"Swampy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me, that even eagles, had for three centuries abandoned the desolate crags of Snowdon; and as for its being a haunt for owls, neither bird nor mouse could reside there to supply such with subsistence. Snowdon appeared to me too swampy to be drained for cultivation in many parts, and in most others its marble, granite and shingles, forbade the idea of spontaneous vegetation. I am sorry for the poets, having a sincere regard for the fraternity, but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... some nasty swampy ground with a few low elevations until we reached Ghaloom's, which we did about 2 P.M. A small spot was allotted to us some distance from the village, on which we erected our huts. Ghaloom changed his residence to this ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... battle and the troubles of a war-weary world, as one might suppose. It was surrounded by swamps everywhere. And it had been raining, of course. It always seems to have been raining in France during this war. There were duck boards over the swampy ground, and a single mis- step might send one prone in the ooze up ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... under the command of Captain H. Smith of the Volage. As we approached the lofty headland of Cape Aden it looked like an island. Its position is very similar to that of Gibraltar, as it is connected with the mainland by a piece of low swampy ground. I was struck by its grand picturesque appearance, though it is barren and wild, and utterly destitute of vegetation. We ran in and anchored not far off the fortified island of Sirah, four or five ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Yuen-nan-i. Then over and between barren hills, passing a small lake and plain with the considerable town of Yuen-nan-hsien ten li to the right, I continued in a narrow valley and over mountains in the same uncultivated condition to Hungay, situated in a swampy valley. Having crossed this valley, another rough climb brings the traveler to the top of the next pass, Ting-chi-ling, whence the road descends, and leads by a well-cultivated valley to Chao-chow. After an easy thirty li we reached Hsiakwan,[AD] one of the largest commercial ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... mountain sides, forming beds 200 or 300 feet in extent. At the entrance to Batavia was a large group of houses extending along the shore, and occupied by Chinamen. This portion of the city was entirely destroyed, and not many of the Chinese who lived on the swampy plains managed to save their lives. They stuck to their homes till the waves came and washed them away, fearing torrents of flame and lava ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... hardly remind our readers, has only been rescued from subsidence and collapse at an immense cost by a lavish use of the resources of modern engineering. The building itself is not without merits, but its site is inconspicuous and the swampy nature of the soil is a constant menace to its durability. The scheme which we venture with all humility to suggest is that it should be removed and re-erected, in the same spirit though in the architectural language of our own day, on the summit of St. Catherine's Hill, where it would look better ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... nebula of something else equally pointless. He had not bothered to learn the native name of Island Twenty-seven, because his ship had mapped one thousand three hundred and eighty-six islands, all small, and either rocky or swampy or both. Island Twenty-seven, to him, had only one importance, and that was its being the site of the largest city on ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier
... Kaolians is rendered almost complete by the fact that no waterway connects their land with that of any other nation, nor have they any need of a waterway since the low, swampy land which comprises the entire area of their domain self-waters ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tuft of grass as she prepared a place for her eggs, the whaup wheepled and twirled and cried in eerie alarm, the plover sighed to a low white cloud wandering past; while the snipe and the lark, the "mossie," the heather lintie, and the wandering, sighing winds among the reeds and rushes of the swampy moss, all added their notes to soothe and satisfy the little wounded spirit lying there on the soft moorland. Already he was away upon the wings of fancy in a world of his own—a world full of dreams and joys unspeakable; a world of calm comfort, where there was no pain, ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... rapidly wider, and the ground so swampy that it was impossible to proceed further. Seeing this, we agreed to return to the prairie, and to try if it were not cooler among the palmettos. But when we came to the place where we had crossed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... mind to let you have your try," said Endicott, chuckling as if it were a good joke. "Here's a little farm down in Jersey. It's swampy and thick with mosquitoes. I understand it won't grow a beanstalk. There are twelve acres and a tumble-down house on it. I've had to take it in settlement of a mortgage. The man's dead and there's nothing but the farm to lay hands on. He ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... eroded with countless deep, precipitous gashes seaming the rock in every direction. Numerous 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, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... run over locks and dam which the working days had not allowed, and there being no other train for hours I set off along the railroad to walk the seven miles to Colon. On either side lay hot, rampant jungle, low and almost swampy. It was noon when I reached the broad railroad yards and Zone storehouses of Mt. Hope and turned ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... natives on this river and its neighborhood were not numerous before the establishment of Spanish factories, but since 1813, the epoch of the arrival of several Cuban vessels with rich, merchandise, the neighboring tribes flocked to the swampy flats, and as there was much similarity in the language and habits of the natives and emigrants, they soon intermarried and mingled in ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Calhoun 60. The pods fall from October 15th to December 30th. Lespedeza sericea planted between the trees yields 2-1/2 tons per acre annually. This gives us courage to continue emphasizing their great value for pasture and rough land planting. The trees we planted in our swampy, worn-out meadow are ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... to me, I said, that the great additions which have been made by realism to the territory of literature consist largely in swampy, malarious, ill-smelling patches of soil which had previously been left to reptiles and vermin. It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste. The general consent of civilized people was supposed to have ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the first time I saw blueberries served on the table. I had never seen blueberries before, and yet, at the sight of them, there leaped up in my mind memories of dreams wherein I had wandered through swampy land eating my fill of them. My mother set before me a dish of the berries. I filled my spoon, but before I raised it to my mouth I knew just how they would taste. Nor was I disappointed. It was the same tang that I had tasted a thousand ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... litter, the other ladies rode, and the cradle and its precious contents were carried by four men; but this the poor little Lassla, as Helen shortens his lengthy name, resented so much, that he began to scream so loud that she was forced to dismount and carry him in her arms, along a road rendered swampy by much rain. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... was uncultivated and unhealthy. The lands were low and swampy, and mostly covered with a heavy growth of yellow pines. The few remaining inhabitants were mostly women, negresses and children; now and then a disabled specimen of poor white trash, or a farmer too infirm to be of ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... return the next day and see if the tiger was dead (by no means an absolutely safe proceeding even then as we have seen). Much to my amusement a lean toddy drawer of mine, an excellent shikari, went a few yards into the swampy ground, got on to a small boulder of rock, squatted down, took out his betel bag, threw some betel into his mouth preparatory to chewing, and then held out his long skinny arm and forefinger and said, "Look! A tiger made a meal of a man close ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... indeed, to become possessed of landed property in the town. The Government, however, under Major Campbell, who succeeded Lieutenant Chester, took care to exact from them a large amount of useful work in the filling up of swampy ground near the town, and laying out plots of land for building purposes. They also blasted the rocks at the mouth of the Singapore river, on the site of which was afterwards constructed a fort, named after the first Resident, Mr. Fullerton, and much of ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... we passed over was a poor and cold clay; but there are many rich levels which, could they be drained and defended from the inundations of the river, would amply repay the cultivation. These flats are certainly not adapted for cattle; the grass is too swampy, and the bushes, swamps, and lagoons are too thickly intermingled with the better portions, to render it a safe or desirable grazing country. The timber is universally bad and small; a few misshapen gum trees on the immediate banks of the river may ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... before the German barbed-wire entanglements. The Germans point to these as dumb witnesses of the disaster that overtook forty-eight Russian companies that assaulted ten German ones. The cold weather at this time had made possible the swampy regions in which the Orczy rises, and had enabled the Russians to approach close to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... hand, one of the maddening pests of bird study at the East is here almost unknown,—the mosquito. Until the third week in June I saw but one. That one was in the habit of lying in wait for me when I went to a piece of low, swampy ground overgrown with bushes. Think of the opportunity this combination offers to the Eastern mosquito, and consider my emotions when I found but a solitary individual, and even that one disposed to ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... be happy, dear child, I do indeed," said Mr. Congreve, with an exhaustive hand shake. "But married life is full of swampy places, and you must both be careful. I've only one piece of advice, and that is, whatever you do, don't let your confidence and trust in each other get a shake, for it is the tree of married life, and one shake will knock off more apples ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... reasons, therefore, he led the exiles to a dismal, swampy stretch of ground about a mile from the village; and told them for the present to rest their bones in an old unfinished farmhouse {June 8th, 1722.}. The spot itself was dreary and bleak, but the neighbouring ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... contributions for this purpose, and looking in perceived that two half-dollar pieces had been given—but both of them were bad. I was told also that the absolute foundation of the edifice is bad—that the ground, which is near the river and swampy, would not bear the weight intended to be imposed ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... in the world abounds with a greater variety of insects. We saw numbers buzzing about the trees...Having pursued our walk inland we fell in with a swampy land in a valley with much brush wood; a rivulet of excellent fresh water ran briskly through it, emptying itself in the sea near to where I had ordered our boat to haul the seine. We found the track of the natives and fell in with several of their ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... the day was clear and fine, a perfect example of early spring, with silvery pearls showing on the tips of the red-twig osiers, and pussy-willows gleaming gray along the margins of swampy places. Sylvia and Judith felt themselves one with this upward surge of new life. They ran to school together, laughing aloud for no reason, racing and skipping like a couple of spring lambs, their minds and hearts as crystal-clear of any shadow as the pale-blue, smiling sky above them. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... Jersey was that its seacoast was a monotonous line of breakers with dangerous shoal inlets, few harbors, and vast mosquito infested salt marshes and sandy thickets. In the interior it was for the most part a level, heavily forested, sandy, swampy country in its southern portions, and rough and mountainous in the northern portions. Even the entrance by Delaware Bay was so difficult by reason of its shoals that it was the last part of the coast to be explored. The Delaware region and Jersey were in fact a ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... needs. If the season and the roads favour, he sends his superfluous barrels of corn and fruit eastward, and recovers an equivalent. But what happens if wide distance part him from civilized towns, if the roads are swampy and not made by art, and the conveyance of food be too onerous to remunerate him? All his neighbours being in like case, there is a local Overproduction of food; yet not one of the little community is thereby made a pauper. No one is able to expel them from their rude homes, or forbid their ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... intersected by these lines is by no means so abundant in woods as in other parts, but has fine savannahs, and throughout the whole distance, as well as on each bank of the Trinidad, presents flat, and sometimes swampy country, with occasional detached sugar-loaf mountains, interspersed with streams that mostly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... day and night after night the wind blew and the water splashed against the windows and poured from the overflowing gutters. Patrick Henry, the pig, found his quarters in the new pen, in the hollow behind the barn, the center of the flood zone, and being discovered one morning marooned on a swampy islet in the middle of a muddy lake, was transferred to the old sty, that built by the late Mr. Laban Eldredge, beneath the woodshed and adjoining the potato cellar. Thankful's orderly, neat soul rebelled against having a pig under the ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... by force may be achieved by cunning. An Elephant was killed by a Jackal, in going over a swampy place. ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... once a man who owned a rich swampy rice field. Every year he used to sacrifice a pig to the boundary bonga before harvest; but nevertheless the bonga always reaped part of the crop. One year when the rice was ripening the man used to go and look at it every day. One evening after dusk as he was sitting quietly at the ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... "The Caspian extends about 700 miles in length, and 200 in breadth. The northern shores of this sea are low and swampy, often overgrown with reeds; but in many other parts the coasts are precipitous, with such deep water that a line of 450 fathoms will not reach the bottom. The best haven in the Caspian is that of Baku; that of Derbent is rocky, and that ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... was the only one of his band provided with a tent, or anything resembling one, and the boys shared the common bed of the rest of the party—which was the ground. A more unwholesome resting-place in Africa, particularly on the steamy, swampy banks of a river, could hardly be imagined. So indeed Muley-Hassan seemed to think, for after a short time, during which the boys vainly tried to secure some sleep, he ordered Diego to provide them with blankets to place between ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... across him in the woods one afternoon when I had gone out snipe shooting alone. Whether he had followed me or whether we had chosen the same vicinity by chance, I do not know; but at any rate as I came out from the underbrush on the edge of a low, swampy place, I almost stepped on the man. He was stretched face downward on the black, oozy soil with his arm buried in a hole at the foot of ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... Mobile are covered over with a kind of shell that abounds in the neighbourhood: this binds with the fine sand, and makes the cleanest, best road possible, and is besides, I believe, very durable. Since the swampy ways have been replaced by good roads of this material, the health of the city has never been attacked by fever, which was frequent before. The cholera is unknown here, although its ravages in the south-western country were, and ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... For sowing in spring, the beds should be prepared in the rough before winter, and when the time comes for levelling down and finishing, the top crust will be found well pulverised, and in a kindly state to receive the seed. Stagnant moisture is deadly to Onions, therefore swampy ground is most unfit; but a sufficient degree of dryness for a summer crop may often be secured by trenching, and leaving rather deep alleys between the beds to carry off surface ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... delightful two months" at Lisbon, Burton set out for Brazil, while his wife returned to England "to pay and pack." She rejoined him some weeks later at Rio Janeiro, and they reached Santos on 9th October 1865. They found it a plashy, swampy place, prolific in mangroves and true ferns, with here and there a cultivated patch. Settlers, however, became attached to it. Sandflies and mosquitoes abounded, and the former used to make Burton "come out all over lumps." Of the other vermin, including ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... jungles and desert places. One such man comes to my mind now. He was in the advanced lines near Albert, but was always restless in the trench. As soon as darkness came he would creep out and crawl on his belly across the swampy ground to a deep hole dug by the explosion of a marmite quite close to the German lines. Here he found a hiding-place from which he could take "pot shots" at any German soldiers who under cover of darkness left ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... the soldiers were without armor and without weapons. In place of the gallant array which, more than three years before, had left the harbor of Espiritu Santo, a company of sickly and starving men were laboring among the swampy forests of the Mississippi, some clad in skins, and some in mats woven from a ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... it surely is the tramp of horse And jolt of cannon downward from the hill Toward our right here, by the swampy lakes That face Davout? Thus, as I ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... wasn't much of trail and I guess a fellow couldn't follow it if he wasn't a scout. It was all thick woods like a jungle kind of, and I could see where branches had been broken by somebody that passed there. Pretty soon it began to get swampy and there wasn't ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the long, black-fringed line of trees without joy in the possession of them and a desire to be among them. The sixty acres of timber land covered the whole of a swampy valley, spread over a rolling hill sloping down to ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... soldiers, with plenty of arquebuses [63] and artillery, and had fortified themselves in a strong position. They had many other fortifications inland and went from one to the other with impunity, whenever they wished, and greatly harassed the Spaniards, who were little used to so swampy a country. The latter found themselves short of provisions without the possibility of getting them in the country on account of the war, inasmuch as the camp contained many men, both Spaniards and the native servants and boatmen, ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... straight on to the hill-side and all round about were moorlands and huge stones, and swampy hollows; never a house nor a sign of life wherever you might look, for their nearest neighbours were the "ferlies" in the glen below, and the "will-o'-the-wisps" in the long grass ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... sufficient and wholesome provision—that their tents were good—that the situations of the different battalions were in healthy places, near springs and rivers, but on dry soils, and as far as possible removed from swampy fens or the stagnated air of ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... unhealthy, on account of the low, swampy nature of its grounds. The Sanitary Reform, dating from about thirty years ago, had a great effect on the condition of the place. Before the drainage the annual mortality was twenty-seven in the thousand; since the drainage twenty in the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Veld, as the country to the north-east of Nazareth was called, I first saw the spoor of a lion. I left the wagon, which had been obliged to make a very wide detour for the purpose of avoiding swampy ground, and was making straight across country towards a point close to which I knew the road passed. On my left was a very large leegte, a shallow, nearly level valley. For miles of its course this was filled with swamp, out of which ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... now occupied by the armies was low and swampy, a character which it possessed in ancient times; the marshes on the southern side being supposed to be the same in which Marius concealed himself from his enemies during his proscription. [20] Its natural humidity was greatly increased, at this ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... are nurseries of reptiles. Alligators of immense size are found in the rivers, creeks, and pools, and serpents are met with on the swampy banks of the river, as large as the main-topmast of a merchant ship, and much larger! The serpents being amphibious, often take to the water, and being driven unconsciously down the rivers by the currents, have been fallen in with on the coast ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... miles were trying, for the coast was swampy and thickly grown up to underbrush; but in time the jungle gave place to higher timber and to open savannas deep in guinea-grass. Soon after noon the travelers came to a farm, the owner of which was known to one of the guides, and here a ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... The swampy lake extended for about half a mile from where they were standing to the lower buttresses of the mountain. Feathery purple reeds showed themselves here and there through the shallows. The water was dark green. Maskull did not see how they ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... "roadmaking" was capable of several interpretations. In general, it meant outlining the course for the new thoroughfare, clearing away fallen timber, blazing or notching the trees so that the traveler might not miss the track, and building bridges or laying logs "over all the marshy, swampy, and difficult dirty places." ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... long time after the course of the steamer Sofala had been altered for the land, the low swampy coast had retained its appearance of a mere smudge of darkness beyond a belt of glitter. The sunrays seemed to fall violently upon the calm sea—seemed to shatter themselves upon an adamantine surface into sparkling dust, into a dazzling vapor of light that blinded the eye ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... joined his companion at the oars; when they rapidly passed round the headland, and soon entered the bay-like recess of water, which, sweeping round in a large wood-fringed circle, opened upon the view immediately beyond. After skirting along the sometimes bold and rocky, and sometimes low and swampy, thickly-wooded shore, with a sharp lookout for whatever might come within range of the eye, but without stopping for any special examination till they had reached the most secluded part of the cove, the hunter suspended his oar, and signified his intention of landing. Accordingly, running in ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... this cleared spot, which looked swampy and unwholesome, were serried rows of trees, every one of which was dead as if from a blight, and offering with their gaunt, leafless branches a sharp contrast to the green leafiness of ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... lad, that wouldn't be ordinary warfare. Well, we had better run into one of these little creeks, and land," he continued, as he turned to inspect the low, swampy shore. "Plenty of hiding-places there, where we can lie and watch the junks, and wait for the ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... us something over an hour and a half to reach the edge of the marsh, but once there our task became much easier, for the soft soil showed plentiful evidences of the great brutes' passage. Threading our way through the swampy land, we came at last to a ford of the river, and here we could see where the poor wounded animal had lain down in the mud and water in the hope of easing himself of his pain, and could see also how his two faithful companions had assisted him to rise again. We crossed the ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... because, from the glimpse that I was able to catch of the river, I had very little doubt that its characteristics were precisely those of all the other rivers in that region, namely, a somewhat sluggish current of water thick with foul and fetid mud, swampy margins overgrown with mangroves, and numerous shallow, winding creeks, mangrove-bordered, discharging into it on either side; and it was highly probable that, failing to find a firm bank upon which to land along the margin of the river itself, the mutineers had proceeded in search of such ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... to the south-west of the castle is a lake, said to abound with a species of leech. It does not afford one good subject for the pencil, being without islands, the margin swampy, and the adjacent trees planted with too much attention to regularity. It is a very generally believed tradition that, before Blarney surrendered to King William's forces, Lord Clancarty's plate was made up in an 'oaken chest, which was thrown into this lake, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... the ground between the bananas and yam patch was wet and swampy, and dug two large holes about a yard deep and square; the water trickled in very fast, and they were up to their ankles before ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... from the attack of the Romans, and on the side of the Parthiscus they are secured from any irruptions of the barbarians. Since along its course the greater part of the ground is frequently under water from the floods, and always swampy and full of osiers, so as to be quite impassable to strangers; and besides the mainland there is an island close to the mouth of the river, which the stream itself seems to have separated ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... older than the mole," he said, "yet from him I take my name. In dry ground I make poor progress; where it is muddy and swampy, I can run through it, like a fish through water. When the mole came into being, he borrowed the pattern of my fore feet—shovel and pick and spade in one. Like me, he learnt to run backwards or forwards, and that is why his hair has no set in it. Whichever ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... of the canoes. The other three soon found the track of the Red Man and followed it up like blood-hounds. At first they had no difficulty in following the trail, being almost as expert as Indians in woodcraft, but soon they came to swampy ground, and then to stony places, in which they utterly lost it. Again and again did they go back to pick up the lost trail, and follow it only ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... are not sure which—the Raturan savages made some advances into their swampy grounds and began to improve them. This region lay very remote from the Mountain-men's villages, but, as it approached the mountain base in a round-about manner, and as the mountain-tops could be distinctly seen from the region, although well-nigh impassable swamps still lay between ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... entered the great east-west waterway of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, which carried them around the northern end of the Appalachian barrier into the heart of the continent, planted them on the low, swampy, often navigable watershed of the Mississippi, and started them on another river voyage of nearly two thousand miles to the Gulf of Mexico. Here were the conditions and temptation for almost unlimited expansion; hence French Canada ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... near the mouth of the Liris, now the Garigliano, and in a swampy district. The lower course of the Garigliano is through a flat, marshy, unhealthy region. If Marius landed near Circeii he could not well have passed Teracina without being seen. It in probable therefore that he landed ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... I had arrived at a dim surmise that when such differences were carried to the point of madness and bloodshed. Really, they constituted an expression of the unmeaning, hopeless, melancholy life that is lived in the wilder and more remote districts of Russia—of the life that is lived on swampy banks of dingy rivers, and in our smaller and more God-forgotten towns. For it would seem that in such places men have nothing to look for, nor any knowledge of how to look for anything; wherefore, they brawl and shout in vain attempts ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... caravan went on, and we began to see many tracks of caribou, chiefly does and fawns. In low swampy places we several times came across old wind-and rain-bleached antlers, shed in the late fall ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... in the chase; and, as he passed through the fern patch, perceived that his quarry lay dead. He then followed the chase, and, being very fleet of foot, soon came up with Oswald, and passed him without speaking. The stag made for a swampy ground, and finally took to the water beyond it, and stood at bay. Edward then waited for Oswald, who came ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... people a moderate degree of hepatic obstruction, by a residence in swampy districts, is often found beneficial in diminishing the exalted sensibility and irritability of phthisical patients. Viscous engorgements of the lungs destroy more negroes than all other diseases combined. They are distinguished ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... burned, vegetation even on the swampy ground catching fire as the entire vicinity crackled and hissed with heat. Neither of them seemed to take any notice of ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... we drove over the prairie at a moderate rate, delays having become things of the past, we were for the next hour almost merry. This transient joy was soon dispelled by our driver, who, without any warning, turned off the road through some swampy ground. Pulling up suddenly before an apparently unbroken line of trees, he craned his neck first one way and then the other in search of an opening, unheeding the expostulations in French and English with which he was assailed, ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... a crooked stick before the eye that could see when I wanted the creature to turn. In this way I began my horse-alphabet. First, we waded through the plantains and burdocks, at a slow walk, with a stumble now and then, which set my little heart to quaking like a swampy bog trod upon. Then I grew venturesome, and the old grey warmed into a soft trot, which shook me up like anything, but was more exhilarating than the walk. With my bare feet pressed close to the animal's side and my fingers gripped into his mane, I ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... shore. We had a good road towards Paestum, and in defiance of a cold drizzling day we went on at a round pace. The country through which we travelled was wooded and stocked with wild animals towards the fall of the hills, and we saw at a nearer distance a large swampy plain, pastured by a singularly bizarre but fierce-looking buffalo, though it might maintain a much preferable stock. This palace of Barranco was anciently kept up for the King's sport, but any young man having a certain degree of interest is allowed ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the direction he had decided upon Pepper pursued his way, swerving now to the right and again to the left to avoid some all but impassable thicket or some swampy bit of ground, until he judged that he had gone ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... discouraging pillagers, open their arms to all comers—with purpose of the deadliest. Of these betrayers the chief is the round-leaved sun-dew, which plies its nefarious vocation all the way from Labrador to Florida. Its favourite site is a peat-bog or a bit of swampy lowland, where in July and August we can see its pretty little white blossoms beckoning to wayfaring flies and moths their token of good cheer! Circling the flower-stalk, in rosette fashion, are a dozen or more round leaves, each of ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... hothouse exotic has ever done. Royal in color as in lavish profusion, it blossoms everywhere - in woods, waysides, meadows, and marshes, but always in finer form in cool, shady dells; with longer flowering scapes in meadow bogs; and with longer leaves than wide in swampy woodlands. The heart-shaped, saw-edged leaves, folded toward the center when newly put forth, and the five-petalled, bluish-purple, golden-hearted blossom are too familiar for more detailed description. From the three-cornered ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... Craig went there and back between noon and two o'clock, Professor Gehren says. Now, we've got to find such a place which is near a stretch of deserted, swampy ground, very badly infested with mosquitoes. I'd thought of the Hackensack Meadows, just across the ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... would be well-nigh impossible to send further aid into the town. Vere took with him 900 English and 900 Dutch infantry, and 800 Dutch cavalry. The enemy had possession of a fortified country house called Loo, close to which lay a thick wood traversed only by a narrow path, with close undergrowth and swampy ground on either side. The enemy were in great force around Loo, and came out to attack the expedition as it passed through the wood. Sending the Dutch troops on first, Vere attacked the enemy vigorously with his infantry and drove them back to the inclosure of Loo. ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... of a cragsman, I did manage to get half way to the top of that. From that height I had a better idea of the plateau upon the top of the crags. It appeared to be very large; neither to east nor to west could I see any end to the vista of green-capped cliffs. Below, it is a swampy, jungly region, full of snakes, insects, and fever. It is a natural protection to this ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the half-breeds at Batoche, he surrendered unconditionally. Another expedition under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Strange also relieved Fort Pitt; and Big Bear was forced to fly into the swampy fastnesses of the prairie wilderness, but was eventually captured near Fort Carleton by ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... at last told me in broad Yorkshire, that he thought the place I was looking for must be what they called "the bishop's house," where Squire Dickinson lived. Set at last upon the right track, I walked across two swampy meadows that bordered the Idle River—pertinently named—till I came to a solitary farmhouse with a red-tiled roof. Some five or six slender poplar-trees stood at the back of it, and a ditch of water at one ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... from Lone Star Mountain, led them now directly to the bend of the creek, the base of their old ineffectual operations. Here was the beginning of the famous tail—race that skirted the new trader's claim, and then lost its way in a swampy hollow. It was choked with debris; a thin, yellow stream that once ran through it seemed to have stopped work when they did, and gone into ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... rode first, and the others followed one by one, and the experienced old hunter, by advancing steadily without hurry, avoided these dangers. They soon reached a vast plain three hundred miles across, utterly deserted by the human race; a desert composed half of barren rock and half of swampy quagmire, soft above, but at a foot deep solid and perpetual ice. Fortunately, it was now frozen hard, and the surface was fit to bear the horses. But for this the party must have halted and waited for a severe frost. The rivers were not frozen ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... Clare's regiment, which, with Lee and Dorrington's battalions, was stationed with the force in Oberglau in the centre of our position. It seemed to us, and to our generals, that our position was almost impregnable. It lay along a ridge, at the foot of which was a rivulet and deep swampy ground. On the right of the position was the village of Blenheim, held by twenty-seven battalions of good French infantry, twelve squadrons, and twenty-four pieces of cannon. Strong entrenchments had been thrown up round our position, but these were not altogether completed. ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... in the sun. At length vegetation, long repressed, bursts forth, but in no profuse luxuriance. A few dwarf birches unfold their leaves amid the rocks; a few sub-arctic willows hang out their catkins beside the swampy runnels; the golden potentilla opens its bright flowers on slopes where the evergreen Empetrum nigrum slowly ripens its glossy crow-berries; and from where the sea-spray dashes at full tide along the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... canals with the ruins. When the conquest was finished, but one district of the city was left standing, and in it were crowded a quarter of the population, miserable famished wretches, who had surrendered when their king was taken. All that was left besides was a patch of swampy ground strewed with fragments of walls, a few pyramids too large for present destruction, and such great heaps of dead bodies that it was impossible to get from place to place without ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... The country near the shore was low and unfit for culture, but in one place we perceived a patch of somewhat yellow, which had greatly the appearance of a corn field, yet was probably nothing more than some dead flags, which are not uncommon in swampy places:[52] At some distance we saw groves of trees, which appeared high and tapering, and being not above two leagues from the south-west cod of the great bay, in which we had been coasting for the two last days, I hoisted out the pinnace ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... of de swampy farm An' gettin' up winter night, Watchin' de stove if de win' get higher For fear de chimley go on fire, It's makin' poor Louis feel so tire He tell de ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... rough, but it's handy t'ing enough, An' dey mak' it wit' de log all jine togeder W'en dey strek de swampy groun' w'ere de water hang aroun' Or passin' by some tough ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... the kitchen vegetables and pot-herbs. Above all, the noting of the appearance of the first roses should not be omitted; nor of the Arethusa, one of the delicatest, gracefullest, and in every manner sweetest of the whole race of flowers. For a fortnight past I have found it in the swampy meadows, growing up to its chin in heaps of wet moss. Its hue is a delicate pink, of various depths of shade, and somewhat in the form of a Grecian helmet. To describe it is a feat beyond my power. Also the visit of two friends, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the extreme end of the peninsula of Florida. It is approximately six miles long, has an average width of one mile, and resembles a little in shape a huge comma, with the city of Key West for its head and a diminishing curve of low, swampy chaparral and mangrove-bushes for a tail. The shallow bay of pale-green water between the head and the tail on the concave side of the comma is known as "the bight." It is the anchorage of the sponging-fleet, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... forced to wade great rivers, or worse still, to walk over them on swaying bridges made of cables of twisted reeds that until I grew accustomed to them caused my head to swim, though never did I permit myself to show fear before the natives. Again, once we came to swampy lands that were full of snakes which terrified me much, especially after I had seen some natives whom they bit, ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... Before the break of day, Our raw and hasty levies Were brought into array. No cotton-bales before us— Some fool that falsehood told; Before us was an earthwork, Built from the swampy mould. And there we stood in silence, And waited with a frown, To greet with bloody welcome The bulldogs ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... broad hint which most men would have taken; and it did keep Andy ruefully quiet for a season or two. Then, however, having again saved up a trifle, he could not resist the temptation to drain the swampy corner of the farthest river-field, which was as kind a bit of land as you could wish, only for the water lying on it, and in which he afterward raised himself a remarkably fine crop of white oats. The sight of them 'done his heart good,' he said, exultantly, nothing recking that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... seemed to surprise them exceedingly; and as if they did not think themselves safe in such company, they walked away; but it was soon after discovered, that their spears, and other weapons, were hid in the bushes close behind them. Mr King also informed me, that the ground was swampy, and the soil poor, light, and black. It produced a few trees and shrubs; such as pines, alders, birch, and willows; rose and currant bushes; and a little grass; but they saw not a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... means, though gardeners who do not keep pace with their age still pronounce it a hopeless rebel. Sir Hugh Low tells me that he clothed all the trees round Government House at Pahang with Vanda teres, planting its near relative, V. Hookeri, more exquisite still, if that were possible, in a swampy hollow. His servants might gather a basket of these flowers daily in the season. So the memory of the first President for Pahang will be kept green. A plant rarely seen is V. limbata from the island of Timor—dusky yellow, the ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... fevers, but that there ever should have been a time when illness was not rife in such a locality. Sheltered from anything like a free circulation of air by hills rising abruptly from the seashore, swampy by nature, crowded to excess by thousands of emigrants from all parts of the coast added to its own swarming population, it seems little short of marvellous that even by day Europeans can contrive to exist there long ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... against peoples of the same race as themselves, as vigorous and as brave as they. Some who were not content to obey they exterminated. The rich plains of the Volscians became a swampy wilderness, uninhabitable even to the present time, the gloomy region of the ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... cushion-like tufts at the bottom of the water, and were tender and wholesome. These formed an agreeable addition to their diet, which had hitherto been chiefly confined to animal food, for they could not always meet with a supply of the bread-roots, as they grew chiefly in damp, swampy thickets on the lake shore, which were sometimes very difficult of access; however, they never missed any opportunity of increasing their stores, and laying up for the winter such roots as ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... Ilife, as in the Benin region, granite, quartz and hard stone materials are in their natural state very, very limited, if not altogether absent. Like Benin, Ilife is in the Niger delta region, and, as Frobenius points, is of rather a swampy character. It is a geological fact that hard stone in any quantity is seldom to be found in such regions. In addition to this, Frobenius, as was pointed out above, states that the foundations of the ancient buildings are of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... moon was full. It edged over the low hill flanking Glen Oaks on the east. June bugs buzzed ponderously like armor-plated dragons toward the lights glowing faintly from the town. Frogs croaked from the swampy meadows and ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton
... the edge of the pond. The fresh breeze in my face induced me to try to creep down close to the edge of the pond, to see if it were possible to surprise birds there, should I find any on my next hunting trip. Just below me, at the foot of the hill, was a swampy run leading toward the pond, with grass nearly a foot high growing along its edge. I must ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... our search, we found ourselves on some low swampy ground, where there were said to be abundance of 'possums. But I had no sooner entered the swamp than I was covered with musquitoes of the most ravenous character. They rose from the ground in thousands, and fastened on my "new chum" skin, from which ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... the innumerable rivers, lakes, swamps, vast savannas, and ponds, form so many secure retreats and temporary dwelling-places that effectually guard them from any sudden invasions or attacks from their enemies; and being such a swampy, hommocky country, furnishes such a plenty and variety of supplies for the nourishment of varieties of animals that I can venture to assert that no part of the globe so abounds with wild game, or creatures fit for the food ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... make a good countenance when the English army had advanced in the neighborhood of it. That it was M. de Vaudreuil who commanded-in-chief in Canada, and not M. de Levis; and that there was yet a possibility of retiring with the garrison towards the north side of the island, where the swampy ground upon the border of the river had hindered the English from establishing a post." De Bougainville immediately decided for a retreat, which was executed and combined with equal justness; and the success ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone
... brushwood extended from the fences well into the fields, and in a notable instance across the entire place. One portion was so stony that it could not be plowed; another so wet and sour that even grass would not grow upon it; a third portion was not only swampy, but liable to be overwhelmed with stones and gravel twice a year by the sudden rising of a mountain stream. There was no fruit on the place except apples and a very few pears and grapes. Nearly all of the land, as I ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... exists so much more among the poor than among the rich, to be, from the want of better accommodation as residence, (their dwellings instead of being built of solid materials are complete shells of mud on a spot of waste land the most swampy in the parish; this is to be met with almost everywhere in rural districts) to the want of better clothing, being better fed, more attention paid to the cleanliness of their dwellings, ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... a few days where we were encamped to repose our horses and enable them to support the fatigues of our journey through the rugged and swampy wilderness of North-east Texas. Three days after the execution of the three prisoners, some of our Indians, on their return from a buffalo chase, informed us that several Texan companies, numbering two hundred men, were advancing in ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... the Salado the country is low and swampy, with tosca-rock appearing at long intervals at the surface. On the banks, however, of the Tapalguen (sixty miles south of the Salado) there is a large extent of tosca-rock, some highly compact and even semi-crystalline, overlying pale Pampean mud with ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... day the spell deepened with Louie, and for another week there was delightful loneliness with this lover of hers—strolls down through the swampy woods hunting for moss to frame the prints he had brought home uninjured, and which were to be part of the furnishing of their future home; others across the salt meadows for the little red samphire stems to pickle; sails in the float down ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... stated, his property; they are situated on one of the small hills that overlook the town; the Sheik removes there with his family during the rainy season, as it is in some degree less unhealthy than the swampy ground below. ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... a hurry, sir,' he said, gravely; 'when you lose your way of a dark night, in a swampy country, and see a light ahead, don't begin to clap your hands and cry hooray till you know what kind of light it is. It may be a Jack-o'-lantern; or it may be the identical lamp over the door of the house you're bound for. You leave this business to me, ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the baron's ship unluckily came from the Grand Banks to port on that circular bank of sand known as Sable Island—from twenty to thirty miles as the tide shifts the sand, with grass waist high and a swampy lake in the middle. The Baron de Lery unloads his stock on Sable island and roves the ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Frances made to the lake after her return, discovered to her, that it was sadly changed. It was no longer full to overflowing, but swampy and low; the water was constantly drained off to supply the manufactory and mills which were erected at a distance. Mr. Draper had found out that the little stream could much more than earn its own living, ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee |
