"Arid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... area of 5306 sq. m. The district is a long narrow strip of country, 198 m. in length, sloping gradually from the hills which form its western boundary to the river Indus on the east. Below the hills the country is high and arid, generally level, but sometimes rolling in sandy undulations, and much intersected by hill torrents, 201 in number. With the exceptions of two, these streams dry up after the rains, and their influence is only felt for a few miles below the hills. The eastern ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... category are those that are widely distributed in the western United States and that occur in Colorado in both the mountains and the lower more arid intermontane areas. Some of these species are differentiated into subspecies, one of which inhabits the mountains and another the lowlands. Wide-spread species that do not have subspecies in the lowlands different than the subspecies in the mountains or ...
— Mammals of the Grand Mesa, Colorado • Sydney Anderson
... of Chelan was not attractive. We had motored half a day through that curious, semi-arid country, which, when irrigated, proves the greatest of all soils in the world for fruit-raising. The August sun had baked the soil into yellow dust which covered everything. Arid hillsides without a leaf of green but dotted thickly with gray ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... more constrained on the part of the two strangers followed, which they endeavored to escape from by furious riding; so that in half an hour the party had reached a point where the tules began to sap the arid plain, while beyond them broadened the lagoons of the distant river. In the foreground, near a clump of dwarfed willows, a camp-fire was burning, around which fifteen or twenty armed men were collected, their horses picketed in ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... philtre. It is all very well for Berta's father to see in him a masterful mind and an eccentric nature. And who knows—he has sometimes heard of mysterious fluids, of subtle forces which attract arid repel, of dominating influences, of marvels of magnetism; and although he has never given a great deal of thought to any of those matters, he thinks about them since he has felt himself dominated by this ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... plain: barren as a threshing-floor, it did not produce a single blade of grass. Displeased at the desert aspect of the place, he was just going to seek other and more fruitful regions, when Atossa appeared, and, without seeing him, ran towards a spring which welled up through the arid soil as if by enchantment. While he was gazing in wonder at this scene, he noticed that wherever the foot of his sister touched the parched soil, graceful terebinths sprang up, changing, as they grew, into cypresses whose tops reached unto heaven. As he was going ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... high pavilion Where the sick, wind-harassed sun In the whiteness of the day Ghostly shone and stole away— Parched with the utter thirst Of unnumbered Libyan sands, Thou, cloud-gathering spirit, burst Out of arid Africa To the tideless sea, and smote On our pale, moon-cooled lands The hot breath of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... felt themselves in a very anomalous condition; an atmospheric current of extreme velocity was bearing them away beyond arid mountains, upon whose summits vast fields of snow surprised the gaze; while their convulsed appearance told of Titanic travail in the earliest epoch of the ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... of ghostly mist lift at intervals to disclose the magical pink and blue of the mountain distance, as sunrise throws a shaft of scarlet over the grim cliff's of the Moengal Pass. A chasm in the stony wall reveals the famous Sand Sea below the abrupt precipice, a yellow expanse of arid desert encircling three fantastic volcanoes. The pyramidal Batok, the cloud-capped Bromo, and the serrated Widodaren, set in the wild solitude of this desolate Sahara, form a startling picture, suggesting a sudden revelation ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... to the north-east, through a region covered with baobab-trees, abounding with springs, and inhabited by Bushmen, they entered an arid and difficult country. Here, the supply of water being exhausted, great anxiety was felt for the children, who suffered greatly from thirst. At length a small stream, the Mababe, was reached, running into a marsh, across which they ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... said Mr, Westall. "At any rate we will take our chances on it and try to get a good night's sleep. It might be well for whoever gets up during the night to mend the fire, to step out arid take a look at him. Now, Jeff, what about sleeping arrangements? There are not bunks enough for all of us, and I reckon we'll have to tote this table of yours out doors to make room for us to lie down on the ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... is low, and presents a sandy beach lined by a rocky reef, extending off the shore for a mile, on many parts of which the sea was breaking heavily: the land was clothed with a small brush wood, but altogether the coast presented a very unproductive appearance, and reminded us of the triste and arid character of ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... being. Speculative reason, imagination and affection, are chiefly employed in scientific studies and social pursuits, or personal schemes, external rather than internal. This absorption in material things and evanescent affairs engenders in the spirit an arid atmosphere of doubt and denial, in which no efflorescence of poetic and mystic faiths can flourish. Thus, while the outward utilities abound, hard negations spread abroad; and living, personal apprehension of God, of an all pervasive Providence, and of the immortality of the soul in any ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... counteracted by Professor Fortescue's presence. His sympathy was marvellous in its penetration, brimming the cold hollows of her spirit, as a flooded river fills the tiniest chinks and corners about its arid banks. He called forth all her natural buoyancy and her exulting sense of life, which was precisely the element which charged her sadness with such a fierce electric quality, when she became possessed by it, as ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... unreasoning anger. Why should any woman, even so dear and all deserving as Charlotte, live and thrive in the warmth and light while that other creature, of as simply human cravings, battled her way along from cliff to cliff, with the sea of doom below, beating against the land that was so arid to her and waiting only to engulf her? That, he thought, was another count in his indictment against the way things ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... Many villages were also passed, some of which looked quite pretty from a distance, clustering among their cactus hedges and a few trees. But anything green would have looked pleasant at that moment to the men who, for so long, had seen nothing but the arid desert. It was a case, however, of "distance lending enchantment to the view", as a close inspection proved disappointing. The filth in which these people live must be seen to be realised. Language fails in this case! Their houses are ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... waterless crystal which seeks to complete itself by means of our sea, to quench the thirst of its arid rigidity, and therefore produces ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... know what I did not until I saw for myself, that the Asrapako, in common with several Indian tribes, place their dead in trees instead of in the ground. As the trees are very scarce in that arid country, and only to be found in gullies and along the banks of the Little Big Buck River, nearly every tree has its burden of one or more swathed-up bodies bound to its branches, half hidden by the leaves, like great cocoons—most ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... enough can never be said about the versatility of William Morris and the strong flood of beauty in design that he sent rippling over arid ground. It were enough had he accomplished only the work in tapestry. It is not too strong a statement that he produced at Merton Abbey the only modern tapestries that fill ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... answered Vilalba, "that it is easier to feel than to reason about things which lie without the pale of mathematical demonstration. But some day, my friend, you will learn that beyond the arid abstractions of the schoolmen, beyond the golden dreams of the poets, there is a truth in this matter, faintly discerned now as the most dim of yonder stars, but as surely a link in the chain which suspends the Universe to the throne of God. However, your incredulity is commendable, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of pleasure we turn to gaze into a lovely valley, trending eastward from the base of the mountain! What a contrast to the arid plain! Its surface is covered with a carpet of bright green, enamelled by flowers that gleam like many-coloured gems; while the cotton-wood, the wild-china-tree, the live-oak, and the willow, mingle their foliage in soft shady groves that seem to ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... strange basin, we were once more travelling across patches of clean chapada and dirty chapada—according to the soil and quantity of moisture; then over arid campos spreading for 15 kil. without ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... how they predicted it, but they did. Spotted it coming several years ago, so they've been romping through parallel after parallel trying to find one they can migrate to. They found one, sort of a desperation choice. It's cold and arid and full of impassable mountain chains. With an uphill fight they can make it support a fraction of ...
— PRoblem • Alan Edward Nourse
... several most steep and dusty streets—hot and dusty, although it was but nine o'clock in the morning. Thence the guide conducted us into some little dust-powdered gardens, in which the people make believe to enjoy the verdure, and whence you look over a great part of the arid, dreary, stony city. There was no smoke, as in honest London, only dust—dust over the gaunt houses and the dismal yellow strips of gardens. Many churches were there, and tall half-baked-looking public edifices, that had a dry, uncomfortable, earth-quaky look, to my ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... whom I have once before noted described so happily that, if I quoted the passage, its brilliancy would spoil one of my pages, as a diamond breastpin sometimes kills the social effect of the wearer, who might have passed for a gentleman without it. Your arid patch of earth should seem to the natural birthplace of the leaner virtues and the abler vices,—of temperance and the domestic proprieties on the one hand, with a tendency to light weights in groceries and provisions, and to clandestine abstraction from the person on the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... arid forms which States incrust themselves with, once in a century, if so often, a poetic act and record occur. These are the jets of thought into affairs, when, roused by danger or inspired by genius, the political leaders of the day break the else ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... directions, he started afresh. Leaving the well-built, agreeable, commonplace "Lower city" of the plain, he came to the bridge, and there, sitting on its parapet, near the ancient Cross, he feasted his longing eyes on that perfect vision of Mediaevalism. The high, arid, and almost isolated hill of the Cite stood before him, and at the top rose battlements and flanking towers in double range, bristling, war-like, and strong; yet beautiful in their mass of uneven, peaked tower-roofs and ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... of February an indictment was lodged against Sestius for bribery by the informer Cn. Nerius, of the Pupinian tribe, arid on the same day by a certain M. Tullius for riot. He was ill. I went at once, as I was bound to do. to his house, and put myself wholly at his service: and that was more than people expected, who thought that I had good cause ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the mail that must be hurled by flesh and blood over 1,966 miles of desolate space—across the plains, through North-eastern Kansas and into Nebraska, up the valley of the Platte, across the Great Plateau, into the foothills and over the summit of the Rockies, into the arid Great Basin, over the Wahsatch range, into the valley of Great Salt Lake, through the terrible alkali deserts of Nevada, through the parched Sink of the Carson River, over the snowy Sierras, and into the Sacramento ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... immediately it poured upon us that our vast journey had not been made in vain, that we had come to no arid waste of minerals, but to a world that lived and moved! We watched intensely. I remember I kept rubbing the glass before me with my sleeve, jealous of the ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... stagnation of the atmosphere which in sultry weather is so trying to the nervous system. Marysville is nearly one hundred miles due north of Stockton—of course, much farther by rail—and the same arid, treeless, inhospitable belt of country between the cultivated area and the foot-hills apparently extends the whole distance. It is a country ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... Obscene and savage and half effaced— An elephant hunt, a musicians' feast— And curious matings of man and beast; What did they mean to the men who are long since dust? Whose fingers traced, In this arid waste, These rioting, twisted, ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... bright side of my life, after the affection for my old friends, is the new and delightful friendship which I have found in Herbert Spencer. We see each other every day, and in everything we enjoy a delightful comradeship. If it were not for him my life would be singularly arid." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... piece of copper wire, and some muslin were all that were necessary. One liked the muslin to be green, for there was a feeling that this deceived the butterfly in some way; he thought that Birnam Wood was merely coming to Dunsinane when he saw it approaching, arid that the queer- looking thing behind was some local efflorescence. So he resumed his dalliance with the herbaceous border, and was never more surprised in his life than when it turned out to be a boy and a butterfly-net. ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... territory of Pupinia (in Latium), where all the foliage is meagre and the vines look starved, where the scant straw never stools, nor the fig tree blooms, while for the most part the trees are as covered with moss as are the arid pastures. On the other hand, a rich soil like that of Etruria reveals itself heavy with grain and forage crops and its umbrageous trees are clean of moss. Soil of medium strength, like that near Tibur, which ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... upon the earth; when, at sea, sailors looked to the Bear arid the stars of Orion; when, in the city, there was no longer the sound of barking dogs nor of men's voices, Medea went from the palace. She came to a path; she followed it until it brought her into the part of the grove that was all black with ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... make one last effort to rid himself of the enemy that seemed to hang upon his heels. He would strike straight out into that horrible wilderness where even the beasts were afraid. He would cross Death Valley at once and put its arid wastes ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... particular interest for any mortal man. Simkin contradicted it. Sutherland repeated it. Simkin knocked Sutherland's helmet overboard. Sutherland returned the compliment in kind, and their comrades had to quell an intestine war, while the lost head-pieces were left on the arid plain, where they were last seen surrounded by wonder-stricken and long-legged natives of ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... over the arid range; a day filled with contented labor for some, strenuous activity for some others—Johnny Jewel among these—and more or less anxious waiting for a ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... That Titanic heart Beats strongly through the arid page, And we, self-conscious sons of art, In this ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... the Emperor Ashoka, surnamed the Great, sometimes Piyadasi, sometimes Dharmashoka. He was the son of Bindusara, King of Magadha, arid grandson of Chandragupta, who drove the Greeks ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... the kind of wood which there is to rear. Friedrich, having settled the positions, rides out reconnoitring; hither, thither, over the Heights of Trettin. "The day being still hot, he suffers considerably from thirst [it is our one Anecdote] in that arid tract: at last a Peasant does bring him, direct from the fountain, a jug of pure cold water; whom, lucky man, the King rewarded with a thaler; and not only so, but, the man being intelligent of the localities, took with him to answer questions." Readers too ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... occasional request of a fellow governor for requisition papers disturbed, Shelby plodded over the bewildered mass of estimates, maps, and mazy statistics which his special committee was accumulating. A more brilliant man doubtless would have left much of this arid drudgery to subordinates, contenting himself with the sum of things, without a close scrutiny of detail; but this was never Shelby's way. When he mastered a subject it was his blood and bones, and his passion for the Ditch transmuted its story, howsoever ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... of a shallow sea Carimata raises a lofty barrenness of grey and yellow tints, the drab eminence of its arid heights. Separated by a narrow strip of water, Suroeton, to the west, shows a curved and ridged outline resembling the backbone of a stooping giant. And to the eastward a troop of insignificant islets stand effaced, indistinct, with vague features that seem to melt into the gathering shadows. The ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... from west to east (or, speaking more exactly, of W.S.W. to N.E.E.) reaching from the Atlantic on the one hand nearly to the Yellow Sea on the other, is interrupted about its centre by a strip of rich vegetation, which at once breaks the continuity of the arid region, and serves also to mark the point where the desert changes its character from that of a plain at a low level to that of an elevated plateau or table-land. West of the favoured district, the Arabian and African wastes are seas of land ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... good grass, own Mentula master; Forty to plough; bare seas, arid or empty, the rest. Poorly methinks might Croesus a man so sumptuous equal, Counted in one rich park owner of all he can ask. Grass or plough, big woods, much mountain, mighty morasses; 5 On to the farthest North, ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... a rule, withstands drought very well, several species growing wild on the desert's edge. Even in the semi-arid regions of the far West, where other fruits must always be irrigated, the grape often grows well without artificial watering. Irrigation is practiced in vineyards in the United States only on the Pacific slope and ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... by one subdued, showed, amidst their hollows in the haze of noon, the windings of that long desert journey, now at last to close. But who shall enter into the thoughts of the High Priest as his eye followed those paths of ancient pilgrimage; and through the silence of the arid and endless hills, stretching even to the dim peak of Sinai, the whole history of those forty years was unfolded before him, and the mystery of his own ministries revealed to him; and that other Holy of Holies, of which the mountain peaks were the altars, and the ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... to them. So also, where a special function is required for particular circumstances, nature has provided for it, not by a new organ, but by a modification of a common one, which she has effected in development. Thus, for instance, some plants destined to live in arid situations, require to have a store of water which they may slowly absorb. The need is arranged for by a cup-like expansion round the stalk, in which water remains after a shower. Now the pitcher, as this is called, is not a new organ, but simply ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... cynicism, to a corner of the king's own box, where sat she who had once been a laughing maid by his side and with whom he had played that diverting pastoral, called "First Love." It was only an instant's return into the farcical but joyous past, and a moment later he was sharply recalled into the arid present by the words of ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... snow-crowned peaks of the Coast Range, you will have as good an idea as I can give you of the journey from the Isonzo up to the Carnia. Down on the Carso the war is being waged under a sky of molten brass and in summer the winds which sweep that arid plateau are like blasts from an open furnace-door. The soldiers fighting in the Carnia, on the other hand, not infrequently wear coats of white fur to protect them from the cold and to render them invisible against the expanses of snow. When I was on the Italian front they told me an incident of ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... the arid plain that had stretched before us yesterday. Few trees punctuated the sad song of its monotony; but always in the distance rose yellow hills like lions crouched asleep, lights and shadows sailing above their heads with the bold swoop of the Titanic birds. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... England on beds of leaves or straw; in Portugal Dr. Torrend finds it on or in dead leaves of Agave americana! Evidently an American species, and belonging to arid regions; ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... mountains or even hills, so that it may be safely concluded that the land contains no metals, nor yields any precious woods, such as sandal-wood, aloes or columba; in our judgment this is the most arid and barren region that could be found anywhere on the earth; the inhabitants, too, are the most wretched and poorest creatures that I have ever seen in my age or time; as there are no large trees anywhere on this coast, they have no boats or ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... an all-sided education for youth had always been close to my heart. I saw clearly the arid results of ordinary instruction, aimed only at the development of body and intellect. Moral and spiritual values, without whose appreciation no man can approach happiness, were yet lacking in the formal curriculum. I determined ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... name given to this plant by Ruiz and Pavon, indicates that in its native arid home it is affected in some manner by the dryness or dampness of the atmosphere.* In the Botanic Garden at Wrzburg, there was a plant in a pot out of doors which was daily watered, and another in the open ground ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... administration of the forest reserves will be not less helpful to the interests which depend on water than to those which depend on wood and grass. The water supply itself depends upon the forest. In the arid region it is water, not land, which measures production. The western half of the United States would sustain a population greater than that of our whole country to-day if the waters that now run to ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... arable earth the giver attains to excellent prosperity. By giving a piece of earth containing mineral wealth, the giver aggrandises his family and race. One should never give away any earth that is barren or that is burnt (arid); nor should one give away any earth that is in close vicinity to a crematorium, or that has been owned and enjoyed by a sinful person before such gift. When a man performs a Sraddha in honour of the Pitris on earth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to be one of the most decisive of my life. After dinner we walked on the heights across a barren plain where no herbage grew; the ground was stony, arid, and without vegetable soil of any kind; nevertheless a few scrub oaks and thorny bushes straggled there, and in place of grass, a carpet of crimped mosses, illuminated by the setting sun and so dry that our feet slipped ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... so widely in different parts of the island, and from year to year, that exact information is difficult. Taken as a whole, it is little if at all greater than it is in most places in the United States. We have our arid spots, like El Paso, Fresno, Boise, Phoenix, and Winnemucca, where only a few inches fall in a year, just as Cuba has a few places where the fall may reach sixty-five or seventy inches in a year. But the average fall ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... again, beyond the cliffs, stretched the Causses, vast, arid and barren plateaux, flat and featureless save for an occasional low, rounded mound, a menhir or a dolmen, and (if such may be termed features) great pits that opened in the earth like cold craters, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... lamentable uprisings in history. Thus, it is a remarkable fact that the weather is generally rather warm in Egypt; and this cannot but throw a light on the sudden and mysterious impulse of the Israelites to escape from captivity. The English strikers used some barren republican formula (arid as the definitions of the medieval schoolmen), some academic shibboleth about being free men and not being forced to work except for a wage accepted by them. Just in the same way the Israelites in Egypt employed some dry scholastic ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... the frequent fact that the work of art which gives us this full and vivid pleasure (actually refreshing! for here, at last, is refreshment!) is either fragmentary or by no means first-rate. We have remained arid, hard, incapable of absorbing, while whole Joachim quartets flowed and rippled all round, but never into, us; and then, some other time, our soul seems to have drunk up (every fibre blissfully steeping) a few bars of a sonata (it was Beethoven's 10th violin, and they were stumbling through it ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... of the souls it enters. It is rigorous and rough in arid souls, but tempers and softens itself in ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... dairy produce, and even hay from foreign countries. It is the same to-day. Half a century ago it needed a farm of 5,000 acres to keep a family in decent comfort; to-day it needs the same farm of 5,000 acres to keep a single family in comfort." West of the great Drakenberg range it is an arid, or semi-arid, region. The reason is not so much that the rainfall is deficient, as that the rain comes at the wrong time, and is wasted. What is wanted is water-storage, with irrigation works to spread the ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... view; to the left the palisade continued, an endless barrier of sheer cliffs crowned with pine and hemlock. But the interesting section of the landscape lay almost directly in front of me—a rent in the mountain-wall through which appeared to run a level, arid plain, miles wide, and as smooth ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... more subject, of literary as well as philosophic interest, which he was minded to treat before turning his back finally upon the arid wastes of theory;—the subject of realism versus idealism, or, as he decided to phrase it, of naive and sentimental poetry. This essay, published in 1796, was briefly analyzed in the last chapter. It marks the end of Schiller's one-sided glorification of the Greeks. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... due time at Toulon. The town is not very striking in itself. It is surrounded by an amphitheatre of mountains of hard magnesian limestone. These are almost devoid of vegetation. This it is which gives so arid an aspect to this part of the coast. Facing the south, the sun's rays, reflected from the bare surface of the rocks, place one at mid-day as if in the focus of a great burning mirror, and send every one in quest of shade. This intense temperature has its due effect upon the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... comparatively cool, and a soft moist air fanned our heated cheeks. The roar of the falls grew louder, and at any moment we felt that we might come upon the sight, but we had to travel on nearly half a mile along what seemed to be a steep slope. It was no longer arid and barren here, for every shelf and crevice was full of growth of the most vivid green. For a long time we had not seen a tree, but here tall forest trees had wedged their roots in the cracks and crevices, curved out, and then shot straight up ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... light If you sit in the silence and ask for a Guide; In the caverns of sorrow your soul gains its sight Of beautiful vistas, ascending and wide. In by-paths of worry and trouble and strife Full many a bloom grows bedewed by a tear, But wretched and arid and void of all life Is the ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... following morning, the Tarmangani and his mate went forth upon their journey across the Valley of Jad-ben-Otho, and ahead of them were fierce men and savage beasts, and the lofty mountains of Pal-ul-don; and beyond the mountains the reptiles and the morass, and beyond that the arid, thorn-covered steppe, and other savage beasts and men and weary, hostile miles of untracked wilderness between them and the charred ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... him." Like those of his co-workers for freedom from tyranny, his nerves were now strung to the highest tension, and he spent many a sleepless night planning how best to achieve his high purposes and grim resolves, while his love for pretty Dorothy was the one green spot in the arid ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... as the Ebro divides the levels of Arragon. Spain abounds with brackish streams, Salados, and with salt-mines, or saline deposits, after the evaporation of the sea-waters. The central soil is strongly impregnated with saltpetre: always arid, it every day is becoming more so, from the singular antipathy which the inhabitants of the interior have against trees. There is nothing to check the power of evaporation, no shelter to protect or preserve moisture. The soil becomes more and more baked and calcined; in some parts it has almost ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... men of the Twentieth Century, will your times find place for you? There is plenty to do in every direction. That is plain enough. All the pages in this little book, or in a very large one, would be filled by a mere enumeration. In agriculture a whole great empire is yet to be won in the arid west, and the west that is not arid and the east that was never so must be turned into one vast market-garden. The Twentieth Century will treat a farm as a friend, and it will yield rich returns for such friendship. In the Twentieth Century vast regions will be fitted to civilization, ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... substantial nature which, Johnson says, suits the stomach of middle life. Burke, for instance, is a sufficiently poetical politician to interest one just when one's sonneteering age is departing, but before one has come down quite to arid fact. Do you know anything of poor Sir Egerton Brydges?—this, in talking of sonnets—poor fellow, he wrote them for seventy years, fully convinced of their goodness, and only lamenting that the public were unjust and stupid enough not to admire them also. He lived in haughty seclusion, and at ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... hereafter, is done through the waters which it impels and bears about. Yet where winds blow over verdureless surfaces the effect of the sand which they sweep before them is often considerable. In regions of arid mountains the winds often drive trains of sand through the valleys, where the sharp particles cut the rocks almost as effectively as torrents of water would, distributing the wearing over the width ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... seem to be in harmony with prior laws by which, under certain conditions, arid lands may be conveyed to States for the purpose of irrigation, and it is not clear what is intended by the words "any of the storage-reservoir sites not reserved by the ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... he told of the countries through which he had journeyed; of the sea and the cities by the sea; of the Alps and the Alpine lakes; of cathedrals, palaces, and marvellous monasteries; of the queer people he had met, of his work and his loneliness. It was all incoherent, arid, and loveless. Though sorely tempted, he desisted from mentioning things that came close to his soul; things that moved his heart, fired his brain. When he told of the Jewess, the Swallow, he did ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... heights lift green in place of barren cliffs, to watch banks of fern massed against the right of way where for a day and a night parched sagebrush, brown tumble-weed, and such scant growth as flourished in the arid uplands of interior British Columbia had streamed in barren monotony, hot and ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... bondage bred, The arid deserts roam, Through trackless sands undaunted tread, With skins of water on their head To cheer their ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... disposal, and a banquet of every native delicacy was served me. I still felt, however, that I was not a free man, as several spearmen were placed as a guard at the entrance of my hut. All day my mind was occupied with plans of escape, but none seemed in any way feasible. On the one side was the great arid desert stretching away to Timbuctoo, on the other was a sea untraversed by vessels. The more I pondered over the problem the more hopeless ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Gentlemen, Citizens, Burgesses, Ministers of the Gospel, arid Commons of all sorts, in the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland ... with our hands lifted up to the most high ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... had listened with an immovable attention, the grey eyebrows twitching now and then, the arid face betraying a grim enjoyment. When Philip had finished, he still sat looking at him with steady slow- blinking eyes, as though unwilling to break the spell the tale had thrown round him. But ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... day! It rules in philosophy as elsewhere, and we are now about to see the most rigid and arid of analysts, the leader of the so-called realist school, or school of exact science in Germany in the nineteenth century, plunge headlong into ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... of palisades, very little is to be seen from the river. Quarrying for paving-stones appears to be the chief pursuit of the Elizabethans. At Rose Clare, Ill., a string of shanties three miles below, are two idle plants of the Argyle Lead and Fluor-Spar Mining Co. Carrsville, Ky., is another arid, hillside hamlet, with striking escarpments stretching above and below for several miles. Mammoth boulders, a dozen or more feet in height, relics doubtless of once formidable cliffs, here line the riverside. The palisaded hills reappear in Illinois, commencing ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... was largely derived from the fertile soil, but the district about Santa Brigida was less productive than the rest and had been long neglected. There was rain enough all round, but much of the moisture condensed on the opposite side of the range and left the slopes behind the town comparatively arid. To remedy this an irrigation scheme was being carried out by American capitalists, and the narrow-gage railroad formed ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... River one beautiful morning in April, when a band of voyageurs lounged in scattered groups about the front gate of Fort Garry. They were as fine a set of picturesque, manly fellows as one could desire to see. Their mode of life rendered them healthy, hardy, arid good-humoured, with a strong dash of recklessness—perhaps too much of it—in some of the younger men. Being descended, generally, from French-Canadian sires and Indian mothers, they united some of the good and not a few of the bad qualities ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the tense solitude of the forest developed a spirit of individualism, restive under control. On the other hand, the sense of sharing with others the arduous tasks and dangers of conquering the wilderness gave birth to a strong sense of solidarity arid of human sympathy. With the lure of free lands ever before them, the pioneers developed a restlessness and a nervous energy, blended with a buoyancy of spirit, which are fundamentally American. Yet this same untrammeled freedom occasioned a disregard ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... many noble buildings and a fine park, which he filled with beasts of prey for the pleasure of the ducal family. He also laid out some most beautiful gardens, and since all this country was very dry and arid, he constructed aqueducts with great artifice and ingenuity, and brought water into the place in such abundance that these lands, which had hitherto been sterile and barren, bore fruit in great quantities. And so entirely did he improve and alter the ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... so vaunted by the guide-books Joanne and Baedeker, an hermetic yellow fog, complicated with a flurry of snow in white spirals, enveloped the summit of the Rigi (Regina monhum) and its gigantic hotel, extraordinary to behold on the arid waste of those heights,—that Rigi-Kulm, glassed-in like a conservatory, massive as a citadel, where alight for a night and a day a flock of ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... the long-drawn nasal song of an Arab boatman—that quaint, plaintive, sing-song rhythm accompanied by a tom-tom, which encourages the rowers to bend at their oars, while away still further behind across the river, lays the desolate ruins of the once-powerful Thebes, and that weird, arid wilderness which is so impressive—the Valley of the ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... that Sir John Hawkins, one of England's great "sea kings," went to Africa, loaded his ships with negroes, sold them to planters in Haiti, and came home with hides and pearls. Such trade for one not a Spaniard was against the law of Spain. But Hawkins cared not, arid came again and again. When foul weather drove him into a Mexican port, the Spaniards sank most of his ships, but Hawkins escaped with two vessels, in one of ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... knowing well both his own strength and that of his enemies, handled the matter so, as he cut off their land-forces from their ships; and entoiled both their navy and their tamp with a greater power than theirs, both by sea and land: arid compelled them to render themselves without striking stroke and after they were at his mercy, contenting himself only with their oath that they should no more bear arms against him, dismissed them ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon
... article in The Nation, from A. H. Sedgwick, commenting upon the features of baseball arid cricket as exemplifying national characteristics, said: "To those other objectors who would contend that our explanation supposes a gradual modification of the English into the American game, while it is a matter of common learning that the latter is of no foreign origin but the lineal ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... study of the period. It is not a period to which the student of literature can turn with joy. One who would know Gustavus well must traverse a vast desert of dreary reading, and pore over many volumes of verbose despatches before he can find a drop of moisture to relieve the arid soil. Sweden in the early part of the sixteenth century was not fertile in literary men. Gustavus himself, judged by any rational standard, was an abominable writer. His despatches are in number almost endless and in length appalling. Page after page he runs on, seemingly ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... pronounced by all wretched and useless. They can be described only by negative characters: without habitations, without water, without trees, without mountains, they support merely a few dwarf plants. Why then—and the case is not peculiar to myself—have these arid wastes taken so firm a hold on my memory? Why have not the still more level, the greener and more fertile pampas, which are serviceable to mankind, produced an equal impression? I can scarcely analyze these ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Abraham walked out upon the plain, and looked toward the home of Lot. He saw the smoke as of a great furnace going up to the calm azure, from the scathed and blackened plains, where life was so busy and joyous a few hours before! With a heavy heart he returned to his tent, arid brought Sarah forth to behold the scene. She clung with trembling to his side, while she listened to the narration of the terrible overthrow of those gorgeous cities, and the rescue of her brother's ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... heavy rain falls during the winter; and the summer, though dry, is not so in any excessive degree. [3] We see nearly the whole of Australia covered by lofty trees, yet that country possesses a far more arid climate. Hence we must look to ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Like the snows which envelop the bleak arid waste Of the desert; once melted, alas! what remains But the poor, unproductive, dry soil of the plains? The flora of Cupid will never be found, However he toil there, to ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... hours hang limp and flaccid between the meals which punctuate them with a plateful of coarse-grained gruel. Therefore to Christy Sheridan and Terence Kilfoyle, with half a dozen of their neighbours, the sight of their distinguished visitor was an oasis in a very arid desert, and ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... about Klumpy-Dumpy that tumbled down, who notwithstanding came to the throne, and at last married the princess. And the children clapped their hands, arid cried out, "Oh, go on! Do go on!" they waited to hear about Ivedy-Avedy too, but the little man only told them about Klumpy-Dumpy. The Fir tree stood quite still and absorbed in thought: the birds in the wood had never related the like ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... already sundered its every karmic tie. Not of this world, you must yet be in it. Many years still remain during which you must conscientiously fulfill your family, business, civic, and spiritual duties. A sweet new breath of divine hope will penetrate the arid hearts of worldly men. From your balanced life, they will understand that liberation is dependent on inner, rather than ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... greatly increased by study, while in addition to this he never failed to express his meaning clearly. Giotto indeed was not so much the pupil of any human master as of Nature herself, for in addition to his splendid natural gifts, he studied Nature diligently, arid was always contriving new things and borrowing ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... agreeability to Vienna, sums up all in one prodigious yawn. "The same evenings at Metternich's, the same lounges for making purchases and visits on a morning, the same idleness and fatigue at night, the searching and arid climate, and the clouds of execrable fine dust"—all conspiring to tell the great of the earth that they can escape ennui no more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... a waterless land. That may be a literally true reproduction of his condition, if indeed the old idea is correct, that this is a work of David's; for there is no more appalling desert than that in which he wandered as an exile. It is a land of arid mountains without a blade of verdure, blazing in their ghastly whiteness under the fierce sunshine, and with gaunt ravines in which there are no pools or streams, and therefore no sweet sound of running waters, no shadow, no songs of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... they should be spoken of, of men whose organization and temperament is that of the southern European, living under the influence of a climate at once enervating and exciting, scattered over trackless wildernesses of arid sand and pestilential swamp, intrenched within their own boundaries, surrounded by creatures absolutely subject to their despotic will; delivered over by hard necessity to the lowest excitements of drinking, gambling, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... the desperado, Two-Gun Steve, had forced the engineer to run the train back to a siding, he had ordered Butch to vamoose. Quite naturally, then, the collegian next found himself staggering across the arid expanse, until at last, half dead from a burning thirst, seeking vainly for a water-hole, the vast stretch of sandy, sagebrush-studded wastes shimmered into a gorgeous ocean of sparkling blue waters. Then, as he collapsed on the scorching-hot sand, helpless, the cool water ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... the red incline to an open tableland, where the soil is arid, and yields but a reluctant and scanty harvest. Nothing obstructs the view, and you can see long distances over the downs, which are bereft of all timber except an occasional clump of pines that the axe has spared ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... their arms, to eat the food which was distributed to them, and quench their thirst at the pure stream, which poured its bounties down the hill, or they might be seen to extend their bulky forms upon the turf around them. The Emperor, his most serene spouse, arid the princesses and ladies, were also served with breakfast, at the fountain formed by the small brook in its very birth, and which the reverent feelings of the soldiers had left unpolluted by vulgar touch, for the use of that family, emphatically said to be born in the purple. Our ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... all the cavalry, higher up towards the mountain-range, concealed by the bushes. On debouching from the mountains, the Romans saw the enemy in a position completely commanding their right flank; and, as they could not possibly remain on the bare and arid crest of the chain and were under the necessity of reaching the river, they had to solve the difficult problem of gaining the stream through the entirely open plain of eighteen miles in breadth, under the eyes of the enemy's horsemen and without light cavalry of their own. Metellus despatched ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... 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 Flying W men, of course, she assured herself, and ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... flowers opened. More warmth, a closer atmosphere, is brought to bear upon them, and down fall the buds in showers on stage or floor—the chief cause of this slip between the buds and the open flowers being a rise of temperature. A close or arid atmosphere often leads to the same results. Camellias can hardly have too free a circulation of air or too low a temperature. Another frequent cause of buds dropping arises from either too little or too much water at the roots. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... flowers, speckled with white inside, and shaped like the fingers of a glove," border a certain road; all the ferns that grow on the wastes, "amid which it is often no easy task to recollect one's whereabouts," and on the arid hills all the heathers, pink, white, and bluish, with different foliage, "of which the innumerable species do not, however, very greatly differ." Nothing is to be neglected; "every plant, whatever it may be, great or little, rare or common, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... characters, so widely that they may cover the whole gamut of differences between a split soul like Dr. Jekyll's and an utterly singleminded Brand, Parsifal, or Don Quixote. If the selves are too unrelated, we distrust the man; if they are too inflexibly on one track we find him arid, stubborn, or eccentric. In the repertory of characters, meager for the isolated and the self-sufficient, highly varied for the adaptable, there is a whole range of selves, from that one at the top which we should wish God to see, to those ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... undoubtedly a little dust in the air most of the time, but I do not think that it extends very high. Where it would be the highest and most perceptible would be on the arid plans of Africa and Asia, when the simoom is passing, or in the track of a tornado. But from the multiplicity of these storm centers and the varied winds they would produce even this dust could not travel from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... important work of saving and restoring our forests and the great improvement of waterways, are all proper government functions which must involve large expenditure if properly performed. While some of them, like the reclamation of arid lands, are made to pay for themselves, others are of such an indirect benefit that this cannot be expected of them. A permanent improvement, like the Panama Canal, should be treated as a distinct enterprise, and should be paid for by the proceeds of bonds, the issue of which will distribute its ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... outspread Ever in power O'er each defenceless head In danger's hour! Thanks for the light arid love, From thy full fount above— A rich and constant ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... the heart of their country was a bold and even hazardous undertaking; it could be reached only by traversing miles of arid and rocky plains, exposed to the rays of a burning sun, vast extents of swamps and boggy pasture land, desolate wastes infested with serpents and scorpions, and a mountain range of blackish lava known as Khazu. It would have been ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... believed by naturalists to be descended from the Numida ptilorhynca, which inhabits very hot, and, in parts, extremely arid districts in Eastern Africa; consequently it has been exposed in this country to extremely different conditions of life. Nevertheless it has hardly varied at all, except in the plumage being either paler or darker-coloured. It is a singular fact that this bird ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... us is given; Tomorrow—all the aching years; This is our last short day in heaven, The last of all our kisses nears— Then life too arid even for tears. ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... rocking railway carriage stretched vast arid plains, sprinkled with innumerable villages consisting of mud houses. The fields were cut across in every direction by dirt roads, unpaved, full of deep ruts and holes. At times these roads were sunk far below the level of the fields, worn deep into the earth by the traffic of centuries; ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... Mesa Verde were more fortunate even than their fellow pueblo dwellers. The forested mesas, so different from the arid cliffs farther south and west, possessed constant moisture and fertile soil. The grasses lured the deer within capture. The Mancos River provided fish. Above all, the remoteness of these fastness ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... Much against the grain, the sober deacon got the unsober medicine, and, equally against her conscience, the poor old woman took it; but, by so doing, ere long recovered health and spirits, famous appetite, and glad again to see her friends; and having by this experience broken the ice of arid abstinence, never afterwards kept herself ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... canals?—it is like a body without veins and arteries, and must perish for want of a free circulation of the vital fluid."—Ten Breeches, on the contrary, retorted with a sarcasm upon his antagonist, who was somewhat of an arid, dry-boded habit; he remarked, that as to the circulation of the blood being necessary to existence, Mynheer Tough Breeches was a living contradiction to his own assertion; for everybody knew there had ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... winds vext; and clasp within their arms The tortuous shores: and marshes wide he adds, Pure springs and lakes:—he bounds with shelving banks The streams smooth gliding;—slowly creeping, some The arid earth absorbs; furious some rush, And in the watery plain their waves disgorge; Their narrow bounds escap'd, to billows rise, And lash the sandy shores. He bade the plains Extend;—the vallies sink;—the groves to bloom;— And rocky hills to lift their ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... of God and the Angels. Therefore in his coal-black eyes were gloomy lights which sometimes became ecstatic when they contemplated the incomparable delights of the supernatural world. His back was bent from the continual reading of books, arid his hand shook with excitement caused by the perpetual state of emotion in which his mind was kept; his body was thin from spiritual ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... who leaves Constantina for Setif has a choice of two routes—one picturesque, lively and covered with Roman remains; the other perfectly arid, and distinguished by the fact that in five miles there are just ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... her dream With grey lips arid and cold; She saw not the face as a beam Burn on her, but only a gleam Through her sleep ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... with squirming gnats And acrid coils,—a hole of Death! And runnels thick with arid dung, Flow past a Temple's swoll'n arch, Where warring tribes of hungry cats Fish for green lizards filched of breath; A palace-dome where runes are sung As Satan views his squadron's march, Flare ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... culture— for such, strictly speaking, no longer existed—but of men of erudition that the Greek literature was still cherished even when dead; that the rich inheritance which it had left was inventoried with melancholy pleasure or arid refinement of research; and that, possibly, the living sense of sympathy or the dead erudition was elevated into a semblance of productiveness. This posthumous productiveness constitutes the so-called Alexandrinism. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... directed that it should be made of immense size so that the Trojans should not be able to drag it within their walls, "for," said he, "if the men of Troy do any injury to the gift, evil will come upon the kingdom of Priam, but if they bring it into their city, all Asia will make war against Greece, arid on our children will come the destruction which we would have ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... herbs. The darkened dwelling was wrapped in silence, broken only by the bells, by the chanting of the offices heard through the windows of the church, by the call of the jackdaws nesting in the belfries. The region is a desert of stones, a solitude with a character of its own, an arid spot, which could only be inhabited by beings who had either attained to absolute nullity, or were gifted with some abnormal strength of soul. The house in question had always been occupied by abbes, and it belonged to an old ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Rand sat, chin in hand, thoughtfully regarding his visitor. Major Churchill, erect, rigid, grey, and arid, stared before him as though indeed he saw only snowy plains, fallen men, and a forlorn hope. At last he spoke in a dry and difficult voice. "You persevere in your intention of returning to Richmond and to your house on Shockoe Hill ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... gentle gale ever sweeps down her valleys or disturbs the dead calm that hangs over this world; no cloud ever tempers the fierce glare of the Sun that pours down his unmitigated rays from a sky of inky blackness; no refreshing shower ever falls upon her arid mountains and plains; no sound ever breaks the profound stillness that reigns over this realm ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... as a bloom on the branchlet, is associated with trees in arid localities, especially Mexico, where it is very common. With several species the character is inconstant, apparently dependent on environment, and is a ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... tell him what so earnestly he asks." Whereon I thus: "Perchance, O ancient spirit! Thou marvel'st at my smiling. There is room For yet more wonder. He who guides my ken On high, he is that Mantuan, led by whom Thou didst presume of men arid gods to sing. If other cause thou deem'dst for which I smil'd, Leave it as not the true one; and believe Those words, thou spak'st of him, indeed the cause." Now down he bent t' embrace my teacher's feet; But he forbade him: "Brother! do it not: Thou ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... developed industries,—to the days when the valiant Knights of St. John, under their brave old Grand-Master, L'Isle Adam, almost sorrowfully took possession of it, as the permanent home of the Order, when, alas! all seemed nearly lost to them! Yes, it was then indeed but a barren, arid rock. Though wondrously fertile, considering the small quantity of soil, Malta is still little else than a huge fortress and series of sun-smitten rocks; and therefore, beyond the great docks and fortifications, not very interesting except for its history and mementoes of ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... pass under its arcades and walk out into a region of the Sun, warm, bright, dazzling. The architect, Louis Christian Mullgardt, has caught the feeling of the South,—not the rank, jungle South of the tropics; nor the mild, rich South of our own Gulf states; but the hard, brilliant, arid South of the desert. This court expresses Arizona, New Mexico, Spain, Algiers,—lands of the Sun. The very flowers of its first gardens were desert blooms, brilliant in hue, on leafless stalks. There are orange trees, but they, also, are trees of the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... loose gravel as with water, hollowed out at its base until its crest, bristling with coarse herbage, magnified against the sky, projected far out over the cottage roof. The sun was reflected from the sand in a great hollow of arid light. Jerome, nearing it, felt as if he were approaching an oven. The cottage door was shut, as were all the windows. However, he heard plainly the shrill wail of ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... light of the moon I saw them go—from the ridge I saw them put out to sea. I watched them until the boat was a mere speck on the luminous waters, and finally vanished from sight. I was left alone, a desperately wounded man, on an arid sulphurous island, without food ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... ended his adjuration he drew a phial from his bosom, and sprinkled a few drops upon the arid fuel. A pale blue flame suddenly leaped up; and, as it lighted the haggard but earnest countenance of the Israelite, Muza felt his Moorish blood congeal in his veins, and shuddered, though he scarce knew why. Almamen, with ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... more important than the highest culture. The West is the Almighty's reserve ground, and as the world is filling up, He is turning even the old arid plains and deserts into fertile acres, and is sending there the rain as well as the sunshine. A high and glorious destiny awaits us; soon the balance of population will lie the other side of the Mississippi, and the millions that are coming ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... her pastry, she glanced demurely at her lover, sometimes her blue eyes wandered to the sunny picture outside where roses grew and honeysuckle trailed and the blessed green grass enchanted the tired eyes of those who dwelt in the monstrous and arid city. ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... these traps for them, but always without success, as some other kind of vermin is nearly certain to spring the trap before the chetah's arrival. Among the variety of small animals thus caught I have frequently taken the civet cat. This is a very pretty arid curious creature, about forty inches long from nose to tip of tail. The fur is ash-gray, mottled with black spots, and the tail is divided by numerous black rings. It is of the genius Viverra, and is exceedingly ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... in this state. The soil conditions vary widely, all the way from the sandy loams to the deep soils and gravels, and it is possible to find thousands of acres of deep, rich loam soil. Some of it is five to twenty-five feet deep. Of course the rainfall in that semi-arid region is insufficient for nuts but that can be supplemented by irrigation water, so that is practically no disadvantage. Since I have been there I have tried to interest some of the fruit growers in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... the brave man. On the very first night, after he had travelled his tired horse on past sunset as long as he dared, he found a big patch of parakelia. This extraordinary plant sends up thick moisture-filled leaves in the middle of the most arid desert. The juice, which can be easily squeezed from parakelia leaves, tastes bitter and is not at all pleasant, but it has saved the life of many a bold adventurer in Central Australia. Stock can live ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... by and on, turned a corner, crossed the street, descended into a cave, smiled sweetly at a man who was closing a door and who, seeing that smile, smiled at it, smiled wantonly, held the door open, yet, noting then but an arid blankness where her smile had been, banged the door and ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... their foes, always visible, but not to be overtaken. When at last Count Herbert was convinced that his horses were no match for the fleet steeds of his opponents he discovered that he and his band were hopelessly lost in the arid and pathless desert, the spears of the seemingly phantom host ever quivering before him in the tremulous heated air against the cloudless horizon. Now all his energies were bent toward finding the way that led to the camp by the ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... "the letter kills; That on our arid fields of strife And heat of clashing texts distils The clew of spirit and of life. But, searching still the written Word, I fain would find, Thus saith the Lord, A voucher for the hope I also feel That sin can give no wound beyond love's power ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... waif or a belated homegoer sat in drowsy isolation. The stars were too dim even from this vantage-ground to afford Keith much satisfaction. His thoughts flew back to the mountains and the great blue canopy overhead, spangled with stars, and a blue-eyed girl amid pillows whom he used to worship. An arid waste of years cut them off from the present, and his thoughts came back to a sweet-faced girl with dark eyes, claiming him as her old friend. She appeared to be the old ideal ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... voiceless and unbeautiful. It is a land of soft, crumbling soil and parched rock, dyed with strange colors and broken into fantastic shapes. Nature is titanic and mad: the sane and alleviating beauty of fertility is displaced by an arid and inanimate desolateness, which glows with alien splendor in evanescent conditions of the atmosphere, but which in those moments when the sun casts a fatuous light upon it is more oppressive in its influence upon the observer than when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various |
