"Earthwork" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it is in Boston and Massachusetts that Bunker holds highest carnival. They keep in the Senate-chamber of the Capitol, nailed over the entrance doorway in full sight of the Speaker's chair, a drum, a musket, and a mitre-shaped soldier's hat-trophies of the fight fought in front of the low earthwork on Bunker's Hill. Thus the senators of Massachusetts have ever before them visible reminders of the glory of their fathers: and I am not sure that these former belongings of some long-waistcoated redcoat are not as valuable incentives to correct legislation as that historic ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... out of soldiers, and to guard the cattle and booty; the principal street was one hundred feet wide, and was called Principia. The defences of the camp consisted of a ditch, the earth from which was thrown inward, and of strong palisades of wooden stakes driven into the top of the earthwork so formed; the ditch was sometimes fifteen feet deep, and the vallum, or rampart, ten feet in height. When the army encamped for the first time the tribunes administered an oath to each individual, including slaves, to the effect that they would steal nothing out of the camp. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... the fort. The country is here hilly, broken, and now, as in La Salle's time, covered with wood, which, however, soon ends in the open prairie. A short time since, the remains of a low, irregular earthwork of considerable extent were discovered at the intersection of two ravines, about twenty-four hundred feet behind, or south of, Starved Rock. The earthwork follows the line of the ravines on two sides. On the east, there is an opening, or gateway, leading ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... eyes, and choking words are whispered as they file round the casket, and look upon the calm dead face, that no more on earth will meet them with its wonted smile, and the pale hands that have done all their rough earthwork. His welcome we did not hear. Ah, it is well that the sound of harps and the silvery peals from the chiming bells of the city of God reach us not, or perchance we should "stand all the day idle." For are we not all entered ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... evidently going. A good earthwork is worth a dozen of these walls. They will soon have the castle about our ears. However, it is of no great importance to us. I saw you lads just now on the wall; I did not care about ordering you down at the time; but don't go up again except to help to carry down the wounded. Make it a rule, ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... the same low red wall and iron railing and privet hedge; so indistinguishably, so maddeningly alike were all these diminutive houses. Each roof had the same purple slates, each roof tree the same red earthwork edging it like a lace; the same red tiles roofed each porch and faced each gable and the space between the stories. Only when your eyes became accustomed to the endless running pattern could you trace it clearly, grasp the detail, note that every two ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... the causeway, I found my men couched, like black statues, behind the slight earthwork there constructed. I expected that my proposed immersion would rather bewilder them, but knew that they would say nothing, as usual. As for the lieutenant on that post, he was a steady, matter-of-fact, perfectly disciplined Englishman, who wore a Crimean medal, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... were told not to throw away the firing-pins, but to put them in their pockets, to be turned in and used over again. The day after this order went into effect a company of newly arrived recruits were being put through their bomb-throwing tests. Man after man walked up to the protecting earthwork, jerked loose the firing-pin, hurled the bomb, and put the firing-pin in his pocket. At last it came the turn of a youngster who was obviously overcome with stage fright. To the horror of his comrades, he threw the firing-pin and put the live bomb in his pocket! In ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... above, the defenders now hurled over great stones, which had been specially placed there for the purpose of destroying the drawbridge should the earthwork be carried. The boards were soon splintered, and the drawbridge was pronounced by the Earl of Talbot, who was acting as judge, to be destroyed. The excitement of the spectators was worked up to a great pitch while the conflict was going on, and the citizens cheered lustily ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... bombardment was at once begun; but the fort failed to reply, and a storming-party sent ashore found it empty. Hoisting the stars and stripes above the deserted bastions, the ships went on. Soon they reached Fort Ellis. Here the firing was sharp on both sides. The fort was a powerful earthwork, well armed with rifles ranging from thirty-two to eighty pounders. The Confederates did but little damage with their guns; their aim being bad for want of practice, and their powder of poor quality. Still, they fought on with great ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... when leaves fall and the light is low and slant, one sees the long clean flanks of the jackrabbits, leaping like small deer, and of late afternoons little cotton-tails scamper in the runways. But the most one sees of the burrowers, gophers, and mice is the fresh earthwork of their newly opened doors, or the pitiful small shreds the ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... Creusot gun—throwing, some say 40lbs., some 95lbs., each shot. Anyhow, the shell is quite big enough, whatever its weight, and it bangs into shops, chapels, ladies' bedrooms without any nice distinctions. I could see "Tom's" ugly muzzle tilted up above a great earthwork which the Boers had heaped near a tree on the edge of that flat-topped hill, which we may call Pepworth, from ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... the town was an elevated green spot surrounded by an ancient square earthwork—earthworks square and not square, were as common as blackberries hereabout—a spot whereon the Casterbridge people usually held any kind of merry-making, meeting, or sheep-fair that required more space than the streets would afford. On one side it sloped to the river Froom, and from any point ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... starved, a handful of men, not more than four hundred, but their bayonets gleamed and flashed in the sunlight. In the face of a murderous fire he charged and actually drove our men out of an entrenchment. We concentrated our guns on him as he crouched behind this earthwork. Our own men lay outside in scores, dead, dying, and wounded. When the fire slacked, we could ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... embankment. These old practitioners formed a nucleus of skilled manipulation and aptitude, which rendered them of indispensable utility in the immense undertakings of the period. Their expertness in all sorts of earthwork, in embanking, boring, and well-sinking—their practical knowledge of the nature of soils and rocks, the tenacity of clays, and the porosity of certain stratifications—were very great; and, rough-looking though they ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... yourself on every side. My words only prompt you to throw up another earthwork at the point attacked. I do harm instead of good. I will leave you to think the matter over alone." Miss Temperley ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... earlier meaning of Fr. motte, now a clod, In Anglo-French we find moat used of a mound fortress in a marsh. Now it is applied to the surrounding water. From dike come the names Dicker, Dickman, Grimsdick, etc. Sometimes the name Dykes may imply residence near some historic earthwork, such as Offa's Dyke, just as Wall, for which Waugh was used in the north, may show connection with the Roman wall. With these may be mentioned the French name Fosse, whence the apparently pleonastic Fosdyke and the name of Verdant Green's friend, Mr. Four-in-hand ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... twelve miles north of Green Bay, Wisconsin, on the eastern shore, and one hundred feet above the water, stands an earthwork that the first settlers found there when they went into that country. It was built by the Sauks and Outagamies, a family that ruled the land for many years, rousing the jealousy of neighboring tribes by their wealth and power. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... he built an immense wall and earthwork, nine miles long, surrounding the city, and to protect this he raised eleven great forts and eighteen redoubts. Still the harbor was open, and into this the English fleet might return and succor the city at any time. His plan was soon made. In the midst of that great harbor of La Rochelle ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... came. They stood together on a high place, an earthwork of the stone-age men, watching for the light. It came over the land. But the land was dark. She watched a pale rim on the sky, away against the darkened land. The darkness became bluer. A little wind was running in from the sea behind. It seemed to be running to the pale rift of the dawn. And she ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... head over his right shoulder, his cheeks became flushed, and a sudden flash of the eye showed with what reluctance he retired before the fire directed upon him. No other course was left him, however, and he continued to ride slowly toward his inner line—a low earthwork in the suburbs of the city—where a small force was drawn up, ardent, hopeful, defiant, and saluting the shell, now bursting above them, with cheers and laughter. It was plain that the fighting-spirit of the ragged troops remained unbroken; ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... I experience a southern inclination, and cross Long Bridge and rendezvous for the day in some old earthwork on the Virginia hills. The roads are not so inviting in this direction, but the line of old forts with rabbits burrowing in the bomb-proofs, and a magazine, or officers' quarters turned into a cow stable by colored squatters, form an interesting feature. ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... drawn our first parallel: close against the Selinghinsk and Vallyrie redoubts, and partly covering the ground where we dug our rifle-pits later on. But we were going ahead with our work fast, and already we had thrown up the little redoubts known as No. 11 and No. 15, which covered the advancing earthwork leading to where our second parallel was to begin. Redoubt No. 11 was a good hundred yards, and Redoubt No. 15 was more than three times that distance outside of our lines; and everybody knew that these ...
— For The Honor Of France - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... of the Pepperrells, wearing even now an air of dingy respectability. Looking through its small, quaint window-panes, one could see across the water the rude dwellings of fishermen along the shore of Newcastle, and the neglected earthwork called Fort William and Mary, that feebly guarded the river's mouth. In front, the Piscataqua, curving southward, widened to meet the Atlantic between rocky headlands and foaming reefs, and in dim distance the Isles of Shoals ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... sent a force of 1200 men, under Colonel Prescott, on the night of June 16, to take possession of Bunker Hill. By some mistake Prescott passed Bunker Hill, reached Breeds Hill, and before dawn had thrown up a large earthwork. The moment daylight enabled it to be seen, the British opened fire from their ships. But the Americans worked steadily on in spite of cannon shot, and by noon had constructed a line of intrenchments extending from the earthwork ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... it, yet with his facile tongue he worked persuasion in the mind of the bluff Englishman, who at this point, turned about and put out to sea—hence its name, English Turn. We found here relics of very early times in the form of an old earthwork, and an angle of a brick wall, built, when, and whether by French or Spaniard, none could tell. Here we soon selected a site and laid out our camp. The time rapidly passed in the busy occupations which each day brought, in little excursions into the surrounding country, in conversations ...
— Reminiscences of two years with the colored troops • Joshua M. Addeman
... all other Oriental cities, and at the same time constitutes its main defence, is the stupendous character of the earthwork upon which the city wall is built. This earthwork averages 250 feet in width at the base and about 50 feet in height, and as it is crowned by a wall 25 feet high and 14 feet thick at the base, supported by about ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... position a number of men were set to work with spades, picks, and shovels, to throw up an earthwork. When it had assumed sufficiently large dimensions to attract the attention of the French, a body of men, with blue jackets, and caps with bits of red flannel hanging down the sides, were marched up behind it at ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... Novgorod of South Wessex; and the busiest, merriest, noisiest day of the whole statute number was the day of the sheep fair. This yearly gathering was upon the summit of a hill which retained in good preservation the remains of an ancient earthwork, consisting of a huge rampart and entrenchment of an oval form encircling the top of the hill, though somewhat broken down here and there. To each of the two chief openings on opposite sides a winding road ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... vale on the west side, which leads, by the by, to Orchard Farm, is to be seen a curious earthwork, apparently ancient British, which, from its structure, might have been a place of druidical judicature, or for pastimes. This relic has, we believe, escaped the notice of the intelligent Rev. John Clavell of Kimmeridge; and if the public are ever to be favoured with the result ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... to attack Fort Donelson, but he had none forbidding him to do it. He straightway moved nearly his whole force over the eleven miles of dreadful roads, and on the 12th began investing the stronghold, an earthwork inclosing about 100 acres, with outworks on the land and water sides, and defended by more than 20,000 men commanded by General Floyd, who had been President Buchanan's Secretary of War. The investing force had its right near the river above the ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... glass was aimed here and there over the approaching columns and lines, was that at no point was there a flaw or a defect in the orderly movements of the American soldiers. With admirable drill and under perfect management, they swung forward across the broad level between their earthwork batteries and the badly shattered wall of the captured city. Compared with them, the garrison which had surrendered was, for the greater part, only a little better than an ill-provided, half-armed, undisciplined mob. Wealth, arms, civilization, ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... the battlefield covered by the enemy's lines. These photographs are developed and studied and diagrams drawn from them of the enemy's system of trenches. These diagrams are reproduced far behind the front in elaborately prepared earthwork and trenches which are an exact replica of the enemy's lines. The divisions which are to take part in the attack are sent back to rehearse their exact duties at just the point corresponding to that which they will have to take. ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... behind the firing-line and I couldn't see Feisul's car or any of the others. For the moment there was just one clear line of vision, straight from where I sat to the nearest infantry. I could see about fifty yards of the line and perhaps that many men; and they were blazing away furiously over a low earthwork, although I couldn't see a sign of the French. There was hardly any artillery firing ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... archaeologist or of the historian. Fortunately, the most important of all is still almost in its original condition. It is that, which has become known to readers of the Transactions of the Canadian Institute as the Southwold Earthwork. It is situated on the farm of Mr. Chester Henderson, Lot Number Four North on Talbot Road East. Mr. David Boyle in the Archaeological Reports printed in 1891 has given the results of his examinations of the mounds. A ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... held that careful preliminary arrangements, suitable and elastic organisation of transport, the collection of material at railhead, the training of platelaying gangs provided by the troops, the utilisation of the earthwork of the enemy's line for our own railway, luck as regards the weather and the fullest use of sea transport, should enable us to give the enemy less breathing time than appeared possible on paper. It was beyond hope, however, whatever preparations were made, that we should be able ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... would have filled and almost obliterated it, but at intervals of two or three years, at a time when it was dry, quantities of earth were dug up from the bottom and thrown on the mound inside. It was in appearance something like a prehistoric earthwork. In winter as a rule it became full of water and was a favourite haunt, especially at night, of flocks of teal, also duck of a few other kinds—widgeon, pintail, and shoveller. In summer it gradually ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... to Morteyn. The French infantry had been pouring into Morteyn since late afternoon; they had entered the park when he entered, driving his tumbril with its blood-stained burden; they had turned the river into a moat, the meadow into an earthwork, the Chateau itself into ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... for attack. They did not come at once, however, but delayed till the sun was well up. Then they began to pour a furious fire upon our defences, that reduced the shattered beams of the gates to powder, and even shook down the crest of the earthwork beyond them. Suddenly the firing ceased and again a trumpet called. Now they charged us in column, a thousand or more Tlascalans leading the van, followed by the Spanish force. In two minutes I, who awaited them beyond it together with some three hundred warriors of the ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... from the observatory of Montmartre, and more near at hand by the bivouac fires extended along the banks to the left of the Marne, while everywhere about the field flitted the lanterns of the Frere Chretiens. Suddenly, in the dimness of a spot cast into shadow by an incompleted earthwork, he observed a small sinister figure perched on the breast of some wounded soldier, evidently not to succour. He sprang forward and seized a hideous-looking urchin, scarcely twelve years old, who held in one hand a small crystal locket, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... threatened and almost as constantly assailed, was held. Men know now that it was not by strength, but by sleepless watch and dogged endurance, that less than 30,000 worn men—so dotted along works extending near forty miles, that at points there was one soldier to every rod of earthwork—held their own, even against the earlier onsets. Men now realize why the Federal general—failing in every separate effort to buy a key-position, even at the cost of six lives for one—was forced to sit down sullenly and wait the slow, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... valley, level as a prairie, and indescribably wild and deserted, the plain stretched before us. At some distance to our right a long and narrow mound rose five hundred feet from the plateau, a hill that did not mar the vast level expanse, but seemed instead a great earthwork piled upon it by man. Its green terrace was a wild garden of flowers and fruit growing in luxuriant confusion, watered by a stream that ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... position, but particularly so taken in conjunction with the ancient city and the fertile valley threaded by numberless small streams. On the left side of the valley is St. Catherine's Hill, a bold and outstanding spur crowned with a small belt of trees surrounded by a circular earthwork. At one time a chapel dedicated to St. Catherine capped the hill, and slight traces of the building may yet be seen. Here is the interesting maze, said to have been made by a Winchester College boy who was obliged to remain behind during the holidays, but probably ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... the Roman legions it was the country of a distinct tribe, or nation, of the original Britons. But if we speak of history we shall never have done, for the town and its antique abbey (of which this tower is a mere remnant) have mingled more or less in every change that has occurred, down from the earthwork camp yonder on the hills to to-day—down to the last puff of the locomotive there below, as its driver shuts off steam and runs in with passengers and dealers for the market, with the papers, and the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... southward upon ships moving up or down Channel in the blue distance and the white water girdling Menawhidden; northward upon downs where herds of ponies wander at will between the treeless farms, and a dun-coloured British earthwork tops the high sky-line. Dwellers among these uplands, wringing their livelihood from the obstinate soil by labour which never slackens, year in and year out, from Monday morning to Saturday night, are properly despised by the inhabitants ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... pyramidal, square and polygonal, and in some places are manifestly imitations of the shapes of beasts, birds, and human beings. There are districts where hundreds of these mounds appear within a limited area. Sometimes—as at Aztalan, in Wisconsin, and at Newark, in the Licking Valley—a vast series of earthwork enclosures is discovered, sometimes with embankments twelve feet high and fifty broad, within which are variously shaped mounds, definitely formed avenues, and passages and ponds. These enclosures amply prove, aside from the geological evidences of their antiquity, the existence ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... is contained in the above paragraph may be judged by what has been already stated. It will be sufficient to add that Clive, receiving no answer to his summons, made a sudden attack on a small earthwork to the south-west of the fort at 3 A.M. on the 14th of March. For two whole days then, the English had been in sight of Chandernagore without attacking. The French ladies had been sent to Chinsurah and Serampore, so that the defenders had nothing to fear on their account. Besides the French ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... time in protecting the station by a ditch and earthwork, so that I could leave a garrison without risk, and I would then attack the country in ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... is to be done, Jethro? The men working in those shelters will speedily dislodge these stones facing the walls, and will then without difficulty dig through the earthwork behind." ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... posted in such a manner as to be able to destroy the bridges and otherwise retarding our movements. About 9 o'clock, Company K., Captain Cole, of the Third New York Cavalry, came upon the enemy at a place called Southwest Creek. The rebels had an earthwork thrown up directly across the road. Behind it they had posted four guns. Captain Cole attempted to charge across the bridge, but found it partially destroyed. He then retired a short distance, after leaving John Costello wounded in the face, when the ...
— Kinston, Whitehall and Goldsboro (North Carolina) expedition, December, 1862 • W. W. Howe
... been rushed by the 4th Punjab Infantry gallantly led by a Dogra Subadar,[19] a Punjabi Mahomedan of this distinguished corps behaved with the most conspicuous bravery. The enemy, having been driven out of the earthwork, made for the gateway, the heavy doors of which were in the act of being closed, when the Mahomedan (Mukarrab Khan by name) pushed his left arm, on which he carried a shield, between them, thus preventing their being shut; on his hand being badly wounded by a sword-cut, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... commanding down is crowned with the grassy mound and trenches of an ancient earthwork, from whence there is a noble view of hill and plain. The inner slope of the green fosse is inclined at an angle pleasant to recline on, with the head just below the edge, in the summer sunshine. A faint sound ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... to satisfy the young General, the great guns were brought and set upon it in such masterly fashion, and in such a commanding way, that La Hire, Dunois and Xantrailles, who came to see, marvelled at it, and we could note from the top of this earthwork that within the city great commotion reigned, and that it was as busy as a ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... instructions from our friends and warnings from Mackaye, I started next day on my journey. I arrived in the midst of a dreary, treeless country, and a little pert, snub-nosed shoemaker met me, and we walked together across the open down towards a circular camp, the earthwork, probably, of some ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... led by the two troopers). The Prince of Homburg, Soon as the enemy, hard pressed by Truchsz, Reeling broke cover, had brought up his troops To the attack of Wrangel on the plain; Two lines he'd pierced and, as they broke, destroyed, When a strong earthwork hemmed his way; and thence So murderous a fire on him beat That, like a field of grain, his cavalry, Mowed to the earth, went down; twixt bush and hill He needs must halt ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... hourly increases in size. Two weeks, and now its summit is far above the reach of spade or shovel throw, and crowned by a platform firmly knit and held together by well-spliced timbers. As to its object we are somewhat dubious, but think it the beginning of an earthwork fortress, built high in order that guns may be depressed and brought to bear on the turrets of any Monitors which might possibly come down upon this ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... was said by either till they were crossing the fallow, when he asked if his arm would help her. She did not take the offered support just then; but when they were ascending the prehistoric earthwork, under the heavy gloom of the fir-trees, she seized it, as if rather influenced by the oppressive solitude ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... serious obstacle, it merely indicated how far the prisoners might venture to go. Whoever crossed it must expect to be struck down by an arrow from the wall. This earthwork, it is true, menaced those held captive here, but they also owed it a debt of gratitude, for it shut from their eyes the horrible incidents on the sandy plain between the sea and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the battle ceased, save for the fitful boom of cannon along the lines, Dick sank against an earthwork, exhausted. He panted for breath and was without the power to move. He regarded vaguely the moving lights that had begun to show in the darkness, and he heard without comprehension the voices of men and the fitful fire ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to own lands in the sunny vales of Sligo instead of the hungry hills of Leitrim. If some have greatness thrust upon them, some in the same way inherit lands. Out of the town we went, and climbed up a grassy eminence; with some difficulty got upon the "topmost tow'ring height" of an old earthwork—blamed on the Danes of course; everything unknown is laid on them. The square shape, the remains of the ditch that surrounds it look too much like modern modes of fortification not to have a suspiciously British look. Of course ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... Battery were his absences on so many errands. Behind a big earthwork of their own construction down on the river's edge of the old battle ground, close beyond the Callenders', they lay camped in pretty white tents that seemed to Anna, at her window, no bigger than visiting-cards. Rarely did she look that way but the fellows were drilling, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... English invasion reached the settlement, and volunteers marched to the defence of the frontier. Twice Gallatin accompanied such parties to Passamaquoddy, and once, in November, 1780, was left for a time in command of a small earthwork and a temporary garrison of whites and Indians at that place. At Machias Gallatin made one acquaintance which greatly interested him, that of La Perouse, the famous navigator. He was then in command of the Amazone frigate, one of the French squadron on the American coast, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... fiercely and continuously. They were covering a great stretch of country up to Hulluch, and north of it, with intense harassing fire. Later on that Saturday morning the 15th Division received orders to attack and capture the German earthwork redoubt on the crest of the hill. A brigade of the 21st Division was nominally in support of them, but only small groups of that brigade appeared on the scene, a few white-faced officers, savage with anger, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... boys, longed to exchange the society of Dominick and Harman for that of their winsome mother. Therefore, he managed to engage the lads in the construction of a mimic fort in a cornfield. Promising to inspect the grand earthwork when it was completed, the colonel slipped away ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... bastioned earthwork, was erected on the river-bluff, between the two creeks, its elevation being one hundred feet above the water. A bend in the river gives the fort command over it as far as its armament could carry. On the slope of the ridge facing down stream, two water-batteries were excavated. The lower ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... momentary and vanishing mark of the shell in the invisible air. There are little splashes in the stream, where the fragments of iron fall. There are pillars of water tossed upward in front of the earthwork, which break into spray, painted with rainbow hues by the bright sunshine. A round shot skips along the surface and pierces the embankment. Another just clears the parapet, and cuts down a tree beyond. The air is filled with sticks, timbers, branches of trees, and earth, as if a dozen thunderbolts ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... caisson, and applied to the armor through the intermedium of a leaden ring. Externally, the cheeks of the embrasure and the merlons consist of blocks of concrete held in caissons of strong iron plate. The surrounding earthwork is of sand. For closing the embrasure, Commandant Mougin provides the armor with a disk, c, of heavy rolled iron, which contains two symmetrical apertures. This disk is movable around a horizontal ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... fleshy substance, which afterwards grew into a man, the supposed ancestor of the Binds. In Mandla the Murhas say that the difference between themselves and the Nunias is that the latter make field-embankments and other earthwork, while the Murhas work in stone and build bridges. According to their own story they were brought to Mandla from their home in Eastern Oudh more than ten generations ago by a Gond king of the Garha-Mandla dynasty for the purpose ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... interesting, is the fact that over the churchyard wall on the west, in a small grass field, traditionally called the Castle Field, there is the well-preserved plan of a Saxon lordly mansion. The circuit of the earthwork is almost complete, and at a point in the enceinte there rises the mound on which was pitched the garrison of the little castle. I use the term castle, as the habits of the language now require, and as it is expressed in the name of the spot. But, indeed, castles were little known in ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... was covered by the Warwick Creek which he dammed up to make it unfordable, and erected batteries to guard the dams. Across the intervening ground a weak earthwork with trenches was constructed, there being no time to raise stronger works; but Magruder relied chiefly upon the swampy and difficult nature of the country, and the concealment afforded by the forest, ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... two miles. Between Dauphin Island and the mainland there are some shoal channels, by which vessels of very light draft can pass from Mississippi Sound into the bay. These were not practicable for the fighting vessels of Farragut's fleet; but a small earthwork known as Fort Powell had been thrown up to command the deepest ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... a "disappearing" gun in an earthwork, the gun recoiling below the level of the parapet and being run up to a firing position by a counterweight. In 1878 Congress stopped all appropriations for defenses, and nothing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... of Saturday. On Sunday morning the contest was renewed, and kept up with great energy during the whole day, chiefly within the suburbs of the town of Winchester. In the afternoon a sudden and unexpected attack was made upon an unfinished earthwork on Flint Ridge, which, as it commanded the Pughtown and Romney roads, was occupied by Battery L of the 5th regular artillery, supported by the 110th and part of the 116th Ohio volunteer infantry, all under command ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... to find it; well we knew who stood behind it, Though the earthwork hid them from us, and the stubborn walls were dumb Here were sister, wife, and mother, looking wild upon each other, And their lips were white with terror as they ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Castle, though there is no evidence to show that the riotous ringleader of 1381 had ever any connection with the hostelry named after him, but it is quite possible that the Heath formed a rendezvous for the malcontents of his time. In early times an earthwork stood on the site, which gave rise to the name "castle." The real Jack Straw's Castle was at Highgate. It is almost certain that the Hampstead hostelry was originally a private house; the wood of the gallows on which one ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... toward this earthwork, firing as we advanced, and the French cleared out as we were ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... little picture of this to yourselves. A great herd of volunteers, some of whom had never been under fire, the rest of whom had bolted miserably at Verdun a few days before, men not yet soldiers and almost without discipline: the batteries banging away in the wood behind them, in front of them a long earthwork at which the enemy were lobbing great round lumps of iron and exploding shells, and along the edge of this earthwork an elderly gentleman from Norfolk, in England, walking up and down undisturbed, occasionally giving orders to his army, and teaching his ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... established for a distance of eleven miles, to the Upper Works, which seem to have been the only works in operation. At the Lower Works, besides the remains of the dam, the only vestige I saw was a long low mound, overgrown with grass and weeds, that suggested a rude earthwork. We were told that it was once a pile of wood containing hundreds of cords, cut in regular lengths and corded up here for ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... stones (verses 20-24). Gilgal, the first encampment, lay defenceless in the open plain, and the first thing to be done would be to throw up some earthwork round the camp. It seems to have been the resting-place of the ark and probably of the non-combatants, during the conquest, and to have derived thence a sacredness which long clung to it, and finally led, singularly ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... dam which an enterprising landowner was constructing. Three hundred women were consolidating the earthwork by means of round, flat blocks of granite about twice the size of a curling stone. Round each block was a groove in which was a leather belt with a number of rings threaded on it. To each ring a rope was attached. When these ropes were extended the granite block ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... were all in the vegetable garden, and the audience under cover of straw hats and parasols were slowly assembling on the benches above. The cannon was loaded at the top of an earthwork commanding the asparagus-bed, torpedo ammunition was stored in a box half way down the hill, and fire-crackers were everywhere, provided by the combatants who had clubbed their spending-money for the ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... interesting avenues of speculation; many of them were undoubtedly built as defences, some few—such as the small earthwork on the din's edge at Martinhoe—as beacons or signalling stations, and some are conjectured to have been built for burial purposes, not the mere barrows for single internment, but in connection with sepulchral ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... redoubt or hornwork, a strong work of pentagonal shape, well portrayed in Tiffeny's plan of the Siege Operations before Quebec. This hornwork was-partly wood, defended by palisades, and towards Beauport, an earthwork—covering about twelve acres, the remains (the round or ring field), standing more than fifteen feet above the ground, may be seen to this day surrounded by a ditch, three thousand [289] men at least must have been ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Polotsk is situated on the right bank of the Dvina. Its houses are built of wood and it is dominated by a very large and splendid college, at that time occupied by the Jesuits, almost all of whom were French. It is surrounded by an earthwork fortification, having at one time undergone a siege during the war waged by Charles XII against Peter the Great. The corps commanded by Ney, Murat and Montbrun, in order to get from Drissa to Witepsk, had built a pontoon bridge across ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... they lose themselves in the Channel, to re-appear as the islets of the Steep and Flat Holms. On their S.W. side they descend into the plain with considerable abruptness; and when viewed from the lower parts of the county, present a hard sky-line, like some enormous earthwork. On the opposite side their aspect in general is far less impressive, and towards Bath they lose themselves in a confusion of elevations and declivities. The main ridge is an extended tableland, some 25 m. long, and in places 3 m. broad. It rises to its greatest heights ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... each other, being almost impossible for a single man even to pick his way through, and next to impossible for a line of battle to cross over. All along the entire length of the fortifications were built great redoubts of earthwork in the form of squares, the earth being of sufficient thickness to turn any of our cannon balls, while all around was a ditch from twelve to fifteen feet deep—only one opening in the rear large enough to admit the teams drawing the batteries. Field pieces were posted ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... sight. Of a sudden, a mass of Cuirassiers rushed forth from the invaders' ranks, flung itself uphill, and girdled the grim earthwork with a stream of flashing steel There, for a brief space, it was stayed by the tough Muscovite lines, until another billow of horsemen, marshalled by Grouchy and Chastel, swept all before it, took the redoubt on its weak reverse, and overwhelmed its devoted defenders.[266] In vain ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... pit was for the women and children. Under the wagons, completely around the circle, a shallow trench was dug and an earthwork thrown up. This ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... almost half a century, "the Dunkirk of America," must stand no longer as a menace. An army of workmen laboured for months with pick and spade and blasting-powder upon those vast fortifications; yet nothing but an upheaval of nature itself could obliterate all traces of earthwork, ditch, glacis, and casemate, which together made up the frowning fortress of Louisbourg. To-day grass grows on the Grand Parade, and daisies blow upon the turf-grown bastions; but who may pick his way over those historic mounds of earth without a sigh for the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... air, avoiding the use of temples, is precisely that of Zoroaster, as is also their leading doctrine of two spirits—good and evil—ruling the world; and the allegory of the egg of Ormuzd has been found in an earthwork on the top of a hill in Adams's County, Ohio. 'It represents the coil of a serpent, 700 feet long, but it is thought would reach, if deprived of its curves, 1000 feet. The jaws of the serpent are represented as widely distended, as if in the act of swallowing. In the interstice ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... has taken place since the loess was brought above the water, to which it owes its origin. This statement is fully proven by the position of the mounds and lodge sites. Any estimate of age must be only a guess at the best, but it is a safe guess that no earthwork, mound, lodge site, or human bone along this part of the Missouri River has been here ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... solemn-looking pile of dark gray stone, with the feeble battlements and towers common to American prison architecture. But the chief feature of the place is the great Indian mound—the "Big Grave" of early chroniclers. This earthwork is one of the largest now remaining in the United States, being sixty-eight feet high and a hundred in diameter at the base, and has for over a century attracted the attention ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... night, debarked the next morning, and in the course of that day (the 28th) took the cars on what was then known as the Nashville and Chattanooga railroad, and went to Murfreesboro, about thirty miles southeast of Nashville. Here we went into camp inside of Fortress Rosecrans, a strong and extensive earthwork built under the direction of Gen. Rosecrans soon after the battle of ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... I suppose the Indians followed that trail for hundreds of years. There's still traces of their camps over there on that side, and a little ways down the river is a place where they had a regular village. Over here on this side, quite a little ways farther down, is the remains of an old earthwork fort used by the French long before the Revolution, and afterwards by American soldiers about the time of the War of 1812. We'll go and look at it some day if you like. Most people are interested in it, but for why, I ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... from afar to voyagers coming up the river from Quebec. The city was inclosed by a stone wall and a shallow ditch, once useful as a defence against the Indians, but no protection in the face of serious assault. At the lower end of the city, covering the landing-place, rose a high earthwork ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... collected by the Indian, the Spanish garrison consisted of about two hundred men; who were entrenched in a small earthwork on the southern side of the isle, and not more than cannon-shot distance from the Mexican encampment. Two field pieces, set in battery, defended the work; and the schooner, whose unlucky shot had swamped the canoe, lay at a cable's length ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... its utmost for the country." McClellan then explained to me the importance of the position to which I was ordered. The heights were the outer line of defence of Washington on the west, which had been held at one time, a year before, by the Confederates, who had an earthwork there, notorious for a while under the camp name of "Fort Skedaddle." From them the unfinished dome of the Capitol was to be seen, and the rebel flag had flaunted there, easily distinguishable by the telescopes which were daily pointed at it from the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... voice, and, weakened, though not dispirited, they gallantly responded to the appeal. Once more the line pressed forward. The short space between them and the earthwork was quickly traversed. Before the artillery could deal out a second salvo, the Royal Picts were over the parapet and in the thick of the Russians, bayoneting them as they stood ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... of the town, erected a palisaded embankment with four bastions, a house for the garrison, and a place for a battery; later he leveled the hill on Castle Island in the harbor, and built there a similar palisade and earthwork and barracks for the soldiers. He took a survey of military stores, made application to England for guns and ammunition, endeavored to put the train-bands of the colony in as good shape as possible, and ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... to be alone, to consider, to focus his thought; he went off for a walk by himself among the hills, past the spring, up the valley, till he came to a place where the down ran out into the plain, the bluff crowned with a great earthwork. An enormous view lay spread out before him. To left and right the smooth elbows of the uplands ran down into the plain, their skirts clothed with climbing woods and orchards, hamlets half-hidden, with ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Boro Budur—which means the collection of Buddas—is not a building in the sense that we speak of St. Paul's or St. Peter's. A small hill has been cut down and the earthwork surrounded by masonry, uncemented, unjointed, layer upon layer, and there is no column, pillar, or true arch. It is supposed that it was built by some of the first Buddhist settlers from India as the resting place (dagaba) of one of the urns containing a portion of the ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... further two days' thaw, made the Colonel determine to fill in the space between the spruce stockade and the cabin with "burnt-out" soil closely packed down and well tramped in. It was generally conceded, as the winter wore on, that to this contrivance of the "earthwork" belonged a good half of the credit of the Big Cabin, and its renown as being the warmest spot on the lower river that terrible memorable year of ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... built on little terraces on both banks of the river, and every four of them were supplied with power from an artificial dam, in which the water was stored in time of drought, and from which it escaped in a mill-race when required for use. These four dams were built of big stones, earthwork, and lumber, faced with smooth planks, over which a small quantity of water usually drizzled into the shallow river-bed. Formerly, before the power was utilized, this slope had been covered with seething and swirling rapids—a favorite resort of the salmon, which leaped ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... position, which, nevertheless, is reckoned to be one of the most ingenious on the whole front. The gallery is rather dark, because it is lighted only by the loop-holes. These loop-holes are about eight inches square, and more than eight inches deep, because they must, of course, penetrate the outer earthwork. A couple of inches from the bottom a strong wire is fixed across them. At night the soldier puts his gun under this wire, so that he may not fire ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... western side of the triangle we have the Troy River; and for apex the peaceful village of Lerryn, set in apple-orchards, where the tidal waters end by a narrow bridge. For the eastern side we take, not the Looe River (which doesn't count), but an ancient earthwork, known as the Devil's Hedge, which stretches across country from Looe up to Lerryn. Who built this earthwork, or when he did it, or for what purpose, no one can tell; but the Looe folk will ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... coming boldly into the light, and no more shots were fired at them. They ran up the slope to the crest of the bluff, leaped over a fresh earthwork, and fell among a crowd of soldiers in blue. Dick quickly raised himself to his feet, and saw soldiers about him, many of them wounded, all of them weary and drawn. Others were hard at work with pick and spade, and ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... custom in the cloisters of S. Lorenzo was the feeding of cats; but it has long since been dropped. If you look at Mr. Hewlett's "Earthwork out of Tuscany" you will find an entertaining description of what it ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... had been lying for years in Fort Clinton, which is an earthwork overlooking the Hudson River, and only about four hundred feet from the row of brick houses occupied by the officers ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 31, June 10, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Cardinham. One of the Welsh Triads speaks of the three chief palaces of Arthur as being Caerleon-on-the-Usk, Celliwig in Cornwall, and Penrhyn Rhionedd in the north. Celliwig may safely be identified with the partially effaced earthwork near St. Kew Station, known as Kelly Rounds (probably from the Cornish killi, meaning woods or groves), standing in what may be described as a Kelly district, for we have here in a cluster such ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon |
