"Flat-topped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was seated at a flat-topped mahogany desk. He rose as Marjorie entered and came forward ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... morning began a day of toil. They had to climb over the mountain divide, a long, flat-topped range of broken rocks. Joan spared her horse to the limit of her own endurance. If there were a trail Smith alone knew it, for none was in evidence to the others. They climbed out of the notched head of the canon, and up a long slope of weathered shale that let the horses ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... settled down on the camp. Now and again a stick cracked in the fires, and the cicadas cried aloud in the tree stems; but except where the solitary paced up and down before the little flat-topped tree in front of the captain's tent, not a creature stirred in the whole camp; and the snores of the trooper under the bushes might be heard half across ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... and the showy problems, including the rapid moving of a ray of light and the long years of its travel between star and star, and smiled incredulously. Why, the stars were just above our heads, were not much higher than the flat-topped hills that barred the horizons. Venus was a yellow lamp hung in a tree; Mars a ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... lifting power of the gas, this, according to Pole, is a deduction of h(1 - d)/828 where d is the specific gravity of the gas and h the height (in inches) of the top of the gasholder above the water level. This strictly applies only to a flat-topped bell, and hence if the bell has a crown with a rise equal to about 1/20 of the diameter of the bell, the value of h here must be taken as equal to the height of the top of the sides above the water-level ( h'), plus the ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... This low, flat-topped mountain, as I say, was grassy and quite treeless, although it rose like a truncated sugar-cone out of a wilderness of trees which stretched for miles below us, north, south, east, and west, bordered on the horizon ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... yards north of the drift was a flat-topped, rocky mountain, and about a mile to the northeast appeared the usual sugar-loaf kopje, covered with bushes and boulders—steep on the south, but gently falling to the north; this had a farm on the near side of it. About a thousand yards south of the drift was a convex and smooth ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... were filled with huge, floating, flat-topped battleships, within the capacious interiors of which were packed the parts of aeroplanes as were the soldiers of the Grecian army in their wooden horse at Troy, for assembling and launching them. But the engines of warfare which men had repeatedly claimed would make war so ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... bucket of water and the garden hose. Grocery and delivery wagons came and went, rattling over the cobbles and car-tracks, while occasionally a whistle blew very far off. At the corner of the street by a livery-stable a little boy in a flat-topped leather cap was calling incessantly for some unseen dog, whistling and slapping his knees. An ex press-wagon stopped a few doors below the white house and the driver pulled down the back-board with a strident rattle of chains; the cable in its slot kept up an unceasing burr and clack while ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... wandering about on them became indistinguishable. Beth went long before the time. It was a beautiful still grey day, such as she loved, and she longed to be alone with the sea. The tide was going out, and she had a fancy for following it from rock to rock as it went. Some of the bigger rocks were flat-topped islands, separated from the last halting-place of the tide by narrow straits, across which she sprang; and on these she would lie her length, peering down into the clear depths on the farther side, where the healthy happy sea-creatures ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... them, keeping away to the left so as to come onto the well-beaten trail which he knew ran in that direction. He found it and let the mustang drop back to a steady dogtrot; for, if the journey to Sour Creek was now a short distance, there would be a hard ride back to the flat-topped mountain if he wished to accomplish his business and return before the full dawn. He must be there by that time, for who could tell what the girl might do when she found herself alone. Therefore he saved the cattle pony as ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... stood open. She had not been in there for so long,—years perhaps; but as a child she had often played there among the old things, come down from the dead, who were kept in such friendly recollection in this house. Near the door there had been an old, flat-topped, hair-covered trunk . . . yes, here it was, just as it had been. Nothing ever changed here. She sat down on it, the candle on the floor beside her, and saw herself as a little girl playing among the ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Dawn lighted the flat-topped kopjes that lay in a huge semicircle in the distance, and men clambered up the sides of the spruit to ascertain the camp of the enemy. The white smoke-stack of the Bloemfontein waterworks appeared against the black background of the hills in the east, but it was still too dark to distinguish objects ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... the flat-topped desk in the centre of the room, the prosecutor, the Reverend Doctor Sherman, and a rather smartly dressed man whom Bruce remembered to have seen once or twice but whom he did not know. With the first two the editor shook hands, and the third was introduced ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... aisle they reached a small, railed-in space, strongly resembling what might be seen in any office on the earth. In the middle of it stood a low, flat-topped desk, for all the world like that of a prosperous real-estate agent, except that it was about half a foot lower. There was no chair. For lack of a visible gate in the railing, the explorers stepped over, being ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... his trunk, dragging nearly the whole bulk of it out of the water. Then he set to work to pound it down into the mud and stones at the bottom of the river with such a persistent thoroughness, that he gave us time to reach the other bank and climb up a stout tree which grew there, a sloping, flat-topped kind of tree that was fortunately easy to ascend, at least for a man. Here we sat gasping, perhaps about thirty feet above the ground ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... mounds, but the so-called temple mounds are most numerous in the South. At one place in Wisconsin is found a low embankment inclosing four low mounds with leveled tops. But the resemblance between these and the regular temple mounds is certainly slight. Only a few instances of these flat-topped mounds are found in Ohio. Of these the still existing "elevated squares" at ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... shoulders squared, he put up his head. Free and in the open, if only for twenty-four hours. And with a horse, a real horse, between his knees. He looked off to the left to Barlow's three peaks; the sun was gilding the top of the tallest and it was unquestionable that it was flat-topped. But he did not dwell long upon buried gold nor yet on the query which suggested itself: "Where were Barlow and Zoraida riding so early?" The immediate present and the immediate surroundings were all that he cared to interest himself in on a ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... of a vast flat-topped mass of granite unique among the natural elevations of the world. She is another melting pot. Here mingle Kaffir and Boer, Basuto and Britisher, East Indian and Zulu. The hardy rancher and fortune-hunter from the North Country rub shoulders with the globe-trotter. In the bustling streets modern ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... Flat-topped houses, colored white and pink and lemon, with almost unbroken fronts, ran round the square. A few had green lattices and handsome iron gates to the arched entrances that ran like a tunnel through the house, but many showed ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... the flat-topped division of the seat, a pistol lay; but the fingers of the small white hand which held it were nerveless. In his bearing was no menace—only the ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... his companion set about his share of camp tasks. It was still early in the summer—too early to expect to find ripe fruit. But Dalgard rummaged in his voyager's bag and brought out a half-dozen crystal beads. He laid these out on a flat-topped stone by the stream, ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... secure the fresh breezes, and to render them more easily defended, the Assyrians, as well as the Babylonians and the Persians, built their palaces upon lofty artificial terraces, or platforms. These eminences, which appear like natural, flat-topped hills, were constructed with an almost incredible expenditure of human labor. The great palace-mound at Nineveh, called by the natives Koyunjik, covers an area of one hundred acres, and is from seventy to ninety feet high. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... parts of the front that show their old form now have not, however, all continuously retained it. At the time of the erection of the Perpendicular clerestory to the nave, the northern gable turret was rebuilt in the curiously plain, octagonal, flat-topped form, which the oldest engravings of the front illustrate. It has only quite recently been altered again to the earlier shape of its fellow on the south; and is the only feature in which there is any conspicuous difference between ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... Faircloth said, his chin still in his hands and eyes gazing away to the Bar—"earth and pebbles banked up into a flat-topped mound, upon which stood your shoes filled with sprays of hedge fruit and yellow button-chrysanthemums—stolen too, I suppose, from one of the gardens at Lampit. They grow freely there. Your silk stockings hung round her neck, a posy of flowers twisted into them.—When I came ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... her rope reins, and Beck flew up the road as if all Sherman's army were after her; nor did she slacken until she reached the great gateway which turned into the Hermitage. Only a flat-topped post remained of the gate, and a boy of twelve, with a face like ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... turn up the silvery underside of their leaves, and all the foliage looked soft and wilted. I carried the lunch-basket to the top of one of the chalk bluffs, where even on the calmest days there was always a breeze. The flat-topped, twisted little oaks threw light shadows on the grass. Below us we could see the windings of the river, and Black Hawk, grouped among its trees, and, beyond, the rolling country, swelling gently until it met the sky. We ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... chips and trunks of great trees all turned to eternal stone, called by the Indians "Yeitso's bones," after the great giant of that name whom an ancient Indian hero killed. He described the coloring of the brilliant days in Arizona, where you stand on the edge of some flat-topped mesa and look off through the clear air to mountains that seem quite near by, but are in reality more than two hundred miles away. He pictured the strange colors and lights of the place; ledges of rock, yellow, white and green, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... Of human form, crowned with a flat-topped cap and two long, straight plumes; clothed in the schenti; his flesh sometimes painted blue. There are various forms of this god (there were almost as many varieties of Ammon in Egypt as there are varieties of the Madonna in Italy or Spain), but he is most generally described as King ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... its great square bulk against the background of black, star-flecked sky. From the facade before me down to the spot where I stood by the water, came a flight of half a dozen terraces, each balustraded in white marble, ending in square, flat-topped pillars of Florentine design. What moon there was revealed the quaint architecture of that stately edifice and glittered upon the mullioned windows. But within nothing stirred; no yellow glimmer came to clash with ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... flat-topped mesa eroded to fantastic mockery of some bastioned fort. In the round-topped hills behind it was Noches, fifty miles away. Beyond lay the tangle of hills, rising to the saw-toothed range now painted with orange and mauve and a hint of deepening purple. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... was announced that the vessel was nearing the Cape of Good Hope, our young friends strained their eyes in a friendly competition to be first to make it out. Harry was ahead of Ned in discerning the dim outline of Table Mountain, which is well described by its name. It is a flat-topped mountain fronting on the bay on which Cape Town stands. It is about three thousand five hundred feet in height, and is guarded on the left by the Lion's Head, and on the right by the Devil's Berg. The harbor ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... centre, and Hlangwane Hill on the east, are the principal points to remember. On the British side of the river, a plain sloped gradually down to the southern bank from a distance of two or three miles. It was divided north and south by a slight swell in the ground, flat-topped, of height just sufficient to conceal men on one side of it from those {p.225} on the other. On the eastern edge of this rise, the railroad track ran north to the bridge. On the western side, and between 3000 and 4000 yards from Wylie, was ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... gully, he climbed upward and onto a flat-topped, miniature butte. Here he saw a spectacle that literally ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... as Sime and Tolto slowly walked about in widening circles, and when they were sufficiently far away Murray and Tuman closed in. They had no expectation of finding the ship unlocked, and wasted no time trying to get it. Instead they climbed a flat-topped block of stone about ten feet high. From this position they could command, with Murray's neuro, anyone who might seek ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... will be broad and gold, and darkened here and there into shadows of porphyrine amber. Amidst the grey and green of the olive and acacia foliage there will arise the low pale roofs and flat-topped towers of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... colonel did not interrupt them for a while. But when the lady at length rose, holding Phil by the hand, the colonel, fearing that the boy, who was a child of strong impulses, prone to sudden friendships, might be proving troublesome, left his seat on the flat-topped tomb of his Revolutionary ancestor and hastened ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... both of them, and there painted in the air they saw the picture of a great mountain, standing by itself upon a plain, but with other mountains visible to the north and south of it. This mountain was flat-topped, with precipices of red rock, and down its eastern slope ran five ridges shaped like the thumb and fingers of a mighty hand, while between the thumb and the first finger, as it were, a stream gushed out, upon the banks of which grew flat-topped ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... into our mouths, we see behind our canines a long row of broad, flat-topped, square-looking teeth, which fill up the largest part of our jaws. Again their shape tells what they are used for. They are not sharp enough to cut with, or pointed enough to tear with, but are just suited for crushing ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... there is a remarkable flat-topped rock known as the Enchanted Mesa, which rises with precipitous walls to a height of four hundred feet above the valley in which it stands. It was long believed that human beings had never been upon ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... came to collect, Bradley arose and started for the doorway. He had covered half the distance when he heard the voice of mine host calling to him: "Come back, jaal-lu," screamed the Wieroo; and Bradley did as he was bid. As he approached the creature which stood now behind a large, flat-topped pedestal beside the alcove, he saw lying upon the smooth surface something that almost elicited a gasp of astonishment from him—a simple, common thing it was, or would have been almost anywhere in the world but Caspak—a square bit ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... so that he struck the three Maela [Note: i.e. flat-topped hills.] of Meath with his three blows. Cuchulainn heard the blows then that Fergus gave on the hills or on ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... it, is a ledge of rocks on which the sea constantly breaks. We passed close round the reef, and hauled into a very considerable opening about six or seven miles wide, and at least five or six leagues deep. At the bottom of this inlet was some higher land than usual, and among it two flat-topped hills were very conspicuous. The eastern shore of the port, for such it proved to be, is formed by a succession of rocky points, between which were ranges of red cliffs, much higher than any we had yet seen, and, if possible, more thickly wooded. ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... hand to the left. She beheld a clearing—an avenue, that ran like a broad ribbon to the summit of a flat-topped rise. ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... hobbled down the slope she saw Denis O'Meara's scarlet uniform gleaming martially against a background of dark broom and hoary rock. Its wearer was, however, very peacefully employed in pulling the silky floss off the heads of the bog-cotton, which lay in a great heap before him on a flat-topped boulder, with a big bunch of many-hued wild flowers beside it. Theresa Joyce, who sat opposite to him, was pulling bog-cotton too, though less diligently, for it might have been noticed that she often looked off her work, and towards the scrap of road that lay within her ken. ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... now return to Labu, to give some account of the channel between the reefs; as, from the appearance of the charts, it would seem impossible to navigate the western side of the bay. Having passed Tanjong Labu at a distance of 3 1/2 or 4 miles, get the flat-topped hill called Bulu Tanna ahead. Close to the Bulu Tanna, in the foreground, is another smaller hill, with two remarkable tufts on the top: this hill, just open to the eastward of Bulu Tanna, is the leading mark for Songi, which stands to the westward. This mark will lead ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... white heads of tubular florets only, crowded in a scaly involucre and borne in spreading, flat-topped terminal cymes. Stem: Stout, tall, branching above, hairy, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, often united at their bases, or clasping, lance-shaped, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... lay, a wilderness of little hills and valleys, flat-topped benches and sandy gulches threaded minutely with winding trails and cow paths, green with the illusion of drought-proof giant cactus and vivid desert bushes, one vast preserve of browse and grass from the Peaks to the gorge of the Salagua. Here was the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... stretches of fine open Ironbark forest, interspersed with thickets of an aborescent species of Acacia, for about four miles in a north-west course, when we found ourselves on the margin of a considerable valley full of Bricklow scrub; we were on flat-topped ridges, about 80 to 100 feet above the level of the valley. After several attempts to cross, we had to turn to the N. N. E. and east, in order to head it, travelling through a most beautiful open Ironbark forest, with the grass in full seed, from three to four feet ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... with a crash. For a moment the darkness was such that no object could be distinguished within. The negro servant hung back, trembling from some indefinable dread. The captain, his hand on the door-knob, stepped quickly into the gloomy apartment, Pierce close at his heels. A broad, flat-topped desk stood in the centre of the room. Some shelves and books were dimly visible against the wall. Some of the drawers of the desk were open, and there was a litter of papers on the desk, and others were strown in the big ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... central aisles which distinguish the interior show in the outer structure. Under the gables the huge clerestory windows above the entrances relieve the great expanse of the end walls. Similar windows open up the walls above the flat-topped wings. In the main entrance, the gables are deepened to form a huge triple vestibule where the row of columns is repeated. The long side walls are relieved by pairs of decorated columns flanking the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... contrast with the mainland we had passed which was full of sandhills. The country continued hilly and the northernmost land, the same we had seen from the lagoon island, appeared like downs, sloping towards the sea. Nearly abreast of us was a flat-topped hill which on account of its shape I called Pudding-pan hill; and a little to the northward were two other hills which we called the Paps; and here was a small tract of country without sand, the eastern ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... single ridge may double back and forth so often that the region well deserves the old Indian name of the "Endless Mountains." Southwestward the valley grows narrower, and the ridges which break its surface become straighter. Everywhere they are flat-topped, steep-sided, and narrow, while between them lie parts of the main valley floor, flat and fertile. Here in the south, even more clearly than in the north, the valley is bordered on the east by the sharply upstanding range of the crystalline Appalachians, while ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... man with eyeglasses and an ingratiating smile arose from behind a flat-topped desk facing the door and rubbed his hands as he ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... led those twain into the midst of the Mote, and there bade them go up on to a wide, flat-topped stone, six feet above the ground, just over against the ancient chieftain; and they mounted it by a rough stair, and stood there before that folk; Walter in his array of the outward world, which had been fair enough, of crimson cloth and silk, and white linen, ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... compelled to say 'ad salutem' in the course of the evening was astonishing. The old priest appeared more accustomed to these copious libations than his younger assistant, who before he left the table showed unmistakable signs of being 'well on.' Both vicar and curate wore moustachios, and the flat-topped red fez, which distinguishes their profession. The curate had received a certain amount of education at one of the Bosnian convents, whence he had been sent to Rome, where he had, at any rate, attained a tolerable proficiency ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... to, it was with an excruciatingly painful struggle that left him shrinking and nerveless, lying in a corner, blinking at the light of a kerosene lamp. Corrigan sat on the edge of a flat-topped desk watching him with an ugly, appraising, speculative grin. It was as though the man were mentally gambling on his chances ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... cluster of palms beside a rude well, hedged in by a little patch of green earth, about which a few camels or goats are quenching their thirst or cropping the scanty herbage. Some Arabs, in picturesque costumes, linger hard by. The tents pitched in the background are of the same low, flat-topped, camel's-hair construction as have been used by these desert tribes ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... Well, when you get into the house, go straight through the vestibule and hall to the door at the end. On the big, flat-topped desk in the middle of the room you'll find a telephone. Do you know how to ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... each accommodated with a flat-topped cart, without sides, drawn by two bullocks, and each animal has two attendants. They are loosely bound by a collar and rope to the back of the vehicle, and are also held by the keeper by a strap round the loins. A leathern hood covers their eyes. The antelopes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... At the same time some genius invented the "A" frame, a really wonderful labour saving device. Hitherto floorboards had been supported on piles and crossbars, while further and longer stakes were driven in to carry the rivetment. The new frame shaped like a flat-topped letter "A," was put in the floor of the trench upside down. The legs held the revetment against the sides, the floorboards rested on the cross-piece, and the space between the cross-piece and the flat top formed a good drain. These were first used in communication trenches ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... read this will think it a strange thing, but, though I had been busy all that morning handling beautiful little pippins, long, rosy, and flat-topped, I had never even ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... plain backed by flat-topped hills and rugged mountains; dissected upland desert plains in center slope into the desert ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... their surface, whether stony or sandy, is quite smooth and even, as if washed so by the action of the water. Throughout this level tract of country were interspersed, in various directions, many small flat-topped elevations, varying in height from 50 to 300 feet, and almost invariably exhibiting precipitous banks. These elevations are composed almost wholly of a chalky substance, coated over on the upper surface by stones, or a sandy soil, and present the appearance of having formed a table land ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... a look full of import. Susan leaned over Miss Thornton's flat-topped desk so that their heads were close together. "Listen," said Miss Thornton, in a low tone, "I met George Banks on the deck this afternoon, see? And I happened to tell him that Miss Wrenn was going." Miss Thornton glanced ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... weather conditions the fall strikes on flat-topped slabs, forming a kind of ledge about two-thirds of the way down from the top, and as the fall sways back and forth with great variety of motions among these flat-topped pillars, kissing and plashing notes as well as thunder-like detonations are produced, like those ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... which was spating from the recent rains, but great flat-topped rocks made it always possible ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Rottnest Island. Another remarkable effect of mirage. Anchor under, and land upon Rottnest Island. Break an anchor. Examine the coast to the northward. Cape Leschenault. Lancelin Island. Jurien Bay. Houtman's Abrolhos. Moresby's Flat-topped Range. Red Point. Anchor in Dirk Hartog's Road, at the entrance of Shark's Bay. Occurrences there. Examination of the coast to the North-west Cape. Barrow Island. Heavy gale off the Montebello Isles. Rowley's Shoals. Cape Leveque. Dangerous situation of the ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... immediately set out, with a man carrying my theodolite, for Mount Red Cap, distant from our camp about six miles. This little red cone had a very singular appearance, as we approached it from the east. A dark tinted scrub of flat-topped trees enveloped its base, on the outside of which the light and graceful Acacia pendula also grew on the grassy plain. I found the red rock to be the common one of the country, in a state of decomposition. It was hollowed ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... plain was like a frozen sea that had no end, and so far as eye could see was only bounded by the dark orb of heaven. Here and there, grey, cleft, cone-shaped rocks and blunt-cornered stone boulders or blocks and flat-topped stones not unlike a table rose out of the sand-ocean. Two such stones were situated close together; one was partly covered by the yellow quicksand, the other stood higher out of the ground. On each of them lay a man stretched at full length. One, strong and sinewy, lay ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... and thus the two struggled unarmed, Osmund atop. But Camoys was the younger man, and Osmund's strength was ebbing rapidly by reason of his wound. Now Camoys' tethered horse, rearing with nervousness, tumbled his master's flat-topped helmet into the road. Osmund caught up this helmet and with it battered Camoys in the face, dealing ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... next office stood open. Sarah walked in, that is, she stepped just inside the doorway and stood there as though glued to the floor. The thin, gray-haired man who was stooping over the flat-topped desk, looking at a card file, glanced up at her and smiled. This was the principal, ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... southward, which became dry at low water. Our latitude here was 10 deg. 30' from bearings, and longitude by time-keeper 142(? illegible in book) 181/2' east; but I was altogether at a loss to know what islands these were, under which we had anchored. Supposing the flat-topped island to have been the easternmost York Isle, the land we had in sight to the southward should have been Cape York; but no such isles as those around us were laid down by captain Cook, to the north of that cape. On consulting the sketch made by captain Bligh in ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... violet. Its function is to shunt the lift out of the gas, and this it will do without watching. That is all! A tiny pump-rod wheezing and whining to itself beside a sputtering green lamp. A hundred and fifty feet aft down the flat-topped tunnel of the tanks a violet light, restless and irresolute. Between the two, three white-painted turbine-trunks, like eel-baskets laid on their side, accentuate the empty perspectives. You can hear ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... the victory at Jerusalem. The most significant of all the signs was the attitude of Moslems. The Turks had preached the Holy War, but they knew the hollowness of the cry, and the natives, abandoning their natural reserve, joined in loud expression of welcome. From flat-topped roofs, balconies, and streets there were cries of 'Bravo!' and 'Hurrah!' uttered by men and women who probably never spoke the words before, and quite close to the Jaffa Gate I saw three old Mahomedans clap their hands while tears of joy coursed down their cheeks. Their ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... to a very steep hillside, up which the half-obliterated trail zigzagged toward the crest of a flat-topped hill. Barney went ahead, taking the girl's hand in his to help her, and thus they came to the top, to stand hand in hand, breathing ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... crossed the Chapman River just below a pool of apparently permanent water; at 9.50 crossed a granite ridge, beyond which the country improved, with many large patches of grass to the eastward; at 10.20 ascended a high flat-topped hill of red sandstone resting on granite, which proved to be the eastern point of Moresby's Flat-topped Range. From this hill Mount Fairfax and Wizard Hill were visible to the east; grassy hills rose gradually from the Chapman ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... Fr. butte, a hillock or rising ground), a word used in the western states of North America for a flat-topped hill surrounded by a steep escarpment from which a slope descends to the plain. It is sometimes used for "an elevation higher than a hill but not high enough for a mountain." The butte capped by a horizontal platform of hard rock is characteristic of the arid plateau region of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... my hoe in the furrow, I saw a man come by walking a pretty good horse. He was an elderly, bearded man, very portly, and wore the brown garb of the Capuchins, which I certainly had no reason to love. His bald head, gleaming in the sun, was of the steep and flat-topped shape of our English quartern-loaves; and it came upon me with a shock that here was that Fra Palamone, whom I had last seen extended, shot by my hand, in the Piazza Santa Maria at Florence. This alarming discovery was verified by his nearer approach. I recognised ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... corner he drew out what looked like a flat-topped stand, about the height of his waist, with a curious box-like arrangement on it, in which was a powerful light. For several minutes, he occupied himself with the adjustment of this machine, switching the light off and on ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... as business-like in its appearance as his own. A flat-topped desk, rows of files, a bookcase filled with books bearing formidable titles, and three straight-backed chairs against the wall gave an impression of severity. Two redeeming things caught John Westley's eye—a bowl of blooming narcissi and a ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... at an immense ebony flat-topped desk. The room was furnished like his mind, that is to say, sparsely, and without any southern exposure. A peculiarly terrifying feature of the scene was that the top of the desk was completely bare, not a single paper lay on it. Remembering his ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... athletic looking woman with black hair, square shoulders, cheeks browned by the sun and wind, and quiet grey eyes. She stood facing Sam's desk and pulled off a glove while she looked down at him with amused, quizzical eyes. Sam rose, and leaning over the flat-topped desk, took her hand, wondering ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... variable in relative length, often becoming almost equal, while sometimes the upper radials are very much reduced. The figure referred to in Cact. Mex. Bound. is not satisfactory as to the general habit of the plant, which is flat-topped rather than hemispherical. ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... five feet by these interfering Ordnance surveyors. The new maps now read—Walbury Camp 959 feet; Inkpen, 954. But the loss of 18 yards or so does not seem to have altered the glorious view from the flat-topped Down or to have made its air less sparkling. The grand wooded vista down the Kennet valley toward Newbury is a sharp contrast to the bare uplands north and south. Walbury Camp, a fine prehistoric entrenchment, is distinct from Walbury ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... his eye down his slim legs with fatuous complacency and fingered the fur fringe of his doublet and pushed his steep flat-topped cap over to a different angle. Abner looked at him with contemptuous amazement and ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... through a break in the foliage the scene burst upon the eager eyes of the boy. To Akut it was a familiar one; but to Korak it was all new. His nerves tingled at the savage sight. The great bulls were dancing in the moonlight, leaping in an irregular circle about the flat-topped earthen drum about which three old females sat beating its resounding top with sticks worn smooth by long ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was ready to begin. He took his position behind the long, flat-topped table which he used for his demonstrations before his classes. "I realize, ladies and gentlemen," he began formally, "that I am about to do a very unusual thing; but, as you all know, the police and the coroner have been completely baffled by this terrible mystery and have requested ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... the river had widened almost to a sea, growing more and more desolate, with a few lonely islands breaking its expanse, and the shores sinking lower and lower till, near Tadoussac, they rose a little in flat-topped bluffs thickly overgrown with stunted evergreens. Here, into the vast low-walled breadth of the St. Lawrence, a dark stream, narrowly bordered by rounded heights of rock, steals down from the north out of regions of gloomy ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... marched a Malay, with a staff and a large flag waving above his head; then came two spearmen with their shields; and next the minister, another man holding above his head a canopy of state, a huge flat-topped umbrella, of scarlet silk, fringed with gold. Next followed a band of musicians, two with drums, and two with pipes; and last, a large body of spearmen, all ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... notary, its grim and forbidding exterior gave little promise of the comfort within. A passage led to a square centre hall from which opened various rooms—a library, with a wood fire, the latest possible London and Paris papers, a flat-topped desk and a large map; a very large drawing-room, which is Sir John French's private office, with white walls panelled with rose brocade, a marble mantel, and a great centre table, covered, like the library desk, with papers; a dining room, wainscoted ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... her last speech, for they were now entering the classroom. At the first flat-topped desk in one corner of the room sat a small, fair woman with a sweet, sunshiny face that ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... came out of a deep, broad ravine that had caused us much delay and difficulty, we caught sight of an attractive town situated on a steep, flat-topped hill. Upon drawing near, a fine-looking, white-bearded Arab rode up on a small gray mare. He said that he was the head man of the town; that he hated the Turks, and would like to be of any assistance possible to us. I asked him if the enemy had evacuated ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... bleak, and almost soundless, save where the wind harped his wild anthem upon the heathery waste, and where roaring streams filled the lonely cloughs with drowsy uproar. It was a striking scene, and it was an impressive hour. The bold, round, flat-topped height of Musbury Tor stood gloomily proud, on the opposite side, girdled off from the rest of the hills by a green vale. The lofty outlines of Aviside and Holcombe were glowing with the gorgeous hues of a cloudless October sunset. Along those wild ridges the soldiers ...
— Th' Barrel Organ • Edwin Waugh
... everything has strange shapes and where the rocks make one think of trolls. The great frozen Whernside stands up above it, and Ingleborough Hill, which is like no other hill in England, but like the flat-topped Mesas which you have in America, or (as those who have visited it tell me) like the flat hills of South Africa; and a little way off on the other side is Pen-y-ghent, or words to that effect. The little River Ribble rises ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... thousand. Everywhere were mail planes, express and passenger ships taking off for the transcontinental day run, and private planes scattering to the smaller landing areas among the flashing lights of the flat-topped business blocks. Among them Smithy threaded his way toward the green-lighted transfer zone, ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... a dingy, battered place, with the pink plaster falling in patches from its walls. There was a courtyard abutting on the road, and a flat-topped house with a big hole in its side. It was a long way from any battle-ground, and I guessed that some explosion had wrought the damage. Behind it, a few hundred yards off, a detachment of cavalry were encamped beside a stream, with their horses tied up in ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... carried them by the south west near the head of it, where the stream, passing through a rocky swamp, permitted them to wade over it. Thence they steered between N 50 degrees and 60 degrees West, getting a sight of the flat-topped peak at times, which, appearing to be considerably nearer than the highest Glass-House, was that which he first meant to visit; but observing that one of the round mounts with sloping sides was still nearer, he altered his course for it; and, after walking about nine miles from the boat, ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... peace of mind when he had twisted his fat fingers in the lad's forelock to make sure that it was still fast. Schonholz had passed a year at Heidelberg and carried his diploma on his cheek—two crisscross slashes that had never healed—spoke battered English, wore a green flat-topped cap, and gray bobtailed coat with two rows of horn buttons ("Come to shoot chamois, have you?" Marny had asked when he presented his credentials.)—laughed three-quarters of the time he was awake, and ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... us and throughout the United States from ocean to ocean, except at the extreme south, may be known by its bright purplish-red twigs; its opposite, slender, petioled leaves, rather abruptly pointed at the apex, roughish on both sides, but white or nearly so beneath; its small, flat-topped white flower-clusters in June or July; and finally, by ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... from the little human nucleus made up of a Jesuit mission and a Hudson Bay Company depot of the old days. They stand on Thunder Bay, a deep-water sack thrusting out from Lake Superior under the slopes of flat-topped Thunder Cape. The situation is ideal for handling the trade of the great lake highway that swings the traffic through the ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... over the low stone roofs of its flat-topped dwellings, the silver spread of lake showed a green-clad island some three miles off shore. The distance made its white stone houses seem small. But as I gazed, I realized that they were large compared to their environment, all far larger than those of the little town. The island was ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... he saw a head lifted from the lip of a gully which cut the valley like a trench. It was not the head of a savage, nor yet the head of a Peruvian mountaineer, for it was covered down to the eyebrows by a flat-topped leather automobile cap which was adorned with driving goggles! Evidently ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... before—in fact, the moment he had seen the herd. He could not have failed to observe it, for it lay right in the middle of the open ground, neither tree nor bush being near to hide it. It was of enormous size, too—nearly as big as a hovel, square-sided and apparently flat-topped. Of course, he had noticed it at the first glance, but had not thought of making it a stalking-horse— the thicket seeming to offer ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... water," the agent said. "Play 'King of the Castle' on a flat-topped rock for hours together. One seal pushes the other off the coveted post, only to be dislodged himself a minute after. And I have never once seen any sign of ill-humor. They never bite. They never injure one another. They never even growl angrily. It's hard to believe that their ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... twilight zone, the vessel dived vertically downward, and it became evident that Nevia was neither entirely aqueous nor devoid of intelligent life. For the blunt nose of the space-ship was pointing toward what was evidently a half-submerged city, a city whose buildings were flat-topped, hexagonal towers, exactly alike in size, shape, color, and material. These buildings were arranged as the cells of a honeycomb would be if each cell were separated from its neighbors by a relatively ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... entrance gates a big, flat-topped tent was pitched, which bore over the low door a signboard on which was painted, Triage No. 1. Malades et Blesses Assis. This meant that those assis, able to travel in the ambulances as "sitters," were to be deposited here for diagnosis and classification. Over beyond was the Salle d'Attente, ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... roughly, three hundred feet, and its thickness varied from three hundred feet or more at the center, to a few feet at each end. Roughly, then, its basic outline was that of an irregular parallelogram, while its profile was that of a flat-topped cone. For some moments the little group stood in silence as they gazed up at the yellowish-gray walls of ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... high above the others, like The Sentinels in Yosemite valley. The last cliff before one reaches the level country is known as Cape Sverbef, a bold promontory that projects into the river and is nearly a thousand feet high. Not far from this cliff is a flat-topped mountain remarkable for several crevices on its northern side, from which currents of cold air steadily issue. Ice forms around these fissures in midsummer, and a thermometer suspended in one of them fell in an hour ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Fe, leaning over a flat-topped table, wrote leisurely. When he had finished, he turned a kindly face to the visitor and asked what ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... spineless, the cushions distant, and sometimes bearing a few very short bristles. Flowers at the extremities of the branches, 11/2 in. long, composed of numerous imbricating, scale-like petals, curving inwards, and coloured crimson. Fruit flat-topped, 2 in. long, red; pulp reddish; seeds black. It is a native of tropical South America, whence it was introduced in 1688. It requires stove treatment, and blossoms in August. This is one of the most useful of the genus, on account of its being the kind chiefly employed in the cultivation ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... or so ago I witnessed a Sokol display on that flat-topped height called Letna; it is, as it were, an eastward prolongation of the Castle Hill. Here is a large recreation ground for the use of such bodies as Sokol societies. In the arena, before a large and appreciative ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... a flat-topped desk at one of his office windows. Warden was big, though not massive. He seemed to have the frame of a tall, slender man, and had he stayed slender he might have carried his flesh gracefully. But Warden had lived well, denying himself nothing, and the flesh ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... to and from the forest I cast many a wistful look at a solitary flat-topped hill, almost a mountain in height, which stood two or three miles from the house, north of it, on the other side of the river. From its summit I felt sure that a very extensive view of the surrounding country might be had, and I often wished to pay this hill a visit. One afternoon, ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... this moment whether these knights were bona fide gentlemen, or only their deputies, driving their tandems for them, and I am equally at a loss to account for the variety, of their hats. Some wore tall, shining silk hats; some flat-topped, brown derbys; some simple black pot-hats;—and is there, then, no rigor as to the head-gear of people driving tandems? I felt that there ought to be, and that there ought to be some rule as to where the number of each tandem should be ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells |
