"Driftwood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the beach were groups of Indians, representatives of various petty tribes who had not yet passed to the island of council. Horses were tethered to the driftwood strewed along the beach; packs and saddles were heaped on the banks awaiting the canoes that were to carry them over. Across the river, Cecil could see upon the island scattered bands of ponies feeding and many Indians ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... and night after night, over the unknown ocean; the mutinous and ill-appeased crew; at length, when hope had turned to despair in every heart but one, the tokens of land—the cloud banks on the western horizon, the logs of driftwood, the fresh shrub floating with its leaves and berries, the flocks of land birds, the shoals of fish that inhabit shallow water, the indescribable smell of the shore; the mysterious presentment that seems ever to go before a great event; and finally, on ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... a lamp, her eyes ran quickly over the dark interior, lighted fitfully as the driftwood, snapping on the stone hearth, flared at times into a blaze. Kate herself, despite the doubts and fears of her situation, was conscious of a strange feeling in being under Laramie's roof—at one with him in so far as he could make her feel so. Like a roll of fleeting film, strange ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... dame's shoulder. Jason's two spears, one in each hand, kept him from stumbling and enabled him to feel his way among the hidden rocks; although every instant he expected that his companion and himself would go down the stream together with the driftwood of shattered trees and the carcasses of the sheep and cow. Down came the cold, snowy torrent from the steep side of Olympus, raging and thundering as if it had a real spite against Jason or, at all events, were determined to snatch off his living burden from ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... the crocodiles and other formidable water-dwellers, which were quite unknown to him, paid them no attention whatever; and he concluded that they looked upon the raft as nothing more than a mass of floating driftwood containing nothing for them to eat. He could see them everywhere about, swimming with brute snouts half above water or basking on sandy spits of shore. Then he observed that the current was bearing them gradually towards that further shore which he so longed to visit, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... their tempers and dispositions were very much akin to the hog. A dish of venison, however, was no unacceptable meal to them, especially after feeding so long on oysters and clams. So, beholding the dead stag, they felt of its ribs, in a knowing way, and lost no time in kindling a fire of driftwood, to cook it. The rest of the day was spent in feasting; and if these enormous eaters got up from table at sunset, it was only because they could not scrape another morsel off the ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... empty, except for the piles of driftwood, the rocks, and the other things he had originally found there. Yet he knew that something was waiting to pounce. Having discovered that for him pain was a defense weapon, he had that one resource. If they took him, it would be after besting him in ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... the stones above the water line for driftwood; and succeeded in picking up a stick here and a branch there. Four of the stouter pieces he tied in a square with the rope that bound his pack; and upon this frame he piled a crib of sticks, of sufficient buoyancy to float his clothes, his pack and his gun. He stripped to the skin and ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... The result was absolutely new to all experience, —India-rubber not melting in contact with red-hot iron! A man must have been five years absorbed in the pursuit of an object to comprehend his emotions. He felt as Columbus felt when he saw the land-bird alighting upon his ship, and the driftwood floating by. But, like Columbus, he was surrounded with an unbelieving crew. Eagerly he showed his charred India-rubber to his brother, and to the other bystanders, and dwelt upon the novelty and marvellousness of his fact. They regarded it with complete indifference. The good man had ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... breakfast fire of driftwood glowed ruddily. What is there about the tang of wood-smoke in a lonesome place that fills one with glories that seem half memory and half dream? Crouched on my haunches, shivering just enough to feel the beauty there is in fire, I needed only to close ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... was doubtless derived from his own pursuit. As soon as the mastiff leaped into the canoe, Ben shoved off, and the light craft was pushed up the stream by himself and Gershom without much difficulty, and with considerable rapidity. But little driftwood choked the channel; and, after fifteen minutes of moderate labor, the two men came near to the point of low wooded land in which the bee-tree had stood. As they drew nigh, certain signs of uneasiness in the dog attracted ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... had a few visitors, and collected about a hundred hides, and every night, at sundown, the gig was sent ashore to wait for the captain, who spent his evenings in the town. We always took our monkey-jackets with us, and flint and steel, and made a fire on the beach with the driftwood and the bushes which we pulled from the neighboring thickets, and lay down by it, on the sand. Sometimes we would stray up to the town, if the captain was likely to stay late, and pass the time at some of the houses, in which we were almost always well received by the inhabitants. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the woods were filled with another burst of cries, and at the signal four savages sprang from the cover of the driftwood. Heyward felt a burning desire to rush forward to meet them, so intense was the delirious anxiety of the moment; but he was restrained by the deliberate examples of the scout and Uncas. When their foes, who ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... current. Beyond ran an uneven, bulging mass that resembled some gray, heavy moving monster. In the gloom Bostil could see how the river turned a corner of wall and slanted away from it toward the center, where it rose higher. Black objects that must have been driftwood appeared on this crest. They showed an instant, then flashed out of sight. The boom grew steadier, closer, louder, and the reverberations, like low detonations of thunder, were less noticeable because all sounds were being ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... drawing-room, panelled simply in woods, furnished with the old Sturtevant mahogany, came upon Bertram Chester like a stage setting as he entered with Mrs. Tiffany. Upstage, burned a driftwood fire in a low hearth of rough bricks; Judge Tiffany sat there, in a spindle-backed chair, reading. Across a space broken only by a painting, a Japanese print or so, and more spindle-backed chairs, Eleanor and Kate had grouped themselves by the piano. Eleanor, turning ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... descriptions were floating down with the swift current. Rabbits and other small animals, which had probably been surrounded on some island and compelled to take to the brush or drown, crouched on floating logs and piles of driftwood. Happening to glance down the road, Clarke saw a horse galloping in his direction. At first he thought it was a messenger for himself, but as it neared him he saw that the horse was an Indian pony and the rider a young girl, ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... attraction, in short, remained unimpaired. And of this Damaris was actually, if unconsciously, sensible as he closed the door and, passing between the stumpy pillars, walked up the long narrow room and stood, his hands behind him, his back to the pleasantly hissing and crackling fire of driftwood. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... a faint ledge made by caught driftwood from the current and the debris of the overhanging cliffs. Again the narrow footprint on the ooze was his guide. At last, emerging from the canyon, a strange view burst upon his sight. The river turned abruptly to the right, ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... when she had found herself back in the alley, like a bit of driftwood that for a brief space is whirled out of its stagnant pool, only to be cast back again, she had planned ceaselessly for a means of escape. During the first terrible weeks of Uncle Jed's illness, her thoughts flew for relief sometimes to Dan, sometimes to Mac. And Dan answered her silent ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... was a quantity of driftwood, and they had just gotten out of sight of the bay when there was a sudden grinding and crashing sound on board of the tug, and the engineer shut off ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... that first day. The Balls made no outcry when they found that she had disappeared. And no near-port fishing craft came by. But the smoke from the chimney of the cabin, when she had swept and made comfortable its interior and built a fire of driftwood in the rusty pot stove, attracted at least ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... torments which the modern sportsman will appreciate. She subsisted on such roots, bark, reptiles, or other small animals, as her Indian habits enabled her to gather on her way. She crossed streams by swimming, or on rafts of driftwood, lashed together with strips of linden-bark; and at length reached the St. Lawrence, where, with the aid of her hatchet, she made a canoe. Her home was on the Ottawa, and she was ignorant of the great river, or, at least, of this ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... fine, sandy shore: long, natural jetties of rock had been flung out far into the softly rippling water. The tide was making, perhaps a dozen feet below the fringe of shells and seaweed, cocoanuts and driftwood ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... driftwood burn to peacock flames, Sea-emeralds and sea-purples and sea-blues, And all the innumerable ever-changing hues That haunt the changeless deeps but have no names, Flicker and spire in our enchanted sight: And as we gaze, the unsearchable mystery, The unfathomed ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... a warm night. The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little canyon was stifling with heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth faint, sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day, and its fierce passions, still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank of the river, striking no answering reflection from its tawny ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... was there alive. In answer to her repeated calls came the answer of the engineer, who had caught hold of and made a lodgment in a tree-top, and around whom the waters were still rapidly rising, sending floating logs, trees, and driftwood against his frail support, and threatening momentarily to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... and often we saw fawns peering at us from the underbrush, or looked straight into the brown eyes of a stag as we charged full tilt round a corner and entered another reach of the river. Foxes, too, everywhere haunted the banks, tripping daintily among the driftwood and disappearing so suddenly that it was impossible to see how they ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... better. I was allowed a little tent to myself within the enclosure, and close to the great common tent in which the half-dozen families lived, each in its screened cubicle, with its own lamp and common rights on the fire of driftwood and blubber in the centre. This was of course much colder than the great tent, but with skins and a couple of lamps I did not ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... changing life, people drop out, yet are not quite forgotten. Some of the young fellows whom fortune had buffeted had found a place in active, stirring life: he, with his education, refinement, accomplishments, and talent, was merely a piece of driftwood. Sylvie Barry had been right,—he was a useless appendage to the world. Ah, no wonder she despised him! Sturdy, honest Jack Darcy could find a place. His self-complacency was more than touched,—it was shattered, completely broken up. The ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... merry mowers, hale and strong, Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along The low green prairies of the sea. We shared the fishing off Boar's Head, And round the rocky Isles of Shoals The hake-broil on the driftwood coals; The chowder on the sand-beach made, Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot, With spoons of clam-shell from the pot. We heard the tales of witchcraft old, And dream and sign and marvel told To sleepy listeners as they lay Stretched idly on the salted hay, Adrift along the winding shores, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... later, my brother and I were riding along the road at about the same place, and we met a very miserable-looking specimen of humanity, driving a poor limping horse to a rickety wagon in which were some pieces of driftwood. My brother was in a "spell of the blues" at this time, and he remarked that he was coming to just that condition as fast as he could. The image and memory of this incident also came into consciousness as if it had been waiting repressed just under ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... rather thought that bears wore their skin tanned on the inside and lined, too. The next thing was to have a dinner of bear-meat, for, as Tommy well remembered, all bear-hunters ate bear-steaks. They were about to go down to the shore to hunt along for driftwood, when, their eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, they found a pile of wood in the corner of the cave, which satisfied them that at some time in the past this cave had been used by robbers or pirates, who probably had been driven away by this great bear, or possibly might ...
— Tommy Trots Visit to Santa Claus • Thomas Nelson Page
... were seen at intervals, and multitudes of people were along the bank gathering driftwood and "loot," and watching ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... our so-called great men are but featherless geese, possessing a superabundance of Gall— creatures of chance who ride like driftwood on the crest of a wave raised by forces they cannot comprehend; but they ride, and the world applauds them while it tramples better men beneath its brutal feet. Greatness and Gall, genius and goose-speech, sound and sense have become synonyms. If you fall on the wrong side ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... wake the faint yelping of the pack. Plunging into the first stream, we dashed for some distance along its bed. Emerging on the opposite bank, we sped on through marshy fields, skirting high hills and bounding down through dry watercourses, over shelving stones and accumulated barriers of driftwood; now panting up a steep ascent, and now resting for a moment to rub our shoes with the resinous needles of the pine; always within hearing of the dogs, whose fitful cries varied in volume in accordance with the broken ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... to the food supplies for the trip, I had a bag of meat, and another of buns, for my use when I should reach the village, where I was going to preach and to teach. I gathered a pile of clubs, which I cut from the driftwood on the shore, from which we had also obtained that for our fire. Then, putting the bag of meat, which was frozen hard, under my pillow, and giving the bag of buns to one of my Indians, with orders to guard it carefully, ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... driftwood enough to make a fire, and could get an old battered kettle and some water to make a soup of shell fish, "Little Sunshine" must be invited to dinner, for half the enjoyment ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... outgrown their youthful pleasure in "Maidenhood," "The Rainy Day," "The Bridge," "The Day is Done," verses whose simplicity lent themselves temptingly to parody. Yet such poems as "The Belfry of Bruges," "Seaweed," "The Fire of Driftwood," "The Arsenal at Springfield," "My Lost Youth," "The Children's Hour," and many another lyric, lose nothing with the lapse of time. There is fortunately infinite room for personal preference in this whole matter of poetry, but the confession of a lack of regard for Longfellow's ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... dried, and almost immediately thereafter a squatter took possession of the Sawdust Pile. Across the neck of the little promontory, and in line with extreme high-water mark on each side, he erected a driftwood fence; he had a canvas, driftwood, and corrugated-iron shanty well under way when Hector McKaye appeared on the scene and ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... composed of black slaty shingle, we found the skeleton of a whale from which the baleen was absent; also a quantity of driftwood, some of it twelve inches in diameter; a wooden wedge; a barrel-stave; a piece of a boat's spar and a fragment of a biscuit-box. The river, which we named Clark river, was about one hundred yards wide, two fathoms deep near the mouth, and rapid. From the ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... abdomen were a lovely dove grey; that soft tan grey, with a warm shade, almost suggestive of pink. I suppose the reason I thought of this was because at the time two pairs of doves, one on a heap of driftwood overhanging the river, and the other in an apple tree in the Aspy orchard a few rods away, were giving me much trouble, and I had dove grey on my ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... at that place three days, doctoring her wound, and then set off for home. She crossed the Ohio river, at the mouth of Great Kenhawa, on a log of driftwood, travelling only during the night, for fear of discovery—She subsisted on roots, herbs, green grapes, wild cherries and river muscles—and entirely exhausted by fatigue and hunger, sat down by the side of Greenbrier ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... inhabiting sluggish streams and ponds usually construct a conical winter house about three feet in diameter and from two to three feet in height. These houses are made of coarse grasses, rushes, branches of shrubs, and small pieces of driftwood, closely cemented together with stiff, clayey mud. The top of the house usually projects two feet or more above the water, and when sun-dried is so strong as to easily sustain the weight of a man. The walls are generally about six inches in thickness and are very difficult ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... where wilt thou be to-night? When the loosed storm breaks furiously? My driftwood fire will burn so bright! To what warm shelter can'st thou fly? I do not fear for thee, 'though wroth The tempest rushes through the sky. For are we not GOD'S children both, Thou little sandpiper ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... slanted down in sheets and the broken plain, thoroughly saturated, held the water in pools or sent it down the steep sides of the arroyo, to feed the turbulent flood which swept along the bottom, foam-flecked and covered with swiftly moving driftwood. Around a bend in the arroyo, where the angry water flung itself against the ragged bulwark of rock and flashed away in a gleaming line of foam, a horseman appeared bending low in the saddle for better protection against ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... board from the ice. It is a very uninviting task and disagreeable procedure getting into an icy bed at night and in the morning getting into icy clothes." When both clothes and food were frozen and even the prospect of getting an occasional piece of driftwood was dim, one can imagine the situation and wonder at the endurance as well as the ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... the borders of the marsh, awoke their tingling nerves to the happy but fruitless chase. And when night came, too soon, and they pigged together around the warm ashes of their camp-fire, under the low lodge poles of their wigwam of dried mud, reeds, and driftwood, with the combined odors of fish, wood-smoke, and the warm salt breath of the marsh in their nostrils, they slept contentedly. The distant lights of the settlement went out one by one, the stars came out, very large ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... is at flood, with danger always present in floating trees and driftwood, muddy torrents coming from the melting snows of the Rocky Mountains. In the autumn the river falls, until in places there are mere trickles around the muddy banks. Navigation, perforce, had to be suspended. These were the conditions under which it was proposed to make of the Colorado the great ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... never think of making a fire of anything but driftwood. It makes the most wonderful, magical fire in the world. One could dream out stories for a whole evening from the wood alone. Here is a stick that must have been a part of a spar. Was it blown away from the mast ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... loomed a white mass of flame like the blast of a thousand furnaces, with tongues of fire piercing the night gloom. The sea was rocked by an explosion that reverberated over the waters like the crash of a million guns and tossed the submarine like a piece of driftwood. ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... seeing her look at Matey if they were to put the girl on some balanced equality with a fellow she was compelled to love. It seemed to them that he gave, and that she was a creature carried to him, like driftwood along the current of the flood, given, in spite of herself. When they saw those eyes of hers they were impressed with an idea of her as a voluntary giver too; pretty well the half to the bargain; and it confused their notion of feminine inferiority. They resolved to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... home, surely synonymous terms. And then, suddenly, a feeling of intense loneliness broke over her like a wave. She felt like a bit of driftwood, cast up upon a summer shore where flowers and verdure smiled on every side and all was peace; but at the next tide, once more the waters would engulf her and drag her back to the sparkling, restless ocean. She smiled to herself at the foolish simile even as she thought of it. It was absurd ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... the rope was fastened to the two boats, they were quickly drawn to the spot I had reached, when the men took out their cargoes and pulled them upon the ice. We found they were so much injured by striking against the ice, as to need a thorough overhauling, which we set about without delay. The driftwood, which lay along the shore in considerable quantities, now stood us in good need, as by means of it we were enabled to boil ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... a small venomous spider of New Zealand and Australia. The name is Maori. The scientific name is Latrodectus scelio, Thorel.In New Zealand, it is generally found on the beach under old driftwood; but in Australia it is found widely scattered over the Continent, and always frequents dark sheltered spots. The derivation may be from Kakati, verb, to sting, and po, night. Compare Kakapo. It is a dark-coloured spider, with a bright red or ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... for two years, De Soto came, in 1541, to the shore of a large river. This river was wide and muddy, and had a strong current which carried much driftwood along with it. De Soto learned from the Indians that it was called Mississippi, or ...
— Discoverers and Explorers • Edward R. Shaw
... and there were often rapids whose ascent necessitated disembarking from the canoes, while the bogas strained and teased the lumbering dugouts up over them. In places the stream was choked by fallen trees and tangled driftwood, until only a narrow, tortuous opening was left, through which the waters raced like a mill-course, making a heavy draft on the intuitive skill of the bogas. Often slender islets rose from the river; ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... I wired him to hold on to Eliphalet but to drop all the men he didn't need to handle the tug at the first convenient point and send them singly into the woods beyond Calderville to await instructions. This is a dead port; nothing but driftwood has landed here since the mill shut down ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... hard-fighting stock. She fell to wondering what her life would have been like had she been born a Chinese woman, or an Italian woman like those she saw, head-shawled or bareheaded, squat, ungainly and swarthy, who carried great loads of driftwood on their heads up from the beach. Then she laughed at her foolishness, remembered Billy and the four-roomed cottage on Pine Street, and went to bed with her mind filled for the hundredth time with the ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... doubt about Neb's pony making land, unless struck by some driftwood, or borne to the centre of the stream by the shifting force of the current. But if Neb had failed to retain his grip he might have been sucked under by the surge of waters. A hundred yards below he found them, dripping and weak from the struggle, yet otherwise unhurt. ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... sing new songs; for in many places thousands of boulders were hurled into their channels, roughening and half-damming them, compelling the waters to surge and roar in rapids where before they glided smoothly. Some of the streams were completely dammed; driftwood, leaves, etc., gradually filling the interstices between the boulders, thus giving rise to lakes and level reaches; and these again, after being gradually filled in, were changed to meadows, through ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... coming early that year, which gave an excuse for the fire in the big fireplace. This fire was made of that peculiar kind of driftwood whose flames show marvellous rainbow tints. Patty never tired of watching the strange-coloured blaze, and delighted in throwing on more chips and splinters from ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... the exact center of the most grew-some collection of human skulls and bones I have ever seen. Bones were strewn on the floor of the cave like driftwood. Skulls were grinning at us from every corner of the darkness. We had stumbled into a big grave where some of the Indians had hidden their dead away from the wolves after a battle. It may be that none of us were superstitious, ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... least. Until noon the canoe sped swiftly down the chasm without mishap. The stream, to which each mile added its contribution of flood water from the mountain tops, increased constantly in width and depth, but only now and then was there a rock to threaten their progress, and no driftwood at all. When the gold seekers landed for dinner they were confident of two things: that they had passed far beyond the mad hunter's reach, and were very near to the first waterfall. Memory of the thrilling experiences through which they had so recently run the gauntlet ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... darn elephant, too, Mr. Grigg," said Byram, looking up from a plate of fried ham that Miss Crystal, our "Trapeze Lady," had just cooked for him over our gypsy fires of driftwood. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... mussels bursting open their shells and exuding their moisture. They were large shellfish, running from three to six inches in length. The boys raked them out with sticks and placed them on a large piece of driftwood to cool. ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... driftwood and dried sea-weed filled the low roof and was reflected back to a cot, on which a woman lay with a living child beside her. Something dread and ineffable was conveyed by that stiffened form. The Jew, familiar ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... Lloyd, the young Englishman of the Reese River days, had also established himself. On Sundays, no doubt to give the tired mother a long rest, he would take little Bel to the beach out by old Fort Point, where he made swords for her out of driftwood, played at Jack the Giant-Killer, and told stories about Mr. and Mrs. Sea-Gull and what they said to each other. He even borrowed fairy-tale books from the public library in order to learn stories to tell his little friend on these Sunday outings. ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... tree jungle. Every now and then we see some bird or beast which we have not seen before outside of a Zoo; a grand eagle is in sight just now, no vulture this fellow; he looks twice the size of our golden eagle, and sits motionless on a piece of driftwood in the middle of a sandbank. I can only just make out his or her mate soaring against the woods on the hills behind. On a bank to our right there's a whole crowd of large birds—as we get closer I can count their feathers with my glasses; they are not beauties—vultures ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... was not going to be of any use, and one of them had got out of the window of the bridge onto the middle pier, with a long pole in his hand. It had an iron hook at the end, and it was the kind of pole that the men used to catch driftwood with and drag it ashore. When the people saw Blue Bob with that pole in his hand, they understood what he was up to. He was going to wait till the water brought the roof with Jim Leonard on it down to the bridge, and then catch the hook into the shingles and pull it up to the pier. The strongest ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... was a barren rock beyond the cliffs, and, in the autumn storms, was almost covered by the waves. The first thing they'd have to do, when they arrived, was to rebuild their refuge from the year before, roof it over with bits of driftwood and cover them with seaweed. That was to be their shelter at night, no matter what the weather. Nature had provided a landing-place, so that they'd no trouble with that, though the spot was so treacherous that one of them would have to ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... on the beach, and which is useful to play with when wading, and afterward to throw stones at. You take a piece of cork for the hull. Cut a line down the middle underneath and wedge a strip of slate in for a keel to keep her steady. Fix a piece of driftwood for a mast, and thread a piece of paper on ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Out of driftwood the castaways constructed a hut. Fish were in plenty, wild fowl offered easy mark, and in springtime the ice floes brought down the seal herds. There was no lack of food, but rescue seemed forever impossible; for no fishing craft would approach the demon-haunted isle. A year ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... rocks available, but along the shore she found quantities of driftwood deposited by the river at a slightly higher stage. These she gathered and piled far in the stern of the boat, until at last, to her immense relief, she saw the bow rise gently from the mud of the bank and the stern drift slowly with the current until it again lodged ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and the dark sets in so soon. It is all right later on; I rather enjoy the long evenings and a good fire, when I can afford a good one, but at first it is a little gloomy. So come and have supper with me. There is a good fire to-night, and a bit of driftwood that I got ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... no detraction from her unquestioned charm. Though she was nineteen she gave the effect of a high-spirited precocious child, and in the present glow of her youth and beauty all the men and women she had known were but driftwood on the ripples of her temperament. She had met other egotists—in fact she found that selfish people bored her rather less than unselfish people—but as yet there had not been one she had not eventually defeated and brought ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the tribes of red men, and by the help of the Great Spirit unite them into one people; make of them a dam to stay the flow of this mighty water, lest it utterly sweep away our forest and cast us like driftwood, broken and scattered, on the far-off shores beneath the setting sun. We have warned the white stranger to come no farther, but have spoken to the winds that hear not; we have entreated him to come ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... end-locked logs that form my cabin home. In truth, it is a terrible night to be afar from human companionship, with naught but this roaring desolation about and the air above filled with screeching terrors. Even through thick log walls I can hear the surf roaring among the rocks and beating the white driftwood like a thousand battering-rams, almost at my door. It is a night to make one shiver, and in the lulls of the storm the tall pines above me whistle and wail mournfully as they straighten their ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... against the rocks and trees, which till now had afforded us refuge: we therefore took advantage of the low tide, and moved about half a mile round a point to a small brook, which we had not observed before on account of the thick bushes and driftwood which concealed its mouth. Here we were more safe, but still cold and wet; our clothes and bedding rotten as well as wet, our baggage at a distance, and the canoes, our only means of escape from this place, at the mercy of the waves. Still, we continued ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its fulness. But a girl comes into his life—a beautiful bit of human driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and through his passionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life has to ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... be far gone indeed when an arrow point will not sting him to life. I was no longer a fever-riven log of driftwood. I knew where I was and what was happening. I had reached the Malhominis village. Working through the rice swamp, I had come into the main river too far to the west, but following the woman's voice I had floated back. I was caught in ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... abundance of fresh air, a current blowing part of the time in their faces, and part of the time in the opposite direction. This proved that there was a good draft in the elongated cave, but it was voted best not to take any chances, though there was plenty of dried driftwood on the tunnel floor, and this could have been used ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... towards some logs of driftwood on the upper sand, and she sank down upon them. He ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... yellow water. A cry arose from the opposite bank as the head of a man and horse struggled for a few moments against the battling current, and then were swept away amidst uprooted trees and whirling driftwood. ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... on with his hands and rested his feet on a pile of driftwood. A piece of floating debris struck the drift, sweeping it away. The man hung with his body immersed in the water. A pile of drift soon collected and he was enabled to get another insecure footing. Up the river there ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... ourselves comfortable on the shady bank, and while I busied myself in splitting the fish and pinning it open on a bit of board that I had found in a pile of driftwood, and setting it up before the fire to broil, my new companion entertained me with the sweetest and friendliest talk that I ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... growing belief that some mysterious power was leading him—he knew not whither—a feeling that he was soon to face some ghastly experience, came like an icy hand grasping his in the dark. He could not shake that feeling off, and as he gathered driftwood, bits of dead spruce—anything that would burn, and piled the fuel near his shelter—his dread increased. What strange spell was it that had kept him four hours beside that wall-enclosed harbor unconscious of the lapse of time? ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... American women visit each other and give dinners, which, to the men who live in helpless subjection to an ignorant native cook, are less a social than a gastronomic joy. If we are near the seashore, we make up picnics on the beach, swim, dig clams, and cook supper over a fire of driftwood. If thirst overtakes us, we send a native up a tree for green cocoanuts. He cuts a lip-shaped hole in the shell with two strokes of his bolo, and there is water, crystal clear and fresh. The men hunt snipe and wild ducks, and ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... one arm resting on the mantelpiece, the firelight glowing on her black dress. Her clever speculative eyes were fixed on the smouldering logs of driftwood. Lucille was moving about the room, exhibiting by her manner that impatience which the mention of my ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... early dawn. He had been dreaming that he and Maud Lindesay were walking on the shore together. It was a lonely beach with great driftwood logs whereon they sat and rested ere they took hands again and walked forth on their way. In his dream Maud was kind, her teasing, disdainful mood quite gone. So Sholto awoke smiling, but in a moment he wished that he ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... of escaping from the crate. He held a freshly plucked crow in his hand, and in reply to my question climbed slowly on a platform of sand which ran in front of the holes, and commenced lighting a fire there in silence. Dried bents, sand-poppies, and driftwood burn quickly; and I derived much consolation from the fact that he lit them with an ordinary sulphur-match. When they were in a bright glow, and the crow was neatly spitted in front thereof, Gunga Dass began without ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the big stone, and pushed with such good-will that it slipped and went crashing into the stream, while the party went off at full speed after the horse. The poor animal was found at last stranded amid a mass of driftwood, with its saddle and baggage gone, but beyond this and the fright, no ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... abundance, broken only by moments of firmer faith, and so of larger, happier possession, that make the poverty-stricken ordinary days appear ten times more poverty-stricken. The channel lies dry, a waste chaos of white stones and driftwood for long months, and only for an hour or two after the clouds have burst on the mountains does the stream fill it from bank to bank. Do not many of us remember moments of a far deeper and more earnest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... busy for the last few minutes gathering driftwood and getting a fire started. The girls had decided to cook dinner down on the beach in order to show the visitors their skill in cooking in the most primitive way. A big kettle of clams was hung over a fire all its own, while another fire was kindled between two long logs, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... latter to the lake shore. There he hid his rifle and his supplies in the hollow of a tree, so that he might have greater freedom of action. Then he worked his way cautiously toward the rude breastworks facing the blockhouse. A small fire of driftwood burned dimly behind these, and about it sat several blanketed figures. In no other direction was there ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... easy matter for the boys to swim also, but they preferred to use a raft. Accordingly, they set to work, and it did not take them long to gather enough logs and driftwood to float all three. These were deftly fastened together by Deerfoot, who used hickory withes for that purpose, and, then, with a long pole which he cut and trimmed with his tomahawk, he ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... short and chubby fingers a stout sea-grass line was running out to the accumulated driftwood in the eddy below the wharf-boat. Suddenly there came a ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... decide his destiny for good or evil, was fast approaching. For years previously he had given up the struggle against the latter, and had sunk deep in moral apathy, making greater effort to doubt everything concerning God than to believe. Then he had lost even his earthly ambition, and become mere driftwood on the tide of time. But a sweet, true woman was doing a work for him like that of Elsie for Prince Henry in the Golden Legend. A consciousness of power to take up his burden again and be a man among men was coming back, and old Daddy Tuggar's words were growing ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... driftwood for her fire. There is a little bay not far from here, The shingle of it a thronging city of flies, Feeding on the dead weed that mounds the beach; And the sea hoards there its vain avarice,— Old flotsam, and decaying trash of ships. An arm of reef half locks it in, and holds ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... their boats upon the fishing banks on days when a treacherous calm lures them seaward, and they can rarely be induced to own that the monsoon has in truth broken, until the beaches have been strewn with driftwood from a dozen wrecks. They long for the open main when they are not upon it, and I have seen a party of Kelantan fishermen half drunk with joy at finding themselves dancing through a stormy sea in an unseaworthy craft ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... leaders crawled to the top of the break. Sheltered by a couple of sage-bushes and lying flat to the ground, Wilbur looked over and down upon the beach. The first object he made out was a crazy, roofless house, built of driftwood, the chinks plastered with 'dobe mud, the ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... traveler," said Old Mother Nature. He really loves to travel up and down the Laughing Brook, even for long distances. Wherever there is plenty of driftwood and rubbish, Billy is quite at home, being so slender he can slip under all kinds of places and into all sorts of holes. Quick as he is on land, he is not so quick as his Cousin Shadow; and good swimmer as he is, he isn't so good as his bigger cousin, Little Joe Otter. ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... forehead in the rear among a waste of juniper-bushes and the wild growth of a broken pasture. The village was picturesque in the variety of its edifices, though all were rude. Here stood a little old hovel, built, perhaps, of driftwood, there a row of boat-houses, and beyond them a two-story dwelling of dark and weatherbeaten aspect, the whole intermixed with one or two snug cottages painted white, a sufficiency of pig-styes and a shoemaker's ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... And once, hugging the coast, came a half-breed paddling a canoe with a small diamond- shaped sail, filled with trout. The cliff above me was crowned with beds of blue flowers, whose names I did not know. Against the little gulfs and coasts of rock at my feet were washing a few white logs of driftwood. I wondered if they could have floated across from England, or if they could be from the Titanic. The sun was very hot, the sky a clear light blue, almost cloudless, like an English sky, and the water seemed fairly deep. ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... finished our supper we beat the willow thicket for driftwood. By the time we had collected enough, night had fallen, and the pungent, weedy smell from the shore increased with the coolness. We threw ourselves down about the fire and made another futile effort to show Percy Pound the Little Dipper. We had ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... as if a curtain had been drawn, the outlines of a rough shanty appeared in front of them. It was a tumble-down sort of a place, seemingly made of driftwood and old sacks and bits of canvas. From a rusty iron stove-pipe on top, a feeble column of ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... could barely reach the sand-spit on the other shore, though the passage was not fifty feet across. But she managed to struggle ashore and secure her end of the net by jamming the pole between some logs of driftwood which lay upon the sand. Then, with a loud, merry laugh, she bade me run up to the house and bring her a petticoat and bodice, and leaping into the water she swam across again and helped Will to properly secure his end of the net to the bole ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... us across. As for our horses, a keel boat must be sent after these, and Monsieur Gratiot would no doubt easily arrange for this. And so we found ourselves, about five o'clock on that Saturday evening, embarked in a wide pirogue on the current, dodging the driftwood, avoiding the eddies, and drawing near to a village set on a low bluff on the Spanish side and gleaming white among the trees. And as I looked, the thought came again like a twinge of pain that Mrs. Temple and Riddle might be there, thinking themselves secure in this spot, so ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... had noticed that the shores of Greenland were strewn with driftwood of a kind also found on the shores ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 56, December 2, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of stone with a flag flying above its battlements stood at a little distance, pressed against the rocks, as if beating back the encroaching surges; between him and the fort but farther inland was a lagoon with a number of dilapidated, rudely patched cabins or cottages, like stranded driftwood around its shore. But there was no mansion, no block of houses, no street, not another habitation or ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... wind fell quite away, but still we drifted southward, passing Rocky Point and peering curiously into Pilot Boat Cove, which looked so strangely unfamiliar to me from the sea, though I had fished in its trout-brooks many a day, and had hauled driftwood from the rocky beach to Johnson's ranch in times gone by. The tide turned after sundown, and Captain Booden thought we ought to get a bit of wind then; but it did not come, and the fog crept up and up the glassy sea, rolling in huge wreaths ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... glance he saw that nearly the whole upper floor of the building had been converted into one gigantic room. Near a big stone fireplace, where burning driftwood sent up its many tinted flames, Heinrich stood rigidly at attention. Hans, the dachshund, crouched at his feet. When the dog started to meet Parker a guttural ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... later, he went up the river bank, one evening, with a fishing rod, and stopped at dusk at the tail of the Grand Rapid. He had gone farther than he meant and was tired after scrambling across slippery rocks and among the driftwood that lay about the bank. There was, however, a shorter way back, and lighting his pipe he sat down upon ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... a man did appear on the beach the horse whirled and dashed into the woods. But he ran only a short distance. Soon he picked his way back to the lake shore and gazed curiously at the intruder. The man was making a fire of driftwood. Blue Blazes approached him cautiously. The man was bending over the fire, fanning it with his hat. In a moment he ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... quite likely. Human natur' is little better than a log of driftwood, when the life that was breathed into its nostrils is departed. That Iroquois will never harm any one more; but yonder skulking savage is bent on taking the scalp of my best and most ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... Juana could be learned. Dan Morrissey had been faithful, but his ardent spirit outran his detective skill and his initiative advanced no farther afield than a daily round of the hospitals and temporary shelters of the city's driftwood, and a hopeless concentration on the neighborhood from which the aged ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... notice—seemingly storing it up against future needs. But the evening came when the laughing river gurgled into Lake Nameless, and that night they camped below its frowning shores on a narrow strip of beach, where the driftwood of many years and many storms had stranded, seemingly forever. All three had rolled into blankets, with sleep hovering above and about them, when, noiselessly as the dawn, Fox-Foot slipped from his bed like an eel, dipped under the tent, and ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... me tonight, a piece of driftwood at thirty-five, and all for the want of money enough to buy an automobile and take the darned-fool world by storm on its vain side! You can't scratch it with a diamond on its reasoning side—I've scratched away on it ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... along the beach yesterday, looking at driftwood and scales and stones, I came upon a tiny bit of plate glass. How it ever got there, is more than I can make out; but the thing seems a mistake, a very lie, to look at. Would any fisherman, now, have rowed out here with it ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... the water. It was muddy, but it gave a wavering reflection as the wind ruffled it; now and then a piece of driftwood glided from under the bridge, and was borne along toward the factory dam. Her mind flashed round to the factory, and home, and the Christmas tree for to-morrow, and she laughed bitterly. Jump! She had lost him, all that had been keeping her up so long—he never ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... of the house," calmly replied Jack, seating himself on a big log of driftwood, once the rib of a schooner that went ashore on the dangerous shoals off Hampton and ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... up he met an aged man, who had been gathering driftwood in the torrent-bed. He had laid down his fagot in the road, and was trying to lift it again to his shoulder. And when he saw Theseus, he called ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... narrow beach we flit, One little sandpiper and I; And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered driftwood bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit,— One ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... began to run and in a brief time arrived at the rude structure, and after a hasty inspection they placed the two bundles on the piers beneath the bridge and then covered them with the driftwood that had been cast up on the bank of the stream when its waters had been swelled by ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... Emory to carry out the object confided to him, yet all proved failures. Bayou Sorrel, Lake Chicot, Grand River, and the Plaquemine itself, from both ends of the stream, were thoroughly explored, but only to find the bayous choked with driftwood impossible to remove, and until removed rendering the streams impassable. Two of these drifts in Bayou Sorrel were carefully examined by Captain Henry Cochen, of the 173d New York. The first he reported to be about a mile in length, ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... retired to its narrow channel, and examine piece after piece of the rubbish that has been lodged here and there against a knoll or some willows, a patch of rushes or dead grass. We are studying the different modes by which plants travel. In the driftwood may be found dry fruits of the bladder nut, brown and light, an inch and a half in diameter. See how tough they are; they seem to be perfectly tight, and even if one happens to have a hole punched in ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... deep and clear channel of a mile in width separates these islands, the larger of which is surrounded completely, and the smaller partially, by an extensive reef. The former, or western one, is merely a long strip of heaped-up coral and shells, with a little sand and some driftwood running parallel to the outer edge of the reef, in the direction of the prevailing wind. It is overrun with low bushes, and a few other plants, such as the large purple-flowered Bossioea, and Ipomoea maritima. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... clean gone I gathered me brush and driftwood, and striking flint and steel soon had a fire going and set about cooking certain strips of dried goat's flesh for my breakfast. Whiles this was a-doing I was startled by a sudden clatter upon the cliff above and down comes a great boulder, ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... up her mane of soft, black hair. "You will surely help me to launch the boat." But no hand would help her. They saw the impetuous girl going to doom, and they would not be a party to her madness. Getting three or four round pieces of driftwood, which were slippery with water-slime, she laid them along the dock; two other billets she placed under the boat's keel. Then gathering her strength for one pull, she sent the boat into the churning surf. One of the fishermen advanced to detain her, but she waved him ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... scorn, "what's the matter with our building a shelter of logs, bark and driftwood on the shore of the lake, if the worst strikes us? It wouldn't be the first time we'd done such a thing ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... valour onward. In the last attack He rode before us as the crested wave That leads the flood; and lo, our enemies Were broken like a dam of river-reeds. The flying King encircled by his guard Was lodged like driftwood on a little hill. Then Naaman, who led our foremost band Of whirlwind riders, hammered through the hedge Of spearmen, brandishing the golden yoke. "Take back this gift," he cried; and shattered it On Shalmaneser's helmet. So the fight Dissolved ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... floors of red concrete—bordered with stone boxes for flowers and handsomely designed stone benches, its long walks and drives but newly begun, its stretch of beach, say a half mile away and possibly a mile and a half long, to be left, as he remarked, "au naturel," driftwood, stones and all, struck me most favorably. Only one long pier for visiting yachts was to be built, and a certain stretch of beach, not over three hundred feet, cleared for bath houses and a smooth beach. On one spot of land, a high hummock reaching out into the sea, had already been erected ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... constructed with a considerable curve, the convex side towards the stream. Frequently, in such cases, if there is any small island in the centre, it is taken advantage of, and the dam is built out to it from either bank. They make use of a variety of materials; employing driftwood when it can be obtained, to save themselves the trouble of cutting down trees. This they tow to the spot, and sink it horizontally with mud and stones. They also employ pieces of green willows, birch, and poplars, intermixing the whole with mud and gravel, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... last. A young cow, as fat as one could wish, was thrown on the outside by some movement of the herd, caught, as it were, like a piece of driftwood in an eddy, and Dick instantly fired at her. She staggered and went down, but at the same instant a huge, shaggy bull careened against Dick and his horse. It was not so much a charge as an accident, the chance of Dick's getting in ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... afternoon we landed. The island Pitsiolak, which forms two at high water, is low and flat, overgrown with Empetrum and Rubus Chamoemorus, (Akpik-berries). Quantities of driftwood float about the shores. The jasper occurred here again. This island may be about four or five miles long, and, at low water, is connected with other islands to the north. By the help of our glasses we could perceive woods on the continent, and the Esquimaux thought they discovered ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... escape the flood that was coming, but not very many got through. Some of the people asked Elder Brother to help them, but he did not answer. Only Coyote he answered. He told Coyote to find a big log and sit on it, so that he would float on the surface of the water with the driftwood. Elder Brother got into a big olla which he had made, and closed it tight. So he rolled along on the ground under the olla. He sang a magic song as he climbed into ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... and made down upon its outer tip where the breeze tended to thin the plague of insects. They were all old-stagers in the ways of camplife, so there was no lost motion or bickering as to their respective duties. Their preparations were simple. First they built a circle of smudges out of wet driftwood, and inside this Lee kindled a camp-fire of dry sticks, upon which he cooked, protected by the smoke of the others, while Gale went back to the edge of the forest and felled a dozen small firs, the branches ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... side. It was like crossing from Dover to Calais on the ice. The passage made, the Alaskan mainland was reached once more, the Seward Peninsula left behind us, and our way lay across desolate, low-lying tundra strewn with driftwood and hollowed out here and there into little lagoons. Evidently the waves sweep clean across it in stormy weather when the sound is open; a salt marsh. In the midst of it reared a sort of lookout tripod of driftwood thirty or forty feet high, lashed and ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck |
