentleman who had strolled arm-in-arm with Stede Bonnet to the tavern green was a ragged scarecrow and bedaubed with red clay and black mud. This aroused their sympathy before he told them of his escape from the Revenge and his adventures with Bill Saxby and the crippled buccaneer. In their turn they explained how Captain Bonnet had sent them down the ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... paid his respects and turned his back, Old Mother Nature saw something red on the tail of his coat. It was nothing but a little smear of red clay, but that was enough for Old Mother Nature. You see, she knew that Mrs. Quack's home was right at the foot of a red claybank. She didn't say a word until everybody had paid their respects and passed before her. Then she told them how grieved she was to hear of all the trouble there had been, but ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... air while the train rushed downward. From the great drifts they ran to the soft, melting snow, then to the mud and freshness of early spring. Small boys crowded early wild-flowers on them whenever they stopped at the small towns built on the red clay. The air became indescribably soft and balmy, full of a gentle caress. At the next station the children brought oranges. A little farther the foothill ranches began to show the brightness of flowers. The most dilapidated hovel was glorified by splendid sprays ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... more than ever convinced that the sooner we got rid of the wretched station, miscalled a colony, the better. It still supplies hides from the tipper country, ivory, bees'-wax, and a little gold. The precious metal is found, they say, in the red clay hills near Macarthy's Island; but the quality is not pure, nor is the quantity sufficient to pay labour. The Mandengas, locally called 'gold strangers,' manage the traffic with the interior, probably the still mysterious range called the 'Kong Mountains.' They are armed with knives, sabres, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... regions of southern Missouri the land is covered with a layer of broken flints and red clay, while the country rock is limestone. The limestone contains nodules of flint, and we may infer that it has been by the decay and removal of thick masses of limestone that the residual layer of clay and flints has been left upon the surface. ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... for traveling in an erect position; yet there are several places that require crawling. The first stopping point is the Gulf of Doom Room, or as it is also known, the Register Room, because here visitors usually write their names in the peculiar dark red clay, which is moist but firm and cuts with a polish. This room is twenty-five feet high and fifty feet wide, and looks off into the Gulf of Doom, which seems rightly named when a rock is thrown into it and you note the lapse of time before any sound returns; ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... beautiful grass known as Capim; this grass makes an excellent pasturage for cattle, and the abundance of it in this region renders the district of Monte Alegre very favorable for agricultural purposes. Here and there, where the red clay soil rose above the level of the water, a palm-thatched cabin stood on the low bluff, with a few trees about it. Such a house was usually the centre of a cattle farm, and large herds might be seen grazing in the adjoining fields. Along the river-banks, where the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... seen. As the shores narrowed in, they saw the wild gorge of the Saguenay River upon the right, with the smoke from the little fishing and trading station of Tadousac streaming up above the pine trees. Naked Indians with their faces daubed with red clay, Algonquins and Abenakis, clustered round the ship in their birchen canoes with fruit and vegetables from the land, which brought fresh life to the scurvy-stricken soldiers. Thence the ship tacked ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cage; the globe itself is a cage of echoes. Science, instead of contradicting religion, has but affirmed its truths. Matter is radiant energy—matter is electric phenomenon. The germ-plasma from which we stem—the red clay of Genesis—is eternal. The individual is sacrificed to the species. The species never dies. And how beautifully logical is the order of our ancestry as demonstrated by the science of embryology. Fish, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... coast. In these wanderings he met with tribes whose language was not wholly strange, but whose customs and occupations were not exactly like those of his own Indians. Once he found a village of deerskin tents where the warriors were painting themselves with red clay, for a dance. He remembered that the squaws, when he came away some days before, were in great lamentation because they had no red paint for their baskets. He took out a handful of shells and found that these Indians were ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... Catawba. My memories of that ride are as misty as the spring weather in the mountains. But presently the country began to open up into broad fields, some of these abandoned to pines. And at last, splashing through the stiff red clay that was up to the mare's fetlocks, we came to a place called Charlotte Town. What a day that was for me! And how I gaped at the houses there, finer than any I had ever dreamed of! That was my first sight of a town. And how I listened open-mouthed to the gentlemen at the tavern! ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ignorance of what good land really is, or an owner's blind pride in his own estate, can justify the phrase "a good loam." On most of the estate the soil is thin, varying in color from a light gray to a yellow red, with below a red clay hardpan almost impervious to water. To an observer brought up on a farm of the rich Middle West, Mount Vernon, except for a few scattered fields, seems extremely poor land. For farming purposes most of ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... indeed, whether the most ardent philanthropist in the world would not have hesitated before he even held forth his hand to creatures whose heads and countenances were darkened over with a compound of grease and red clay, whose persons had never been submitted to ablution from the hour of their birth, and whose approach was always heralded by a perfume that would stagger the most enthusiastic ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... and they crossed the Sabine, to take shelter among the Yankees, where they had another village, which was their largest and their richest. We followed; and on the very shores of their river, although a thousand miles from our own country, and where the waters are dyed with the red clay of the soil, we encamped round their wigwams and ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... treasure,' said Alice; 'an ancient parchment revealed to us the place of concealment. Come over and help us. When we have dug deep enough we shall find a great pot of red clay, full of gold ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... the end of five days dig it up again and wrap up the bones, etc., in bark of trees, and carry them along with them. When the women fight, which is very often, they use a short kind of club. The natives paint their bodies over with red clay to prevent the mosquitoes from biting them. When they paint their bodies white it is a sign of war ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... they kill one another. And perhaps they do adhere to Jahveh's method, and make fresh human beings out of earth, for, now I think of it, I have seen the small, recently completed ones, who looked exactly like red clay." ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... he was not so censorious of the broken nails, the lines of indelible black. He caught James Polder's gaze, and turned from its intense questioning. Young cheeks had no business to be so gaunt. Polder picked up the figurine in red clay, studied it with a troubled brow, and replaced it with a gesture of hopelessness. "Possibly," Howat Penny unexpectedly remarked, "possibly you find beauty in a piece of ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... upbringing to correct the tendency. His was not a sceptical or scientific mind. He was ignorant and poetical and credulous. He had always accepted unquestioningly the tale that Isabel Temple had been seen on earth long after the red clay was heaped over her murdered body. Her bridegroom had seen her, when he went to visit her on the eve of his second and unhappy marriage; his grandfather had seen her. His grandmother, who had told him Isabel's story, had told him this too, and believed ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... way, with shorter poles and lighter loads. Bands of {83} naked boys, noisy and restless, roamed the prairie, practising their bows and arrows on any small animal they might find. Gay young squaws—adorned on each cheek with a spot of ochre or red clay and arrayed in tunics of fringed buckskin embroidered with porcupine quills—were mounted on ponies, astride like men; while lean and tattered hags—the drudges of the tribe, unkempt and hideous—scolded the lagging ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... and Jack Powell, felt a sudden homesickness for the abandoned camp, which they were leaving with the gay little town and the red clay forts, naked to the enemy's guns. He saw the branching apple tree, the burned-out fires, the silvery fringe of willows by the stream; and he saw the men in blue already in possession of his woodpile, broiling their bacon by the logs that Big Abel ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... the wet with 'em any more. He'll give you a lashing if he comes in and sees your shoes. I'll have to try and get 'em dry before he comes home. Anyways," with a breath of deep relief, "I'm glad it ain't that red clay from the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the southward. She crossed the flat bottoms where the great river was hedged out by the levees; edged off again toward the red clay hills and finally, leaving this fringe of little eminences, plunged straight and deep into the ancient forests of the Delta, whose flat floor lay out ahead for many miles. Number 4 was now in the wilderness. Panther, and fox, and ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... described was but one of many—the principal and sublime stench in a city of evil smells, a populous city built on a plain without drainage and without water-supply beyond that which was sold by watermen in buckets, each bucketful containing about half a pound of red clay in solution. It is true that the best houses had algibes, or cisterns, under the courtyard, where the rainwater from the flat roofs was deposited. I remember that water well: you always had one or two to half-a-dozen scarlet wrigglers, the larvae of mosquitoes, in a tumblerful, ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... but colonnades ran in all the streets, row after row of beautifully ordered arches; over them were jutting cornices enriched with dancing children, sea monsters, tritons, dolphins, nymphs blowing conches, Nereus, Thetis, and all their sleek familiars, moulded in red clay. The fountain shone, the displayed Graces jetted their crystal store; from every window hung carpets, on every tower a gonfalon, from every church belfry came the riot of bells. The people were massed at the gates, at the windows, on roofs ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... flicker of the blaze and the discouraged daylight from the open door, for the batten shutters of the unglazed window were closed. The puncheon floor was grimy—the feet that curiosity had led hither brought much red clay mire upon them. The poultry, all wet and dispirited, ventured within and stood about the door, now scuttling in sudden panic and with peevish squawks upon the unexpected approach of a heavy foot. Loralinda, sitting at her spinning wheel, was paler than ever, all her dearest illusions dashed into ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of dry clay-pans water can usually be obtained, but unfortunately it is almost sure to be salt. The difference between clay-pans before and after rain is most marked. First we have the dry, hard bed of red clay, blistered and cracked into all manner of patterns by the sun's heat; around us the stillness of death, nothing astir unless it be the constant shimmering haze of heat which strikes our faces like the blast from ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... get in this window," said Superintendent Galloway. "And here's the proof that the murderer came in this way." He stooped and picked up something from the floor, close to the window, and held it out in the palm of his hand for the inspection of his companions. It was a small piece of red clay, like the ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... entered, for La Tour was unable to maintain a garrison there. All that open country lay sodden with the breath of the sea. From whatever point she had approached, La Tour could scarcely believe her feet came tracking the moist red clay alone. ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... and jars were used in the cooking of food. The red clay (Tabatinga clay) found abundantly in these regions formed a superior material for these utensils. They were always decorated symbolically with juices of the scarlet urucu and the black genipapa. Even when not burned into the clay, ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... reared, flung back, pitched over the edge of the Rim Rocks. Then the cloud blot, earth and air sponged into the wet blur of a washed slate, shrieking furies of peltering rain, a roar of the hurricane wind, a blinding flash, the air torn to tatters! The cloud burst hurled down in sheets, the red clay road runnelling flood torrents. Wayland had caught her under shelter of the rock wall. The old man hurtled to the heads of the shivering bronchos, gripping both bridles. A splintering crash that rocketted from crag to crag and rumbled below their feet; and the thing was over quick ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... near to the road as possible, a small space would be cleared, and the rudest kind of log house built, with a huge fireplace filling one side of the room. The chinks in the logs were filled with red clay. The trunk of a tree, cut into a plank, was fastened to four upright posts, and served the whole school as a writing-desk. A little below it was stretched a smooth log, and this was the seat for ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... Her prattlers little heeding, Would murmur, "This bird, with its carol clear. When the red clay was kneaden, And God made Adam our father dear, Sang ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... spots." If the land was only half-worked, we should call it clay; but being thoroughly cultivated, it is a good clay loam. Mr. Lawes describes it as "a somewhat heavy loam, with a subsoil of raw, yellowish red clay, but resting in its turn upon chalk, which provides good ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... and in the royal hovel of a Tchoupitoulas village not far removed from that "Buffalo's Grazing-ground," now better known as New Orleans, was born Lufki-Humma, otherwise Red Clay. The mother of Red Clay was a princess by birth as well as by marriage. For the father, with that devotion to his people's interests presumably common to rulers, had ten moons before ventured northward into the territory of the proud and exclusive Natchez nation, and ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... ground at the head of the Dee and the Don, while the mass spreading outwards from the Moray Firth invaded the low plateau of Buchan; but at a certain stage there was a marked defection northwards parallel with the coast, as proved by the deposit of red clay north of Aberdeen. At a later date the local glaciers laid down materials on top of the red clay. The committee appointed by the British Association (Report for 1897, p. 333) proved that the Greensand, which has yielded a large suite of Cretaceous fossils at Moreseat, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to a low red clay ant hill immediately in their path and about thirty yards ahead. To the casual glance it looked no different from any of the hundreds of others of like size and colour everywhere to be seen. Kingozi's attention, however, now narrowed to a smaller ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... Northern Montana is called Et-tsis-ki-ots-op, "It fell on them." A longtime ago a number of Blackfeet women were digging in a bank near this creek for the red clay which they use for paint, when the bank gave way and fell on ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... charcoal, this double-bellied gourd turns black, becomes covered with shiny warts that look like jet beads, emits a smell like that of grilled meat and leaves a residue of red clay. It is therefore formed of clay and sanies. Moreover, the paste is sprinkled with little scraps of dead flesh. At the smaller end is the egg, in a chamber with a very porous roof, to allow the air ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... public; matters that do not bear directly on their private trade, and of all matters of general science or information. Not one knew the name of the plants around his own door; not one is acquainted with the country ten miles beyond St. Salvador's; not one could tell me even the situation of the fine red clay, of which the only manufacture, pottery, here is made: in short, I was completely out of patience with these incurious money-makers. I was perhaps unjust to my countrymen: I dare say there are many who could have told me these things, but I am sure none did tell me, and equally ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... the builders laid parallel timbers and puncheons to make both flooring and ceiling. The ridgepole of the roof was supported by two crotched trees and the roofing was made of logs and wooden slabs. The crevices of the walls were packed close with red clay and moss. Lastly, spaces for a door and windows were cut out. The door was made thick and heavy to withstand the Indian's rush. And the windowpanes? They were of paper treated with hog's fat ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... and country "store" constituted Clifton. Still at a gallop we left these behind and entered a broad lane between fields of tasselling corn, where we saw a gallant sight. In the early sunlight and in the pink dust of their own feet, down the red clay road at an easy trot in column by fours, the blue-gray of their dress flashing with the glint of the carbines at their backs, came Ferry's scouts with Ned Ferry at their head. There was his beautiful brown horse under ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... tho' the nations Rise up blind, as of old, And the new generations Wage their warfares of gold; Tho' they trample child and mother As red clay into the clay, Where brother wars with brother, "Love ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the only God's country I know." He suddenly felt that he could tell Andy all about his home and the wide corn-fields shimmering and rustling under the July sun, and the creek with red clay banks where he used to go in swimming. He seemed to see it all before him, to smell the winey smell of the silo, to see the cattle, with their chewing mouths always stained a little with green, waiting to get through the gate to the water trough, and the yellow dust and ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... arroyo. The dog sweltered through, and the red clay adhered to his shaggy coat. It corresponded with that with which he ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... again that terraced character to be seen in the vineyards and the staircase streets of the town. But though the cause is in a sense in the ruinous strength of the rain, the hues are not the dreary hues of ruin. What earth there is is commonly a red clay richer than that of Devon; a red clay of which it would be easy to believe that the giant limbs of the first man were made. What grass there is is not only an enamel of emerald, but is literally crowded with ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... on awning and roof, Once more the red clay's pulverized by the hoof, Once more the dust powders the "outsides" with red, Once more at the station ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... were trees enough a few hundred yards away, but the post-office stood boldly and unflinchingly in the blazing sun. The roads crossing each other stretched themselves as far as the eye could follow them, the red clay transformed into red dust which even an ordinarily lively imagination might have fancied was red hot. The shrill, rattling cry of the grasshoppers, hidden in the long yellow sedge-grass and drouth-smitten corn, pierced the stillness now and then with a suddenness ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... easily—and, if possible, of volcanic origin—is best for coffee; also, soil rich in decomposed mold. In Brazil the best soil is known as terra roxa, a topsoil of red clay three or four feet thick with a ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... passed the bluish-gray sweep of burned earth edging the forest. Presently a few dwarf junipers appeared. He was getting higher, although the mesa seemed level. Again he discovered the tracks of the horses in the powdered red clay of the road. ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... emerging from this miserable ravine, Gringalet, who had no doubt scented something, suddenly rolled himself upon the ground, frantically. We had proceeded some distance before he rejoined us, covered with a coating of red clay, which gave him as singular an aspect as can well be imagined. The dog ran up and down, bounded about and barked, as if he was making it a business to amuse us. Nor were his efforts without success. We now reached a small plain, in which the sun flooded us with its warm rays. This had the effect ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... The hat was too large for his head without this band; a sudden gust of wind blew it off—Lady Diana's horse started and reared. She was a famous horse-woman, and sat him to the admiration of all beholders; but there was a puddle of red clay and water in this spot, and her ladyship's uniform-habit was a ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the Gallows Hill to the Kineton Copse There were ten ploughed fields, like ten full-stops, All wet red clay, where a horse's foot Would be swathed, feet thick, like an ash-tree root. The fox raced on, on the headlands firm, Where his swift feet scared the coupling worm; The rooks rose raving to curse him raw, He snarled a sneer at their swoop and ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... ridge of higher ground, where two trees hung like sentinels above the bank. Madame immediately turned the prow that way, and, bending our heads low, we shot beneath their trailing branches, grounding softly on the red clay of the bank. A brief search disclosed remains of camp-fires, testimony to the Puritan's remembrance of the spot. Evidently the place had been frequently occupied, and by sizable parties, yet the marks were all ancient; we discovered no ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... swaying down the last mesa to the place called Red Lake. Casey had heard it spoken of with opprobrious epithets by men who had crossed it in wet weather. In dry weather it was red clay caked and checked by the sun, and wheels or hoofs stirred clouds of red dust that followed and choked ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Turks as a nation have the reputation of being solemn-visaged, imperturbable people, yet one occasionally finds them quite animated and "Frenchy" in their behavior - the bicycle may, however, be in a measure responsible for this. The soil around Geiveh is a red clay that, after a shower, clings to the rubber tires of the bicycle as though the mere resemblance in color tended to establish a bond of sympathy between them that nothing could overcome, I pass the time until ten o'clock in avoiding the crowd that has swarmed ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens |
