"Marshy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sacred hour when a misty smoke hung over a pit surrounded by an impassable sinking mire. This strange smoke appeared every morning, both winter and summer; but most visibly in midwinter it rose immediately above the marshy spot. By the time the full face of the sun appeared above the eastern horizon, the smoke vanished. Even very old men, who had known this country the longest, said that the smoke from this pit had never failed a ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... saying they were the first ever to follow the Missouri to its head. They named a little lake, up near the summit, in a marshy flat, Lilian Lake, after me. Just a little way beyond that they found a big saucer-like spot in the round little hole up there—peaks all around it, like it had sunk down. Well, out of that circular ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... Bois-le-duc, was strongly fortified, and so surrounded by marshy ground, intersected by a number of small streams, that the only way of approach for a besieging force was a single causeway defended by the forts of St Isabella and St Anthony. The garrison consisted of 8000 men, and the governor, Grobendonc, was an ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... going up and down, and the great stars came gleaming out to look on the face of Yann. Then the sailors lighted lanterns and hung them round the ship, and the light flashed out on a sudden and dazzled Yann, and the ducks that fed along his marshy banks all suddenly arose, and made wide circles in the upper air, and saw the distant reaches of the Yann and the white mist that softly cloaked the jungle, before they returned ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... beautiful creature darts out of the reeds bordering the Itchen, and it used to be at Chandler's Ford before the place was so populated. It seems also to haunt ponds or marshy places in woods, for a young full-fledged one was brought into Otterbourne House by a cat, alive and apparently unhurt. Another took a fancy to the gold-fish in a stone basin at Cranbury, and was shot, as the poor fish could ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... from hills into marshy regions which to their skilled eyes betokened another creek, flowing like its parallel sister into the Ohio. All these creeks overflowed widely in the heavy spring rains, and they judged that the swampy territory had been left ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a brief history of the parish. Its soil was from very early times damp and marshy. To the south of the hospital was a stretch of ground called Marshlands, probably at one time a pond. Great ditches and fosses cut up the ground. The most important of these was Blemund's Ditch, which divided the parish from that of Bloomsbury. This is supposed to have been ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... Swamp, which gave rise to this genuine Indian tradition, is one of the gloomiest spots on the face of the earth. It is situated in the state of Virginia, and covers a very large space. On the south side of this wild and gloomy region the marshy border is thickly overgrown with immense reeds, and, as far as the eye can take in, waves slowly and heavily one dark green sea. Then, on all the other skirts of the forest itself, the lofty trees are covered to their summits by the yellow jessamine, and other quick-growing ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... hills east of Rio Paraguay; Gran Chaco region west of Rio Paraguay mostly low, marshy plain near the river, and dry forest and thorny ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... looked around. I saw before us a wide, marshy plain, traversed by the Gruna-Bach and the Floss-Graben. A few hills arose along these streams, and beyond ran a large river, which the sergeant told me was the Elster. The morning mist hung ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... and here and there a long low island; or descending, he would find himself in some narrow ravine, cleft between grey rocky heights overgrown with brushwood and trailing plants, the road leading beside a marshy brook, full of rushes and forget-me-nots, and disappearing amongst the forest trees. All day long Graham wandered about that pleasant land, and it was long past the four o'clock dinner hour when he stood on the ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... difficulty be forced by assiduous tillage to yield thin crops of rye and oats. In other places, the ancient forests, which the conquerors of the Roman Empire had descended on the Danube, remained untouched by the hand of man. Where the soil was rich it was generally marshy, and its insalubrity repelled the cultivators whom its fertility attracted. Frederic William, called the Great Elector, was the prince to whose policy his successors have agreed to ascribe their greatness. He acquired by the peace of Westphalia several ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... plain. Compare modern English, "lawn," and French, "Landes" — flat, bare marshy tracts in ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... town was, indeed, almost impregnable. It was built upon a rock of considerable extent, and the land outside the walls was low and marshy, and could at any time be flooded. The Shannon was broad and rapid. The Irish town on the Limerick shore was not strong, being defended only by ordinary walls. If this were captured, however, the English town ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... camp, excepting that which he spent in Pompey's company, he employed in reading and in study, which he did not neglect even the day before the great battle. It was the middle of summer, and the heat was very great, the camp having been pitched near some marshy ground, and the people that carried Brutus's tent were a long while before they came. Yet though upon these accounts he was extremely harassed and out of order, having scarcely by the middle of the day anointed himself ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... unless they have on either side some mortal, whose body, or whatever has been put in its place, as the story-teller would say, is asleep at home. Without mortal help they are shadowy and cannot even strike the balls. One day I was walking over some marshy land in Galway with a friend when we found an old, hard-featured man digging a ditch. My friend had heard that this man had seen a wonderful sight of some kind, and at last we got the story out of him. When he was a boy he was working one day with about thirty men and women and boys. They were ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... a turpinambis. This animal, which is not uncommon at Cape Verd, climbs up trees, frequents the marshy places, and is said to inflict severe wounds if it is not laid hold of with great precaution. The inhabitants of the Mamelles assert that it devours young crocodiles. This species seems to be the same as that which frequents the banks of the Nile. It ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... entire globe was in that new, raw, marshy state. But he had worked only in one comparatively small area of the northern hemisphere; had never been within thirty thousand miles of the red spot. What might lie in that ominous crimson patch, he could not even guess. However, he reflected, ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... to S. and 170 leagues from E. to W. It is divided into many small principalities, of which the most powerful is the king of Banjaar Masseen, and after him the kings of Borneo and Sambas. The air is reckoned very unwholesome in some places, on account of being low and marshy; and it is only thinly peopled, though abounding in very rich commodities. On the first establishment of the Dutch in India, they were very solicitous to have factories in this island, and accordingly fixed three, at the cities of Borneo, Sambas, and Succadanea; but they soon ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... his notice; but he afterwards reconciled it as being synonymous with Semnopithecus cristatus. The colouring, according to different authors, seems to vary considerably, which causes some confusion in description. It differs from an allied species, S. maurus, in selecting low marshy situations near the banks of streams. Its favourite food is the fruit of the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... the middle of July—Hyacinth was invited by Canon Beecher to join a boating party on the lake. The river, whose one useful function was the turning of Mr. Quinn's millwheel, wound away afterwards through marshy fields and groves of willow-trees into the great lake. At its mouth the Beechers kept their boat, a cumbrous craft, very heavy to row, but safe and suited to carry a family in comfort. The party started early—Canon Beecher, Hyacinth, ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... which, farther on, had done damage to the line, here ran close to it for some distance, consequently Zilda came to the river before she reached the scene of the disaster. The river banks at this season were marshy, green like plush or velvet when it is lifted dripping from green vats of the brightest dye. There were some trees by the river bank, maples and elms, and every twig was tipped with a crimson gem. Zilda did not see the beauty ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... to the headland they had to make a detour around a marshy spot and then climb over a number of rough rocks. The exertion exhausted Josiah Crabtree, and he ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... ground on which I tread, Count Lesle. Believe me, it is slippery and marshy soil, and a single incautious step ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... and sides of arable fields which the tenants believed injurious to crops. He repaired labourers' cottages, and added offices to farmsteads. In short, he did everything that could be done without too heavy an expenditure. To kill off the rabbits, to grub the smaller coverts, to drain the marshy spots, to thatch the cottages, put up cattle sheds, and so on, could be effected without burdening the estate with a loan. But, small as these improvements were in themselves, yet, taken together, they ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... the principal ditches in all the secondary valleys to render the lands wholesome, but also to completely drain the ground, diverting the rain water and cultivating the land, in the cultivation of which those trees, shrubs, and plants should be selected which thrive the most on marshy grounds and on the shores and paludal coasts of the sea, and which have their roots most speading and most ramified. Some of the ordinary grasses are also quite appropriate, but crops of the cereals, which are obtained after a suitable reformation of marshy lands, yield a much better return. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... the following incident from the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, notice how the description prepares the mind for the action that follows. We are told that the brook which Ichabod must cross runs into a marshy and thickly wooded glen; that the oaks and chestnuts matted with grapevines throw a gloom over the place, and already we feel that it is a dreadful spot after dark. The fact that Andre was captured ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... intervals of oiling his duck-gun. Even duck-shooting becomes a weariness when a man has to manage gun and punt single-handed. One afternoon he abandoned the sport in an exceedingly bad temper, and pulled up to the jaws of Cuckoo Valley. Here he landed, and after an hour's trudge in the marshy bottoms had the luck to knock over ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on had lain along the foothills, but when I first thought I had missed the right road we were coming down into a grassy valley. Mr. Stewart came across a marshy stretch of meadow and climbed up on the wagon. The ground was more level, and on every side were marshes and pools; the willows grew higher here so that we couldn't see far ahead. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy was behind, and she called out, "Say, I believe we ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... runs Sandy Creek. Here, on the day of the investment, the line of Confederate earthworks stopped, the country lying toward the northeast being considered so difficult that no attack was looked for in that quarter. Sandy Creek finds its way into the marshy bottom of Foster's Creek, and from Sandy Creek, where the earthworks ended, to the river at the mouth of Foster's Creek, is about twenty-five hundred yards. Save where the axe had been busy, nearly the whole country was covered with a heavy growth of ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... east, on his left, the broad landscape seems black and ominous; before him, the sleeping city spreads its panorama, broken and sombre, beneath heavy clouds; the fretted towers on the massive prison frown dimly through the mist to the right, from which a low marshy expanse dwindles into the dark horizon. And ever and anon the forked lightning courses its way through the heavens, now tinging the sombre scene with mellow light, then closing it ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... straight ahead, following the banks of the Croton until a favorable place for crossing occurred, when it took advantage of the opportunity and started back for the Hudson, in order to get around Hessian Hill. The marshy breadth of the Croton's mouth was probably too much for the bridge builders of early days. Along this road a short half mile is the one-time celebrated Black Horse Tavern. It was not only a house of refuge for travel-worn humanity, ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... rode towards that very kloof where years before Suzanne had discovered the shipwrecked boy. At the mouth of this kloof was a patch of marshy ground, where the reeds still stood thick, since being full of sap they had resisted ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... Bax, then, as we have said, Long Orrick resolved to make a stand. Tommy Bogey had, by taking a short cut round a piece of marshy ground, succeeded in getting a little in advance of Orrick, and, observing that he was running straight towards the tombstone, he leaped into the ditch, the water in which was not deep at the time, and, coursing along the edge of it, reached the rear of the tomb and hid himself there, without ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... houses, painted white, with Venetian blinds, green outside, with two white wooden churches. There are some American elms of a weeping kind, and sycamores, i.e. planes; but the wood is mostly pine—white pine and yellow pine—somewhat scrubby, occupying the tops of the low banks, and marshy hay-land between, very brown now. A little brook runs through to the Concord River.'[3] The brook flowed across the few acres that were Emerson's first modest homestead. 'The whole external appearance of the place,' says one who visited him, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... talk with an old bald-headed angel by the name of Sandy McWilliams. He was from somewhere in New Jersey. I went about with him, considerable. We used to lay around, warm afternoons, in the shade of a rock, on some meadow-ground that was pretty high and out of the marshy slush of his cranberry-farm, and there we used to talk about all kinds of things, and smoke ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "Marshy country is the oldest, And the first of trees the willow. Pine-roots were the oldest houses, And the earliest pots ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... attractive, and would fain have never left it. He was more at home there than anywhere else, and the historical legends, according to which it was true Russian ground, filled him with emotion. No one knows what inspired this fondness on his part. It may have been the vague resemblance of the marshy flats to the lowlands of Holland; it may have been the stirring of some ancestral instinct. According to a legend, accepted by Nestor, it was by the mouth of the Neva that the earliest Norman conquerors of the country passed on their journeys across the Varegian Sea—their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... lands, ye barbarous climes, Where angry England sends her outcast sons— I hail your joyless shores! my weary bark Long tempest-tost on Life's inclement sea, Here hails her haven! welcomes the drear scene, The marshy plain, the briar-entangled wood, And all the perils of a world unknown. For Elinor has nothing new to fear From fickle Fortune! all her rankling shafts Barb'd with disgrace, and venom'd with disease. Have pierced my ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... steadily forward, with some increasing sense of lassitude, passing one marshy islet after another, all seeming strangely out of place, and sometimes just reaching with my foot a soft tremulous shoal which gave scarce the shadow of a support, though even that shadow rested ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... and marshy. The house in which the composer was born had been built by his father. Situated at the end of the market-place, it was in frequent danger from inundation; and although it stood in Haydn's time with nothing worse befalling ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... address. Near Esthwaite's foot exists a lonely spot, Named by the country people "The Priest's Pot"; A strange, deep hole, with crystal water filled, By land surrounded which was never tilled; Of spongy texture, yielding to the foot— Quite full of danger is this marshy spot. To this place WILLIAM once a fishing went, And, ere his patience was completely spent, Took up a fresh position; but, alas! His foothold proved but little else than grass. While sinking fast he, with a fluttering heart, Gave one quick spring and reached a firmer part. This proved a lesson ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... that in the year 1869 I discovered the site of ancient Cintla, buried in the thick and fever-haunted forests of the marshy coast, and unknown until then to the Indians themselves. In the course of the excavations which I caused to be made, antiquities of a curious and ...
— The Battle and the Ruins of Cintla • Daniel G. Brinton
... that face again, and set about learning what forts were on the neck of land to south, where the two rivers, coming together at an angle, make what we call the Neck. It was a wide lowland then, but partly diked and crossed by many ditches; a marshy country much like a bit of Holland, with here and there windmills to complete ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... as he said, by a wide running branch of the river, as wide as the Eemster, near Amsterdam, but by a small creek, as wide as a large ditch, running through a meadow. It is long and covered with bushes, and inside somewhat marshy. It is about two miles long, or a little more, and a mile and a half wide. Although there are not less miles than he said, he did not say they were English miles, which are only one-fourth the length of Dutch miles, ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... Saint-Eutrope, at the bottom of a marshy gorge, he was cloistered there with his sister Desiree. He showed a fine humility, refusing all preferment from his bishop, waiting for death like a holy man, averse to remedies, although he was already in the early stage ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... Hence, in marshy countries at cold seasons, which have succeeded hot ones, and amongst those, who have lived on innutritious and unstimulating diet, these agues are most frequent. The enlargement of these quiescent viscera, and the swelling of the praecordia in many other fevers, is, most probably, owing to the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... been to turn their attention to the south and to the still undiscovered lands. At the first glimpse the aspect of the Atlantic coast to the south of Brazil gave little promise of the wealth—that is to say, of the gold—sought by the pioneers, since its shores were low, marshy, and alluvial. ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... experience was my best. Nowhere again were we so well entertained as at Burchell Fenn's. And this, I suppose, was natural, and indeed inevitable, in so long and secret a journey. The first stop, we lay six hours in a barn standing by itself in a poor, marshy orchard, and packed with hay; to make it more attractive, we were told it had been the scene of an abominable murder, and was now haunted. But the day was beginning to break, and our fatigue was too extreme for visionary terrors. The second or third, we alighted on a barren ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Monzie about the beginning of the seventeenth century, is one of its historic scenes. It derives its name from the Pow—a small stream which joins the Earn near this place. Inner-Powfray signifies the junction of two rivers. The name Powfray was given to it when the marshy grounds around the Abbey of Inchaffray were cut and drained, after the Battle of Bannockburn, by order of King Robert the Bruce, for the services of Maurice, Abbot of Inchaffray. In process of time "Powfray," or "Innerpowfray," became merged into "Innerpeffray," ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... began to vanish from the valleys and low-lying lands, although still clothing the distant hill- sides and mountain-peaks, from the loftier ones of which it probably never entirely cleared away even in the height of summer; but, the ground around was naturally so damp and marshy, and had become so soddened now with moisture, that it was almost as impracticable for Mr Meldrum or any other of the party to get away from the vicinity of the hut, as it had been during the heavy storms of August when ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... southward along the Kinderkamack Road with its high terraced houses to the right and to the left the low marshy land stretching away to the river. Along the road they had to pass several villages before reaching the point where it would be well to leave the road and cut through the country ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the sternest and most remarkable portion of Upper Newton Dale lies to the left, across the deep heather, and we are tempted aside to reach the lip of the sinuous gorge nearly a mile away to the west, where the railway runs along the marshy and boulder-strewn bottom of a natural cutting 500 feet deep. The cliffs drop down quite perpendicularly for 200 feet, and the remaining distance to the bed of the stream is a rough slope, quite bare in places, and in others densely grown ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... parallel with the river, which I crossed again at Dedham. Most of the road lay through a growth of young oaks principally. They still retain their verdure, though, looking closely in among them, one perceives the broken sunshine falling on a few sere or bright-hued tufts of shrubbery. In low, marshy spots, on the verge of the meadows or along the river-side, there is a much more marked autumnal change. Whole ranges of bushes are there painted with many variegated hues, not of the brightest tint, but of a sober cheerfulness. I suppose this is owing more to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... San Remo. Bordighera has a beauty which is quite distinct from both. Palms are its chief characteristics. They lean against the garden walls, and feather the wells outside the town, where women come with brazen pitchers to draw water. In some of the marshy tangles of the plain, they spring from a thick undergrowth of spiky leaves, and rear their tall aerial arms against the deep blue background of the sea or darker purple of the distant hills. White pigeons fly about among their branches, and the air is loud ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... where fortune once more came to his aid. For Magon, the Carthaginian admiral, had begun to doubt Hicetas. He doubted him the more when he saw the men of Timoleon and those of Hicetas engaged in fishing for eels together in the marshy grounds between the armies, and seemingly on very friendly terms. Thinking he was betrayed, he put all his troops on board ship ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... snow, hooded, shawled and coated till she resembled a huge cocoon. The Squire placed a big armchair for her near the fire, and Marshy sat down, but not without disdaining Anna's offers to remove her wraps. She sniffed at Anna—no other word will express it—and savagely clutched her big old-fashioned muff when Anna would have taken it from her to dry it ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... internal cold caused by drinking ice water or eating frozen feed, may cause it. The infectious forms of enteritis are caused by germs and ptomaines in the feed. Drinking filthy water or eating spoiled, mouldy feeds are common causes. In cattle pasturing in low, marshy places, enteritis may be common. The toxic form is caused by irritating poisons, such as caustic ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... prostrate figure on the damp marshy ground, took the heavy head on her lap, and looked up at the two men with a pale set face which indicated a resolve that neither of them was strong enough to overrule. They tried their utmost to persuade her, but in vain. She was fixed as ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... waggon at a time. When we consider that at the Kuhthurm again the road is but just wide enough for one carriage; that, on the west side of the city, the Elster, the Pleisse, and their different branches, intersect with their thousand meanders the marshy plains covered with wood, which are scarcely passable for the pedestrian; when we farther consider the incessant stoppages of the whole train at every little obstacle, and figure to ourselves all the three ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... the mountains recede, and the extended plains have a desert, uncultivated look. Towns and villages become so thinly scattered, that it seems as though the whole region were depopulated. The road is rather narrow, and as the country is in many places exceedingly marshy, a great portion of it has been paved. For many miles before we enter Rome we do not pass a single town or village. At length, some three hours before we reach the city, the dome of St. Peter's is seen looming in the distance; one church after another appears, ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... this they were disappointed. They explored the recesses of the swamp from end to end and side to side with the utmost thoroughness, but found nothing further to reward their search. The ground was too soft and marshy to retain any traces of footsteps, and the mare and saddle furnished the only evidence that the object of their quest had been in the neighborhood of the swamp—and of course this evidence was of the most vague and ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... cliff the whole field came into sight at once. There was Reynard slipping ahead, and two or more fields behind the foremost of the pack, while the rest, rushing after, made the hills resound with their chiding. The leaders taking the hedges, the main squadron splashing through a marshy place, the outsiders straining to come up, and the last man behind, who rode harder than any—all could be ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... on the west shore of the river, opposite Columbus, is low and in places marshy and cut up with sloughs. The soil is rich and the timber large and heavy. There were some small clearings between Belmont and the point where we landed, but most of the country was covered with the native forests. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... easily to be matched. P. Crescentius, in his lib. 1. de Agric. cap. 5. is very copious in this subject, how a house should be wholesomely sited, in a good coast, good air, wind, &c., Varro de re rust. lib. 1. cap. 12. [3176]forbids lakes and rivers, marshy and manured grounds, they cause a bad air, gross diseases, hard to be cured: [3177]"if it be so that he cannot help it, better (as he adviseth) sell thy house and land than lose thine health." He that respects not this in choosing of his seat, or building his house, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... birds, nesting in small colonies, and when once settled they never seem to stray far from home. The nest is a thick pocket hung either between reeds over the water, or fixed to the upright stems of a bush, quite near the ground, if the place is very marshy. ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... might erect a church. Their application was refused. After a time it was renewed, and refused again. At last, a building-place was granted them, the situation of which has just been mentioned. It was a marshy spot, on which few persons believed that any building could ever be erected. It is strangely noticeable, however, that a great many things which never can be done, are nevertheless somehow brought about, especially in the progress ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... south of Vienna, amid marshy flats along the river Leitha, lies the small village of Rehrau. At the end of the straggling street which constitutes the village, stood a low thatched cottage and next to it a wheelwright's shop, with a small patch of greensward before it. The master wheelwright, Mathias Haydn, ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... of Miss Mann during the winter season at Helena, was a marvel to us all. It was an exceedingly rainy winter, and the streets were often knee deep with mud. The town is built on a level, marshy region of bottom land, and for weeks the roads became almost impassable, and had to be waded on horseback, or the levee followed, and causeways had to be built by the military. But Miss Mann was not to be prevented by these difficulties from visiting the "Contraband Hospital," ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... is a very skillful fisher. It haunts the low marshy islands in the rivers and lakes of Central Africa, with elephants, monkeys, flamingoes, and many varieties of birds for its companions, and gains its principal food from the water. It often goes in companies of ten or twelve to fish. ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... safe from pursuit, had taken little or no pains to conceal their course. Of this their pursuers now took advantage, and hurried onward with long and rapid strides; now through thick dark woods and gloomy hollows; now up steep hills and rocky barren cliffs; now through tangles and over marshy grounds—clearing all obstacles that presented themselves with an ease which showed that notwithstanding some of them might be inferior as woodsmen, none were at all events ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... left, after doubling the bend, was a large marshy plain protected by a dyke, behind which sharpshooters were thought to be lurking. Commander Macomb ordered the marines of the squadron to land, and under command of Acting Ensign Fesset, of the Wyalusing, to move along the bank, ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... had another quarter of an hour, when the mist, that had been hanging about all day, came down on us, and it was difficult to see more than a field ahead. We had got down on to lower ground, and we were in a sort of marshy hollow when we were confronted by the most serious obstacle of the day: a tall and obviously rotten bank clothed in briars, with sharp stones along its top, a wide ditch in front of it, and a disgustingly squashy take-off. Robert Trinder and the yellow horse held their course ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... see, and the capital of an administrative district, formerly included in the province of Beira, Portugal; on the river Vouga, and the Lisbon-Oporto railway. Pop. (1900) 9979. Aveiro is built on the southern shore of a marshy lagoon, containing many small islands, and measuring about 15 m. from north to south, with an average breadth of about 1 m. The Barra Nova, an artificial canal about 33 ft. deep, was constructed between 1801 and 1808, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... picked out, along the marshy bank, a point of land jutting into the river like a miniature promontory, and seemingly of firm soil. It is only large enough to hold one at a time, so they take turns. One is now filling a bottle, while the other waits, ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... now lasted for nine weeks. They tell me that vapours rise up from the land and lie above it like a cloud. Some think they come from the great poppies which grow in the marshy fields of the lowlands; others say from the dark pools in the gorges of the hills. However it may be, those that remain on the island fall into a trance while the vapour is there. A strange thing! Some never wake from ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... and the preparations for an immediate start drove for the time all other thoughts from his mind. It had been determined to get the little band at once out of the marshy spot where the camp had been made. The teams were soon hitched, the wagons loaded, and the train ready to move. He surveyed it, a hundred poor wagons, many of them without cover, loaded to the full with such nondescript belongings as a house-dwelling ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... white! their manes Like mace-reed of the marshy plains Thick-tufted, wavy, free o' the shears: And when the fiery squadron rears Bursting at speed, each mane appears Even as the white scarf of a fay Floating upon their necks along ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... have never been able to recall any incidents of that night's walk. Mechanically, as in a dreadful dream, they followed Ned's guidance, stumbling across little watercourses, tramping through marshy rice-fields, climbing into and out of deep nullahs, now pausing to listen to the barking of a village dog, now making their way through a thick clump of trees, and at last tramping for hours—that seemed ages—along the dead flat of the highroad. This at the first faint dawn of morning they left, ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... 'Salii,' as if of the verb 'salire,' that is to say 'saulter,' to leap"—(and in future therefore—duly also to dance—in an incomparable manner) "to be quicke and nimble of foot, to leap and mount well, a quality most notably requisite for such as dwell in watrie and marshy places; So that while such of the French as dwelt on the great course of the river" (Rhine) "were called 'Nageurs,' Swimmers, they of the marshes were called 'Saulteurs,' Leapers, so that it was a nickname given to the French in regard both of their natural disposition ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... thirty, a flock of white wings that skim the waters of San Pablo Bay, upward bound. At Vallejo and Mare Island they exchange salutes, abreast of the naval station, and enter the mouth of Napa Creek; it is broad and marshy for a time, but soon grows narrow, and very crooked. More than once as we sailed we missed stays, and drifted broadside upon a hayfield, and were obliged to pole one another around the sharp turns in the creek; ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Then a signal was given to the other canoe, and after some further discussion I felt that we approached the shore. There was a scraping, jarring sound, followed by the soft trampling of feet upon a marshy bank; and then a hand drew me up and ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... When the knees tremble and the temples beat; Behold them, leaning on their scythes, look o'er The labour past, and toils to come explore; See them alternate suns and showers engage, And hoard up aches and anguish for their age; Through fens and marshy moors their steps pursue, When their warm pores imbibe the evening dew; Then own that labour may as fatal be To these thy slaves, as thine excess to thee. Amid this tribe too oft a manly pride Strives in strong toil the fainting heart to hide; There may you see the youth of slender frame ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... were strolling down the familiar path toward the river. The October air was fresh with a suspicion of frost. The clear notes of a hunter's horn came floating down from the hills. A flock of wild geese had alighted on the marshy ground at the end of the island where they kept up a continual honk! honk! The brown hills, the red forest, and the yellow fields were now at the height of their autumnal beauty. Soon the November north wind would thrash ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... and of the cautious words of their commander, the vanguard pressed hastily on, winding along the road, and at length entering a deep curving ravine, over whose marshy bottom the road way was carried by a causeway of earth and logs. The borders of the ravine were heavily timbered, while a thick growth of underwood masked its ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... bird than those just described, but the colour of the plumage is much the same. It is generally found in marshes, or marshy ground, and frequently ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... stories, with a thatched roof. Its back was to the slopes that rose by marshy terraces to the hills. Its face was turned to the lake, and between it and the water lay a walled forecourt, the angle on each side of the entrance protected by a tower of an older date than the house. The entrance was somewhat pretentious, and might—for each of the pillars ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... and such in appearance was the fire; for we could see it from the heights where we stood, forming a line of a width which it seemed possible to leap over, or at all events to dash through without injury. Now it divided, as it passed some rocky spot or marshy ground. Now it again united, and the flames were seen licking up the grass which ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... keep it straight, but it swerved to the left and we plunged over a bank into a marshy hollow. There was a sickening bump as we struck the lower ground, and the whole party were shot out into the frozen slush. I don't yet know how I escaped, for the car turned over and by rights I should have had my back broken. ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... Oakland we reached Port Costa, where the train was ferried across an estuary of the sea to Benicia; for 20 miles from there the line (the Central Pacific division of the Southern Pacific Railway Company) runs, across a flat, marshy country, then into a cultivated country with the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada rising around it, the country being very dry and parched, having had no rain since March: the farm-houses have the Eucalyptus, or Australian blue gum, planted around them; and about 75 miles from ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... breeze to aid the untiring paddles. The little canoe, weighed down by men and provisions, had scarcely three inches of its gunwale over the water, and yet the steersman held his course far out into the glassy waste, leaving behind the marshy headlands which marked ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... to be brought back into good-humour; and Jack was very glad when the tall, square tower of Saint Faith's church rose up in sight above the dead flat of marshy country over which they were travelling, which, however, was relieved by occasional groups of tall beech and birch-trees, and lines of weeping ash, amid which in spring and summer were happy birds singing all day, and some ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... downhill. There was a plain beneath, but up on the hillside only the sheep were feeding contentedly, all with their broad-tailed sterns turned to us. The sun was shining on the white diamond-shaped causeway stones which led across a marshy place. We came again to the foot of the hill. It had indeed been no more than a dividing ridge, which we had ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... fields of Consentinium. The effect of soil appears also from the fact that those plants which bear most profusely in wild places produce better fruit under cultivation. The same explanation applies to those plants which cannot live except in a marshy place, or indeed in the very water: they are even nice about the kind of water, some grow in ponds like the reeds at Reate, others in streams like the alders in Epirus, some even in the sea like the palms and the squills ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... fine defensive positions. As soon as we passed the point above designated (about three miles from the top of the mountains), we dismounted and formed a line of battle on a ridge circling to the rear. Our right rested on a precipitous ravine and the left was protected by a marshy run that was easily held against the enemy. The mules were sent into a ravine to the rear of our right, where they were protected from the enemy's bullets. I also deployed a line of skirmishers, resting on our right and left flanks ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... was rested and full of spirits. They drove almost straight across the city, about at the end of our first hundred numbered streets. But the road wound around to get out of a low marshy place, a pond in the rainy season, and some rocks that seemed tumbled up on end. They struck a bit of the old Boston Post Road, and that caused the little girl to stop her prattle and think of the old ladies they had never visited. She must ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... or structure applies to every one of the plants belonging to the grass family; and in this family are included all the different kinds of canes and reeds that grow in swamps and marshy places, as well as ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... of his biographers, the first glimpse of Claverhouse as a soldier. The story goes that, at an early period of the fight, William with a handful of his men was closely beset by a large body of French troops. In making his way back to his own lines the Prince's horse foundered in some marshy ground, and he would inevitably have been either killed or made prisoner had not Claverhouse, who was of the party, mounted him on his own charger and brought him safe out of the press. For this service William ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... fatal could have been done: the marshy ground, the number of dead bodies that choked the stream, the feeding on fish that had preyed upon them—for the Lenten fast prevented recourse to solid food—occasioned disease to break out—fever, dysentery, and a horrible disorder which turned the ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... never seen a man of whom to ask the way back to the town. Of course we tried to make our way back by the sun, but ever there would seem to grow up a thicket or wood before us, which we must skirt, or some marshy lake shone across our path in a hollow of the heath; and it was slow work, and the horses grew weary as ourselves. The hounds trailed after us with bent heads, hardly rousing themselves to tug at the ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... lying between St. Petersburg and Moscow. For a short distance out of St. Petersburg there are some few villas and farms to relieve the monotony of the gloomy pine forests; then the country opens out into immense undulating plains, marshy meadows, scrubby groves of young pine, without any apparent limit; here and there a bleak and solitary village of log huts; a herd of cattle in the meadows; a wretched, sterile-looking farm, with plowed ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... terrible magnificence of the workings of the elements. The vivid lightning and terrific peals of thunder seemed to the men the presage of deadly work to come. The advance was very difficult, the woods being marshy and filled with tangles and briars. The men were scratched and bleeding. The long line of battle presently emerged from the woods and occupied a clearing, in the center of which was a mansion, the late residence of a rebel officer. Some scouts brought ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... feel distinctly in her knees the creepy damp as the moisture of the marshy ground penetrated her skirts, bending over the ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... laid his head knowingly on his forepaws. The night had gone; rays of lilac-coloured light illumined the snow and entered the house. Round, red, and distant rose the sun. Below the hill lay the blue, ice-bound river, and away beyond it stretched the ribbed outline of the vast, marshy Siberian forest. Demid did not enter it that day, nor on ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... proves this. Arminius is far more truly one of our national heroes than Caractacus: and it was our own primeval fatherland that the brave German rescued, when he slaughtered the Roman legions eighteen centuries ago in the marshy glens between the Lippe and the Ems. [See post, remarks on the relationship between ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... one league from the Loire, in a small and deep valley, between marshy swamps and a forest of large holm-oaks, far from any highroad, the traveller suddenly comes upon a royal, nay, a magic castle. It might be said that, compelled by some wonderful lamp, a genie of the East had carried it off during one of the "thousand and one nights," and had brought ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and, in winter, as far south as Cuba and Jamaica. In north-eastern Illinois the Avocet generally occurs in small parties the last of April and the first of May, and during September and the early part of October, when it frequents the borders of marshy pools. The bird combines the characteristics of the Curlew and the ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... a kind of grass with an onion for a root, but it does not taste of onions and is much sought after by wild animals and wild people. It is found in low or marshy places. ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... a little farther up, the bayou widened. Curiosity prompted me to continue; and after pulling a few hundred strokes, I found myself at the end of an oblong lake, a mile or so in length. It was deep, dark, marshy around the shores, and full of alligators. I saw their ugly forms and long serrated backs, as they floated about in all parts of it, hungrily hunting for fish and eating one another; but all this was nothing new, for I had witnessed similar ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... knock off," I said, so I used my spade as a ladder and climbed out of the ditch. Being very thirsty, I walked down through the marshy valley to the clump of alders which grows along the creek. I followed a cow-path through the thicket and came to the creek side, where I knelt on a log and took a good long drink. Then I soused my head in the cool stream, dashed the water upon my arms and came ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... did not leave to posterity the care of crowning the great poets of the time. Italy, the mother of art, wished the laurel to encircle the brow of the living, not to be simply the ornament of a tomb. Rome had crowned, in 1341, him who, "cleansing the fount of Helicon from slime and marshy rushes, had restored to the water its pristine limpidity, who had opened Castalia's grotto, obstructed by a network of wild boughs, and destroyed the briers in the laurel grove": the illustrious Francis Petrarch.[478] Though somewhat tardy, the honour ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... mill-pond, catching flounders, perch, eels, and tom-cod, which came up thither with the tide. The place where they fished is now, probably, covered with stone-pavements and brick buildings, and thronged with people, and with vehicles of all kinds. But, at that period, it was a marshy spot on the outskirts of the town, where gulls flitted and screamed overhead, and salt meadow-grass grew under foot. On the edge of the water there was a deep bed of clay, in which the boys were forced to stand, while they caught their ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... view, however, disappointed me : the towns it shows have no prominent features, the country is as flat as it is extensive, and the various branches of the sea which run into it give, upon their retreat, a marshy, muddy, unpleasant appearance. There is, besides, a want of some one striking object to arrest the eye, and fix the attention, which wearies from the general glare. Points, however, there are, both of the sublime and beautiful, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... and prince Eugene observed the posture of the enemy, who were advantageously posted on a hill near Hochstadt, their right being covered by the Danube and the village of Blenheim, their left by the village of Lutzengen, and their front by a rivulet, the banks of which were steep, and the bottom marshy. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... part of France is marshy and crossed by dykes; but, to the eastward, the ground rises slowly to a ridge, on the western border of which are two spurs. Aubers is at the apex of one; and Illies at the apex of the other. Both of these villages were held by the Germans. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... Pizarro, heading his battalion of infantry, led it straight across the river. The water was neither broad nor deep, and the soldiers found no difficulty in gaining a landing, as the enemy's horse was prevented by the marshy ground from approaching the borders. But, as they worked their way across the morass, the heavy guns of Orgonez played with effect on the leading files, and threw them into disorder. Gonzalo and Valdivia threw ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... to, half in jest, by our older novelists. It is now, I think, dying out a good deal, and local where it stays. It occurred to me, on seeing some such allusion the other day, that it was six years since I had heard a gnat in a bedroom—never since we left a neighbourhood where there had once been marshy ground. Gnats are, however, less common generally—exclusive, of course, of those places where there is much water. All things are local, insects particularly so. On clay soils the flies in summer are most trying; black ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... university whose fame drew scholars from distant Britain, and whose ducal family gave birth to the Brunswick dynasty, whence descended the royalty of England. The city dates its origin from the fifth century, when its marshy site gave refuge from the pursuing Huns, and the ambition of its rulers gradually concentrated around the unpromising domain those elements of ecclesiastical prestige, knightly valor, artistic and literary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... trenches, and numerous communication saps, all built on the old style with numerous sandbags. On the flat ground to the north it had been impossible to dig down for defence, and both sides had built up earthworks on the somewhat marshy ground, so that sandbags were again the most noticeable feature. Running behind the breastworks in this portion was a convenient trench-tramway—for rations, ammunition, etc. To the south of Givenchy were the famous La Bassee Canal ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... nation[123-4] through which they passed, was the Folles Avoines (Wild Rice),[123-5] so called from the grain of that name, which abounds in the rivers and marshy lands. This plant is described as growing about two feet above the water, resembling European oats, and is gathered by the savages during the month of September. The ears are dried, separated from the chaff, and prepared for food either by pounding into meal, or simply boiling ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... have been for the colonists had they obeyed these instructions. Captain Smith says there was in fact opposition on the part of some of the leaders to the selection of the Jamestown peninsula, and it was amply justified by the event. The place was low and marshy and extremely unhealthful.[52] In the summer months great swarms of mosquitoes arose from the stagnant pools of water to attack the immigrants with a sting more deadly than that of the Indian arrow or ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... When the marshy lands, skirting our watercourses in St. Clair, Macomb, Wayne, and Monroe counties, shall have been drained, (which will, no doubt, be consummated at no distant day,) a large tract will be rendered available for grazing, which ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... would be glad enough to make a meal of toad or turtle. One day last March the sun shone out bright and warm; in the afternoon the first frogs began to tune up, cr-r-r-runk, cr-r-runk-a-runk-runk, like a flock of brant in the distance. I was watching them at a marshy spot in the woods, where they had come out of the mud by dozens into a bit of open water, when the bushes parted cautiously and the sharp nose of a fox appeared. The hungry fellow had heard them from the hill above, where he was asleep, and had come down to see if he could catch a few. He ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... the clouds rolled away dramatically, and the pale sun came out. Across the flat, marshy plain Petrograd glittered. To the right, white and gilded and coloured bulbs and pinnacles; to the left, tall chimneys, some pouring out black smoke; and beyond, a lowering sky over Finland. On each side of us were churches, monasteries.... Occasionally a monk was visible, silently ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... we looked about the country, and found it to be a marshy flat, about two miles over, across which the natives haul their canoes to the corresponding bay on the other side. We then prepared to continue our route for what Tituboalo called the other kingdom; he said that the name of it was Tiarrabou, or Otaheite Ete; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... accessible point; but not a single soldier was stationed there. All the forces seemed directed upon the north of Perpignan, upon the most difficult side, against a brick fort called the Castillet, which surmounted the gate of Notre-Dame. He discovered that a piece of ground, apparently marshy, but in reality very solid, led up to the very foot of the Spanish bastion; that this post was guarded with true Castilian negligence, although its sole strength lay entirely in its defenders; for its battlements, almost in ruin, were furnished ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... of that day show us, but in a very different form from the complex of stone buildings of the present day. Its principal facade, with extensive, stiffly arranged gardens, faced upon the river,—the only means of communication in that town, planted on a bog, threaded with marshy streams, being by boat. In fact, for a long time horses were so scarce in the infant capital, where reindeer were used in sledges even as late as the end of the last century, that no one was permitted to come to Court, during Peter the Great's reign, otherwise than ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... ado retired across the Rhine.[550] Cerialis vigorously laid waste the island of the Batavi, and employed the common device of leaving Civilis's houses and fields untouched.[551] They were now well into autumn. The heavy equinoctial rains had set the river in flood and thus turned the marshy, low-lying island into a sort of lake. Neither fleet nor provision-convoys had arrived, and their camp on the flat plain began to be washed away by the ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... river, but then the ground is flat and marshy; and therefore the air is damp and unhealthy, and there are ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... differences in the natural tendencies of our domestic animals; one cat, for instance, taking to catch rats, another mice; one cat, according to Mr. St. John, bringing home winged game, another hares or rabbits, and another hunting on marshy ground and almost nightly catching woodcocks or snipes. The tendency to catch rats rather than mice is known to be inherited. Now, if any slight innate change of habit or of structure benefited an individual wolf, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... Virginia. So he chose emigration, and was shipped off, upon condition that if he ever again set foot in England he should be forthwith turned over to the merciless law. His relations, as he perceived, cherished the hope that he would die of a fever likely to be caught on the piece of marshy land in Virginia which they, in a belief that it was worthless, had made over to him. Pondering on this on the voyage, and perhaps having had his fill of the flesh and the devil, he resolved to disappoint his family. And, to make short a very long story of ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Montoya, who was of those who rest but in the grave. In 1632, at the instance of the Governor and magistrates of the township of Jerez, Montoya sent Fathers Jean Ranconier and Mansilla to the north of Paraguay to found a mission amongst the Itatines, a forest-dwelling tribe. Their territory was marshy and the climate bad, and woods of indiarubber-trees covered all the land. Fathers del Techo and Charlevoix both speak of the 'rebounding balls' with which they played, which, thrown upon the ground, start up again as if they were filled ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... problem that concerns mosquitoes, most exasperating of all summer pests. These insects fly but short distances. Marshy land and stagnant pools are their breeding places. If the latter cannot be drained, oil spraying is the alternative and that is work for a professional. Again an old rubbish heap, replete with tin cans and other discards that will hold water, offers more encouragement to mosquitoes than is generally ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... so pleased at having given the slip to Long John, that I began to enjoy myself and look around me with some interest on the strange land that I was in. I had crossed a marshy tract full of willows, bulrushes, and odd, outlandish, swampy trees; and had now come out upon the skirts of an open piece of undulating, sandy country, about a mile long, dotted with a few pines, and a great number of contorted trees, not unlike the oak in ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... quite a tiger-cat,—but I confess I do not like one-sidedness in anything, Nature's tendency being to equalise—equalise—till we are all flattened down into one level,— the grave! At the present moment we are treading on a mixture of kings and saints and heroes,—all one soil you see, and rather marshy,—badly in need of draining at all times!" She laughed a little. "Frankly, I assure you, it is to me the most deplorable arrangement that a true woman should be destined to give all the passion and love of her life to one man, while the same man scatters ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... I went, when again I found myself descending, and thus knew that I had crossed over a hill of some height; still the trees prevented me from getting a view of the country beyond. At last I came to some marshy ground of a similar character to that which I had met on the other side of the lake, with sulphur springs in the centre. I had therefore to make a detour to avoid it, but as the tall trees which grew on the surrounding hills would not allow me to get a view of the ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston |
