"Watercourse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at full speed. Most of them were on horseback, but a number loped along on foot, keeping up with the animals. One look was enough. I raced down to my companions again; and we hastily took refuge in the only cover near enough to conceal us—a little clump of willows in a small, damp watercourse. There we ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... piled-up heap of dbris and broken trees, while the old stream had been obliterated and the stream could be seen flowing over a sandy bed, which must have been raised many feet above the level of the old watercourse." ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... multitude of small silvery fish from one and a half to two inches in length, leaping on the gravel of the high road, numbers of which I collected and brought away in my palankin. The spot was about half a mile from the sea, and entirely unconnected with any watercourse or pool. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... for variety's sake, I stayed at home and amused myself by catching huge pike, which lie perdue in certain deep ponds skirted with lofty reeds, upon my land, and to which there is a communication from the lagoon by a deep and narrow watercourse. I had almost forgotten the ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... the bird slightly moved its head, when I saw its beak, and knew it was a pheasant immediately. I then stepped forward—almost on the bird—and a young pheasant rose, and flew between the tree-trunks to a deep dry watercourse, where it ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... out a V-shaped twig, the forks of which were each about a foot long, and walked slowly along the ground a short distance from the well. Suddenly the twig revolved ... and Mullins confidently asserted that he was standing over a subterranean watercourse. Proceeding to the other side of the well, he traced, or professed to trace, the course of the hidden stream, and marked a spot contiguous to the buildings where he asserted a good spring would be tapped at a depth ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... inch upward, scanning minutely the treacherous ground over which they were soon to venture. Had there been running water within sight the searching sun must have revealed it. He saw none, nor did he catch any signs that indicated a watercourse. ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... was located at the head of Clearwater Lake, a beautiful sheet of water about two miles long and half a mile wide and containing a number of picturesque islands. At the head of the lake was the Rick Rack River, running down from the hills and woods beyond. Up in the hills it was a wild and rocky watercourse containing a number of dangerous rapids, but where it passed Colby Hall it was a broad and fairly deep stream, joining the lake at a point where there were two rocky islands. The distance from the railroad station to the Military ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... with Captain Brooke to visit some of the battalions of General Hart's Brigade and see what sort of punishment they were receiving. As we rode up the watercourse which marks the bottom of the valley a shrapnel shell cleared the western crest line and exploded among one of the battalions. At first it seemed to have done no harm, but as we climbed higher and nearer we met a stretcher carried by six soldiers. On it lay a body with a handkerchief thrown ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... cried he, getting up on his feet, and stretching himself. "Still, a man doesn't starve in four days. I've cast my bread on the waters. It has evidently gone down the stream. Now, what's to hinder a man escaping by means of that watercourse? Still, if he did, what would be the use? He'd float out into the Baltic Sea, and if able to swim round the rock, would merely be compelled to knock at the front door and beg admission again. No, by Jove, there's the boat, but they probably guard it night and ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... vastnesses of silent snow, the glittering of ballroom lights, great galleries and lecture halls, a fleeting shimmer of glistening test-tubes, long rows of book-lined shelves, the throb of machinery and the roar of traffic, a fragment of forgotten song, faces of dear women and old chums, a lonely watercourse amid upstanding peaks, a shattered boat on a pebbly strand, quiet moonlit fields, fat ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... perfect lucidity, that it is to him, and no one else, that backsheesh is due. He sings snatches of music as old and strange as the hills; picks us balls of cotton, and prickly pear; and once stops to point to the fresh tracks of a panther. We are in the winding gorge of a watercourse; and presently, at a turn, in a semicircle facing south, we see in the cliff the long line of caves. As we enter the first an intolerable odour meets us, and a flight of bats explains the cause. Gradually ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Just as at first reported, the Indians in overwhelming numbers had suddenly charged down upon the detachment from behind a ridge that lay full half a mile to the east of the road; while others, crouching in a dry watercourse, had picked off the leading soldiers,—the two men thrown out to the front to scout the trail and secure the main body against surprise. Hatton, all told, had only twenty men, and the fall of the two far in the advance had for an instant flurried their comrades back ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... narrow track that grew steeper at every step. The moon presently ceased to help us here, so that my guides lit torches, which flared and cast long shadows on the rocky wall. By degrees the track became a mere watercourse, up which we could only scramble one by one. So narrow was it that two men could scarcely pass, yet so richly clothed in vegetation that our torches scorched the overhanging ferns. Peter led the way, and I followed close at his heels, for fear of loose stones; but every ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... protected by an exceedingly deep ravine, which was a watercourse cut by the torrents from the mountain. I accordingly took a party of the "Forty Thieves," and following along the edge of the ravine, ascended the slope that led to the stockades upon the heights. Great numbers of natives had assembled, and were shouting ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... by way of the Sangamon River that he entered politics. That uncertain watercourse had already twice befriended him. He had floated on it in flood-time from his father's cabin into Springfield. A few weeks later its rapidly falling waters landed him on the dam at Rutledge's mill, introducing him effectively if unceremoniously to ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... aspect does the Missouri appeal to the imagination. From Three Forks to its mouth—a distance of three thousand miles—this zigzag watercourse is haunted with great memories. Perhaps never before in the history of the world has a river been the thoroughfare of a movement so tremendously epic in its human appeal, so vastly significant in its relation to the development ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... line and the high-road between Laval and Le Mans were near at hand, and only a few miles away there was the old town of Sille-le-Guillaume, one of the chief grain and cattle markets of the region. There was considerable forest-land in the vicinity, and wood was abundant. But there was no watercourse, and the wells of the various adjacent little farms yielded but a very inadequate supply of water for a camp in which at one moment some 40,000 men were assembled. Thus, at the outset, the camp lacked one great essential, and such was the case when I visited it in November. But I am bound ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... lady's interest could get from the Linen Board to distribute gratis. Then there was a bleach-yard near us, and the tenant dare refuse my lady nothing, for fear of a lawsuit Sir Murtagh kept hanging over him about the watercourse. With these ways of managing, 'tis surprising how cheap my lady got things done, and how proud she was of it. Her table the same way, kept for next to nothing [See GLOSSARY 6]; duty fowls, and duty turkeys, and duty geese, came as fast as we could eat ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... of swelling hills and grassy fields can one get out of either sight or sound of running water. Every little dip in the hills has its watercourse, every vale its broader stream, and the pleasant sound of their murmurings and sweet babbling fills in the background of every remembrance of days spent upon the green slopes of the Cheviots. You may hear in ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... sorry afterwards that I had not taken Ursula, and sent Elsie to Lungern to rouse the men; for she found the climbing hard, and I had difficulty at times in dragging her up the steep and stony pathway, almost a watercourse. However, we persisted in the direction of the Kulm, tracking Harold by his footprints; for he wore mountain boots with sharp-headed nails, which made dints in the moist soil, and scratched the smooth surface of the rock where he ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... Irish lakes, whose name is legion, were formed by depression or upheaval, almost within the period of written history. A fertile valley traversed by a stream, a populous city by the little river, an earthquake-upheaval lower down the watercourse, closing the exit from the valley, a rising and spreading of the water, an exodus of the inhabitants, such has undoubtedly been the history of Lough Derg and Lough Ree, which are but reservoirs in the course of the River Shannon, while the upper and lower Erne lakes are ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... not gone a mile and had barely reached the dry watercourse, when the weather broke utterly in a storm of mist and fine rain. At other times this chill weather would have been a comfort, but here in these lonely altitudes, with a difficult path before him, its result was ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... now reeking of desolation far more than did the upper country when Tumwah descended upon it, had been deprived of its attractiveness and Warruk lost no time in leaving it. He followed the little watercourse straight to the marsh. And there new experiences ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... encamped beside a small watercourse near Mussel Brook, the thermometer at four P.M. being as high as 95 degrees. In the evening, the burning grass became rather alarming, especially as we had a small stock of ammunition in one of the carts. I had established our camp to the windward of the burning grass, ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... state. I carefully removed the uterus, the apparent embryo and the mammae, and put it in a wide-mouthed bottle with some spirits, and gave it in charge of the seaman who was to carry a portion of the animal for the dinner of that day. It was placed in a canvas bag, but on crossing a Deep watercourse he had the misfortune to break the bottle, which he never mentioned until the following day. The contents soon dried up and became an uniform mass. The intense heat had rendered it so firm that nothing could be made of it; all the gelatinous parts had adhered so firmly to ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... I might pass the stream while it was small. The wood was pretty open, and keeping along the lower spurs, I had soon turned the corner of that hill, and not long after waded to the mid-calf across the watercourse. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we reached the last divide, and sighted the scattering timber of the expected watercourse. The enforced order of the day before—to hold the herd in a walk and prevent exertion and heating—now required four men in the lead, while the rear followed over a mile behind, dogged and sullen. Near the middle of the afternoon, McCann returned ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year! Sometimes, in following up a watercourse among our hills, in the early spring, one comes to a weird and desolate place, where one huge wild grapevine has wreathed its ragged arms around a whole thicket and brought it to the ground,—swarming to the tops of hemlocks, clenching a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... heart Jael turned from her, yet not without hope. He hastened on, keeping to directions. He saw the willows by the watercourse and heard the murmur of the river. He cleared the marsh. He came to the still pool. He saw the bed of rushes piled by the spring flood against the bleached sycamore. All was as pictured by the Wise Man of the East. Softly he made his way toward the bed of rushes with eyes ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... Mormonism in the American States has been a failure. Every avenue of communication with Utah is necessarily obstructed. No railroad penetrates to within eleven hundred miles of Salt Lake Valley. There is no watercourse within four hundred miles, on which navigation is practicable. Neither the Columbia nor the Colorado empties into seas bordered by nations from which the Mormons derive accessions; and the length of a voyage up the Mississippi, Missouri, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... the watchful guardians of the Wild sent the mule-deer to Harry the man who had been a pot-hunter. A buck of three years came down the draw by the watercourse and nibbled the young shoots of the vines where he could reach them across the rabbit proof fencing that the settler had drawn about his planted acres. Not that the wire netting would have stopped him; this was merely the opening of the game. Three ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... prevented. The first or lowest row consists of six arches, with a span of 60 ft. each, except the largest, which has 75 ft. The second row consists of eleven arches of the same dimensions as the first, and the third of 35 arches of 15 ft. span. Astair from the right bank of the river leads up to the watercourse above the topmost tier of arches. In the striking boldness of its design this bridge exhibits a decided improvement and superiority over all the other Roman aqueducts. The arches are wider, and the piers in proportion lighter, and had the same principle been extended so as to ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... them off. The fellows seemed utterly unafraid of the great beasts leaping and snarling about them, handling them much the same as one might handle a pack of obstreperous dogs. Along the bed of the old watercourse that once ran through the gorge they made their way, and as the first faint lightening of the eastern horizon presaged the coming dawn, they paused for a moment upon the edge of a declivity, which appeared to the girl in the strange light ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... There was the path between the shanty and the landing-place to be put in proper condition; various muddy places in it to be covered with fascines; a certain watercourse we were in the habit of jumping to be newly-bridged, and so forth. Then there was the catering. Two of us were out with guns, shooting turkeys, pheasants, pigeons, fowls, and anything else that was eatable. Others were butchering the fairest and fattest pig ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... persist, are unreal. The case is analogous to that of the snake-rope. The rope which persists as a substrate is real, while the non-continuous things (which by wrong imagination are superimposed on the rope) such as a snake, a cleft in the ground, a watercourse, and so on, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... shriller insect chorus of midsummer. Garden patches, about through their summer yield, were a tangle of bubble-tinted morning glories, the open woods misty with wild asters, bell flowers trembling from the crevices of rocks; and along fence-row and watercourse turkey-pea, brook sunflower, queen of the meadow, and joepye-weed ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... and it was suggested that Gif led the way, which he did. They left the main stream and started up a smaller watercourse leading directly ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... near it lay the graves of the Wild Men, one with the normal awning of palm-fronds honoris causa. There were signs of stone-quarrying, and at one place a road had been cut in the rock. Leaving on the north the left side of the watercourse, with its rushes (Scirpus), and huge-headed reeds (Arundo donax), its dates and Daums—the two latter often scorched and killed by the careless Bedawi—we struck into a parallel formation, the Wady el Wuday, bone-dry and much trodden by camels. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... and it lay direct a high heathery hill, which I afterward found is called "The Tongue," because hemmed in on three sides by a watercourse. It looked as if, could I only get to the bottom of that, I should be on comparatively level ground. I then attempted to descend in the watercourse, but, finding that impracticable, climbed on the hill again and let myself down ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... on a still and frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping; on this side huddled together with their gray hairs streaming in a secluded valley, which the sun had not penetrated; on that hurrying off in Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow. The river, viewed from the high bank, appeared of a yellowish green color, though ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... to keep the Thames clean, and at the mouth of every sewer or watercourse there was a strong iron grating two feet deep.—Guildhall ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... fortified its banks. The Shurappu, according to Delitzsch, would be the Shatt Umm-el-Jemal; according to Delattrc, the Kerkha; the account of the campaign under consideration would lead me to recognise in it a watercourse like the Tib, which runs into the Tigris near Amara, in which case the ruins of Kherib would perhaps correspond with the site ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to the east the low, concave sweep of the prairie was cut by the jagged banks and curves of a watercourse which drained the melting snows in earlier spring. Along the further bank a dozen buffalo were placidly grazing, unconscious of the fact that in the shallow, dry ravine itself half a dozen young Indians—Sioux, apparently—were ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... The wretched appearance of the country as we penetrated into it, damped our spirits; we pressed on, however, with difficulty, over ground that was totally destitute of vegetation. Instead of lofty timber and a living stream, we wandered along the banks of an insignificant watercourse, and under trees of stunted size and scanty foliage. We stopped on the 20th at the angle of a creek, in which there was some dry grass, in consequence of the animals being almost in a starving state, but even here they had but little ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... yards long, made of fine black silk, with a small mesh, are used in some parts of the country for taking kingfishers. These nets are stretched across a small watercourse or the arch of a bridge in such a manner that, a little "slack" being allowed, the bird is taken to a certainty in attempting to pass. So fatal is this net when skilfully set, that I know one man who adds several ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... thin with plaster, held up its gables and chimneys over a stone-tiled roof. To the left, big barns and byres—a farm-man leading in a young bull with a pole at the nose-ring; beyond that, open fields, with a dyke and a flood-wall of earth, grown over with nettles, withered sedges in the watercourse, and elms in which the rooks were clamorously building. We met with the ready, simple Berkshire courtesy; we were referred to a gardener who was in charge. To speak with him, we walked round to the other side of the house, to an open space of grass, where the fowls picked ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... see, in every direction, it was the same; forest and hill. And, in the heart of it all, the great watercourse of the Beaver River debouched upon the cove which linked it with the ocean beyond. It was a world of forest, ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... reached on the 10th of September, 1844. Here Eyre left them, and on the 11th of October the explorers arrived at Williorara, the place where they intended leaving the Darling for the interior. The appearance of this watercourse very much disappointed Sturt, he had hoped from the account of the natives to find in it a fair-sized creek, heading from a low range, distantly visible to the north-west; instead, he found it a mere channel for the flood water of the Darling, distributing it into some shallow ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... am still!' cried Synesius, tears of excitement glittering in his eyes;.... while Raphael gave himself up to the joy, and forgot even Victoria, in the breathless rush over rock and bush, sandhill and watercourse. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... precipitous than the climb and far shorter to the plateau. Just where the true mountains broke out into a pleasant medley of foothills, the stallion stopped to rest. He nibbled a few mouthfuls of grass growing lush and rank on the edge of a watercourse, waded to the knees in a still pool and blotted out the star-images with the disturbance of his drinking, and then went back onto a hilltop ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... of maybe a hundred yards, though planted in corn, was now given up to grass, and live-stock, getting into it at some unseen point, had eaten and trampled everywhere. The farther half was thinly covered with a poor stand of cotton, and between the corn and the cotton a small, trench-like watercourse crossed our line of view at right angles and vanished in the woods at the field's eastern edge. The farther border of this run was densely masked by a growth of brake-cane entirely lacking on the side next us. Between the cotton ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... was not distasteful to me. It reminded me of days out hunting, when I have come suddenly upon him at the edge of the watercourse, and have shared his melons and his conversation. I anticipate for him some not unagreeable experiences. The lower order of divinities will probably adapt themselves with ease to our new conditions. They despaired the most ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... house to Tarrano's wall there was a dip, so that the wall stood upon higher ground. On my side, however, the reverse was true. The wall lay in a hollow in one place, with a steady upward slope back from it to uplands behind us, as though in some better day a broad watercourse had flowed down here, now long since buried in solid ice ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... from places where the soil is deep, or where, from being in a hollow, it will speedily again accumulate and sward over; and, in cutting peats, tenants shall on all occasions open the banks in a straight line, and in the line of the watercourse, and make proper drains from the lower end of the banks, in order to prevent the accumulation of stagnant water, and shall carefully preserve the surface feal, and as soon as the peats are cut, smooth the surface of the bottom of the banks, and replace ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... our rivers are apt to be strings of pools linked by muddy trickles—the most stagnant kind of watercourse you would look for in a day's journey. But presently they reach the edge of the plateau and are tossed down into the flats in noble ravines, and roll thereafter in full and sounding currents to the sea. So with the story I am ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... of the imports and exports shows an immense increase in the prosperity of this, if not salubrious sea-port, at least healthy watercourse. It seems that the importation of Margate slippers this year, as compared with that of the last, has been as two-and-three-quarters to one-and-a-half, or rather more than double, while the consumption of donkeys has been most gratifying, and proves beyond doubt that the pedestrians ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... just been performed, another must inevitably be performed to complete the first; what is done is done, and is never repeated. Like the watercourse, which cannot climb the hills and return to its source, the insect does not retrace its steps or repeat its actions, which follow one another invariably, and are inevitably connected in a necessary order, like a series of echoes, one of which awakens ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... the pocket furniture of fops,— Mirrors on every lady's zone,[13] From which his face reflected shone. What could our dear Narcissus do? From haunts of men he now withdrew, On purpose that his precious shape From every mirror might escape. But in his forest glen alone, Apart from human trace, A watercourse, Of purest source, While with unconscious gaze He pierced its waveless face, Reflected back his own. Incensed with mingled rage and fright, He seeks to shun the odious sight; But yet that mirror sheet, so clear and still, He cannot leave, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... 1/1st City of London Yeomanry, 1/1st County of London Yeomanry, and the 1/3rd County of London Yeomanry. At half-past twelve the Bucks Hussars less one squadron and the Berks battery, which were in the rear of the brigade, advanced via Beshshit to the wadi Janus, a deep watercourse with precipitous banks running across the plain east of Yebnah and joining the wadi Rubin. One squadron of the Bucks Hussars had entered Yebnah from the east, co-operating with the 8th Brigade. General Godwin was told over the telephone that the infantry attack was held up and ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... we got orders to move as we were certain to be shelled, lying as we were behind the Infantry of our Brigade. We accordingly moved after dark to a gully, which is really a dry watercourse entering the middle of the north side of the Salt Lake. Agassiz and I, followed at a short distance by a few men, had no difficulty in striking the desired spot, but the others, following in small lots, got ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... to the nest—leaving an aperture just large enough to be filled up by the beak of the female. The material employed by him for this purpose is a kind of agglutinated mud, which he procures from the neighbouring watercourse or quagmire, and somewhat similar to that used by the common house-swallow for constructing its peculiar nest. When dried, this mud becomes exceedingly hard—bidding defiance to the teeth and ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... city just as we reached the narrowest part of the gut, Grim leading, and its first rays showed that we were using the bed of a watercourse for a road. Exactly in front of us, glimpsed through a twelve-foot gap between cliffs six hundred feet high, was a sight worth going twice that distance, running twice that risk, to see—a rose-red temple front, carved out of the solid valley wall and glistening in the ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... yellow line of rippling light. Everywhere is glory and richness. What wonder if the earth in that enchanted land be as rich to her inmost depths as she is upon the surface? The heaven, the hills, the sea, are one sparkling garland of jewels—what wonder if the soil be jewelled also? if every watercourse and bank of earth be spangled with emeralds and rubies, with grains of gold and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... they ascended to the roof and stepped out upon a mosaic pavement of transparent tiles. Looking over the parapet, they beheld a country of vast extent, where field, forest, and watercourse combined in a landscape of rare beauty. Beneath lay the marble city with its palaces, parks, and fountains. In the distance were shadowy hills and gleaming lights; and above, a sky whose singular purity was reflected over all. The height was ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... permanence. The banks are well lined with box timber, as well as with marshmallows and wild spinach: the land on either side consists of well-grassed sandy rises. At four or five miles above this, the creek is a narrow, dry, sandy watercourse, winding through a grassy valley, which everywhere presents indications of the most violent floods. Beyond this is an extensive grassy plain; and for three or four miles scarcely a trace of the creek could be seen. We then came to a ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... which the boys went fishing and also bathing was a broad, shallow stream which could be forded in many places with ease. So far, however, the lads had remained on their side of the watercourse. But one day Jack proposed that they go off on horseback and do a little exploring on the ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... that appeared in July, 1894, in which, under the title of "The Course of True Love, etc.," Miss Di, a six-foot damsel, asks her five-foot-three curate-lover to pick her up and carry her across the watercourse, "as it is rather deep, don't you know;" and the Wiltshire village where it occurred and the chief actors in the little comedy became at once the talk of the county, and the water itself is pointed out as the scene of the incident. Mr. Hodgson, it may be noted, was introduced to Punch through ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... but prompt retreat. One gun had to be spiked and abandoned, Lieutenant Hardy of the Horse Artillery remaining by it until surrounded and killed. Some 500 yards further back, near the village of Baghwana, the three remaining guns stuck fast in a deep watercourse. At General Roberts' instance a second charge was attempted, to give time for their extrication; but it made no head, so that the guns had to be abandoned, and the gunners and drivers with their teams accompanied the ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... object of every one is to "get on the gutter," that is, to reach the lowest part of the old underground watercourse, through which for centuries the gold may have been accretionising from the percolation of the mineral-impregnated water; or, when derived from reefs or broken down leaders, the flow of water has acted as a natural sluice wherein the gold is therefore most thickly collected. Sometimes ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... me is a queer book. It is like a watercourse with an insufficient number of buoys, so that one might run aground at any moment. But I pricked the chart and found calm waters. Only, I couldn't do it again. The devil may crack these nuts which are rotten ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... pack-train was early on the way. The walls grew somewhat lower, though still two thousand feet high, and the canyon was usually seventy-five to one hundred feet wide at the bottom. There were patches of alluvial deposit now along the sides of the watercourse, covered by fields of cactus loaded with "apples," the prickly leaves compelling us to keep the trail the prospectors had made by their passage to and from the ephemeral Eldorado. After a time we emerged from the lower canyon into a wider one in the way previously described; that is, like ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... with our baggage and people to the opposite side of the river, and pitched our tents at the village of Goorashee. A small watercourse had brought down a large quantity of black sand. Thinking it probable that gold might exist in the same locality, I washed some earth in a copper basin, and quickly discovered a few specks of the precious metal. Gold is found in small quantities in the sand of the Atbara; ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... memorable affairs of Lodi and Arcoli. But these examples had not served to correct the Austrians, for on leaving Vienna, which is not suited to defence, they retired to the other side of the Danube without destroying a single one of the bridges spanning this vast watercourse, and limited themselves to placing inflammable material on the platform of the main bridge, in order to set it alight when the French appeared. They had also established on the left bank, at the end of the bridge ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... many rivers knows that every watercourse has an individuality, which is no more to be analyzed than the personality of one's dearest friend. Two rivers may flow almost side by side for a hundred miles, separated only by a range of hills, and resemble each other no more than two women. You may admire ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... trees, except small, thorny mimosas (they are really acacias, the commonest being Acacia horrida), whose scanty, light-green foliage casts little shade. On the higher mountains, where there is a little more moisture, a few other shrubs or small trees may be found, and sometimes beside a watercourse, where a stream runs during the rains, the eye is refreshed by a few slender willows; but speaking generally, this huge desert, one-third of South Africa, contains nothing but low bushes, few of which are fit even for fuel. Farther east, where the rainfall is heavier, the trees, ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... sky and leaked down between the cliffs; the cold gray dusk which comes before the dawn. The shadows melted slowly; the heavens began to blush. Down here a man could line the notch of his hindsight with the bead. A pebble tinkled in the arid watercourse. One of the sleepers stirred in his blankets. He caught the sound, opened his eyes, and saw the crown of a sombrero rising behind a rock. He leaped from his bed and flung himself among a clump of boulders just as the rifles ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... he rides along "The Mangy" watercourse till he comes to the lowland of "The Blind Cow." The barking of half a dozen mongrel curs leads him into the edge of the forest, and he comes upon the residence of Fulano de Tal. The man has perhaps recently moved to this spot, and has not had ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... English the word by "valley," which is about as correct as the "brook Kedron," applied to the grisliest of ravines. The Wady (in old Coptic wah, oah, whence "Oasis") is the bed of a watercourse which flows only after rains. I have rendered it by "Fiumara" (Pilgrimage i., 5, and ii., 196, etc.), an Italian or rather a Sicilian word which ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... conclusions, fixed upon the unchallengeable authority of his personal experience. It is like a man who has his own boat for crossing his village stream, but, on being compelled to wade across some strange watercourse, draws angry comparisons as he goes from every patch of mud and every ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... Exercise, the fresh air, the thought of seeing Robert, at least of being on his premises, in his vicinage, revived her somewhat depressed spirits quickly. Arriving in sight of the white house, and within hearing of the thundering mill and its rushing watercourse, the first thing she saw was Moore at his garden gate. There he stood, in his belted Holland blouse, a light cap covering his head, which undress costume suited him. He was looking down the lane, not in the direction of his cousin's approach. She stopped, withdrawing a little behind a willow, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... leg. Unfortunately, he could not deliver the cut in the right place, as the elephant, with increased speed, completely distanced the aggageers, then charged across the deep sand and reached the jungle. We were shortly upon his tracks, and after running about a quarter of a mile he fell dead in a dry watercourse. His tusks were, like those of most Abyssinian elephants, exceedingly short, ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... very unfrequented one, twisting like a mountain river—indeed, it was the bed of an old watercourse—between brown hills of wild oats, and debouching at last into a broad blue lake-like expanse of alfalfa[162-2] meadows. In vain I strained my eyes over the monotonous level; nothing appeared to rise above or move across it. In the faint hope that she might ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... in the bushes—if I can," was the answer, and Dave turned in the direction of the brushwood lining the watercourse. ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... went full swing over a roaring watercourse as he spoke, and alighted safe on the opposite bank, but the gravelly soil was treacherous; it gave way, and the animal's hind legs slipped back. With a bound ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... much elated by the discovery, as he knew that in the vicinity of a large watercourse he should find natives, and from some of these he had little doubt but that he should obtain news of Rokoff and the child, for he felt reasonably certain that the Russian would rid himself of the baby as quickly as possible ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... forces, Colonel F——, of the Coldstream Guards, in his tandem, drawn by two sprightly blood bays, with his servant, a light boy, mounted Creole fashion on the leader, was coming up in my wake at a spot where the road sank into a hollow, and was traversed by a watercourse already running knee deep, although dry as a ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... opposite slope, and adjacent to the road, stood an iron house which commanded the drift where the road crossed the above-mentioned watercourse. ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... aside and went down to the bed of a neighboring stream, thinking to come up behind the Indians while they were menaced by his comrades in front. Hearing a low murmur, he crept up through the bushes to a jutting rock on the brink of the watercourse, and peering cautiously over, he saw two Indians beneath him. They were sitting under a willow, talking in deep whispers; one was an ordinary warrior, the other, by his gigantic size, was evidently the famous chief himself. Andrew took steady aim at the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the ice and bleeding. When I was able to stand, I signalled to the frightened and wailing coolies above to go on, and I myself proceeded along the watercourse until I found a spot from which I could ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... have done credit to more youthful limbs. On reaching a ridge of rock that overlooked the cave where Maximus was sheltered, Old Moggy became aware of how matters stood. She could also see, from her elevated position, that a track, or the bed of a dried-up watercourse, led through the bushes towards the cave. Without a moment's delay she descended it; but, on drawing near to the cave, she found that there was a barren spot of about thirty yards in extent between the place of refuge and the edge of the bushes. This open space was completely exposed ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... Clive was approaching, ran a deep ditch with a high bank forming a regular battery. A body of French infantry were placed in support of the guns, with some Sepoys in reserve behind the grove. Parallel with the road on the left ran a deep watercourse, now empty, and in this the rest of the infantry were stationed, at a point near the town of Kavaripak, and about a quarter of a mile further back than the grove. On either side of this watercourse the enemy had ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... her Book, and wrote again on the flyleaf: "Who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of thunder, to cause it to rain on the earth where no man is, on the wilderness wherein there is no man, to satisfy the desolate and waste ground, and to cause the bud ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... started in the grey dawn, passed up a dry watercourse, and proceeded where the vine was queen and there fell a scented filigree of dead blossom from flowering olives. They had seen a million clusters of tiny grapes already rounding and had passed through ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... I say, some Ethiop, past pursuit Of all enslavers, dips a shackled foot, Burnt to the blood, into the drowsy, black, Enormous watercourse which guides him back To his own tribe again, where he is king; And laughs, because he guesses, numbering The yellower poison-wattles on the pouch Of the first lizard wrested from its couch Under ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... declined over a long, gradual slope. At the bottom of it was a broad, almost dried-out slough. A wooden culvert spanned the reed-grown watercourse. Then the trail made a sharpish ascent beyond, and lost itself behind a distant bush, beyond which again stretched out a ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... beneath the surface. All these valuable natural productions may be readily conveyed down the slopes of its mountains or across the plains, by short and easy routes by land and water, to the larger watercourse which places it in communication with the outer world; and as to the obstacles offered by the 'Iron Gates' to the navigation of the upper Danube, these are soon likely to disappear in an age when dynamite effects such vast revolutions in the industrial history of nations. Add to these facts that ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... trail led him down out of the hills by a little watercourse to the edge of the desert. Along the sides of this the chaparral grew thickly, and the spring by 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 ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... the boys, the skating on the river came to an end. Beyond, the stream was little better than a rocky watercourse, now thickly covered with ice ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... Pennsylvania, petroleum floated in such quantities on the surface of a branch of the Allegheny River that this small watercourse had for generations been known as Oil Creek. The neighboring farmers used to collect the oil and use it to grease their wagon axles; others, more enterprising, made a business of gathering the floating substance, packing it in bottles, and selling it broadcast ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... living in Waimea, Kauai, who wanted to construct a mano, or dam, across the Waimea River and a watercourse therefrom to a point near Kikiaola. Having settled upon the best locations for his proposed work, he went up to the mountains and ordered all the Menehunes that were living near Puukapele to prepare stones for the ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... Swamp Canal was at last ready for traffic between the Albemarle country and Norfolk, in the State of Virginia. A change was soon apparent in the trade of the towns thus connected by a new watercourse with the outer world. The dangerous voyages through the inlets and out into the ocean were by degrees abandoned, and almost all direct trade ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... course is again quite dry; it mounts with a sharp turn a very steep face of the mountain, and then stops abruptly at the lip of a plateau, I suppose the top of Vaea mountain: plainly no more springs here - there was no smallest furrow of a watercourse beyond - and my task might be said to be accomplished. But such is the animated spirit in the service that the whole advance guard expressed a sentiment of disappointment that an exploration, so far successfully conducted, should come to a stop in the most ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson |
