"As the crow flies" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... To the east towards fenland, the country is flat, and the river is broad, slow, and deep. Towards the west it is quicker, involved, fold doubling almost completely on fold, so that it takes sixty miles to accomplish thirteen as the crow flies. Beginning at Kempston, and on towards Clapham, Oakley, Milton, Harrold, it is bordered by the gentlest of hills or rather undulations. At Bedford the navigation for barges stopped, and there were very few pleasure boats, one of which was mine. ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... on a shoulder of the mountain, which rose on the other side of the valley, lying between it and the Eagle Cliff, a grey speck might have been seen perched on a rock. Even as the crow flies the distance was so great that the unassisted human eye could not have distinguished what it was. It might have been a grey cow, or a grew crow, or a grey rabbit, or a grey excrescence of the rock itself; but a telescope would have revealed the fact that it was ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... chapter. The waters of this longer stream rise on a western outlier of Butser Hill and, draining a remote and beautiful district served by the Meon Valley Railway, reach Titchfield Haven over three miles below the Hamble. Titchfield, two miles as the crow flies from the sea (for we are now on the open waters of the Solent), is a pleasant old town with an interesting church and the gatehouse remnant of a once famous abbey of Premonstratensians. Part of the tower and nave of the church are ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... what Sheen was asking himself. What could he do? The road to the school twisted and turned to such an extent that, though the distance from the "Blue Boar" to Seymour's was only a couple of miles as the crow flies, he would have to cover double that distance unless he took a short cut across the fields. And if he took a short cut in the dark he was certain to lose himself. It was a choice of evils. The "Blue Boar" possessed but one horse and trap, and he had seen that driven away ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... pretty enough. The details are few, the massed result is charming, but not imposing; not riotous, not exciting; it is a Sunday landscape. Perspective, and the enchantments wrought by distance, are wanting. There are no distances; there is no perspective, so to speak. Fifteen miles as the crow flies is the usual limit of vision. Mauritius is a garden and a park combined. It affects one's emotions as parks and gardens affect them. The surfaces of one's spiritual deeps are pleasantly played upon, the deeps themselves are not reached, not stirred. Spaciousness, remote ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the marquis commented. He meditated for a moment, then caught up his sword close to his side and plunged into the nearest hedge. After a little he came out, with a scratched face and a scant breath, into another alley. As the crow flies, he went through the maze of Longaville, leaving in his rear desolation and snapped yew-twigs. He came out of the ruin behind the white-lilac bush, where he had stood and had heard the Earl of Pevensey sing to the Lady Ursula, and had seen ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... use of claiming to be a woodsman," he told Bluff when the other looked a little incredulous over something or other, "if you don't keep track of your direction? I feel sure that as the crow flies Cabin Point lies over there, right beyond that tree with ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... no doubt the said stream meanders considerably in its course, that might mean only half the distance as the crow flies," remarked the leader, turning once more to look back toward the deserted camp, after the fashion of a carpenter who considers it wise to measure his post once again before applying the saw, because after the deed is done the parts can never be put together again; but everything seemed ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... Shoe-Bar ranch was a roughly rectangular strip, much longer than it was wide, which skirted the foothills of the Escalante Mountains. As the crow flies it was roughly seven miles from the ranch-house to Las Vegas camp, and for the better part of that distance there was little conversation between the two riders. Buck would have liked to question his companion about a number of things that puzzled him, but ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... blown or clumsy. Just consider how many are run, and how few are killed. I consider a fox to be the noblest quarry in the world. His speed, courage, and cunning are wonderful. I have seen a fox run fifteen miles as the crow flies, and only three of us in at the death. That's what I ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... or headland,” and not “the head of the bay.” In this case there is a slight complication, because there is actually something of a headland about the Battery Rocks, and the town arms are St. John Baptist’s head in a charger; but when we find that Tremaine is some ten miles, as the crow flies, from the nearest point of the coast, we may be quite justified in doubting whether Pryce is right in calling it “the town on shore ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... Canadian Pacific transcontinental train. I was clad in fur cap, vivid blanket coat, corded trousers, German stockings and moccasins; and my only baggage was the pair of snowshoes. It was the season of light travel. A single Englishman touring the world as the crow flies occupied the car. He looked at me so askance that I made an opportunity of talking to him. I should like to read his "Travels" to see what he made out of the riddle. In similar circumstances, and without explanation, I had fun talking French and ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... built on the left-hand side of the river Sarawak going up; and, from the windings of the river, you have to pull twenty-five miles up the river to arrive at it, whereas it is only five miles from the coast as the crow flies. It consists of about 800 houses, built on piles driven into the ground, the sides and roofs being enclosed with dried palm leaves. Strips of bamboo are laid across, which serve as a floor. In fact, there is little difference between these houses and those ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... lianas, shovelled unceremoniously off the one shore and driven to try my luck upon the other—I saw I should have hard enough work to get my body down, if my mind rested. It was a damnable walk; certainly not half a mile as the crow flies, but a real bucketer for hardship. Once I had to pass the stream where it flowed between banks about three feet high. To get the easier down, I swung myself by a wild-cocoanut—(so called, it bears bunches of scarlet nutlets)—which grew upon the brink. As I so swung, I received a crack on the head ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Snark,—principally because of the fact that we did not read that particular little paragraph in the sailing directions until after we had started. We sailed from Hilo, Hawaii, on October 7, and arrived at Nuka-hiva, in the Marquesas, on December 6. The distance was two thousand miles as the crow flies, while we actually travelled at least four thousand miles to accomplish it, thus proving for once and for ever that the shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line. Had we headed directly for the ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... About thirty miles, as the crow flies, from my place, down York River, is situated, in Gloucester County, "White Marsh," an old Virginia home which then belonged to Dr. Prosser Tabb, who with his wife and children was living there. Mrs. Tabb was a near cousin of my father, and as a little girl had been a pet and favourite. ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... in Barker enthusiastically, "we were only overlooked by the Black Spur Range and the Sierran snow-line; where the nearest voice that came to you was quarter of a mile away as the crow flies and nearly ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... is a three days' march as the crow flies, for a man carrying a burden. They saw a large quantity of iron and copper wire being made here by a party of Wanyamwesi. The process is as follows:—A heavy piece of iron, with a funnel-shaped hole in it, is firmly fixed in the fork of a tree. A fine rod is then thrust into it, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... from their morning bath, across the broad river Maur, for the nonce black in the shadow of the jungle, across the gilded tops of the jungle, forty miles away as the crow flies, rested the ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... property of Graff Schaff-Koatch, presents a peculiarly striking appearance, the eye finds its powers of vision bounded at last by the Riesengebirgen, which have as yet lost no portion of the sublimity of character that belongs to them, though they are now removed to a distance, as the crow flies, of at least twenty miles. We took what we suspected would prove to be our last distinct view of the magnificent range, not without experiencing a portion of that melancholy which never fails to arise ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... as the crow flies. My boy has a telescope his uncle sent him and we can see the Monument ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... no longer travel 'as the crow flies,' I shall not spend a winter here," he would say to them with a solemn wink. That was one of his favorite jokes. He had heard that when anybody asked Farmer Green how far it was to the village he always answered, "It's ...
— The Tale of Old Mr. Crow • Arthur Scott Bailey |
