"Sparsely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... railway scheme was based were sufficiently solid to justify such encouragement to the investment of floating capital as the passage of the bill would have implied. Beyond the Missouri River, even on the line of Western travel, population was as sparsely scattered as in an Indian reservation. Neither the gold reaches of Colorado nor the silver-bearing "leads" of the Washoe district had as yet been discovered. California was known only as a region of placer-digging, and its agricultural capacities were very inadequately ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... so sparsely settled, the growth of population filled a large place in the shaping of public policy. With this matter, however, Duchesneau had more to do than Frontenac, for it was the intendant's duty to create prosperity. During the decade 1673-83 ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... away, and if so, where? The vision of her which I had just seen in my mind's eye came out with a clearness at this, which struck me as providential. I could discern as plainly as if I had been a part of the scene the white-clad form of the bride bending toward the light which came in sparsely through the half-open shutter she had loosened for this task. This was the shutter which had never again been fastened and whose restless blowing to and fro had first led attention to this house and the crime it might otherwise have concealed indefinitely. ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... bordering China, South Korea, and Russia; mountainous interior is isolated, nearly inaccessible, and sparsely populated ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... back and forth past a row of sparsely inhabited deck-chairs, meeting in their promenade a sprinkling of the hardier spirits of the ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... hardness, is laminated, and has at its base the Melbourn Rock and at its summit the Chalk Rock. Nodules of flint, greenish in appearance, and (rarely) arranged in layers, occur sparsely in the Middle Chalk, which may be traced in the neighbourhood of Boxmoor, Berkhampstead and Baldock, and also ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... little while, they arrived by way of a hill, over which they plunged into the middle of the camp. Thorpe saw three large buildings, backed end to end, and two smaller ones, all built of heavy logs, roofed with plank, and lighted sparsely through one or two windows apiece. The driver pulled up opposite the space between two of the larger buildings, and began to unload his provisions. Thorpe set about aiding him, and so found himself for the first time ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... had said, wondering, as they had driven into what seemed a village set in bright bareness, sparsely shaded here ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... batteries with the attendant expense for new batteries or new material, and of labor and transportation in visiting the station. The labor item becomes more serious when the stations are scattered in a sparsely settled community, in which case the visiting of the stations, even for the performance of a task that would require but a few minutes' time, may consume some hours on the part of the employes in getting there ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... one of those tremendously solid brown, or rather black, rocks which emerge from the sand like something primitive. Rough with crinkled limpet shells and sparsely strewn with locks of dry seaweed, a small boy has to stretch his legs far apart, and indeed to feel rather heroic, before ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... completed." HE forgot the deed of Powell. A recent writer mentions the north-western corner of Arizona as a "mysterious wilderness."* He forgot that it was thoroughly explored years ago. Wilderness it may be, if that means sparsely settled, but mysterious?—no. It is all known ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... springs oozed and trickled from the stratified conglomerate along the edges, sides, and bottoms of the ravines. The tops of some of these truncated knolls were quite swampy in the depressions, and covered with a thin-stemmed feathery grass. Here and there was a clump of scrub oaks; sparsely scattered about were small pines. We found great numbers of Opuntia Missouriensis, called by the Mexicans nopal; small mesquite shrubs, too, are seen everywhere, while the resurrection plant covers great areas, like the heather on the ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... and in England (after 1066) the national assembly began as a feudal council, composed of the prelates and barons who held their lands and dignities directly from the Crown. But that of France was, before the twelfth century, seldom convened, sparsely attended, and generally ignored by the greater feudatories, a conference of partisans rather than a parliament. In England the Great Council of the Norman dynasty, inheriting the prestige and the claims of the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot, ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... downward, towards the working places. Presently they passed underneath one of the streets of the moving ways, and saw its platforms running on their rails far overhead, and chinks of white lights between the transverse slits. The factories that were not working were sparsely lighted; to Graham they and their shrouded aisles of giant machines seemed plunged in gloom, and even where work was going on the illumination was far less brilliant ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... understand an American's instinctive desire to know about things; we do not understand his lack of curiosity in that direction. Both of us forget what I think must be the underlying reasons—that we are a race which, until comparatively recently, lived wide distances apart in sparsely settled lands, and were dependent on the passing stranger for news of the rest of the world, where he belongs to a people who all these centuries have been packed together in their little island like oats in a bin. London itself is so crowded that the ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... disappointment in this respect when he began the visitation of his diocese in the simplest and most primitive manner, riding on horseback or in a sulky over rough and circuitous roads, and through regions sparsely inhabited. A plain yeoman, who had never seen a bishop in his robes, and knew not how he would appear in officiating, took an early opportunity to gratify his curiosity and attend a service where he was to preach. The next morning a neighbor, who had not the boldness ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... was without a home as long as he remained in Wyoming or Montana, while in another sense he was the owner of numberless dwelling-places or "headquarters." He may be likened to a commercial traveller in a vast and sparsely-settled region, where he is well known and welcomed ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... the hall there was a large long room with four windows looking into a small wilderness that had once been a garden, and commanding a fine view of land and sea. This the Captain called the drawing-room. It was sparsely furnished with a spindle-legged table, half-a-dozen armchairs covered with faded tapestry, an antique walnut-wood cabinet, another of ebony, a small oasis of carpet in the middle of the bare ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... with delicate moss and fern and shaded by birch and ash; on the other the ravine fell precipitously to hidden water, and was choked by towering pine and hemlock. The air was heavy, cool, and dank, the sunshine entering sparsely. The place was, however, a haunt of birds, and now a wood ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... Lessingham and I entered. Then the door was refastened and the chain replaced. Our hostess showed us into the front room on the ground floor; it was sparsely furnished and not too clean,—but there were chairs enough for us to sit upon; which she ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... elementary stage during the first hundred years. The country was sparsely populated, and music depends on the existence of a community. Even in 1750 the cows, according to tradition, were still occupied, during their daily peregrinations, in laying out the streets of the future city of Boston,—a city which was destined to be one of the ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... sagged, betraying a cavernous expanse of sparsely-toothed gums. "Joe Bloss!" he ejaculated. "My land! I hope you ain't traveled far fur that. If so, yuh sure got yore trouble for yore pains. Why, man alive! Joe Bloss ain't been nigh the Shoe-Bar for close on to ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... the advantage in nature's scheme of filling a niche which no one else, when they are turned out, will care to fill in their place. The old dead-alive farm, the sunny stoep, the few flocks and herds and wandering horses sparsely scattered over the barren plain, the huge ox-waggon, most characteristic and intimate of their possessions, part tent and part conveyance, formed for the slow but sure navigation of these solitudes, and reminding one a great deal ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... fully a mile from any other dwelling. Indeed, at that period, the country in the immediate vicinity of the Falls of Montmorenci was very sparsely settled. The nearest village, in the direction of Quebec, was Beauport, and even there the inhabitants were comparatively few. The hut of the hermit was also removed from the high road, standing about midway between ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... strange to any one not conversant with the facts of the case, that the small, sparsely populated village should require the services of a curate, and especially a hardworking man like Mr. Anderson; but a sad affliction had befallen the young vicar of Sandycliffe; the result of some illness or accident, ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... sacrilege in venturing upon it; and with congratulations to the population on their heroism in supporting it. The number of persons who have been all but hit by shells is enormous. I went to the left bank of the Seine in order to see myself the state of affairs. At Point-du-Jour there is a hot corner sparsely inhabited. The Prussians are evidently here firing at the viaduct which crosses the river. From there I followed the ramparts as close as I could as far as Montrouge. I heard of many shells which had fallen, but except at Point-du-Jour ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... consisted of cliffs, broken considerably however by chines and other indentations, and pierced here and there by caverns, some close down to the water, and others high up and almost inaccessible from below. Inland, the country was sparsely cultivated—open downs and fern and gorse-covered heaths prevailing. The more sheltered nooks in the bay contained a few fishermen's cottages, pitched here and there wherever the ground favoured their erection, with very little regard to symmetry or order. Nearer to the ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... shuffled off everything of the past—names, relations, antecedents. There was no reason why any one should watch them out of the country, but they had adopted precautions against such watching. They separated, disappeared, met again in the far North, in a sparsely-populated, lonely country of hill and dale, led there by an advertisement which they had seen in a local newspaper, met with by sheer chance in a Liverpool hotel. There was an old-established business to sell as a going concern, in ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... hurtling on their way to market. My impression remained that the strip of beach was decidedly narrow, and generally bordered by a rather thick growth of dwarfed shrub. The point of land beyond clung dimly in my memory as sparsely wooded, tapering at its outer extremity into a sand bar against which the restless waves of the Bay broke in lines of foam. The only feasible method of approach to the spot I now sought would be by following this narrow strip of beach, yet this ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... the flood of hot white sunrays burned away the shadow tapestry of the valleys. In place of the cool mysterious vales there were left only scorched gulleys and dry washes sparsely set with greasewood and sagebrush ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... which keeps nearly all Anglican and Roman churches open all day for rest, meditation, and prayer, came in, stayed a few minutes, and left again. At eleven o'clock there was a short service, the daily Morning Prayer, sparsely attended. Sylvia knelt and stood, mechanically, with the other worshippers. Then suddenly, just before the benediction was pronounced, Austin slid into the seat beside her, and groped for her hand. Neither spoke, nor could have spoken; ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... population of that sparsely inhabited country in 1812. Let us now see the strength ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... distance of about 260 miles, its northern limit being near the thirty-ninth parallel, the southern a little below the thirty-sixth. The elevation of the belt above the sea varies from about 5000 to 8000 feet. From the American River to Kings River the species occurs only in small isolated groups so sparsely distributed along the belt that three of the gaps in it are from forty to sixty miles wide. But from Kings River south-ward the sequoia is not restricted to mere groves but extends across the wide rugged basins of the Kaweah ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... of April 15, 1874. No railroads are within immediate approach to its boundaries, and only one, as shown on recent maps, is under construction in the neighborhood leading in its direction. The surrounding country is sparsely settled, and I have been unable to ascertain that the necessities of commerce or any public exigencies demand this legislation, which would affect so seriously the rights and interests of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... or twelve persons assembled seemed only a sprinkling in the large lofty room, furnished sparsely with amber satin sofas, a pair of Florentine marble tables, and half an acre or so of looking glass. Voluminous amber draperies shrouded the windows, and deadened the sound of rolling wheels, and the voices and footfalls ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... The glen was but sparsely dotted with houses even in those days; a number of them inhabited by farmer-weavers, who combined two trades and just managed to live. One would have a plough, another a horse, and so in Glen Quharity they helped each other. Without a loom in addition many of them ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... liable to be at once envious of, and injured by, the riches of others. Her wardrobe was limited. She was, this morning, vexatiously conscious of a warmer hue in the back pleats than in the front breadth of her mauve, cashmere dress, sparsely decorated with bows of but indifferently white ribbon. "It has enabled them to make an immense success. One really gets rather tired of hearing about them. But everybody goes to their house, you know, and says that he ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... a half-hour of slow plodding across an arm of the lake, they entered the edge of sparsely wooded forest and halted. Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn began at once to remove the snow from the top of what appeared to be a high drift, and a little below the surface uncovered the roof of a cache ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... increase in that branch of the public service. It is the index of the growth of education and of the prosperity of the people, two elements highly conducive to the vigor and stability of republics. With a vast territory like ours, much of it sparsely populated, but all requiring the services of the mail, it is not at present to be expected that this Department can be made self-sustaining. But a gradual approach to this end from year to year is confidently ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... cedars and firs marked the course of the river. Once there he found himself standing on a bluff with the broad, placid stream stretching away to the north and south at his feet. The bank was some twenty feet high and covered sparsely with grass and weeds; and a few feet below him a granite bowlder stuck its lichened head outward from the cliff, forming an inviting seat from which to view the sunset across the lowland opposite. The boy half scrambled, half fell ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... be secured by association and co-operation on a large scale, affording not merely greater comfort and often luxury, but actually distributing the fruits of labor on a more equitable basis than is possible in sparsely settled regions and among feeble communities. The great improvements of our day in labor-saving machinery, and its application to agriculture, enable the nation to be fed with a less percentage of its total force thus applied, ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... surrounding the cities of Hereford and Inverness. In the Charleston earthquake, also, the position and form of the epicentres were deduced from the trend of isoseismal lines based on the damage to railway-lines and various structures within a sparsely ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... Attock is twice the size of Rawalpindi it has a smaller population. Nature has decreed that it should be sparsely peopled. The district stretches from the Salt Range on the south to the Hazara border on the north. It contains itself the fine Kalachitta range in the north, the small and barren Khairi Murat ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... his high-backed chair, Luke Claridge seemed a part of its dignified severity. In the sparsely furnished room with its uncarpeted floor, its plain teak table, its high wainscoting and undecorated walls, the old man had the look of one who belonged to some ancient consistory, a judge whose piety would march with an austerity that would save a human soul ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not allowed to have matches. Their possession might have tempted her to burn gas after ten o'clock, when at latest all lights had to be out. Now, Janet Hepburn brought a box of matches on the tray; and the gas, when lit, showed the sparsely furnished room with its gray-painted, pictureless wall, against which Barrie's red hair glowed like a flame. Outside the open window the old ivy and the young peeping roses, which had been green and pink and gold in the twilight, lost their colour as the ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... stupor, and began the experiment of keeping house and maintaining his dairy with hired help. For a long year he had struggled on through all kinds of domestic vicissitude, conscious all the time that things were going from bad to worse. His house was isolated, the region sparsely settled, and good help difficult to be obtained under favoring auspices. The few respectable women in the neighborhood who occasionally "lent a hand" in other homes than their own would not compromise themselves, as they expressed it, by "keepin' house ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... since Germany began to build up a colonial empire in Africa, and the net result is that, after spending some hundred million dollars, she has acquired over a hundred million square miles of territory, with a sparsely scattered German population of between five and six thousand souls. A third of the adult white population is represented by officials and soldiers. Militarism is rampant everywhere, with the result that the white settler shuns German colonies as he would the plague. The keen-witted ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... Probably the stage would be locked at night. Still, at a suitable hour, he could descreetly find out. On another stage a bedroom likewise intrigued him, though this was a squalid room in a tenement and the bed was a cheap thing sparsely covered and in sad disorder. People were working on this set, and he presently identified the play, for Muriel Mercer in a neat black dress entered to bring comfort to the tenement dwellers. But this ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... Italy, and Austria, and Russia rejoiced. They expected the Withdrawal of the international gendarmerie to send the Turks downhill with a crash. England, probably, was not guilty of withdrawing for that reason, but was much less well informed, because more sparsely represented, than the other Powers. And we were already tangled in Russia's plans, and did not know what ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... around the Bully Boy and Theresa group of mines midway up Squaw Gulch, spreading down to the smelter at the mouth of the ravine. The freight wagons dumped their loads as near to the mill as the slope allowed, and Jimville grew in between. Above the Gulch begins a pine wood with sparsely grown thickets of lilac, ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... now over a wild and desolate stretch of country, for the region lying on either side of the imaginary line dividing Canada and New York State, at the point where the St. Lawrence flows north-east, is sparsely settled. ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... toward the path of modern development; the other path, followed by a fourth of the land and people, has local self-government and native customs and might evolve, if undisturbed, a native culture along their own peculiar lines. A tenth of the land, sparsely settled, is being monopolized and held for whites to make an African Australia. To these later folk must be added the four and one-half millions of the South African Union, who by every modern device are being forced into ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... wagon-circle. The wagons were roughly in a circle, but there were many gaps, and the wheels were not chained. Preparations were made to stop a week. The cattle must be rested for the real desert, though this was desert enough in all seeming. The same low hills of sand were about us, but sparsely covered with scrub brush. The flat was sandy, but there was some grass—more than we had encountered in many days. Not more than a hundred feet from camp was a weak spring that barely supplied human needs. But farther along the bottom various other weak ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... pressure became so strong that Kiangsi had to be abandoned, and in the epic "Long March" the rest of the communists and their army fought their way through all of western and northwestern China into the sparsely inhabited, underdeveloped northern part of Shensi, where a new socialistic state was created with Yen-an as ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... was comprehensive and the discipline severe. The fare provided was frugal, and the chambers were sparsely furnished. Luxury was tabooed, and the rules were rigidly enforced. From early morning till the hour of five in the evening, when supper was served, not an hour was wasted. Fortescue, writing in the time of Henry VI., gives a graphic account of these law-schools as they were in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... was rehabilitating the Erie, the Reading, the Baltimore and Ohio, the Southern, and the Hocking Valley systems. But he had kept clear of the far Western field and had definitely refused to reorganize the Union Pacific on the ground that its territory was too sparsely settled and that there was little hope for its future, especially as its partial control by the United States Government made any reorganization extremely difficult. The new plan for the Northern Pacific was carried ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... community consists of the people within a local area; the land they occupy is but the physical basis of the community. The nature of the community will depend very largely upon whether its people live close together or at a distance. In the Rocky Mountain States many communities are but sparsely settled and may have a radius of forty or fifty miles and yet be true communities, while on the Atlantic seaboard a definite community with as many people may have a radius of not ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... in this village. This town then included the adjoining towns to the north and south. The region was then more sparsely settled, although many houses standing then have disappeared. While he was sleeping peacefully in the cradle, while he was opening on the world childhood's wide, wondering eyes, those great men ...
— The New Minister's Great Opportunity - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... who was quite a wag, wrote back informing us of the difficulty of reaching a town on that part of our route, and stating that he had made arrangements for us to stay over night on the plantation of 'Lady Hayes,' and that although the country was sparsely settled, we could doubtless give a profitable performance to a ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... through the mist, the daylight lingered astonishingly late. The cold grew bitter as I went on through the gloaming. There were no trees save rare and stunted pines. The Aar was a shallow brawling torrent, thick with melting ice and snow and mud. Coarse grass grew on the rocks sparsely; there were no flowers. The mist overhead was now quite near, and I still went on and steadily up through the half-light. It was as lonely as a calm at sea, except for the noise of the river. I had overworn myself, and that ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... Diaspora, and bids fair to become the first, instead of the second, within another generation. No other country in the world offers, even approximately, such a favorable combination of opportunities for the development of a Diaspora Judaism, as does America: economic possibilities, vast and sparsely populated territories, freedom of action, liberty of conscience, equality of citizenship, appreciation of the fundamentals of Judaism, variety of population, excluding a rigidly nationalistic state policy, and other ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... the main range, and between it and the Tennessee River. This spur is known by the name of Walling's Ridge [NOTE from Brett and Bob: This is probably what is now known as Walden's Ridge which was named after a Mr. Walling or Wallen as subsequently described. This Ridge was quite sparsely populated with an estimate of 11 families at the time of the civil war, so it's history is not exactly well documented. Subsequent references use Walling's Ridge to be consistent with the original text.], after an early settler and Indian hunter. It abuts close on the Tennessee ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... parts of the house were sparsely occupied, but the stalls were full. Owen, disapproving of the whole business, refused to buy a programme, and settled himself in his seat prepared for the worst. He had a vivid recollection of White Roses, the novel, and he did not anticipate any keen enjoyment ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... F. R. G. S., traveller and autobiographer. Visited a sparsely-settled island in the Pacific Ocean; talked to parrots; found some footprints; rescued Friday, and returned to England to ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... there was no sun. I sat down on a log to await his friendly appearance. Hours passed; he did not come. Night, cold, freezing night, set in, and found me exposed to all its terrors. A bleak hill-side sparsely covered with pines afforded poor accommodations for a half-clad, famished man. I could only keep from freezing by the most active exertion in walking, rubbing, and striking my benumbed feet and hands against the logs. It seemed the longest, most terrible night of my life, and glad ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... numbers; but whenever she can resort to physical and brutal strength, she then makes a fight which crimsons the earth with blood, and Protestantism pays the penalty, and the reason why those in the country and in sparsely settled districts do not know more of the hellishness of Catholicism is because this creed cannot intelligently defend itself and will not take issue with Protestantism unless she can take issue by brutal power, but in ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... passed the grilled doors into a place so gray and cold that it might have led us to a cloister. We mounted broad stairs, our footfalls muffled by a heavy carpeting of so unobtrusive a color that I cannot name it. We crossed a white panelled hall, so sparsely furnished that the untutored might have thought that the family were just moving in or just moving out. Penelope pushed through heavy portieres and we stood at last in a room that seemed designed for human habitation. But it was the design of an alien mind, not of the owner. The owner had not ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... was big and sparsely furnished. Four men sat at the long table in its center. Quillan knew two of them—Marras Cooms, second in command of the Beldon Brotherhood's detachment here, and the Duke of Fluel, Movaine's personal gun. Going by Heraga's descriptions, the big, florid-faced man with white ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... the tree and the exposure of the nuts to this injury. For this reason, the densely foliated varieties may prove best adapted to the inland valleys, where the difficulties of sun-scald are most prevalent. The more sparsely foliated types often appear to have less blight on the nuts and leaves because of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... was immediately shown in 1894, after the Bell patents had expired, by the tremendous outburst of new competitive activity, in "independent" country systems and toll lines through sparsely settled districts—work for which the Edison apparatus and methods were peculiarly adapted, yet against which the influence of the Edison patent was invoked. The data secured by the United States Census Office in 1902 showed that the whole industry had made gigantic leaps in eight years, and ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... not long risen, looked over the ragged crest of the ridge, and sent long shadows down the sparsely wooded slope. Though there was no wind, and every tree was as motionless as if carved of ice, these spare, intricate shadows seemed to stir and writhe, as if instinct with a kind of sinister activity. ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... plain-looking women, evidently sent thither by the wealthy families in whose employ they were, came in hesitatingly, and those who did not take seats near the entrance, as a matter of course, were motioned thither without ceremony. The audience room was but sparsely filled, large families being represented by one or two members or not at all. But Mrs. Arnot saw none of Haldane's class present—none who looked as if they were in danger, and needed a kind, strong, rescuing hand—none ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... herself in Tom's random diaries. As in the printing of a photograph the lights and darks come sparsely out, and unawares the delicate outline, so by a word here, a phrase elsewhere, we realise the presence of a sweet-natured, sound-minded girl, and more than that, of a girl with character. After a spell of Brompton lodgings Tom took her to Kegworth in Leicestershire, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... some writers have laughed at the gates of pearl, and the diamonds which stud the floors and walls of his New Jerusalem, where the most ordinary utensils are made of the rarest substances of the globe. 'But,' say his disciples, 'because such things are sparsely scattered on this earth does it follow that they are not abundant in other worlds? On earth they are terrestrial substances, whereas in heaven they assume celestial forms and are in keeping with angels.' In this connection Swedenborg ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... cloud of shade. Here and there the blossomy tamarisk adorned the roadside. There was a curious gnarled and twisted black tree, without a single leaf on it. It might have passed itself off for a dead apple tree but for the fact that it had a a star-like, red-hot flower sprinkled sparsely over its person. It had the scattery red glow that a constellation might have when glimpsed through smoked glass. It is possible that our constellations have been so constructed as to be invisible through smoked glass; if this is so ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Chersonese is still somewhat of a terra incognita; there is no point on its mainland at which European steamers call, and the usual conception of it is as a vast and malarious equatorial jungle, sparsely peopled by a race of semi-civilized and treacherous Mohammedans. In fact, it is as little known to most people as it was to myself before I visited it; and as reliable information concerning it exists mainly in valuable volumes now out of print, or ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... to house in that sparsely settled neighborhood were great, and doctors were few and could not be had the moment they were called for. So it was not until the next day that Doctor Potts, the round-bodied little medical attendant of the neighborhood, made his appearance at ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... afraid, a more common occurrence than any one would think who only knew me through your memoirs. The fact is that I could not believe it possible that the most remarkable horse in England could long remain concealed, especially in so sparsely inhabited a place as the north of Dartmoor. From hour to hour yesterday I expected to hear that he had been found, and that his abductor was the murderer of John Straker. When, however, another morning had come, and I found that beyond the arrest of young Fitzroy ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the skin and wings of an enormous eagle, holding a dagger in its mouth,—the device of our family. A similar device in red brick-work was to be seen on the wall above the entrance on the outside. Paint had been sparsely used,—paper not at all,—many of the rooms being merely whitewashed, though the more important were wainscotted with brown oak, and others with plain deal on which the scions of our race had for several ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... the enemy advanced pickets were driven in. We were advancing in artillery formation over undulating and broken country, sparsely set with jujube-bushes (zizyphus). A gazelle bounded away in front of us. At 6.15, says my diary, the first shells came. Our planes swept along, klaxons sounding, and the sky became torn with shrapnel. Johnny felt for us who formed ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... two kinds,—the wood berry and the field berry. The former is as wild as a partridge. It is found in open places in the woods and along the borders, growing beside stumps and rocks, never in abundance, but very sparsely. It is small, cone-shaped, dark red, shiny, and pimply. It looks woody, and tastes so. It has never reached the table, nor made the acquaintance of cream. A quart of them, at a fair price for human labor, would be worth their weight in silver at least. (Yet a careful observer ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... district in Hispaniola called Cotoy, lying between the provinces of Huhabo and Cahibo. It is a sterile country having mountains, valleys, and plains, and is sparsely inhabited. Gold is found there in quantities, but instead of being in the form of ingots or grains, it is in solid masses of pure metal, deposited in beds of soft stone in the crevices of the rocks. The veins are discovered by breaking the rocks, and one such may be compared to a ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... daylight. The country was sparsely populated. They passed through a few small villages, but no place of any importance until, late in the afternoon, they approached Blaye, after a long day's tramp. As they thought that here they might learn ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... are apt to be destitute of soil; moreover, even the mountain-valleys are apt to be difficult of access, and in such cases the cost of moving the crops may be greater than the market value of the products. Mountainous countries, therefore, are apt to be sparsely peopled regions. ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... his predecessors. "It is a truism to assert," said he, "that labour extorted by fear of punishment is insufficient and unproductive"; yet some people can be driven by the lash to accomplish what no feasible payment would have induced them to undertake. In sparsely settled regions, furthermore, slavery may afford the otherwise unobtainable advantages of labour combination, and it has undoubtedly hastened industrial development in some American areas. Yet, since all processes carried on by slave labour are conducted in the rudest manner, virtually ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... he had expected, in the parlor, a high- ceilinged, sparsely furnished room with a glazed floor of Spanish mosaics. His sudden appearance threw the occupants into alarm: a woman cried out sharply; a man whom O'Reilly identified as Ignacio Alvarado himself leaped to his ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... canyon the cedared desert heaved higher and changed its aspect. The trees grew larger, bushier, greener, and closer together, with patches of bleached grass between, and russet-lichened rocks everywhere. Small cactus plants bristled sparsely in open places; and here and there bright red flowers—Indian paintbrush, Flo called them—added a touch of color to the gray. Glenn pointed to where dark banks of cloud had massed around the mountain peaks. The scene to the west was somber ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... the Mississippi were but sparsely settled in 1846, yet the fame of the fruitfulness, the healthfulness, and the almost tropical beauty of the land bordering the Pacific, tempted the members of the Donner Party to leave their homes. These homes were situated in Illinois, Iowa, Tennessee, ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... Catalogues to those living in sparsely settled districts are a profound blessing. I should not be surprised to see the paper, ink, and printing business one of our largest industries. We cannot do without any of these commodities. Have you thought, for example, of the amount of material and labor that goes ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... sparsely inhabited, and those who live near each other are thrown very much together. For this reason I saw a good deal of Sir Charles Baskerville. With the exception of Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, and Mr. Stapleton, the naturalist, ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... for deer in the brushy, sparsely timbered foothills of the Sierra Range of mountains, or higher up in the extensive forests, some of the hunters wore for a headgear a false deer's head, by which deceptive device they were enabled to get to a closer and more effective range with their bows and arrows. This head-dress ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... rendering him a service, and walked him out by the arm. We stumbled over a few chairs; we had the feeling of open space before us, and felt the fresh breath of the river—fresh, but tainted. The Chinese theatres across the water made, in the sparsely twinkling masses of gloom an Eastern town presents at night, blazing centres of light, and of a distant and howling uproar. I felt him become suddenly tractable again like an animal, like a good-tempered horse when the object that scares ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... was overhung by a bold, lion-like, red rock. Poison oak, sweet bay trees, calcanthus, brush, and chaparral, grew freely but sparsely all about it. In front, in the strong sunshine, the platform lay overstrewn with busy litter, as though the labours of the mine might begin again ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the railway is sparsely settled, the ground being generally unfavorable to agriculture. For some time after this portion of the road was opened, the natives refused to give it patronage, many of them declaring that the old mode of travel, ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... early summer, and therefore the summer dining-room of the Spatts was in use. This dining-room consisted of one white, windowed wall, a tiled floor, and a roof of wood. The windows gave into the winter dining-room, which was a white apartment, sparsely curtained and cushioned with chintz, and containing very few pieces of furniture or pictures. The Spatts considered, rightly, that furniture and pictures were unhygienic and the secret lairs of noxious germs. Had the ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Illinois during that period, only 87 had settled in Mississippi. The two States had been admitted almost simultaneously and had equal attractions. Why should the one gain more population and have more political strength than the other? Although statistics for the sparsely populated territories were not so available, there was no doubt that the Northern section everywhere was being settled ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... the region must be considered. In a sparsely settled grain and livestock region it would be quite inadvisable to grow strawberries or other crops which require a maximum of hand labor during a very brief period. Berries, however, may be perfectly well suited to sections where either transient workers or city ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... overcoat and goes into the parlour. The greenish light of the lamp lies sparsely on the cheap furniture in patched white covers, on the pitiful flowers and the posts on which ivy is trained. . . . There is a smell of geranium and carbolic. The little clock on the wall ticks timidly, as though abashed at the presence of ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... in truth, were glad of visitors at any time. They were clever educated men who had given their lives to christianising brainless savages in a sparsely settled country; and any news of the outer world was very welcome. They pushed back their hoods and sat about the boys, their faces beaming with interest and amusement as they listened to the adventures of those wayward youths. ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... boundary between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Several small bays indent this portion of the shore, the one most favorable for shipping being Las Aguilas Bay, also known as Bahia sin Fondo, or Bottomless Bay. This part of the country, the Baboruco peninsula, is very sparsely inhabited. In the beginning of the nineteenth century it was the abode of maroons, half-savage fugitive slaves and ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... characters of the species are—General colour black, sprinkled with gray above and beneath; ears black and naked; auriculum, short and broad or obtusely triangular; interfemoral membrane, sparsely hairy; last joint of the tail free: two incisors, with notched crowns, on each side of the canine teeth of the upper jaw, with a broad intervening ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... repeated Berenger to himself; and the Prioress, struck, perhaps, by the almost flaxen locks that sparsely waved on his temples, and the hue of the ungloved hand that rested on the edge of the grille, said, smiling, 'You come of a ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that they might expect him to be with them at a given time. This announcement always sent a thrill of joy through their hearts. The news of his coming spread rapidly; and he was sure of large congregations for that sparsely ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... Vara made neither appearance nor sign. On the second evening Conyngham decided to go on alone, prosecuting his journey through the sparsely populated valley of the Alcadia to Ciudad Real, Toledo, ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... rendered it somewhat fixed, comparative security from attack has caused many of the Pueblo Indians to recognize the inconvenience of dwellings grouped in large clusters on sites difficult of access, while the sources of their subsistence are necessarily sparsely scattered over large areas. This is noticeable in the building of small, detached houses at a distance from the main villages, the greater convenience to crops, flocks and water outweighing the defensive motive. In Cibola particularly, a marked tendency ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... mind, each super-posed on each, Vary alternately and interweave The fabric of our members. For not only Are the soul-elements smaller far than those Which this our body and inward parts compose, But also are they in their number less, And scattered sparsely through our frame. And thus This canst thou guarantee: soul's primal germs Maintain between them intervals as large At least as are the smallest bodies, which, When thrown against us, in our body rouse Sense-bearing motions. Hence it comes that we Sometimes don't feel alighting on our frames ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... and twilight would soon merge into moonlight; but we would need the moon and stars as well on the road we had to travel. In more than one place it was marked on my map by an ominous, thin black line which meant "Motorists, beware." The country was sparsely populated; people whispered of bandidos; and if anything happened to the car in the middle of the night, there would be no ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... ready for hazard. It was evident that there were as many mere spectators as there were actual candidates for jobs. Above all, ardent curiosity prevailed; in that region where events marshaled themselves slowly and sparsely men did not balk at riding or hoofing it a dozen miles or more in order to get first-hand information in regard to ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... which he halted made a little spot of green at the edge of the gray. But out in front of him was the infinite stretch of death, far sweeps of wind-furrowed sand burning under a sun made sullen red by the clouds of fine dust in the air. Sparsely over the dull surface grew the few shrubs that could survive the heat and dryness,—stunted, unlovely things of burr, spine, thorn, or saw-edged leaf,—all bent one ways by the sand blown against them,—bristling cactus and ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... flights of stairs he entered a room on the top story where he found his family, his father, a tall pompous-looking man dressed all in black, his mother, an amiable but extremely fragile woman, and a small brother and sister seated at a table eating supper. The room was very sparsely furnished; the only bright spot in it was a small fire in a rusty grate, flanked by two bricks to ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... are without lining, a mere depression in the sand. The eggs are usually four, light gray to creamy buff, finely and rather sparsely speckled or dotted with ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... Sir Owen Lanyon had quite recently allowed a body of 300 trained volunteers, mostly, if not altogether, drawn from among the loyalists, to be raised for service in the Basutu war, a serious drain upon the resources of a country so sparsely populated as ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... see you united to any man you do not truly love. In former days the system of marrying through the agency of a match-maker undoubtedly possessed great advantages. It is incumbent upon every good Israelite to marry, but originally the villages were sparsely settled, in many places there was a lack of marriageable men, in others the maidens were in the minority, and as facilities for travelling were limited, and often entirely absent, a schadchen, who made it a business to bring eligible couples together, was a great convenience. ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... was now cut deep into the plain, the banks being from thirty to forty feet in height, and the current very swift. The plain had once been sparsely, wooded but was burned over and very desolate looking now. Huckleberries, cranberries, and Labrador tea grew in profusion, and were in blossom, while patches of reindeer moss were seen struggling into life ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior) |
