"Flat-bottomed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dream if anything became a shade more clear. Well, if a man must dream, let him dream thus, vividly, turning the clock back to maids unbelievably quaint and winsome in old brocade. Sweet as an Irish smile, the face of this one, and as haunting. And beyond, an old flat-bottomed punt and a river, a ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... Janissaries finished the repast with which we had furnished them, than the Russians came in flat-bottomed boats; not a Janissary escaped. The Russians paid no attention to the condition we were in. There are French surgeons in all parts of the world; one of them who was very clever took us under his care—he cured us; and as long as I ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... Ibid., Nos. 954, 1389. Fernandez Duro (t.v., p. 181) mentions a Spanish ordinance of 22nd February 1674, which authorized Spanish corsairs to go out in the pursuit and punishment of pirates. Periaguas, or large flat-bottomed canoes, were to be constructed for use in shoal waters. They were to be 90 feet long and from 16 to 18 feet wide, with a draught of only 4 or 5 feet, and were to be provided with a long gun in the bow and four smaller pieces in the stern. They were to be propelled by both oars and sails, ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... wading alongside cracked their whips and uttered strange cries; the carts rocked and swayed as the huge wheels churned through the mud and water. As the last light faded we reached the small patches of dry land at the landing, where the flat-bottomed side-wheel steamboat was moored to the bank. The tired horses and oxen were turned loose to graze. Water stood in the corrals, but the open shed was on dry ground. Under it the half-clad, wild-looking ox-drivers ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... seen from below hung in a flat-bottomed lantern just beyond the head of the stairs, and outside the entrance to one of two passages which appeared to lead to the back part of the house. Suspecting that M. de Bruhl's business had lain with mademoiselle, I guessed that ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... he, "this morning we made a descent upon the north shore, about half a mile to the eastward of Sillery; and the light troops were fortunately, by the rapidity of the current, carried lower down, between us and Cape Diamond. We had in this detachment thirty flat-bottomed boats, containing about 1600 men. This was a great surprise on the enemy, who, from the natural strength of the place, did not suspect, and consequently were not prepared against, so bold an attempt. The chain of sentries which they had posted along the summit of the heights, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... the rolling ship into some huge flat-bottomed boats, like coal-barges, and even so, were grated and ground several times by the churning waves on the ragged reefs beneath us: and, just as I was enjoying the see-saw, and trying to comfort two poor drenched ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... authors; and I am persuaded if one were to live here (which could not be long I think) he should forget the use of sleep; for what with the market folks bringing up the boats from Terra Firma loaded with every produce of nature, neatly arranged in these flat-bottomed conveyances, the coming up of which begins about three o'clock in a morning and ends about six;—the Gondoliers rowing home their masters and ladies about that hour, and so on till eight;—the common business of the town, which it is then time to begin;—the state affairs and pregai, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... interruption. "It was during a boat race on Point Judith Pond in Rhode Island. My pal, who was a surfman, had been assigned to duty there. Naturally, he was watching the races. On the other side of the pond a small flat-bottomed skiff, carrying one sail, capsized. There were three men in her. Streeter, that's the fellow I know, saw the boat capsize, but he knew that the water was shallow and noted that it was near shore. Just the same, he kept an eye on the boat. As soon as he saw two ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... because the Spanish ships were described vnto them to be so huge, they relied partly vpon the shallow and dangerous seas all along their costs. Wherfore they stood most in doubt of the duke of Parma his small and flat-bottomed ships. Howbeit they had all their ships of warre to the number of 90. and aboue, in a readinesse for all assayes: the greater part whereof were of a small burthen, as being more meete to saile vpon their riuers and shallow seas: and with these ships they besieged all the hauens ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... the same personal note in the pattern of her baskets. Not that she does not make all kinds, carriers, water-bottles, and cradles,—these are kitchen ware,—but her works of art are all of the same piece. Seyavi made flaring, flat-bottomed bowls, cooking pots really, when cooking was done by dropping hot stones into water-tight food baskets, and for decoration a design in colored bark of the procession of plumed crests of the valley quail. In this pattern she had made cooking pots in the ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... tubs, side by side, so that the sap may flow out of the wound. Sometimes a longitudinal incision is made from top to bottom of the leaf, to facilitate the discharge. The crude juice thus obtained is placed in shallow flat-bottomed receivers, and exposed to the sun until it has acquired sufficient consistency to be packed in gourds for exportation. In preparing the coarser kind, or horse aloes, the leaves are cut into junks and thrown into the tubs, there to lie till the juice ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... hand, and with the other catching at garden palings and the edges of door-steps to save themselves from pitching headlong, while beside them little boys and girls with the agility of long practice, went down merrily almost at a run, their heavy, flat-bottomed shoes making a clap-clap-clapping noise as they descended, like the strokes ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... of the Shenandoah. The negro had told him that he was about thirty miles from Harper's Ferry, which he knew was in possession of General Patterson's forces. Attached to a tree on the shore was a small flat-bottomed boat, which attracted the attention of the soldier boy. Tom was accustomed to boats, and the sight of this one suggested a change of programme, for it would be much easier to float down the stream, than to walk the thirty miles. This was a point which needed ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... that point had been kept between banks, expanded into a vast marsh. That marsh was the best shooting ground I ever saw. It was my cousin's chief care, and he kept it as a preserve. Through the rushes that covered it, and made it rustling and rough, narrow passages had been cut, through which the flat-bottomed boats, impelled and steered by poles, passed along silently over dead water, brushing up against the reeds and making the swift fish take refuge in the weeds, and the wild fowl, with their pointed, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... friend Commissioner Blackford. The "Tomtoolan"[2] is not a large body of water—one hundred and fifty feet long, seventy-five feet wide—but it is a delight to me and has been grossly traduced by ignorant or envious outsiders. The day after the "Katy-Did" was christened (a flat-bottomed boat, painted prettily with blue and gold) I invited a lady to try it with me. Flags were fluttering from stem and stern. We took a gayly colored horn to toot as we went, and two dippers to bail, if necessary. It was not exactly "Youth at the prow and Pleasure at the helm," but we were ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... place between the temperatures of 15 C. and 20 C. Evaporation to dryness shall take place between 98.5 C. and 100 C. in shallow, flat-bottomed basins, which shall afterwards be dried until constant at the same temperature, and cooled before weighing for not less than twenty minutes in air-tight desiccators ...
— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser
... basin of the S——en and the P—— is full of new boats, which are called 'baidaka.' These 'baidaka' are small, constructed to hold three or four men. The boats are flat-bottomed and steady. The scouts take the 'baidaka' on their shoulders, and as soon as they come to deep water launch their craft and row to the other side. Small oars or paddles are used, and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... however, their long waiting, the blazing fire, and being unaccustomed to boats at night, the poor scared horses refused to enter the boat, The boats are flat-bottomed or broadly bulging, with a bamboo platform strewn with grass in the centre. As a rule, they have no protecting rails, and even in the daytime, when the current is strong and eddies numerous, they are very dangerous for horses. At all events, the poor brutes would not be ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... morning found him busy caulking a big flat-bottomed boat, which was already half laden with stores. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... sponge cake in a flat-bottomed pudding-dish; when ready to use, cut in six or eight pieces, split and spread with butter and return them to the dish. Make a custard with four eggs to a quart of milk; flavor and sweeten to taste; pour over the cake and bake one-half ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... were in the road before me, three of them, and tailless, brown, speckled birds, with dark-blue necks and ragged crests. They stepped archly over the filigree snow, and their bodies moved with slow motion, like small, light, flat-bottomed boats. I admired them, they were curious. Then a gust of wind caught them, heeled them over as if they were three frail boats, opening their feathers like ragged sails. They hopped and skipped with discomfort, to get out of the draught of the wind. And then, ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... with the assistance of Bolton, one of the surviving soldiers, took out all the rotten pieces, and, by adding on the portion of another canoe, with eighteen days' hard labour they changed the Bambarra canoe into his Majesty's schooner "Joliba." Her length was forty feet, breadth six feet; and, being flat-bottomed, she drew only one foot of water when loaded. In this craft he and his surviving companions embarked on the 16th of November, on which day his journal closes. He intended next morning to commence his adventurous voyage down the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... conducting in the Netherlands. But on Philip's side at least these negotiations were simply delusive. The Spanish pride had been touched to the quick. Amidst the exchange of protocols Parma gathered seventeen thousand men for the coming invasion, collected a fleet of flat-bottomed transports at Dunkirk, and waited impatiently for the Armada to protect his crossing. The attack of Drake however, the death of its first admiral, and the winter storms delayed the fleet from sailing. What held it back even more effectually was the balance of parties in France. ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... Bill passed both Houses, and the preliminary works were at once begun. The same year the Navy had taken a great harvest of prizes in the North Sea, one of which, a Prussian fishing dogger, flat-bottomed and rounded at the stem and stern, was purchased to be a floating lightship, and re-named the Pharos. By July 1807 she was overhauled, rigged for her new purpose, and turned into the lee of the Isle of May. 'It was proposed that the whole party should meet in her and pass the night; ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... landed at Courbevoie from a flat-bottomed barge that had been constructed to bring it up the Seine. Courbevoie is about two miles from the Arch of Triumph, which is again nearly the same distance from ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... huge armada was making ready in the southern ports of the Spanish dominions, the Prince of Parma, with almost incredible toil and skill, collected a squadron of war-ships at Dunkirk, and his flotilla of other ships and of flat-bottomed boats for the transport to England of the picked troops, which were designed to be the main instruments in subduing England. Thousands of workmen were employed, night and day, in the construction of these vessels, in the ports of Flanders and Brabant. ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... the whip-cracking of their own headman and the fatherly advice of an R.E. corporal. Looking up the Canal the fatigue party, already late for their dinners, perceive a P. & O. liner about four miles away majestically crawling south. Their only hope is now the horse-ferry, an aged flat-bottomed contrivance wound across by a squad of natives and a chain. With the assistance of a friendly military policeman, the headman of this gang is discovered some hundred of yards away lying asleep with his feet in the ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... He decided to make a floating trip down the Rhone, and he engaged Joseph Very, a courier that had served him on a former European trip, to accompany him. The courier went over to Bourget and bought for five dollars a flat-bottomed boat and engaged its owner as their pilot. It was the morning of September 20, when they began their floating-trip down the beautiful historic river that flows through the loveliest and most romantic region ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in a flat-bottomed boat, enjoying the soft melancholy Italian evening. Not a human did I see; nor had I encountered one on my slow voyage from the Middle Seas. In meditation I pondered the ultimate wisdom of Confucius and smiled at the folly of the white barbarians ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... of steps to the beach, and stumbled across the soft sand towards the sea. One or two boats were lying out in the surf—heavy Dutch fishing-boats, known technically as "pinks," flat-bottomed, round-prowed, keel less, heavy and ungainly vessels, but strong as wood and iron and workmanship could make them. Some seemed to be afloat, others bumped heavily and continuously; while a few lay stolidly on the ground ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... company with the bones of reindeer, cave-bears, and mammoths, whose joints had doubtless been duly boiled, a hundred thousand years ago, by the intelligent producer of those identical sun-dried fleshpots; and M. Joly, of Toulouse, has in his possession portions of an irregularly circular, flat-bottomed vessel, from the cave of Nabrigas, on which the finger-marks of the hand that moulded the clay are still clearly distinguishable on the baked earthenware. That is the great merit of pottery, viewed as an historical document; it retains its shape and peculiarities unaltered through countless ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... four fat and humpy bullocks, who managed, with very great labour and difficulty, to drag us through the heavy sands of the river-bed down to the edge of the water. Here we were shipped on board a flat-bottomed boat, with a high peaked bow; and, after an immensity of hauling and grunting, we were fairly launched into the stream, and poled across to the opposite shore. The water appeared quite shallow, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... whar the wind is strong enough to blow you through the windy, and jist peart enough to pack away over them cliffs every inch of snow that falls. I'll jist skirmish round in and out o' them drifts on these four wheels whar ye can't drag one o' them flat-bottomed dry-goods boxes through a drift." Bill had a California whip's contempt for a sledge. But he was warmly seconded by Thatcher, who had the next best thing to experience, the instinct that taught him to read character, and take advantage of another man's ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... along beside him, each determined that it must be all or none; and presently the terror-stricken fisherman who had roused the village, still shrieking deliriously, came upon them in a flat-bottomed boat manned by four stalwart fellaheen, and the tragedy of the bridge was over. But not the tragedy of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Nancy pooled their pocket money and bought a light skiff—a flat-bottomed affair which was just the thing for them to paddle about in shallow water, and was "seaworthy." No ordinary amount of rocking could turn the ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... but their sister called them, and after the accustomed cup of coffee and rusks they went out to fish on the Gudenaa. Of late Hardy had hired a flat-bottomed boat, and a man called Nils Nilsen rowed or punted it with a pole, as on the Thames, or he went