"Thatch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grass, of hay fallen from the rick, these flare immediately; the flame runs along like a train of gun-powder, rushes up the side of the rick, singeing it as a horse's coat is singed, takes the straw of the thatch which blackens into a hole, cuts its way through, the draught lifts it up the slope of the thatch, and in five minutes the rick is on fire irrecoverably. Unless beaten out at the first start, it is certain to go on. A spark from a pipe, dropped from ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... invariably old; there were men among them in their strength and prime, of marked ability and energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. But, as respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there will be no wrong done, if I characterize them generally as a set of wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... think, that sharpened my sentimental sympathy as we went through the straggling village street and across the trim green on our way back to London. It seemed that afternoon the most tranquil and idyllic collection of creeper-sheltered homes you can imagine; thatch still lingered on a whitewashed cottage or two, pyracanthus, wall-flowers, and daffodils abounded, and an unsystematic orchard or so was white with blossom above and gay with bulbs below. I noted a row of straw beehives, beehive-shaped, beehives of the type long since condemned as inefficient ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... form an elongated St. Andrew's cross; but nobody can tell for certain who built them, or why. They are all alike; each, built of cob, circular, whitewashed, having pointed windows and a conical roof of thatch with a wooden cross on the apex. When I was a boy these thatched roofs used to be pointed out to me as masterpieces; and they still endure. But the race of skilled thatchers, once the peculiar pride of Gantick, has come to an end. What time has eaten modern and clumsy ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... huts of turf—among them one or two of clay, and one or two of stone, which were more like cottages. Hardly one had a window two feet square, and many of their windows had no glass. In almost all of them the only chimney was little more than a hole in the middle of the thatch. This rendered the absence of glass in the windows not so objectionable; for, left without ordered path to its outlet, the smoke preferred a circuitous route, and lingered by the way, filling the air. Peat-smoke, however, is both wholesome and ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... about Europe, seemed able to apprehend almost everything except the possibility of existence in a country without bamboos! "When I speak of bamboo huts, I mean to say that posts and walls, wall-plates and rafters, floor and thatch, and the withes that bind them, are all of bamboo. In fact, it might almost be said that among the Indo-Chinese nations the staff of life is a bamboo! Scaffolding and ladders, landing-jetties, fishing ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... A drench for sur-rein'd jades, their barley-broth, Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat? And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine, Seem frosty? O, for honour of our land, Let us not hang like roping icicles Upon our houses' thatch, whiles a more frosty people Sweat drops of gallant youth in our rich fields! Poor we may call them ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... one of the hatchets, Henry Burns proceeded to stretch a line between two trees; then interlacing the line, on a slant between other trees, he constructed a slight network; upon which, after an excursion amid the surrounding woods, he laid a sort of thatch of boughs. ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... that the virtues have taken refuge in cottages and wholly abandoned slated houses. Let me tell you, I particularly abominate that sort of trash, because I know so well that human nature is human nature everywhere, whether under tile or thatch, and that in every specimen of human nature that breathes, vice and virtue are ever found blended, in smaller or greater proportions, and that the proportion is not determined by station. I have seen villains who were rich, and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... valleys grow trees, and canebrakes, and banana groves, and all manner of bushes and most pleasant grass; and in among the bushes and trees, here and there, are little huts of wattled golden cane overlaid with a thatch of brown. And it was in one of these jacals, standing a stone's throw below the causeway that crosses the arroyo of the ojo de agua, upon the point of land that juts out between the two valleys before ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... fellow. He gathered an impression of size and redness. Why, the man must stand six feet and a half in his boots! A son of Anak! And his head—no wonder the man had temper. He was afire. A red face, a red mustache that bristled, a thatch of brick-red hair that protruded from beneath a blue, peaked cap. His suit was of pilot cloth, and he wore a guernsey. He was unmistakably a sailor—both words and appearance bespoke the seaman. Martin was surprised to encounter such a specimen in this remote ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... on shore on fire and feared it fired by Indians, but the tide being out, men could not get ashore for three quarters of an hour, when they went armed. At the landing they heard that the lost men were returned, some frost-bitten, and that the thatch of the common-house only was burnt by a spark, but no other harm done the roof. The most loss was Governor Carver's and Master Bradford's, both of whom lay sick in bed, and narrowly missed being blown up with powder. The meeting was to have been kept ashore to-day, the greater number of ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... excruciated, read that plaguy paper! 'Sblood! why didn't nature clap a pair of long ears and a tail upon me, that I might be a real ass, and champ thistles on some common, independent of my fellow-creatures? Would I were a worm, that I might creep into the earth, and thatch my habitation with a single straw; or rather a wasp or a viper, that I might make the rascally world feel my resentment. But why do I talk of rascality? folly, folly, is the scourge of life! Give me a scoundrel, so he be a sensible one, and I will put him in my heart of hearts! but a fool is more ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... came to a long thicket of these oak-like trees—live, or evergreen, oaks, I heard afterward they should be called—which grew low along the sand like brambles, the boughs curiously twisted, the foliage compact, like thatch. The thicket stretched down from the top of one of the sandy knolls, spreading and growing taller as it went, until it reached the margin of the broad, reedy fen, through which the nearest of the little rivers soaked its way into the anchorage. The marsh was steaming in the strong ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clambers in flower o'er the thatch, And the swallow sings sweet from her nest in the wall; All trembling with transport he raises the latch, And the voices of loved ones ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... with a wide, flat face and low forehead surmounted by a thick thatch of black hair, below which two swinish eyes scintillated unevenly, paused in the act of raising a great calk-booted foot over ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... no use. France has undergone some subtle change, yet I knew I was in France. I knew it when we left Paris and sped through the dim leafy tunnels of the Bois; when I beheld a touch of filtered sunlight on the dense blue thatch of the 'marroniers' behind the walls of a vast estate once dedicated to the sports and pleasures of Kings; when I caught glimpses of silent ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... depleted on the top of the dome of thought." I have not yet tried the remedy, but I intend to do so, and when I appear again on the American platforms I shall probably rival Paderewski, who owes a great deal of his success and fortune to his "thatch." ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... building, with a narrow paving in front from end to end, of stones cast up by the plough. Its walls, but one story high, rough-cast and white-washed, shone dim in the twilight. Under a thick projecting thatch the door stood wide open, and from the kitchen, whose door was also open, came the light of a peat-fire and a fish-oil-lamp. Throughout the summer Steenie was seldom in the house an hour of the twenty-four, and now he hesitated to enter. In the winter he would keep ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... Lane, from the name of the original occupant of the soil, before whose cottage-door it was a cow-path. A natural spring of soft and pleasant water—a rare treasure on the sea-girt peninsula where the Puritan settlement was made—had early induced Matthew Maule to build a hut, shaggy with thatch, at this point, although somewhat too remote from what was then the centre of the village. In the growth of the town, however, after some thirty or forty years, the site covered by this rude hovel had become exceedingly desirable in the eyes of a prominent ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... expected. You see, it had been out of use for some time, sir, and there was mostly nothing but old broken ploughs and lumber there; and what's more, there was a deal of rain early in the week, as you may remember, sir, so the thatch was pretty sodden, being out o' repair and all—and so was the timber, for the matter o' that, for there's no telling when it was last painted. So the fire didn't go quite so fierce as it might, you see; else I should ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... to the side of the hut; then her hand fumbled along the top of the wall; it seemed to Sunni for an interminable time. At a certain place she parted the thatch and put her hand into it with a little rustling that Sunni thought might be heard in the very heart of the palace. Then she drew out a small, tight sewn, oilskin bag, that had taken the shape of the book inside it, groped across the hut again, and gave it to Sunni. The boy's ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... will serve thee, lay Stover up drie, And everie sort by it selfe for to lie. Or stack it for litter if roome be too poore, And thatch out ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... whole town. The best of them consist of a frame of wood, each post standing on a single stone, which is simply laid on the ground, not let into it; the vacancies between the posts and the cross-pieces of framework, are filled up with lath and plaster; and the roof is almost invariably of thatch. They resemble huge stools resting upon stones, to keep the legs from sinking into the earth, and look as if the first breeze would upset them. An earthquake shakes them, and makes them vibrate, but seldom or ever injures them; whereas a brick and mortar ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... after this conversation Paul was awakened by a patter upon their skin and thatch roof. It must have been two or three o'clock in the morning, and he had been sleeping very comfortably. He lay on furs, and the soft side of a buffalo robe was wrapped close about him. He could not remember ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... besides," he continued, "it's no sae bad now as it was in forty-six. The Hielands are what they call pacified. Small wonder, with never a gun or a sword left from Cantyre to Cape Wrath, but what tenty* folk have hidden in their thatch! But what I would like to ken, David, is just how long? Not long, ye would think, with men like Ardshiel in exile and men like the Red Fox sitting birling the wine and oppressing the poor at home. But it's ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of houses, built of mud, whitewashed, and principally covered with thatch or palm-leaves; a few built of stone or wood, with verandas, doors, and shutters painted a bright green, standing in the middle of a small orchard of orange-trees in flower. But there were two or three public buildings, a barrack, and a church dedicated ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... the men who had been on the waggon—by this time had found a ladder, which Mark Clark ascended, holding on beside Oak upon the thatch. The smoke at this corner was stifling, and Clark, a nimble fellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed Oak's face and sprinkled him generally, whilst Gabriel, now with a long beech-bough in one hand, in addition to his crook in the other, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... cottage where some engrossing interest did not defy sympathy; where there was not some secret joy, some heart-sore, hidden from every eye; some important change, while all looked as familiar as the thatch and paling, and the faces which appeared within them? Yet there seemed something wonderful in the regularity with which affairs proceeded. The hawthorn hedges blossomed, and the corn was green in the furrows: the saw of the carpenter was heard from day to day, ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... Necessaries. A short time after the Spaniards built a stately House, which was an Appartment for the Indians, that they might accomplish their praemeditated Designs, which was thus effected. When they were to thatch it, and had rais'd it two Mens height, they inclos'd several of them there, to expedite the Work, as they pretended, but in truth that they who were within, might not see those without; thus part of them surrounded the House with Sword in Hand that no one ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... that interest one even more than the land they live in. We turned aside at different points, from the stations of the railways, and got glimpses of the Javanese in their country homes. I am bound to say that these homes were often primitive in the extreme, mere shacks or huts of bamboo and thatch, often without windows and with only a door in front and a door behind, sometimes standing in a pool of shallow water or lifted on stilts to escape the rain. But everybody seemed to be at work, except on market-days, when the whole population of a district gathered in a country ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... guessed that it sought these avenues of least resistance, as well it might, since, unlike its grim stalker, it walked erect upon two feet—it walked upon two feet and was hairless except for a black thatch upon its head; its arms were well shaped and muscular; its hands powerful and slender with long tapering fingers and thumbs reaching almost to the first joint of the index fingers. Its legs too were shapely but its feet ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the practice to clear away a certain number of the middle branches of a tree, then a wooden platform is constructed, on which a quantity of hay is placed in store for winter use. This mushroom-shaped hay-rick receives a cover of thatch, out of the centre ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... suspicion at her from under the black thatch of brows that met above his nose and were ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... defending his house against a Roman soldier, and this sculpture, confirmed by others on the column of Antoninus at Rome of those of the German barbarians, gives this dwelling as a species of circular, upright hut, covered with a conical-shaped roof constructed of branches and reeds, or thatch, or perhaps of ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... in striking here," and Friedel sprang to withhold Koppel, who had lighted a bundle of dried fern ready to thrust into the thatch. ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... built of stones roughly dressed with the hammer, and having the windows and doors decorated with huge heavy architraves, or lintels, as they are called, of hewn stone, and its roof covered with broad grey flags, instead of slates, thatch, or tiles. A jargonelle pear-tree at one end of the cottage, a rivulet and flower-plot of a rood in extent in front, and a kitchen-garden behind; a paddock for a cow, and a small field, cultivated with several crops of grain, rather for the benefit of the cottager than ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... easily be understood, had sprung from the rollicking Irish race, possessed a fine voice, as sweet as that of any girl; and many the time did he beguile an evening at the campfire with his songs and his clever dancing. Jimmy, by the way, happened to have a fiery thatch, a multitude of freckles, and upon occasions lapsed into the brogue of his ancestors, although he could talk as well as the others ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... white fret of Lachine Rapids and the dense forests that shrouded the base of Mount Royal. Checkerboard squares of farm patches had been cleared in the woods. La Salle's old thatch-roofed seigniory lay not far back from the water. St. Anne's was the launching place for fleets of canoes that were to ascend the Ottawa. Here, a last look was taken of splits and seams in the birch keels. With invocations of St. Anne in one breath, and invocations of a ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... what seemed a small city or community of chiffoniers. There were a number of shanties or huts, such as may be met with in the remote parts of the Bog of Allan—rude places with wattled walls, plastered with mud and roofs of rude thatch made from stable refuse—such places as one would not like to enter for any consideration, and which even in water-colour could only look picturesque if judiciously treated. In the midst of these huts was one of the strangest adaptations—I cannot say ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... no wall so impregnable or so vulgar, but a summer's grass will attempt it. It will try to persuade the yellow brick, to win the purple slate, to reconcile stucco. Outside the authority of the suburbs it has put a luminous touch everywhere. The thatch of cottages has given it an opportunity. It has perched and alighted in showers and flocks. It has crept and crawled, and stolen its hour. It has made haste between the ruts of cart wheels, so they were not ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... trails of late convolvulus festooned the opening, hardy hart's-tongue and tufts of parsley fern sprang from every crevice in the stones, while the top was covered with a tangle of briars, nettles, and matted grass. These combined to form a species of thatch which perfectly protected the interior ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... have known it!" she said. "What a fool I've been, Minnie, and how clever you are under that red thatch of yours! Dicky can not appear as long as I am here, and Pierce takes his place, and I help to keep the secret and to play the game! Well, I can appreciate a joke on myself as well as most people, but—Minnie, Minnie, think of that guilty wretch of a ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... enclosed on three sides by a rough stone wall, and by a wooden fence, forming a paddock of about three quarters of an acre in extent. It comprised one large room, of some forty feet by eighteen, which had a roof of thatch in tolerable repair. The north side, protected by a verandah, had a door and two windows, in which a few panes of glass remained, and looked upon the broad river, from which it was separated by a bank of some twenty feet ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... altitude. It throws out branches from the central stem, which is sufficiently firm and woody to be fashioned into walking-sticks; and the stems are even used by the islanders as rafters for bearing the thatch on their cottage-roofs. Several varieties are cultivated as ornamental plants on account of their beautifully coloured, frizzled and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... joined the great flood of night. The maple was indeed a robin's inn at some crossing of the invisible roads of the air. Its green dome towered high above and fell to the gable end of the little house. Its deep and leafy thatch hid every timber of its frame save the rough column. Its trunk was the main beam, each limb a corridor, each tier of limbs a floor, and branch rose above branch like steps in a stairway. Up and down the high dome of the maple were a thousand ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... brittle spray round twisted stems of ill-grown birches strangling each other, and changing half into roots among the rock clefts; knotted stumps of never-blossoming blackthorn, and choked stragglings of holly, all laced and twisted and tethered round with an untouchable, almost unhewable, thatch, a foot thick, of dead bramble and rose, laid over rotten ground through which the water soaked ceaselessly, undermining it into merely unctuous {120} clods and clots, knitted together by mossy sponge. It ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... prosaically occupied in scooping out the remaining taste left in an almost-empty jam tin. Beside him, Carew was similarly occupied. Two more jam tins were between them and, exactly opposite the pair of jam tins, there squatted a burly Kaffir, young, alert and crowned with a thatch of hair which by rights should have sprouted from the back of a sable pig. His mouth was slightly open, and now and then his tongue licked out, like the tongue of an eager dog. Aside from his hair, his costume consisted of one black sock worn in ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... a dome-shaped frame of cottonwood or other poles, thatched with grass. Average diameter at the base, twelve feet. The house itself they term kowa; the grass thatch, pin. Bear-grass, or what the Spanish term palmillo, is used exclusively in thatching. Since the institution of the Messiah religion the houses are built rather elongate in form, with a doorway in each end, and all the ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... over. The ice from both sides came towards the middle, leaving an empty space between, along which the dark water showed itself, hurrying away as if in fear of its life from the white death of the frost. The wheel stood motionless, and the drip from the thatch of the mill over it in the sun, had frozen in the shadow into icicles, which hung in long spikes from the spokes and the floats, making the wheel—soft green and mossy when it revolved in the gentle sun-mingled summer-water—look like its own gray skeleton now. The sun was getting ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... oaths, I'll trust to your conditions: be whores still; And he whose pious breath seeks to convert you, Be strong in whore, allure him, burn him up; Let your close fire predominate his smoke, And be no turncoats: yet may your pains, six months, Be quite contrary: and thatch your poor thin roofs With burdens of the dead; some that were hang'd, No matter; wear them, betray with them: whore still; Paint till a horse may mire upon your face: A ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... could get at that anonymous letter-writer, he would teach him not to meddle and stir up mud at the bottom of water which he wished should remain stagnant!... A distant flash, a low rumble, and large drops of rain spattered on the thatch above him. He remained indifferent, tracing a pattern with his finger on the dusty surface of a little rustic table. Fleur's future! 'I want fair sailing for her,' he thought. 'Nothing else matters at my time of life.' ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the world yearly visit this relic of Old Shanklin. Pretty thatched cottages can be seen in many parts of the Island, but nowhere is there such a combination, there being three different styles of roof in thatch, the setting in a background of trees completing the illusion of the country. In the angle where the figures stand is the rustic fountain on which hangs the shield with the verse written by the poet Longfellow when staying at Hollier's ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... room which one rude beam divides, And naked rafters form the sloping sides; Where the vile bands that bind the thatch are seen, And lath and mud are all that lie between, Save one dull pane that, coarsely patched, gives way To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day: Here on a matted flock, with dust o'erspread, The drooping wretch reclines his languid ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... the most picturesque spots in Denmark. It was a lovely rolling country, with fertile fields and meadows, relieved in places by little clumps of forest, beneath which he could often discern the time-worn front of some grim old mansion. Sheep and cattle were grazing on the hillsides. Thatch-roofed huts, with plastered walls, were all about him. The fields, in those September days, were red with buckwheat. Occasionally a broad meadow spread out before him, and, to avoid the husbandmen gathering in their crops, ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... time was winter, and it blew from the north. The snow lay all over the ground, like soft feathers, and the hay-ricks looked as though each one wore a dunce-cap, like the dull boy in Dame Week's school over by the green. The icicles hung down by the thatch, and the little birds crouched shivering in the ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... in wonder and astonishment when the white men, in their strange attire, were brought on shore; and Ned saw that his suspicions were correct, and that they were regarded by their captors as gods. Further proof was given of this when they were escorted to a large shed, composed of a roof of thatch supported on four upright posts, which stood in the ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... mother was doubtful as to her daughter-in-law's project and even Musai was but half-hearted. Yet he went to work diligently. With beam, and wattle, and thatch, floor of mats and window of latticed paper, with walls made tight because well daubed with clay, he built the room apart. There alone, day by day, secluded from all, the sweet wife toiled unseen. The mother and husband patiently waited, until after a week, the little woman rejoined the ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... destroyed the property of another lost his right hand. But there was no public executioner; and there are many records of the flight of guilty persons, though an intention to make "the punishment fit the crime" is evident. No one was allowed to build a house close to the walls, and thatch was forbidden. A blasphemer was pilloried for a day (a list of illegal words and phrases is attached to this section). Workmen were forbidden to receive more than the wage prescribed, butchers had to accept the price ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... The result interested him more than his case about a party-wall. Under a tropical sun, in a furnace heat reflected from the wall of the shed, every five minutes he climbed the ladder bare-headed, with no other protection against sunstroke than his thatch of thick, grey locks. Instead of the one observer whom I had posted, I found two good pairs of ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... house has two doors, one of which is used only by women in this condition. During her impurity the wife is fed by her husband apart from the rest of the family, and whenever she has to quit the house she is obliged to creep out on her hands and knees in order not to defile the thatch by her touch.[213] The Kharwars, another aboriginal tribe of the same district, keep their women at such seasons in the outer verandah of the house for eight days, and will not let them enter the kitchen or the cowhouse; during this time the unclean woman ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... log village in the backwoods of Michigan or Minnesota, and transport it to a quiet spot by a well sheltered harbor of Lilliputian size. Cover the roofs of some buildings with iron, shingles or boards from other regions. Cover the balance with thatch of long grass, and erect chimneys that just peer above the ridge poles. Scatter these buildings on a hillside next the water; arrange three-fourths of them in a single street, and leave the rest to drop wherever they like. Of course those in ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Kraton, now the seat of the Dutch government), Segli on the N., Edi on the E., and Analabu or Melabuh on the W. Kotaraja lies near the northern extremity of the island, and consists of detached houses of timber and thatch, clustered ill enclosed groups called kampongs, and buried in a forest of fruit-trees. It is situated nearly 3 m. from the sea, in the valley of the Achin 1iver, which in its upper part, near Sehmun, is 3 m. broad, the river having a breadth of 99 ft. and a depth of 1 1/2 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... separated the village of thatch and grass from the palace grounds, and ended at a wharf, up to which a steam-launch would dash from time to time, startling the half-grown crocodiles that slept beneath the ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... usually shares his father-in-law's house for a long period after his marriage. But Haji Ali had a fine new house of his own, brave with wattled walls stained cunningly in black and white, and with a luxuriant covering of thatch. Moreover, he had taken the daughter of a poor man to wife, and could dictate his own terms to her and to her parents. The girl went willingly enough, for she was exchanging poverty for wealth, a miserable hovel for a handsome ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... desolate. At the side of a steep lane, overgrown with grass, and seeming a mere cart-path, stood a deserted-looking, black and white, timbered cottage, which was half a ruin. Close to it was a dripping spinney, its trees forming a darkling background to the tumble-down house, whose thatch was rotting into holes, and its walls sagging forward perilously. The bit of garden about it was neglected and untidy, here and there windows were broken, and stuffed with pieces of ragged garments. Altogether a sinister and ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Through the unbroken thatch of matted foliage overhead no faintest ray of sunlight filtered—not even where the stream coiled its slimy way among the tamaracks and spruces. But south of us, along the ascending trail by which we had come, the westering sun glowed red across a ledge of rock, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... out viciously towards its feeble enemy. The vast space under the high pitch of the roof was filled with a thick cloud of smoke, whose under-side—level like a ceiling—reflected the light of the swaying dull flame, while at the top it oozed out through the imperfect thatch of dried palm leaves. An indescribable and complicated smell, made up of the exhalation of damp earth below, of the taint of dried fish and of the effluvia of rotting vegetable matter, pervaded the place and caused Lingard to sniff strongly as he strode over, sat ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... of man I had never before met. The enemy was astonishingly large and lithe and distinctly resembled one of the big gold-colored lions that live in the wilds of the Harpeth Mountains out beyond Paradise Ridge. His head, with its tawny thatch that ought to have waved majestically but which was sleek and decorous to the point of worldliness, was poised on his neck and shoulders with a singularly strong line that showed through a silk soft collar, held together by an exquisitely worldly amethyst silk scarf which, it was a shock to see, ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... ran across the floor, something cracked—a flash of sound flaring up in the noiselessness. The autumn rain again rustled on the thatch like light thin fingers running over the roof. Large drops of water dismally fell to the ground, marking the slow course of the autumn night. Hollow steps on the street, then on the porch, awoke the mother from a heavy slumber. ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... shaft of it with cotton as a wad, and fired it back over the paling with his musket. The cotton he had used caught fire from the powder, and it chanced that this blazing shaft drove home into a palm thatch. In the hurry and confusion the flame was not noticed, though it spread rapidly across the huts till it reached some powder casks. There was a violent explosion just within the palisadoes, and stones and blazing sticks came rattling down about the Spaniards' ears. The inner ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... out in bunches ye are!" said Sandy. "Ah, well, man" And he reached with both his hands for Ikey's thatch. ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... Jack now felt sad, And thought of the home, so safe he once had, Where he'd plenty of food, and clean straw for his bed, And at night, a roof of good thatch o'er his head. He escaped from the field, though he scarcely knew how, And scampered as fast as his strength would allow: In the distance, a town, long and wide he could see; "Ah! ah!" said Jack Swine, "that's the quarter ...
— Surprising Stories about the Mouse and Her Sons, and the Funny Pigs. - With Laughable Colored Engravings • Unknown
... stone or bricks. Judging by the patches of repair, the oak seems to be the more durable part of the structure. Some of the roofs are covered with earthen tiles; others (more decayed and poverty-stricken) with thatch, out of which sprouts a luxurious vegetation of grass, house-leeks, and yellow flowers. What especially strikes an American is the lack of that insulated space, the intervening gardens, grass-plots, orchards, broad-spreading shade-trees, which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... the herring season, an occasional fish-curer comes the way, rarely bait at the Gardenstone inn; and in the little low-browed room, with its windows in the thatch, into which, as her best, the land-lady ushered me, I certainly found nothing to identify the locale with that chosen by the literary lawyer for his open library. But, according to Ferguson, though "learning was scant, provision was good;" and I ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... thatch to cover the roofs of the houses, or shelter over their boats. Neatly fastened together with split rattans, they form the walls of the house. From the juice of the tree they make a fermented drink something like sweet beer, also brown sugar. The young shoots are eaten in curries and salads. The fruit ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... in a tangle of garden and orchard; such curious outlines of old brick gables in the better class houses of miller, butcher, and general dealer; orchards and gardens and farm buildings, with every variety of thatch and eaves, huddled together in picturesque confusion; large spaces everywhere—pond, and village green, and common, and copse beyond; a peaceful, prosperous settlement, which had passed unharmed ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... look out over the water at the island's outer sentinel, the "Lone Cypress." We paused yet another time down where the marsh reeds lined the way. Grasping handfuls of the coarse grass, the Commodore started to illustrate how the colonists bound thatch, doubtless from that very marsh, to make roofs for their flimsy cabins. But the marsh furnished something besides grasses; and before the Commodore's explanation had gone far, his auditors had gone farther. He valiantly slew the snake, the whole six inches ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... all good intent, For they foresee and croak th' event. My friends ne'er think, but talk by rote, Speak when they're taught, and so to vote. When rogues like these (a Sparrow cries) To honour and employment rise I court no favour, ask no place, From such, preferment is disgrace: Within my thatch'd retreat I find (What these ne'er feel) ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... made out distant mountains far beyond nearer hills. The latter were green-covered with dense forests whence rose mysterious smokes. Along the shore we saw an occasional cocoanut plantation to the water's edge and native huts and villages of thatch. Canoes of strange models lay drawn up on shelving beaches; queer fish-pounds of brush reached out considerable distances from the coast. The white surf pounded ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... houses in Savolax to be thatched with thin strips of wood an inch or so wide, similar to our old shingle roofs in the west of England. At Wiborg we were shown, among the curiosities of the town, a red-tiled roof, which Finlanders thought as wonderful as we thought their wooden thatch. These were quite common formerly, but are now ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... considerable dimensions, the houses—or huts, rather—being for the most part square or quadrangular structures, although there were a few circular ones among them, built of upright logs with panels of mud and leaves between them, roofed in with palm-leaf thatch, the eaves projecting sufficiently at each end to form a verandah some six or eight feet deep. At a little distance from the village, a hundred yards or so, towered the clump of lofty trees under which the slave barracoons were said to be erected; but whether this was ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... only three hiding-places where he had heard of cottagers' hoards being found: the thatch, the bed, and a hole in the floor. His eyes travelling eagerly over the floor, noted a spot where the sand had been ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... sound of his stirring, a figure came out from the farther shadow. It was that of a man. Jerry looked at him in silence. He was tall, his thin erectness making him seem abnormal in the low room. The lean face was unshaven, and from under a thatch of black hair a pair of deep-set eyes stared penetratingly at the figure on the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... of the down stood a wayside inn; a desolate and villainous-looking lump of lichen-spotted granite, with windows paper-patched, and rotting thatch kept down by stones and straw-banks; and at the back a rambling court-ledge of barns and walls, around which pigs and barefoot children grunted in loving communion of dirt. At the door, rapt apparently in the contemplation of the mountain peaks ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... his stride large and loose. The lack of nervous energy which kept his mind from a high tension was shown again in the heavy fall of his feet and the forward slump of his head. His hands dangled aimlessly at his sides, as though in need of occupation. A ragged thatch of blond hair covered his head and it was sunburned to straw color ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... in the lease, has raised the predial service, called in that and in other parts of Scotland, manerial bondage, to fifty-two days in the year at once; besides many other services to be performed at different though regular and stated times; as tanning leather for brogans, making heather ropes for thatch, digging and drying peats for fuel; one pannier of peat charcoal to be carried to the smith; so many days for gathering and shearing sheep and lambs: for ferrying cattle from island to island, and other distant places, and several days for going on distant errands: ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... about thirty yards away from where we stood; and then, to show that no time would be lost, Eusis at once sent five or six men into the bush to cut posts, and ordered all the women and girls to begin making the thatch for the roof and cutting cane ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... object, and he allowed them to travel languidly upwards and along the roof until they rested on the spot directly over his head, where they became fixed, and, at the same time, opened out to a glare, compared to which all his previous glaring was as nothing—for there, in the thatch, looking down upon him, was the angular head of a huge python. The snake was rolled up in a tight coil, and had evidently spent the night within a yard of the professor's head! Being unable to make out what sort of snake it was, and fearing that it might be a poisonous one, he ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... them into the ground. They should have a point on one end and a fork on the other. Lay a stout pole across the two forks like a gypsy fire rig. Then lean poles against the crosspiece and finally thatch the roof with spruce, hemlock or other boughs and pile up boughs for the sides. A brush camp is only a makeshift arrangement and is never weather proof. It is simply a temporary shelter which with the all-night fire burning in front will keep ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... been sitting on a bed in the upper room, but the rain was trickling now through the thatch. The printer made a nervous stride to his printing stick, and, brandishing it in the ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... bronzed a little by sun and wind. There was the same healthy bronze upon his face, Clarissa perceived, when he took off his hat, and hung it up above him; rather a handsome face, with a long straight nose, dark blue eyes with thick brown eyebrows, a well cut mouth and chin, and a thick thatch of crisp dark brown hair waving round a broad, intelligent-looking forehead. The firm, full upper lip was half-hidden by a carefully trained moustache; and in his dress and bearing the stranger had altogether a military air: one could fancy him a cavalry soldier. That ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... and the cavity is shaped so as exactly to fit the eye, while the brow projects over like a roof of a veranda, to keep off falling dust and rain from injuring it while the lid is open; and the eyebrows, like a thatch sloping outward, conduct the sweat of the brow, by which a man earns his bread, away around the outer cover, that it may not enter the eye and destroy the sight. If it were preposterous nonsense to say that electricity, or magnetism, or odyle, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... morss the flower-ports Was-I mean were-crusted one and orl; Ther rusted niles fell from the knorts That 'eld the pear to the garden-worll. Ther broken sheds looked sed and stringe; Unlifted was the clinking latch; Weeded and worn their ancient thatch Er-pon ther lownely moated gringe, She only said 'Me life is dreary, 'E cometh ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... man replied. "You don't suppose they would be such fools as that and, if they had, you don't suppose as I should be such a fool to split on 'em. Not likely. I ain't no desire to wake up, one night, and find the door fastened outside and the thatch on fire." ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... village of Cacahuamilpan on the slope of a hill. In the midst of neat trim gardens stood the little white church, and the ranches of the inhabitants, cottages of one room, with walls of canes which one can see through in all directions, and roofs of thatch, with the ground smoothed and trodden hard for a floor. Everything seemed clean and prosperous, and there was a bright sunny look about the whole place; but to Englishmen, accustomed to the innumerable ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... eastern outlet of the valley a strip of blue sea bounds the horizon; westward are the distant mountains. In the foreground, in front of a farmhouse, snug-looking, with its roof of velvety-brown thatch, a troop of sturdy urchins, suntanned and stark naked, are frisking in the wildest gambols, all heedless of the scolding voice of the withered old grandam who sits spinning and minding the house, while her son and his wife are away toiling at some outdoor ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... large dog which had lost its master: they were the cries of the deer in their distress, seeking for a place of shelter. Nature seemed to be in convulsions, and to have declared war in every element. The loose thatch under which we had taken refuge was soon penetrated, and we were completely deluged. We soon quitted this miserable hole, preferring to move our stiffened and almost deadened limbs, covered with the fearful little leeches, which terrible infliction deprived us of ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... shooting, Bana; let us look at your gun." It happened to be loaded, but fortunately only with powder, to fire my announcement at the palace; for he instantly placed caps on the nipples, and let off one barrel by accident, the contents of which stuck in the thatch. This created a momentary alarm, for it was supposed the thatch had taken fire; but it was no sooner suppressed than the childish king, still sitting on his throne, to astonish his officers still more, levelled the gun from his shoulder, fired the contents of the second barrel into the ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... time to go in Sugbu, where the forces were gathered—who, as they were many, occupied all the houses, even the smallest ones—some soldiers were cleaning their weapons in one near the residence of the Recollect fathers. One fired his arquebus, which, unknown to him, was loaded. It caught in the thatch which formed the roof of that little house; and, as the sun was hot, and the wind the greater brisa, the house quickly caught fire. The father prior, Fray Pedro de San Nicolas, was very much annoyed; and he came out, and with reason rebuked the soldiers, who lost all their effects. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... black cock—the one without a white hair, and the other without a white feather—can prevent him from carrying away, body and soul, the individual who called him up, accompanied by such terrors. In fact the night, independently of the terrible accessory of the fire, was indescribably awful. Thatch portions of the ribs and roofs of houses were whirled along through the air; and the sweeping blast, in addition to its own howlings, was burdened with the loud screamings of women and children, and the stronger shoutings of men, as they attempted ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... for, hitherto to no purpose, namely, Maoris and their habitations. Brown, gypsey-like people they appear in the distance, wearing ordinary clothes like Europeans, only dirty and ragged usually. Here and there we pass a cluster of their whares, low down near the beach—brown huts of thatch-like appearance, for they are made of raupo grass. Some of them are very neat, with carved and painted doors and fronts. Near them is usually some fenced-in cultivation, and possibly a rough-grassed clearing, on which ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... broken milestone; though the sittings of the municipal council were held in a filthy den with a roughcast wall; though the best houses were such as would now be called hovels; though the best roofs were of thatch; though the best ceilings were of bare rafters; though the best windows were, in bad weather, closed with shutters for want of glass; though the humbler dwellings were mere heaps of turf, in which barrels with the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... her through an open tract of the forest, full of brush and birches, and where the starlight guided her; and, beyond that again, must thread the columned blackness of a pine grove joining overhead the thatch of its long branches. At that hour the place was breathless; a horror of night like a presence occupied that dungeon of the wood; and she went groping, knocking against the boles - her ear, betweenwhiles, strained to aching and ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there was a sound of scraping and scratching at some of the other holes. The roof was constructed of rough poles laid at short distances apart, and above these were small branches, on which was a sort of thatch of reeds and rushes. Standing close under one of the holes Beric could see nothing, but from the sound of the scratching he could tell from which side the wolf was at work enlarging it. He carefully thrust the point of his spear through the branches and gave a sudden ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... yourself that's the dacent thing, any how; and I'm sorry that I can't be at home to thrate you with a bottle of the rale poteen. Never mind; tell Nancy it's in the thatch above the dure; and you're welcome to it all the same as if I ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... unusual number of peewits visited the flats near Wittenham and Burcote, and remained there for several months. One or two starlings which haunted the house in which we stayed, and slept in their old holes in the thatch, picked up all the various peewits' calls and notes, and used to amuse themselves by repeating these in the apple-trees on sunny mornings. The note was so exact a reproduction that I often looked up to see where the plover was before I made ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... are assembled outside the fort, in houses or huts built with mud, upon the general construction in Africa, which usually is an oblong square, raised little more than eight feet; or a circle of the same height, over which is thrown a roof of bamboo, or other thatch, supported by posts about five or six feet asunder, forming a canopy, which shelters them from the rays of the sun, or the inclemency of the weather, and affords a shade under which they retire in the extreme heat of the day, where they repose in their hammocks, or rest upon their ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... the disorders which provoked him; for, from the Oder to the Vistula, and even to the Niemen, if provisions were abundant and properly stationed, the less portable foraging supplies were deficient. Our cavalry were already forced to cut the green rye, and to strip the houses of their thatch, in order to feed their horses. It is true, that all did not stop at that; but when one disorder is authorized, how ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... wool, not particularly enumerated, or otherwise charged with duty, not being articles wholly or in part made up; magna-grocia ware; manuscripts; maps, and charts; matresses; meat, (salted or fresh), not otherwise described; medals; palmetto-thatch manufactures; parchment; pens; plantains; potatoes; pork, fresh and salted; silk, thrown or dyed, viz., silk, single or tram, organzine, or crape-silk; thread, not otherwise enumerated or described; woollens, viz., manufactures of wool, not being goats' ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... wanting. The floor is sometimes sandy, but generally of hard and level tamped clay, to which the European would prefer boarding, and, as a rule, it is clean—no fear of pythogenie from here! The pent-shaped roof of rafters and thatch is water-tight except when the host of rats disturb it by their ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... finding these obstacles insurmountable, it dodged underneath them, and the scared observer could almost imagine its two ends meeting with a click somewhere in the wilderness at the back of that unseen hemisphere of hairy thatch. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... he did on coming home was to buy up his mother's croft, re-thatch the old house, and put in a poor person ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... German sharpshooter watching in the trench opposite had a chance at him. He advanced through a vast burrow. Trenches ran parallel, and other trenches cut across them. One could wander through them for miles. Most of them were uncovered, but others had roofs, partial or complete, of thatch or boards or canvas. Many had little alcoves and shelves, dug out by the patient hands of the soldiers, and these niches contained their most ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... blushing dewdrops falter; The peacock wakes and leaves the cottage thatch; A deer is rising near the hoof-marked altar, And stretching, stands, the day's new life ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... needed during the winter. The savages were of fine figure and of olive complexion. They adorned themselves with an embroidery skilfully interwoven with feathers and beads, and dressed their hair in a variety of braids, like those at Saco. Their dwellings were conical in shape, covered with thatch of rushes and corn-husks, and surrounded by cultivated fields. Each cabin contained one or two beds, a kind of matting, two or three inches in thickness, spread upon a platform on which was a layer of ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... force. But the words of his mother, warning him not to remain too long, came to his mind, and he determined to break away from his prison. So he climbed up to the roof, and removing a portion of the thatch, made ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... don't know about the niceness. I shall have to thatch it soon, and where the thatch is to come from I can't tell, for straw do get that dear, that 'twill soon be cheaper to cover your house ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... K. Belmoreana, the Thatch-leaf palm, and K. Forsteriana, the Curly palm, are the hardiest of all the house palms and sure to give satisfaction. The former is of dwarf, sturdy habit, with broadly divided, dark green leaves borne up well on stiff stems. K. Forsteriana ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell |
