"Cactus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Here were Chug Springs, the head of a branch stream, and from thence we went over what we were told was the toughest divide in the whole country. The heat was scorching over the dreary, dusty wastes of sand and alkali, where hardly the cactus could find sustenance. This was our first glimpse of the Mauvaises Terres, the alkali-lands, which turn up their white linings here and there, but do not quite prevail on this side the Platte. The Black Hills of Wyoming, with their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... halted the pony on the crest of a low hill and looked about her. The country at this point was broken and rocky; there was much sand; the line of hills, of which the one on which her pony stood was a part, were barren and uninviting. There was much cactus. She made a grimace of abhorrence at a clump that grew near her in an arid stretch, and then looked beyond it at a stretch of green. Far away on a gentle slope she saw some cattle, and looking longer, she observed a man on a horse. One of the ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... while in the valleys are mistletoe-laden cottonwood as well as willow, alder, and walnut, which, with smaller growths, are interwoven with vines of grape, hop, and columbine, in places forming a veritable jungle. On every hand, whether on mountain or in valley, many varieties of cactus grow in profusion; and in springtime canon and vale, mountain-side and mesa, are all ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... the victim by the tail, and with one awkward chop of his knife he cut it off at the middle, and the Coyote dropped, but gave a shrill yelp of pain. She was not dead, only playing possum, and now she leaped up and vanished into a near-by thicket of cactus and sage. ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... indefinite slurring from note to note was strangely un-English. Diana Mayo leaned forward, her head raised, listening intently, with shining eyes. The voice seemed to come from the dark shadows at the end of the garden, or it might have been further away out in the road beyond the cactus hedge. The singer sang slowly, his voice lingering caressingly on the words; the last verse dying away softly and clearly, almost imperceptibly fading ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... little brown ants that harbor under logs in the uplands, but now they came for the first time on one of the hills of the great, fat, luscious Wood-ant, and they all crowded around to lick up those that ran out. But they soon found that they were licking up more cactus-prickles and sand than ants, till their Mother said in Grizzly, ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... heavens floated a flock of birds flying back to us.... 'Spring! welcome spring!' I shouted aloud: 'welcome, life and love and happiness!' And at that instance, with sweetly troubling shock, suddenly like a cactus flower thy image blossomed aflame within me, blossomed and grew, bewilderingly fair and radiant, and I knew that I love thee, thee only—that I am all ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... land which the sunlight floods and fills, To the north the open country, southward the Cyprus Hills; Never a bit of woodland, never a rill that flows, Only a stretch of cactus beds, and the wild, sweet prairie rose; Never a habitation, save where in the far south-west A solitary tepee lifts its solitary crest, Where Neykia in the doorway, crouched in the red sunshine, Broiders her buckskin mantle with the ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... and then a mass Of dry red cactus ruled the land: The sun rose right above and fell, As falling molten from the skies, And no winged thing was seen to pass." ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... coppice shrubs (as you might call them), and we know tomillares, or undergrowth; but in Corsica nature heaps these together with both hands, and the Corsican, in despair of separating them, calls them all macchia. Cistus, myrtle and cactus; cytisus, lentisk, arbutus; daphne, heath, broom, juniper and ilex—these few I recognised, but there was no end to their varieties and none to their tangle of colours. The slopes flamed with heather bells red as blood, or were snowed white with myrtle blossom: wild roses trailed everywhere, ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... short. He had seen something that brought back to him with a rush the realization of his whereabouts. Seated in the shelter of a cactus tree, not fifty yards away, was King Mtetanyanga, wearing his three opera hats, one upon another, in the form of a triple crown, and drinking his own rum with Raguet, under the shade of Raguet's umbrella. Prone at their feet crouched ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... North Eagle seemed to know just what would interest the white boy—all the romance of the trail, the animals, the game, the cactus beds, the vast areas of mushrooms growing wild, edible and luscious, the badger and gopher holes, and the long, winding, half obliterated buffalo trails that yet scarred the distant reaches. It was only when he ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... for the open, to give a better chance to his preponderating numbers. Akbar carried the town with a rush, and then dashed in pursuit. But the country was intercepted by lanes, {111} bordered on both sides by cactus hedges, and the horsemen of Akbar were driven back into a position in which but three of them could fight abreast, the enemy being on either side of the cactus hedges. The Emperor was in front of his men, having by his ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... now beyond the line of haphazard shacks and adobe buildings that bordered the one street, into the jungle of mesquite and cactus growing in the dry waste of sand that almost surrounded the settlement—and ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... ship. Farragut was ordered to take a party of men to capture the pirates, and at three o'clock the next morning, they set out in the barges, and after landing on the island, had no easy time to find the pirate camp, as they had to cut their way through thickets of trailing vines, thorny bushes and cactus plants and in such intense heat that some of the men fainted from exhaustion. They found the camp, but their prey had fled! Evidently the approaching vessels had been seen, and the pirates were gone. The sailors at once searched their camp, ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... story, but at last I gathered that he had been watching my mistress, who used to meet a sort of vagabond whom my steward had hired the month before, behind the neighboring cactus woods, or in the ravine where the oleanders flourished. The night before, Mohammed had seen her go out without seeing her return, and he repeated, in an exasperated manner:—'Gone, mo'ssieuia; she ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... was nobody to be seen if we hadn't been in a box. Of course no one comes there but stately old farmers and their smart daughters. I saw one with a Gainsborough hat, and a bunch of cock's feathers, with a scarlet cactus cocking it ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... thinking they must all have lost their wits together, I was unconsciously being dragged and pulled along till we came to a kind of ruined marble staircase, down which they hurried me into something still resembling a spacious chamber; for though the wild fig-tree and cactus pushed their fantastic branches through gaps in the walls, these stood partly upright as yet, discovering in places the dull red glow of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... arms; but the resistless steed that bore us onward, though quivering and panting with the effort, always contrived to find the narrow opening toward liberty. Occasionally our route lay through enormous fields of cactus and yucca trees, twelve feet in height, and, usually, so hideous from their distorted shapes and prickly spikes, that I could understand the proverb, "Even the Devil ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... fast enough to suit the Blackfeet. An old fellow commenced to shout at him, and motion for him to go faster. But he didn't wish to go faster; the ground was thickly grown to prickly-pear cactus, and he had to pick his ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... of Angels was all but empty. Upon it the lassitude of early afternoon lay heavily. The spider-legged music-racks of the Mexican string orchestra, the empty platform chairs, the deserted side-tables along the pictured wall, the huge cactus scrawled over with pin-etched initials,—all the impedimenta of ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... undulating plain, in the midst of which nestled the smiling village of Khan Yunus, a beautiful sight, and one never to be forgotten. Everywhere was green; fields of young barley rippled in the light breeze, palms and almond trees nodded to the morning, and between the rows of cactus and prickly pear ran the slim grey ribbon of the caravan road ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... through; the Isabelle fish, it is violet and green and gold, like a queen. Under my feet, see, Colorado! sand white like the snow of your winter, fine, shining with many bright sparks. And this is a garden; for all on every hand flowers are growing. You have seen a cactus, that some lady keeps very careful in her window, tending that it die not? Yes! Here is the white ground covered with these flowers completely, only of more size hugely, crimson, pale, the heart of a rose, the heart of a young maiden. Sea-anemones are these, ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... Gould's admirable account of a hunting trip for them—"To the Gulf of Cortez," published in a preceding volume of the Club's book—will be remembered, and the curious fact stated by his Indian guide that the sheep break holes in the hard, prickly rinds of the venaga cactus with their horns, and then eat out ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... "It looks so much different in the summer time, but still seems queer to me with its heaps of rocks and no trees except the stiff old Joshuas. I wonder why they are called that. Even they don't seem like trees to me. They look like giant cactus plants, and just ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... day I never hear of some new frontier being developed without pricking up my ears and quivering like a circus horse when he hears a band play. There are some desert products that can't be rooted out—sagebrush and cactus and the ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... rare or distant that one could hardly hope to get hold of them without the help of Sindbad the sailor. Once, as it happened, the Professor forgot himself so far as to mention accessible things. Who could ever believe that a seed dipped and dried twenty-one times in the juice of a species of cactus would sprout and flower and fruit all in the space of an hour? I was determined to test this, not daring withal to doubt the assurance of a Professor whose name appeared ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... America—the ash, elm, beech, oak, fir and walnut. The orchards, above those of oranges and lemons, are of figs and olives. The cork-oak covers considerable tracts, but is less attended to than in Spain. A non-European aspect is imparted by the tufts of cactus and aloes which abound in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... turtles decided they would climb out of the river and go hunt some food, for there was a kind of cactus around there that they like very much. But one of the turtles had a baby and she didn't like to wake it up and take it with her because it was sleeping so nicely. So they just went along ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... the 'bus, Ash," smilingly replied the leader of the drummers, a man named Pritchard. "If you'll send the 'bus over to the Cactus House with our ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... fine vineyards. The ashfield of ten square miles above Nicolosi, created by the eruption of 1669, which was entirely barren in 1835, is now planted with vines almost to the summits of Monte Rosso, at a height of three thousand feet" Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau, p. 19.] But the cactus is making inroads even here, while the volcanic sand and molten rock thrown out by Vesuvius soon become productive. Before the great eruption of 1631 even the interior of the crater was covered with vegetation. George Sandys, who visited Vesuvius in 1611, after it had reposed ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... into patches—each hedged off in squares in which flourished all sorts of vegetables, including sweet corn and potatoes and several other less familiar varieties. In pastures, fenced in with mathematical regularity by hedges of the African cactus thorn, herds of humped cattle were feeding contentedly in the mellow glow of the setting sun, occasionally lowing softly, which latter made Billy, as he expressed it, "long ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... was sad and silent. Pepet led the way, the bimbau between his lips buzzing like a gad-fly. From time to time he stopped to throw a stone at a bird or at a puffed-up black lizard darting among the opuntia cactus. Little impression did death make upon him! Margalida walked at her mother's side, silent, abstracted, her eyes opened very wide, beautiful bovine eyes, which looked in every direction reflecting not a single thought. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... house. Are there not dull days enough in the year for you to write and read in, that you should waste this glittering season when Florida and Cuba seem to have left their glittering seats and come to visit us with all their shining hours, and almost we expect to see the jasmine and cactus burst from the ground instead of these last gentians and asters which have loitered to attend this latter glory of the year? All insects are out, all birds come forth, the very cattle that lie on the ground seem to have great ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... end of the four days we turned in at a deep bay and came to anchor. The country was the usual proposition—very light-brown, brittle-looking mountains, about two thousand feet high; lots of sage and cactus, a pebbly beach, and not a sign of anything fresh ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... Monocotyledons, and Dicotyledons. Here is a casual list of plants that then grew in the latitude of London and Paris: the palm, magnolia, myrtle, Banksia, vine, fig, aralea, sequoia, eucalyptus, cinnamon tree, cactus, agave, tulip tree, apple, plum, bamboo, almond, plane, maple, willow, oak, evergreen oak, laurel, beech, cedar, etc. The landscape must have been extraordinarily varied and beautiful and rich. To one botanist it suggests Malaysia, to another ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... no walks hereabouts, and the hills, three miles distant, are too remote for my reduced vitality. The intervening region is a plain of rock carved so smoothly, in places, as to appear artificially levelled with the chisel; large tracts of it are covered with the Indian fig (cactus). In the shade of these grotesque growths lives a dainty flora: trembling grasses of many kinds, rue, asphodel, thyme, the wild asparagus, a diminutive blue iris, as well as patches of saxifrage that ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... see it all in my mind's eye by your eloquent description. You are quite right in supposing that I like compliments; but I am particular about their quality; and I dont need to be told I am pretty in comparison with a hideous cactus. You would not have condescended to make such a speech long ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... there is plenty of soil and moisture, plenty of chance for yuccas to thrive, and you will find it turned into a tree and the thorn merely a dull blade-ending. Follow the sahuaro and the pitahaya into the tropics again, and with their cousin, the organ cactus, you will find them growing a soft thorn that would hardly ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... government, and, perhaps, grant it to some one of his officers, or pawn it to foreign sympathizers for military stores. The neighborhood of Rivas was dotted with ranch-houses, distenanted by these means,—rank grass growing in the court-yards, the cactus-hedges gapped, and the crops swept away by the foragers. Perhaps, had these men been let alone, jealousy toward foreigners would not, of itself, have made them enemies; but General Walker was obliged to provide arms and provisions for his soldiers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... like a miracle out of the Arabian Nights. Your backyard becomes voluptuous with pomegranate and almond trees, lemon groves, and hedges of flowering cactus, dazzling banks of azaleas, marble- basined fountains, in which chestnut-and-white pond-herons step daintily amid exotic water-lilies, while golden pheasants strut about on alabaster terraces. The whole effect rather suggests ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... are bunches of cactus with prickly leaves. Look out! don't catch your toe in those sea-ferns. Even that sweet green maiden-hair fern might pin down your foot so firmly that it would take a fish's sharp tooth to set ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... curious-shaped parcel, and Penelope kept enjoining her to be very careful, and not to turn it over. When at last she did undo the wrappings, and the box inside, and found a tiny red flower-pot with a baby cactus in it, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... walking, the girls came to a road, or something that passed for a road. There was no sign of life on it, but there was something that made them start, then stop and look at each other. Beside the rough path, in a tangle of vines and thorny cactus, stood the ruin of a tiny chapel. A group of noble palms towered above it; from the stony bank behind it bubbled a little fountain. The door of the chapel was gone; it was long since there had been glass in the windows, and the ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... loose from the stake, and she raised up in a sitting posture, "Would ye's moind lettin' me help ye to yer fate, Miss?" said Mike. "O, I'm so tired and weak I can't stand," said the girl. "They have almost killed me dragging me over the cactus." ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... the ruddy, horizontal rays of the sun were casting long grotesque shadows of the tall-branched plants of the cactus family that stood up, some like great fleshy leaves, rudely stuck one upon the other, and some like strangely rugged and prickly fluted columns, a body of Indians, about a hundred strong, rode over the plain towards the rocks where Dr Lascelles and ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... beside. There was the moonlight on the sea and above all Valma and Mallorca, the most delightful place in the world, and all this kept me terribly far away from philosophy and theology. Fortunately I have found some superb convents here all in ruins, with palm-trees, aloes and the cactus in the midst of broken mosaics and crumbling cloisters, and this takes me back to Spiridion. For the last three days I have had a rage for work, which I cannot satisfy yet, as we have neither fire nor lodging. There is not an inn in Palma, no house to let and no furniture to be bought. ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... & 23. 1847. Within a circle formed by two serpents, one of which is a rattlesnake, the American army, commanded by General Taylor, is repulsing the attack of the Mexicans. Beneath are branches of cactus and oak. F. A. SMITH DEL. (delineavit.) C. C. ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... think the horticulturist insane, who took a delicate fern and planted it in arid soil, on a hilltop, far from shade, and expected it to thrive and bear blossoms like the cactus. ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... tracks, then, now through narrow gullies in brown and barren mountains, now striking some village path amidst peach trees and marguerites, Jose Medina drove Martin Hillyard down to the edge of the sea. Here amongst cactus bushes in flower, with turf for a carpet, a camp had been prepared near to one of the two tiny villages. Jose Medina was king in this region. The party arrived in the afternoon of the twenty-sixth day of the month, all of the colour of saffron ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... water; while on shore a soft, pleasant vegetation presented to the eye the whole range of shades in green, from the bluish, sickly green of the idrys to the dark, metallic green of the stenia. Farther inland, tall grapes, lianes, aloes, and cactus formed impenetrable thickets, out of which rose, like fluted columns, gigantic cocoa-palms, and the most graceful trees on earth, areca-palms. Through clearings here and there, one could follow, as far as ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... by the flexile vivacity of the feathery willow acacia? The same white lilies, or their deliciously sweet July representatives, are contrasted well with scarlet geranium, vivid and glowing, or with the flames of the cactus, and toned down by the bluish lavender of the wistaria. This makes a bouquet eminently suited for church—its colors forming Ruskin's sacred chord, and typifying the union of purity, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... displayed in architectural matters by the wealthier residents. The walls surrounding the little compounds are sometimes adorned with house-leeks or cactus, tastefully set out along the top; and, in other cases, with ornamental tiles. The walls of the houses are decorated with paintings depicting, in bright colors, scenes of the chase, birds, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... miles from the town, is a very beautiful cemetery, and is to Hong Kong what Mount Auburn is to Boston,—not quite so extensive, but superior in its collection of flowers and trees, which must have been gathered and naturalized here at a great cost. The varieties of the cactus family are remarkable in numbers and mode of training. The same may be said of the camphor-tree, the aloes, tall and graceful cypresses, mingling with which are Cape jasmines, hydrangeas, magnolias, and the scarlet geranium, tall ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... on a ledge of rock midway between earth and heaven, the cliff falling almost sheer to the valley two hundred feet and more, the mountain rising behind straight toward the sky; all the rocks covered with cactus and dwarf fig-trees, the convent draped in smothering roses, and in front a terrace with a fountain in the midst; and then—nothing—between you and the sapphire sea, six miles away. Below stretches the Eden valley, the Concha d'Oro, gold-green fig orchards alternating with smoke-blue olives, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... openest country I had yet seen hereabouts—a basin of wave-like veldt, just growing thinly green under the spring rains, spangled with budding mimosa-thorn. Scarred here and there with the dry water-courses they call sluits, patched with heaves of wire-fenced down, livened with a verandah, blue cactus-hedged farmhouse or two, losing itself finally in a mazy fairyland of azure mountains—this valley was the nearest approach to what you would call a smiling country I had ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... one-card draw, and the nocturnal stimulation of towns from undue lethargy; but, hitherto, it had not been famed as a stronghold of aesthetics. Lonny Briscoe's brush had removed that disability. Here, among the limestone rocks, the succulent cactus, and the drought-parched grass of that arid valley, had been born the Boy Artist. Why he came to woo art is beyond postulation. Beyond doubt, some spore of the afflatus must have sprung up within him in spite of the desert soil of San Saba. The tricksy ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... understood English pretty well. Naab laughed, and while Hare ate breakfast he talked of the sheep. The flock he had numbered three thousand. They were a goodly part of them Navajo stock: small, hardy sheep that could live on anything but cactus, and needed little water. This flock had grown from a small number to its present size in a few years. Being remarkably free from the diseases and pests which retard increase in low countries, the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... for me," commented Billie as he kept himself well hidden behind a giant cactus. "It reminds me of Ali Baba and the forty thieves. I hope I have better luck than ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... plant, when mature, resembles a cactus. The flattened hypocotyl is fleshy, enlarged in the upper part, and bears two rudimentary cotyledons. It breaks through the ground in an arched form, with the rudimentary cotyledons closed or in contact. ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... of the Author Frontispiece A Dasylirion, 1 Cottonwood, 4 Cereus Greggii, a small cactus with enormous root, 5 Fronteras, 7 Remarkable Ant-hill, 8 Church Bells at Opoto, 10 Also a Visitor, 11 A Mexican from Opoto, 12 Rock-carvings near Granados, 15 The Church in Bacadehuachi, 17 Aztec Vase, Found in the Church of Bacadehuachi, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... is a joyous trysting-place, my love, With no inconstant climate to distract us; Pure azure is the sky that laughs above These admirable bowers of prickly cactus, Where we may nestle, conjugating amo (Dear old ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... is found this beautiful symbol:—'There is a species of Cactus, from whose outer bark, if torn by an ignorant person, there exudes a poisonous liquid; but the natives, who know the plant, strike to the core, and there find a sweet, refreshing juice, that renews their strength.' Surely the preceding extracts ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... to a place where Wildfire had doubled on his trail and had turned up a side canyon. The climb out was hard on Slone, if not on Nagger. Once up, Slone found himself upon a wide, barren plateau of glaring red rock and clumps of greasewood and cactus. The plateau was miles wide, shut in by great walls and mesas of colored rock. The afternoon sun beat down fiercely. A blast of wind, as if from a furnace, swept across the plateau, and it was laden with red dust. Slone walked here, where he could have ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... completely overshadowed by enormous cypress-trees, all of which seemed extremely ancient, while some appeared quite dead and withered. There was, in addition to these trees, a thick undergrowth of long rank grass and stunted shrubs, among which an outrageously prickly variety of the cactus made itself conspicuously apparent to the touch; while, more than half hidden by the undergrowth, there were dotted here and there a few sepulchral stones and monuments in the very last stage of irretrievable dilapidation. Add to these sombre surroundings the ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... on one side from the hill above, bordered by the graceful and variously shaped trees of the tropics—the tall maple arrow, surrounded by its flowering crown of yellow; the Spanish needle, with its dagger-like leaves; the quilled pimploe, a species of cactus; and numberless others, from the branches of which hung lilac and purple wreaths in rich festoons—while the sweet notes of the feathered songsters ever and anon burst forth, and here and there could be seen tiny humming-birds flitting ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... trifle while the guanacoes were in sight. Concealing ourselves as much as possible behind rocks and bushes, and here and there an evergreen quillay-tree, we got nearer and nearer to them. Sometimes we got behind clumps of the great chandelier-like cactus, whose sturdy green twisted stems ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... level, rising gradually to the foot of the rock, which then rose steeply up. A few houses were scattered about, surrounded by gardens. Hedges of cactus lined the road. Parties of soldiers and sailors, natives with carts, and women in picturesque costumes passed along. The vegetation on the low ground was abundant, and Bob looked with delight at ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... the wilderness meant thousands of dollars to the stockholders somewhere up in God's country, who would some day hold them to account for them. They dragged their chains through miles and miles of jungle, and over flat alkali beds and cactus, and they reared bridges across roaring canons. We know nothing about them and we care less. When their work is done we ride over the road in an observation-car and look down thousands and thousands of feet into the depths they have bridged, and we never give them a thought. They ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... wound in and out among the mesquite and the cactus to the house. Beside this trail, behind a clump of prickly pear, the Ranger sat down and waited. The hour-hand of his watch crept to ten, to eleven, to twelve. Roberts rose occasionally, stretched himself to avoid any chance of cramped muscles, and counted stars ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... midst of an almost tropical climate. This difference in climatic features between the top and bottom of the canon is equal to the change which the traveller experiences in a trip from the pine forests of the northern United States to the cactus-covered plains ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... Slender cypresses rise up from amidst brightly verdant groves of orange, fig, pomegranate, plum, and peach trees. Tall mulberry trees, umbrageous planes, and ash trees glance down upon thickets and hedges of blossoming myrtles, oleanders, and the aguus cactus. From amidst this garden-paradise, which occupies the whole higher portion of the entire extent of the valley, rise here and there white villas, with ornaments upon their roofs and balconies, with small towers, which show a mediaeval ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... his hands into his coat-pockets, and with a frowning countenance went off in search of Rais Ali. Mariner-like, he descried him afar on the horizon of vision, as it were, bearing down under full sail along a narrow path between two hedges of aloes and cactus, which led ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... coast of Opeki was not built in a day. Nor was it ever built. For before the Bradleys could mark out the foul-lines for the base-ball field on the plaza, or teach their standing army the goose step, or lay bamboo pipes for the water-mains, or clear away the cactus for the extension of the King's palace, the Hillmen paid Opeki ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... the Hindu, so that an elegant union of the keen and naked Jain asceticism with the mellower and richer fancy of the luxurious Mohammedan has resulted in a perfect work of that art which makes death lovely by recalling its spiritual significance. Besides, a holy silence broods about the cactus and the euphorbian foliage, so that a word will send the paroquets, accustomed to such unbroken stillness, into hasty flights. The tomb proper is in the chamber at the centre, enclosed by delicately-trellised ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... The snow-covered peaks of a lofty range rose skyward in the west. To the north was the solitary butte from which the town received its name. To the south was a line of dimpled foothills, while eastward stretched a barren vista of cactus, sand, and sagebrush. A shallow stream flowed between alkali-coated banks on two sides of the town. In the spring when melting mountain snows filled it to overflowing, it ran swift and yellow; but in the ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... seen or heard of what the captain had come across) and say in his slow way, "The blue chalice flower was about the shape of that magnolia, only twice as big, and just the colour of the gentians in the border, and it had a great white tassel hanging out like the cactus in the parlour window, and all the leaves were yellow underneath; and ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... company and there isn't the means. I can't even make you an apple-pie bed, when you sleep in a single blanket; and a booby-trap needs a door. And when there are only two people, and no one else to laugh, it's no fun to stick a cactus in a fellow's chair. Tuck, too! What do you know about tuck? What can you know about tuck when there's no shop for chocolate and Turkish Delight and things like that? Tinned stuff is all very well, but it gets jolly ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... at pleasure. Mrs. Boulte put on a big terai hat, and walked across to the Vansuythens's house to borrow last week's Queen. The two compounds touched, and instead of going up the drive, she crossed through the gap in the cactus-hedge, entering the house from the back. As she passed through the dining-room, she heard, behind the purdah that cloaked the drawing-room door, her husband's voice, saying—"But on my Honor! On my Soul and Honor, I tell you she doesn't care for me. She told me so last night. I ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... of dried venison that the elder produced from his wallet, the two Seminoles sat, concealed behind a thick cluster of cactus, watching the river for any signs of pursuit, and forming plans for future action. Cat-sha told Chitta that he had left his band in their most inaccessible stronghold among the bayous and deep morasses of the ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... lighter, and looked out upon the bright garden, the alms-houses, and the church tower. The upper part of the window was occupied by Katherine's large cage of canary birds, and below was a stand of flower-pots, a cactus which never dreamt of blossoming, an ice-plant, and a columnia belonging to Katherine, a nourishing daphne of Helen's, and a verbena, and a few geranium cuttings which she had brought from Dykelands, looking very miserable under cracked tumblers ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lofty rim that in reality is a considerable chain of mountains. The bowl is two or three miles long and as much wide, with tall grass growing on the small hills inside and thousands upon thousands of curious cactus-like trees. Several mountain streams tumble down from the gorges between the peaks and, uniting, flow out of the big gap in one stream, the river Turkwel, which separates Uganda ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... a sharp incline, Gloriana called our attention to a view panoramic and matchless beneath the glamour of sunset. Below us lay the mission town, its crude buildings aglow with rosy light; to the left was the canon, a frowning wilderness of manzanita, cactus and chaparral; to the right towered the triune peak of the Bishop, purple against an amber sky; in the distance were the shimmering waters of the Pacific. Upon the face of the landscape brooded infinite peace, and the soft shadows ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... crackled beneath a cactus that filled up the niche in the wall, and in black wood frames against the oak-stained paper hung Steuben's "Esmeralda" and Schopin's "Potiphar." The ready-laid table, the two silver chafing-dishes, the crystal door-knobs, the parquet and the furniture, all ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... insect, a species which has the habit of feeding upon the cactus, is used for a dye stuff, for which service the brightly colored body is appropriated. Although the creature is deliberately planted where it is to feed, and thus is in a way submitted to culture, it cannot fairly be said to have been entered in the domesticated circle of man. In a similar ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... there in that cactus-bordered country of black, lava hills where I was born an' where I belong!" said Rathburn grimly, sliding into a chair on the opposite side ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... 9 A.M. we started. Our road lay at first over a ridge of high hills, from which we saw nothing of the ship. We then crossed a sandy plain covered with the cactus, which severely wounded my feet. Afterwards passed through some wooded ravines, and over an extensive marsh intersected with brooks. Towards the evening a horseman overtook us, who seeing the tired condition of the steward, his feet bleeding, and also suffering from a gash on his head, ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... lowland surface, the canal sage grew thick, a gray-green expanse stretching unbroken to the distant cliff that was the other side of the canal. Occasionally above its smoothness thrust the giant barrel of a canal cactus. ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... "Never mind whether Cactus Ike is going to sleep there or not," said Mr, Kent sharply. "You tell Ike he can bunk in with the rest of the boys. He's no better ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... and particularly because he'd had a government contract for a long while, ran a big gang of men and critters, and had made a lot of money. Likewise he had a girl, who lived at the fort, and was mighty nice to look at, and restful to the eye after a year or so of cactus-trees and mesquite and buffalo-grass. She was twice as nice and twice as pretty as the women at the post, and as for money—well, her dad could have bought and sold all the officers in a lump; but they and their wives looked down on her, and she didn't mix with ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... which led down to the garden and was decorated by lemon and pomegranate trees in tubs, and with cactus and aloe and flowering plants, stood a young girl of about twenty, scattering millet from two plates held by a barefooted child of twelve. At her feet were assembled hens, turkeys, ducks, pigeons, sparrows and daws. She called to the birds to come to breakfast, and cocks, hens ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... as Senora Mendez took one of the little buttons out of the silver tray. Carefully paring the fuzzy tuft of hairs off the top of it—it looked to me very much like the tip of a cactus plant, which, indeed, it was—she rolled it into a little pellet and placed it in her mouth, chewing it slowly like a ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... enjoyed, however, some bold and wonderful mountain scenery, and obtained glimpses through the flying murk of the vast plains and the base of Suswa. On a precipitous canon cliff we found a hanging garden of cactus and of looped cactus-like vines that was a marvel to behold. We ran across the hartebeeste on our way home. Our men were already out of meat; the hartebeeste of yesterday had disappeared. These porters are a good deal like the old-fashioned Michigan lumberjacks—they ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... white dust of death. Shadeless and colourless, to the limit of vision, it rose and fell in long billowing waves; as if some wizard, in the morning of the world, had smitten a living ocean to lifeless sand, where nothing flourished but the camel thorn and the ak plant and gaunt cactus bushes—their limbs petrified in ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... natives of the Samoa Islands use similar tackle with great success. The Indians of the northwest coast make fish-hooks of epicea wood, and those of Arizona utilize for the same purpose the long spikes of the cactus. It is very probable that European as well as American races knew how to use wood in the same manner. During the lapse of centuries, however, these fragile objects have been reduced to dust, and we are unable to make any further ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... coolness around. Having heard that Santa Cruz was a very poor place, we were astonished to find it really a fine city with handsome houses, spreading backwards a considerable distance from the sea, with gardens and villas beyond, and outside all cactus plantations and cultivated terraces rising up the slopes of the mountains. I was proceeding with Mr Henley in search of the consul, who was to arrange matters about the ship, when I felt a hand placed on my shoulder, and I heard ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... minute pieces of marble forming a far-more-lovely-than possible faded purple and lilac rug. Also, the pathetically trodden-down-to-bits porphyry discs in the doorway. And the little cippus of a Roman girl who lived sixteen years and twenty-eight days. Against the apse, outside, the great python of a cactus. ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... this I was treated to a surprise. Right ahead of me lay a barren waste of sand extending to the right and left as far as I could see. Its width in the direction that I was going I judged to be about twenty miles. On its farther border the cactus plain began again, sloping gradually upward to the horizon, along which was a fringe of cedar trees—the willows of my vision! In that country a cedar will not grow within thirty miles of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... of green (hoist side), white, and red; the coat of arms (an eagle with a snake in its beak perched on a cactus) is centered in the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... robbed: the quires were hidden in his vest suddenly and he walked on in confidence, also in a great seriousness, going his way melancholy as a camel, his head turned from the many temptations that the way offered to him—the flower in the cactus hedge was one. He passed it without picking it, and further on he allowed a strange crawling insect to go by without molestation, and feeling his mood to be exceptional he fell to thinking that his granny would laugh, were ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... spirit of the scene appeared before him: the sun, and wind, and sky; the vast, vast spaces of waving grass, broken by the beds of dried-up streams, strewn here and there with mimosas and thorns, here dim with the growth of vangueria bushes, here sharp and gray-green with cactus; this giant land, infinite, sunlit, and silent, spoke to him in a ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... marshes, they came upon a sacrificial stone which they recognized as one upon which some years before one of their priests had immolated a captive {126} chief. From a crevice in this stone, where a little earth was imbedded, there grew a cactus, upon which sat an eagle holding in its beak a serpent. A priest ingeniously interpretated this symbolism as a prophecy of signal and long-continued victory, and, forthwith diving into the lake, he had an interview with Tlaloc, the god of waters, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... name Golden Horn, and was vastly astonished to find her here against this unknown island. Far up the coast I could see—with the surges dashing up like the explosion of shells, and the cliffs, and the rampart of hills grown with grass and cactus. A bold promontory terminated the coast view to the north, and behind it I could glimpse a more fertile and wooded country. The sky was partly overcast by the volcanic murk. It fled before the Trades, and the red sun alternately blazed ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... We passed the divide between the Colorado and Gila rivers, and arrived at Gila City that afternoon, eighteen miles. Our route was the old overland stage route on the south side of the Gila. Here we first saw that peculiar and picturesque cactus, so characteristic of the country, called by the Indians "petayah," but more generally known as the "suaro," and recognized by botanists as the ...
— Frontier service during the rebellion - or, A history of Company K, First Infantry, California Volunteers • George H. Pettis
... without water or tea. Hi Lang shows the girls how to extract food and moisture from a cactus plant. "This is heavenly!" gasps Emma, and wonders why they did not bring an artesian well. Shouts and screams ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... to countenance all day long. The last four-and-twenty hours of our journey have been very tiring. The scenery has been so monotonous; endless long undulating plains like the waves of the sea, covered with grass quite dried up, a few flowers, and a bee-shaped cactus. The heat was very oppressive, a hot sirocco, wind blowing which; obliged us to keep our windows shut on account of the fine alkaline dust. E—— had her window open last night, and awoke this morning to find herself ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall |
