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Steep   Listen
noun
Steep  n.  A precipitous place, hill, mountain, rock, or ascent; any elevated object sloping with a large angle to the plane of the horizon; a precipice. "We had on each side naked rocks and mountains broken into a thousand irregular steeps and precipices." "Bare steeps, where desolation stalks."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Steep" Quotes from Famous Books



... introduction into mountainous regions like Armenia must have been immediately followed by a system of terracing, or at least scarping the hillsides. Pasture and meadow, indeed, may be irrigated even when the surface is both steep and irregular, as may be observed abundantly on the Swiss as well as on the Piedmontese slope of the Alps; but in dry climates, ploughland and gardens on hilly grounds require terracing, both for supporting the soil and for administering water by irrigation, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... runs into the sea near Buroach. The 5th, I passed the river Nerbuddah. The 6th, I travelled eight c. and lay in a wood, not far from the king's famous castle of Mandoa, [Mundu] which stands on a steep hill, of great extent, the walls being fourteen c. in circuit, this castle being of wonderous extent and great beauty. The 7th, I proceeded ten c. the 8th, eight c. the 9th, ten c. the 10th, twelve c. the 11th, sixteen c. the 12th, fourteen c. the 13th, six c. the 14th we halted ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... Switzerland. The road here is cut in the sides of huge granite rocks. At the base of the gorge rushes the foaming Reuss, tearing madly against the rocks, which try in vain to arrest its course. All the way from Geschenen to Andermatt the ascent is very steep—the road in some places being almost suspended over the Reuss. Of course, our progress was slow, as, in addition to the steepness of the road, we had to pass by (and sometimes through) huge snow drifts from twelve to twenty ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various

... the steep hill side with great difficulty, and not without one or two nasty slips, which, to a man of his age, was no trifle, but at length stood trembling with exertion before a flooded brook, across which lay a ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... the three stewed prunes, or the redolent boiled potato, and on Saturday mornings, almost to the thirty-odd of them, wasp-waisted, oiled-haired young negro girls in white-cotton stockings and cut-down high shoes enormously and rather horribly run down of heel, tilted pints of water over steep stone stoops and scratched at the trickle with ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... conscious of that fact, but fear—especially for their bellies' sake—to publish it. And both remind one of certain little blood-sucking animals which eat their way most obstinately into the surface of a foreign body in proportion as it is slippery and steep." ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... bodies of an herd of swine feeding by. This he graciously permitted. The devils left the men and entered the swine; whereupon the poor pigs, experiencing a novel sensation, never having had devils inside them before, "ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters." Whether the devils were drowned with the pigs this veracious history saith not. But the pigs themselves were not paid for. Jesus wrought the miracle at other people's expense. And the inhabitants of that part took precisely this view of the case. For ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... they took, Blake could not remember. She stopped and whispered to him to go softly, as they came to a stairway, as steep and dark as a cistern. Blake, at the top, could smell opium smoke, and once or twice he thought he heard voices. The woman stopped him, with outstretched arms, at the stair head, and together they ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... over the red cliffs and then climbed the steep steps that led to the top of the White Cliff. The night was beginning to gather her clouds about her, but still they did not hurry homewards. Far out, they could see the trawlers returning to the Bay, dipping and rising and plunging ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... of the grapes are not gathered till the first frosts have touched them, whereby the wine made from them is the stronger and sweeter. Anyhow there were the peasants, men and women, boys and young maidens, toiling and swinking; some hoeing between the vine-rows, some bearing baskets of dung up the steep slopes, some in one way, some in another, labouring for the fruit they should never eat, and the wine they should never drink. Thereto turned the King and got off his horse and began to climb up the stony ridges of the vineyard, and his lords in like manner followed ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... went away, and Alain fell into a mournful revery, from which he was roused by a loud ring at his bell. He opened the door, and beheld M. Louvier. The burly financier was much out of breath after making so steep an ascent. It was in gasps that he muttered, "Bon jour; excuse me if I derange you." Then entering and seating himself on a chair, he took some minutes to recover speech, rolling his eyes staringly round ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... went forth to open the fountain; but there were few that went with him, for he was a poor man of lowly aspect, and the path upward was steep and rough. But his companions saw that as he climbed among the rocks, little streams of water gushed from the places where he trod, and pools began to gather in the dry river-bed. He went more swiftly than they ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... teach you a lesson, Bobby Wentworth," scolded the mother, now that after various proddings she had determined to her satisfaction that none of the boy's bones were broken. "I wish to the Lord you was back where the hills are so steep there ain't no automobiles." ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... wagon-road made its crossing of a tiny stream, by slipping under the foot-bridge, some fifteen feet below. Down there, all was semi-gloom, pungent fragrance of weeds, cooling breath of the half-dried brook, mystery of space between steep banks. But on a level with the bridge, meadow-lands sloped away from the ravine on either hand. On the left lay straggling Littleburg with its four or five hundred houses, faintly twinkling, and beyond the meadows on the right, a fringe of woods started ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... over the sandy plain, he had to climb a great steep, jagged rock. When he got to the top of the rock he saw spread out before him a stony waste without a tuft or blade of grass. At some distance in front of him he noticed a large dark object, which he took to be a rock, but on looking at it more closely ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy

... be so laden with spray that one could not walk there without being wet. And yet the place was very healthy, and noted for the fineness of its air. Rising from the cottage, which itself stood high, was a steep hill running up to the top of the cliff, covered with that peculiar moss which the salt spray of the ocean produces. On this side the land was altogether open, but a few sheep were always grazing there when the wind was not so high as to drive them to some shelter. Behind ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... long march through magnificent forests, along winding streams, up and down the sides of steep hills, the boys and their leader and the guide reached Pioneer Camp late ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler

... wonderful scheme of things. Indeed, I am becoming a part of nature. I have grown so straight and tall, and so beautifully thin and supple that I can dart in and out of the stream without bumping myself against the rocks, can climb steep hills, and let the winds blow me where they will. I should not be at all surprised to awaken some morning and find that I had become one of the tall reeds that sway to and fro along the ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... to the bottom of the hill on which the famous fortress of Warkworth formerly stood, and there, at the landing-place, they fastened the boat. The hill was steep, but the young people enjoyed the fun of climbing it all the more for that; when they reached the top, they were well repaid ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... am informed—of the female cases in certain hospitals, are those of women-servants suffering from diseases produced by overwork in household labour, especially by carrying heavy weights up the steep stairs of our London houses—when we consider the large proportion of accident cases which are the result, if not always of neglect in our social arrangements, still of danger incurred in labouring for us, we shall begin to feel ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... Ravine of Happiness, and we'll come here every day—just every day; but perhaps it's time for grandpa to be home, dearie, so we must go back to the castle." She sighed unconsciously as she began climbing up the steep bank and crept under the wire. "I hope we haven't stayed very long, because the giantess might not like it," she continued uneasily; but as she set her feet in the homeward road, every sensation of anxiety fled before an approaching vision. She saw a handsome ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... Amyntas do?- what did he not? A pipe have I, of hemlock-stalks compact In lessening lengths, Damoetas' dying-gift: 'Mine once,' quoth he, 'now yours, as heir to own.' Foolish Amyntas heard and envied me. Ay, and two fawns, I risked my neck to find In a steep glen, with coats white-dappled still, From a sheep's udders suckled twice a day- These still I keep for you; which Thestilis Implores me oft to let her lead away; And she shall have them, since my gifts ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil

... of the garden impinged upon the river, and there ended; for the bank was steep and vertical, and the deep, still water that ran under it formed a ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... and gait he was a little hasty and unsteady, and twice or thrice he was obliged to pause in the steep of the street to draw his breath; but even in this there was an affecting and great earnestness, a working of a living soul within, as if it panted to enter on the performance of ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... mortal thing of foot or wing Made glad its steep and strand; But voices, voices seemingly— Vague voices of the sky and sea— Peopled the ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein

... a key which he took from his pocket, and hand in hand they ascended a steep path which led between a grove of pine trees. Out once more into the open, they crossed a patch of green turf and came to another gate, set in a stone wall. This also Rochester opened. A few more yards, and they climbed up to the masses of tumbled rock which ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... led into this rocky gorge, whose steep yellow and brown walls seemed scorched by the sun in many blackened spots, and looked like a ghostly array of shades that had risen from the tombs in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... We watched the wharfinger's boys trying to drown themselves in a cranky boat, like the young male animals of all lands; we listened to their shrill little songs; we counted the ducks, gazed at the peasants assembled on the brow of the steep hill above us, on which the town was situated, and speculated about the immediate future, until the time fixed and three quarters of an hour more had elapsed. The wharfinger's reply to my impatient questions was ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... of the old men pointed to a great castle standing on a steep hill and said: 'Therein dwells Time, and we are his people;' and they all looked curiously at King Karnith Zo, and the eldest of the villagers spoke again and said: 'Whence do you come, you that are so young?' and Karnith Zo told him how ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany

... the mountains. I hoped to get to Grand Lake for the night, but I was on the east side of the range, and Grand Lake was on the west. Along the twenty-five miles of trail there was only wilderness, without a single house. The trail was steep and the snow very soft. Five hours were spent in gaining timber-line, which was only six miles from my starting-place, but four thousand feet above it. Rising in bold grandeur above me was the summit of Long's ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... it we shall be soon. I see daylight ahead at last, bright between the dark stems. Up a steep slope, and over a bank which is not very big, but being composed of loose gravel and peat mould, gives down with me, nearly sending me head over heels in the heather, and leaving me a sheer gap to scramble through, and out on ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... grove-tops—elms chiefly, or beeches—and a beautiful boundary of blue hills. "Good-day, Sergeant Stewart! farewell, Ma'am—farewell!" And in half an hour we are sitting in the moss-house at the edge of the outer garden, and gazing up at the many-windowed grey walls of the MAINS, and its high steep-ridged roof, discoloured by the weather-stains of centuries. "The taxes on such a house," quod Sergeant Stewart, "are of themselves enough to ruin a man of moderate fortune—so the Mains, sir, has been uninhabited for a good many years." But he had been speaking ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... rebellious body with weeks of abstinence. I remember how I often cried aloud all night till the break of day. I used to dread my cell as if it knew my thoughts, and stern and angry with myself, I used to make my way alone into the desert. Wherever I saw hollow valleys, craggy mountains, steep cliffs, there I made my oratory; there the house of correction for my unhappy flesh. There, also, when I had shed copious tears and had strained my eyes to heaven, I sometimes felt myself among angelic hosts and ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... above the small settlement of that name on the flats about three miles to the northeast of the Ponto river. The Richfield river was a branch of the latter, and was a turbulent stream, often rising rapidly, for It was confined between steep, high! banks. ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster

... us that we should find "it's not much of a 'burg neither when you git thar." Our ride into London had been on Sunday, and was surely a work of necessity if not of mercy. Captain B. had found his horse a little shaky in coming down the steep hills, and at one little stream the jaded beast came down on his knees in the water. The captain with affected seriousness argued that it was a punishment for travelling on the day of rest, but was ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... empty and deserted. The cholera had deprived them of their customers and in many cases of their proprietors. Business was practically suspended during the continuance of the plague. On leaving the podol, the road led up a steep incline to the Petcherskoi. This was the official portion of the town. Here stood the vast Petcherskoi convent, a mass of old buildings, formerly a fine specimen of Byzantine architecture, but now gradually yielding to the ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... huts and crossed through the fringe of trees that surrounded the village, coming out at the foot of the cone. The huge monolith rose some eight hundred feet above the tableland on which the village was built. Its symmetrical slopes were smooth and steep. A goat could not have found footing ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... vain for a lovelier spot. Sheltered by high hills from the bleak winds of the north and east, it was still sufficiently elevated to permit a wide view of the farms and forests around it. Close below, with only a short, steep bank, and a wide strip of meadow land between, lay Merle pond, the very loveliest of the many lovely lakelets, hidden away among these mountains. Over on the rising ground beyond the pond stood the meeting-house, and scattered to the right and left of it were ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... could reason myself into the belief, that that calm and unruffled mien—that soft sweet smile were the tokens of a heart at rest. Alas! I cannot. Fate will have its victims. Poor Eugenie! God be merciful to thee! Oh, that I could steep thy heart ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... followed the guide; but they did not reach the steep path which leads to the upper part of the cemetery without having to pass through a score of proposals and requests, made, with honied softness, by the touts of marble-workers, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... and precipitous, like that on which they lay; but the two uniting above, bounded the head of the vale with a long, bushy, sweeping slope—a fragment of a natural amphitheatre—which was evidently of an easy ascent, though abrupt and steep. The valley thus circumscribed, though broken, and here and there deeply furrowed by the water-course, was nearly destitute of trees, except at its head, where a few young beeches flung their silver boughs and rich green ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... The steep hills and natural mounds that border the alluvions have obtained the name of bluffs. Some are in long, parallel ridges, others are in the form of cones and pyramids. In some places precipices of limestone rock, ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... and followed her up the steep stairs, which were closed at the head by a stout door. The upper story was divided about equally into two rooms. The east room, to which Mrs. Preston opened the door, was plainly furnished, yet in comparison with the room below it seemed almost luxurious. Two windows gave ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... Pyrenean-waters, the passage of the visitors to Cauterets and Bagneres also brought some animation; diligences passed through the town twice a day, but they came from Pau by a wretched road, and had to ford the Lapaca, which often overflowed its banks. Then climbing the steep ascent of the Rue Basse, they skirted the terrace of the church, which was shaded by large elms. And what soft peacefulness prevailed in and around that old semi-Spanish church, full of ancient carvings, columns, screens, and statues, peopled with ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... chief town of the department of Loire-et-Cher. This city is celebrated for the purity with which even the lower classes of its inhabitants speak their native tongue. It rises precipitously from the northern bank of the Loire; and many of its streets are so steep as to be almost impassable for carriages. On the brow of the hill, overlooking the roofs of the city, and commanding a fine view of the Loire and its noble bridge, and the surrounding country, sprinkled with ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... particular day, when she had left Miss Trigg reading in her favorite summer-house high on the rocky hill, and Nancy had tripped lightly down to the path that skirted the pond's steep edge, there was a boy doing just what she had ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe

... that valley is! On every hand are inaccessible mountains, steep, yellow slopes scored by water-channels, and reddish rocks draped with green ivy and crowned with clusters of plane-trees. Yonder, at an immense height, is the golden fringe of the snow. Down below rolls the River Aragva, which, after bursting noisily forth from the dark and misty depths of the ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov

... that he remembered let at five pounds a year, but for which he now paid twenty. He told us some stories of their march into England. At last, he left us, and we went forward, winding among mountains, sometimes green and sometimes naked, commonly so steep, as not easily to be climbed by the greatest vigour and activity: our way was often crossed by little rivulets, and we were entertained with small streams trickling from the rocks, which, after heavy rains, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... the distant corner where the sand was, rose suddenly a steep little hill, surmounted by a wild and splendid group of pines, through which one looked across a vale of cornfields at an ancient town that became strange and magical as the sun went down, so that I was held gazing at it, and afterwards had to flee the twilight across the windy spaces and under ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... it will lie lovingly over all the foul and rough places of the human heart, as the snow from heaven does over the hard and broken mountain rocks, following their forms truly, yet catching light from heaven for them to make them fair—and that must be a steep and unkindly crag, indeed, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... spargefaction|, affusion[obs3], irrigation, douche, balneation[obs3], bath. deluge &c. (water in motion) 348; high water, flood tide. V. be watery &c. adj.; reek. add water, water, wet; moisten &c. 339; dilute, dip, immerse; merge; immerge, submerge; plunge, souse, duck, drown; soak, steep, macerate, pickle, wash, sprinkle, lave, bathe, affuse[obs3], splash, swash, douse, drench; dabble, slop, slobber, irrigate, inundate, deluge; syringe, inject, gargle. Adj. watery, aqueous, aquatic, hydrous, lymphatic; balneal[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... remarkable incident. We had six guns, heavy old brass Napoleons. One afternoon we had to go uphill—in many cases it was terribly steep—by a road like those in Devonshire, resembling a ditch. It rained in torrents and the water was knee-deep. The poor mules had to be urged and aided in every way, and half the pulling and pushing was done by us. All of us worked like navvies. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... pity for those less blessed than herself. She looks down through the love- guarded lattice of her home,—from which your care would fain bar out all sights of woe and squalor,—she looks down, and sees the weary toilers below, the hopeless, the wretched; she sees the steep hills they have to climb, carry in' their crosses; she sees 'em go down into the mire, dragged there by the love that should ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... touch. So that while Niccola and Giovanni Pisano are still virtually Greek artists, experimentally introducing Gothic forms, Arnolfo and Giotto adopt the entire Gothic ideal of form, and thenceforward use the pointed arch and steep gable ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... with new ardor, and in about twenty minutes the avenging white men came within sight of the savages. With considerable military sagacity, the Indians had taken position upon a steep and narrow ridge, and seemed desirous of magnifying their numbers in the eyes of their pursuers by running from tree to tree and making the forest resound with their hideous yells. The pursuers were, however, too well acquainted ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... the mountains, the downs that sloped down to the sea, the pretty fields of corn and maize and rye, the olive orchards and the vineyards, and the little town itself—with its towers and its turrets, its steep roofs and strange windows—that nestled in the hollow between the sea, where the whirlpool was, and the mountains, white with snow and rosy ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit

... trucks are in use now. I learned about oxen. They didn't go fast 'ceptin' when they ran away. They would run at the sight of water in hot weather. They was dangerous if they saw the river and had to go down a steep bank, load or no load the way they went. If it was shallow they would wade but if it was deep they would swim unless the load was heavy enough to pull them down. Oxen was interesting ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... away to the right and left with extraordinary speed. The Xth Soudanese opened fire on the village as soon as they topped the rise. The 3rd and 4th Egyptians deployed on the right and left of the leading regiment, two companies of the 4th extending down on to the foreshore below the steep river-bank. Peake's battery (No. 1) and the Maxim guns, coming into action from a spur of Firket mountain, began to fire over the heads of the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... neighbourhood, young Rasay and Dr Macleod, with the help of some women, brought it to the sea, by extraordinary exertion, across a Highland mile of land, one half of which was bog, and the other a steep precipice. ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... stones roughly squared and laid dry. Two monolith jambs support a huge lintel, cambered in the middle like the tie-beams of our sixteenth-century roofs. Above the lintel the courses are gathered over, leaving between their lower faces and the top of the lintel a triangular space of a steep pitch (about 60°), in which was inserted a frontispiece carved on a single stone representing two lions standing up on either side of an archaic column supporting a fragment of a rudimentary architrave.[129] The heraldic pose of the lions and the technique of their sculpture, so suggestive of ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... Phaeton set out upon his journey. A long way he travelled, with never a stop, yet when the glittering dome and jewelled turrets and minarets of the Palace of the Sun came into view, he forgot his weariness and hastened up the steep ascent to the home of ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... width. The moose-tracks were quite numerous and fresh here. We noticed in a great many places narrow and well-trodden paths by which they had come down to the river, and where they had slid on the steep and clayey bank. Their tracks were either close to the edge of the stream, those of the calves distinguishable from the others, or in shallow water; the holes made by their feet in the soft bottom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... named, it may be explained for the benefit of those who have not been there, from being the haunt of a number of beggars who frequent the steep ascent, demanding alms of all bluejackets and others that may chance to pass up or down, their whining plea being that they have nothing to eat— "Nix mangiare, buono ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... to do that sort of thing. She expected him to spring to earth on reaching the summit, and lean in a careless and graceful attitude against the machine, waiting for her. When, on the contrary, she saw him pass the summit and proceed rapidly down a long and steep incline, she was seized, first with surprise, secondly with indignation, and lastly with alarm. She ran to the top of the hill and shouted, but he never turned his head. She watched him disappear into a wood a mile and a half distant, and then sat down and cried. They had ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... corner of the large yard, where the smooth ground broke off into a steep slope to the river, there stood a small office built of brick. It was the Major's executive chamber, and thither he directed his steps. Inside this place his laugh was never heard; at the door his smile always faded. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... view from the road was modern. Facing the west all was of the old Scottish chateau style, with gables, narrow windows, and a strange bulky chimney on the north, bulging out of the wall. The west side of the house stood on the very brink of a steep precipice, beneath which lay what is now but a large deep waterhole, but, at the period of the Gowrie conspiracy, was a loch fringed with water weeds, and a haunt of wild fowl. By this loch, Restalrig Loch, the witch more than three centuries ago met the ghost of Tam Reid, ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang

... slanting one. A steep grade fully half-a-mile long led to a stone bridge crossing a river. It was so steep that Andy wondered that Lute did not stumble. The wagon wheels ground and slid so that the vehicle lifted at the rear, as if its own momentum would cause ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... by her wisdom, and our own traditions, still search and try the virtues of those plants the good God hath strewed this earth with, some to feed men's bodies, some to heal them. Only in desperate ills we mix heavenly with earthly virtue. We steep the hair or the bones of some dead saint in the medicine, and thus ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... do rock on the tree-top Where vew foes can stand; The martin's is high, an' is deep In the steep cliff o' zand. But thou, love, a-sleepen where vootsteps Mid come to thy bed, Hast father an' mother to watch thee An' shelter thy head. Lullaby, Lilybrow. Lie asleep; Blest ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... The stifling heat compelled me at last to begin to think of husbanding our energies and strength. I managed to reach the little river Ista, which is already known to my indulgent readers, descended the steep bank, and walked along the damp, yellow sand in the direction of the spring, known to the whole neighbourhood as Raspberry Spring. This spring gushes out of a cleft in the bank, which widens out by degrees into a ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... the school-room, the big bare school-room, that has seen us all—that is still seeing some of us—unwillingly dragged, and painfully goaded up the steep slopes of book-learning. Outside, the March wind is roughly hustling the dry, brown trees and pinching the diffident green shoots, while the round and rayless sun of late afternoon is staring, from behind the elm-twigs in at the long maps on the ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... though it ran more silver than it ever knew before, was beautiful no longer. Mines of remarkable value, mines of gold and silver, had been discovered twenty and thirty miles back in the mountains. Mining towns had sprung up along the steep and rocky banks. Mining methods had turned a limpid stream into a turbid torrent. Two railways had run their lines, hewing, blasting, boring, and tunnelling up the narrow valley, first to reach the mines and finally to merge in a "cut-off" to the great Transcontinental, so that ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... face red with British blood he waves his sword and shouts to his legions. Now you may see him fighting in that cannon's glare, and the next moment he is away off yonder, leading the forlorn hope up that steep cliff. Is it not a magnificent sight, to see that strange soldier and that noble black horse dashing, like a meteor, down the ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... backing the camp the gold-seekers struggle to their resting-place. Here, one man comes clambering over the rough bowlder-strewn path at the base of a forest-clad hill. Here, an atom of humanity emerges from the depths of a vast woodland that dwarfs all but the towering hills. Another toils up a steep hillside from the sluggish creek. Another slouches along a vague, unmade trail. Yet another scrambles his way through a low, dense-growing scrub which lines the sides of a vast ravine, the favored locality of ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... regrets Aziel fell at length into a heavy sleep. He was awakened by the opening of the door of his dungeon, and the entry of priests—grim, silent men who seized and blindfolded him. Then they led him away up many stairs, and along paths so steep that from time to time they paused to rest, till at length he knew, by the sound of voices, that he had reached some place where people were assembled. Here the bandage was removed from his eyes. He stepped backwards, recoiling involuntarily at the glare of light ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... men and with myself, Up the steep summit of my life's forenoon, Three things I learned, three things of precious worth To guide and help me down the western slope. I have learned how to pray, and toil, and save. To pray for courage to receive what comes, Knowing what comes to be divinely sent. To toil for ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... do, Mr. Lynx traveled faster, coming with great jumps and snarling and spitting with every jump. Mr. Otter was almost out of breath when he reached the high bank just above the open spring-hole. It was very steep, very steep indeed. Mr. Otter threw a hasty glance over his shoulder. Mr. Lynx was so near that in one more jump he would catch him. There wasn't time to run around to the place where the bank was low. Mr. Otter threw himself flat, gave a frantic ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess

... old, very noisy, and very able. With it we drove cheerfully anywhere we pleased—over plowed land, irrigation checks, through brush thick enough to lift our wheels right off the ground, and down into and out of water ditches so steep that we alternately stood the affair on its head and its tail, and so deep that we had to hold all our belongings in our arms, while old Ben stuck his nose out the top bars of his cage for a breath of air. It could not be tipped over; at least we ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... having so miraculously re-discovered her. He leaped down from the commode and seized his hat. As he laid his hand on the lock of the door, and was on the point of opening it, a sudden reflection caused him to pause. The corridor was long, the staircase steep, Jondrette was talkative, M. Leblanc had, no doubt, not yet regained his carriage; if, on turning round in the corridor, or on the staircase, he were to catch sight of him, Marius, in that house, he would, evidently, take the alarm, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... Romans pitched their camp. At night Hasdrubal withdrew his forces to an eminence, on the summit of which extended a level plain. There was a river on the rear, in front and on either side a kind of steep bank completely surrounded its extremity. Beneath this and lower down was another plain of gentle declivity, which was also surrounded by a similar ridge equally difficult of ascent. Into this lower plain Hasdrubal, the next day, when he saw the troops of the enemy drawn up before their camp, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... baskets with the provisions, while the whole company walked along the steep river bank, seeking a convenient spot ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... from the wounds on his face where the sharp edges of rocks had cut. He thrust himself through the scrub growth, opening a way with the motions of a swimmer, his hands scarred by the tangled branches. There were other steep places that were broken by terraces. When he was down from the rocky heights on which the vapor did not extend and had entered the confusing mists, he was obliged to go more slowly still, for he narrowly missed some ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day

... a sponge an' you c'n do that with a string. All you gotta do is to steep 'em good an' hard in saltpetre. An' you c'n light that with burning glasses. It c'n be done twenty steps away!—All that's been done before now. There ain't nothin' new in all that to me. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... of the cut was steep, and the soft sand and clay did not make a secure footing. But when the black received the signal from Trevison he did not hesitate. Crouching like a great cat at the edge, he slid his forelegs over until his ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... exhilarating discussion. There is no one near me to understand me, no one who can even passively oppose his ideas to mine and take part in the conflict whence the light will spring, even as a spark is born of the concussion of two flints. When a difficulty arises, steep as a cliff, there is no friendly shoulder to support me in my attempt to climb it. Alone, I have to cling to the roughness of the jagged rock, to fall, often, and pick myself up, covered with bruises, and renew the assault; alone, I must give my shout of triumph, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... a dhrain it is," said the Irishman; "from the placer up beyant," he added, pointing to a washed-out excoriation on the steep upper slope of the mountain. "Major Evarts did be tellin' us we'd have the lawyers afther us hot-fut again if we didn't be lavin' ut open ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde

... shown other canals and reservoirs, and the manner in which some of the canals were cut through the mountains. In some instances the walls of the canals were almost perpendicular. Steep cuts, even in soft ground, seemed to be characteristic of all the ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... the infernal steep Rolls the huge rock whose motions ne'er may sleep, So up thy hill, ambrosial Richmond! heaves Dull MAURICE [56] all his granite weight of leaves: Smooth, solid monuments of mental pain! The petrifactions of a plodding brain, That, ere they reach the ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... his mail sack, the loungers at the stoop gradually disappeared, and so presently I began to look about me. I found my eyes resting upon a long figure at the farther end of the gallery, sitting in the shade of the steep hill which came down, almost sharp as a house roof, back of the tavern, and so cut off the evening sun. It was apparently a woman, tall and thin, clad in a loose, stayless gown, her face hid in an extraordinarily long, green sun-bonnet. Her arms were folded, and she was motionless. But ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough

... almost impassable. Here and there were clumps of fruit trees, patches of low wood, and abundance of plantations and rice grounds, all of which are, in tropical regions, a very desert for the entomologist. The virgin forest that I was in search of, existed only on the summits and on the steep rocky sides of the mountains a long way off, and in inaccessible situations. In the suburbs of the village I found a fair number of bees and wasps, and some small but interesting beetles. Two or three new birds were obtained by my hunters, and by incessant inquiries ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... Rachel descended the steep, rock-strewn banks of the dry branch of the river-bed, wending her way between the boulders and noting that rotten weeds and peeled brushwood rested against the stems of the mimosa thorns which grew—there, tokens which told her that here in times of flood the water flowed. Well, there ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... head each of them wore a kind of helmet made of twigs, and from their ears hung tips of the tails of rabbit-bandicoots. The two sat on the ground facing each other with a shield between them. One of them held in his hand some twigs representing the Hakea flower in bloom; these he pretended to steep in water so as to brew the favourite beverage of the natives, and the man sitting opposite him made believe to suck it up with a little mop. Meantime the other men ran round and round them shouting wha! wha! ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... interested in scenery or light effects. He topped the ridge and plodded slowly down the steep trail on the far side. Lennon lingered to enjoy the glorious illusion of ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... chief street of Fraunheim the road took a sharp bend, and began to mount the slopes of the Taunus suddenly. It was an abrupt, steep climb; but I flatter myself I am a tolerable mountain cyclist. I rode sturdily on; my pursuer darted after me. But on this stiff upward grade my light weight and agile ankle-action told; I began ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... pistols, and they with care shall give account, if need be, of two men. After that, nothing. It were better—so much better—not to live if one were only ten minutes too late.... Now he was in the forest again, and now as he rode quickly down the steep sandy road among the bracken, he heard the hoarse rush of the river in his ears, and knew the end was well-nigh come.... Now the house was in sight, and now he cried aloud some wild inarticulate sound of thankfulness and joy. All was ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... canoes over the portage road by the cataract, and launched them upon Lake Erie. On the fifteenth they landed on the lonely shore where the town of Portland now stands; and for the next seven days were busied in shouldering canoes and baggage up and down the steep hills, through the dense forest of beech, oak, ash, and elm, to the waters of Chautauqua Lake, eight or nine miles distant. Here they embarked again, steering southward over the sunny waters, in the stillness and solitude of the leafy hills, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... up on the beach, and the men were so eager to get to close quarters with the enemy that they dashed at a furious pace towards the steep and rugged path that led ...
— Young Glory and the Spanish Cruiser - A Brave Fight Against Odds • Walter Fenton Mott

... humanity has been like that of an individual climbing the paths of a steep mountain. At every turn there are fresh dangers and difficulties to be overcome, fresh complications for which the traveler is prepared only ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... allegiance, drifted giddily about, mere flakes of rosy blushes. The victory of the day came slowly, but sure, and then the full morning flushed out, fresh with moisture and light and delicate perfume. The bars of sunlight fell on the lower earth from the steep hills like pointed swords; the foggy swamp of wet vapour trembled and broke, so touched, rose at last, leaving patches of damp brilliance on the fields, and floated majestically up in radiant victor clouds, led by the conquering wind. Victory: it ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... tide would be high, and as the beach was steep, she might, resting on the rollers, be quickly launched, having the tackle ready to check her ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... and apples; and may the blessing of the ancient fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, be heaped upon thee!—May the blessing of Him, who appeared in the bush, come upon his head, and may the full blessing of the Lord be upon his sons, and may he steep his feet in oil! With his horn, as the horn of the rhinoceros, may he push the nations to the extremities of the earth; and may He who has ascended the skies be his auxiliary ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... they advanced, the scene began to change around them. They were now turning to the eastward, and had reached the range of steep and barren hills which binds in that quarter the naked plain, and varies the surface of the country, without changing its sterile character. Sharp, rocky eminences began to rise around them, and, in a short time, deep declivities and ascents, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... scattered wide over the mountain breast, set in dense clumps of evergreens, hidden from the roads and from each other by trees and shrubbery separated by valleys. One might live in one part of Semmering for a month and never suspect the existence of other parts, or wander over steep roads and paths for days and never pass twice over the same one. The Herr Doktor might not see the American girl again—and if he did! Did he not see American girls ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... forest one day, alone and on foot, when a royal stag, milk-white and without blemish, crashed through the meeting boughs before him; how he followed the glorious creature fast and far, and shot and missed and shot again, and how at last the stag sprang up a steep and jutting rock and faced him, and he saw Christ's cross between the branching antlers, and upon the Cross the Crucified, and heard a still far voice that bade him be Christian and suffer and be saved; and so, alone in the greenwood, he knelt down and bowed himself to the world's Redeemer, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford



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