"Expanse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its cold, serene blue, and the soft green of the herbage, and brown of the reaped harvest-fields, temper to the eye the intervening brilliancy, and that, within the limits of a picture, there is not sufficient expanse to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... England, as all travelers know, there are but three staple vegetables—to wit, boiled potatoes, boiled turnips, and a second helping of the boiled potatoes. But here, spread before the gladdened vision of the newly arrived, and his to pick and choose from, was a boundless expanse of new foodstuffs—birds, beasts and fishes, fruits, vegetables and berries, roots, herbs and sprouts. He furnished the demand and the soil was ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... fruitless, in his attempt to produce gayety, tried in vain to break. To this gloom the untried dangers of the impending dance, duly prefigured by a lonely cottage piano and two violins in a desert of expanse, added a nervous chill. When at last the music struck up—somewhat hesitatingly and protestingly, from the circumstance that the player was the church organist, and fumbled mechanically for his stops, the attempt to make ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... alone in the evening light, and felt that he ought to be enjoying the calmness and serenity of the ocean expanse around him after the noise and squalor of London; but now that the excitement of the recent quarrel was over, he felt the reaction, and his natural diffidence led him to blame himself. Most of the passengers were below, preparing for dinner, and he had the deck ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... The storm, clearing away at about sunset, opened a noble prospect from the porch of the colonel's house, which stands upon a high hill. The sun streamed from the breaking clouds upon the swift and angry Missouri, and on the immense expanse of luxuriant forest that stretched from its banks back to ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... went forward like a thing possessed, over what seemed to be a limitless expanse of moonlit sand. Next, I remember, the ground rose suddenly in front of us, and as we topped the ascent I saw the waters of the Sutlej shining like a silver bar below. Then Pornic blundered heavily on his nose, and we rolled together down some ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... This old man was called "the Great Western": I suppose his bulk and commanding figure were reminiscent of the power and energy of one of the locomotives on that line. He wore a very wide-brimmed straw hat, and a vast expanse of waistcoat with sleeves, without a coat over it, and he had a very determined and masterful habit of speech. Caldecott's sketch of Ready-Money Jack in Bracebridge Hall always recalls him to my mind. He must have been born before the opening of ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... him, he gained the level ground of the fairway. Then, over a wide expanse of golf links, the fog had lifted clear. The Wildcat saw the two Blue Fezant Nobles poking around near the Chinese tomb in search of the ball which had been lost ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... to be on the side of the car toward the quarry. He was not spending nearly so much time now looking ahead, leaving that task to his chums; even while talking he kept his eyes fixed upon the dark expanse that represented the surrounding woods, anticipating catching a glimpse of something, he hardly knew what, at any moment now. Doubtless all those silly yarns retailed by the ignorant gossiping farm-hands in the market-place in Scranton, while they tried to outdo ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... among the trees and brush near the river, but it was not until absolute darkness had descended over the vast expanse of prairie that Larkin gave the order to march. Then the main body of the herd, with Sims at its head, the dogs flanking and Bud bringing up the rear on horseback, moved silently out toward the unknown hazards of ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... which the open door gave view, though of considerable dimensions, was poorly furnished. The wide expanse of colour-washed wall was broken only by a hat-stand, on which hung a large assortment of masculine hats and coats, all of them looking considerably the worse for wear, and by two straight-backed chairs ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... could stand in the center of Hiroshima and get a view of the most of the city; the hills prevented a similar overall view in Nagasaki. Hiroshima impressed itself on one's mind as a vast expanse of desolation; but nothing as vivid was left in ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... on either side, spreading over a vast expanse of ground, each armed with all the terrible machinery of modern warfare, and striving to gain the advantage of their opponents by some particular movement, studied long by those learned in the ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... beautiful buildings that existed two thousand years ago. They were situated among the hills. The sacred groves of cypresses were on three sides of the temple, and "to the north the verdant plain of Cos, with the white houses and trees of the town to the right, and the wide expanse of turquoise sea dotted by the purple islands of the AEgean, and the dim mountains about ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... the silence. I tried to shout—with the dimmest possible hope of being heard—rather to reassure myself by the sound of my own voice; but my voice came husky and short, and yet it dismayed me; it seemed so weird and strange, in that noiseless expanse of black darkness. Suddenly the air was filled thick with dusky flakes, my face and hands were wet with snow. It cut me off from the slightest knowledge of where I was, for I lost every idea of the direction from which I had come, so that I could not even retrace my steps; ...
— The Half-Brothers • Elizabeth Gaskell
... eastern sky, dimly revealing misty outlines of white, fleecy clouds extending above the faint horizon line, until they assumed a spectral brightness, causing me to dream of the fairies' dwellings which my mother pictured to me in childhood. Gently the delicate awakening spread along the wider expanse of sky, which became bluish gray, gradually expanding and reflecting its glow along the water, until this also became a portion of the vast arch, while the darker borderland, now far astern, formed merely a distant shade, a background to the majestic picture. The east became ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... haughty Frontenac, His great heart torn with pride and pain, His clear eye dimming as it swept The land he might not see again, This infant world, this strange New France Dropped down as by some vagrant wind Upon the New World's vast expanse, Threatened yet safe! Through storm and stress ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... moors, clambering over the granite slabs of a stile, turned his thoughts to a more perceptible danger. If he could see that man more than half a mile away, his own figure must be apparent over a long distance in that clear brown expanse. Perhaps at that very moment the policeman from the churchtown was prowling about the moors in search of him. His actions at that lonely house were suspicious enough to attract anybody's attention. That was an act of imprudence which he had no right to commit. He had not ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... of such a compass find? Whence furnish such a vast expanse of mind? Just Heaven thee, like Tiresias, to requite, Rewards with prophecy thy loss ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... with the light of the sun diffused over the whole islands, distant hills, and the broad expanse of the lake, with its creeks, bays, and little slips of water among the islands, it must ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... imaginable nestled in a beautiful valley, around it rising romantic crags, wooded heights, and gentle slopes, fresh and verdant as if the month were May. Through the smooth meadows between the encompassing hills winds the musically-named stream, the Iraliot, and from end to end the broad expanse of green is scented with newly-mown hay. The delightful scenery, the purity of the air, the excellent quality of the waters, ought to turn Vic-sur-Cere into a miniature Vichy. Fortunately for the lovers of rusticity and calm, such has not as yet been the case, and the simple, straightforward ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... great quantity of horns, without doubt tusks of walruses, or horns of musk oxen; from which they named the bay Horn Sound. After remaining some days in this place, they were able to put to sea again. On setting out from 75 degrees 40 minutes, they encountered a vast expanse of water free from ice, and penetrated, without much danger, beyond the 78 degree of latitude, to the entrance of the strait, which prolonged northwards the immense bay which they had just traversed, and which received the name of Baffin. Then turning to the west, and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... line that carried it beyond the measure of smallness. Most little mouths are pretty, some even lovely, but not one have I seen beautiful. Her forehead was the sweetest of half moons. Of those who knew her best some absolutely believed that a radiance resembling moonlight shimmered from its precious expanse. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... forward, much startled by a thing so strange and unaccountable, and in a moment more he was looking out upon a great expanse of water, dotted here and there with ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... attention as when he began. They looked in the dim uncertain light like a group of bronze statues. As it grew lighter, I perceived that the voice of the young man grew weaker. The tent faced the east, looking across the lake. The glow of the rising sun increased. A wide expanse of the most brilliant golden hues was spread over the whole of that part of the sky. Then upward rose the sun himself in all the glorious brilliancy of that lovely clime. I saw the young Veddah make a sign with his hand. His friends stood aside. He ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... waves were but mere ripples this calm afternoon, but from the shore there came up a ceaseless, steady murmur that made itself heard in the quiet of the room; and by and by Trafford's eyes turned from the calm face above him and looked out seaward. White and shining lay the vast expanse, with here and there the faint film of a sail upon the horizon. Nothing to be seen but water and the great dome of sky and the little spit of yellow sand where the tide was murmuring. How many sunny ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... momentum, and the extensive prairie-like expanse of Hounslow Heath, would have realized in any enthusiastic mind, the feelings of the children ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... openly up the stream bed was to invite discovery. Rynch surveyed the nearer bank. Clumps of small trees and high growing bushes dotted that expanse, an ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... view of the Bristol Channel, the whitened houses of Ilfracombe, with the hills of Devon and Somerset, Lundy Island, and the scenery of Swansea Bay. And on the reverse of the picture, almost the whole peninsula of Gower, the extensive estuary of the Burry River, and part of the beautiful expanse of the County and Bay of Carmarthen, is spread out like a map before you. King Arthur's Stone, an immense rock of lapis molaris, twenty tons weight, supported by a circle of others—the remains of Druidism—invites the attention of the antiquary, on the north-west point of Cefyn-bryn. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... there still, looking up. Barely a leaf in the big maple was astir, not a single sensate thing. Had they been the only two people alive on a desert expanse they could not have been more isolated, more completely alone. Yet he pursued the lead no further, neither by word nor suggestion. Creeping through a tiny gap a ray of sunlight glared in his eyes, and he shifted enough to avoid it. ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... masts, the large sails are shaken out, and aided by the breeze some vessels get loose, sail out, and desert the field of battle. These are they whose task is done, and which are empty. They retire one by one upon the great expanse of water, which, save in one spot, was a little while ago deserted, and is now overspread with the vessels making their various ways toward that green line ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... upon the ocean route. The proportions of water and land were much like the relative quantities of sack and bread in Falstaff's hotel bill. Whether on the Atlantic or the Pacific, the Indian, or the Arctic, the appearance of Ocean's blue expanse is very much the same. It is water and sky in one place, and sky and water in another. You may vary the monotony by seeing ships or shipping seas, but such occurrences are not peculiar to any one ocean. Desiring ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... believe that it was really Rupert who was riding before him. The latter, who had been looking forward to the meeting, was yet scarcely less surprised at what had taken place. It had seemed such a hopeless task looking for Edgar over so wide an expanse of country that he could scarcely credit that he had succeeded in finding him, and for a time the feelings were so deep on both sides that hardly a word was spoken. It was not, indeed, until the camels came to a halt late in the evening that they ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... Two hours before the time of sunset the great luminary had become so completely obscured that all trace of him was lost; yet nothing in the shape of a cloud was to be seen, nothing but the veil of colourless vapour which obscured the sky, yet left the whole expanse of ocean almost unnaturally clear from one horizon to the other; and all the time the wind was falling, so that when at length the night suddenly closed down about the ship and she became enveloped in a darkness that might almost be felt, ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... the Indians for several miles; not even on the wide expanse of Laramie Plain. Here, however, Nick Undrell pointed to the dusty ground where the track of a ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... the field, but it was able to retire to its own territory, the sea. The army under Wellington, handled with splendid judgment, had to wait long for its opportunity, which came when Napoleon with the Grand Army had plunged into the vast expanse of Russia. Wellington, marching from victory to victory, was then able to produce upon the general course of the war an effect out of all proportion to the strength of the force which he commanded or of that which ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... shone with dazzling brilliancy; the deep purple of the glowing night which succeeded was like sapphire, every building, every tower, every hill, was mirrored in the waters, and the spires of every church threw their delicate lines along the still expanse. The gigantic castle looked down from its height as if protecting all; and the few white motionless sails at a distance, pausing near the willowy islands, where not a leaf moved, made the whole like enchantment. ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... night when they had watched through the mist and his hand closed over hers. The sun was well up before the east wind dissipated it, and left only the dancing waves, brilliantly blue, stretching away into the dawn. On all that broad expanse there was not so much as a ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... as of a more extended opening or clearing, and there was even a superficial gleam from the end of the swamp itself, as if from some ignis fatuus or the glancing of a pool of unbroken water. A few rods farther brought him to it and a full view of the unencumbered expanse. Beyond him, far across the swamp, he could see a hillside bathed in the moonlight with symmetrical lines of small white squares dotting its slopes and stretching down into a valley of gleaming shafts, pyramids, and tombs. It was the cemetery; the white squares ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... along the eastern side of the lake, sinks sheer into its brown depths, save at one point, where a level tract, half-encircled by precipices, is occupied by fields and copsewood, and bears in the midst a white mansion-house; the blue expanse of the lake greatly broadens in its lower reaches; and a group of partially submerged hillocks, that resemble the forest-covered ones on its western shores, but are of lower altitude, rise over its waters, and form a miniature archipelago, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... no lives, and seldom broke bones. They were chiefly opportunities for the display of brilliant enamelled and gilt armour, at the very acme of cumbrous magnificence; and of equally gorgeous embroidery spread out over the vast expanse provided by elephantine Flemish horses. Even if the weapons had not been purposely blunted, and if the champions had really desired to slay one another, they would have found the task very difficult, as in effect they did in the actual game of war. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hushed. It was almost certain that with dawn would come a downpour of rain; the tree-toads already heralded the good news. The dry hemlocks whispered it. Bathed in a gauze of moonlight the forest rolled away—silent—mighty in its expanse—promising nothing. Big Shanty Brook gleamed defiantly past in a riot of rapids and whirlpools. Flashing in the crisp sunlight, these rapids and whirlpools shone in inviting splendour; at ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... The hotels, bad as they were, were packed. The public places were noisy, the private houses crowded. Gradually the town became half-military and half-savage. Persons of importance arrived by steamers up the river, on whose expanse lay boats which might be bound for England—or for some of England's colonies. The Government—not yet removed to Ottawa, later capital of Ontario—was then housed in the old Chateau Ramezay, built so long before for the French ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... him. He was seated by a splendid fire, for the autumn days were now chilly on the shady side, in the most luxurious of easy chairs, with his furred feet buried in the long hair of the hearth-rug. He looked worn and peevish. All the placidity of his countenance had vanished. The smooth expanse of his forehead was drawn into fifty wrinkles, like a sea over which the fretting wind has been blowing all night. Nor was it only suffering that his face expressed. He looked like a man who strongly suspected that he ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... this other self, body sagging, head hanging, stand again before the paper-littered table and sway to and fro upon tottering legs. He heard, from a great distance, the deep rumble of Captain Carew's voice—but all he could see of Carew was a foot and a section of leg. He saw a wide expanse of bare floor, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... about, and were soon following a driveway that they were sure led to the park entrance. Yet they trudged on and on, and still the green expanse, dotted with trees, flower-beds, and shrubbery seemed to stretch ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... eyes with transport rove O'er all the blue expanse above, Unbroken by a cloud! And now beneath delighted pass, Where winding through the deep-green grass A full-brimmed ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... boat heeled over, and began to cut through the water at a very exciting rate. It was a very pleasing and delightful sensation to me, and from that moment I became a sailor in my aspirations. I had never seen the salt water, and had a very indefinite idea of the expanse of ocean. ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... From her earliest years that sheet of water had seemed an essential part of her life, and the calmness at her feet brought back to her irresistibly the scenes she knew so well. But the rippling waves washed the shores of Hampshire with a persuasive charm that they had not elsewhere, and the broad expanse of it, lacking the illimitable majesty of the open sea, could be loved like a familiar thing. Yet there was in it, too, something of the salt freshness of the ocean, and, as the eye followed its course, the heart could exult with a sense of freedom. Sometimes, in the dusk ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... respectfully to my captain standing in the prow of the boat and looking across an expanse of swirling muddy water to the village on the bluffs beyond. I spoke more after the manner of making polite conversation than because I was desirous of information, for I knew without asking that it ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... of dark-green foliage formed a prospect extending for miles. And as she watched, and Somerset's eyes, led by hers, watched also, a white streak of steam, thin as a cotton thread, could be discerned ploughing that green expanse. 'Her father made THAT,' Miss De Stancy said, directing her finger towards ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the climb was imperceptible. Now four thousand six hundred feet of elevation was reported, now four thousand eight hundred, at last above five thousand; and still there seemed about them nothing but a vast expanse of flat levels,—the table-lands of Nebraska. There was little that was beautiful in the landscape, which was principally made up of wide reaches of sand, dotted with cactus and grease-wood and with the droll cone-shaped burrows of the prairie-dogs, ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... do not crowd you, Rhoda?" she remarked parenthetically. Then turning sideways, so as to present an expanse of neatly clad back and shoulder to her outraged relative, she continued:—"I wonder which, Dr. Nevington—I mean I wonder which houses Susan has recommended. Of course there is the Priory. But nobody has lived in it for ages and ages. It is in a very low neighbourhood, close ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... conveying more in the way of sympathy than any words would have done, while the discomforts of the novel ride seemed to die away, and the soft dreaminess of the night grew soothing; the vast silvery grey expanse, melting away in its vastness, became lit-up with a faint halo of hope, and with his spirits rising, Frank seemed another man when the ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... Christian people that saved the nation from ruin. At the end of thirty years from the time when the soil of Missouri was devoted to slavery the "Kansas-Nebraska Bill" was proposed, which should open for the extension of slavery the vast expanse of national territory which, by the stipulation of the "Missouri Compromise," had been forever consecrated to freedom. The issue of the extension of slavery was presented to the people in its simplicity. The action of the clergy of New ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... expanse of field, forest, desert, and tundra, has endured many "times of trouble"—the Mongol rule of the 13th to 15th century; czarist reigns of terror; massive invasions by Swedes, French, and Germans; and the deadly communist period (1917-91) ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... first stage, the closest undersurface level to the top! After this stage there was only rock, lead and rock, and the great tubes leading up like the burrows of earthworms. Lead and rock, and above that, where the tubes opened, the great expanse that no living being had seen for eight years, the vast, endless ruin that had once been Man's home, the place where he ...
— The Defenders • Philip K. Dick
... and objectively in the reinforcement, through this stronger functioning of the retina, of the complementary colors themselves. This tendency to mutual aid is shown in the familiar experiment of fixating for some moments a colored object, say red, and then transferring the gaze to a white or gray expanse. The image of the object appears thereon in the complementary green. Per contra, the most complete lack of contrast makes the most unpleasing combination, because instead of a refreshing alternation of processes in the retina, a fatiguing repetition ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... demand made by the States. The district then called Louisiana included the present State of that name and the States of Missouri and Arkansas—included also the right to possess, if not the absolute possession of all that enormous expanse of country running from thence back to the Pacific: a huge amount of territory, of which the most fertile portion is watered by the Mississippi and its vast tributaries. That river and those tributaries are navigable through the ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... wood houses, mostly cottages to let, and a permanent population of a few hundred inhabitants. From the pier one sees a mile and a half of hotels and cottages, fronting south, all flaming, tasteless, carpenter's architecture, gay with paint. The sea expanse is magnificent, and the sweep of beach is fortunately unencumbered, and vulgarized by no bath-houses or show-shanties. The bath-houses are in front of the hotels and in their enclosures; then come the broad ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of a bushy foot-hill the old nag stopped, lifted her head, and threw her ears forward as though to gaze, like any traveller to a strange land, upon the rolling expanse beneath, and the lad on her back voiced her surprise and his own with a long, low whistle of amazement. He folded his hands on the pommel of his saddle and the two searched the plains below long and hard, for neither knew so much level ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... and, as he laughed, his white expanse of shirt-front heaved to the shaking of his deep chest. For a moment, however, I had little thought of him or the ugly-looking Browning he held in his fist. My ears were strained for any sound that ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... feet, animated with steamers and small boats, stretches the illimitable steppe, where the purple and emerald shadows of the sea depths and shallows are enriched with hues of golden or velvet brown and misty blue. The steppe is no longer an unbroken expanse of waving plume-grass and flowers, wherein riders and horses are lost to sight as, in Gogol's celebrated tale, were Taras Bulba and his sons, fresh from the famous Academy of Kieff, which lies at our feet, below the cliffs. Increasing population has converted this virgin ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... drew nearer as this was said. A subtle change flickered across the wide expanse of the innkeeper's face, while a tinge of suspicion added a ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... {223} are wrong in saying that they leave a great many minds singularly ill at ease, in a condition of vague but unmistakeable discomfort, oppressed by the vastness of the universe as revealed by science, feeling lost and utterly insignificant in this illimitable expanse of worlds on circling worlds, and aeons upon exhaustless aeons. It was possible, when the universe was regarded as a comparatively small affair, with our earth as its veritable centre, to think oneself of sufficient value in the scheme of things to live for ever; but now such a claim seems ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... birds; pausing, now and then, to listen to the blythe carol of a sky-lark, or the rich; sweet notes of a black-bird, and feeling that it was indeed, good to be alive; so that, what with all this,—the springy turf beneath his feet, and the blue expanse over-head, he began to whistle for very joy of it, until, remembering the Haunting Shadow of the Might Have Been, he checked himself, and sighed instead. Presently, turning from the road, he climbed a stile, and followed a narrow path that led away across the meadows, and, as he went, there ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... bird devoured the whole, and ate his allowance on the following day with as good an appetite as usual. I measured a very large male condor, and the width from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other was fourteen English feet and two inches—an enormous expanse of wing, not equalled by any other bird except the white albatross. (Diomedea exulans, Linn.). The snipes (Scolopax frenata, Ill.) found on the little plain between the bay and the light-house are in color precisely ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... walls are perfectly plain, broken only by 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 ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... wing is all too weak Such adventurous heights to seek; In the bower thou seem'dst to be Trembling with timidity; Now, with proud, unshrinking glance Thou art daring yon expanse, And, with wild, exultant singing, Upward thy free flight art winging;— Creature of the calmer air, ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... level of the levee broken occasionally by tide-gates. The prospect would have been monotonous had we not had at one side the lovely mountain range of which Mount Diablo is the prominent peak. But the great expanse of clean fields, level as a billiard-table, and in as fine tilth as though this was a model farm, was a delight ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... within their reach than the pathetick; for they never attempted that comprehension and expanse of thought which, at once, fills the whole mind, and of which, the first effect is sudden astonishment, and the second, rational admiration. Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion. Great thoughts are always general, and ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... his station. There it stood, actually the Ultima Thule of this vast continent, or, what was much the same, so closely united to it as to seem a part of our own moiety of the globe, looking out on the broad expanse of waters. The eye saw, to the right, the Pacific; in front was the Southern, or Antarctic Ocean; and to the left was the great Atlantic. For several minutes, both Roswell and Stephen sat mute, gazing ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... spend the entire day out, preferring to eat their dejeuner "informally," perched above some safe precipice, or on a glacier-bordered rock or in the shade of the cool woods, but there are always some who linger both morning and afternoon on the terrace with its far expanse of view, with the bright ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... and over the water, the lights twinkled already, reflected in the still waters below. The hum of voices, the occasional cry of a child, the rapid and abruptly interrupted roll of a wooden drum, together with some distant hailing in the darkness by the returning fishermen, reached her over the broad expanse of the river. She hesitated a little before crossing, the sight of such an unusual object as an European-rigged vessel causing her some uneasiness, but the river in its wide expansion was dark enough to render a small canoe invisible. She urged her small ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... that had drawn me across four States to study it was its situation. For when has one of those airy sprites, with the whole expanse of the tallest trees at command, chosen to come down to the level of mortals, to set up her domestic gods within reach of a human hand, and within hearing of a human ear? What friendly spirit bade her select a scantily leaved branch, backed by the heavy foliage ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... with short thick hair, uncurled, but black and glossy as the wings of a raven. It was on that forehead that time had set its trace; it was knit into a frown over the eyebrows; lines deep as furrows crossed its broad, but not elevated expanse. That frown spoke of hasty ire and the habit of stern command; those furrows spoke of deep thought and plotting scheme; the one betrayed but temper and circumstance; the other, more noble, spoke of the character and the intellect. The face was square, and the regard lion-like; ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... livery of red and gold, and the stars had shrunk from sight before the ardor of his beams. The level "bench" through which the stream meandered, the billowing slopes to the north and south, were bare of foliage and uninviting to the eye, yet keen and wary eyes were scanning their bald expanse, studying every crest and curve and ridge in search of moving objects. Only at the very brink of the flowing waters, and only in far-scattered places along the stream, little clumps of cottonwood-trees gave proof that nature had not left the valley utterly without shade and refuge ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... in his heart he went out of his tent and seated himself on a rock near at hand. One by one the stars disappeared as the thick, black clouds came rolling up, quickly covering the whole expanse of heaven, and making the night one of inky darkness, save when the cliffs and forest, islands and lake, were illumined by the vivid ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... considerable in size to be at any time covered by the moving sands. We alighted on the following day among some acacia trees, after travelling about twenty miles. We were here at once surprised and terrified by a sight, surely one of the most magnificent in the world. In that vast expanse of desert, we saw a number of prodigious pillars of sand at different distances, at one time moving with great celerity, at another stalking on with majestic slowness. At intervals we thought they were coming to overwhelm us; and again they would retreat, so as to be almost out of sight, their ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... turning my head as I sit at my table,—the Charles is hardly more real to me than Shakespeare's Avon, since I floated on its still waters, or strayed along its banks and saw the cows reflected in the smooth expanse, their legs upward, as if they were walking the skies as the flies walk the ceiling. Salisbury Cathedral stands as substantial in my thought as our own King's Chapel, since I slumbered by its side, and arose in the morning ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... miles farther the explorers ventured, and had nearly reached the mouth of the Arkansas River, floating on a wide expanse of water between lofty woods, when they heard wild yelling on the west shore, and saw a crowd of savages pushing out huge wooden canoes to surround them. Some swam to seize the Frenchmen, and a war club was thrown over ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... very much what Wordsworth's visitors saw when they trudged up from Stowey to commune with him in 1797. The barrier of ancient beech-trees running up into the moor, Kilve twinkling below, the stretch of fields and woods descending northward to the expanse of the yellow Severn Channel, the plain white facade of Alfoxden itself, with its easy right of way across the fantastic garden, the tumultuous pathway down to the glen, the poet's favourite parlour at the end of the ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... on the eastern horizon my eyes met the dark, massive heights of Chuhuichupa, followed towards the south by ridge upon ridge of true sierras with sharp, serrated crests, running mainly from northwest to southeast. And between them and me was an expanse of gloomy, pine-hidden cordons, one succeeding close upon another, and running generally in the same direction as the sierras. Primeval stillness and solitude reigned all over the woodland landscape. I like the society of man, but ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... table. They drank champagne and they listened to Selingman. All the time he talked, save when mademoiselle interrupted him. Seated upon a chair which seemed absurdly inadequate, his great stomach with its vast expanse of white waistcoat in full view, his short legs doubled up beneath him, he beamed upon them all with ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and ringed and spattered by the jumping fish; and now they could hear them far out, splash! slap! clip-clap! splash!—hundreds and hundreds jumping incessantly, so that the surface of the water was constantly broken over the entire expanse. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... man,—will be that which the soul contemplating in the life to come will be perfectly happy by so doing. The soul will contemplate all intellectual beauty that she finds about her, all heights of truth, all the expanse of goodness and mystery of love. She will see herself: a vast and curious sight is one pure spirit: but that will not be enough for her, her eye travels beyond. She must be in company, live with myriads of pure spirits ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... home, Polunin looked up into the overarching sky, searching the glittering expanse for his beloved Cassiopeian Constellation, and gazed intently at the sturdy splendour of the Polar Star; then he watered the horses, gave them their forage for the night, and treated them to a special ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... unwashed plates were crowded on the table; the big unmade bed added a flavor of its own to the atmosphere. Madame eased herself, panting, into the chair before the desk, revealing the great rounded expanse of her back with its row of straining buttons and lozenge-shaped revelations of underwear. With the businesslike deliberation of a person who transacts a serious affair with due seriousness, she spread the bill before her, smoothing it out with a practiced wipe of the hand, took her rubber ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... of slightly graying hair flung back from a wide, unfurrowed brow. Small and very black eyes pierced out from crinkled heavy lids and a bulldog jaw shot out from under a fat beak of a nose. And over the broad expanse of countenance was spread a smile so sweet, so deep, so high that it gave the impression of obscuring the form of features entirely. In point of fact it was a thick and impenetrable veil that the Senator had for long hung before his face from behind which to view the world at large. ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... for nearly five minutes now, Jack!" called Herb, who, it seemed, was paying strict attention to business, and not bothering about whether he got anything to eat or not, or what would happen in case they headed out into the vast expanse of salt water that stretched ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... a space it can be reproduced and rearranged in its whole expanse. Describe in your anatomy what proportion there is between the diameters of all the images in the eye and the distance from ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... had been successful, the war on land had been for us full of humiliation. The United States then formed but a loosely knit confederacy, the sparse population scattered over a great expanse of land. Ever since the Federalist party had gone out of power in 1800, the nation's ability to maintain order at home and enforce respect abroad had steadily dwindled; and the twelve years' nerveless reign of the Doctrinaire Democracy ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... had watched the forest with growing amazement. The river seemed to end at its edge, but as he drew closer the reason for the anxiety of the outlaws to prevent his entering it was plain. No horse could travel through that dark, gloomy expanse. It was a floating forest. Great cypress and giant bays reared their mighty stems from the surface of black scummy water. Amongst their boughs bloomed brilliant orchids and from limb to limb stretched tangled masses of creeping ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... pitched on the south shore of Hudson's Bay, many leagues to the west of Rupert House, not far from the Moose River. Looking north was the wide expanse of the bay, dotted with sterile islands here and there; to the east were the barren steppes of Labrador, and all round them the calm, incisive air of a late September, when winter begins to shake out his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a hundred and fifty to two hundred ploughs issue from both establishments; these spread over the plain and till an immense expanse of land. Carts drawn by bullocks, big mules, or superb horses are ceaselessly exporting the products of the fields, the meadows, or the orchards. Innumerable cows cover the pastures, and legions of women and herds are employed to look after ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... low, and the road lay across bare and stony prairies, the gray expanse of which became lost in the distant mist. This depressing landscape would have made a disagreeable impression on a less unobserving traveller, but, as we have said, Julien looked only inward, and the phenomena of the exterior world ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... soldiers were only shaded by the dust-bank in which they rode. A broad arid plain, swelling into stony hills, surrounded them on every side. Here and there in the extreme distance, mounted figures moved over the vast expanse—Boer scouts who marked in amazement the advance of this great array. Once or twice these men gathered together, and a sputter of rifle fire broke out upon our left flank, but the great tide swept on and carried them with it. ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... essentials the account holds good for all or nearly all the peoples. It is not usual to invoke the aid of any recognised magician. The man whose heart is filled with hatred against another will retire secretly to a spot at the edge of a PADI field, or of some other clearing, where he can see a large expanse of sky and yet feel sure of being unobserved. Here he sets up the BATANG PRA, a pole supported horizontally some six or eight feet above the ground, its ends resting on two vertical poles. A little figure of a man or woman (according ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... memory which take place within us at critical moments and place before our eyes with wonderful clearness of outline the most trivial acts of our lives bearing any relation to present disasters or joys. Was it the red sun that suddenly broke forth from the clouds, flooding the level expanse with its oblique rays in that winter afternoon as at the sunset hour in August? Was it the silence that surrounded her, broken only by the harmonious sounds of nature, which are ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... he depicts the bringing to earth by the hands of angels of the Holy Grail, the vessel in which Joseph of Arimathea caught the last drops of Christ's blood upon the cross. With the opening chords we seem to see the clear blue expanse of heaven spread before us in spotless radiance. As the Grail motive sounds for the first time pianissimo in the topmost register of the violins, a tiny white cloud, scarcely perceptible at first, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... the east, in the far distance, are the Sierras Blancos, and is fringed on the west by the Sierra Caballo and Sierra de Frey Cristobal. From these heights, on either side, the Indians are enabled to distinctly perceive any party of travellers coming over the wide and unsheltered expanse of the Jornada del Muerto. When any such parties are seen, they come sweeping down upon the unsuspecting immigrant in more than usual numbers, and if successful, as they generally are, in their attack, invariably destroy ...
— Frontier service during the rebellion - or, A history of Company K, First Infantry, California Volunteers • George H. Pettis
... from Slievemore the horizon is broken by an army of mountains, beginning with the Twelve Peaks of Connemara. Eastward of these hills are spread the great Galway lakes; eastward of these a wide expanse of plain. This is the famous Moytura of traditional history, whose story we shall presently tell. Ages ago a decisive battle was fought there; but ages before the battle, if we are not greatly misled, the stone circles of the plain were already ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... fail to give some time to the modern part, not, however, omitting the lovely walls round the ramparts, before quitting the region of romance for plain matter of fact. Here you have unbroken solitude and a wide expanse of open country; you also get a good idea of ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... jogged along not more than a quarter of a mile when the coast line veered sharply to right, leaving only the expanse of ocean looming up beyond the stretch of sandy beach. Following along the curve in the coast line, Jack found himself presently on the shore of a small land-locked bay. The mouth of the inlet was barely wide enough to permit the passage of ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... was returned from so many hundred thousand points of reflection, afforded by the sparry pillars and their numerous angular crystals. The fire itself did not remain steady and unmoved, but rose and fell, sometimes ascending in a brilliant pyramid of condensed flame half way up the lofty expanse, and again fading into a softer and more rosy hue, and hovering, as it were, on the surface of the altar to collect its strength for another powerful exertion. There was no visible fuel by which it was fed, nor did it emit either smoke ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... the crafty Wunpost always to head north when his mine was hidden safely to the south; and yet how had it escaped the eyes of the prospectors who had been combing the hills for months? Where was it possible for a mine to be hid in all that expanse of peaks? She sat down ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... proximity of the stony masses, which rise perpendicularly above the water, deprived us of the little wind which blew: the sloop no longer obeyed the helm, and we dreaded striking every instant. It is difficult to conceive how a mass of basalt, insulated in the vast expanse of the ocean, can cause so considerable a motion of the waters. These phenomena, worthy the attention of naturalists, are well known to mariners; they are extremely to be dreaded in the Pacific ocean, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... part of this progress was dreary in the extreme; they saw nothing before them but a wild expanse of lifeless earth and sky, naked rocks and burning sands, stretching immeasurably into the exterior, and affording no encouragement to any project of settlement. After, however, passing Cape Blanco, the coast began to improve in appearance, and when they saw the ivory and gold brought down from the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... leaping, thousands of gulls were descried on the sea, their gleaming wings seeming to be the very meaning of morning. Out of the sea under the dawn, dark dolphins came leaping toward the shore. The sea became a grey expanse over which the sun made a silver roadway. There commenced the quiet, ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... steamship, they were not observed by the lookouts. In all probability no signals were given. The little craft was to be at a certain place at a certain hour,—and she was there! The men who jumped knew that she would be there. A black, tiny speck on the broad expanse of water, sheltered by a night of almost stygian darkness, she lay outside the narrow radius to which visual observation was confined, patiently waiting for the Doraine to pass a designated point. There was to be no miscalculation on the part of either the boat or the men who went over ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... lying at anchor in the centre of the little basin with all her canvas set and gently flapping in the light breeze. And a marvellously pretty picture the little craft presented with her snow-white hull, surmounted by a broad expanse of scarcely less white cotton canvas, sitting daintily and jauntily upon the water, the white of her hull and sails, and the ruddy sheen of her copper sheathing brilliantly reflected upon the smooth, dark surface ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood |
