"Cliff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impatiently, glanced at her with mingled anger and contempt, and muttering reproaches, threw her bundle and his own into the ravine, then roughly seized her hand and dragged her to the edge of the cliff. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dismounted at the commencement of the action. Others engaged on horseback. On the retreat, some were fortunate enough to recover their horses, and fled on horseback. Others retreated on foot. From the point where the engagement commenced to the Licking river was about a mile's distance. A high and rugged cliff environed either shore of the river, which sloped off to a plain near the Licks. The ford was narrow, and the water above and below it deep. Some were overtaken on the way, and fell under the tomahawk. But the greatest slaughter was at ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... into the little triangular nook which had been anciently formed by the Colorow as it descended in power from its source in the high parks. On the left the ledges rose almost sheer for a thousand feet, and from the edge of this cliff ore-buckets, a-slide on invisible cables, appeared in the sky, swooping like eagles, silently dropping one by one, to disappear, tamely as doves, in the gable end of a huge, drab-colored mill which stood upon the flat beside the stream. Beyond the mill Mount Ignacio rose darkly ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... the pens an' he comes to that place on the road that branches out over the top of a canon, and there some one springs out of a clump of willows an' dashes into the herd and drives the wether that's leading right over the cliff. The leaders begin to follow that wether, and they go right over the cliff like the pore fools they are. The herder fired and tried to drive 'em back, they tell me, an' he an' the dawg were shot at from the clump of willows by some one else who was there. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... heard a tale of two Irishmen, one of whom lowered the other over a cliff, probably in search of the nests of sea-fowl. Presently the man at the top called out, "Hold hard while I spit on my hands," so he loosed the rope for that purpose, and his ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... reality from books than we get from life. Leslie Stephen liked the real country, also. In his holidays he climbed the Swiss mountains—wrote a book about them—it's on that top shelf. Don't you remember how he loved to roll stones off a cliff? And as a pedestrian he was almost as famous as George Borrow—walked the shirt off his back before his college trustees and all that sort of thing. But he got an even sharper reality from books. He liked the city, too, but in many a mood, there's no doubt about ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... to a cliff fully two hundred yards distant, and of half that height. On this projecting ledge stood a noble buck, with antlers and head raised, while he seemed to be gazing over the wild expanse of country below him. They knew ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... he does all day long is sit in the backyard and stare at the grass. He insists that he is standing on top of a cliff." ...
— Texas Week • Albert Hernhuter
... grave," said the coastguard simply. He pointed up at the old graveyard on the cliff above us. Then, touching my elbow, he turned away with me toward the little hamlet ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... Clefts in the cliff shelter the purple sand-peas And chicory flowers bluer than the ocean Flinging its foam high, white fire in sunshine, ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... that at the foot of the slide—that is to say, at the edge of the valley—there was a tall cliff, or rock wall, and over this precipice all the mass of snow now was pouring, driven with such mighty force against this wall of rock at its foot that it broke into fine particles more like mist than snow. In a vast cascade it poured down and out over the valley, making ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... jagged scythes and reaping-hooks of white electric fire, or leaping, dancing, playing, vanishing tongues of thin blue. Once this fire struck a krantz, under the lee of which the child was sheltering, and made a black scorched mark all down the cliff-face, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... where two Giants worked together amidst a metallic clangour. Against the sky, as the glare came about, his eye caught the familiar outlines of the old worksheds and playsheds that were made for the Cossar boys. They were hanging now, as it were, at a cliff brow, and strangely twisted and distorted with the guns of Caterham's bombardment. There were suggestions of huge gun emplacements above there, and nearer were piles of mighty cylinders that were perhaps ammunition. ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Edgar is trying to persuade the blind Gloucester that he has in reality cast himself over the cliff, he describes the being from whom he is supposed ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... naked state roast him alive. The sea and the fresh water alike make no effort to uphold him if his vessel founders; he casts up his arms in vain, they come to their level over his head, filling the spot his body occupied. If he falls from a cliff the air parts; the earth beneath dashes him ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... the perfume of apple blossoms, the water from the old wheel fell with silvery echo and ran rippling over the stones into the river. Somewhere above the cliff a negro was playing a banjo and far down the river, beside a little cottage torn with shot and shell, but still standing, a mocking-bird was singing ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... autumn afternoon—clean air, quiet, and the sea. Far below the cliff walk, trawlers crawling slowly in; along the horizon a streak of smoke from some patrolling destroyer or battleship. And all along this cliff walk, Belgians—strolling with their children, sitting on the benches, looking out to sea. Just beyond that hazy white wall ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... trees and plants from India, the Sunda Islands, and Australia, all labelled with their English and scientific names. Monkeys climb actively among the trees, and sit swinging on the boughs, and a high waterfall tumbles down a cliff surrounded ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... hands, and patient souls—can this, then, be all you have left! this the sum of your doing on the earth!—a nest whence the night-owl may whimper to the brook, and a ribbed skeleton of consumed arches, looming above the bleak banks of mist, from its cliff ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... stage coach robbers and kept a hard-ware store and is only twenty-five and the other has not had quite as much experience but has been to Princeton, he is 23. The mixture of narratives which change from tricks of the hard-ware trade to dances at Buckingham Palace and anecdotes of Cliff House supper parties at San Francisco are very interesting. I am going to write a book for them and call it "Through Central America with a Phonograph" or "Who We Did, and How We Done Them." We sing the most beautiful medleys and contribute to the phonograph. I had to protest against them announcing ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... August (yes, there was one), I stepped out of my diggings in an obscure Cornish fishing-village to find a gentleman busily engaged strangling a lady on the cliff side. He had her by the throat and was gradually forcing her over the edge. Once in Bristol I interposed in a slogging contest between husband and wife and was very properly chastised for my interference, not only ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... and Agatha, fell on a little camp near the spit of coast-land toward which they had struggled. The point lifted itself abruptly into a rocky bank which curved in and out, yielding to the besieging waves. Just here had been formed a little sandy cove partly protected by the beetling cliff. At the top was verdure in abundance. Vines hung down over the face of the wall, coarse grasses and underbrush grew to its very edge, and sharp-pointed fir trees etched themselves against the clear blue of the ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... Bill Broom and his crew had been keeping watch upon their intended victims from the top of the cliff above the pool. They could see every move from the time the Frontier Boys had arrived until they lay down ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... as we rounded a point, we saw an Eskimo boy high on a cliff, with a net in his hand. He did not see us for some time, and we were so excited that we stopped rowing to watch him in breathless silence. Thousands of birds were flying round his head among the cliffs. How often ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... it? It is only a bare block of granite, jutting out of the cliff, and its happiness ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... plumage, and remove any suspicions we may have had, that, perhaps, from some cause or other, she was in some slight disfavor with Nature. After a few weeks Phoebe is seldom seen, except as she darts from her moss-covered nest beneath some bridge or shelving cliff. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... grotesquely, from the crevices of which sprays of peach-coloured orchids quivered, while the flora of land and sea commingled on the lustrous surface. Beyond again, the inlet wound round the base of it cliff vocal with the fugue of birds which flew from flowery ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... to tighten the clumsy wrappings of rags which served him for shoes, and hurried on after the little, shouting mob which had followed the butcher down to the steep hillside of Valley Forge, where he stood at bay with his back to the cliff. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Island, so named from the position it occupies at the entrance of Port Discovery. Vancouver landed on it on the 1st of May 1792, and thus describes its appearance:—"On landing on the west end, and ascending its eminence, which was a nearly perpendicular cliff, our attention was immediately called to a landscape almost as enchantingly beautiful as the most elegantly finished pleasure-grounds in Europe. The summit of this island presented nearly a horizontal surface, interspersed with some inequalities of ground, which produced ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... it shortly and carelessly. It was a vast slide that broke the straight wall of a cliff, and was overrun with brush and creeping plants, where a score of tribes could have lain ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... suddenly failed, and about midnight her spirit left this world. The captain and I decided that the best thing to do was to burn everything—and in order to avoid publicity to do it at once. So having laboriously carried it all out onto the edge of the cliff, we set a light to the pile and were rewarded with a bonfire which would have made many a Guy Fawkes celebration. Quite unintentionally we were sending out great streams of light into the darkness over the waters away down below us, and actually giving the longed-for ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... had seated himself with his son, upon the moss, among the brambles of the promontory. Around their heads passed and repassed large bats, carried along in the fearful whirl of their blind chase. The feet of Raoul were across the edge of the cliff, and bathed in that void which is peopled by vertigo and provokes to annihilation. When the moon had risen to its full height, caressing with its light the neighboring peaks, when the watery mirror was illumined in its full extent, and the little red fires ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... is more unwholesome still never to let the contemplation of that end come into our calculations of the future, and to shape our lives in an obstinate blindness to what is the one certain fact which rises up through the whirling mists of the unknown future, like some black cliff from the clouds that wreath around it. Is it not strange that the surest thing is the thing that we forget most of all? It sometimes seems to me as if the sky rained down opiates upon people, as if all mankind ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... can not say; I only know that I gave no sign, and that soon all stir ceased in his direction and I was left to enjoy my triumph and to listen with anxious interest to the strange and unintelligible sounds which accompanied the descent of the horseman down the face of the cliff, and finally to watch with a fascination, which drew me to my knees, the passage of that sparkling star of light hanging from his saddle. It crept to and fro across the side of the opposite mountain as he threaded its endless zigzags ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... shattered into dyes, The light for ever is morning light; The hills are verdured pasture-wise; The angel hosts with freshness go, And seek with laughter what to brave;— And binding all is the hushed snow Of the far-distant breaking wave. And from a cliff-top is proclaimed The gathering of the souls for birth, The trial by existence named, The obscuration upon earth. And the slant spirits trooping by In streams and cross- and counter-streams Can but give ear to that sweet ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... into a little room where three ladies sat. 'What have you to say?' asked the little black-haired one in the corner—she with the great eyes and the face pale as a chalk-cliff. I said, 'I am instructed, mesdames, to deliver this simple message: Sir Max is quite well.' 'That will do. Thank you.' said the big eyes and the pale face. Then she gave me two gold florins. The money almost took my breath, and when I looked up to thank her, blest if the ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... Why, if we hold our own in respect to the material growth of our population, it is as much as we do. Where is the joyful buoyancy and expansive power with which the Gospel burst into the world? It looks like some stream that leaps from the hills, and at first hurries from cliff to cliff full of light and music, but flows slower and more sluggish as it advances, and at last almost stagnates in its flat marshes. Here we are with all our machinery, our culture, money, organisations—and the net ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... returned. 'You will soon see a far bigger hole in the cliff than that. There are heaps of caves about here; some quite shallow like that one; others very deep and high and dark, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... Sydney Harbour in shape, with one principal valley and no end of small cover and gullies running off from it, and winding about in all directions. Even the sandstone walls, by which the whole affair, great and small, was hemmed in, were just like the cliff about South Head; there were lines, too, on the face of them, Jim and I made out, just like where the waves had washed marks and levels on the sea-rock. We didn't trouble ourselves much about that part of it. Whatever might have been there once, it ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... that his companion was yielding to the spell of the hills and woods. For now they had but to skirt the base of Painter's Cliff; to cross Elder Branch and mount the hill beyond, and Goree would have to face the squandered home of his fathers. Every rock he passed, every tree, every foot of the rocky way, was familiar to him. Though he had forgotten the woods, they thrilled him ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Creek. Opposite the house the river makes a sudden bend around the point of a high mountain, where the action of water and erosion of time had washed away the base of the mountain leaving a precipitous cliff, hundreds of feet high. Under this cliff a great amount of drift wood has been deposited, and here Jim Clark went for his fire wood. The high bank of the river next the house, which was 600 yards away, had been cut down so as to give an easy ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... that here indicated one should have anti-skidding tires on the rear wheels, take descents with care, and, if you be the owner of a powerful machine, do not make that an excuse for rushing up the tortuous, twisting, and frightfully dangerous roads, banked by a cliff on one hand, and by a precipice on the other, which ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... amaze My mind beyond that water fair: From a cliff of crystal, splendid rays, Reflected, quiver in the air. At the cliff's foot a vision stays My glance, a maiden debonaire, All glimmering white before my gaze; And I know her,—have seen her otherwhere. Like fine gold leaf one cuts with care, ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... the windows, whose jambs are enriched with empty niches; on the north the small windows are placed very high up, the twisted vaulting shafts only come down a short way to a string course some way below the windows, leaving a great expanse of cliff-like wall. At the bottom are the confessional doors, so small that they add greatly to the scale, and above them tall narrow niches and their canopies. But the nave piers are the most astonishing part of the whole building. Not more than three feet thick, they rise up to a height of nearly ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... "'You are preparing as before To deck your slender shape; And yet, just three years back—no more— You had a strange escape: Down from yon cliff a fragment broke; 35 It thundered down, with fire and smoke, And hitherward pursued its way; [3] This ponderous block was caught by me, And o'er your head, as you may see, 'Tis ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... and birthright seis'd By younger Saturn, he from mightier Jove His own and Rhea's Son like measure found; So Jove usurping reign'd: these first in Creet And Ida known, thence on the Snowy top Of cold Olympus rul'd the middle Air Thir highest Heav'n; or on the Delphian Cliff, Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds Of Doric Land; or who with Saturn old Fled over Adria to th' Hesperian Fields, 520 And ore the Celtic roam'd the utmost Isles. All these and more came flocking; but with looks Down cast and damp, yet such wherein ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... to find that the beans had grown up in the night, and climbed up and up till they covered the high cliff that sheltered the cottage, and disappeared above it! The stalks had twined and - twisted themselves together till ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... magazines, and wine-cellars. We proceed through the village of Rochecorbon, and along a road winding among the spurs of the Vouvray range, past hamlets, half of whose inhabitants live in these primitive dwellings hollowed out of the cliff, and finally enter the charming Valle Coquette, hemmed in on all sides with vine-clad slopes. Here a picturesque old house, half chteau half homestead, was pointed out to us as a favourite place of sojourn of ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... neighbours' gear; or else there sounded in his ears the love-song or the dirge, or the incantation of the forsaken girl rose amid the silence to the silver moon. Once again he stood upon the shore and watched the fishers cast their nets, while around him the goats browsed on the close herbage of the cliff, and the crystal stream leapt down, and the waves broke upon the rocks below, till he saw the breasts of the nymphs shine in the whiteness of the foam and their hair spread wide in the weed, and the fair Galatea, the enticing and the fickle, mocked the clumsy suit of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... erected buildings more suited to the splendour of his court, and found the place so much to his taste during his lifetime, that he was unwilling to leave it after death. He therefore caused his tomb to be cut in the steep limestone cliff which borders the plain about half a mile to the north-west of the town. It is an opening in the form of a Greek cross, the upper part of which contains a bas-relief in which the king, standing in front of the altar, implores the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... his comrades had found a remarkable camp at the edge of one of the beautiful small lakes in which the region abounds. The cliff at that point was high, but a creek entered into it through a ravine. At the entrance of the creek into the river they found a deep alcove, or, rather, cave in the rock. It ran so far back that it afforded ample shelter from the rain, and that was all they wanted. It was about halfway ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... succeeded "All aboard," and we whizzed along this most extraordinary line of railway, so prolific in accidents that, when people leave New York by it, their friends frequently request them to notify their safe arrival at their destination. It runs along the very verge of the river, below a steep cliff, but often is supported just above the surface of the water upon a wooden platform. Guide-books inform us that the trains which run on this line, and the steamers which ply on the Hudson, are equally unsafe, the former from collisions and "upsets," the latter from "bustings-up;" ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... you. I can't walk up a perpendicular cliff. I dare say I could come straight down if ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... cottage was not exactly so snug as it has been described in itself and its interior; for it was situated on a hill which terminated at a short distance in a precipitous cliff, beetling over that portion of the Atlantic which lashes the shores of Cumberland under the sub-denomination of the Irish Sea. But Forster had been all his early life a sailor, and still felt the same pleasure in listening to the moaning and whistling of the ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... tumbled from the mountain on the right hand side; in a few minutes that silent guide turned with an easy curve and disappeared in what had yet the appearance hardly distinguishable of an area wrenched with enormous labor from a low cliff of solid ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... 1625 was a significant day for the colony of New France. On that morning a blunt-prowed, high-pooped vessel cast anchor before the little trading village that clustered about the base of the great cliff at Quebec. It was a ship belonging to the Caens, and it came laden to the hatches with supplies for the colonists and goods for trade with the Indians. But, what was more important, it had as passengers the Jesuits who had been sent to the aid of the Recollets, the first of the ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... forbidden to stroll through the grounds attached to "Solitude," which was the nearest point where land and ocean met. Following a cattle-path that threaded the bare brown hills and wound through low marsh meadows, Salome at length climbed a cliff that overhung the narrow strip of beach running along the base of the promontory, and, while Stanley prepared his net, she applied herself vigorously to the completion of a cluster of lilies of the valley which she had begun ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... against him, what we shall afterwards prove, that the guilty are not to be directly put to death except by public authority. But what we may not directly bring about, we may not directly risk the occurrence of. As I may not throw myself down a cliff, so neither may I walk along the edge precisely for the chance of a fall. I may often walk there with the chance of falling, but not because of the chance. It will be said that the English love of fox-hunting and Alpine climbing is largely owing to the element of ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... straight out to sea, and those on the left and right commanded prospects along the shore to the north and south respectively. On the south you saw the village of Burnstow. On the north no houses were to be seen, but only the beach and the low cliff backing it. Immediately in front was a strip—not considerable—of rough grass, dotted with old anchors, capstans, and so forth; then a broad path; then the beach. Whatever may have been the original distance between the Globe Inn and the ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... wigwam's cheering ray, Then, aloft through freezing air, With the snow-bird soft and fair As the fleece that heaven flings O'er his little pearly wings, Light above the rocks I play, Where Niagara's starry spray, Frozen on the cliff, appears Like a giant's starting tears. There, amid the island-sedge, Just upon the cataract's edge, Where the foot of living man Never trod since time began, Lone I sit, at close of day, While, beneath the golden ray, Icy columns gleam below, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... direct blast cut down Nevada's speed one-half. She made zigzag tracks in the snow; but she was as tough as a pinon sapling, and bowed to it as gracefully. Suddenly the studio-building loomed before her, a familiar landmark, like a cliff above some well-remembered canon. The haunt of business and its hostile neighbor, art, was darkened and silent. The elevator ...
— Options • O. Henry
... at Ocean Cliff, the home of Uncle William and Aunt Emily Minturn at Sunset Beach. School was soon to open, and Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey were anxious to get back to their town home, for Flossie and Freddie were to start ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... French and Indians concealed by the prairie grass and timber, and from this situation, in almost perfect security, they fired down upon Braddock's men. The only exposure of the French and Indians, resulted from the circumstance of their having to raise their heads to peep over the verge of the cliff, in order to shoot with more deadly precision. In consequence, all of them who were killed in the early part of the action, were shot ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... come thou, hieing lief, Awhile to leave th' Aonian cave, Where 'neath the rocky Thespian cliff Nymph Aganippe loves to lave In ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... young Laird of Port Agnew reposed in the best room of his own hospital, and Andrew Daney was risking his life motoring at top speed up the cliff road to The Dreamerie with bad news for old Hector. Mrs. McKaye and the girls had retired but The Laird was reading in the ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... view of that beautiful sheet of water was from a projecting cliff 1000 feet above its surface, and it embraced not only the entire outline of the Lake with its charming bays and rocky headlands but also the magnificent forests of giant pines and firs in which it was embosomed, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... "slumming," and he was disguised in "pearlies," whilst I was gowned "a la 'ARRIETT")—and I assure you our Donkeys went very fast. However—this is a digression—as the man said when he walked over the cliff, so let us "noch einmal zu unser schafen," as the German proverb runs. Although disappointed in the behaviour of La Fleche, my second string Llanthony maintained my reputation for correct tips, by running last, as I said he would!—It is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 11, 1892 • Various
... collected a fleet to enable Sigurd to avenge his father. They encountered a great storm, and were driven past a certain promontory. A man was standing on the cliff ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... seized her around the waist. Bessie screamed and called for help, while the man who held her a helpless prisoner laughed sardonically. With his free hand he thrust aside the frail pine pole that formed a hand-rail to guard the edge of the cliff. It fell into the torrent and ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... thrice-lovely landscape unfolds beneath your gaze, you wander among quiet little paved piazzas with a bit of daisied grass in their midst, surrounded by great silent buildings, whence through some opening you descry a street which is a ravine, and the opposite cliff rising high above you piled close with gray houses overhung with shrubs and creepers, and little gardens in their crevices like weeds between the stones of a wall; or you come out upon a secluded gallery with tall, deserted-looking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... colours for the painting of the woodwork. This exasperated my aunt extremely—she called him a "Pestilential old Splosher" with an unusual note of earnestness—and he also enraged her into novelties of abuse by giving each bedroom the name of some favourite hero—Cliff, Napoleon, Caesar, and so forth—and having it painted on the door in gilt letters on a black label. "Martin Luther" was kept for me. Only her respect for domestic discipline, she said, prevented her retaliating with "Old ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... ministry to guide others into it. Though not the truth, an illustration is a stepping-stone towards it; an indentation in the rock which makes it easier to climb. No man had a happier knack in hewing out these notches in the cliff, and no one knew better where to place them, than this pilgrim's pioneer. Besides, he rightly judged that the value of these suggestive similes—these illustrative stepping-stones—depends very much on their breadth ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... cabin half-way down the cliff, You see it from this arch-stone; there we live, And there you'll find my mother. Poverty Weeps on the woven rushes, and long grass Rent from the hollows is our only bed. I have no father here; he ran away; Perhaps he's dead, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the long white Kentish cliffs recede. One walked about the boat doing one's best not to feel absurdly adventurous, and presently a movement of people directed one's attention to a white lighthouse on a cliff to the east of us, coming up suddenly; and then one turned to scan the little different French coast villages, and then, sliding by in a pale sunshine came a long wooden pier with oddly dressed children upon it, and ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... they seemed to be stratified with extraordinary evenness and regularity to within a few feet of the top, the summit being crowned with loose sand. Farther on, they sank to sand dunes piled into rounded banks and softly moulded ledges, like snow-drifts. Landing the next day at a bold bluff marked Cliff End on the charts, he found the lower stratum to consist of a solid mass of tertiary fossils, chiefly immense oysters, mingled, however, with sea-urchins. Superb specimens were secured,—large boulders ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... The dictionary definition is a ravine or gulch, but it also means a high bluff or cliff and in that sense is used ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge
... Isaac talk enough for one night," said Colonel Zane. "He is tired out. Major, tell Isaac and Betty, and Mr. Clarke, too, of your jump over the cliff." ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... was, they pushed doggedly on over snow-sodden tracks, that were speedily converted into drainage rivulets; trailing single file along the 'devil's pathways' that overhang the Wakhan river,—mere ledges cut out of the cliff's face, where a false step means dropping a hundred feet and more into the valley beneath; scrambling up giant staircases of rock, and glacier debris; zigzagging down one or two thousand feet, by the merest suggestion of a route, only to start a fresh climb—drenched ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... for me, and they have been confirmed by a very cordial letter from Caesar himself. The result of the British war is a source of anxiety. For it is ascertained that the approaches to the island are protected by astonishing masses of cliff. Moreover, it is now known that there isn't a pennyweight of silver in that island, nor any hope of booty except from slaves, among whom I don't suppose you can expect any ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... with the dead princes hung about her neck. A hermit comes to the rescue, and restores the babies to life. The king finds out his mistake, is reunited to the lady out of the hay, and the were-wolf is cast off a high cliff into the sea, and that is the end of him. The king, the queen, and the princes live happily, and may be living yet, for no notice of their death ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... rainbows. A long, curved, and inclined tunnel near the top of the mountain led to the undulating plains of the Transvaal—a marvellously rapid transition from a region filled with nature's wildest panoramas to one that contained not even a tree or rock or cliff to relieve the monotony of the landscape. On the one side of this natural boundary line was an immense territory every square mile of which contained mountain passes which a handful of Boers could hold against an invading army; on the other side ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... love to all the spots where we had first seen each other, then met and walked; where we had sat, and talked, and loved, during the long and heavenly intercourse between ourselves and lonely Nature. We began by the lovely hill of Tresserves which rises like a verdant cliff between the valley of Aix and the lake; its sides, that rise almost perpendicularly from the water's edge, are covered with chestnut-trees, rivalling those of Sicily, through their branches, which overhang the water, one sees snatches of the blue lake or of the sky, ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... reached the limits of the world, marched resolutely back to Perth. The only road that then led through this Valley of the Shadow of Death was a rugged path, so narrow that not more than three men could walk abreast, winding along the edge of a precipitous cliff at the foot of which thundered the black waters of the Garry. Balfour's regiment led the van of this perilous march: the baggage was in the centre, guarded by Mackay's own battalion: Annandale's horse and Hastings' ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... the harbor of Cape Town, our friends stood on her deck and were deeply interested in the scene about them. As they steamed out around the breakwater, they had a fine view of Table Bay and the mountains that surround it. Then they passed a series of cliff-like mountains, known as the Twelve Apostles, and after them some brightly colored mountains that had a dazzling appearance in the bright sunlight. Thirty miles from Cape Town they passed the famous Cape of Good Hope, which is popularly but erroneously supposed to be the ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... 'ad," declared Prue, quite jubilantly. "'E droonk 'isself to death an' tumbled over a cliff near 'ere one dark night an' was drowned!" This, with the most ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... this tall cliff,—my wings are strong, The hurricane is raging fierce and high, My spirit pants, and all in heat I long To fly right upward to a purer sky, And spurn the clouds beneath me rolling by; Lo thus, into the buoyant air I leap Confident and exulting, at a bound Swifter than whirlwinds happily ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... saw that all was ruinous, Here stood a shattered archway plumed with fern; And here had fall'n a great part of a tower, Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff, And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers, And high above a piece of turret stair, Worn by the feet that now were ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... who had a curacy there. Tom Starbrow went with them, and they were absent all day. Constance occupied herself with her writing, and Mary would not leave the house alone, but towards evening they went out for a walk on the cliff together, and there they were unexpectedly joined by Captain Horton and Mr. Northcott, who had apparently been consoling each other. The curate and Constance had some literary matters to discuss, and presently drifted away from the others. Then Mary's face lost ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... foreland[obs3]; promontory; ridge, hog's back, dune; rising ground, vantage ground; down; moor, moorland; Alp; uplands, highlands; heights &c. (summit), 210; knob, loma[obs3], pena [obs3][U.S.], picacho[obs3], tump[obs3]; knoll, hummock, hillock, barrow, mound, mole; steeps, bluff, cliff, craig[obs3], tor[obs3], peak, pike, clough[obs3]; escarpment, edge, ledge, brae; dizzy height. tower, pillar, column, obelisk, monument, steeple, spire, minaret, campanile, turret, dome, cupola;skyscraper. pole, pikestaff, maypole, flagstaff; top mast, topgallant ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... left of Tynemouth Castle, which was built as a protection for the monastery against the attacks of the Danes. It stands in a commanding position on a neighbouring cliff, and is now used as barracks for garrison artillery corps. During the days when Scotland harried the English borders, the Priors of Tynemouth maintained a garrison here; and later, in Stuart days, Charles I. visited the North, and the fortress was strengthened just before the outbreak of the ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... regicide who suddenly appears from the woods to head the colonists of Massachusetts in a critical emergency; then he tries his hand at a bit of allegory, and describes the search for the mythical carbuncle which blazes by its inherent splendour on the face of a mysterious cliff in the depths of the untrodden wilderness, and lures old and young, the worldly and the romantic, to waste their lives in the vain effort to discover it—for the carbuncle is the ideal which mocks our pursuit, and may be our curse or our blessing. Then perhaps we have a domestic ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the road Paaker stood still, and with him Bent-Anat and Nefert. Neither of them had spoken a word during their walk. The valley was perfectly still and deserted; on the highest pinnacles of the cliff, which rose perpendicularly to the right, sat a long row of vultures, as motionless as if the mid-day heat had taken all strength out of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... asleep last night while in a state of great perplexity about the care and education of my daughter, I dreamt as follows. I was walking with the child along the border of a high cliff, at the foot of which was the sea. The path was exceedingly narrow, and on the inner side was flanked by a line of rocks and stones. The outer side was so close to the edge of the cliff that she was compelled to walk either before ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... escaped me. I looked over into a fearful abyss. Below was a fertile valley, but so deep was it that the river looked only like a silver thread, and the trees but an inch in height. I was standing on the edge of a huge granite cliff that went down sheer into the valley, its face almost as flat as the side ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... on a high bluff overlooking miles of sea, between which and the foot of the cliff stretched a low sandy beach a hundred yards or more in width, and gained by flights of ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... travelled on, and at night they camped in a hollow among the rocks at the foot of a tall cliff. Jack was not ill-treated, and plenty of food was given to him, but the keenest watch was kept upon his every movement, and escape was a thing altogether beyond his reach. His captors were six in ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... father utilized several of these vertebrae for stools, but seeing them for the first time, the little fellow looked down at them respectfully, hushed into silence by vague, sea-born feelings. Far down the beach to the southward rose the cliff's where thousands of sea-birds swarmed in the sunshine. Their screaming, softened by the distance, came to his ears with an eerie wildness. All at once he felt very small and alone among alien creatures. Kobuk had turned back without him and was bounding out of sight around Skeleton Rib. The giant ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... traverse them. Accordingly the trail had to go over the top of the mountain, both the ascent and the descent of the rock-strewn, forest-clad slopes being very steep. It was hard work to carry loads over such a trail. From the top of the mountain, through an opening in the trees on the edge of a cliff, there was a beautiful view of the country ahead. All around and in front of us there were ranges of low mountains about the height of the lower ridges of the Alleghenies. Their sides were steep and they were covered with the matted growth ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... him, and the glorious, abused word was tossed from cliff to cliff, across the river and back, ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... seemed to fascinate her. Then the thought that perhaps poor, wilful Tavia had fallen down such a place; that perhaps at that very moment, she lay alone, helpless, at the bottom of a cliff! ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... asylum from the wrath and cruelty of men. They rejoiced in their freedom to worship before Him. Often when pursued by their enemies, the strength of the hills proved a sure defense. From many a lofty cliff they chanted the praise of God, and the armies of Rome could not silence ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... there was a mocking in his voice and his face and in his whole huge body, which made the sword of Hallblithe uneasy in his scabbard; but he refrained his wrath, and said: "Big man, the longer I look, the less I can think how we are to come up on to yonder island; for I can see nought but a huge cliff, and great mountains rising ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... skidding of wheels, Winthrop whirled the car round a corner and into the Lafayette Boulevard, that for miles runs along the cliff of ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... the bears and wolves which he said he saw looking down from these cliff-like towers, were great stone figures of these animals, that projected from various angles and cornices here and there, ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... I watched the lines come out in bold relief from a wonderland of cloud! With what eternal life I seemed to tingle! 'Twas as though I, Richard Carvel, had discovered all this colour; and when a tiny white speck of a cottage came out on the edge of the cliff, I thought irresistibly of the joy to live there the year round with Dorothy, with the wind whistling about our gables, and the sea thundering on the rocks far below. Youth is in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... stubborn unreasoning of the time. It was useless to argue with her. Arguments have no chance against petrified training; they wear it as little as the waves wear a cliff. And her training was everybody's. The brightest intellect in the land would not have been able to see ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