ashore on the towing-path and pulled it up the river with a towing rope, while a minnow was cast ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... Hanover, the private property of the English monarchy, stationed on the coasts of the North Sea and the Channel, several army corps, and ordered the construction and assembly, at Boulogne and neighbouring ports, of an immense number of barges and flat-bottomed boats, on which he proposed to embark ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... all speed. A large, flat-bottomed boat, the Willing, was fitted out with four guns and was sent down the Mississippi with forty men to ascend the Ohio and the Wabash to a place of rendezvous not far from the coveted post. By early February the depleted companies were recruited to their full strength; and after the enterprise had ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... it was now frozen hard, and the surface was fit to bear the horses. But for this the party must have halted and waited for a severe frost. The rivers were not frozen when large in volume, and the Aldana had to be crossed in the usual flat-bottomed boat kept for travelers. At night they halted, and with a bush and some deer-skins made a tent. Kolina cooked the supper, and the men searched for some fields of stunted half-frozen grass to let the horses graze. This was the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... "but I am particularly desirous of a good night's rest, and I never can sleep with anything on my mind. So I came over here to talk business. By-the-by, I should have come over here long ago, if any one had had the sense to give me a hint that I had only to cross a muddy stream, in a flat-bottomed boat, in order to see a face like that—" ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... on which one could walk. The only way to follow the windings of the stream would have been to wade or swim. Once more I had to own myself beaten by natural obstacles. The Dordogne is a river that cannot be followed throughout its savage wildernesses, except perhaps in a light flat-bottomed boat, and then not without serious difficulties. Anglers might have splendid sport here until they broke their necks, for the trout abound where the shadow of a man seldom or never falls. In the neighbourhood of ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... brass buttons, red sash round his waist, with holster thrust in it, containing the horse-pistol with which PITT armed himself when he sat at the window of Walmer Castle, looking across the Channel, momentarily expecting to discover BONEY crossing in a flat-bottomed boat. The trousers are of scarlet, with broad braid of gold lace on outer seams. Finally there is a truculent cocked hat, which OLD MORALITY persists in putting on with the peak astarn. The dress is picturesque, and OLD MORALITY's figure lends ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... the sides, it is probable that these resembled in their construction and object the pieces of wood attached to the sides of small Dutch vessels and barges on the Thames, and generally all vessels that are flat-bottomed, for the purpose of preventing them from making much lee way, when they ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... sold it to Park for a quantity of firearms. It was half rotten and took eighteen days to make water-tight. Forty feet long by six broad and flat-bottomed. They christened it ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... the sea that is lacking," interrupted the Jew; "Memphis trades only with Egypt, and we with the whole world. The merchant who sends his goods here only load camels, and wretched asses, and flat-bottomed Nile-boats, while we in our harbors freight fine seagoing vessels. When the winter-storms are past our house alone sends twenty triremes with Egyptian wheat to Ostia and to Pontus; and your Indian and Arabian goods, your imports from the newly opened Ethiopian provinces, take ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to the bows of the old, flat-bottomed rowboat, with incredible exertions uprooting it from its ancient bed, and at length ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... store for winter. If not, feed them. Never give bees dry sugar. They take up their food, as an elephant does water in his trunk; it, therefore, should be in a liquid form. Boil good sugar for ten minutes in ale or beer, leaving it about as thick as honey. Put it in a feed trough; which should be flat-bottomed. ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... its enormous size, great difficulty was experienced in removing it to Paris. A road was constructed from the obelisk to the Nile, and eight hundred men were occupied three months in removing it to the banks of the river, where was a flat-bottomed vessel built expressly for it. A part of the vessel had to be sawed off to receive it, so great was its size. It descended the Nile, passed the Rosetta bar, and with great care was towed to Cherbourg. It ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... orders issued in Louisbourg. '1st June, 1759. The Troops land no more. The flat-bottomed boats to be hoisted in, that the ships may be ready to sail at the first signal.' '2nd June, 1759. The Admiral purposes sailing the first fair wind.' On the 4th a hundred and forty-one sail weighed anchor together. All that day and the next they ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... who successfully combined in his single person the varied offices of ferryman, rat-catcher, jobbing gardener, amateur barber, mender of sails and of nets, brought the heavy, flat-bottomed boat alongside the jetty. Shipping the long sweeps, he coughed behind his hand with somewhat sepulchral politeness to give warning of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... General Coote's force in the spring of 1798 at the sluice-gates near Ostend. Its surrender under untoward circumstances was, perhaps, nearly counterbalanced by the destruction of canal works necessary for the assembly of the flat-bottomed boats ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... While I was looking at the river, a boat shot into view round a bend of the gorge and came down like an arrow over the rapids. It contained a small party of tourists and two boatmen, who stood in. the flat-bottomed craft with poles in their hands, with which they kept it clear of the rocks. I understood at once the delicious excitement of coming down the Tarn in this fashion. Bucketfuls of water are often shipped where ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... said the priest, "that if the play were a great success a line of flat-bottomed steamers might ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... two twins were shoving the drifted boat along the shore by pushing the ends of their sticks into the soft bank. The boat was of good size, and it was flat-bottomed, which meant it would not easily tip over. Flossie and Freddie each knew how to row, though they had to have oars made especially for them. But they knew how to keep in the middle of a boat, and never thought of rocking it or changing seats, so ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... was once a busy settlement much frequented by shipping, which thus escaped harbour dues. The mosquito-haunted stream, clear in the dries, and, as usual, muddy during the rains, supports wild duck, and, carried some ten miles in "dongos" or flat-bottomed boats, supplies the capital of Angola with ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... The Marquis de la Jonquiere anticipated great advantages from the overland route of communication. He says in a letter to France, dated May 1, 1751: "We have made a road and are going to make some flat-bottomed conveyances so that in winter we will be able to transport by hauling over the snow the things most needed for the River St. John, and in summer we shall be able to make the transport by means of carts and flat-bottomed batteaux. These arrangements will be very useful supposing ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... life from the enemy was so great that I could not hire a crew. I pled therefore with Nowar and Manuman, and a few leading men, to take one of their best canoes, and themselves to accompany me. I had a large flat-bottomed pot with a close fitting lid, and that I pressed full of flour; and, tying the lid firmly down, I fastened it right in the center of the canoe, and as far above water-mark as possible. All else that was required we tied around our own persons. Sea and land being as they ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... last long enough to serve our turn as we hoped. The Governor trusted it would have destroyed the whole fleet; but from what I can learn, nothing was really lost except a few of the flat-bottomed landing boats used in the disembarkation of the troops. The English are certainly notable sailors; but it is with her soldiers that we shall have more directly to deal. Still, I wish we could have sunk her ships; it would have placed her on the ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... noble harvest. The water also teemed with life and a shiftless out-at-elbow energy. Shabby looking fishing smacks, with dirty white wings, like birds too indolent to plume themselves, passed constantly, and flat-bottomed canoes, manned by good-humored negro oystermen, plied a lazy, thievish ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... Shepard prepared to literally spear him in the water. Dave—who was a tall, athletic boy, with a frank, pleasant face, if freckled, and close-cut brown curls in profusion—had driven the flat-bottomed skiff he had obtained from a neighboring landing, across the pool, and now, standing erect in the boat, with a single lunge impaled upon the boathook the ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... the inhabitants called their city (they called themselves Tenochques), came to be a great city of houses built on piles, with canals running through the straight streets, along which the natives poled their flat-bottomed canoes. The name which the Spaniards gave to the city, the "Venice of the New World," was appropriate, not only to its situation in the midst of the water, with canals for thoroughfares, but also to the history of the causes which led to its being ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... directions. Only natives who are thoroughly familiar with the river are entrusted with the piloting of boats up the stream during the season of low water. Even at the season of high water it is still so shallow as not to be navigable anywhere by seagoing vessels, but only by flat-bottomed boats with a carrying capacity of four to five hundred tons. The draft of steamers on the Yukon should not exceed three ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... Regiment filed down the gangways of the Andania on to the Abassiyeh and landed that night on Gallipoli. From the Abassiyeh we were transhipped into a "beetle" packed like sardines and loaded like a Christmas-tree. These lighters being flat-bottomed could run ashore on the sand and land troops dry-shod. The gangway was very steep and slippery and the men were so overloaded, each carrying a bundle of firewood as well as full equipment, and a pick ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... Greene, instead of having made arrangements for evacuating, was, on the contrary, reinforcing Fort Washington. The entire defense numbered only about 2000 men, mostly militia, with hardly a coat, to quote an English writer, "that was not out at the elbows." "On the night of the 14th thirty flat-bottomed boats stole quietly up the Hudson, passed the American forts undiscovered, and made their way through Spuyten Duyvil Creek into Harlem River. The means were thus provided for crossing that river, and landing before unprotected ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... they could not see the way. Percival and Strawberry followed. Alfred and Martin had already gone down to get the boat ready. In a few minutes they were in the boat, and pushed off from the shore. The boat was crowded, but, being flat-bottomed, she bore the load well. They pulled out about half a mile into the lake before they found themselves in a less oppressive atmosphere. Not a word was spoken until Martin ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... we catch them. A bugle sounds, and a hundred and twenty forms plunge from the bathing-stage and quay into the water. The bright harbour is dotted with the heads of swimmers. Some backward boys are being taught to swim in a "swimming-tray," a thing like a flat-bottomed barge, sunk with its bottom about four feet below the surface. A capital place it is for teaching youngsters to swim. But all soon learn, and are free to join the others in sporting about and cutting capers in the water. A ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... guide and coolie, and having much to think out, and sure thinking being anything but a rapid process with him, also because he did not wish to draw too much attention to his movements, he chose as a means of conveyance the ugly flat-bottomed public paddle-boat which floats unconcernedly down the Hoogli from Calcutta, through the bigger creeks of the Sunderbunds, and up ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, where a well had been bored and natural-oil struck the year before. This proved a very profitable investment. When I first visited this famous well, the oil was running into the creek where a few flat-bottomed scows lay filled with it, ready to be floated down the Allegheny River on an agreed upon day each week, when the creek was flooded by means of a temporary dam. This was the beginning of the natural-oil business. We ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... destination, which we reached. in another hour. The hills had closed in around us as we advanced; and when we reached a ruinous shed which had been erected for the accommodation of visitors, we found ourselves in a flat-bottomed valley about a quarter of a mile wide, bounded by precipitous and often overhanging limestone rocks. So far the ground had been cultivated, but it now became covered with bushes ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... sat immured. When Charlie came back, there was going to be a change. She repeated that to herself with determination. Between whiles she rambled about in the littered clearing, prowled along the beaches, and paddled now and then far outside the bay in a flat-bottomed skiff, restless, full of plans. So far as she saw, she would have to face some city alone, but she viewed that prospect with a total absence of the helpless feeling which harassed her so when she first took train for her brother's camp. She had passed through what she ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... with monks' cowls and golden croziers and white-robed acolytes in its streets; with the subtle smoke of incense coming out from the cathedral door to mingle with the odours of the fruits and flowers in the market-place; with great flat-bottomed boats drifting down the river under the leaning eaves of its dwellings; and with the galleries of its opposing houses touching so nearly that a girl leaning in one could stretch a Provence rose or toss an Easter egg across to her neighbour ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... a staircase, which led to a deep hollow chamber, shaped like a bell, and echoing like one. A pool of intensely black water filled it, reflecting the lights on its surface, that only enhanced its darkness, while there moved on a mysterious flat-bottomed boat, breaking them into shimmering sparks, and John Eyre intimated that the visitors must lie down flat in it to be ferried one by one over a space of about ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... steamer is not a river boat, and she is not a flat-bottomed craft," I tried to explain. "Her keel does not take kindly to the levee. I must stay here and look out for her; but I will call at your ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... "Fifteen millions of people," he said, in allusion to the disproportion between the population of England and France, "must give way to forty millions"; and the invasion was planned on a gigantic scale. A camp of one hundred thousand men was formed at Boulogne, and a host of flat-bottomed boats gathered for their conveyance across the Channel. The peril of the nation forced Addington from office and recalled Pitt to power. His health was broken, and as the days went by his appearance became so haggard and depressed that it was plain death was drawing near. But dying ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... typical boarded dounga. Upon a long, low, flat-bottomed hull, which tapered to a sharp point at bow and stern, was raised a light wooden superstructure with a flat roof, upon which the passengers could sit. The interior was divided off into some half-a-dozen compartments, a vestibule or outer cabin held boxes, &c., and through it one passed into ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... boat off sharp, and a long shelving run of sandy shingle before we reach the sea; for all the boats are on the upper strand of the beach, above the last high-water mark, and the flow of the tide is scarcely an hour old. There is a short squat cobble, flat-bottomed and of intolerable weight, down near the waters, and its owner makes for it. Another man drives him out seawards, against the constant lift of breaking waves, large enough to be troublesome, small enough to be numerous. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... have made its living by collecting nickels for the slide. Indeed, one might think that a part of the city had come bouncing down the slope, for now it lay resting at the bottom, sprawled somewhat for its ease. Or it might appear—if your belief runs on discarded lines—that the whole flat-bottomed earth had been fouled in its celestial course and now lay aslant upon its beam with its cargo shifted ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... the passing and repassing of ships was very great, there was a ferry instead of a bridge. In these cases there was a flat-bottomed boat to pass to and from one side to the other, with a pretty little landing of stone steps at each end. Rollo was much entertained by these ferries. He said it was crossing a street by water. And it was exactly that, and no more. The place where he first crossed one of these ferries was precisely ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... buckles in her shoes, and a great white cap with a kind of gold band round her head, sat knitting there; or sometimes a Dutchman in trunk hose was fishing there. We saw them all, for we had entered a barge or trekschuyt, towed by horses on the bank, a great flat-bottomed thing, that perfectly held our carriage. Thus we were to go by the canals to the Hague, and no words can describe the strange silence and tranquillity of ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by sea and land, to very remote countries. There they found the conveniences of seeing many countries on all hands, for no ship went any voyage into which he and his companions were not very welcome. The first vessels that they saw were flat-bottomed, their sails were made of reeds and wicker woven close together, only some were of leather; but afterwards they found ships made with round keels, and canvas sails, and in all respects like our ships; and the seamen understood both ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... men smoke their pipes and doff their caps to "the American" with the cheery welcome of friends who knew and spanked him with hearty good will when as "a kid" he absconded with their boats for a surreptitious expedition up to the lake. Those boats! heavy, flat-bottomed, propelled with a pole that stuck in the mud and pulled them back half the time farther than they had gone. But what fun it was! In after years a steam whistle woke the echoes of these quiet waters. It was the first one, and the last. ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... expedition of Ordaz, was sent in 1553, by the governor Geronimo de Ortal, to pursue the discovery of the Orinoco and the Meta. He lost nearly thirteen months between Punta Barina and the confluence of the Carony in constructing flat-bottomed boats, and making the preparations indispensable for a long voyage. We cannot read without astonishment the narrative of those daring enterprises, in which three or four hundred horses were embarked to be put ashore ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... A short flat-bottomed float, such as that known as the Fabre, is good at getting off from smooth water, but is frequently damaged when the sea is rough. A long and narrow float is preferable for rough water, as it is able to cut through the waves; ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... in 1035, is estimated at 800,000 souls, we may judge from their fleets how large a portion of the men were engaged in these piratical pursuits. The ships on which they prided themselves so highly were flat-bottomed craft, with little or no keel, the sides of wicker work, covered with strong hides. They were impelled either by sails or oars as the changes of the weather allowed; with favourable winds they often made the voyage in three days. As if to favour ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... afterwards for bacon; furry creatures innumerable, all good for meat or skin. Fish of the infinite sea breaking their bark-fibre nets; fowl innumerable, migrant in the skies, for their flint-headed arrows; bred horses for their own riding; ships of no mean size, and of all sorts, flat-bottomed for the oozy puddles, keeled and decked for strong Elbe stream and furious Baltic on the one side, for mountain-cleaving Danube and the black lake of ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... places where the sluicing rains had driven hard across the hills; soft with sand in places where the fierce winds had swept the open. For awhile the thin, wobbly track of a wagon meandered along ahead of him, then turned off up a flat-bottomed draw and was lost in the sagebrush. Some prospector not so lucky as he, thought Casey, with swift, soon forgotten sympathy. A coyote ran up a slope toward him, halted with forefeet planted on a rock, ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... boats of ours—graceful, yet strong in line, floating easily, well up in the water, in spite of their five hundred pounds' weight. They were flat-bottomed, with a ten-inch rake or raise at either end; built of white cedar, with unusually high sides; with arched decks in bow and stern, for the safe storing of supplies. Sealed air chambers were placed in each end, large ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... for speed. It depended on sail, with the oars as auxiliaries. The long ship was designed for speed, depending on oars and using sail only as auxiliary. And while the round ship was of deep draft and rode to anchor, the shallow flat-bottomed long ships were drawn up on shore. The Phoenicians took the Egyptian and Cretan models and improved them. They lowered the bows of the fighting ships, added to the blunt ram a beak near the water's edge, and strung the shields of the fighting men along the bulwarks to protect the rowers. To increase ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... of mud huts, intersected by crooked alleys and surrounded by date palms, little villages where doves were flying overhead and from which came the sound of barking dogs to mingle with the puffs of the steamer. Flat-bottomed boats freighted with sugar cane lay with drooping sails in a noonday calm, or, later in the day, sped before the evening breeze. Near the pottery towns the river banks were dotted with yellow water jars in scattered ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... accompanied by a steady increase in the size of ships and a broadening of the knowledge of the navigators. The flat-bottomed vessels of the Nile and the Euphrates were replaced by the sailing vessels of the Phoenicians, the AEgeans, the Greeks, the Carthaginians and the Romans. These in turn were discarded for the square rigged vessels of the Portuguese and the Spaniards. And the latter were driven from the ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... boat, a heavy flat-bottomed thing, was already half launched upon the beach, furnished with stout boat-hooks for pushing among the ice, as well as her oars and sailing gear. He was glad to find that such speedy departure was to be his. He had no thought of saying ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... as we are, we can dispense with the first, but not with the second. A square mile even of pond water is worth a year's schooling to any intelligent boy. A boat is a kingdom. We personally own one,—a mere flat-bottomed "float," with a centre-board. It has seen service,—it is eight years old,—has spent two winters under the ice, and been fished in by boys every day for as many summers. It grew at last so hopelessly leaky, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... began constructing two large flat-bottomed boats of light enough draft to run the rapids in the flood-tide of spring. Carpenters worked hidden in an attic; but when the timbers were mortised together, the boats had to be brought downstairs, where one of the Huron slaves caught a glimpse of them. Boats of such a size he had never before seen. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... Trelawny gives the following account of how he passed his days: he "was up at six or seven, reading Plato, Sophocles, or Spinoza, with the accompaniment of a hunch of dry bread; then he joined Williams in a sail on the Arno, in a flat-bottomed skiff, book in hand, and from thence he went to the pine-forest, or some out-of-the-way place. When the birds went to roost he returned home, and talked and read until midnight." The great wood of stone pines on the Pisan Maremma was his favourite study. Trelawny tells us how he found ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... frugal view, were the necessities and comforts of life. They had no Eastern market for their produce, for railways did not begin to be made till 1840, and it was many years before they crossed the Eastern mountains. An occasional cargo was taken on a flat-bottomed boat down the nearest creek, as a stream is called in America, into the Ohio and so by the innumerable windings of the Mississippi to New Orleans; but no return cargo could be brought up stream. Knives and axes were the most precious ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Company, incorporated for this purpose, intend to extend their navigation, and have already perfected it within the distant of six or seven miles. The work is going forward, and I believe will be completed next summer. This being perfected, there will be a good navigation for large flat-bottomed boats, within one mile of the coal-bank, to which a good road may be had on the side ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... point of departure to be compared with the head of the Albert. The expedition should, as I have before remarked, go to Investigator Road, fulfilling my prediction of the ultimate importance of that port, which lies only twenty-seven miles North-North-West from the entrance. Here the flat-bottomed boats, taken out in frame, for the purpose of carrying up the camels, should be put together, and towed from thence ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... together. On another occasion, when they had to cross a river in the face of the Russian troops posted on the other side, they invented a peculiar kind of boat, which was of great service in enabling them to accomplish the transit in safety. These boats were flat-bottomed and square; the foremost end of each of them was guarded by a sort of bulwark, formed of plank, and made very high. This bulwark was fixed on hinges at the lower end, so that it could be raised up and ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... little man in gray, with a chuckle. "She may be all right to row round in on a troubled sea, but she'll tip quicker'n scat if you step up on the side of her. This one near spilt me into the drink after I was alongside here. What I want is a flat-bottomed scow or raft. I hope this yacht is good and steady, for I'm going to take ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish |
