"Great Wall" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to quicken the most sluggish zeal, the most retrograde "patriotism"? For without such mediation, misunderstanding, envy, hate, mistrust still erect barriers between the races of mankind more impassable than continents or seas or the great wall of Ch'in Chi. This is a part not for the future merely, it is one to which Britain is already by her past committed. The task is great, for between civilization and barbarism, the vanguard and the rearguard of humanity, suspicion, rivalry, and ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... is to be within one great enclosure; all that is done for the bodily or mental welfare of the child is to be done within this great wall. It has been said that the children could attend public worship elsewhere. Where is the proof of this? There is no such provision in the devise; there is nothing said about it in any part of Mr. Girard's will; and I ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... our era (B. C. 1108,) the unerring magnet that points so steadily to the pole, was discovered by this ingenious people; and who may say what other progress may have been made in science and literature up to B. C. 220, when the cruel and ambitious Che-Hwang-te, who, having finished the Great Wall, and wishing to date the foundation of his empire from his reign, collected and burned all such records as he could obtain, and destroyed by a cruel death the wise men within ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... the Bernese Oberland and the Pennine Alps, and between them runs a deep trench called the valley of the Rhone. Take Mont Blanc in the west and a peak called the Crystal Peak over the Val Bavona on the east, and they are the flanking bastions of one great wall, the Pennine Alps. Take the Diablerets on the west, and the Wetterhorn on the east, and they are the flanking bastions of another great wall, the Bernese Oberland. And these two walls are parallel, with ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... make waves like a great wall. He did it very naturally, and he draws a great deal better than those rubbishy old pictures in ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... days, I lingered reflecting, and even composing (dichtete), by the Pine-chasms of Vaucluse; and in that clear Lakelet moistened my bread. I have sat under the Palm-trees of Tadmor; smoked a pipe among the ruins of Babylon. The great Wall of China I have seen; and can testify that it is of gray brick, coped and covered with granite, and shows only second-rate masonry.—Great Events, also, have not I witnessed? Kings sweated down (ausgemergelt) into Berlin-and-Milan Customhouse-Officers; the World well ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... put down as 'Toroczko.' It is in a mountain gorge, entered by a narrow path along the riverside and through a cleft in the rocks. The northern side of this narrow ravine, being in some measure exposed to the southern sun, is clothed with woods; the southern is a great wall of bare rock rising in terraces, or giant steps, that might well suggest the dreariness and desolation of a landscape in the moon. This barren expanse of naked rock is called the Szekler Stone, and was formerly surmounted by the castle of a ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... of ice! They could see where it came out of a hollow place between two hills. It looked just like a river, only it was frozen solid, and the end of it, where it came into the sea, was broken off like a great wall of ice, and there were cakes of ice ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... expressly ascribed to Nebuchadnezzar by the ancient writers are the following: He built the great wall of Babylon, which, according to the lowest estimate, must have contained more than 500,000,000 square feet of solid masonry, and must have required three or four times that number of bricks. He constructed a new and magnificent palace in the neighborhood of the ancient residence of the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... early autumn of the year 1771, Kien Long, the Emperor of China, was pursuing his amusements in a wild frontier district lying on the outside of the Great Wall. For many hundred square leagues the country was desolate of inhabitants, but rich in woods of ancient growth, and overrun with game of every description. In a central spot of this solitary region, the Emperor had built a gorgeous hunting-lodge, to which he resorted ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... a chopper breaks kindling wood, enforced his words. Canoes were at once beached and tarpaulins drawn over the bales of provisions. The men struggled to hoist a tent; but gusts of wind tossed the canvas above their heads, and before the pegs were driven a great wall of rain-drift drenched every one to the skin. By sundown the storm had gone southeast and we unrighteously consoled ourselves that it would probably disorganize the Hudson's Bay brigade as much as it had ours. Plainly, we were there for the ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the lecturer continued, "while Edison was with the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company, he often heard Jay Gould and 'Jim' Fisk, the great Wall Street operators of that day, talk over the money market. At night he ate his lunches in the coffee-house in Printing House Square, where he used to meet Henry J. Raymond, founder of The New York Times, Horace Greeley of the Tribune ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... That same year saw the death of her youthful acquaintance, Attila the Hun, that fierce barbarian whom men had called the "Scourge of God." His mighty empire stretched from the great wall of China to the Western Alps; but, though he ravaged the lands of both eastern and western Rome, he seems to have been so managed or controlled by the wise and peaceful measures of the girl regent, that his destroying hordes never troubled the splendid city ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... no place," said Rob, as they glided out of the lily field into clear water, the great wall of trees tangled together with creepers being now about two hundred ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... the afternoon we found ourselves out of this "Region of Weir." Great wall rocks soared above us. Consulting our map, we found that we were nearing Eagle Rapids, the first of a turbulent series. I had fondly anticipated shooting them all under power. So once more I decided to go over that engine. We landed at the wooded mouth of ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... more rapids and I got out above one of them to walk. I climbed up the river wall to the high, sandy terrace above. This great wall of packed boulders is one of the most characteristic features of the lower river. It is thrown up by the action of ice in the spring floods, and varies all the way from twenty feet at its beginning to fifty and sixty feet farther down. One of the remarkable ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... his father's seat of Bamburgh, also fell before their fierce onslaught. His brother Oswald now took command of the Bernicians and prepared to lead them against the foe. Oswald posted his men in a strong position on the north side of the great Wall; and, setting up a huge cross of wood, called upon all his followers to bow before the God of whom he had learnt during his exile in Iona, and to pray to Him for victory. His army obeyed, and, in the battle which ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... I—" he stammered, staring at her, but even as he looked a great wall of gold seemed to rise between them and shut her from him. "Forgive me," he muttered brokenly; "I can't ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... about it; perhaps because half of them never saw it, and took its character from hearsay; the other half, like mankind every where, stupidly admiring what is said to be admirable. It is like a crack in a great wall, at the bottom of which is a river, sometimes inundated, sometimes dry; the passage narrow, the sides craggy, bare, lofty and perpendicular; its whole ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... had installed for facilitating housekeeping in her day-to-day camps—folding beds, a cracker-box pantry, a planed board for table, racks for groceries and the like, all strung alongside the car, so numerous and extensive that by the time the Hickory Bend Outing Club's great wall tent had been added you barely could see the wheels underneath the moving mass. From the midst of all projected the steering wheel, which Paw grasped as he sat, with only the top of his hat visible to the naked eye. Maw rode beside him somewhere. I never was able satisfactorily to determine ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... the Chinese as the Lu-kue River, and the geographies of the present dynasty clearly identify it as such. The T'ien-Shan are sometimes called the K'i-lien Shan, and the word K'i-lien is otherwise well established along the line of the Great Wall." (E.H. PARKER, Asiatic Quart. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... shrine. Evelyn leaned back in her seat, with her head resting against the window, and did not speak. All her animation of the morning had vanished. She looked ghastly. Maria kept glancing furtively at her. She herself looked nearly as pale as Evelyn. She realized that she was face to face with a great wall of problem. She was as unhappy as Evelyn, but she was stronger to bear unhappiness. She had philosophy, and logic, and her young sister was a creature of pure emotion, and at the same time she was so innocent and ignorant ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... more than two hundred years before our era, constructed that great wall which was not able to save them from the invasion of the Tartars. The Egyptians, three thousand years before, had overloaded the earth with their astonishing pyramids, which had a base of about ninety thousand square ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... your fame reaches as far as dawn itself. Surely when the Achaeans have gone home with their ships, you can shatter their wall and fling it into the sea; you can cover the beach with sand again, and the great wall of the Achaeans will then ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... rational world. She could understand it—understand the green crabs with white-bleached claws that scuttled before her and which she could see pasturing on green-weeded rocks when the tide was low. Here, hopelessly man-made as the great wall was, nothing seemed artificial. There were no men here, no laws nor conflicts of men. The tide flowed and ebbed; the sun rose and set; regularly each afternoon the brave west wind came romping in through the ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... peoples, and since the rulers needed their armed forces for their struggles within China, a beginning was made with the building of frontier walls, to prevent sudden raids of the northern peoples against the peasant settlements. Thus came into existence the early forms of the "Great Wall of China". This provided for the first time a visible frontier between Chinese and non-Chinese. Along this frontier, just as by the walls of towns, great markets were held at which Chinese peasants bartered their produce ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... plain in the Chinese Tartary, only eighty leagues from the great wall, was found by the missionaries to be three thousand geometrical paces above the level of the sea. Montesquieu, who has used, and abused, the relations of travellers, deduces the revolutions of Asia from this important ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... moraine once blocked off Billington sea from the ocean, but Town Brook released it. Long before the Pilgrims came it had cut its valley through the great wall of gravel and occupied it in peace till latter day highways and factories came to vex it. In spite of these, unhampered bits of the original brook show in Plymouth itself and you are not far out of town before you see more ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... and after long journeying they came in sight of the great wall and at last reached the place from which they had started. They had been away twelve months in all, and the people were heartily glad to see them, especially when they heard that Hormuz had been killed and saw his body. They had worked ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... is the third hero who is named in the calendar, and some of his descendants still reside in the town of Teopisca, where they are known as Votans. He is sometimes referred to as Lord of the Sacred Drum, and he is said to have seen the great wall (which must have been the Tower of Babel), and to have divided this land among the Indians, and given to each ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... hovels. A dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the manager's hut, vanished, then, a second or so after, the doorway itself vanished, too. We stopped, and the silence driven away by the stamping of our feet flowed back again from the recesses of the land. The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... "Opera," vol. ii., Migne edition, p. 335. Richard, of Cirencester, says that the Attacotes lived on the shores of the Clyde, beyond the great wall ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... on, the green glow became brighter and brighter, and it seemed that at last they were nearing the end of their travels. Yet it was afternoon before they came to the great wall that surrounded the City. It was high and thick and of a ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... ideal lovers' days, with their punt moored at night amongst the lilies, where her kisses seemed to come to him with an aroma and wonder born of the spot. Then there came a morning when he found a cloud on her face. She was looking at the great wall, and away at the minaret beyond. They had heard from the butler that Sir Timothy had spent the night at the villa, and that preparations were on hand for another of his wonderful parties. Francis, who was swift to read her thoughts, led her away ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... house one has a view of the great wall of mountains that form the western and older—older geologically—end of the island, in which lies the famous Iao Valley, which I have already described. We judge, from the much deeper marks of rain erosion, ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... system. He started to corral the insurgents by a chain of blockhouses and barbed wire fences from ocean to sea—the first completely guarded cross-country line since the frontier walls of the Roman Empire in Europe and the Great Wall of China in Asia. He then proceeded to starve out the insurgents by destroying all the food in the areas to which they were confined. As the revolutionists lived largely on the pillage of plantations in their neighborhood, this policy involved the destruction ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... Trans-Siberian Railway southward from Sungari through Manchuria to Tachi-chao near Mukden. From there one branch runs southward to Port Arthur and Dalny and another southwestward to Shan-hai Kwan, where the great Wall of China touches the sea. As connection is made at that point with the Imperial Railway to Taku, Tien-tsin and Peking, Moscow 5,746 miles away, is brought within seventeen days of Peking. Thus, Russian influence had an almost ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... comrades and soon found out that he was lost. He wandered about for a long time, and at last he spied what looked like a mountain range in the distance. He journeyed toward it as fast as he could travel, and when he got near to it he was surprised to find out that it was really a high wall. It was the great wall which bounds the land of the giants. The ruler of the country was an enormous giant whose head reached almost to the clouds. The giant's wife was nearly as enormous as he was, and their only child was as tall as her mother. Her ...
— Tales of Giants from Brazil • Elsie Spicer Eells
... lake is strangely overflown, and we are desperate about turf, being forced to buy it three miles off: and Mrs. Johnson (God help her!) gives you many a curse. Your mason is come, but cannot yet work upon your garden. Neither can I agree with him about the great wall. For the rest, vide the letter you will have on Monday, if ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... went with loosened rein, while the young Roman's eyes raised to the great wall towering over him had more of admiration and a generous foe's appreciation of his enemy's strength than of the note-making search ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... to make better use of the soil. This explains the easy intrusion of the English colonists into the sparsely tenanted territory of the Indians, of the agricultural Chinese into the pasture lands of the Mongols beyond the Great Wall, of the American pioneers into the hunting grounds of the Hudson Bay Company in the disputed Oregon country.[106] The frail bonds which unite these lower societies to their soil are easily ruptured and the people themselves dislodged, while their land is appropriated by ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the city of Manator and above the babel of human discords rising from the crowded mass that filled the seats of the stadium below. It called the players for the first game, and simultaneously there fluttered to the peaks of a thousand staffs on tower and battlement and the great wall of the stadium the rich, gay pennons of the fighting chiefs of Manator. Thus was marked the opening of The Jeddak's Games, the most important of the year and second only to ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not bring. I have received a baptism standing here, purer than fire, gentle as dew, yet deep and pervading as ocean. I cannot describe what I mean, but I feel it. Before I came, it seemed as if a great wall of adamant rose between me and heaven; now there is nothing but this ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... sentence came to her mind and she flamed at the recollection. Yes, it did take the whole valley to hold her, the valley which was as much a part of her as her eyes which beheld it. There were moments when she stood under the hazy autumn sky, so acutely conscious of every line and color of the great wall of mountains surrounding her that she grew in very fact to be an indivisible portion of the whole—felt herself as actually rooted to that soil and as permanent under that sky as the great ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... have entered into an eternal agreement, pledged their faith one to another, and have been calling upon Heaven for help; therefore they declare that no flag will be lowered, and no gun will be silent until the great wall around the city of their foes shall fall, either at a long blast of the horn or a continuous ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... gods in no wise appear visibly to all. But Odysseus was ware of her and the dogs likewise, which barked not, but with a low whine shrank cowering to the far side of the steading. Then she nodded at him with bent brows, and goodly Odysseus perceived it, and came forth from the room, past the great wall of the yard, and stood before her, and ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... attacks, each increasing in strength and proving more disastrous to us than the first, were made upon us. But our Maxims kept up their rattle, and from every part of the great wall of paving stones, furniture, trees and heaped-up miscellaneous articles, there poured out volley after ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... rectangular oblong, behind which a man could stand untouched and untouchable. And that is the kind of shield, says Paul, which we are to have—no little defence which may protect some part of the nature, but a great wall, behind which he who crouches ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... As a barrier against the incursions of the Huns, he began the erection of the celebrated Chinese Wall, a great rampart extending for about 1500 miles along the northern frontier of the country. [Footnote: The Great Wall is one of the most remarkable works of man. "It is," says Dr. Williams, "the only artificial structure which would arrest attention in a hasty survey of the globe." It has been estimated that there is more than seventy times ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... national life, have continued. The authentic history of China commences some two thousand years before Christ, and a thousand years in this history is like a century in that of any other people. The oral language of China has continued the same that it is now for thirty centuries. The great wall bounding the empire on the north, which is twelve hundred and forty miles long and twenty feet high, with towers every few hundred yards,—which crosses mountain ridges, descends into valleys, and is carried over rivers ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... sketched, as far as I am able, the topography of the mesilla, and described its great wall of circumvallation, I now turn to the ruins which cover its upper surface, starting for their survey from the transverse wall of the old church-yard, 10 m.—33 ft.—north of the church, and proceeding thence northward along the ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... that from the threshold to the inmost chamber, and round them was a frieze of blue' (kuanos); while fresco paintings in several of the rooms exhibited the spiral and rosette decoration of Orchomenos and Egypt. But perhaps the most interesting find was the remains of a great wall-painting in which a mighty bull is represented charging at full speed, while an athlete, clinging to the monster's horn with one hand, vaults over his back—a picture which is the first important example of the now well-known and numerous set of similar representations ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... forms which they would have taken, 'si qua fata aspera rupissent.' Among these still-born Chesters, Newcastle-upon-Tyne may fairly rank first. It stands on the Roman site, called, from its bridge across the Tyne, Pons Aelii, and known later on, from its position on the great wall, as Ad Murum. Under the early English, after their conversion to Christianity, the monks became the accepted inheritors of Roman ruins; and the small monastery which was established here procured it the English name of Muneca-ceaster, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... up," Corliss advised, as they slipped into an eddy and drifted with the back-tide under the great wall of rim-ice. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... the great wall of tumbled rocks on his right, and the sudden remembrance of his previous passage over it, set him wondering if it might not be possible to find better shelter in some of those fissures across which he had had to swing himself by the hands on the ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... while the climbing was easy, but at length they came to a great wall of rock, a hundred fathoms high, on which no fox might find a foothold, nor anything that had ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... thirty years it is this rice which has been served at my table. The grain is elongate and of a reddish colour, but it has a sweet smell and very pleasant taste. It is called Vu-mi, Imperial rice, because it was first cultivated in my gardens. It is the only sort which can ripen north of the great wall, where the winter ends late and begins very early; but in the southern provinces, where the climate is milder and the land more fertile, two harvests a year may be easily obtained, and it is for me a sweet reflection to have procured this advantage for ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Jerusalem and provoked a great uprising of the people whom he called to follow him through the gates of the city, which they did, and over the hills as far as Jordan. The current of the river, he said, will stop, and the water rise up in a great wall as soon as I impose my hands. We have no knowledge if the waters would have obeyed his bidding, for before the waters had time to divide a Roman soldier struck off the prophet's head and carried it to Jerusalem on a spear, where the sight of it was well received by the ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... I went way on, 'round where the path turns behind the hill. And after I had walked a little way, I came to a high wall—built right up into the sky. At first I thought I had discovered the 'ends of the earth,' or perhaps I had somehow come to the great wall of China. But after walking a long way I came to a large gate, and over it was printed in beautiful gold letters, 'Santa Claus Land,' and the letters were large enough for a baby ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman
... work-people. And when the King and the princes went riding through the streets on great occasions, these people used to hang out beautiful pieces of cloth of many colours—red and blue and gold—so that the curious narrow streets looked like fairyland. The great wall was a protection to all the people who lived inside, and made the palace and houses like a ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... then have the honor of being permitted to accompany him to Vienna. His Imperial Majesty is a strict and punctilious lord, and has calculated to the very day and hour when I may again reach the imperial palace. For our interview here he allowed me one hour; and, lo! the cock of your great wall clock had just stepped out and crowed eleven as I entered your room, and is already here, crowing twelve as loud as he can. It is therefore time for me to depart. I have briefly made you acquainted with the Emperor's intentions and desires, and your wise and fertile brain will know how to enlarge ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... time of this Mongol invasion, the Manchus, a nomadic tribe, gathered up their portable tents and fled into a province lying beyond the Great Wall, permanently occupying the region now called Manchuria. Remote and obscure, the Manchus were almost unknown to the Chinese until the year 1580, when Tai-Tsu, a remarkable man and born leader, on account of grievances suffered by ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... So ours shall be The sufferance, perishing in our native home, If for long season they beleaguer us. No food, if we be pent within our walls, Shall Thebe send us, nor Maeonia wine, But wretchedly by famine shall we die, Though the great wall stand firm. Nay, though our lot Should be to escape that evil death and doom, And not by famine miserably to die; Yet rather let us fight in armour clad For children and grey fathers! Haply Zeus Will help us yet; of his high blood are we. Nay, even though we be abhorred ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... impossible to make a little Christian turn back again into a little heathen, they led her away down the road which leads south from the Palatine hill, to the place of execution. This was just outside the Ostian gate, an archway in the great wall which surrounded Rome, through which the road led to the town of Ostium and to the sea. Just outside this gate, to show that they were no longer worthy of being Romans and living within its walls, criminals were executed. And here many Christian martyrs lost their lives. Prisca was one of these, ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... proceeded the darkness closed in upon them, until they appeared to be making an almost precipitate descent into a vast black pit. There was no light here at all except for the stars above, for the last glow of twilight was completely shut off by the great wall they were ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... difficult a matter it is to define the district this book has to describe, so the southern boundary of the true Wessex must be taken as the coast line from the Meon river on the east side of Southampton Water to the mouth of Otter in Devon. On the north, the great wall of chalk that cuts off the south country from the Vale of Isis and the Midlands and that has its bastions facing north from Inkpen Beacon to Hackpen Hill in the Marlborough Downs. East and west of these summits an arbitrary line ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... daybreak. The great wall of pines and hemlocks that keep off the east wind from Stillwater stretches black and indeterminate against the sky. At intervals a dull, metallic sound, like the guttural twang of a violin string, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... government till the time of the conquest by the Spaniards, and for a long time the only city in the Peruvian empire, deserves a paragraph under the head archeology. Its wonderful fortress has already been referred to, and there are other Cyclopean remains, such as the great wall which contains the "stone of twelve corners." Some monuments of the Inca period also attract much attention, such as the Curi-cancha temple, 296 feet long, the palace of Amaru-cancha (i. e., "place of serpents"), so called from the serpents sculptured ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... Now at the great wall, the two men heaved mightily upon a lever, the gate of the emergency port swung slowly open, and they entered the miniature cruiser of the void. Costigan, familiar with the mechanism of the craft from careful ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... great trees that grow within the palace grounds I pressed her to me for, perhaps, the last time and then, lest by ill-fate I meet the messenger, I scaled the great wall that guards the palace and passed through the darkened city. My name and rank carried me beyond the city gate. Since then I have wandered far from the haunts of the Ho-don but strong within me is the urge ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... conflagration. Suddenly, a tremendous peal of thunder, accompanied by a terrific downfall of rain, rattled along the sky. The arch of light disappeared, as though some invisible hand had shut the slide of a giant lantern. A great wall of water rushed roaring over the level plain of the sea, and with an indescribable medley of sounds, in which tones of horror, triumph, and torture were blended, the cyclone swooped ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... least, ride round the city walls: a feat more easily performed. No prospect can be more diversified and lovely than the changing views of the harbour, and the valleys of the two rivers, the Polcevera and the Bizagno, from the heights along which the strongly fortified walls are carried, like the great wall of China in little. In not the least picturesque part of this ride, there is a fair specimen of a real Genoese tavern, where the visitor may derive good entertainment from real Genoese dishes, such as Tagliarini; Ravioli; German sausages, strong ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... saw a great wall of rock towering before them, in which was a low arched entrance, and on either side of this entrance stood a guard, armed with a sword and a spear. The guards of the mines were not so fierce as the warriors of King Gos, their duty being to make the slaves work at their ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... desert, for ever untroubled by man: all yellow it is, and spotted with shadows of stones, and Death is in it, like a leopard lying in the sun. To the south they are bounded by magic, to the west by a mountain, and to the north by the voice and anger of the Polar wind. Like a great wall is the mountain to the west. It comes up out of the distance and goes down into the distance again, and it is named Poltarnees, Beholder of Ocean. To the northward red rocks, smooth and bare of soil, and without any speck ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... the name of a district in Kan-chow department, Kan-suh. It is a long way north and west from Lan-chow, and not far from the Great Wall. Its king at this time was, probably, ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... Sky-Bird upward at as stiff a slant as he felt would be safe for them in that high wind. At nine thousand feet they emerged above the first layer; but eastward the clouds appeared to terrace up gradually, and in the distance there extended another great wall, ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... conquerors, and they not only subdued the Chinese but marched westward, overrunning most of Russia and stopping only when they were on the frontiers of Italy. For a long time southern Russia remained under their rule. Their capital was just north of the Great Wall of China. ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... ahead. Far in the distance a great wall loomed skyward to a terrific height. So vast was it and so remote, at first it had escaped the eye altogether. An incredibly high range of mountains, glowing with a faint rose blush under the touch ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... impossible. What trees there were—the Judas tree, the tamarisk, the umbrella-pine—grew close to the low parapets. Rose bushes gave no real cover; one step to right or left of them, and the person wishing to be private was discovered. Only the north-west corner was a little place jutting out from the great wall, a kind of excrescence or loop, no doubt used in the old distrustful days for observation, where it was possible to sit really unseen, because between it and the house was a ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... turned. In the lanes about that curious old mansion, with its windows reaching from floor to roof, that stands at the base of Wolstanbury Hill, they grow early, and ferns linger in sheltered overhung banks. The South Down range, like a great wall, shuts off the sea, and has a different climate on either hand; south by the sea—hard, harsh, flowerless, almost grassless, bitter, and cold; on the north side, just over the hill—warm, soft, with primroses and fern, willows budding and birds already busy. It is a double ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... centuries before the birth of Christ three imperial families ruled in China in succession. Two and a half centuries before our era a powerful and far-sighted emperor built the Great Wall, the mightiest erection ever completed by human hands (Plate XVII.). This wall is 1500 miles long, 50 feet high, and 26 thick at the bottom and 16 at the top. Towers stand at certain intervals, and there are gates here and there. It is constructed of stone, brick, and earth. It is in parts much ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... and the changing light. The moon and stars were a later development. They found, too, that the light could not be made to reach certain recesses in the cavern where the roof approached the earth, so they finally built a great wall to keep the inhabitants within proscribed boundaries, and to prevent them from understanding the ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... and indeed the glory of a wall lieth in this, that it is great and high; the walls of the Canaanites were terrible upon this account, and did even sink the hearts of those that beheld them (Deu 1:28). Wherefore this city shall be most certainly in safety, she hath a wall about her, a great wall: a wall about her, an high wall. It is great for compass, it incloseth every saint; it is great for thickness, it is compacted of all the grace and goodness of God, both spiritual and temporal; and for height, if you count from the utmost side to the utmost, then it is higher than heaven, who ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... routed and drove out the Tartar invaders, and put down the rebellion of the feudal princes. He enlarged the kingdom nearly to the limits of modern China proper. For the protection of the northern frontier he began the "Great Wall," which he did not live to finish. It was finished 204 B.C., ten years after it was begun. When finished, it was not less than fifteen hundred miles in length. It would reach "from Philadelphia to Topeka, or from Portugal to Naples." The innovations and maxims ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the peculiar spirit-thrilling metallic rattle of bayonets upon rifles, and then with black figures falling in all directions the company of British infantry swept through the kraal and cleared the little camp to line the great wall, and, taking up this commanding position, to bring down ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... World.—Where is the largest building in the world situated? The answer to this question must depend upon what the term "building" is held to represent. The Great Wall of China, 1,280 miles in length, wide enough to allow six horsemen to ride abreast along it, and with an average height of 20 ft., may fairly be called a building; so, too, may be called the Great Pyramid of Egypt. The question, however, was not meant to include such works as these. Some ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... Valens threatened the empire of Rome, had been formidable, in a much earlier period, to the empire of China. Their ancient, perhaps their original, seat was an extensive, though dry and barren, tract of country, immediately on the north side of the great wall. Their place is at present occupied by the forty-nine Hords or Banners of the Mongous, a pastoral nation, which consists of about two hundred thousand families. But the valor of the Huns had extended the narrow limits of their dominions; and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... of the Dutch was with the motive of making isolation more complete, and of securing the perfect safety which that isolation was expected to bring. For, having built, not indeed with brick and mortar, but by means of edict and law, both open and secret, a great wall of exclusion more powerful than that of China's, it was necessary that there should be a port-hole, for both sally and exit, and a slit for vigilant scrutiny of any attempt to force seclusion or violate the frontier. Hence, the Hollanders were allowed to have a small place of residence in front ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Formless Void. The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious, Thothmes, and Buddha. Its emblems and symbols have been found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the Egyptian Pyramids—always by ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... She would have liked to take lessons of Mr. Rhys on another subject. She half envied Julia's liberty. There seemed a great wall built up between her and the knowledge she wanted. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... notions, these novelties must almost necessarily have filtered through this semi- Chinese half-barbarous state in possession of the Wei Valley, or through other of their Tartar kinsmen periodically engaged in raiding the settled Chinese cultivators farther east, along the line of what is now the Great Wall, and the northern parts of Shan ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... head, quiescent. Then Lee all at once experienced a feeling of profound compassion for Ruth as he regarded her, a poignant stab in his breast like pain. Sitting there without movement, with her hands idle upon her lap, with her face a little lifted and her eyes wistfully bent on the great wall opposite, she seemed so young and small to be dwelling at such a place, so helpless, so solitary, that her presence appeared a cruel irony of fate. Her homesteading was a desperate clutch at security; ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... rained again the next day and most of the following one. Still, they spent the two days crawling along the farther side of the range, for when they had struggled through the snow in a rift between two peaks, a great wall of rock that fell almost sheer cut them off from the next valley. Somewhat to Weston's astonishment, Grenfell now showed little sign of flagging. He seemed intent and eager; and when they stopped, gasping, where the rock fell straight down beneath their feet ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... had died young, and her gifted father had taken her to a hundred places that the school-teacher on a holiday never gets to and thinks of only in connection with geography lessons. She had followed the Great Wall of China, she had stood before the tomb of Tamburlaine, she had shaded her eyes from the glare of KaA-rouan the Holy, she had chaffered in Tiflis and in Trebizond. All this before she was twenty-five. At that time her father's health broke, and they proceeded to live ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Before the end of 1827, it had traversed the Molucca islands, and the island of Timor, and continuing for several years to ravage the interior of China, it had, by 1827, passed to the north of the great wall, and had desolated some places in Mongolia. In the meantime, also, it extended to the west. Bombay, Persia, Asiatic Turkey, Russia, Poland, Austria, and Prussia, all experienced the dreadful visitation, from 1818 to 1831. Precautions had been taken in England, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the form. Stopped in this direction their ringleaders turned their attention to other matters. What was the nature of these it was Irene's lot one day to discover. She happened to be walking in a rather quiet part of the garden, a portion reserved mostly for vegetables, which adjoined the great wall that separated the estate from the highroad. As she sauntered along, doing nothing in particular, she noticed Mabel, who was standing under an orange tree close to the wall. At the same moment, advancing towards them came the sound of Rachel's voice caroling ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... memorial, which had been presented to the judiciary committee, reported the result of her interview with them, and said she had the assurance that it would be favorably reported, and that the heart of every man in Congress was in the movement. Thus ended the first effort of the great Wall street ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... nations and cities then known, lastly lists of plants and animals with a very rude and defective attempt at some sort of classification. History is but scantily represented; it appears to have been mostly confined to the great wall inscriptions and some other objects, of which more hereafter. But—what we should least expect—grammars, dictionaries, school reading-books, occupy a prominent place. The reason is that, when this library was founded, the language in which the venerable books of ancient sages were ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... on their way north-east for more than "one thousand days," three years and a half, till they stood in the presence of Kublai Khan; beyond Gobi and the Great Wall and the mountain barriers of China, in Cambaluc or Pekin, "princess encrowned of ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... no single ladder could be made of sufficient length and strength to have reached from the bottom to the top of that great wall; or if such could be constructed, he knew equally well that it would be impossible ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... strange rock-shape known as the Chapeau de Gendarme, and the line of mountains which is like the great wall of China, Maieddine defied the danger he had never quite ceased to fear during the five long days since the adventure on the other side of Bou-Saada. He ordered the carriage curtains to be rolled up as tightly as they would go, and ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... extended beyond the "dumps" and pits. It revealed a cutting hewn out of the great wall of the gorge. It was hewn at a point well above the highest water level of the spring freshets. And it was approached by a well timbered roadway ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... as the result of natural selection. We can grow rice in India, we can grow wheat in Russia. We can put up a high tariff wall and grow rice in Russia, if we grow it in a hothouse; but it would not be so profitable as raising wheat. Tariff walls are trade restrictions. They are as obsolete as the great wall of China." ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... brickmaking travelled eastwards from Babylonia across the whole of Asia. It is believed that the art of making glazed bricks, so highly developed afterwards by the Chinese, found its way across Asia from the west, through Persia and northern India, to China. The great wall of China was constructed partly of brick, both burnt and unburnt; but this was built at a comparatively late period (c. 210 B.C.), and there is nothing to show that the Chinese had any knowledge of burnt bricks when the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Nothing if it fails; and there never was a more ticklish thing. The whole depends on the manner in which the name is brought out, which I value myself on, as a chef-d'oeuvre. How the paper grows less and less! In less than two minutes I shall cease to talk to you, and you may rave to the Great Wall of China. N.B. Is there such a wall! Is it as big as Old London Wall by Bedlam? Have you met with a friend of mine, named Ball, at Canton?—if you are acquainted, remember me kindly to him. Amongst many queer cattle I have and do meet with at the India Ho. I always ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... toward the camp a great wall of flame seemed to leap from the ground between him and his companions. There it poised for one brief instant, then, with a roar swooped down into the tall bunch grass, rushing ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... will enable us to trace the extent of his geographical knowledge. At the extremity of the world to the east, bounded by the ocean, Thina was placed in the map of Eratosthenes, in the parallel of Rhodes; a parallel which passes through the empire of China, within the Great Wall. Eratosthenes, according to Strabo, (to whom we are indebted for nearly all we know respecting this philosopher,) asserts that Thina had been, previously to the construction of his map, incorrectly placed in the more ancient maps. His information respecting Meroe or ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... be discussed in his own place. Charles Gordon needs little introduction. Long before this tale begins his reputation was European, and the fame of the 'Ever-victorious Army' had spread far beyond the Great Wall of China. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... first it appears rather surprising that the trade-wind along the northern parts of Chile and on the coast of Peru should blow in so very southerly a direction as it does; but when we reflect that the Cordillera, running in a north and south line, intercepts, like a great wall, the entire depth of the lower atmospheric current, we can easily see that the trade-wind must be drawn northward, following the line of mountains, towards the equatorial regions, and thus lose part of that easterly movement which it otherwise would have gained from ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... to the great wall of the Emerald City, the gates were opened by the Guardian who always tended them. Over the gateway hung a dull-colored metal magnet shaped like a horse-shoe, placed against a shield of ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... great village in huts that were built of stone and surrounded by a great wall. They were very fierce, rushing out and falling upon our warriors before ever they learned that their errand was a peaceful one. Our men were few in number, but they held their own at the top of a little rocky hill, until the fierce people went back at sunset into their wicked ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the open window; the clusters of cultivated shrub on the sweep of velvet lawn extending to the great wall that inclosed the place, then the bend of the river and beyond the distant mountains, blue and mysterious, blending indiscernibly into the sky. A soft sun, clouded with the haze of autumn, shone ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... bad," he murmured softly, "—not so bad ... and better from the water." He glanced at the canal below. A white hand from a passing gondola waved to him and motioned approvingly toward the colors of the great wall. ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... being ready, I draw out of my basket a cake of cheese, a few olives, an onion, and three paper-like loaves, rather leaves, of bread, and fall to. With what relish, I need not say. But let it be recorded here, that under the karob tree, on the bank of the River Adonis, in the shadow of the great wall surrounding the ruins of the temple of Tammuz, I Khalid, in the thirty-fourth year of the reign of Abd'ul-Hamid, gave a banquet to the gods—who, however, were content in being present and applauding the devouring skill of the peptic host and toast-master. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... channel had formed. Two rows of circular holes—like port-holes—were to be seen, one directly under the summit, the other one-third down the cliff side. A giant rectangular tower of solid rock stood erect parallel to the great wall. Skirting this vertical wall we travelled north-west-by-west, rising gradually to 1,800 ft. on a deep layer of red ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... A great wall, hardly a mile away, as the crow flies, the third mountain rose, bare and forbidding. Below us, a narrow strip of evergreen wound away to the south as far as our eyes could reach, and at wide intervals thin columns of smoke sifting through the ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... of the farmer are getting attention. The enemy of the San Jose scale was found near the Great Wall of China, and is now cleaning up all our orchards. The fig-fertilizing insect imported from Turkey has helped to establish an industry in California that amounts to from fifty to one hundred tons of dried figs annually, and is extending over the Pacific coast. A parasitic fly from South Africa is ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... there was an end of it, and immediately began, on no other foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man the Great Wall of China. He went away in high spirits. Ada and I, prepared to miss him very much, commenced our ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... run to mere words. Mr. Hue I think it is, who tells us some very good stories about the way in which two Chinese gentlemen contrive to keep up a long talk without saying a word which has any meaning in it. Something like this is occasionally heard on this side of the Great Wall. The best Chinese talkers I know are some pretty women whom I meet from time to time. Pleasant, airy, complimentary, the little flakes of flattery glimmering in their talk like the bits of gold-leaf in eau-de-vie ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... the large building in front of the mound, and starting at either end of it inside from the old low wall, built a new one in the form of a crescent running in towards the town; in order that in the event of the great wall being taken this might remain, and the enemy have to throw up a fresh mound against it, and as they advanced within might not only have their trouble over again, but also be exposed to missiles on their flanks. While ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... She took him through the palace, where all was as still as the grave, and so came out by a postern door into a garden. Beside the postern a torch burned in a bracket. The queen took it down, and then led the prince up a path and under the silent trees until they came to a great wall of rough stone. She pressed her hand upon one of the great stones, and it opened like a door, and there was a flight of steps that led downward. The queen descended these steps, and the prince followed closely behind her. At the bottom was a long ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... out, they found that they were near a great wall. It was built of very old stones and was as wide as a road on top. Several horses could ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... of Christendom. Diplomatic relations were established between Tartar and Christian princes. In the Paris archives may still be seen letters written from Tabriz to the kings of France bearing official Chinese seals of the thirteenth century. For the first time Europeans were welcome beyond the Great Wall. Kublai Khan sent presents to the Pope and requested Christian missionaries for the instruction of his people. Traders and travelers were hospitably received, clever adventurers were taken into favor and loaded with benefits ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... which dwelt the Chagan, with his palace and his treasures. These walls were made of double rows of palisades of oak, beech, and pine logs, twenty feet high and twenty feet asunder, the interval between them being filled with stone and lime. Thus was formed a great wall, which at a distance must have presented a singular appearance, since the top was covered with soil and planted ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... black,—a good, good Englishman—a missionary, who is preaching to them under a palm-tree." (She showed a little coloured cut to that effect.) "And here are pictures" (she went on) "more stranger" (grammar was occasionally forgotten) "than that. There is the wonderful Great Wall of China; here is a Chinese lady, with a foot littler than mine. There is a wild horse of Tartary; and here, most strange of all—is a land of ice and snow, without green fields, woods, or gardens. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... side, the river below them went flowing out to the sea in the dark, giving a cold sluggish gleam now and then, as if it were a huge snake heaving up a bend of its wet back, as it hurried away to join its fellows; on the other side rose a great wall of stone, beyond which was the sound of long waves following in troops out of the dark, and falling upon a low moaning coast. Clouds hung above the sea; and above the clouds two or ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... which might have seemed unusual and ominous to English engineers, but which Mr. Lionel Vaughan Bennett regarded as a mere matter of daily routine, hardly worth more than a passing mention. There was nothing for it but to take another walk round Newport, and after further admiring the great wall holding up the embankment opposite the station—a colossal work executed under great difficulties—to look at the surrounding landscape. Those who are interested in engineering may like to know the dimensions ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... else cigars with which the rocky sides of the nearest hills are defaced. But there is nothing new in this, for, as far back as 1887, the name of a well-known American pill and ointment vendor met my astonished gaze on the Great Wall of China. The North Pole will soon be the only virgin field left open to the up-to-date advertiser. Skagway is now a quiet, orderly township, and a favourite resort of tourists, but shortly after it was founded, in 1898, a band of ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt |
