"Cliff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Markoff and Hafner focus as much on their psychologies and motivations as on the details of their exploits, but don't slight the latter. The result is a balanced and fascinating account, particularly useful when read immediately before or after Cliff Stoll's {The Cuckoo's Egg}. It is especially instructive to compare RTM, a true hacker who blundered, with the sociopathic phone-freak Mitnick and the alienated, drug-addled crackers who made the Chaos Club notorious. The gulf between {wizard} and {wannabee} ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... than a quarter of a mile away rose a tall black cliff straight up out of the water. It stretched away on either hand for miles and miles, and came to an end in the ocean at the right hand and the left, so that it was probably the side of an island. The sea rolled up and down at the foot of the cliff, ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... as an after-thought. But I was already busy with my glass and that was not the hour for light talk. Yonder upon the port-bow a group of islands shaped on our horizon as shadows upon a glassy sea. I could espy a considerable cliff-land rising to the southward, and north of that the rocky spur of which I have made mention. The sun was setting behind us in a sky of orange and crimson, and it was wonderful to see the playful lights now giving veins of gold to the dark mass of the higher rocks, ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... his seat on a high cliff overlooking all his host, just above the Temple of Herakles, we are told by Phanodemus, where the strait between Salamis and Attica is narrowest, but according to Akestodorus, close to the Megarian frontier, upon the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... masters, and look ahead at the rock yonder, jist under the tall cliff. There's a bear a-sittin' there, and if we can only get ashore afore he sees us, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the early morning at the little old church that had nestled for centuries among its trees in the village on the cliff. The absolute simplicity of the service deprived it of all terrors for Dinah. Standing with Scott in the glow of sunlight that smote full upon them through the mellow east window, she could not feel afraid. The whole world was so ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... over it, proved to be highly precipitous when you scampered over it; and Turnbull was twice nearly flung on his face. MacIan, though much heavier, avoided such an overthrow only by having the quick and incalculable feet of the mountaineer; but both of them may be said to have leapt off a low cliff when ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... a rumbling sound, and the earth seemed again to tremble. Then there came a great splash in the water at the foot of a tall, rugged cliff about a quarter of a mile away. A great piece of the precipice ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... the early cars on stones in which grooves were cut for the guidance of the wheels instead of the steel rail and the flange wheel of the present day. These early cars were drawn by mules, after they had been pulled by a windlass up the cliff from the boat landing at Frankfort. The mules and the rock rails were soon replaced by two locomotives and iron rails. One engine brought the train from Frankfort to a point half way, by noon, and after the passengers had eaten dinner at Midway, ...
— The story of Kentucky • Rice S. Eubank
... days and nights, crouching behind a rock topped with a growth of mesquite, and with the cliff at my back, suffering agonies of thirst and absolutely hopeless of deliverance, I fought the fellows at long range, firing occasionally at the smoke of their rifles, as they did at that of mine. Of course, I did not dare to close my eyes at night, and ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... above, and lived in the caves. They walled the fronts of the caves with rock, which they covered with plaster, and divided them into compartments or rooms; and now many hundreds of these dwellings are found. Such is the cliff village of Walnut Canyon. In the ruins of these cliff houses mortars and pestles are found in great profusion, and when first discovered many articles of pottery were found, and still many potsherds are seen. The people were very skillful in the manufacture of stone implements, ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... night-mists. Darkness and all night's adherents were annihilated. Pelicans and geese and curlews were in uproar, as at a concerted signal. A buzzard yelped thrice like a dog, and rose in a long spiral from the cliff to Melicent's right hand. He hung motionless, a speck in the clear zenith, uncannily anticipative. ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... that the boy and his old gun had ended that fight on the cliff; and without knowing it, old Gabe kept the lad in constant torture with his talk of the blood-penalty. But Isom got used to it in time, for he had shot to save his brother's life. Steve Marcum treated him thereafter as an equal. Steve's friends, too, changed ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.
... rock. A ray of glory flashed across its surface. The pilgrims looked whence it should proceed, but closed their eyes with a thrill of awful admiration, to exclude the fervid splendor that glowed from the brow of a cliff impending over the enchanted lake. For the simple pair had reached that lake of mystery, and found the long-sought ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... closing days at Ocean Cliff, the home of Uncle William and Aunt Emily Minturn at Sunset Beach. School was soon to open, and Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey were anxious to get back to their town home, for Flossie and Freddie were to start regular lessons now, even though it was ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... and not only in the orchard, but of it, for she was comfortably perched on a low bough of an ancient hoary apple tree. She had a volume of Robert Bridges's poems in her hand and a thirst was on her to be at the edge of a cliff and look over into blue space below. The secluded orchard with its early crown of pink blushes, the serene shut-in valley screened from cold winds and cradled between the chalky highlands, weighed on her. She looked upwards through the ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... relish; he was not born in the woods to be scared of an owl, you know; what then? It mast have been the echo, most musical, most resonant, repeated and yet repeated, dying with long sighs of sweet sound, vibrated from rock to river and back again from depth to depth of cave and cliff. Her thought flew after it; she knew, that, even if her husband heard it, he yet could not reach her in time; she saw that while the beast listened he would not gnaw,—and this she felt directly, when the rough, sharp, and multiplied stings of his tongue retouched her arm. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... could see where it poured down a narrow vertical cataract from an opening in the face of the cliff. It was sweet water. The guide drank eagerly and ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... was his kind face with its high cheek-bones and short-pointed beard. Had he indeed come down from the skies? There seemed no other way, for Susan did not know till afterwards that there were some steps cut zigzag down the cliff just behind her. But wherever he had come from he was undoubtedly there, real flesh and blood, and she was no longer alone with the dreadful roaring sea. It was such a joyful relief that it gave her new strength; she forgot her bedraggled and woebegone state, and starting up began to try and explain ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O sweet and far, from cliff and scar, The horns ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... boughs twilight reigned, while beyond, not more than half a mile away, the splendid river-fall thundered down the precipice. For the rest they could find no exit to that garden which on one side was enclosed by a sheer cliff of living rock, and on the others with steep stone walls beyond which ran a torrent, and by the buildings of the ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... cliff, at the edge of a steep precipice, lie the remains of a Moorish castle; the clouds hang where hung the balcony; the path along which the ass now goes, leads through the hall. From here you can enjoy the view over the whole valley, which, long and narrow, seems like a river ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... beautiful contrast. Instead of the brazen glare of the first, the air was full of glimmering lights and shades, and the sky of a deep transparent blue. Far up a mountain side, on an overhanging cliff, grew the same graceful ash-tree, but its branches were entwined with vines of the passion-flower that hung around in slender streamers. On a jutting rock, with precarious footing, stood a young ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... a time it happened that Merlin showed to her a wonderful cavern in the cliff, closed by an enchanted stone. By her subtle working she soon made Merlin remove the stone and go into the cavern to let her know of the marvels there. Then she so wrought through the magic he had taught her that the stone was placed back again, so that he never ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... approach we should discover our error. What we had supposed to be peaks were in reality a thousand glittering spires. Nothing could be more beautiful than the architecture of this ice-palace. The walls are curiously constructed of massive blocks of ice which terminate in cliff-like towers. The entrance to the palace is at the end of an arched recess, and it is guarded night and day by twelve ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... as she had never been on the water before, and could not know whether she were a good or a bad sailor. Aunt Sara and Elinor had told her unpleasant anecdotes of voyages; but when Dover Castle on its gray height, and white Shakespeare Cliff with its memories of "Lear," had faded from her following eyes, still she would hardly have known that the vessel was moving. The purring turbines scarcely thrilled the deck; and presently Mary ate sandwiches ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... God, our lives were saved by Kenneth Moore. Did you not hear that cry of his when we were about to crash into the face of the cliff?" ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... more adrift. O'er dappling sea and broad lagoon, O'er frowning cliff and yellow dune, The long, warm lights of afternoon Like jewel ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... the stubborn unreasoning of the time. It was useless to argue with her. Arguments have no chance against petrified training; they wear it as little as the waves wear a cliff. And her training was everybody's. The brightest intellect in the land would not have been able to see that her position ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the tried and true comrades of camp and trail are in the saddle, bent on seeing with their own eyes some of the wonderful sights to be found in that section of the Far Southwest, where the singular cave homes of the ancient Cliff Dwellers dot the walls of the Great Canyon of the Colorado. In the strangest possible way they are drawn into a series of happenings among the Zuni Indians, while trying to assist a newly made friend: all of which makes interesting reading. If there could ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... there are many dikes which are for the most part vertical, and traverse the inclined beds of lava and scoriae which were successively superimposed during those eruptions by which the old cone was formed. They project in relief several inches, or sometimes feet, from the face of the cliff, being extremely compact, and less destructible than the intersected tuffs and porous lavas. In vertical extent they vary from a few yards to 500 feet, and in breadth from one to twelve feet. Many of them cut all the inclined beds in ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... winter-chimney, or well-polished jet, Exhale mundungus, ill-perfuming scent! Not blacker tube, nor of a shorter size, Smokes Cambro-Briton (versed in pedigree, Sprung from Cadwallader and Arthur, kings Full famous in romantic tale) when he O'er many a craggy hill and barren cliff, Upon a cargo of famed Cestrian cheese, High over-shadowing rides, with a design To vend his wares, or at the Arvonian mart, Or Maridunum, or the ancient town Ycleped Brechinia, or where Vaga's stream Encircles ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... day? Ah, rather let us now in lovely June O'erlook these happy children at their play: Lo, where they gambol through the garden gay, Or round the hoary hawthorn dance and sing, Or, 'neath yon moss-grown cliff, grotesque and grey Sit plaiting flowery wreaths in social ring, And telling wondrous tales of the green ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... first-rate magnitude make compensation, in some degree, by exhibiting those ever-changing fields of green, blue, and purple shadows or lights, (one scarcely knows which to name them) that call to mind a sea-prospect contemplated from a lofty cliff. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... towering walls had been carved by wind and water into thousands of beautiful, fantastical forms, and a dim religious light fell from above through a long, funnel-shaped hole running from the roof of the cavern to the top of the great cliff. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... of a cliff about the first of November, I saw a vigorous young apple-tree, which, planted by birds or cows, had shot up amid the rocks and open woods there, and had now much fruit on it, uninjured by the ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... the precipice, three hundred feet in depth, forming the wall of the old crater, but now thickly covered with vegetation. It is so steep in many places that flights of zigzag wooden steps have been inserted in the face of the cliff in some places, in order ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... the sail that is always straining against the wind; and the timbers form clearly the lightest possible framework for the canvas,—thus showing the essence of windmill sail. Then the clay wall of Stanfield's mill is as beautiful as a piece of chalk cliff, all worn into furrows by the rain, coated with mosses, and rooted to the ground by a heap of crumbled stone, embroidered with grass and creeping plants. But this is not a serviceable state for a windmill to be in. The essence of a windmill, as distinguished from all other mills, is, that ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Look at the crumbling cliffs around old England's shores. See the effect upon the beach of one night's fierce storm. Mark the pathway on the cliff, how it seems to have crept so near the edge that here and there it is scarcely safe to tread; and very soon, as we know, it will become impassable. Just from a mere accident, of course,—the breaking away of some of the earth, loosened by rain and frost ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... struggle between two lights, the wonderful clearness of the air would let things be seen and heard at incredible distances. Two leagues away I could make everything out. The smallest detail about the distant mountains, a tree, a cliff, a house, a bend in the ground, was thrown out with the most delicate sharpness. New senses seemed to be given me. I found myself another being, released from bondage, free to soar away on my new wings. It was an hour of utter purity, all hard and clear. I said to myself, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... mountain elder-berries and lots of flowers in the grass. There was the glacier, the roar of the river and a plaintive little chapel on a green knoll under the great cliff of ice which cut the sky. There was a fat, crumby woman ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... like one who shivers on the plank at a bathing-place, nor could the jeering cries of the Cossack induce him to venture on the treacherous surface. Meanwhile, we who had crossed were examining the broken cliff which rose above us. It looked not exactly dangerous, but a little troublesome, as if it might want some care to get over or through. So after a short rest I stood up, touched my Cossack's arm, and pointed upward. He reconnoitred ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... in a voice that rang from cliff to plain; and springing forward, he seized Houseman with a giant's grasp,—"behold ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... standing out from the homeland and seeing the long white Kentish cliffs recede. One walked about the boat doing one's best not to feel absurdly adventurous, and presently a movement of people directed one's attention to a white lighthouse on a cliff to the east of us, coming up suddenly; and then one turned to scan the little different French coast villages, and then, sliding by in a pale sunshine came a long wooden pier with oddly dressed children upon it, and the clustering town ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... king, that that dreadful battle took place between Bhurisravas alone on one side and the many united together on the other. And those ten heroes covered that single mighty car-warrior with showers of arrows like the clouds showering rain on a mountain cliff in the season of rains. That mighty car-warrior, however, cut off those clouds of shafts shot by them resembling the fatal darts of Death or the very thunder in effulgence, before they could reach him.[401] They then, surrounding ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... "We may even now be too late!" They were only a hundred yards from the tower, when the sound of rapid pistol shots was heard, wafted down the wind, and a confused sound of cries on the cliff was wafted to them, as a dozen twinkling lantern lights appeared on the ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... exercise. Why, if we hold our own in respect to the material growth of our population, it is as much as we do. Where is the joyful buoyancy and expansive power with which the Gospel burst into the world? It looks like some stream that leaps from the hills, and at first hurries from cliff to cliff full of light and music, but flows slower and more sluggish as it advances, and at last almost stagnates in its flat marshes. Here we are with all our machinery, our culture, money, organisations—and the net result of it all at ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... crowned, The cork-trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep, The mountain moss by scorching skies imbrowned, The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep, The tender azure of the unruffled deep, The orange tints that gild the greenest bough, The torrents that from cliff to valley leap, The vine on high, the willow branch below, Mixed in one mighty scene, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... shrubs, in ALLMERS'S garden. At the back a sheer cliff, with a railing along its edge, and with steps on the left leading downwards. An extensive view over the fiord, which lies deep below. A flagstaff with lines, but no flag, stands by the railing. In front, on the right, a summer-house, covered with creepers and ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... days up a precipitous mountain range, and, turned back in sight of the crest by an impassable cliff, were forced to back track and ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... have been a string stretched from the corner eaves to the snow-white light-house standing on the farthest spit of land; blue sea and yellow sand curving round it, with a white edge of breakers; inshore, the sand rising to a cliff ridged with grassy hummocks; farther inshore, the hummocks united and rolling away up to inland downs, but broken here and there on their way with scars of sand; over all, white gulls wheeling. He could hear the nearest ones mewing as they ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it. We must lean hard upon God's will. In Switzerland at one of the most dangerous passes, where men used to travel with their faces white with fear, to-day any ordinary traveler can pass in safety because along the edge of the cliff there is an iron rail against which you may lean and have almost no danger beside you. This iron rail corresponds to the will of God for Christians. Paul also asks in this prayer that God's people may be made perfect to do his will. We need not be afraid of this word perfect, nor of ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... fight. His enemy, rejoicing in his victory, seized the King's horse and mounted it. The horse seemed to know what had happened, and who was on his back, for he began to show the greatest fury. After trying for some time to throw his new rider off, he suddenly dashed off up a steep cliff; and when he reached the top, he leapt wildly down the sheer precipice, with the man still on his back. The rider had no time to save himself, and both he and the horse were dashed to pieces. Thus the King was avenged ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... should be precipitated into matrimony with Miss Penge. According to his ideas in such matters a man should be left alone. Therefore, as was customary with him when he opposed his wife, he held his tongue. "You have been called in three or four times when he has been just on the edge of the cliff." ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... boys I guessed we were elected to go on foot to California after all, for I did not propose to follow the river down any sort of a hole into any mountain. We were floating directly toward a perpendicular cliff, and I could not see any hole any where, nor any other place where it could go. Just as we were within a stone's throw of the cliff, the river turned sharply to the right and went behind a high point of the mountain that seemed ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... summer plain, the eastern side of which is bounded by grassy hills of limestone, the other sides by a forest. The hill nearest to the plain terminates in a cliff, in the face of which, nearly at the level of the ground, are four caves, with low, narrow entrances. Before the caves, and distant from them less than one hundred feet, is a broad, flat rock, on which are laid several sharp slivers of flint, which, like the rock, ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... stood on the edge of the castle cliff, looking across the bay of Cruta to the sea. He was tall, loose jointed, and gaunt, and the long grey beard and unkempt locks of flowing hair which streamed behind in the breeze showed that he was an old man; but his eyes, set back in deep hollows, ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that way. It was horrible. She was flung down by a huge breaker, and before she could pick herself up a second wave broke over her. She had no chance to get her breath. And there wasn't any one near enough to help her. I saw it all happen from the cliff." She shuddered a little at ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... to be no more; another name for death: 'Tis the sun parting from the frozen north; And I, methinks, stand on some icy cliff, To watch the last low circles that he makes, 'Till he sink down from heaven! O only Cressida, If thou depart from me, I cannot live: I have not soul enough to last for grief, But thou shalt hear what grief has ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... since 1681. For a sixth part of its distance it is carried over mountains deeply excavated. It has, I think, ninety-nine locks and viaducts, and as one of its most wonderful features it has an octuple lock, or eight locks in flight, like a ladder from the top of a cliff to the valley below. If in 1681 a French engineer had the ability and the daring to conceive and construct an octuple lock, will any one maintain that more than two hundred years later, with all the enormous advance in engineering, with a better knowledge of hydraulics and ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... went twice to Broadstairs, in June and in September. From this he wrote to me (17th June), "It's now four o'clock, and I have been at work since half-past eight. I have really dried myself up into a condition which would almost justify me in pitching off the cliff, head first—but I must get richer before I indulge in a crowning luxury. Number 15, which I began to-day, I anticipate great things from. There is a description of getting gradually out of town, and passing through neighborhoods of distinct and various characters, with ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... poultry, duck and partridge, sand-grouse, and "Bob White" the quail, for half our dinners; and the Arabs call him the "Angel of Death belonging to the Birds." He failed to secure a noble eagle in the Wady 'Afal, whose nest was built upon an inaccessible cliff: he described the bird as standing as high as our table, and with a width of six to seven feet from wing to wing. He also brought tidings of a large (horned?) owl, possibly the same species as the fine bird noted at Sinai. The Arabs call it classically ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... men who showed themselves now and then on inaccessible-looking crags, who eyed us suspiciously and made no answer to the shouted challenge of Anazeh's men. When the track passed over a spur, or swung round the shoulder of a cliff, we could sometimes catch sight of other parties—always, though of three, before and behind us, proceeding in ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... English-speaking people of the Lowlands. The king of England had some claim to be their suzerain, a claim which the Scots were slow to acknowledge. The old line of Scottish princes of the Celtic race died out. Alexander III. fell with his horse over a cliff on the coast of Fife. Two competitors for the throne arose, both of them of Norman descent,—John Baliol and Robert Bruce. The Scots made Edward an umpire, to decide which of them should reign. He decided for Baliol ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... here assume against him, what we shall afterwards prove, that the guilty are not to be directly put to death except by public authority. But what we may not directly bring about, we may not directly risk the occurrence of. As I may not throw myself down a cliff, so neither may I walk along the edge precisely for the chance of a fall. I may often walk there with the chance of falling, but not because of the chance. It will be said that the English love of fox-hunting and Alpine climbing is largely owing to the element of danger present in those ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... pioneers to whom we owe our age of comparative enlightenment were heretics," George persisted. "And if they could have been headed off, or burned, most of us would still be living in mud caves at the foot of the cliff on which stood the nobleman's castle; and kings would still be kings by divine decree, scientists—if there were any —workers in the black art, and every phenomenon we failed to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the shoulder of the hill in the required direction; and by the time they reached a point where actual descent had again become necessary, they had once more come within sight of the ship, and had the satisfaction of seeing that she had drawn sensibly nearer to the cliff. ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... going directly towards a gate that opened out on the cliff above the river. In Charley's day this gate had been often used, for it gave upon four steep wooden steps leading to a narrow shelf of rock below. From the edge of this cliff a rope-ladder dropped fifty feet to the river. For ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... weather it makes a collection of honey intended to be absorbed by its own larvae, if it had not the misfortune to be watched by one of these intriguing Coleoptera. Wherever in Provence there is a perpendicular wall, natural or artificial, a little cliff, a sloping ditch, or the wall of one of those caves which the people of the country use for putting their tools in, the Anthophora hollows out galleries, at the bottom of which he builds a certain number of chambers. He fills each of them with ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... other there must have been an enormous population to worship in such a sanctuary; and yet all you see now is a public-house just opposite the church, a few cottages, and a farmhouse. A few steps farther bring you to the low cliff, and there is the sea ever encroaching on the land in that quarter and swallowing up farmhouse and farm. Miss Agnes Strickland, who lived at Reydon Hall—a few miles inland—has thus sung the ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... the bush. He turned back and went, as he thought, the way he had come, but soon arrived at a tall, precipitous cliff, which by some infernal magic seemed to have got between him and the river. Then he broke down, and that strange madness came on him, which comes even on strong men, when lost in the forest—a despair, a confusion of intellect, which has cost many a man his life. Think what ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... Dud stopped at the ranch some days, too. He had to, for he hurt his foot. That's when Helen saved his life. He was flung from the back of a horse over the edge of a cliff and fortunately landed in the top ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... "we were covering the flank of the main army, marching on Vienna under the Emperor's command. We came to a bridge defended by three batteries of cannon, one above another, on a sort of cliff; three redoubts like three shelves, and commanding the bridge. We were under Marshal Massena. That man whom you see there was Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, and I was one of them. Our columns held one bank of the river, the batteries were on the other. Three times they tried ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... egg hunting on the cliff, and sometimes he set traps there for foxes, and he helped Menie and Koko make a little trap to catch hares. There was plenty to do in every ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... sounds, and the flock of bells suddenly springs into wakefulness. It is the new dawn! Behind the sheer black cliff rises the golden glory of the invisible sun. Almost falling Christophe at last reaches the bank, and he says to ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... spot Montgomery, with his leading company, reached the first barricade, which was undefended; passing through this, they pressed on toward the next. The road leading to it was only wide enough for five or six persons abreast. On one side was the river, on the other a steep cliff; in front was a log hut with loop-holes for musketry, and a battery of two three-pounders. It was held by a party of 30 Canadians and 8 militiamen under John Coffin, with 9 sailors under Bairnsfeather, the captain of the transport, to work the guns. Montgomery, ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... misfortune felt a bitter resentment swelling in her heart, and scorning to remain among her kind in that costume, took her way to the Cliff House, where she arrived, worn and weary, ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... looked over the bluff. Half-way down the cliff on an outcropping shelf of rock the man lay, face downward, motionless. He seemed to have grown smaller and to have shrunk into his clothes. One long, thin leg was bent up under the skirts of the overcoat in a queer, twisted way, and the cloth of the trouser leg looked flattened and empty. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... passed, and in the bed of the river is some limestone which is small and worn smooth, and seems to have been brought down by the current. We went about a mile further and encamped under a high bluff on the right opposite to a cliff of rocks, having ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... over the heavens, how they clap their hands for joy. Moreover, when they grow larger, they love me still; then I help the charming maids to weave variegated garlands, and the wild boys to become still, while I seat myself near them, on the lofty summit of a cliff, steep lofty cities and brilliant palaces in the mist-world of the blue mountains in the distance, and, on the red-tinged clouds of evening, paint brave troops of horsemen, ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... the attitude of this new-found relative. Then one evening—when solution seemed least near—the key, metaphorically speaking, fell at his feet. Returning home from a ramble over the headland, his observant eye was caught by the sight of a narrow foot-track that, crossing the main pathway of the cliff, wound steeply upward and seemingly lost itself in a tangle of gorse and bracken. Stirred by a boyish desire for exploration, he paused, turned into this obscure track, and incontinently ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... squabbling imps; but to the forest sped, Or roam'd at large the lonely mountain's head, Or, where the maze of some bewilder'd stream To deep untrodden groves his footsteps led, There would he wander wild, till Phoebus' beam, Shot from the western cliff, released ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... weird, endless arches of the Claudian aqueduct, throwing long shadows before them in the westering sun. Worthy framework for such a picture, the noble semicircle of the Sabine Hills rises on the horizon to the left, terminating in the grand rugged peak of Monte Gennaro, whose every cliff and scar are distinctly visible, and concealing in its bosom the romantic waterfalls of Tivoli and the lone ancestral farm of Horace. On the right the crested Alban heights form the boundary, crowned ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... was growing eery, now, and precipitous. To their right rose a sheer cliff. To their left, the path fell off abruptly to a gigantic caldron where ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... those plicated, overthrown, or curved exposures where parallel rocks, as talcose schist, usually vertical, are bent and fractured, as if by a maul like force, battering them from above. The strata are oftentimes tumbled over upon a cliff-side like a row of books, and rest upon heaps of fragments broken away by the strain upon the bottom layers, or crushed off from their ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... not say that I was on the point of throwing myself from yonder cliff to escape the misery ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... the spit of coast-land toward which they had struggled. The point lifted itself abruptly into a rocky bank which curved in and out, yielding to the besieging waves. Just here had been formed a little sandy cove partly protected by the beetling cliff. At the top was verdure in abundance. Vines hung down over the face of the wall, coarse grasses and underbrush grew to its very edge, and sharp-pointed fir trees etched themselves against the clear blue of the sky. Below, the white sand formed a sickle-shaped beach, bordered by the rocky wall, ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... waterside to listen; and at once ordered the whole party to get under arms. He requested Mr. Barlow, the young lieutenant in charge of the troops, to place half his men across each end of the plateau. The back was defended by a cliff, which rose almost perpendicularly from it to a height of some hundred feet; the plateau being some thirty yards, in depth, from the sea face to its foot. The male passengers were requested to divide themselves ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... thirty in number, excavated in the south side of the precipitous bank of the ravine, and vary from 35 to 110 ft. in elevation above the bed of the torrent. The caves are of two kinds—-dwelling-halls and meeting-halls. The former, as one enters from the pathway along the sides of the cliff, have a broad verandah, its roof supported by pillars, and giving towards the interior on to a hall averaging in size about 35 ft. by 20 ft. To left and right, and at the back, dormitories are excavated opening on to this hall, and in the centre of the back, facing the entrance, an image of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 'leben," said Joan, looking at the clock. "I don't see how 'tis possible for 'em to venture in 'fore wan, 'less 'tis to Yallow Rock, and they'd hardly try that. What do 'ee say, Eve? Shall we run up out to cliff, top o' Talland lane, and see if us can see any signs ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... reported that somebody was shouting. A long time afterward, as it seemed to her then, a strong arm went round her. Inch by inch she was dragged from the water that fought and wrestled for her. Phyllis knew that her rescuer was working up the cliff wall with ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... the Battry of St. Dominica of 7 Guns. A little without this Battry, on the East side of the Bay, is a small but high Island, close to the Shore, on the Top of which is the Church of Bonn Voyage, about half-way down the Cliff. Below the Church is a Battry of 3 Guns. Neither the one nor the other of these battry's are of much Consequence. They serve, indeed, to force Shipping coming into the Bay between 2 Fires, and hinder them from ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... mishap, they rumbled into the hamlet of Poldau. For the last hour they had seen signs of the coming fete. All the natives, arrayed in their best clothes, were drifting westward to the rocky cape, where, perched on a lonely cliff, was the tiny chapel, "Our Lady of the Guard," which was the scene of the Pardon on the morrow. Before they entered Poldau night had fallen, and the long yellow beams from the powerful Phare glanced out across the sullen waters and the level land. It was beneath ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... on the highroad which skirts the cliff-bound coast of Normandy you may come to a board bearing the legend "Hottetot-sur-Mer" and a hand pointing down a narrow gorge. If you follow the direction and descend for half a mile you come to a couple of villas, a humble cafe, some fishermen's cottages, one of which is also ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... the schooner vanished, and its place was supplied by a remarkable white cliff, which from the extraordinary optical delusion it occasions gives its name to the noble port which is now called Ship Harbour. I have since mentioned this subject to a number of mariners, and have ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... in the icy caves And barren chasms, and all to left and right The bare, black cliff clang'd round him as he based His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels. And on a sudden, lo! the level lake And the long glories ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... pure enjoyment of the family circle I will pass my days, cheering my idle hours with lute and book. My husbandmen will tell me when spring-time is nigh, and when there will be work in the furrowed fields. Thither I shall repair by cart or by boat, through the deep gorge, over the dizzy cliff, trees bursting merrily into leaf, the streamlet swelling from its tiny source. Glad is this renewal of life in due season: but for me, I rejoice that my journey is over. Ah, how short a time it is that we are here! Why, then, ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... ran parallel to the desert. The palm trees rustled on their right, the green corn waved, the narrow cuttings in the earth gleamed with shallow water. But on their other side was limitless sterility; the wide, stony expanse of the great river bed, the Oued-Beni-Mora, then a low earth cliff, and then the immense airy flats stretching away into the shining regions of the sun. At some distance, raised on a dazzling white wall above the desert in an unshaded place, Domini saw a narrow, two-sided white ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... slowly, slowly down from him, into the pool, to be carried away out to sea; and her face looking up, her lost face with beseeching eyes, and dark, wet hair-possessed, haunted, tortured him! He got up at last, scaled the low rock-cliff, and made his way down into a sheltered cove. Perhaps in the sea he could get back his control—lose this fever! And stripping off his clothes, he swam out. He wanted to tire himself so that nothing mattered and swam recklessly, fast and far; then suddenly, for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had a fancy that when she spoke again it would be without that deliberation—almost restraint—which seemed to accord a little strangely with the girlishness of her appearance and actual years. She stood on the extreme edge of the cliff, her slim straight figure outlined to angularity against the sky. She remained so long without speech that I had time to note all these things. The sunshine, breaking through the thin-topped pine trees, lay everywhere about us; a little brown feathered bird, scarcely a dozen yards away, sang ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it was true. Poor Lydia had had a taste of the joy of life, and a full measure of the sorrow, seven years ago, when Clifford Frost, twelve years her senior, at thirty-one the perfect match, had singled her out for his favour. Martie and Sally could remember how pleasantly exciting it was to have Cliff Frost so much at the house, how Lydia laughed and bloomed! Lydia had been just Sally then: her age, and ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... the highest one hundred and twenty cubits in height. But, in the vicinity of the gate of Benjamin, the wall arose by no means from the margin of the fosse. On the contrary, between the level of the ditch and the basement of the rampart sprang up a perpendicular cliff of two hundred and fifty cubits, forming part of the precipitous Mount Moriah. So that when Simeon and his associates arrived on the summit of the tower called Adoni-Bezek-the loftiest of all the turrets around about Jerusalem, and the usual place of conference ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... rooms here, and established ourselves for the night. From this point we have a view of the beautiful lake, and of Skiddaw at the head of it. The cascade is within three or four minutes' walk, through the garden gate, towards the cliff, at the base of which the inn stands. The visitor would need no other guide than its own voice, which is said to be audible sometimes at the distance of four miles. As we were coming from Keswick, we caught glimpses of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a tree that harmonizes with all situations, rude and cultivated, level and abrupt. On the side of the mountain it adds grandeur to the declivity, and gives a look of sweeter tranquillity to the green pastoral meadow. It yields a darker frown to the projecting cliff, and a more awful uncertainty to the mountain-pass or the hollow ravine. Amid desolate scenery it spreads a cheerfulness that detracts nothing from its power over the imagination, while it relieves it of its terrors ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... her his watch. Then she perceived that the sun had not yet risen high enough to illumine the wooded crest of the opposite cliff. The snow-clad hills, the blue glaciers, the wonderful clearness of atmosphere, led her to believe that the day was much more advanced. Land and sea shone in a strange crystal light. None could tell whence it came. It seemed to her, in that solemn ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... the car splashed through the ford at the foot of the wood, and carried them along the Warwick Road, past Blacklow Hill, where Piers Gaveston was executed, and where, it is said, his restless spirit still rides at drear midnight, to Guy's Cliff, with its old Saxon mill and romantic view of the Avon. Then on to Warwick, to look at the treasures of a castle fortunately untouched by the ravages of war, and the beautiful Beauchamp Chapel, with its tomb of the "King Maker". They could have stayed a long time in ancient, picturesque ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... I sent in the direction of Roodekraal had a fight with the enemy at Tijgerfontein. A heavy bombardment took place; and my men told me afterwards that the baboons, of which there were a large number in these mountains, sprang from cliff to cliff screaming with fright—poor creatures—as the rocks were split on every side by the ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... been seen, we observed traces of blood, satisfying us he had been wounded; but the course taken in his flight was one that seemed to defy every human effort to follow in. It was a narrow pointed ledge, ascending boldly towards a huge cliff that projected frowningly from the extreme summit, and on either side lay a dark, deep, and apparently fathomless ravine; to look even on which was sufficient to appal the stoutest heart, and unnerve the steadiest brain. For me, however, long accustomed to dangers of the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm; Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... were lost on the valet; he stood yawning with his hands in his pockets, looking neither to the right nor to the left, but staring straight before him at a little hollow, beyond which the ground sloped away smoothly to the brink of the cliff. A bench was placed here, and three persons—an old lady, a gentleman, and a young girl—were seated on it, watching the sunset, and by consequence turning their backs on Monsieur Justin. Near them stood two gentlemen, also looking ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... do, but I know pretty well whereabout it is. We always set sail at night and came in at night, and none was allowed on deck except the helmsman and two or three old hands till morning; but when I was ashore and on duty at the lookout I noticed three trees growing together just at the edge of the cliff at the point where it was highest, two miles away from the entrance to the cove. They were a big un and two little uns, and I feel sure if I were to see them again I should ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... a similar one on the north side) being previously confined to a bed of scarcely one hundred feet in breadth, descends at once in a magnificent cascade of full four hundred feet in height. I stood upon a cliff nearly level with the top of the fall, and directly in front of it. The beams of the evening sun fell upon the cascade, and occasioned a most splendid rainbow; while the vapoury mists arising from the broken waters, the bright green woods that hung from the surrounding ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... cliff stands against the fretting of waves, his grasp stood against hers; and his voice was as immovable as his hand. "Certainly you are going to a palace, you did not let me carry out my meaning. Adjoining the Monastery there is a dwelling-place which was once a house for ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... one very striking difference from seaside cliffs. The seaside cliffs may be nearly vertical, but the inland cliffs are not, excepting for a little way at the top; lower down a heap of stones and soil lies piled against the face of the cliff and makes a slope up which you can climb. If you look at the cliff you can find loose fragments of it split off either by the action of freezing water (p. 83) or by other causes ready to roll down if sufficiently disturbed. ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... gone to live awhile among his people—the two of us were sitting upon the rugged rock, facing to the cliff above the York spring, talking about the ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... above the verge of the slope and screened the clearing all round. Nowhere could we catch sight of any sign of a town, village or farmstead, though there were three several rifts in the forest through which we could see far into the valleys to the eastward. The cliff above the clearing ran nearly from southwest to northeast, so that the place was ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... with his digging nails he clung Fast to the sand, lest the returning wave, From whose reluctant roar his life he wrung, Should suck him back to her insatiate grave: And there he lay, full length, where he was flung, Before the entrance of a cliff-worn cave, With just enough of life to feel its pain, And deem that it ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Guy-Cliff, two miles from the town; so I walked to see it, and of all improvers commend me to Mr. Greathead, its present owner. He shew'd it me himself, and is literally a fat young man with a head and face much bigger than they are usually ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... of strange emotions flooding his heart, Peter Thorold crossed to where his father stood apart. The tide of his thought overflowed the shore of prose and landed his expression high on a cliff of poetry. No chance, but the urging of his own exalted mood, brought him the last lines of Moody's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the messes that following night, to cut out the front logs. The same scheme has been often put in execution. It was argued that by stretching a warping-line across the rapids, from cliff to cliff, directly over the foot of the jam, a man might be lowered on it, with his axe, and cut away the logs. A large "basket"—so it was talked—might be swung on the cable. By slackening the line the axe-man could be lowered ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... Dandenong Ranges, grown bluer and bluer, were also lost in the sky. The vessel crept round the outside of the great Bay, to clear shoals and sandbanks, and, by afternoon, with the sails close rigged in the freshening wind, they were running parallel with the Cliff—"THE Cliff!" thought Mahony with a curl of the lip. And indeed there was no other; nothing but low scrub-grown sandhills which flattened out till they were almost ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... mines here are considerably elevated above the level of the sea, and are of the richest description. The veins are visible on the abrupt face of the cliff, which borders the harbour, and are worked by adits or openings, which serve both to carry off the water and to wheel away the coals. The quantity procured in this easy manner is very great, and might be increased to any extent. So much more coals indeed ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... the ship he had deserted uprising above him, with the red side-light glowing large in the rain like a fire on the brow of a hill seen through a mist. "She seemed higher than a wall; she loomed like a cliff over the boat . . . I wished I could die," he cried. "There was no going back. It was as if I had jumped into a well—into an everlasting deep hole. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... their tip." This was all the jargon of delirium to the terror-stricken old woman; it may be clear enough to the ordinary reader, with what followed. "I tell you I saw the man that got away over the cliff, and shattered every bone in his body. I saw him carried out o' hospital and tied up and flogged, for a caution, till the blood run down and the doctor gave the word stop." He went on in a voluble and disjointed way to tell how this man was "still there! There where your son, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... annoy me when Europeans patronize us about being a new country, doesn't it you? The Palisades, it seems, boiled up and took shape as a wall of cliff thirty million years ago, or maybe more, in the Triassic period. What can you get anywhere older than that? And Europe would give a cathedral or two out of her jewel-box to look young as long as ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... country. On my left hand stretched a long fiat-topped mountain, forming the southern slope of the valley we ascended; steep, dark, and furrowed with innumerable torrent-beds, it frowned upon a river that rushed along the ravine at its foot to pour into the sea where the mountain broke as a rugged cliff. This was the Mons Moscius of old time, which sheltered the monastery built by Cassiodorus. The headlong, swollen flood, coloured like yellow clay, held little resemblance to the picture I had made of that river Pellena which murmurs so musically ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... on a low, pebbly ledge, just outside the black maw of the passage—an entrance hidden in a curtain-like fold in the face of the cliff that towered above them, casting an ink-black shadow. But beyond it the emblazoned firmament glowed irradiant, and at their feet the encircling waters ran, a broad ribbon of black silk purling between the cliff and the opposing ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... to my mind. I returned to the point at which the bear had hurled me down and peered over the edge of the cliff into the ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... thou known, Ere rude hands scooped thy grave, Of Homestead Act, or Building Loan, Thou wouldst have quite disdained to own A rugged cliff or cave. ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... had left outside the gate, near Juno's temple, to the number of three hundred, entering the town, now full of tumult and lights, and not knowing the way by which the former had gone, and finding no track of them, slunk aside, and crowded together in one body under a flank of the cliff that cast a strong shadow, and there stood and waited in great distress and perplexity. For, by this time, those that had gone with Aratus were attacked with missiles from the citadel, and were busy fighting, and a sound of cries of battle ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... about Pushut are here only recognisable in two instances, the central one presenting three peaks, next to it the barren cliff, and the three mountains ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... doubt bed's the best place for 'un, an' gude 'ot drink. Burlacombe zays he'm like a man standin' on the edge of a cliff; and the lasts tipsy o' wind might ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... moss, among the brambles of the promontory. Around their heads passed and repassed large bats, carried along in the fearful whirl of their blind chase. The feet of Raoul were across the edge of the cliff, and bathed in that void which is peopled by vertigo and provokes to annihilation. When the moon had risen to its full height, caressing with its light the neighboring peaks, when the watery mirror was illumined in its full extent, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... had almost surrounded the white men, and more were continually crossing the stream. The soldiers had dismounted, and were firing into the camp from the top of the cliff." ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... some kind of a cliff around here, under which we can stand?" asked Granbury Lapham of the sleigh driver. Hendrik shrugged his shoulders for a moment, ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... sacrifice to his honour. On this occasion, the lord holds a great festival on his accession day; when all who are willing to give this cruel proof of their attachment, are attended to the summit of a high cliff in a certain valley, where, after some peculiar ceremonies, and certain words muttered over them, the victims precipitate themselves from the cliff, and are dashed to pieces. In reward of this sanguinary homage, the lords consider themselves bound to heap extraordinary honours and rewards ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... survey the channel every day. He bid them notice how the town of Havre divided Upper from Lower Normandy. In Lower Normandy the shore sloped down to the sea in pasture-lands, fields, and meadows. The coast of Upper Normandy, on the contrary, was steep, a high cliff, ravined, cleft and towering, forming an immense white rampart all the way to Dunkirk, while in each hollow a village or a port lay hidden: Etretat, Fecamp, Saint-Valery, Treport, Dieppe, and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... population, the men calling to us to land to be fleeced and insulted by way of Mahonga or Mutuari: they threw stones in rage, and one, apparently slung, lighted close to the canoe. We came on until after dark, and landed under a cliff to rest and cook, but a crowd came and made inquiries, then a few more came as if to investigate more perfectly: they told us to sleep, and to-morrow friendship should be made. We put our luggage on board and set a watch on the cliff. A number of men came along, cowering behind ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... dawn. The barges, the bushy willows above the water, the swirling flood began to take shape, and up above in a clayey cliff a hut thatched with straw, and above that the straggling houses of the village, where the cocks had begun ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... Greenland, so bold, so steep, and in places so grim, with the long fields of white glittering ice floating about on the cold blue sea, and our little vessels (for we looked pigmies beside the huge objects around us, whether cliff, berg, or glacier) stealing on so silently and quickly; the leadsman's song or the flap of wild fowl the only sounds to break the general stillness. One of the cliffs we skirted along was actually teeming with birds called "loons:" they might have been ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... Americans closed in on the flank and rear of the British and encircled them with a hot fire. For nearly an hour the battle continued, with a heavy fire on both sides. At length the right wing gained the summit of the cliff and poured such a deadly fire on the foe from their point of vantage that it was ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... arrived safely at Dover, on their way to Ramsgate; but on hearing a report that an epidemic of scarlet fever had broken out near East Cliff, they altered their route and proceeded ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... downs running up to the summits, and ending in a sheer precipice three or four hundred feet deep, at whose foot it was said a man-of-war had once been wrecked, and all souls drowned. Down beneath the cliff, too, were the rocks of every fantastic shape or form, now with the water just gently lapping their weed-hung sides, but in stormy weather covering them with foam as it alternately showed their grim and jagged shapes, or hid them from view. Woe, then, to the unfortunate vessel that came amongst ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... who have seen the effect of a raging sea even on a smooth beach, know that the power of the falling waves is terrible, and their retreating force so great that the most powerful swimmers occasionally perish in them. But the coast to which Rodgers volunteered to swim was an almost perpendicular cliff. ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... my first view of that beautiful sheet of water was from a projecting cliff 1000 feet above its surface, and it embraced not only the entire outline of the Lake with its charming bays and rocky headlands but also the magnificent forests of giant pines and firs in which it was embosomed, and the dozen or more lofty mountain ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... The falcon, from her cairn on high, Cast on the rout a wondering eye, Till far beyond her piercing ken The hurricane had swept the glen. Faint, and more faint, its failing din 70 Returned from cavern, cliff, and linn, And silence settled, wide and still, On the lone wood ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott |
