"Cleft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brown color of the hill behind it, subduing itself to the general scheme, even as birds and animals will do; so that strangers who searched for it in the valley discovered it by the upward swirl of smoke from its wide chimneys. On its western side and just beneath the house, there was a cleft in the downs through which the high road ran and in the cleft the houses of a tiny village clustered even as at the foot of some old castle in Picardy. On the east the great ridge with its shadow-holding hollows, its rounded gorse-strewn slopes of grass, ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... return now to Iouenn. After swimming for some time he came upon a barren rock in the middle of the ocean, and here, though beaten upon by tempests and without any manner of shelter save that afforded by a cleft in the rock, he succeeded in living for three years upon the shell-fish which he gathered on the shores of his little domain. In that time he had grown almost like a savage. His clothes had fallen off him and he was thickly covered with matted hair. The only mark of civilization ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... a starling comes to his nest in a cleft of the cliff above; he shoots over from the dizzy edge, spreads his wings, borne up by the ascending air, and in an instant is landed in his cave. On the sward above, in the autumn, the yellow lip of the toad-flax, spotted with ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... 'Behold these rivers of sacred currents and these excellent trees decked with flowers!' But the faultless Savitri continued to watch her lord in all his moods, and recollecting the words of the celestial sage, she considered her husband as already dead. And with heart cleft in twain, that damsel, replying to her lord, softly followed him ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... endure—to overcome obstacles, and, if man could, to "get there," where, in the base-quarters in Bucharest, the amanuenses were waiting to copy out in round hand for the foreign telegraphist the rapid script of the correspondent scribbling for life in the saddle or the cleft of a commanding tree while the shells were whistling past. We missed him dreadfully when he was gone—even Villiers, who liked good cooking, owned to thinking long for his return. For, in addition to his other virtues, Andreas was a capital cook. It is true that his courses had a habit of ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... a madman's story," she asserted in her clear, candid voice, which had for him the hue of a cleft pomegranate. "It is the history of my father's soul. It is ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... captain tried to weather a rocky point on Hinchinbrook Island, so that he might beach her in a sandy bay beyond. She failed to get around the point, and lifted by a wave over the rocks, became fixed in a cleft, where she soon bumped a hole in her hull. Such of her crew and passengers who were not lucky enough to be thrown far inland were drowned, or crushed to death. One passenger, named Burstall, crawled out on a boom, from which the waves swept him high on to the ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... to the south. On this road, about half a mile within the southernmost extremity of Bracken Water, two hillocks met, leaving a natural opening between them and a path that went up to where the city stood. The dalesmen called the cleft between the hillocks the city gates; but why the gates and why the city none could rightly say. Folks had always given them these names. The wiser heads shook gravely as they told you that city should be sarnty, meaning the house ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... life-saving outfit, alas! unavailing... Bompard, rendered half idiotic, could give no precise indications as to the drama, nor as to the spot where it happened. They found nothing except, on the Dome du Gouter, one piece of rope which was caught in a cleft of the ice. But that piece of rope, very singular thing! was cut at both ends, as with some sharp instrument; the Chambery newspapers gave a facsimile of it, which proved ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... I caught sight of a little flower growing out of the cleft of one of the stones. I knelt down and bent over to reach it. I slipped, I know not how, and should have fallen, had not Thornton sprung to my side and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... in their rods half dry; these also were set apart, Others gave in their rods half dry and cleft; these too were set by themselves. Others brought in their rods half dry and half green, and these were in like ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... cleft for me," Thoughtlessly the maiden sung. Fell the words unconsciously From her girlish, gleeful tongue; Sang as little children sing; Sang as sing the birds in June; Fell the words like light leaves down On the current of the tune,— "Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... seemed to be increased by the gentleman's want of understanding,—"and neither did we till we came up to him. The silly fellow had been sent up for more wood, and splitting a log he had put his hand in to keep the cleft, instead of a wedge, and when he took out the axe the wood pinched him; and he had the fate of Milo before his eyes, I suppose, and could do nothing but roar. You should have seen the supreme indignation with ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... halted in a green nook, near a beautiful cascade that descended in a mist down a sylvan cleft, and poured its pellucid stream, for their delightful use, into a natural basin of marble. The men picketed their horses, and their corporal, who was a man of the country and their guide, distributed their rations. All vied with each other in administering to the comfort and convenience of Theodora, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... sunlit boulder-strewn hills in front? They lay silent and untenanted in the glare of the African day. In vain the great gun exploded its huge shell with its fifty pounds of lyddite over the ridges, in vain the smaller pieces searched every cleft and hollow with their shrapnel. No answer came from the far-stretching hills. Not a flash or twinkle betrayed the fierce bands who lurked among the boulders. The force returned to camp no ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a cleft in some distant mountains, bathed the plains with a silvery flood when horse and rider reached a point within a mile of the pueblo, and Nigger covered the remainder of the distance at a pace that made the night air drum in Trevison's ears. ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... ravines on the Peninsula. From my place I could see the gully floor, which was the dry bed of a water-course, winding away between high walls of perpendicular cliffs or steep, scrub-covered slopes, as it pursued its journey, like some colossal trench, towards the firing line. Down the great cleft, while I looked, a horseman came riding rapidly. He was an officer, with a slight open wound in his chin, and he rode up to our door and said: "Hardy's hit. A hole in ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... there by a blast of trumpets, and there again by stifled cries. It was as if a charm had given life to the rocks and lent their voices; as if noise and clamor were rushing like wild torrents down every gorge and cleft ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dark-green pines, thrown into strong and beautiful contrast with the pure white snow of the higher summits and the rich crimson of the mountain ash which flamed below. Here and there the mountains had been cleft asunder by some Titanic power, leaving deep narrow gorges and wild ravines where the sunlight could hardly penetrate, and the eye was lost in soft purple haze. Imagine with all this, a warm fragrant atmosphere and a deep blue sky in which floated a few clouds, too ethereal even to cast shadows, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... should have talked to her at all about what she might with futility "do"; or why on the other hand, if it were light, he should attach an importance to the office of friendship. She had him, with her little lonely acuteness—as acuteness went during the dog-days in the Regent's Park—in a cleft stick: she either mattered, and then she was ill; or she didn't matter, and then she was well enough. Now he was "acting," as they said at home, as if she did matter—until he should prove the contrary. It was too evident that a person at his high pressure must keep his inconsistencies, which ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... the water; their bedrooms opened on a garden of roses, with an orange grove beyond. Not far from them was the great gorge which cuts the little town of Sorrento almost in two, and whose seaward end makes the harbor of the place. Katy was never tired of peering down into this strange and beautiful cleft, whose sides, two hundred feet in depth, are hung with vines and trailing growths of all sorts, and seem all a-tremble with the fairy fronds of maiden-hair ferns growing out of every chink and crevice. She and Amy took walks along the coast toward Massa, to look off at the lovely island shapes ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... another, these falls eat back the cliff at the rate of about one foot a year, as you can easily imagine they would do, when you think with what force the water must dash against the bottom of the falls. In this way a deep cleft has been cut right back from Queenstown for a distance of seven miles, to the place where the falls are now. This helps us a little to understand how very slowly and gradually water cuts its way; for if a foot a year is about the average of the waste ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: On the left The sun arose and crowned a broad crag-cleft; There stopped and burned out black, except a rim, 55 A bleeding eyeless socket, red and dim; Whereon the moon fell suddenly south-west, And stood above the right-hand cliffs at rest: Yet I strode on austere; No hope ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... is your judgement bent to show A common lovers passion? let the World, That lives without a hart, and is but showe, Stand on her empty, and impoisoned forme, I knowe thy kindenesse and have seene thy hart Clest [Cleft?] in my uncles free and friendly lippes, And I am only now to speake and act The rite's due to thy love: oh, I cood weepe A bitter showre of teares for thy sicke state, I cood give passion all her blackest rites And make a thousand vowes to thy deserts. But these are common, knowledge is the bond, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... from the highest Idalian peak, and she pitied his youth and his beauty, and leapt up from her golden throne; and like a falling star she cleft the sky, and left a trail of glittering light, till she stooped to the Isle of the Sirens, and snatched their prey from their claws. And she lifted Butes as he lay sleeping, and wrapt him in golden mist; ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... it is not marked on the business map of the drovers' "RUNS." Shut in by the lofty Apennines, built on the slope of the hill that winds gently down into a green and fruitful valley through which the river Sabato rushes and gleams white against cleft rocks that look like war-worn and deserted castles, a drowsy peace encircles it, and a sort of stateliness, which, compared with the riotous fun and folly of Naples only thirty miles away, is as though the statue of a nude Egeria were placed in rivalry with the painted waxen image of a half-dressed ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... was a not wholly unwelcome diversion when, late on an August afternoon, she saw the thick laurels of the hedge near her part a little and the form of Ram Juna stand in the cleft, snowy white from turban to slippers save for the gleaming ruby and the polished bronze face. He looked like the ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... airy; the loggia of the sleeping room is rude, but it overhangs a lovely little river, with its hedge of willows. Opposite is a large and rich vineyard; on one side a ruined tower, on the other an old casino, with its avenues of cypress, give human interest to the scene. A cleft amid the mountains full of light leads on the eye to a soft blue peak, very distant. At night the young moon trembles in the river, and its soft murmur soothes me to sleep; it needs, for I have had lately a bad attack upon the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... to swing the vessel quickly round. In a few seconds her stern was presented to the coming wave, and her bow cleft the water as she rushed upon what every one now knew was ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... ropes! Apollo send us ropes," Chrispinus cried, "or death attends our hopes." Then panic reigned, and many a mournful sound Hurt the cleft air; for where could ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... semicircle, rose a thousand nameless mountains, summit over summit, snow-flecked or snow-clad, in boundless fields—a grim, lonely, desolate horror of rugged, barren peaks, of dark gray for the most part, cleft by deep shadows, and right in face of us one superb slab of very pale gray buttressed limestone, perhaps a good thousand feet high. I thought it the most savage mountain-scenery I had ever beheld, while the almost feminine and tender beauty of the parks which dotted these wild hills was something ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... is not so easily obliterated. This is cunningly represented by one of your old sages called Aesop, in the story of the bird that was grieved extremely at being wounded with an arrow feathered with his own wing; as also of the oak that let many a heavy groan when he was cleft with a wedge ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... elderly face, with a short nose, delicately pink at the tip. The eyes were a pale blue, and just under the lower lip, which protruded slightly, was a small gray-red goatee, sticking straight out from a cleft in the chin like a dab of a sandy sheep's wool. Also, as the speaker swung himself further round, I took note of a shirt of plaited white linen billowing out over his chest and ending at the top in a ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... excursions from Fowey are full of charm, but so much depends on the state of the tide. The short trip by boat to Golant, a distance of two miles, should not be missed. The village occupies a cleft on the hillside, where the gardens and orchards reach down to the water's edge. Luxulyan, with its deep sylvan valley and large perched blocks of stone, is another favourite spot ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... guns preoccupied after the startling results of an attack not down on the calendar for that day did not have time to "get on" the cavalry when they were registered on different targets—which is suggestive of what might come if the line were cleft over a broad front. A steel band is strong until it breaks, which may ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... came over her." Yes, she had heard of such things. If she could only get home in safety! Why had she tempted Providence thus? She backed softly and prayed only to escape. What, and never even deliver the Bible? "It would be wicked to return with it!" In a cleft of the rock she placed it, and then, to prevent the wind blowing off loose leaves, she placed a stone on top, and fled ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the maiden put her fingers to her lips, and quietly following Mariposa they walked by the silver stream into a wild gorge. Graceful pines afforded cover for Mariposa and Alfonso, as swift of foot, they scaled high cliffs, till the Indian girl held aloft her hand, and above in a cleft of white quartz the yellow gold shone brightly in ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... country-house stood an ancient lime-tree with a split trunk; in the cleft a wooden platform with a railing had been fitted, and a flight of steps led up to this arbour. In this early morning hour there sat a man in the tree at an unpainted, unsteady table, writing letters. The table was covered with papers, but there was still room for a clock without a glass, a compass, ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... ritual: there is the carrying by women of certain magic charms, fir-cones and snakes and unnameable objects made of paste, to ensure fertility; there is a sacrifice of pigs, who were thrown into a deep cleft of the earth, and their remains afterwards collected and scattered as a charm over the fields. There is more magic ritual, more carrying of sacred objects, a fast followed by a rejoicing, a disappearance of life below the earth, and a rising ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... it sounded as if sixty piles of wood were all being sawn at the same time; then a cleft opened in the water which went down to the bottom of the sea, and there, wedged between three stones, stood a black box, which sang and played and tinkled and jingled, close to the eel-mother and her son, who hastily disappeared in the lowest depths ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... with the propagation of nut trees has been with the following methods. For budding, I use the plate bud exclusively. For grafting on stocks up to one inch I use either the splice graft or the modified cleft graft. For larger stocks I use either the simple bark graft or the slot bark graft. Each will ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... to develop, there was the fag end of that family shrewdness which had made the early Palgraves envied and maligned. Tall and well built, with a handsome Anglo-Saxon type of face, small, soft, fair mustache, large, rather bovine gray eyes, and a deep cleft in his chin, he gave at first sight an impression of strength—which left him, however, when he spoke to pretty women. It was not so much the things he said,—light, jesting, personal things,—as ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... you would know What sort of produce for its lord 'twill grow; Plough-land is it, or meadow-land, or soil For apples, vine-clad elms, or olive oil? So (but you'll think me garrulous) I'll write A full description of its form and site. In long continuous line the mountains run, Cleft by a valley which twice feels the sun, Once on the right when first he lifts his beams, Once on the left, when he descends in steams. You'd praise the climate: well, and what d'ye say To sloes and ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... and wife would leave the crowded beach, and mount by some tortuous dusty way on to the high plateau through which was cleft far below the wooded fissure of the village. Here they seemed to have climbed the beanstalk into a new world. The rich Normandy country lay all round them—the cornfields, the hedgeless tracts of white-flowered lucerne or crimson clover, dotted by the orchard ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of grafting were employed, of which the common cleft and the veneer or side graft were perhaps the most satisfactory. In most instances it was only necessary to bind the parts together snugly with bass or raffia. In some soft wooded plants, like coleus, a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... Mech was fishing in the stream, with a basket curiously formed of a cylinder of bamboo, cleft all round in innumerable strips, held together by the joints above and below; these strips being stretched out as a balloon in the middle, and kept apart by a hoop: a small hole is cut in the cage, and a mouse-trap entrance formed: the cage ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the ground, with a fearful sword cut, which entered the bone of the skull behind and almost cleft it in two. As he fell he seemed to hear distinctly a voice saying, "Fear not, they are praying for you." Rising from this blow, he was again struck down by a club. As he was falling almost unconscious to the ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... the climax of daring and resolution. While on a fall hunt, on the Muskingum, he came upon a camp of four savages, and with but little hesitation resolved to attempt their destruction. He concealed himself till midnight, and then stole cautiously upon the sleepers. As quick as thought, he cleft the skull of one of them. A second met the same fate, and as a third attempted to rise, confused by the horrid yells, which Whetzel gave with his blows, the tomahawk stretched him in death. The fourth Indian darted ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... every fold of these valleys. She became infatuated with sea bathing. When she was well out from shore, she would float on her back, her arms crossed, her eyes lost in the profound blue of the sky which was cleft by the flight of a swallow, or the white silhouette ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Things were being shouted at him, questions, warnings. They bothered him. He wanted to think about the aeropile, to recall every item of his previous experience. He waved the people from him, saw the man in yellow dropping off through the ribs, saw the crowd cleft down the line of ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... Cleft: split: partly divided, longitudinally: in Coleopteran applied to claws so divided that the parts lie one ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... brighter, a jagged patch of pale sky, a cleft in the rock o'er-grown with bush and creeping vines; this Beltane saw ere he stepped out into the cool, sweet air of dawn. A while he stood to stare up at the sky where yet a few stars showed paling to the day, and to ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... last Terry brought him down into a creek-bed and the bottom on a steep-sided canon. He merely said, "I'll take your word for it!" when she told him that this was the deep-cleft ravine which lay like a gash at the base of the ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... to help him with the packing, she desired to show him some tenderness; her heart was cleft in two with pity; but she could not move; some harshness of pride or ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... ebb, ebb ever lower in my heart? Nay, nay, but there is hope. I have here beside me an Arab blade of subtle Damascene steel, insinuous to pierce and to hew, with which in a street of Bethlehem I saw a Syrian's head cleft open—a gallant stroke! The edges of this I have made bright and white for ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... safe if it were but deep enough. Presently I struck out, and, with a stroke or two, came to the surface. But no sooner did my head show above, and I draw a deep breath or twain, looking for my enemy, than an arbalest bolt cleft the water with a clipping sound, missing me but narrowly. I had but time to see that there was a tumult on the bridge, and swords out (the Scots, as I afterwards heard, knocking up the arbalests that the French soldiers levelled at me). Then I dived again, and swam ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... taken and spread under their feet. Thorgils held his brother's shield, and Thord Arndisarson that of Bersi. Bersi struck the first blow, and cleft Cormac's shield; Cormac struck at Bersi to the like peril. Each of them cut up and spoilt three shields of the other's. Then it was Cormac's turn. He struck at Bersi, who parried with Whitting. Skofnung cut the point off Whitting in front ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... behold beheld beheld bid bade, bid bidden, bid bind bound {bound, {[adj. bounden] bite bit bitten, bit blow blew blown break broke broken chide chid chidden, chid choose chose chosen cleave clove, clave (cleft) cloven (cleft) climb [clomb] climbed climbed cling clung clung come came come crow crew (crowed) (crowed) dig dug dug do did done draw drew drawn drink drank {drunk, drank {[adj. drunken] drive drove driven eat ate, eat eaten, eat fall fell fallen fight fought fought find found found fling flung ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... The great trees of the Mariposa grove belong to the gigantea species. The sempervirens, however, reaches the diameter of 16 feet, and some of the greatest trees of this species are in the Bohemian Club grove. It lies in a cleft of the mountains; and up one hillside there runs a natural out of door stage of remarkable ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... the gap for the land, to turn away this wrath by repentance, and amendment of life? Behold the Lord cometh forth out of his place, and will come down and tread upon the places of the earth, and the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, and as the waters that are poured down a steep place. But what is the cause of all this?—For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... beginning of October the weather became so intensely cold that it was almost impossible to work. The carpenter died before the house was half completed. To dig a grave was impossible, but they laid him in a cleft of the ice, and he was soon covered with the snow. Meantime the sixteen that were left went on as they best might with their task, and on October 2nd they had a house-raising. The frame-work was set up, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hatchet, hewing down the trees of the forest. As we came nearer, traces of destruction marked the presence of civilized man; the road was strewn with shattered boughs; trunks of trees, half consumed by fire, or cleft by the wedge, were still standing in the track we were following. We continued to proceed till we reached a wood in which all the trees seemed to have been suddenly struck dead; in the height of summer their boughs were as leafless as ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... head of the narrow gully that led from the cliff to the shore, stood Ludar, pistol in hand, waiting for us. He turned silently as we came up, and, motioning to us to follow, began at once the steep descent. The cleft was so narrow that one man could only lower himself at a time, and that swinging as often as not by his elbows and hands. For me it was harder work than for the active redshanks. As for Ludar, he stood at the bottom, while I, with ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... boundary fence crossed it. Two posts had been broken out, the wire flattened. Through the gap led the sign that Sandy followed. He carried his rifle with him and he moved cautiously but swiftly through the half light, for the cleft was in shadow. The walls lowered, the incline ended, became a decline, leading down. The clouds were assembling for sunset overhead, the moon just topped the eastern cliffs, beginning to send out a measure of reflected light. A beam struck a little cylinder, the emptied ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... by means of magic. Others have to make the rain to fall or to render other services to the community. In short, among the tribes of Central Australia the headmen are public magicians. Further, their most important function is to take charge of the sacred storehouse, usually a cleft in the rocks or a hole in the ground, where are kept the holy stones and sticks (churinga) with which the souls of all the people, both living and dead, are apparently supposed to be in a manner bound up. Thus ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Deschamps paddled down the St. Lawrence, through the rocky entrance to the Saguenay, and over its dark waters till a harbor was reached in a cleft of the coast. Here the madman landed, climbed to the summit of the rock, and laying down the boy, kindled a fire of driftwood. "I may see his face," he muttered. "The last of my line! The English cross shows! The strain shows! I must wash it out! Hush, my little one, thy ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... sudden the dense foliage was cleft; there opened a broad alley between drooping boughs, and in the deep hollow, bordered with sand and stones, a flood rolled eastward. This river is now called Sinno; it was the ancient Sins, whereon stood the city of the same name. In the seventh century before ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... will not shrivel, they are kept until grafting time, which is early spring, usually before the leaves start on the stock. The cions may be placed on the tree by several methods, but only two are commonly employed,—the whip-graft and the cleft-graft. The former is adapted to small stocks, the size of one's finger or smaller; it is the method employed in root-grafting in the nursery, and Fig. 16 ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... shall the cleft rock reunite so as to make a whole, than may he who kills any living being be admitted into our ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... malformation of the external genitalia. A prolonged clitoris, prolapsed ovaries, grossness of figure, and hirsute appearance have been accountable for many supposed instances of hermaphrodites. On the other hand, a cleft scrotum, an ill-developed penis, perhaps hypospadias or epispadias, rotundity of the mammae, and feminine contour have also provoked accounts of similar instances. Some cases have been proved by dissection to have been true hermaphrodites, portions ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... cooper's vessel, that by chance hath been Either of middle-piece or cant-piece reft, Gapes not so wide as one that from his chin I noticed lengthwise through his carcass cleft." Inferno: Canto XXVIII. ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... man sees are within a few yards of him. He sees the woman fall, and turns swiftly to the tent door. The child instinctively turns and runs inside. The man's gun is raised with inexorable purpose. His shot rings out. The child screams; and the man crashes to the earth with his head cleft by a hatchet ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... cranny, fissure, rift, rime, rent, cleft, interstice; rupture, breach, flaw; report, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... marshes of the Delta, so those of Siut and Thinis had at first believed that the souls of the deceased sought a home beyond the sands: the good jackal Anubis acted as their guide, through the gorge of the Cleft or through the gate of the Oven, to the green islands scattered over the desert, where the blessed dwelt in peace at a convenient distance from their native cities and their tombs. They constituted, as we know, a singular folk, those uiti whose members dwelt in coffins, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Caterina, a wide cleft, opened full as slowly as the door and full as steadily, and her eyes seemed to swell at the same time. But she did not utter a word. Words might be forming in her throat, though they were not able to pass her lips. But Robert ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... he was only halfway to the center, and he was nearly exhausted. At a dozen different spots he thought he had found a promising cleft in the rock, a place where something might have been concealed ... but exploration of the clefts ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... near to where I had encountered Ben Gunn, the maroon; and I walked more circumspectly, keeping an eye on every side. The dusk had come nigh hand completely, and as I opened out the cleft between the two peaks, I became aware of a wavering glow against the sky, where, as I judged, the man of the island was cooking his supper before a roaring fire. And yet I wondered, in my heart, that he should show himself so careless. For if I could see this ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the tow'ring Olaus dead, Full fifteen bleed beside: Old Athold cleft the brave Adolphus head, ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... hills, which looked like a wall of darkness. It was lit by the round street lamps, the luminous globules with Chinese letters on them which had pleased Geoffrey first at Nagasaki. The road entered a gorge between two precipices, the kind of cleft into which the children of Hamlin had followed the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... a single mountain as the loftiest of a range; the cloven summit appears most conspicuous when seen from the south. The northern view is, however, more remarkable, for the cleft is less distinguishable, and seven lower peaks suggest, in contemplation with the summits, the fancy of so many seats of the Muses. These peaks, nine in all, are the first of the hills which receive the rising sun, and the last that in the evening ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... to encourage one another. They travelled fourteen miles between granite walls from two thousand to three thousand feet high; and for sixteen days they were almost without food. Then they came to a cleft in their prison walls which seemed to ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... have disputed and wrangled a long time, an old man in the crowd that has meantime gathered suggests that the case be laid before the Tree of Decision, which can be found in a certain town. When they have all come before the tree with the woman, the tree divides, the woman runs into the cleft, the tree unites, and she has disappeared forever. A voice from the tree then says, "Everything returns to its first principles." The seven ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... compartments sat on a stool beside him, and this held bits of wood that looked like pegs, but were in reality whole, half, quarter, and eighth notes, rests, flats, sharps, and the like. These were cleft in such a way that he could fit them on the wires almost as rapidly as his musical theme came to him, and Lyddy had learned to transcribe with pen and ink the music she found in wood and wire. He could write only simple airs in this way, but when he played them on the violin they were transported ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... yellow sheaf, Unculled, as came to hand; a shepherd next, More meek, came with the firstlings of his flock, Choicest and best; then, sacrificing, laid The inwards and their fat, with incense strowed, On the cleft wood, and all due rights performed: His offering soon propitious fire from Heaven Consumed with nimble glance, and grateful steam; The other's not, for his was not sincere; Whereat he inly raged, and, as they talked, Smote him into the midriff with a stone That beat out life; he fell; ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... if from heaven. From under his garment he produced a shell filled with food from paradise, of which she partook with ecstasy; and gave her to drink water from everlasting springs, that overflowed her soul with perfect peace. Then he led her to a mountain, and prepared in the cleft of a rock a hiding-place for her and her child, and left her with a promise ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... th'avenging Angel pass'd Of old the blood be-sprinkled door; As the cleft sea a passage gave, Then closed to whelm th'Egyptians o're; So Christ, our Paschal Sacrifice, Has brought us safe all perils thro', While for unleavened bread He asks, But heart ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various
... this means, familiarly acquainted with Aegias, and being by him led into discourses concerning the fortress, he told him that in going up to his brother he had observed, in the face of the rock, a side-cleft, leading to that part of the wall of the castle which was lower than the rest. At which Aegias joking with him and saying, "So, you wise man, for the sake of a little gold you have broken into the king's treasure; when you might, if ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... heroes they! Giselher stood further back, which irked him sore, in truth. He voided Rudeger, for still he had hope of life. Then the margrave's men rushed at their foes; in knightly wise one saw them follow their lord. In their hands they bare their keen-edged swords, the which cleft there many a helm and lordly shield. The tired warriors dealt the men of Bechelaren many a mighty blow, that cut smooth and deep through the shining mail, down to the ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... again heard the dull roar of falling water. It seemed to have cleared itself of muffled vibrations. Yaqui mounted a little ridge and halted. The next instant Gale stood above a bottomless cleft into which a white stream leaped. His astounded gaze swept backward along this narrow swift stream to its end in a dark, round, boiling pool. It was a huge spring, a bubbling well, the outcropping of an underground river coming down from the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... deep cleft separates the American declarations from the English enactments that have been mentioned. The historian of the American Revolution says of the Virginia declaration that it protested against all tyranny in the name of the eternal laws of man's being: "The ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... little chamber, and amidst that group of Dutch-made women; his profile was clear, fine and expressive: perhaps his eye glanced from face to face rather too vividly, too quickly, and too often; but it had a most pleasant character, and so had his mouth; his chin was full, cleft, Grecian, and perfect. As to his smile, one could not in a hurry make up one's mind as to the descriptive epithet it merited; there was something in it that pleased, but something too that brought surging up into the mind ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... inland from the shore-rim, in a circular place where there was some moss and soil, I built myself a semi-subterranean Eskimo den for the long Polar night. The spot was quite surrounded by high sloping walls of basalt, except to the west, where they opened in a three-foot cleft to the shore, and the ground was strewn with slabs and boulders of granite and basalt. I found there a dead she-bear, two well-grown cubs, and a fox, the latter having evidently fallen from the cliffs; in three places the snow was ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... of this meeting in such an unfrequented place. I was close beside them before any of the company had observed me ascending the hill, their attention being fixed upon two men in the centre. One was turning a small stock, which was supported by two stakes standing perpendicularly, with a cleft at the top, in which the crown piece went round in the form a carpenter holds a chisel on a grinding stone; the other was holding a small branch of fir on that which was turning. Directly below it was a quantity of tow spread on the ground. I observed ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... me! Holy Cross! Holy Cross!' Nor did the aged warrior confine his hostility to words. Encountering the leader of the Saracens face to face, he bravely commenced the attack, and, after a brief conflict, with his heavy axe cleft the infidel from the ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... the d'Ochtes led his cousin to a higher point of the hill overlooking the chateau where he could show her the whole estate of Roche Craie. It was a beautiful sight. The gentle hills sloped to the Seine with here and there a sharp cleft showing a cliff of chalk, standing out very white against the ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... ribbed like some basaltic formations which I have seen. They extended in an unbroken wall right across the background. At one point was an isolated pyramidal rock, crowned by a great tree, which appeared to be separated by a cleft from the main crag. Behind it all, a blue tropical sky. A thin green line of vegetation fringed the summit of the ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... absconded from his house with a large sum of money. An old man who was present suggested that they should all seven appeal to the Tree of Decision, and thither they went accordingly; but no sooner had they stated their several claims than the trunk of the tree split open, the woman ran into the cleft, and on its reuniting she was no more to be seen. A voice proceeded from the tree, saying: "Everything returns to its first principles"; and the seven suitors of the woman were overwhelmed ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... his face and slipped stiffly from the saddle. They were high up on the ridge; Gloria, on foot beside him, clutched at the wind-twisted branch of one of the sprawling cliff growths, in sudden panic that she was being swept from her feet. Just below them was the deepening cleft in the mountain-side which, further down, widened and descended into the steep-walled gorge. Through it shot a mad, frothy stream. A hundred yards further on, high up in the cliffs, was the yawning hole in the rocks. ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... feet, then he got me well up on to his back, as if I had been a sack of coal, and went off with me, striding along pretty near as quick as if I had not been there. It might have been half a mile, when he turned up a narrow ravine that was little more than a cleft in the rock that rose almost straight up from the valley. It did not go in very far, for there had been a slide, and it was blocked up by a pile of rocks and earth, forty or fifty feet high. It was a big job ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... by this cleft in the rockwork, however, he found awaiting him there the person who had summoned him—the so-called General Von Zoesch. Calabressa was somewhat startled, but he said, "Your humble servant, Excellenza," and ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... and the shores of the St. Lawrence, on the other. The stage-coach always drew up before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer, with no companion but his staff, paused here to exchange a word, that the sense of loneliness might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the cleft of the mountain, or reach the first house in the valley. And here the teamster, on his way to Portland market, would put up for the night; and, if a bachelor, might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime, and steal a kiss from the mountain maid at parting. It was one of those primitive taverns where ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Viso and San Mateo, a distance of about three leagues, is exceedingly difficult and dangerous. The ravine becomes narrowed to a mere cleft, between walls of mountain rising on either side to the height of more than a thousand feet; sometimes perpendicularly, and at other times inclining inwards, so as to form gigantic arches. The path runs along ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... mountains, fields, And great distances. There are many spirits Under the Great Spirit. Him I know not. Him I only feel With closed eyes. Or when I look from my bed of moss by the river At a sky of stars, When the leaves of the oak are asleep. I will fill this birch bark full of writing And hide it in the cleft of an oak, Here where Black Eagle fell. Decipher my ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... afterwards soon dug out of the ground; which had been particularly noted to be plain and level, and ploughed just before; but where it was now found to have made a great fissure, or cleft, an ell wide, whilst it singed the ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... to shut out the daylight, and when a sudden flash of lightning cleft the low-hanging clouds overhead the effect was ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... sandy, arid distance, and, naturally enough, a small cloud of dust appeared. Then a strange thing happened. The cloud grew and grew. It came rolling towards us with an unearthly noise. Then it seemed to be cleft in two, as by lightning, and from its centre came marching towards us a mighty army of Amazonian warriors, in battle-array, chanting the war-song of the Mariannakookas. I must confess that my first instinct ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... time was little esteem'd. This Workman after some weeks Labour, had by a Crack appearing in the Stone upon a Stroak given near the wall, an Invitation Given him to Work his Way through, which as soon as he had done, his Eyes were saluted by a mighty stone or Lump which stood in the middle of the Cleft (that had a hollow place behind it) upright, and in shew like an armed-man; but consisted of pure fine Silver having no Vein or Ore by it, or any other Additament, but stood there free, having only underfoot something like a burnt matter; and yet this one Lump held in Weight above ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... young man, tolerably good-looking, noticeably well set up. When they have good features, a cleft chin and a generous nose, clean-shaven men are good to look at. He had fine eyes, in the corners of which always lurked mirth and mischief; for he possessed above all things an inexhaustible fund of dry humor. His lines seldom provoked ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... the Water distilled, of the colour of Brandy, of a fair Yellow: the Leaves of it bruised are very hot biting upon the Tongue: and of these, so bruised, they took some, and having tyed them in the cleft of a long stick, they held them to the Nose of the Ratle-Snake, who by turning and wriggling laboured as much as she could to avoid it: but she was killed with it, in less than half an hours time, and, as was supposed, by the scent thereof; ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... miles above Grenoble, than the mountains begin to close, the scenery becomes wilder, and the fury of the torrent is evinced by the masses of debris strewed along its bed. Shortly after passing the picturesque defile called L'Etroit, where the river rushes through a deep cleft in the rocks, the valley opens out again, and we shortly come in sight of the ancient town of Vizille—the most prominent building in which is the chateau of the famous Duc de Lesdiguieres, governor of the province in the reign ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... of a different character. It is a true contrast to the foreground. It is as placid and delightful as that is wild and tremendous. For the mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach, and partake of the calm below. Here the eye ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... once." She added, as he looked at her in suddenly roused surprise, "I must have had one once." She was looking beyond him at a broad ray of moted white-hot sunshine that slanted through one of the wide openings above, and cleft the thick atmosphere of the crowded place like a fiery sword. "I have often wondered what it really is, and whether I should like it if I heard it? To exchange Lynette Mildare for Eliza Smith ... that would be horrible. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... taking the customary road to the railway station of Caulnes, we hired a carriage, in order to visit the fortress castle of La Hunaudaye, midway between Dinan and Lamballe. The road lay by Jugon, a town prettily situated in the cleft of two hills. On one once stood an important castle, which ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... Albany, divergent trains cleft our party into a better and a worser half. The beautiful girls, our better half, fled westward to ripen their pallid roses with richer summer-hues in mosquitoless inland dells. Iglesias and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... the stump of an elm which had been thrown some winters since, and whose fall had made the gap in the hedge. Then he cut a long, slender willow stick, slit it at one end, and inserted his match in the cleft. He could thus stand a long way back out of harm's way and ignite the priming. The report that followed was so loud the very woods rang again, the birds fluttered with fear, and even the fox, bold as he was, shrank back from such a ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... who may be said to have taken the Cabinet by storm, through sheer dint of talent. I should like to see how these ingredients are working; but by the grace of God, I will take care of putting my finger into the cleft stick. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... hundred years later marshaling phrase upon phrase, clause upon clause, till a modern is forced to exclaim: "What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?" Now I have dealt with these complexes in different ways; and sometimes I have cleft and hacked and wrenched them out of all semblance of their original shape, and sometimes I have hauled them almost entire, like a cable, tangled with particles, out of the ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... Hidden in a cleft of the hills of Jamaica, fifteen hundred feet above that blue tropical sea below, on the brow of a cool valley, where that bounding stream of white water rushes from the tall peak in the sky in tiny cataracts, till it forms a pool there, held in ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... this story, a murderous mother sends her son to two mountains, each of which is cleft open once in every twenty-four hours—the one opening at midday and the other at midnight; the former disclosing the Water of Life, the latter the Water of Death.[310] In a similar story from the Ukraine, mention is made of two springs of healing ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... in front of it, threw the axe with so sure an aim, that the bird, its head almost cleft in two, ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... cast a gloomy, and almost a frightened glance around him. A huge rock rose in front, from a cleft of which grew a wild holly-tree, whose dark green branches rustled over the spring which arose beneath. The banks on either hand rose so high, and approached each other so closely, that it was only ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... we neared the island, yet neither of us spoke during that time; then, as the "grey gull" shaped itself into rock and tree and crag, I noticed in the very centre a stupendous pile of stone lifting itself skyward, without fissure or cleft; but a peculiar haziness about the base made me peer narrowly to catch ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... over the mantelpiece, from whence a row of pictured faces stared back, as though stolidly sitting in judgment. The clear tints of Claire's skin made Janet look sallow and faded, the dark curve of her eyebrows under the sweep of gold brown hair, the red lips and deeply cleft chin, made Janet's indeterminate features look insignificant, the brown eyes seemed the only definite feature in her face, and they ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... knee. At this day he said he could recall the sensation of her little hands smoothing his cheek, or burying themselves in his thick mane. He remembered the touch of her small forefinger, placed half tremblingly, half curiously, in the cleft in his chin, the lisp, the look with which she would name it "a pretty dimple," then seek his eyes and question why they pierced so, telling him he had a "nice, strange face; far nicer, far stranger, than either his mamma ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... us. He wished to regain it, but I offered to supply its place, if he thought the descent too dangerous. He said he would make the trial, and parted from me. I thought it useless to remain idle. A cleft was before me, through which I must pass; so pressing my knees and back against its opposite sides, I gradually worked myself to the top. I descended the other face of the rock, and then, through a second ragged fissure, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... it is a model for earnest revival preaching,—rather, for all preaching to unsaved souls, outside the church, or within it. All of these will be found in some subterfuge, which must be ruthlessly torn down, before it will be abandoned for the cleft Rock. ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... "triple-crested eminence" near Melrose, 1385 ft., and overlooking Teviotdale to the S., associated with Sir Walter Scott and Thomas the Rhymer; they are of volcanic origin, and are said to have been cleft in three by the wizard Michael Scott, when ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood |
