"Precipitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of 17 inhabited islands and one uninhabited island, and a few uninhabited islets; strategically located along important sea lanes in northeastern Atlantic; precipitous terrain limits habitation to small ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... borders it below, and the same is the case above the Bayou Pierre. To land an army at such a place, when its only means of marching upon the country was through this narrow cut, of about one hundred feet in width, with high, precipitous sides, forming a complete defile for half a mile, and where five thousand men could have made its defence good against fifty thousand, is certainly as little evidence of military genius as was the permission of them to pass through it without an ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... was seen to keep alive suspicion; no ships of any description were encountered, save a couple of English frigates, each of which replied to the private signal and exchanged numbers with the Tremendous; and on the evening of the tenth day out the lofty, precipitous cliffs of the ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... Spion Kop was perhaps the most terrible, as it was the most disastrous. It was called Spion Kop, or Spying Mountain, because it was from this eminence the old Boer trekkers spied out the land in the days gone by. It was more than a hill—it was a mountain, and a mountain with a most precipitous ascent. To climb it meant hauling oneself up from one rock to another. It was a task that required all a strong man's strength. Yet up it went our men without a moment's hesitation. It was almost like climbing a house side. But one man helped another, the stronger ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... When o'er precipitous crests of mountain-walls Leapt up broad heaven the bright morning-star Who rouseth to their toils from slumber sweet The binders of the sheaf, then his last sleep Unclasped the warrior-son of her who brings Light to the world, the Child of Mists of Night. Now swelled his mighty heart ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... ye five wild torrents fiercely glad! Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, Forever shattered, and the same forever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury and your joy, Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam? And who commanded,—and the silence came,— "Here let the ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... ambulance, Pike's keen eyes were scanning the mountain sides. North of the Pass the ground did not begin to rise to any extent until fully half a mile away, but southward the ascent began almost at the roadside and was so steep as to be in places almost precipitous. A thick growth of scrub oak, cedar and juniper covered the mountain and here and there a tall tree shot up like some leafy giant among its humbler neighbors; and, standing boldly out on the very point where the heights turned southward, ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... was a noble day for walking; the air was clear and crisp, and all the hills around us were glowing with the crimson foliage of those little bushes which God created to make burned lands look beautiful. The trail ended in a precipitous gully, down which we scrambled with high hopes, and fishing-rods unbroken, only to find that the river was in a condition which made angling absurd ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... of the sands; and, for the next eight or ten minutes, between carts and horses, and asses, and men, there was little room for social intercourse, till we had turned our backs upon the sea, and begun to ascend the precipitous road leading into the town. Here my companion offered me his arm, which I accepted, though not with the intention of using it as ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... our glasses we were able to sweep the rough slopes and precipitous descents below, to the distance of many miles; and, forgetting De Ary, we watched the development of the phenomenon with terror. The larger slides gradually absorbed the smaller ones, as common fish are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... was found in great profusion; so that hitherto it had been neglected, and no vessel had ever come near it. Indeed, the other islands were not to be seen from it except on a very clear day, when they appeared like a cloud or mist on the horizon. The shores of the island were, moreover, so precipitous, that there was no landing-place, and the eternal wash of the ocean would have made it almost impossible for a vessel to have taken off a cargo. Such was the island upon which I found myself in company with this man. Our cabin was built of ship-plank and timber, under the shelter of a cliff, about ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... January 13th we followed again a broad Indian trail along the shore of the lake to the southward. For a short space we had room enough in the bottom; but, after traveling a short distance, the water swept the foot of the precipitous mountains, the peaks of which are about 3000 feet above the lake. The trail wound around the base of these precipices, against which the water dashed below, by a way nearly impracticable for the howitzer. During a greater part of the morning the lake was nearly hid ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... This gully was the precipitous bed of a stream; I clanked down it—thousands of feet—warily; I reached the valley, and at last, very gladly, came to a drain, and thus knew that I approached a town or village. It was ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... tremendous subterranean batteries called the hall of Saint George, and so forth, mounted with guns of a large calibre. But I have heard it would be difficult to use them, from the effect of the report on the artillerymen. The west side of the fortress is not so precipitous as the north, and it is on this it has been usually assailed. It bristles with guns and batteries, and has at its northern extremity the town of Gibraltar, which seems from the sea a thriving place, and from thence declines gradually to Cape Europa, where there is a great number of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... helm up." It was but just in time, for, as the frigate flew round, describing a circle, as she payed off before the wind, they could perceive the breakers lashing the precipitous coast, not two ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... was racing easily down the banks of the Yakima. He was entering the country he had desired to see, and soon his interest wakened. He seated himself to watch the heights that seemed to move in quick succession like the endlessly closing gates of the Pass. The track still ran shelf-wise along precipitous knobs and ridges; sometimes it bored through. The forests of fir and hemlock were replaced by thinning groves of pine; then appeared the first bare, sage-mottled dune. The trucks rumbled over a bit of trestle, and ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... young men, liked to hear them tell of their studies, and friendships, and travels, and taste through their eager conversation the flavor of their fresher life. Allan remained with him until near sunset, then in the warm, calm gloaming, he slowly took the homeward route, down the precipitous crags and hills. ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... route I had explored. I knew there were many obstacles in the way, but the gain would be great if we could overcome them, so I set to work with the enthusiasm of a young path-finder. The point at which the road was to cross the range was rough and precipitous, but the principal difficulty in making it would be from heavy timber on the mountains that had been burned over years and years before, until nothing was left but limbless trunks of dead trees—firs and pines—that had fallen from time to time ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... At a rough guess the gulf was forty feet across, but, so far as I could see, it might as well have been forty miles. I placed one arm round the trunk of the tree and leaned over the abyss. Far down were the small dark figures of our servants, looking up at us. The wall was absolutely precipitous, as ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... or Fish Creek, is the outlet of Saratoga Lake. Though a rapid mill-stream, there were several fords. The precipitous banks were a greater obstacle to troops ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... be waiting for him there. He hurried until his breath came pantingly between his lips and he was forced to rest. And at last he found himself where his progress was made a foot at a time, and again and again he was forced to climb back and detour around treacherous slides and precipitous breaks which left sheer falls at his feet. The mist thickened in the valley. The sun sank behind the western peaks, and swiftly after that the gloom of twilight deepened. It was seven o'clock when he came to the edge of the plain, at least a ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... orders to attack Saul in the rear. The latter had only six hundred men, with whom he scarcely dared to face so large a force; besides which, he was separated from the enemy by the Wady Suweinit, here narrowed almost into a gorge between two precipitous rocks, and through which no body of troops could penetrate without running the risk of exposing themselves in single file to the enemy. Jonathan, however, resolved to attempt a surprise in broad daylight, accompanied only by his armour-bearer. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and roll forth from thence a thick and perfumed cloud, fright took full possession of them, and exclaiming "irru, irru," with the arm extended, and a slight vertical motion of the hand, they darted off most unceremoniously, clambering up the face of a precipitous cliff, with extraordinary agility. Their cry of "irru, irru," and their manner of delivering it, were identical with those of King's Sound, under somewhat similar circumstances. In a few days they had forgotten their fright, and had returned ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... into by openings into romantic valleys, slope rapidly down to the plain, covered with picturesque vineyards; and at their feet lie antique villages, and the richly-cultivated plains of the Rhine, here thirty or forty miles wide. On almost every steep and projecting hill, or precipitous cliff, stands a ruined castle, each, as throughout Germany, with its wild history, its wilder traditions, and local associations of a hundred kinds. The railroad from Frankfort to Heidelberg now runs along the Bergstrasse, and will ever present to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... though seldom, attempts to write as if he were: and never, we think, without leaving an impression of poverty: as the brook which on nearly level ground quite fills its banks, appears but a thread when running rapidly down a precipitous declivity. He has feeling enough to form a decent, graceful, even beautiful decoration to a thought which is in itself interesting and moving; but not so much as suffices to stir up the soul by mere sympathy with itself in its simplest manifestation, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... generally diversified by canyons and buttes, whose precipitous sides break down into long ranges of rocky talus and sandy foothills. The arid character of this district is especially pronounced about the margin of the plateau. In the immediate vicinity of the villages there ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... headlands there was about half a mile of yellow sandy beach on which the waves rolled with a dull roar, fringing the wet sands with many coloured wreaths of sea-weed and delicate shells. At the back the cliffs rose in a kind of semi-circle, black and precipitous, to the height of about a hundred feet, and flocks of white seagulls who had their nests therein were constantly circling round, or flying seaward with steadily expanded wings and discordant cries. At the top of these inhospitable-looking cliffs a line of pale green betrayed ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... nibble the branches of high trees! In the middle of the garden are the courts for bears, only there is a sort of well in which the bears walk about; it is surrounded by no palisades, and you stand upon the precipitous ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... ascended sweeping down in the opposite direction into broad and capacious valleys, the land appeared to retain its general elevation, only broken into a series of ridges and inter-vales which so far as the eye could reach stretched away from us, with their precipitous sides covered with the brightest verdure, and waving here and there with the foliage of clumps of woodland; among which, however, we perceived none of those trees upon whose fruit we had relied with ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... in a few broken seaward glens, that high and barren inland plateau has little in it to attract or interest anyone, least of all a traveler fresh from the rich luxuriance of South American vegetation. But the view that burst suddenly upon Eustace Le Neve's eye as he gained the summit of that precipitous serpentine bluff fairly took his breath away. It was a rich and varied one. To the north and west loomed headland after headland, walled in by steep crags, and stretching away in purple perspective toward Marazion, ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... a moment, though; the next she had cowered, like some animal doubled up within itself. She peeped down the great rugged cliffs—the descent would be easy enough, as they were not precipitous, and the great boulders afforded plenty of foothold. Suddenly, as she grazed, she saw at some little distance on her left, and about midway down the cliffs, a rough wooden construction, through the wall of which ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... hold to the last. The town stands upon a narrow peninsula composed of desolate volcanic rocks, five miles long from east to west, and three from north to south, connected with the main land by a neck of flat sandy ground only a few feet high. The town itself is surrounded by precipitous rocks, which really make it a natural fortress impregnable against attack. All that I urge against conquest in general is inapplicable here, and I say let England guard such spots. As long as she ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... the almost blinding storm, reassured me, and there was no alternative but to find the river and take my direction from its current, Fortunately after a few hours of stumbling and scrambling among rocks and over crests, I came to the precipitous side of the canyon through which it ran, and with much labor, both of hands and feet, descended it to the margin. I drank copiously of its pure waters, and sat beside it for a long time, waiting for the storm to abate, so that I could procure fire. The day wore on, without ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... of the mountain began. It was a rough, narrow road, winding through a thick forest of oak and beech trees, here and there so steep as to try the firm footing of the mules, and in places dangerous because of broken ground on the edge of precipitous declivities. The cart was driven by its owner, a peasant of Casinum, who at times sat sideways on one of the beasts, at times walked by them; behind came the two religious men, cowled, bare-footed; and last Basil's attendant ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... about eight minutes—is picturesque to the last degree, with its crumbling, honeycombed battlements, and queer little flanking turrets, grated windows, and shadowy towers. It is built upon the face of a lofty dun-colored rock, upon whose precipitous side the fortification is terraced. It stands just at the entrance of the narrow channel leading to the city, so that in passing in one can easily exchange oral greetings with the sentry on the outer battlement. What strikingly ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... the precipitous side of the amphitheatre with rapid steps, vaulting from tier to tier, and bounding with wonderful agility from one mass of ruin to another. At length she reached the level; and then, foaming and panting, she rushed to Alroy, ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... experience to slip down every now and then to the tropics: first to pass under the pink walls of Morro Castle into the wide lagoon of Havana; then to cross the Spanish Main to Vera Cruz; then, after skirting the giant escarpment of Orizaba, to crawl zigzagging up the almost precipitous ascent that divides the 'tierra templada' from the 'tierra fria'; and finally to speed through the endless agave-fields of the upland haciendas, to ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... Grand View, and may be visited in the saddle during a camping-out trip of two days. They both command views of the amphitheatre where the Colorado River makes an almost right angle curve from Marble Canyon into the Granite Gorge. The walls are precipitous to three thousand five hundred feet below, and the outlook afforded is about seventy miles in either direction, up and down the Canyon. In addition to the Canyon outlook, Cape Solitude, which might well be called Desert View, commands a fine expanse of the Painted Desert, extending ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... to the mind or to the conscience. It allowed the Greeks to think what they would and to do what they chose. They made their gods to suit themselves, and regarded them rather as companions than as objects of reverence. The gods lived close to them on Olympus, a precipitous and snow-capped range full of vast cliffs, deep glens, and extensive forests, less than ten thousand feet in height, though covered with snow on the top even in ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... English New Testament, also, the word "hell" has not in every place the same meaning. It represents two different nouns in the original Greek—Gehenna and Hades. Gehenna was the name of a deep, narrow valley, bordered by precipitous rocks, in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, which had been desecrated by human sacrifices in the time of idolatrous kings, and afterwards became the depository of city refuse and of the offal of the temple sacrifices. The other noun, rendered ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... right and left, here running for long reaches in a straight line, and there curving or zig-zagging through the prairie. When they arrived upon its brink, they saw at a glance that they could not cross it. It was precipitous on both sides, with dark jutting rocks, which in some places overhung its bed. There was no water in it to gladden their eyes; but, even had there been such, they could not have reached it. Its bottom was dry, and covered with loose boulders of rock that had ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... most interesting to be found in the whole realm of Nature. Thus, the great tree, the "Grizzly Giant," of Mariposa, is shown in two admirable views; the mighty precipice of El Capitan, more than three thousand feet in precipitous height,—the three conical hill-tops of Yo Semite, taken, not as they soar into the atmosphere, but as they are reflected in the calm waters below,—these and others are shown, clear, yet soft, vigorous in the foreground, delicately distinct in the distance, in a perfection of art which compares ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... scenery takes a severer character, and there is sublimity in these gigantic walls of rock rising sheer from the silvery lakelike sheets of water, each successive one seeming to us more beautiful and romantic than the last. Perfect solitude reigns here, for so precipitous and steep are these fortress-like rocks that there is no "coigne of vantage," even for the mountain goat, not the tiniest path from summit to base, no single break in the shelving masses, some of which take the weirdest forms. Seen as we first saw them with a brilliant blue sky overhead, ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... seat close to the ravine, a favorite spot. Always the Martian was a step—or a slither—behind, and when Curtis sat down, Schaughtowl sat between his beloved master and the precipitous drop. ...
— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel
... by the mouth of a small river, which ran down through a very narrow alluvial flat, backed by precipitous rocks. On the right side of the river on entering, and on the level ground above mentioned, which extended back perhaps two hundred yards, until it was met by the rocky cliffs, was situated the village which, centuries back, must have been the town of Lanion. It consisted ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... lee yard-arm, grasped a back-stay, and commenced a rapid and precipitous descent to the deck. A few months before, he would have descended laboriously and fearfully by way of the shrouds; sliding down a backstay would then have rubbed his palms raw, and visited giddiness upon him. But now his hands were rope calloused, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... of the hurry and bustle and noisy confusion of San Francisco, I moved in the midst of a Summer calm as tranquil as dawn in the Garden of Eden; in place of the Golden City's skirting sand hills and the placid bay, I saw on the one side a frame-work of tall, precipitous mountains close at hand, clad in refreshing green, and cleft by deep, cool, chasm-like valleys—and in front the grand sweep of the ocean; a brilliant, transparent green near the shore, bound and bordered by a long white line of foamy spray dashing against the reef, and further ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the descent thence was so steep, so rugged and impracticable, that obviously no scheme of utility had prompted its construction. Jagged outcropping ledges, a chaos of scattered boulders, now and again a precipitous verge showing a vertical section of the denuded strata, all formed a slant so precarious and steep that with the sharp sound of the door, closing on its spring, Bayne looked up from his seat in the swing on the veranda ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... at about fifty miles distant, was the fine range of lofty mountains that stretched in a long line towards Latooka. On the west, on the left bank of the White Nile, which now flowed almost beneath our feet, was the precipitous mountain Neri, known by the Arab traders as Gebel huku. This fine mass of rock descends in a series of rugged terraces from a height of between three and four thousand feet to the Nile, at a point where the river boils through a narrow gorge between the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... road had dissolved to a river of soft slush, and one could sense rather than see the ominous premonitory twitchings in the lowering snow-banks as the lapping of the hot moist air relaxed the brake of the frost which had held them on the precipitous mountain sides. Every stretch where the road curved to the embrace of cliff or shelving valley wall was a possible ambush, and we slipped by them with ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... confidence in his own movements to defying another person's doubt in them. The defiance was more exciting than the confidence, but it was less sure. He continued to bet on his own play, but began often to fail. Still he went on, for his mind was as utterly narrowed into that precipitous crevice of play as if he had been the most ignorant lounger there. Fred observed that Lydgate was losing fast, and found himself in the new situation of puzzling his brains to think of some device by which, without being offensive, he could withdraw Lydgate's ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... ON A SUDDEN—MOON. "Do we not," writes Brimley, "seem to burst from the narrow steep path down the ravine, whose tall precipitous sides hide the sky and the broad landscape from sight, and come ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... now reached a narrow passage, which showed almost the appearance of having been cut by human strength and artifice in the solid rock. There was a wall of granite on each side, high and precipitous, especially on our right, and so smooth that a few evergreens could hardly find foothold enough to grow there. This is the entrance, or, in the direction we were going, the extremity, of the romantic defile ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... long, composed entirely of large blocks of hewn granite. The walls are 20 ft. high and 3 m. in circumference. The defences were formerly of considerable strength, and included a well-built but now dismantled citadel on a precipitous cliff, 250 ft. high, at the extremity of the tongue of land on which the town is built. In the neighbourhood an engagement took place between the English and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... seen in summer, it is apt to be disappointing. Lydford Gorge, however, is properly placed among the 'wonders' of Devonshire—to use Fuller's expression. The gorge is deep and exceedingly narrow, and the sides are precipitous. The river, rushing between blocks of stone, flows so far below the road that from the bridge, where the chasm is only a few yards wide, it is almost invisible. Risdon says: 'It maketh such a hideous ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... hear a kindly voice, but heard The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, The league-long roller thundering on the reef, The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, As down the shore he ranged, or all day long Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail: No sail from day to day, but every day The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... bush-jungle and a little grass. Gum-trees, myrrh, and some varieties of the frankincense are found in great profusion, as well as a variety of the aloe plant, from which the Somali manufacture good strong cordage. The upper part of the range is very steep and precipitous, and on this face is well clad with trees and bush-jungle. The southern side of the range is exactly the opposite, in all its characteristics, of the northern. Instead of having a steep drop of from 6000 to 7000 feet, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... firs, raising their stately forms and pointing their long dark fingers sternly at the intruders on their solitude; graceful birches; and here and there a whispering larch or a nodding pine. The other wall of the valley, or glen, is less precipitous, and its sides are densely wooded, and fringed with ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... place situated at the mouth of the Takia River, was attacked. It was surrounded by a wall 2 miles in circumference, 37 feet thick, and 22 feet high, mounted by 69 heavy guns and numberless jingalls. A lofty and precipitous hill, with a citadel on the summit, commanded the town; stockades had been driven into the water in front of all the batteries and landing-places, and an army of 10,000 men lay encamped, with numerous guns, a short distance from the bank of the river. The ships approached ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... lines were made mostly of elk-skin, which became softened and rotted by the water and often broke under the strain, causing many accidents of a trying and serious nature. The banks were sometimes so rocky and precipitous as to afford no foothold; then the men took to the water, wading, swimming, making headway as they could. One extract from the journals will illustrate the ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... carry water to the town of Beilan, which hangs over the mouth of the pass, half a mile below. This is one of the most picturesque spots in Syria. The houses cling to the sides and cluster on the summits of precipitous crags, and every shelf of soil, every crevice where a tree can thrust its roots, upholds a mass of brilliant vegetation. Water is the life of the place. It gushes into the street from exhaustless fountains; it trickles ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... from which they could be attacked; for the precipitous range of the Black Hills, standing behind Minturne Creek with its semicircular rampart, protected their rear and sides, so that they had only their front face to guard, along the course of the ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... over mountains where the caravans, engaged in the exportation of mohair ever since that valuable commodity first began to be exported, have worn ditch-like trails through ridges of solid rock three feet in depth; over the less rocky and precipitous hills beyond a comprehensive view is obtained of the country ahead, and these time-honored trails are seen leading in many directions, ramifying the country like veins of one common system, which are necessarily drawn together wherever there is but one pass. Parts ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... impossible must be done, and at once. Wolfe, after several desperate proposals of his had been rejected by the council of war, made a feint in force up the river, in the hope of getting Montcalm where he could fight him. He scrutinized the precipitous north shore as with a magnifying glass. At last, on the 11th of September, the hope that had so long been burning within him was gratified. But what a hope! A headlong goat-track cleft its zigzag way up the awful steep, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... to Pat Doolan, on seeing that worthy shivering while trying to re-light the fire—which an avalanche of snow, descending from a precipitous rise above the site of our tent, had suddenly buried, along with the cook's pots and pans, just as he was preparing our morning meal, on the fourth day of the storm—"how about that Manilla guernsey o' yourn now, old flick? Guess it would come in ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... When I was here before, I spent one whole morning listening to the waves, and their surging suggested a waltz to me. This is the way it went,' and leaning on the rough paling that guarded the precipitous edge, Montgomery sang his unpublished composition. 'I never got any further,' he said, stopping short in the middle of the second part; 'I somehow lost the character of the thing; but I ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... of Ross-shire are wild and precipitous, sinking with a sheer descent of two hundred feet to the ocean. The scenery is more rugged than beautiful—little verdure and less foliage. Trees are stunted by the bitter eastern blast, and the soil ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... Flanking him on two sides of the triangle are: cut in high relief, on the left, the scene of the enlistment of the Battalion under the flag of the United States of America; on the right a scene of the march, where the men are assisting in pulling the wagons of their train up and over a precipitous ascent, while still others are ahead, widening a cut to permit the passage of the wagons between the out-jutting rocks. The background is a representation of mountains of the character through which the Battalion and its train passed on its journey ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... from Olevano to Subiaco. A steep mile and a half up to the very crest of the mountains, and then down some sharp corners and one or two very precipitous zigzags, letting myself run down; the first time I have had such a sensation, a sensation largely of fear, partly of joy: a changing view in front, on the side—steeps of sere woods, great mountains, like ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... ran off through the woods (when he did not follow me), and finally up the steep slope at the head of a cove again, into the region of the earliest bloodroots, and so to the final shin up the last precipitous wall to the plateau above. As I reached the summit and looked back, I saw the cove was green, and the veil I had gazed through that morning was hazier now; Spring had climbed with me back up the slope and even here on the two-thousand foot rim the trees were bursting into ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... by which we were mounting would become too precipitous higher up, I turned off to the left, and crossed a long, narrow snow-slope that descended between this ridge and another line of rocks more to the west. It was firm, and just steep enough to make steps cut in the snow comfortable, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... tattered and wayworn, to the summit of a steep descent, and looked below me on the sea. About all the coast, the surf, roused by the tornado of the night, beat with a particular fury and made a fringe of snow. Close at my feet, I saw a haven, set in precipitous and palm- crowned bluffs of rock. Just outside, a ship was heaving on the surge, so trimly sparred, so glossily painted, so elegant and point-device in every feature, that my heart was seized with admiration. The English colours blew from her masthead; ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... the narrow ledges cut around the sides of a precipitous trail, or crossing a narrow natural bridge spanning the frightful gorges found everywhere in the mountains, a mule will be incontinently thrown off the slippery path, and fall hundreds of feet into the yawning canyon ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... pressed up into great folds, two hundred feet in height and between one quarter and a third of a mile from crest to crest. The ridges of the folds were either domes or open rifts partly choked with snow. Precipitous ice-falls and deep cauldrons were encountered everywhere. To the north the glacier flattened out; to the south it ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... (Plate XVIII.). On the 11th of January, 1782, the fleet, carrying six thousand troops, anchored on the west coast off Basse Terre, the chief town. No opposition was met, the small garrison of six hundred men retiring to a fortified post ten miles to the northwest, on Brimstone Hill, a solitary precipitous height overlooking the lee shore of the island. The French troops landed and pursued, but the position being found too strong for assault, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... and down the street, pinched his chin and peered down the precipitous Savoy causeway. Whatever the burden on his soul he did ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... these we threaded our way—keeping as much as possible among the trees. Further on, we came upon a gorge—one of the noted canons through which the Huerfano runs. Here the river sweeps down a narrow channel, with rocky banks that rise on each side into precipitous cliffs ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... land upon the surface of the Boer States, a hundred great billows stand up in Natal. Kopje succeeds kopje, all steep, and many precipitous, yet not the bare, stony cairns of the transmontane regions, but moist green masses of verdure, seldom parched even in the dry season, and in the wet, glistening with a thousand cascades; not severely conical or rectangular, like ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... spent and weary, she let him lie and howl. Exhausted, terribly shaken in body and soul, yet her eyes triumphant, she once more climbed the precipitous path to her own dwelling. The torch she flung away, down the canyon ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... resemblance to a pumpkin pie, and the name, like all bad names, sticks. McKay's Mountain on the main-land, a perpendicular rock more than a thousand feet high, up-heaved by the throes of some vast volcano, and numerous other bold and precipitous head lands, and rock-built islands, around which roll the sapphire-blue waters of the fathomless bay, present some of the most magnificent views to be ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... County of London Yeomanry, and the 1/3rd County of London Yeomanry. At half-past twelve the Bucks Hussars less one squadron and the Berks battery, which were in the rear of the brigade, advanced via Beshshit to the wadi Janus, a deep watercourse with precipitous banks running across the plain east of Yebnah and joining the wadi Rubin. One squadron of the Bucks Hussars had entered Yebnah from the east, co-operating with the 8th Brigade. General Godwin was told over the telephone that the infantry attack ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... served The Company for fifty-seven years, and his ambition is to put in three years more. The Company gives its employes a pension after thirty years' service, and this veteran of Good Hope surely deserves two pensions. The steps are almost precipitous, but the old gentleman insists upon coming down to present in person his report to his superior officer. Then the two climb up the bank together, the younger man giving a strong arm to the older. We follow, and half-way up the two figures stop, ostensibly for Mr. Gaudet to point out to ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... hill, and crosses a bridge. Then you come out on a waste of salt-marsh, threaded by the creek, broken by wild, fantastic sand-hills, grown over by beach-grass which will cut your fingers like a knife. You drive close along the white, precipitous beach; you pass the long, shaky pier, with half-decayed fish-houses at the other end, and picturesque heaps of fish-cars, seines, and barrels. Then the road, following the shore a little longer, climbs the hill and enters the woods. Two miles more and you come out to ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... settled the matter to my own satisfaction and relief, I acknowledged a feeling of shame for having been so precipitous. I shudder to think of the look she would have given me if I had burst in upon her while in the throes of that extraordinary seizure. Obviously I had lost my wits. Now I had them once more, I knew what to do with them. First of ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... on foreign mail days; he says, too, that never since these vessels were started has there been a single accident to life or limb. But the last bag is on board, steam is up, and away goes the ship past the South Stack lighthouse, built on an island under precipitous cliffs, from which a gun is fired when foggy, and in about an hour the Irish coast becomes visible, Howth and Bray Head. The sea gets pretty rough, but luckily does not interfere with your excellent appetite for the first-class refreshments supplied. The swift-revolving paddles churn ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... about a hundred feet above the river's bed. From this spot I had a fine view of the ground. Immediately before me, rose the hill from which the elk had barked; beneath my feet, the river stretched into a wide pool on its entrance to the jungle. This jungle clothed the precipitous cliffs of a deep ravine, down which the river fell in two cataracts; these were concealed from view by the forest. I waited in breathless expectation of 'the find.' A few minutes passed, when the sudden burst of the pack ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... picturesque. It is necessary to carry torches, for the way is dark and dangerous. After advancing sixty or seventy feet we descend a strong but rough ladder twenty feet long, placed against a very precipitous rock. Not the faintest glimmer of daylight reaches that spot; but after a while we stand on the brink of a perpendicular precipice, the bottom of which is strongly illuminated through a hole in the surface rock more than 200 feet above. Standing on the verge ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... the use of any instrument. A world of musical feeling was pent up in her, and music raised the suddener storms in her mobile nature, that she was unable to give that feeling utterance. The waves of her soul dashed the more wildly against their shores, inasmuch as those shores were precipitous, and yielded no outlet to the swelling waters. It was that his soul might hover like a bird of Paradise over the lovely changes of her countenance, changes more lovely and frequent than those of an English May, that Ericson persuaded Robert ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... thirteen miles, running parallel with the coastline and distant from it about eight miles. Viewed from the south-westward the outline is regular, exhibiting a series of nearly flat tops with slight interruptions, but from the southward it appears as a succession of terraces or projecting cliffs, precipitous in front near the summit, with a long steep slope below, probably of debris, while the flat top slopes backwards with a very gentle declivity. Owen Stanley Range again presented quite a different aspect as seen on the ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into frenzied convulsion—heaving, boiling, hissing,—gryrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes except in precipitous descents. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... far as the eye could reach. Their summits were crowned with extensive tracts of pitch-pine, checkered with small patches of the quivering aspen. Lower down were thick forests of firs and red cedars, growing out in many places from the very fissures of the rocks. The mountains were broken and precipitous, with huge bluffs protruding from among the forests. Their rocky recesses and beetling cliffs afforded retreats to innumerable flocks of the bighorn, while their woody summits and ravines abounded ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... borders and sullen waters of the Dead Sea, the ragged and precipitous chain of mountains arising on the left, the two or three palms clustered together, forming the single green speck on the bosom of the waste wilderness—objects which, once seen, were scarcely to be forgotten—showed ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... the little platform; and, making use of them as a staircase, he clambered by their means around the projecting shoulder of the crag on which the cavern opened, and, descending with some difficulty on the other side, he gained the wild and precipitous shores of a Highland loch, about four miles in length and a mile and a half across, surrounded by heathy and savage mountains, on the crests of which the morning mist ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... near Brechin, during a severe snow-storm in the year 1798, had gone with his dog, called Caesar, to a spot on the small stream of Paphry (a tributary of the North Esk), where his sheep on such occasions used to take shelter beneath some lofty and precipitous rocks called Ugly Face, which overhung the stream. While employed in driving them out, an immense avalanche fell from these rocks, and completely buried him and his dog. He found all his endeavours to extricate himself from this fearful situation in vain; and at last, worn out, fell ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... turned to Paul with a radiant face that made him long to catch her in his arms—"do you know that wonderful country? Those fissured peaks, with their precipitous and inaccessible crests—their rock-cumbered valleys, concealing deep and lovely lakes? And the beautiful pine-woods creeping down to the foot of the mountains? I could spend all my life in that wonderful place, living in some ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... later they came to an avalanche of broken sandstone that was heaped half-way up the face of the precipitous wall, and up this climbed until they came to a level shelf of rock, and back of this was a great depression in the rock, forty feet deep and half as wide, with a floor as level as a table and covered with soft white ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... cliff side; half-way up there were some very long steps, and it was from above that help could best be given. He longed with a fierce, aching longing that she would allow him to take her two hands in his and draw her up those high, precipitous steps. But of late Claire had avoided accepting from him, her friend, this simple, trifling act of courtesy. And now twice he turned and held out a hand, and twice she pretended not ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... eastern chain, it differs from the other in its nature also; exhibiting heaps of chalk and sand, whose form, it is said, bears some resemblance to piles of arms, waving standards, or the tents of a camp pitched on the border of a plain. The Arabian side, on the contrary, presents nothing but black precipitous rocks, which throw their lengthened shadow over waters of the Dead Sea. The smallest bird of heaven would not find among these crags a single blade of grass for its sustenance; every thing announces the country of a reprobate ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... to the bluff's edge and clamber down the shelving, precipitous sides. Here was the only natural hiding-place, but like children we all ran the other way. When we had come in again with the report of "No enemy in sight," and had shut the door against the rain, I happened to glance out of the east window. Climbing up to the street from the cliff I saw the lithe ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... if somewhat precipitous, staircase for what must be fully a hundred feet, we find ourselves in a cave from which a very spacious archway leads into a huge vaulted chamber. The first impression is one of acute astonishment, by no means lessened, even after one becomes accustomed ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... its valley might reveal something of interest, they began the ascent, remaining at an elevation of a few hundred feet. For about three hundred miles they followed this river, which had but few bends, while its sides became more and more precipitous, till it flowed through a canon four and a half miles across. Though they knew from the wide discoloration of Cortlandt Bay that the volume of water discharged was tremendous, the stream seldom moved at a rate of more than five miles an hour, and for a time was free from ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... sound once before. It was the fall of part of the precipitous cliff, much of which had been quarried away. But in spite of all precautions, frost and rain were in danger of loosening the remainder, and wire fences were continually needing to be placed to prevent the walking above on edges ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ordeal was terrible, and the sound and sight of wounded and bleeding were enough to paralyse the stoutest heart, the ever "gay" Gordons plodded on, passing higher and higher, while their officers leading, cheered and roared them up the precipitous ascent. Thus they clambered and plodded, with men dropping dead at their elbows, with torn and fainting comrades by their sides. A storm of rain from the gathering thunderclouds drenched them through to ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... friends therefore set off from the Marina in their various craft. The row along the base of the precipitous craggy shore was most beautiful, the water swarmed with gayly-colored sea-stars and jelly-fish, and on the rocks at the edge of the waves grew gorgeous madrepores, and other "frutti di mare." The Blue Grotto is one of the wonders of Italy, but to ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... Francisco. The route passes through the Sierra Nevada Mountains, presenting scenery which recalls the grand gorges and snow-clad peaks of Switzerland and Norway, characterized by deep canyons, lofty wooded elevations, and precipitous declivities. At the several railway stations specimens of the native Shoshones, Piutes, and other tribes of Indians are seen lazily sunning themselves in picturesque groups. The men are dirty and uncouth examples of humanity, besmeared with yellow ochre and vermilion; their dress consisting ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... world unchildlike; spoiled darling of Nature, playmate of her elemental daughters; "pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift," laired amidst the burning fastnesses of his own fervid mind; bold foot along the verges of precipitous dream; light leaper from crag to crag of inaccessible fancies; towering Genius, whose soul rose like a ladder between heaven and earth with the angels of song ascending and descending it;—he is shrunken into the little vessel ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... this—that the one, arduous and difficult in the beginning, leads out at last into the open country; while the other, seeming at first sight easy and free from obstruction, leads to pathless and precipitous places. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... M'Androsser, all very strong men, when they saw Bruce thus protecting the retreat of his followers, made a vow that they would either kill this redoubted champion, or make him prisoner. The whole three rushed on the king at once. Bruce was on horseback, in the strait pass we have described, between a precipitous rock and a deep lake. He struck the first man who came up and seized his horse's rein such a blow with his sword, as cut off his hand and freed the bridle. The man bled to death. The other brother had grasped Bruce in the meantime by the leg, and was attempting to throw him from ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... have christened by the Canadian term 'toboggan,' the excitement becomes far greater. The hand-sledge is about three feet long, fifteen inches wide, and half a foot above the ground, on runners shod with iron. Seated firmly at the back, and guiding with the feet in front, the rider skims down precipitous slopes and round perilous corners with a rapidity that beats a horse's pace. Winding through sombre pine-forests, where the torrent roars fitfully among caverns of barbed ice, and the glistening mountains tower above in their glory of sun-smitten ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... if his pal was going all the way back to get one of the flashlights they had left behind in the precipitous chase. He wasn't worried about his ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... are here combin'd. The wide extended landscape glows with more Than common beauty. Hills rise on hills— An amphitheater, whose lofty top, The spreading oak, or stately poplar crowns— Whose ever-varying sides present such scenes Smooth or precipitous—harmonious still— Mild or sublime,—as wake the poet's lay; Nor aught is wanting to delight the sense; The gifts of Ceres, or Diana's shades. The eye enraptur'd roves o'er woods and dells, Or dwells complacent ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... of Victoria. This small island, previous to 1846, belonged to Borneo, but in that year the Sultan ceded it to Britain, as a convenient station for checking piracy on his sea-board. It lies off the north-eastern end of the great island of Borneo, and within view of its precipitous heights and ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... ridge a short distance to the south. The top was rocky and precipitous, and the trees and vegetation were so scarce that the rugged baldness could be seen a ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... should he fail in his first attempt. His object now was to see if his estimate of proximity to the mine was correct; and leaving his horse, he pushed up the mountain-side. At last he reached a precipitous ledge. Skirting this a short distance, he found a place of comparatively easy ascent, and soon learned with much satisfaction that he was not over two hundred yards from the thicket opposite Mr. Alford's quarters. These discoveries all favored possible future ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... the pass as already shown, were high and precipitous, so that there was no possibility of escape except by going backward or forward. Furthermore, the canyon, as it must have been at some distant day, wound in and out in such a fashion that there were many places where it was impossible to see more ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... Emperor Zeno. Now the Ephthalitae made it appear to their enemy that they had turned to flight because they were wholly terrified by their attack, and they retired with all speed to a place which was shut in on every side by precipitous mountains, and abundantly screened by a close forest of wide-spreading trees. Now as one advanced between the mountains to a great distance, a broad way appeared in the valley, extending apparently to an indefinite distance, ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... made his way along the fatal path; he found the ruin where Hester had sheltered; he gradually identified the route which the rescue party had taken along the side of the fell; and the precipitous scree where they had found her. The freshly disturbed earth and stones still showed plainly where she had fallen, and where he and the shepherds had stood, trampling the ground round her. He sat down beside the spot, haunted by the grim memory of that helpless, bleeding form amid the snow. Not yet ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mountain as lightly as a butterfly. She was lovelier than ever in the morning light, yet a misty doubt, a watchful sadness, seemed to hover upon her forehead. Her wonderful eyes looked ahead up the precipitous tract that she and the Italian woman climbed together. She moderated her pace to the slower gait of the elder and presently they both stopped before a little grey chapel perched ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... only saw The white flash of her seas and there, oh there That land-locked bay with those five elfin ships, Five elfin ebony ships upon a sheet Of wrinkled silver! Then, as the thunder followed, One thought burst through his brain— One ship was gone! Over the grim precipitous edge he hung, An eagle waiting for the lightning now To swoop upon his prey. One iron hand Gripped a rough tree-root like a bunch of snakes; And, as the rain rushed round him, far away He saw to northward yet another flash, A scribble of God's finger in the sky Over a waste ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... rock-rose and bordered with candy-tuft, and try to drive out of mind the only disagreeable thought I have at this moment—that of getting down to the path, where I was safe. The worst part of climbing precipitous places is not the going up, but the coming down. Not a human being or dwelling is in sight, so that I can contemplate the wildness of the scene to my mind's content. But a very hoarse voice not far above tells me that I am not alone. A raven perched upon ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... He saw himself again looking up at the bristling cliffs that were to be rushed, whence the Afridis were pouring their deadly fire. He saw himself measuring with his eye the saddle of precipitous slope that had to be crossed, devoid of cover and strewn with the bodies of dead Ghurkas. Of the actual crossing, with sixty Rangers behind him, he had little or no recollection. He had passed under ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... side with the sea, and was on the other separated from it only by a strip of land, four hundred yards wide. Through this a wide channel had been dug. Thus the hill, which was of considerable extent, rugged and precipitous, was isolated, and could only be attacked ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... the young commander. With the energy of despair he fastened at last upon a daring idea. Thirty-six hundred of his men were ferried in the dead of night to a point above the city where his soldiers might scramble through bushes and over rocks up a precipitous path to a high plain— the Plains ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... along, beneath him he espies The sides precipitous and towering peak Of rugged Atlas, who upholds the skies. Round his pine-covered forehead, wild and bleak, The dark clouds settle and the storm-winds shriek. His shoulders glisten with the mantling snow, Dark roll the torrents down his aged cheek, Seamed with the wintry ravage, and below, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... southernmost coast of Sardinia. Beneath it, on the other side and almost surrounding it, is a cleft in the cliff like an immense corridor which serves as a harbor, and along it the little Italian and Sardinian fishing boats come by a circuitous route between precipitous cliffs as far as the first houses, and every two weeks the old, wheezy steamer which makes ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... let the rope race through his blistered fingers. With hands burnt to the quick, he grabbed the rope and stopped the precipitous descent just in time to bring the stern level ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons |
