"Bog" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the horse, however, snorted and stared wildly, and was evidently unwilling to cross the seemingly inviting spot. I thought that the scent of a wolf, or some other wild animal might have disturbed him, but was soon undeceived by his sinking up to the knees in a bog. The animal uttered a shrill sharp neigh, and exhibited every sign of the greatest terror, making at the same time great efforts to extricate himself, and plunging forward, but every moment sinking deeper. At last he arrived where a small ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... water flowed on each side of a hard, rock trail that ran straight through the center of the basin, and on both sides of the trail a black bog of quicksand spread, covering the ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... been sent by my captain with a letter to a house three miles off. I was kept there some time, and it was nearly dark when, on my way back, I came to a wild, open place, half common and half bog, with nearly a mile of road across it. Just as I got to a small bush near the road, I heard a voice say, "Hist, hist, soldier; turn back and come with me. It's a long way I'll be after taking ye, but it's better than ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... Anton pegged away behind. The heavy downpour of rain, which had not ceased for a day and a night, and which had followed upon the heavy rains of the week before, had made the ground as soft as a bog. The crippled lad's crutch sank in so deeply at every step that it was only with great pain that he could keep up at all. Still, ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... Through bog and brake, over moor and mountain, they hurried on with their prisoner, who, dooming them all to "clootie" and his imps, and commending himself to Michael, Mary, and a number of his especial patrons in the Romish calendar, was urged ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... him genially, "though, as I think I told you long ago, I'm the most well-meaning little cuss that ever walked the earth. I threatened once to put a spoke in your wheel, didn't I? Well, I never did it. I've been pushing and straining to get it out of the bog ever since. And now I've done it, you want to scrag me. Olga, the man's a blood-thirsty scoundrel. If you have the smallest regard for my feelings, you will kick him out of ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... and eyes of that bright blue lustre which is only gained by a free, open-air life. The hillside was just turning purple with heather bloom, and along the winding, stony road the yellow asphodels were dancing in the wind. Everywhere there was the scent of bog-myrtle and wild-rose and sweetbrier, and the tinkling sound of becks babbling over glossy rocks; and in the glorious sunshine and luminous air, the mountains appeared to expand and elevate, and to throw out glowing peaks and summits into ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... enclining to the right and another to the left of the Earl Marischal's squadron of horse, that regiment which should have been on the right, found itself in the center, separated from the rest of the horse, and opposed to the enemies foot; our foot formed all in one line, except on the left, where a bog hinder'd them from extending themselves, and encreased ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... which afforded us an easier footing and inspired us with courage to proceed. These, for a time, terminated at a brook or in a bog, and we were once more compelled to go forward at random. One of these tracks insensibly became more beaten, and, at length, exhibited the traces of wheels. To this I adhered, confident that it would finally conduct us to ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... Here unique and appropriate presents seem to be very cheap. Cedar tubs and bowls and pails, wooden baskets filled with flowers, Shaker rocking-chairs and seats for the veranda, carved tables, cabinets of oak, wall brackets, paintings on wood, water- colors framed in wood-carvings in bog oak, and even a load of kindling wood, have been acceptably offered. The bride can dress as gayly as she pleases at this early anniversary. Then comes the tin wedding, which now is very much welcomed for the pretty tin candlesticks that it ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... inches in depth was 10 deg. warmer than the undrained, at the same depth. The undrained soil never exceeded 47 deg., whereas, after a thunder storm, the drained reached 66 deg. at 7 inches, and 48 deg. at 31 inches. Such were the effects, at an early period of the year, on a black bog. They suggest some idea of what they were, when, in July or August, thunder rain at 60 deg. or 70 deg. falls on a surface heated to 130 deg., and carries down with it, into the greedy fissures of the earth, its augmented temperature. These advantages, porous soils possess by nature, ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... right angles with the banks, but start at a very obtuse one at a point far above the mill. After a little hesitation, inspired by doubtfulness as to what manner of beings we were, he came towards us over the stones and through the water-plants with a bog-trotting movement which we, who had scraped most of the skin off our own ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... sure-footed donkey, over smooth lawns, and through shady parks and flowery lanes, she was accustomed to accompany her father and his rough followers, mounted on one of the wild horses of the country, on long mountain hunts—to dash through bog and briar, to ford swollen streams, and leap ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... of peat, and nothing else. The trunks of such trees as the oak, yew, and fir, are often found mingled with the remains of mosses and reeds, and these often assume a decidedly coaly aspect. From the famous Bog of Allen in Ireland, pieces of oak, generally known as "bog-oak," which have been buried for generations in peat, have been excavated. These are as black as any coal can well be, and are sufficiently hard to allow ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... any, have taken notice) which needs must have corrupted the Air: Those who live in Marshes, and Uliginous Places (like the Hundreds of Essex) being more obnoxious to Fevers, Agues, Pleurisies, and generally unhealthful: The Earth also then a very Bog, compar'd with what it likely was before that destructive Cataclysm, when Men breath'd the pure Paradisian Air, sucking in a more aethereal, nourishing, and baulmy Pabulum, so foully vitiated now, thro' the ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... me, madame," says Monsieur Foullepointe, "who is that queer man who has been talking about the Court of Assizes before a gentleman whose acquittal lately created such a sensation: he is all the while blundering, like an ox in a bog, against everybody's sore spot. A lady burst into tears at hearing him tell of the death of a child, as she lost her own two ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... Duke,' quoth Dame Annora, with a flirt of her fan, learnt at the French court. 'Men will run after a preacher in a marshy bog out of pure forwardness, when they will nod at a godly homily on a ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... six feet apart. She took the bird by one leg and swung it toward me. With outstretched arm I caught it by the other foot, but as I did so I noticed that Euphemia was growing shorter, and also felt myself sinking in the bog. Instantly I entreated Euphemia to stand perfectly still, for, if we struggled or moved, there was no knowing into what more dreadful depths we might get. Euphemia obeyed me, and stood quite still, but I could feel that she clutched the pelican with ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... to cross a bog; and, forgetting that he was no longer wearing his magic boots, he tried to cross it with one stride. But, instead, he put his foot down in the middle and began to sink. As fast as he tried to pull out one foot, the other sank deeper, until at last he was swallowed ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... have no use for a man like that. Not but what some people think too much of Ireland an' too little of other places. Many's a time I get ragin' mad when I hear some of the Nationalists bleatin' about Ireland as if a bit of bog in the Atlantic were worth the rest of the world put together. Do you know what, I'm goin' to say somethin' that'll surprise you. I don't believe Irishmen'll think properly about Ireland 'til they stop thinkin' about it altogether. We're too self-conscious. We haven't enough pride an' we've too ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... slender, sinuous line along the coast for miles, because only the beach afforded dry camping ground. Mounting to the bank behind, one sank knee-deep in moss and water, and, treading twice in the same tracks, found a bog of oozing, icy mud. Therefore, as the town doubled daily in size, it grew endwise like a string of dominoes, till the shore from Cape Nome to Penny River was a long reach of white, glinting in the low rays of the arctic sunset like foamy ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... hills lay. One line of hills brooded grey in the distance, the other stood a patchwork of little square green fields, with a few white cottages about it. The plain was an archipelago of a million islands each about a yard square or less, and everyone of them was red with heather. I was back on the Bog of Allen again after many years, and it was just the same as ever, though I had heard that they were draining it. I was with an old friend whom I was glad to see again, for they had told me that he died some years ago. He seemed strangely young, but what surprised me most was ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... good deal as dinner went on, I could hear her from where I sat. She is in slight mourning, so below her diamond necklace—which is magnificent, but has not been cleaned for years—she had a set of five lockets, on a chain all made of bog oak, and afterwards I found each locket had a portrait of some pet animal who is dead in it, and a piece of its hair. You would never guess that she is Lady Cecilia's sister, except for the bulgy eyes. Towards the end of dinner Mr. Doran got so ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... a call to obedience. 'Follow Me' certainly means 'Do as I bid you,' but softens all the harshness of that command. Sedulously plant your tremulous feet in His firm footsteps. Where you see His track going across the bog be not afraid to walk after Him, though it may seem to lead you into the deepest and the blackest of it. 'Follow Him' and you will be right. 'Follow Him' and you will be blessed. Do as Christ did, or as according to the best of your judgment it seems to you that Christ would ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... the Lord' that he was lost in the desert, and never reached his journey's end. The peoples who walked in the name of any false god will find their path ending as on the edge of a precipice, or in an unfathomable bog; loss, and woe, and shame will be their portion. But 'the name of the Lord is a strong tower,' into which whoever will may run and be safe, and to walk in the name of the Lord is to walk on a way 'that shall be called the Way of Holiness, whereon no ravenous beast shall ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... my art, and had I been permitted to say to the jury what I've said to you, the young man would have been clear. It wouldn't have been gospel, but where's the merit of a lawyer, if he can't go through a bog? This is one of the sweetest and most delightful features of the profession. Sir, it is putting the wings of fiction to the lifeless and otherwise immovable body ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... have stepped in a bog and sunk in; now I've got to spring, and trust to luck for ...
— Three People • Pansy
... look for improvement, I began to perceive evident signs on the part of the road of retrograding into lane-ism; the county had evidently deserted it, and though made for cars and coaches, its traffic appeared to be now confined to donkeys carrying turf home from the bog, in double kishes on their back. Presently the fragments of a bridge presented themselves, but they too were utterly fallen away from their palmy days, and in their present state afforded but indifferent stepping-stones over a bog stream which ran, ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... a ridge of tidal sand divides it from the forest still standing behind. Nor is this all. At Vigia, immediately opposite to Soure, on the continental side of the Para River, just where it meets the sea, we have the counterpart of this submerged forest. Another peat-bog, with the stumps of innumerable trees standing in it, and encroached upon in the same way by tidal sand, is exposed here also. No doubt these forests were once all continuous, and stretched across the whole basin of what is now called the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... brake, Where toils the ant and sleeps the snake; Now o'er the violet's azure flush He skips along in lightsome mood; And now he thrids the bramble bush, Till its points are dyed in fairy blood. He has leapt the bog, he has pierced the briar, He has swum the brook, and waded the mire, Till his spirits sank, and his limbs grew weak, And the red waxed fainter in his cheek. He had fallen to the ground outright, For rugged and dim was his onward ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... why; he is a clever peasant. Twenty-five years ago his cottage was burnt down; so he came up to my late father and said: "Allow me, Nikolai Kouzmitch," says he, "to settle in your forest, on the bog. I will pay you a good rent." "But what do you want to settle on the bog for?" "Oh, I want to; only, your honour, Nikolai Kouzmitch, be so good as not to claim any labour from me, but fix a rent as you think best." "Fifty roubles ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... have been as over-praised by the zealous Scotsmen who cry 'genius' at the sight of a kilt, and who lose their heads at a waft from the heather, as his other books have been under-praised. The best of all, The Master of Ballantrae, ends in a bog; and where the author aspires to exceptional subtlety of character-drawing he befogs us or himself altogether. We are so long weighing the brothers Ballantrae in the balance, watching it incline now this way, now that, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... and the Elbe there lies a fine tract of fertile country. The portion of the duchy lying east of the Elbe is mostly a flat sandy plain, with extensive pine forests, though interspersed, at intervals, by bog-land and rich pastures. The Elbe is the chief river, and intersecting the eastern portion of the duchy, from east to west, receives at Rosslau the waters of the Mulde. The navigable Saale takes a northerly direction through the western portion of the eastern part of the territory and receives, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... to the same commonplace level, seems to need something beautiful to compensate for its coarseness and cruelty. If I were asked to choose between a death by burning, or being suffocated in a dirty bog, I should choose the former; it is any way, a more ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... ——"So eagerly the Fiend O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... fog. It was a still, damp evening. Swirling clouds rose slowly up, and lifted at times and disclosed the peaty hollows, the high tors, the dusky heather. But Trevennack stumbled on, o'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, as chance might lead him, clambering ever toward his goal, now seen, now invisible—the great stack of wild rock that crowned the gray undulating moor to northward. Often he missed his way; often he floundered for awhile ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... thing, for a horse to run away wid a man's characther like this! Oh, Wurra! may I never die in sin, but this was the way of it. I was standin' by owld Foley's gate, whin I heard the cry of the hounds coming across the tail of the bog, an' there they wor, my dear, spread out like the tail of a paycock, an' the finest dog fox ye ever seen a sailin' ahead of thim up the boreen, and right across the churchyard. It was enough to raise the inhabitints out of the ground! Well, as I looked, who should ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... which I with equal readiness ministered to. I lowered the rent of every man at table. I made a general jail delivery, an act of grace, (I blush to say,) which seemed to be peculiarly interesting to the present company. I abolished all arrears—made a new line of road through an impassable bog, and over an inaccessible mountain—and conducted water to a mill, which (I learned in the morning) was always worked by wind. The decanter had scarcely completed its third circuit of the board, when I bid fair to be most popular specimen of the peerage that ever ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... which will be remembered by our soldiers long after they have forgotten the shelling, was worse at Thiepval than elsewhere, or, at least, could not have been worse elsewhere. The road through Thiepval was a bog, the village was a quagmire. Near the chateau there were bits where one sank to the knee. In the great battle for Thiepval, on the 26th of last September, one of our Tanks charged an enemy trench here. It plunged and stuck fast and remained in the mud, like a great animal ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... knee unsot, too," he went on, lifting his knee as he turned the light upon it. "Jes' put yer finger there," said he, indicating a slight protuberance. "Lord! it's big as a bog spavin." ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... entirely absent. Such a condition, by reason of the natural rigidity of the parts, is not to be observed in the foot, although at times it must most certainly occur. Examples of such a condition are to be found in bog-spavin, in hygroma of the stifle, and sometimes in the fetlock. From a study of these, we know that they may be induced by frequent attacks of acute synovitis, from repeated slight injuries or bruises, or from strains to the ligaments of the joint; or that they may be chronic from the ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... had to stagger round and shout his command into each several ear. The might of the deluge almost pressed me to the earth, I carried Elspeth into her bower, but the roof of branches was speedily beaten down, and it was no better than a peat bog. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... on the top of a hill where he could look out towards the bog and in towards the mellow, waving hills. He could drink in the yellowish green, with here and there in the distance a little house; and about two miles away smoke stealing up from the midst of the plantation where Playmore was—Playmore, his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... is likewise a colour peculiar to oil. It is a species of bog-earth or peat, mixed with manganese in various proportions, and found on the estate of Lord Audley at Cappagh, near Cork. The specimens in which the peat earth most abounds are of light weight, friable texture, and dark colour; while those which contain ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... cat, but not in dog. My second is in marsh, but not in bog. My third is in hand, but not in fist. My fourth is in rubber, but not in whist. My fifth is in cow, but not in milk. My sixth is in woollen, but not in silk. My seventh is in brays, but not in neighs. My whole is a poet ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... so big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore, and would smart at every touch; I could not now tell how to speak my words, for fear I should misplace them. Oh, how gingerly[25] did I then go in all I did or said! I found myself as on a miry bog that shook if I did but stir; and 'was' there left both of God and Christ, and the Spirit, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the sheath, and gradually passes into the more insoluble ferric oxide. These actions are of extreme importance in nature, as their continuation results in the enormous deposits of bog-iron ore, ochre, and—since Molisch has shown that the iron can be replaced by manganese in some ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... practically true as if you stepped into a bog and then sat in it and looked forlorn and said. "What a terrible thing it is that I should be in a bog like this; just think of having to sit in a black, muddy bog all the time," and staying there you made no effort whatever to get out of it, even though there ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... Imbros; a breeze from the West whipping up little waves into cover for enemy periscopes. So the moment we left the harbour we took on a corkscrew course, dodging and twisting like snipe in an Irish bog, to avoid winding up our trip in the dark belly of a German submarine. Soon emerged from the sea a huge piled up white cloud, white and clear cut at first as the breast of a swan upon a blue lake, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... built my pretty and substantial house, were not very far-sighted fellows and on their hunt for happiness sailed straight into the bog. But they demanded wares for their money, and that was right. Now I, as an old man, live on the beautiful ruins of their glory overgrown with the immature buds of a newer, grander splendor of life; ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... discovered in a Danish peat-bog probably belong to the fifth century, thus being fifteen hundred years of age. Yet their counterparts can still be seen along the Norwegian coast. Such wonderful persistence, even of such an excellently serviceable type, is quite unparalleled; and it proves, if proof were needed, that the Norsemen ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... those used by the people on this continent or suggested by the ones in use and are typically American; and the designs are suited to the arctics, the tropics, and temperate climes; also to the plains, the mountains, the desert, the bog, and ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... a muckle ghaists aboot?' inquired Meg, as she gazed anxiously upon the wild expanse of moor, grasslands, and bog that stretched away, boundless as the ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... kill or cure; some will treat diseases in their incipiency with quack medicines, bought cheap, hoping thereby to fend off the doctor's bill. Some women seem to be pursued by an evil demon of economy, which, like an ignis fatuus in a bog, delights constantly to tumble them over into the mire of expense. They are dismayed at the quantity of sugar in the recipe for preserves, leave out a quarter, and the whole ferments and is spoiled. They cannot by any means be induced at any one time to buy enough ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... there were only eight holdings on a hundred and seventeen plantation acres, and they paid but L27: 10s: 2 for that extent of land, which was valued under the poor-law valuation at L68, and in addition to which they had a considerable extent of mountain and bog." Mr Lambert, an extensive farmer in Mayo, declares—"I see among the poor people having land, that those who have leases are much less inclined to make improvements than those who have not." Mr Kelly of Galway, a large proprietor, is asked—"What effect ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... galimatias, which he calls his "Memoirs," is frequent reference to a business partner of his, of the name of Nolan, who, in the very beginning of this century, was killed in Texas. Whenever Wilkinson found himself in rather a deeper bog than usual, he used to justify himself by saying that he could not explain such or such a charge because "the papers referring to it were lost when Mr. Nolan was imprisoned in Texas." Finding ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... inextricably in the morass, covering him with water and with mud. The weight of his armor sank him deeper in the mire, and in the desperate struggles of the steed for extrication, he was in great danger of being suffocated. None could come to his aid without danger of being swallowed up in the bog. ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... steps to the public-house for my horse, whose head I now turned towards a farm-house where I had written to procure apartments. I had proceeded but a short distance, when he sunk up to the girths in a small bog, but contrived to scramble out so soon as I had dismounted. I knew beforehand, that my future residence was inaccessible for any description of carriage, but as I was little likely to be encumbered in this way, it was a ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... deceitful hope that the end of his journey was near, by the apparition of a twinkling light or two; but, as he came up, he was disappointed to find that the gleams proceeded from some of those farm-houses which occasionally ornamented the surface of the extensive bog. At length, to complete his perplexity, he arrived at a place where the road divided into two. If there had been light to consult the relics of a finger-post which stood there, it would have been of little avail, as, according ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the garden was full of flowers, but every time I tried to gather them, he pulled me back by that single hair. I don't remember any more, only something about running wildly away from him, and losing myself in a dark forest, and there the ground was soft like a bog, and it seemed as if I were going to be swallowed up every moment. It was a terrible sensation. All of a sudden I woke with a cry. The room was grey with dawn, and you said: "Emily dear, what have you been dreaming, to cry out like that?" I was too tired and frightened ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... must determine this somehow, for the one may lead you to food and shelter, to triumph and honor perhaps; while the other, which may be ever so clear and inviting, will lead you into bog and mire; so you have to ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... inconceivably thick in places, standing man-high above the water; cattle, no, not any fish nor fowl can penetrate them. Old stalks succumb slowly; the bed soil is quagmire, settling with the weight as it fills and fills. Too slowly for counting they raise little islands from the bog and reclaim the land. The waters pushed out cut deeper channels, gnaw off the edges of ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... composition of the flora of our moorlands is as yet to me an utter puzzle. We have Lycopodiums—three species—enormously ancient forms which have survived the age of ice: but did they crawl downward hither from the northern mountains, or upward hither from the Pyrenees? We have the beautiful bog asphodel again—an enormously ancient form; for it is, strange to say, common to North America and to Northern Europe, but does not enter Asia—almost an unique instance. It must, surely, have come from the north; and points—as ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... Vivian, bowing to the ground to the lady. "Oh! my Lord I was late, and made a short cut over Fearnley Bog. It has proved a very Moscow expedition. However, I am keeping you. I shall be in time for the guava and liqueurs, and you know that is the only refreshment ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... down into Marham Bottom, some four or five were left behind, for they feared the soft ground near the river, and did not know the pass through it. But Sir William knew it, and those who remained close to him got over that trouble. Burgo, who would still lead, nearly foundered in the bog;—but he was light, and his horse pulled him through,—leaving a fore-shoe in the mud. After that Burgo was contented to give ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... led along the skirt of the upland, till he entered the mouth of a wide, darksome valley. Upon either side straggled a growth of mixed larch and cedar; in the centre was a dismal bog, through which slowly rolled a black, foul stream. As they passed along the shoulder of solid ground, troops of birds rose out of the wide sea of bog, and the noise of their wings made a low, mournful whirring as they passed in dark troops upwards ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... self-blame. His mind had trampled upon itself in throes of introspection until it was often difficult to say which way the paths of the narrative really led. He had thought so much and acted so little that he travelled in a veritable bog of indecision. And yet, withal, some ideas, by constant attrition, had acquired a really striking form. "I am afraid before life," he said. "It makes me ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... we were to visit. How the Indians could run so quickly through the portages was to me a marvel. Often the path was but a narrow ledge of rock against the side of the great granite cliff. At other times it was through the quaking bog or treacherous muskeg. To them it seemed to make no difference. On they went with their heavy loads at that swinging Indian stride which soon left me far behind. On some of my canoe trips the portages were several miles long, and through ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... Tombs, you're utterly wrong! I've only learned a little manners and a little sense. All that's ever restrained me, sir, was lack of sand. The few bad things I've kept out of, I kept out of simply because I knew if I went into 'em I'd bog down. It's not a half hour since I'd have liked first-rate to be worse than I am, but I didn't have the sand for that, either. Why, sir, I'm worse to-day than I ever was, only it's deeper hid. If men went to convict camps for ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... were worrying the baby between them as a couple of hound puppies worry the hind leg of a cub. She beat them faithfully with a broom and hove both of them out into the wide wet world, and we all slept in a bog that night, and William was much abused and loathed. But that was his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... giue all to thy Daughters? And art thou come to this? Edgar. Who giues any thing to poore Tom? Whom the foule fiend hath led through Fire, and through Flame, through Sword, and Whirle-Poole, o're Bog, and Quagmire, that hath laid Kniues vnder his Pillow, and Halters in his Pue, set Rats-bane by his Porredge, made him Proud of heart, to ride on a Bay trotting Horse, ouer foure incht Bridges, to course his owne shadow for a Traitor. Blisse thy fiue Wits, Toms ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... militate against each other; where reason is perplexed; and an appeal to authorities only thickens the confusion. For high and reverend authorities lift up their heads on both sides; and there is no sure footing in the middle. This point is the GREAT SERBONIAN BOG, BETWIXT DAMIATA AND MOUNT CASIUS OLD, WHERE ARMIES WHOLE HAVE SUNK. I do not intend to be overwhelmed in that bog, though in such respectable company. The question with me is, not whether you have a right to render your people ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... trink the apominations, and be curst to you!" said Donald, who perfectly understood that judgment had gone against him, "and much goot may't do you! but mysel would sooner trink the dirty bog water of Sleevrechkin. Oich, oich! the dirts! But I say, lanlort, maype you'll have got some prandies in the house? I can make shift wi' that when there's no whisky to ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... appeared to have been diging roots today and saw the fresh tracks of 8 or ten horses but they had been wandering about in such a confused manner that we not only lost the track of the hose which we had been pursuing but could make nothing of them. in the head of this valley we passed a large bog covered with tall grass and moss in which were a great number of springs of cold pure water, we now turned a little to the left along the foot of the high hills and arrived at a small branch on which we encamped for the night, having traveled in different directions about 20 Miles and about ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... buzzard-heads has drawed every poun' they kin pull. But I has some reason to believe that if you don't hist your hoofs out'n that mud-hole, you'll bog down. You're up to your pant-leg ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... swelling, too," Frank Nelsen heard Charlie Reynolds say. "Lymphatic glands sometimes bog down in the absence of weight. Don't worry if it happens to some of you. We know that ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... little past eleven, and within the half-hour were at Gretna Green. Thence we rushed onward into Scotland through a flat and dreary tract of country, consisting mainly of desert and bog, where probably the moss-troopers were accustomed to take refuge after their raids into England. Anon, however, the hills hove themselves up to view, occasionally attaining a height which might almost be called ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... us all we knew to get over; it was a regular quicksand. Rainbow never got flustered if he was up to his neck in a bog, but my horse got frightened and plunged, so that I had to jump off. Jim's horse was a trifle better, but he hadn't much to spare. We weren't sorry to take the bridles out of their mouths and let them pick a bit on the flat when ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... nowhere at all. The night before a little snow had fallen so that footprints could be traced. [Sidenote: An finds the sword] An rode back to the brushwood, and followed the footprints of Thorolf to a certain ditch or bog. He groped down with his hand, and grasped the hilt of a sword. An wished to have witnesses with him to this, and rode for Thorarin in Saelingsdale Tongue, and he went with An to take up the sword. After that An brought ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... must be the dreariest glen in Scotland. The trail twists in a futile manner, and, after all, is mainly bog holes and rolling rocks. The Red Hills are on the right, rusty, reddish, of the color of dried blood, and gashed with sliding bowlders. Their heads seem beaten down, a Helot population, and the Cuchullins stand back like an army of iron conquerors. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... said DeBar companionably, slowly turning the bird. "You always want to test the lakes in this country. Most of 'em come from bog springs, and after they freeze, the water drops. Guess you'd had me pretty soon if it hadn't been for the lake, ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... As we neared the garden gate I could have sworn we had stepped knee-deep in quicksand, for we could scarcely drag our feet against the prickling currents that clogged them. After five paces we stopped, wiping our foreheads, as hopelessly stuck on dry smooth turf as so many cows in a bog. ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... there are certain parts of the world in which the coral polypes which live and grow are of a kind which remain, adhere together, and form great masses. They differ from the ordinary polypes just in the same way as those plants which form a peat-bog or meadow-turf differ from ordinary plants. They have a habit of growing together in masses in the same place; they are what we call "gregarious" things; and the consequence of this is, that as they die and leave ...
— Coral and Coral Reefs • Thomas H. Huxley
... time since, I rode across the island, and returned in four days. My excursion would have been longer, but during the whole time it blew a gale of wind, with hail and snow. There is no firewood bigger than heath, and the whole country is, more or less an elastic peat-bog. Sleeping out at night was too miserable work to endure it for all the rocks in ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... This wretched bog was the habitation of all the lords, from Godmund to the Holtes, the Erdington's excepted; for Maud Grymsorwe executing the conveyance at Aston, indicates that she resided there; and Thomas Holte, being possessed of Duddeston, proves that he did not: therefore I conclude, that the ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... I with a mind sore and inflamed. I did not clearly understand what had happened to me. I had blundered, offended, entangled myself; and I had no more conception than a beast in a bog what it was had got me, or the method or even the need of escape. The desires and passionate excitements, the anger and stress and strain and suspicion of the last few months had worn deep grooves in my brain, channels without end or issue, out of which it ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... tried in vain to drag out one front leg after the other, and next my middle and back legs. It was just as a man would feel if he were stuck in a bog. ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... meantime the wedding-day drew near. After the marriage, the Pig and his bride set out for his home in one of the royal carriages. On the way they passed a great bog, and the Pig ordered the carriage to stop, and got out and rolled about in the mire till he was covered with mud from head to foot; then he got back into the carriage and told his wife to kiss him. What was the poor girl to do? ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... his first sensation was that of a man sinking in a bog; then his obstinacy stiffened. 'I won't be done,' he thought. Taking out a sovereign he tried to make the woman comprehend that she could earn it, by telling him where they had gone. He got her finally to write the words out in his pocket-book, gave her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... conclave, the two herdsmen concluded their wisest plan was to throw the dead pig into a bog, and this project they carefully executed, after each had duly carved himself several slices out of the body of this innocent victim of the feud between the Barricini and the ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... me might go together. Ay, the bog behind the meadow is well drained by this, and we might put the plough over it. There will be a fine, deep soil in it, I'm thinking. Don't look that ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... merry night O ho! Follow, follow, nigher, nigher - Over bank, and pond, and briar, Down into the croaking ditches, Rotten log, Spotted frog, Beetle bright With crawling light, What a joy O ho! Deep into the purple bog - What a joy O ho! Where like hosts of puckered witches All the shivering agues sit Warming hands and chafing feet, By the blue marsh-hovering oils: O the fools for all their moans! Not a forest mad with fire Could still their teeth, or ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... By Louvain, Tillemont, Tongres to Maestricht; then from Maestricht up the Maas (left bank) to Venlo, where cross; through Geldern and Goch to Cleve: between the Maas and Rhine this last portion. Flat damp country; tolerably under tillage; original constituents bog and sand. Distances I guess to be: To Tongres 60 miles and odd; to Maestricht 12 or 15, from Maestricht 75; in all 150 miles English. Two days' driving? There is equinoctial moon, and still above twelve hours of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... rivers gliding under ancient walls; beautiful is Italy, her seas, and her suns: but dearer to me the long grey wave that bites the rock below the minster in the north; dearer are the barren moor and black peat-water swirling in tauny foam, and the scent of bog myrtle and the bloom of heather, and, watching over the lochs, the ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... have been if it had been on any other place but a soft bog. On the softest of soft bogs he fell. He made a hole in the ground, but no bone in his body was broken and he still held the cup in his hands. He rose up covered with the mud of the bog, and he started off ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... adorned on one side with a villainous portrait of myself superscribed by the motto, "Our Fathers Fought For Freedom, We Are Fighting For The Right," and on the other a cut depicting the rival candidate up to his armpits in the bog of Civil Service Reform, described as "Spinney's Walk-Over" (a happy blending, as Nick called it, of serious principle and humorous suggestion), I appeared on the door-steps and delivered a few halting sentences of gratitude and augury ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... SPY: According to promise, I now write you a little about Delaware. Persons in your vicinity look upon the 'Little Diamond State' as a mere bog, or marsh, and mud and water they suppose are its chief productions; but, in my opinion, it is one of the finest little states in the Union. Although small, in proportion to the size it produces more grain and fruit than any other state in the country, and they are unexcelled ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... running water. Who does not know it and feel it? The railroad builder fearlessly throws his bank across the wide bog or lake, or the sea itself, but the tiniest nil of running water he treats with great respect, studies its wish and its way and gives it all it seems to ask. The thirst-parched traveller in the poisonous alkali deserts holds ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... forming, when you look close into it, an unlimited forest of delicately separate stems and bloom and seed; every plant detaching itself daintily from an undefinable background of things like itself. This winter turns into a rusty brown and green expanse, or into a bog, or a field of frozen upturned clods. The very trees, stripped of their leaves, look as if prepared for diagrams of the abstraction tree. Everything, in short, is reduced most philosophically to its absolutely ultimate elements; and beauty is got rid of almost as completely as by a metaphysical ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... of a yearlin' calf; an' the way he pulls down sech feeble people as sheep or lays desolate some he'pless henroost don't bother him a bit. This panther spreads a horror over the county. Dances, pra'er meetin's, an' even poker parties is broken up, an' the social life of that region begins to bog down. Even a weddin' suffers; the bridesmaids stayin' away lest this ferocious monster should show up in the road an' chaw one of 'em while she's en route for the scene of trouble. That's gospel trooth! ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... were often together in one long play, broken only by the man's periods of labor. They basked in a boat near rushes, waiting for pickerel to strike, or waded a bog to a trout stream at the other end of the lake, hid in a forest full of windfalls and hoary moss and tropical growths of brake and fern. Gougou had new strong clothes and buckskin shoes. For the patois had not been a week in camp before Brown went to ...
— The Cursed Patois - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... are Empire or Education to men who feel themselves drifting helplessly into debt? What chance has any constructive scheme with an electorate of men who are being slowly submerged in an economic bog? ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... the garden were a few stalks of tansy "to kill the thievin' worms in the childhre, the crathurs," together with a little Rosenoble, Solomon's Seal, and Bugloss, each for some medicinal purpose. The "lime wather" Mrs Sullivan could make herself, and the "bog bane" for the linh roe, or heartburn, grew in their own meadow-drain; so that, in fact, she had within her reach a very decent pharmacopoeia, perhaps as harmless as that of the profession itself. Lying on the top of the ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... though but so big as a straw; for my conscience now was sore, and would smart at every touch: I could not now tell how to speak my words, for fear I should misplace them. Oh, how gingerly did I then go, in all I did or said! I found myself as on a miry bog, that shook if I did but stir, and was, as there, left both of God and Christ, and the ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... bright, Nor by tally nor price shall their worth be replaced; Ah, boded the morning of our brave unreturning, When it drifted the clouds in the rush of its blast. As we march'd on the hill, such the floods that distil, Turning dry bent to bog, and to plash-pools the heather, That friendly no more was the ridge of the moor, Nor free to our tread, and the ire of the weather Anon was inflamed by the lightning untamed, And the hail rush that storm'd from the mouth of the gun, Hard pelted the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... that the corpse was there, and to come up early in the morning and perform Mass. The next thing to do was to make himself comfortable for the night; and then he made a roaring fire on the ould hearth,—for there was plenty of bog-fir there,—closed the windows with the black cloaks, and wrapping two round himself, he sat down to cook a little supper he brought with him in case ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... wind and weather to torture out of the water a few miserable little fish! Of what material can such a man's brain be composed, if he be gifted with brain at all? Is it mud, clay, or water; or is it all a bog? Possibly he was a lover of nature; but if you examine his portrait you will perceive that there is nothing in his personal appearance to warrant that suspicion. Even if such were the case, this ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... has worked most laboriously in his garden but his misfortunes there, during our absence, might melt a heart of stone. The horses of our next neighbouring farmer broke through our hedges, and have made a kind of bog of our mead ow, by scampering in it during the wet; the sheep followed, who have eaten up all our greens, every sprout and cabbage and lettuce, destined for the winter ; while the horses dug up our turnips and carrots; and the swine, pursuing such examples, have trod down all the young plants ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... from Belfast, Ireland, here met me, presenting a beautiful bog-oak casket, lined with gold, and carved with appropriate national symbols, containing an offering for the cause of the oppressed. They read a beautiful address, and touched upon the importance of inspiring with the principles of emancipation the Irish nation, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... told him, "come along," Tu ri lum diddle day. "The weather is certainly fine just now," Fum lum dum skiddle fay. But the grasshopper fell in a deep, dark bog, And I pulled him out on a sunken log, And then came along a bad, savage dog, And we ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... 'that he had given Dr. Parr a dressing, who had taken him for an Irish bog-trotter,' &c. &c. Now I, who know Dr. Parr, and who know (not by experience—for I never should have presumed so far as to contend with him—but by hearing him with others, and of others) that it is ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... workhouse is already every winter filled with abler- bodied men than he, between starvation—and this—. Well, as for employing him, one would have thought that there was a little work waiting to be done in those five miles of heather and snipe-bog, which I used to tramp over last winter—but those, it seems, are still on the "margin of cultivation," and not a remunerative investment—that is, to capitalists. I wonder if any one had made Crawy a present of ten acres of them when he came of ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... how; but for to-morrow, why, I guess we must beat the 'Squire's swamp-hole first; there's ten or twelve cock there, I know; I see them there myself last Sunday; and then acrost them buck-wheat stubbles, and the big bog meadow, there's a drove of quail there; two or three bevys got in one, I reckon; leastwise I counted thirty-three last Friday was a week; and through Seer's big swamp, ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... she took them graciously, but never cut the leaves. There were to them even more heathenish indications in her hoopless straight skirts: the good little creatures zealously cut and trimmed a dress for her from the very last patterns. She put it on, and straightway went through bog and brake with Bruno for mushrooms, coming back with it in tatters. They chattered in their thin falsetto voices the last Culpepper gossip into her patient ear—the story of Rosey's balls at Old Point, and Netty's lovers, all of whom were "splendid matches until impohverished by the war." She listened ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... in turbulent times. It is situated on the margin of a small lake, and, it must be confessed, overlooking an extremely dreary tract of country." It was in the immediate neighbourhood of the wild country to the north, half forest, half bog, the wood and hill of Aharlo, or Arlo, as Spenser writes it, which was the refuge and the "great fastness" of the Desmond rebellion. It was amid such scenes, amid such occupations, in such society and companionship, that the poet of the Faery Queen accomplished as much of his work ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... of Cardamine pratensis, the pretty early meadow flower of which children are so fond, and of which the popularity is shown by its many names: Lady-smocks, Cuckoo-flower,[134:1] Meadow Cress, Pinks, Spinks, Bog-spinks, and May-flower, and "in Northfolke, Canterbury Bells." The origin of the name is not very clear. It is generally explained from the resemblance of the flowers to smocks hung out to dry, but the resemblance seems to ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... the famous Liverpool and Manchester Railway thirty years earlier. Partly in order to avoid interfering with Sir John Hanmer's property, and partly because they deemed it the better way, the engineers decided to carry the line over Whixall Moss, a wide area of bog land lying between Bettisfield and Fenns Bank. This, it was supposed, might even be drained by making the railway across its quivering surface, but hopes of this sort were not to be realised, for it remains to-day a wild, but picturesque ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... that no Terra del Fuegan could envy. For the 'owners' of this land, who live in London and Paris, many of them having never seen their estates, find cattle more profitable than men, and so the men have been driven off. It is only when you reach the bog and the rocks in the mountains and by the sea shore, that you find a dense population. Here they are crowded together on land on which nature never intended men to live. It is too poor for grazing, so the people who have been driven from ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... signifies "low or sloping ground," in Richardson's Arabic and Persian Dictionary; and "Carr, a bog, a fen, or morass," occurs in Armstrong's Gaelic Dictionary. The word I conceive is thus clearly traced to its Keltic or ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... nearly abreast. The old tavern of the Hammer and Trowel was visible, at the foot of the northern hill; the hounds, in front, bayed in a straight line towards Avondale Woods,—but a long slip of undrained bog made its appearance. Neither gentleman spoke, for each was silently tasking his wits how to accomplish the passage most rapidly. The horses began to sink into the oozy soil: only a very practised eye could tell where ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... there are not any beasts of burthen in the country, the natives carrying all their burthens upon their heads, and some of them of greater weight than are seen carried by the Irishwomen from the London markets. Being all assembled at the bottom of the glen, they found that a long and dangerous bog or swamp filled with putrid water, and the decayed remains of vegetable substances intersected their path, and must necessarily be crossed. Boughs of trees had been thrown into the swamp by some good-natured people to assist travellers ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the itch," growled Dirtovitch, "Bog spavin and lumbago." "I'm never dry," swore Goshallski, "I smell ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... now, I thought he would fly out presently. These be our nimble-spirited catsos, that have their evasions at pleasure, will run over a bog like your wild Irish; no sooner started, but they'll leap from one thing to another, like a squirrel, heigh! dance and do tricks in their discourse, from fire to water, from water to air, from air to earth, as if their tongues did but e'en lick the four elements over, ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... supposed to guide the wandering lights, that in the obscurity of the night beguiled the weary traveller "through bog, through bush, through brake, through briar." But their power of evil only extended, or was only employed, to vex those who by a certain obliquity of conduct gave occasion for their reproofs. They besides pinched ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... the quantity of carbon is infinitely less. Between these two beds, according to the degree of pressure to which they have been subjected, are found veins of graphite and rich or poor coal. It may be asserted that it is for want of sufficient pressure that beds of peaty bog have not been completely changed into coal. So then, the origin of coal mines, in whatever part of the globe they have been discovered, is this: the absorption through the terrestrial crust of the great forests of the geological ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... prospect, and commands a fine view of the barn and pigsty through numerous windows. Item 2. We have a small fire-engine near the new house which can be worked by a man or two, and would be equal to the emergency of putting out a bunch of fire-crackers. Item 3. We have a new ladder, in a bog, close to the new fire-engine, so if the new house catches fire, like its predecessor, and there should happen to, be a sick man on an upper floor, he can be got out without running the risk of going up and down a burning staircase. What a blessed ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... man and an Indian, I start on a climb to the summit of the Paunsa'gunt Plateau, which rises above us on the east. Our way for a mile or more is over a great peat bog, which trembles under our feet, and now and then a mule sinks through the broken turf and we are compelled to pull it out with ropes. Passing the bog, our way is up a gulch at the foot of the Pink Cliffs, which form the escarpment, ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... the impervious and quaking swamps. When, formerly, I have analyzed my partiality for some farm which I had contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted solely by a few square rods of impermeable and unfathomable bog,—a natural sink in one corner of it. That was the jewel which dazzled me. I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native town than from the cultivated gardens in the village. There are no richer parterres to my eyes than the dense beds of dwarf ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... a god I would get me a spear, I would get me horse and dog, And merrily, merrily I would ride through covert and brake and bog, ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... barrel. If you fill it half full, you mustn't move a muscle, or the imprisoned air keeps shifting all over the place till one feels sick of one's stomach. In either case it's as hard as petrified bog-oak. If you only leave an imperial pint in the vessel, it all goes and gathers in one corner, thus conveying to one the impression that one is sitting one's self upon a naked chair with a tennis-ball ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... matters worse, the place seemed to be a favorite breeding-place of the Jaracaca snake, the most venomous and aggressive in South America. Again and again these horrible creatures came writhing and springing towards us across the surface of this putrid bog, and it was only by keeping our shot-guns for ever ready that we could feel safe from them. One funnel-shaped depression in the morass, of a livid green in color from some lichen which festered in it, will always remain as a nightmare memory ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Mr. Balfour's caution. It sometimes happens that the politics of a Party become involved in such a queer and awkward tangle that only a choice of evils is at the disposal of its leader; and when the leader has to choose between sliding into a bog on the one hand and jumping over a precipice on the other, some measure of indulgence may be extended to him if he prefers to go on marking time, and indicating the direction in which his followers are to advance by a vague general gesture towards ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... experienced a Kimberley storm. The rain started about 2 a.m., and in twenty minutes the country was a sea of water; our camp was flooded, and blankets and packs soaked through and through. The next morning every creek was running a banker and every plain was a bog. However, the camels behaved well and forded the streams without any fuss. That day we met some half-civilised natives, who gave us much useful information about Hall's Creek. With them we bartered a plug of tobacco for a kangaroo tail, for we wanted meat and they a smoke. They ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... adjacent tribe, had taken refuge in a large swamp about twenty-five miles west. This swamp was in the present town of Fairfield, directly back of the village. The army immediately advanced with all dispatch to the swamp. The bog was so deep and wet, and tangled with underbrush, that it seemed impossible to enter it. A few made the attempt, but they sank in the mire, and were sorely wounded by arrows shot from an ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... be traversed was an immense flat, green meadow, which promised an easy road for the cannon. But the 'green meadow,' which proved so satisfactory at first, became softer and looser as they got further inland, and finally it ended in a treacherous bog, which threatened to engulf both men and guns; and to make matters worse, the enemy, entrenched behind some trees at the little village of Reduction, a mile or so away, now opened fire on our troops, as they struggled to ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... your stationary quarters, and may His Majesty never find a more active enemy than yourself!—By the soul of my grandmother, it would be well for poor Ireland, who has taken leave of her senses, if her bog-trotting marauders were as peaceably inclined as you are.—Fait and troth, but you're a fine looking lad after all, and with the assistance of your master, and a touch of Prometheus, we might raise a regiment of braver fellows than the King's Guards, without bounty or beat of drum, in the twinkling ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... individual still entertain doubts whether in a world without Clothes, the smallest Politeness, Polity, or even Police, could exist, let him turn to the original Volume, and view there the boundless Serbonian Bog of Sansculottism, stretching sour and pestilential: over which we have lightly flown; where not only whole armies but whole nations might sink! If indeed the following argument, in its brief riveting emphasis, be not ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... chain o' blae-berries—or if the Millennium be really close at haun'—or the present Solar System be calculated to last to a' eternity—or whether the people should be edicated up to the highest pitch o' perfection, or preferably to be all like trotters through the Bog o' Allen—or whether the government should subsedeeze foreign powers, or spend a' its sillar on oursells—or whether the Blacks and the Catholics should be emancipawted or no afore the demolition o' Priests and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... nature. You, however small you are, however insignificant people may think you, however humbly you may think of yourselves, you are so great that the whole created Universe, if it were yours, would be all too little for you. You cannot fill a bottomless bog with any number of cartloads of earth. And you know as well as I can tell you that 'he that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase,' and that none of the good things here below, rich and precious as many of them are, are large enough ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... was aware of a tremendous push from behind. The animals smelled the cool water of a spring which formed a large bog in the midst of the plain. This solitary pond or marsh was a watering-place for the wild animals. All pushed and edged toward it; it was impossible for any one to withstand the combined strength ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... him to the edge of the bog, knelt down, drew aside a branch of witch-hopple. A man's footprint was plainly visible ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... inclined. What wonder, then, when the evening came, And the castle gardens were all aflame With the many curious lights that hung O'er the ivied porches, and flared among The grand old trees and the banners proud, That many a heart beat high and loud, While the famous choir of Glendare Bog, Established and led by the Brothers Frog, Sat thrumming as hoarsely as they were able, In front of ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... from his contact with the world. Not even in those volumes which afterwards charmed his country from end to end, did Gilbert see his brother in so interesting a light as in those conversations in the bog, with only two or three noteless ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... learned that the English meant to march by the former route. He then chose ground where his front was defended, first by the little burn of Bannock, which at one point winds through a cleugh with steep banks, and next by two morasses, Halbert's bog and Milton bog. What is now arable ground may have been a loch in old days, and these two marshes were then impassable by a column ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Dwyer still held out: Connemara itself was hardly wilder or less accessible, till the "military road" was run, little more than a hundred years ago, from Dublin over the western slopes of Featherbed, past Glencree, and through Callary Bog, skirting Glendalough and traversing the wild recesses of Glenmalure, so that it cuts across the headwaters of those beautiful streams which meet in the Vale of Ovoca. From Glenmalure the road climbs a steep ridge and then travels in wide downward curves across the ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... know that all the game, and all the turf, and all the bog, and all the gravel, and all the furze on this common belong to the Right ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to the belly; for the Kalevide slaughtered his enemies by tens of thousands, and would have utterly annihilated them, but, as he was pursuing the fugitives over hill and dale, his horse lost his footing in a bog, and ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... you are standing. Here read Kingsley's well-known story of Hereward; or, The Last of the English, and instead of the rich cornfields you will see that black abyss of mud and bottomless slime into which sank the flower of Norman chivalry as they tried to cross that treacherous bog to conquer the gallant Hereward and to plunder the monastery of Ely, the last stronghold of the English. On they came, thousands upon thousands, rushing along the floating bridge which they had formed, until at last it gave way beneath the weight, and the black slime ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... Dripping from the bog-holes and lathered with mud, it was the mystery of Breault's noiseless presence somewhere near him in the still night that drew Peter continually deeper ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... taxed his subjects, collected revenue, kept up a standing army, sent ambassadors to foreign countries, and did all which kings do nowadays? or whether his shillelagh was his sceptre, and his domain some furze-crowned hills and a bog, the intricacies of which were known only to himself? whether he was arrayed in jewelled robes, with a crown of gold weighing on his temples? or whether he went bare-legged and bare-armed, with his bare locks flowing in luxurious wildness to the breeze? ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat |
