"Rafts" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to him. At best he regards it as a means to an end—to make a living. All this must surely be of great consequence for the rise of a mental outlook that cares only for gain; and who will deny that colonial activity generates it? "Our rivulets and streams turn mill wheels and bring rafts into the valleys, as they do in Scotland. But not one ballad, not a single song, reminds us that on their banks men and women live who experience the happiness of love and the pangs of separation; that under ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... could not see. I then went out of the chart house and met the navigator, Lieutenant Leonard, and asked him if he had sent any radio, and he replied "No." I then directed him and accompanied him to the main deck and told him to take charge of cutting away forward dories and life rafts. ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... winter, buried in the eternal forest, far, far away from the haunts of man, they chop and hew; in the summer, they form the timber, boards, staves, &c., into rafts, which are conveyed down the great lakes and the rivers St. Lawrence and Ottawa to Quebec—on these rafts they live and have their summer being. Hard fare in plenty, such as salt pork and dough cakes; fat and unleavened bread, with whiskey, is their diet. Tea and sugar form an occasional ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... all. But to get rid of it, turned out to be a very difficult task. He wandered along the bank of the Ekaterininsky Canal for half an hour or more and looked several times at the steps running down to the water, but he could not think of carrying out his plan; either rafts stood at the steps' edge, and women were washing clothes on them, or boats were moored there, and people were swarming everywhere. Moreover he could be seen and noticed from the banks on all sides; it would look ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... mortification of your flesh, of your old self! Good! Now keep still: the pilgrims are coming on their wooden rafts to celebrate ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... himself a false guide, and none asked his opinion further, and I became the ruling genius of the hour. The embarkation now went briskly forward, several light field guns were placed in the boats, and two or three large rafts, capable of containing two companies each, were prepared to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... then, to suppose that these plants and trees had been swept down by rivers into the sea, as the sands and muds which buried them had been. And it was known that at the mouths of certain rivers—the Mississippi, for instance—vast rafts of dead floating trees accumulated; and that the bottoms of the rivers were often full of snags, etc.; trees which had grounded, and stuck in the mud; and why should not the coal have been formed in ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... the loads were not as heavy as they looked, but the boys were having a hard time of it, to judge from their distressed faces peering anxiously from underneath the rafts which, at each step, rocked to and fro and seemed always on the point of toppling. Frantic clutches of small brown hands and the quick shifting of ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... sensations of Beta and Allan as they beheld the flambeaux gleaming silently along the pool or over the surface when the Folk put forth on the rude rafts ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the raft until they had scoured the sea for miles about, and then they did not stop entirely, but slid by and tossed ropes to the people on the raft, dragging them aboard one by one. A seaman standing near Jimmie explained this procedure; it appeared that the submarines were accustomed to lurk near rafts and life-boats, preying upon those vessels which came to their rescue. Distressed castaways were bait—"live bait", explained the seaman; the U-boats would lurk about for days, sometimes for a week, watching the people in the life-boats ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... "You know that plenty of driftwood lies along the shore. Let us make several rafts, and carry them to a suitable place. If our plot succeeds, we can wait patiently for the chance of some passing ship which would rescue us from this fatal island. If it fails, we must quickly take to our rafts; frail as they are, we have more chance of saving our lives with ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... has no attraction in comparison with the seaward expansion of commerce. The result is often a relative dearth of local land-grown food stuffs. King Hiram of Tyre, in his letter to King Solomon, promised to send him trees of cedar and cypress, made into rafts and conveyed to the coast of Philistia, and asked in return for grain, "which we stand in need of because we inhabit an island." The pay came in the form of wheat, oil, and wine. But Solomon furnished a considerable part of the laborers—30,000 of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... had lowered considerably, and Mortimer, while searching for his boat, saw numerous ice-rafts moving down the channel; yet he could not repress a conviction that something more than mere good fortune had directed the ice-cake to touch at his bleak and comfortless perch in the nick of time ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... journey least fatiguing to the recovering invalid. That the three New Yorkers, to whom the scenery of that noble river was thoroughly familiar, clapped hands and shouted their joy once more, nearly all day, at the flashing blue of the river, the rafts of steamboats, sloops and tows that continually came sweeping down it, the rugged frowning of the Palisades, the narrow-passes and rugged peaks of the Highlands, and the long, blue, uneven line of the Cattskills, with the white glimmering of the Mountain ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... was finished, about four hundred men were carried part of the way across the river on two miserable rafts, which could hardly sustain themselves against the current; and we saw them from the bank rudely shaken by the great blocks of ice which encumbered the river. These blocks came to the very edge of the raft, where, finding an obstacle, they remained stationary for some time, then ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... in felling trees; others with horses dragging the trunks, placed on sleighs, over the hard snow on to the ice. They were there arranged alongside each other, and bound together so as to form numerous small rafts. Here they would remain until the giving way of the frost; when, on the disappearance of the ice, they would be floated down towards the mouth of the river and towed across the lake to the various ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... diary of this journey, telling of encounters with blacks, of death and madness by starvation and other privations; of how they crossed wide and shark-infested rivers by building rafts of tree branches cut down and fashioned with jack knives; of how the lives of men were purchased from the blacks by strips of clothing; and of how they counted the buttons on their ragged garments, and thus reckoned ...
— The Beginning Of The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... afforded by the churches to all before his time he had long ago violated, and, certain of a large booty, did not hesitate to add another sacrilege to his numerous crimes. On his arrival before Metraha, he at once ordered his people to make rafts. Whilst Theodore was occupied in their construction, a priest came in a boat, and approaching within speaking distance, inquired of the Emperor what it was that he desired. Theodore told him the grain ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... will certainly fail," Ned said, as they sat at breakfast. "They will be baffled by this water belt round us. However, they will come next time with rafts ready to push across it, and then we ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... many rafts, splashing them with waves. The beams are in continual motion under the blows of the waves; the men on the rafts in blue shirts, staggering, look at the steamer and laugh and shout something. The ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... those years of labor had builded up about us might vanish in a breath. And I needed new flannelette for the Twins' nighties, and a reefer for little Dinky-Dunk, and an aluminum double-boiler that didn't leak for me maun's porritch. There were rafts of things I needed, rafts and rafts of them. But here we were bust, so far as I could tell, on the rocks, swamped, stranded ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... direction, and at the recent meeting of the Institution of Naval Architects, Mr. Copeman showed several models of the latest types of their life saving apparatus, both for use on torpedo boats and passenger steamers. Our illustration (Fig. 1) represents the kind of rafts supplied to her Majesty's troop ships, while Figs. 2 and 3 show deck seats convertible into rafts, which are intended for ordinary passenger steamers. The raft shown in Fig. 1 consists of two pontoons, joined by strong ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... flood, and a channel of deep water, broader than the Thames below London Bridge and racing along at seven miles an hour, formed a serious obstacle. Since there were no boats the soldiers began forthwith to construct rafts from barrels that had been brought for the purpose. As soon as the first of these was completed, it was sent on a trial trip. The result was not encouraging. The raft supported ten men, occupied five hours in the passage, was carried ten miles down ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... six-oared yawls, with careful hands in them, were kept astern of the ship; a small quantity of bread, water, and other necessary articles, were put into them; two canoes, which we had on board, were lashed together and put into the water; rafts were made, and all floating things upon ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... recalcitrants; but by forethought for them and their wants, and a strict watchfulness for their rights and comfort, I was able in a short time to make them obedient and the detachment cohesive. In the past year they had made long and tiresome marches, forded swift mountain streams, constructed rafts of logs or bundles of dry reeds to ferry our baggage, swum deep rivers, marched on foot to save their worn-out and exhausted animals, climbed mountains, fought Indians, and in all and everything had done the best they could for the service and their commander. The disaffected feeling they entertained ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... the river again, looking for a place where he could safely cross to explore the country on the opposite side. After ascending from the spot where he found the letters for five or six days, he concluded they could cross by means of rafts. In the construction of these rafts he invited the help of the natives of the neighbourhood. He was probably up near the Chocolate Mountains and the Cumanas, who were hostile to Alarcon, and whose sorcerer had attempted to destroy ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... Mexico was in the middle of a great lake, and the inhabitants were not strong enough to hold land on the shores, they were driven to strange shifts to get food. Among other expedients, they took to making little floating islands, which consisted of rafts of reeds and brushwood, on which they heaped mud from the shores of the lakes. On the banks of the lake of Tezcuco the mud was, at first, too full of salt and soda to be good for cultivation; but by pouring the water of ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... of a project for this purpose, I communicated it to my comrades, who approved it. 'Brethren,' said I, 'you know there is much timber floating upon the coast; if you will be advised by me, let us make several rafts capable of bearing us. In the meantime, we will carry out the design I proposed to you for our deliverance from the giant, and if it succeed, we may remain here patiently awaiting the arrival of some ship; but if it ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... foliage. These large marshes, covered with reeds as with a thick mantle, sleep silently and calmly beneath the sun's soft and genial rays. A few fishermen with their families indolently pass their lives away there, with their great living-rafts of poplar and alder, the flooring formed of reeds, and the roof woven out of thick rushes. These barks, these floating-houses, are wafted to and fro by the changing winds. Whenever they touch a bank, it is but by chance; and so gently, too, that the sleeping fisherman is not awakened ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... As soon as the Kuru prince met those beauteous ones deprived of the protection of Krishna and of their sons as well, he was unable to look at them, his vision being obstructed by tears. The Dwaraka river had the Vrishnis and the Andhakas for its water, steeds for its fishes, cars for its rafts, the sound of musical instruments and the rattle of cars for its waves, houses and mansions and public squares for its lakes. Gems and precious stones were its abundant moss. The walls of adamant were the garlands of flowers that floated ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... comfort wherever he could find it, even though it was only on a raft. So the Venture's "shanty" was very different from the rude lean-to or shelter of rough boards, such as was to be seen on most of the timber rafts of the great river. Its interior was divided into two rooms, the after one of which was a tiny affair only six by ten feet. It was furnished with two bunks, one above the other, a table, two camp-chairs, and several shelves, on one ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... tabalang, or raft, on which a live rooster is fastened before it is set adrift on the river. In the tales the raft and fowl are of gold, but this is surprising even to the old woman Alokotan, past whose home in Nagbotobotan all these rafts must ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... extent that with care and labour it can be traversed in every direction on foot. Where the parts do not fit closely there is, of course, open water, which freezes over, in a few hours after giving off volumes of "frost-smoke." In obedience to renewed pressure this young ice "rafts," so forming double thicknesses of a toffee-like consistency. Again the opposing edges of heavy floes rear up in slow and almost silent conflict, till high "hedgerows" are formed round each part of the puzzle. At the junction of ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... observing the vessels under Aldana passing the port of Manta in that province, had sent an express to Gonzalo giving his opinion that these vessels seemed hostile, as they had not called at the port for refreshments. He at the same time sent some Indians on board, in their ordinary rafts or flat boats, to inquire the purpose of their voyage; by means of which Indians Aldana transmitted letters to D'Olmos, urging him to quit the insurgent party, with copies of all the papers connected with the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... Mr. Perkins accompanied me with the remainder of the party by land. The last of the emigrants had just left the Dalles at the time of our arrival, traveling some by water and others by land, making ark-like rafts, on which they had embarked their families and households, with their large wagons and other furniture, while their stock ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... suddenly ceased and the sky cleared," he resumed, "we managed to get dry, after a day or two, and since then we've been chewing leather until there isn't a shoe or a belt left. We thought at first of trying to build rafts—but then where could we go? It wasn't any use to sail out over a drowned country, with nothing in sight but the mountains around us, which looked no better than the one ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... upon the bare soil, without even a blanket to cover their shivering frames. Their feet became blistered. Passing beyond the bounds of the open prairie, they sometimes found themselves in bogs, sometimes in tangled forests. There were streams to be waded or to be crossed upon such rude rafts as they could frame with their hatchets. Their clothes hung in tatters around them, and, most deplorable of all, ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... million escaped by river. Anything that could float was pressed into service: merchant steamers, dredgers, ferry-boats, scows, barges, canal-boats, tugs, fishing craft, yachts, rowing-boats, launches, even extemporized rafts. There was no attempt to enforce order. The fear-frantic people piled aboard until there was not even standing room on the vessels' decks. Of all these thousands who fled by river, but an insignificant proportion ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... canoes were very artificially made, considering that they use no edge-tools in their construction; and are about seven or eight yards in length, by half a yard only in breadth, their heads and stems being both alike, and having rafts made of canes or reeds on their starboard sides, being also supplied both with masts and sails. These latter are made of sedges, and are either square or triangular. These canoes have this property, that they will sail almost as well against ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... any kind of property escaped the ravages of the fire, which swept off the surface everything coming in contact with it, leaving but time for the unfortunate inhabitants to fly to the shore; and there, by means of boats, canoes, rafts of timber, logs, or any article, however ill calculated for the purpose, they endeavoured to escape from the dreadful scene and reach the town of Chatham, numbers of men, women, and children ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... restored, the army set out to march northwards to the place where it had been decided to build the town. They crossed a river in rafts and broken canoes which they found upon its bank, and presently came to a very different scene from the burning sandy waste, which they had left. The wide plains were covered with green grass, and there were groves of palms, among which the Spaniards saw deer and various wild ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... of "White Horse Rapids," from so strangely resembling white horses as the waters are dashed over and about the huge boulders in mid-stream. Here many of the earlier argonauts found watery graves as they journeyed in small boats or rafts down the streams to the Klondyke in their mad haste to reach the ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... stray breeze, came from a point far up the stream. He listened and the sound pleased him. The lone, weird note was in full accord with the night and his mood, and presently he knew it. It was some mountaineer on a raft singing a plaintive song of his own distant hills. Huge rafts launched on the headwaters of the stream in the mountains in the eastern part of the state came in great numbers down the river, but oftenest at this time of the year. Some stopped at Frankfort, and others went into the Ohio for the cities ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... The evening after we had left New York, while we were still off the coast of Long Island, I saw on the poop a crowd of steerage passengers listening intently to harangues by speakers addressing them from the top of a pile of life rafts. Armenians, I was told, on their way to fight the Turks, all recruited in America by one frenzied woman who had seen her child cut in two by a German officer. Twilight was gathering as I joined the group, the sea was silvered by the light of an August moon floating ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... from all parts, and early on the morrow he set out; Santestevan lay on his left hand, which is a good city, and Ahilon on the right, which belongs to the Moors, and he passed by Alcobiella, which is the boundary of Castille. And he went by the Calzada de Quinea, and crost the Douro upon rafts. That night, being the eighth, they rested at Figeruela, and more adventurers came to join him. And when my Cid was fast asleep, the Angel Gabriel appeared to him in a vision, and said, Go on boldly and fear nothing; for everything shall go well with thee as long as thou livest, and ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... of the most energetic and honorable business men in the Grand River valley. From 1848, he had been a familiar figure in lumbering circles and during that period there had been no year when, from May 1 till snow flew, his fleets of rafts of pine lumber were not running over the dam at Grand Rapids. With the business men along the river his relations had been close and friendly. They were, therefore, not reluctant to do him a favor. Among these I will mention but two, though ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... one of the men swam the river and brought over a canoe. As only seven men could be taken over at a time, the work of crossing the troops was slow and tedious. General Clinch and Colonels Samuel Parkhill and Read crossed over, and, in conjunction with General Call, began the construction of rafts on which the baggage and stores could be crossed over. The regulars were all over by twelve o'clock, and Major Alexander C.W. Fanning marched them into an open field surrounded on all sides either by a thick swamp or hammock, and there formed them into line, awaiting the crossing ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... Mother. "When boys get on rafts and fall into the water, they always go to bed while ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... themselves; for the purpose of the Temple is to prepare for the time and the place where the seer 'saw no temple therein.' They are but the cups that carry the wine, the flowers whose chalices bear the honey, the ladders by which the soul may climb to God Himself, the rafts upon which the precious treasure may be floated ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... an additional provision for the comfort and convenience of passengers, and there is no more reason why they should not be provided on these ships than in a large hotel. There were places on the Titanic's deck where more boats and rafts could have been stored without sacrificing these things. The fault lay in not providing them, not in designing the ship without places to put them. On whom the responsibility must rest for their not being provided is another matter and must be left ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... Guayaquil, and thence ran down to Tumbez, an open roadstead, in which we brought up about a mile from the mouth of a river with a bar across it. Here the crew, instead of enjoying the rest they expected, were employed in towing off rafts of wood and water through the heavy surf setting on the shore. It was very hard work under a blazing sun, but still necessary, and the true men did not complain, though the others did pretty loudly, notwithstanding that few captains were more considerate in not overworking ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the monster Carrier and his infamous noyades. The most hideous episode of the Revolution was enacted at Nantes, where hundreds of men and women, tied to- gether in couples, were set afloat upon rafts and sunk to the bottom of the Loire. The tall eighteenth-century house, full of the air noble, in France always reminds me of those dreadful years, - of the street-scenes of the Revolution. Superficially, the association is ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... the Reef, though so few scarce ever ventured on the crater island. He made voyages to and fro, usually connecting business with pleasure. Taking favourable times for such purposes, he floated several cargoes of loam to the Reef, as well as two enormous rafts of sea-weed. Mark was quite a month in getting these materials into his compost heap, which he intended should lie in a pile during the winter, in order that it might be ready for spading in the spring. We use these terms by way of distinguishing ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... in freer windings the measured pastures are traversed (Now swallowed up in the wood, now climbing up to the hills) By a glimmering streak, the highway that knits lands together; Over the smooth-flowing stream, quietly glide on the rafts. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Crusoe returned to the ship. He built more rafts and brought from the vessel everything that he ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... Rafts on the river and caravans on the land carried merchandise far and wide—men made their way to the "Sea of the Rising Sun," as they called the Persian Gulf, and to the "Sea of the Setting Sun," as they called the Mediterranean. They settled on the shores ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... some works to block up the mouth of the harbor. He built piers on each side, extending out as far into the sea as the depth of the water would allow them to be built. He then constructed a series of rafts, which he anchored on the deep water, in a line extending from one pier to the other. He built towers upon these rafts, and garrisoned them with soldiers, in hopes by this means to prevent all egress from the fort. He thought that, when this work was completed, Pompey would be entirely shut ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... his mighty will; On rafts of ice, blue-hued, like steel, He crossed the broadest rivers o'er Ah! me, and then was heard no more The murmur of the peaceful wheel ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... age-old melodies of French and half-breed. Countless canoes drove past the slower and mightier scow brigades; huge York boats with two rows of oars heaved up and down like the ancient galleys of Rome; tightly woven cribs of timber, and giant rafts made tip of many cribs were ready for their long drift into a timberless country. On this two-thousand-mile waterway a world had gathered. It was the Nile of the northland, and each post and gathering place along its length was turned into a metropolis, ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... was at work in those days, as now, for we learn from an old diary that at Old Town Creek were found by the white victors, 78 rafts with which the Indians had crossed the Ohio to the attack, the night of October 9-10; and on the battlefield during the 10th and 12th, were collected 23 guns, 27 tomahawks, 80 blankets, and great numbers of war-clubs, shot-pouches, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... of agricultural products, they were suffering from the lack of a market and were demanding transportation facilities. Some of their lumber and flour found its way by the lakes and the St. Lawrence to Montreal, a portion went by rafts down the Allegheny to the waters of the Ohio, and some descended the upper tributaries of the Susquehanna and found an outlet in Baltimore or Philadelphia; but these routes were unreliable and expensive, and by one of them trade was diverted from the United States to Canada. There was a growing demand ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... heart leapt up. I had now two rafts to cling to. Just then the gong sounded, and my anxiety compelled me ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... have heard of a small village, in the northern part of the State, in St. Lawrence county, entirely destroyed in this way, the flames gaining so rapidly upon the poor people that they were obliged to collect their families and cattle in boats and upon rafts, in ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... sight of the Tigris, at Beshabor. The next day they crossed on rafts supported by inflated goat-skins, and, on the 30th, rode six and a half hours to a Yezidee village. Next morning, after riding an hour, Mrs. Mitchell became too ill to proceed, and she lay four days in a mud hovel, among ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... together, while upon that was reared another some two feet in height. This upper framework was intended to bear their outfits, over which were fastened rubber cloths. The Alaskan lakes are often swept by terrific tempests, the waves sometimes dashing entirely over the rafts and boats, and wetting everything that is not well protected. The upper deck serves also partially to protect ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... a raft, Miss Percival, which is coming down the river," replied Captain Sinclair. "You will see when we are nearer to it, that perhaps it covers two acres of water, and there are three tiers of timber on it. These rafts are worth many thousand pounds. They are first framed with logs, fastened by wooden tree-nails, and the timber placed within the frame. There are, perhaps, from forty to a hundred people on this raft to guide it down ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... very kind and blew the rafts over to the island on which the Big Chestnut Tree stood. Then all the squirrels went ashore and commenced to fill their sacks with nuts, when, all of a sudden, Old Barney Owl looked out of his ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... persons escaped in ships and on rafts, and, carried to the nations east and west the tidings of the appalling catastrophe, which has survived to our own time in the Flood and Deluge legends of the different nations of the old and ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... walk all the way to the sea-coast. There was a much more convenient way at that time of accomplishing the distance, even to a young man with only two dollars in his pocket. The Black Forest is partly in Astor's native Baden. The rafts of timber cut in the Black Forest, instead of floating down the Rhine in the manner practised in America, used to be rowed by sixty or eighty men each, who were paid high wages, as the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... it was worth. Better have built himself some kind of a boat at once. Look at his raft! Always a-sinking, or fouling, or shooting off its cargo, or trying to navigate itself. I don't believe in rafts. They're no use unless you want to use one to get ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... the word)—I sleep on that side." I willingly promised to call him to my aid, if I should get alarmed. I slept but little, for the wind was howling around the tiles over my head, and I was busy with plans for constructing rafts and swimming currents with a rope around my waist. Finally, I found a little oblivion, but it seemed that I had scarcely closed my eyes, when Jose pushed open the door. "Thanks be to God, senor!" said he, "it begins to dawn, and ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... house and led off at right angles one could find refreshment of spirit in the pictures that presented themselves, step by step, as one followed the course of the river. Here ran out from the sloping bank into the river a number of board rafts, some smaller, some larger, floating benches upon which, from early morning on, one saw maids at work washing clothes, always in cheerful conversation with one another, or with the sailors who leaned lazily over the street wall watching them. These rafts, which with the figures upon ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... lead to Louisa and to Prestonburg. If he stops to ask a night's lodging at one of the farm-houses that are to be found at the junction of the creeks with the rivers, log-houses with their primitive out-buildings, their half-constructed rafts of lumber ready to float down-stream with the next rise, their 'dug-outs' for the necessities of river-intercourse, and their rough oxcarts for hauling to and from the mill, he will see before him such a home as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... lumber rafts here," said Sam. "I wonder if that one stopped here that tried to run ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... timber near a river that could float not only loose logs but rafts, and in a small lake-like basin hemmed in by cliffs and separated by a gorge from the river he had gathered them and bound them into three large rafts. Only such a stage as came with the "tide" would convert the gorge into ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... bank, where it was abundant. The only way of supplying fuel, for some time before my arrival, had been to cut trees on the north bank of the river at a considerable distance up the stream, form rafts of it and float it down with the current, effecting a landing on the south side within our lines by the use of paddles or poles. It would then be carried on the shoulders of the men to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... looked as though they were trapped on the island. The natives didn't dare to attack again, but no hunting party was safe, and the food supply was dropping. They had gotten on the island only by the help of the natives, who had ferried them over on rafts. But getting off was another thing, now that the natives were hostile. Cutting down trees to build rafts might possibly be managed, but during the loading the little company would ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... was allowed to read to himself; whereupon she whisked back to London and left them with him in a heap. Those books cooked his fancy, till he thought and dreamed of nothing but midshipmen and dhows, pirates, rafts, sandal-wood traders, iron horses, sharks, battles, Tartars, Red Indians, balloons, North Poles and other extravagant delights. The moment he was suffered to get up, he rigged his bed fore and aft, and set out from it in a narrow bath across green seas of carpet, to a rock, which he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Islets, my attention was called to a reddish-brown appearance in the sea. The whole surface of the water, as it appeared under a weak lens, seemed as if covered by chopped bits of hay, with their ends jagged. These are minute cylindrical confervae, in bundles or rafts of from twenty to sixty in each. Mr. Berkeley informs me that they are the same species (Trichodesmium erythraeum) with that found over large spaces in the Red Sea, and whence its name of Red Sea is derived. (1/8. M. Montagne in ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... appeared and gave us the opportunity to see our situation and the surrounding danger. Our boats were kept astern of the ship; a small quantity of provisions and other necessaries were put into them, rafts were made, and all floating things upon the deck were unlashed. At half past six the hold was filled with water, and water was between decks and it also washed in at the upper deck ports, and there were strong indications that the ship was upon the very point of sinking, and we began ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... "sluicing" the logs. When the boom reaches the run which connects the lake or river with the dam through the sluice of which the logs must pass, the chain of guard-logs is detached, and fastened in lines along both sides of the run, and the rafts are drawn off to one side and anchored to trees. The river-drivers, armed with their pick-poles, are then stationed along the run, on the dam, wherever they ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... covering except grass, whilst the former abound with hazel, grapes and other fruits, among which is the Osage plum of a superior size and quality. On the morning of the 12th, we passed through difficult places in the river, and reached Plum creek on the south side. At one o'clock, we met two rafts loaded, the one with furs, the other with the tallow of buffaloe; they were from the Sioux nation, and on their way to St. Louis; but we were fortunate enough to engage one of them, a Mr. Durion, who had lived with that nation more than twenty years, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... a night in October when the people were awakened by the thunder of cannon and the rattle of muskets. In the morning Abraham said that a party of Americans came down Charles River in flatboats and on rafts, and opened fire upon the troops encamped on the Common. Only one or two were injured, but it gave the British ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... fro. Warships, motor yachts, icebergs, and lumber rafts are everywhere. If I add to this fact that so thick a fog hangs over it that it is entirely hidden from sight, my readers can form some idea of ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... about forty minutes altogether, and through it all the little destroyers—don't forget them—were weaving in and out among the big ships; and on the big ships were thousands of troopers, white life-belts around their olive-drab uniforms, standing steadily by life-boats and rafts. ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... fell a tree across them, but the rivers were too wide to bridge, too cold and dangerous to swim. In nearly every case he had to make a raft. A good scout takes no chances. A slight raft means a risky passage; a good one, a safe crossing but loss of time in preparations. Fifteen good rafts did Rolf make in that cross-country journey of three days: dry spruce logs he found each time and bound them together with leather-wood and withes of willow. It meant a delay of at least an hour each time; that is five hours each day. But the time was wisely spent. The days were lengthening; ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... means pleasant. All marketing from the country was at an end, for the town was closely beset by land and the islands were cleared of provisions; no fresh meat was to be had, and the besieged lived alternately on salt beef and salt pork. Attacks from fire-rafts and whale-boats were daily threatened, and fears were entertained that the inhabitants might set fire to the town in order to force the British to leave it.[101] On May 25 the three new generals landed, and the arrival of the reinforcements raised the number of Gage's army to about 10,000 ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... decided to run his fleet past the defences, and, desperate as the chances were, he started on April 24. A big cable stretched across the river suggested the idea that there was a hostile feeling among the New Orleans people. Five rafts and armed steamers met him, and the iron-plated ram Manassas extended to him a cordial welcome to a wide wet grave with a ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... with which labor is forced to form the most difficult materials into instruments, where these instruments soon bring to an issue the events for which they are formed, is the frequent occurrence, on many of their lakes and rivers, of structures resembling the floating gardens of the Peruvians, rafts covered with vegetable soil and cultivated. Labor in this way draws from the materials on which it acts very speedy returns. Nothing can exceed the luxuriance of vegetation when the quickening powers of a genial sun are ministered to by ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... to and fro on the logs, ascertained how the raft was put together, and took a pull on the long, clumsy steering-oar. At length he seated himself beside Lynn. He was eager to ask questions; to know about the rafts, the river, the forest, the Indians—everything in connection with this wild life; but already he had learned that questioning these frontiersmen is a sure means ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... at the top, and which float on the water. At thirty leguas from the coast are seen many great bunches of grass which are carried down to the sea by the great rivers of the country. These grasses are called balsas ["rafts or floats"]. Also many perrillos are seen, and, in turn, all the various signs. Then the coast is discovered, and it is very high and clear land. Without losing sight of land, the ship coasts along it with the northwest, north-northwest, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... which usually brings misty weather. Then, from the icy regions of the Arctic circle, from the Land of Desolation, come floating through the Straits of Belle Isle the dangerous bergs and ice-fields. Early in the spring these ice rafts are covered with colonies of seals which resort to them for the purpose of giving birth to their young. On these icy cradles, rocked by the restless waves, tens of thousands of young seals are nursed for a few days; then, answering the loud calls of their mothers, they ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... Scandinavian steamers, described the Teutonic losses in the Jutland battle as colossal. A number of the crew of the cruiser Wiesbaden and men from several German torpedo boats were rescued and brought to Copenhagen. They reported that many of their comrades, after floating for thirty-six hours on rafts without food or water, drank the sea water, became insane ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... in name, of that region where there are no roads for (the passage of) horses and cars and elephants, and good vehicles, and asses, and goats and bullocks, and palanquins; where there is swimming only by rafts and floats.' Yayati next addressed Anu and said, 'O Anu, take my weakness and decrepitude. I shall with thy youth enjoy the pleasures of life for a thousand years.' To this Anu replied, 'Those that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... Archibald McKane, a carpenter, came forward and proposed to return with any two of the men and the native Tommy to meet the party coming after us upon the Goulburn; and to construct there such rafts of casks and other gear as might enable Mr. Stapylton to cross that river and the Ovens and so come forward to the Murray; an arrangement which would render it unnecessary for me to send back any cattle or the boat as intended. I was much pleased with the proposal ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... calculation, but only his fond hope, that many have travelled without accident. No firm arch, overspanning the Impassable with paved highway, could the Editor construct; only, as was said, some zigzag series of rafts floating tumultuously thereon. Alas, and the leaps from raft to raft were too often of a breakneck character; the darkness, the nature of the element, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... stood on the sea-coast, was already a sea-port. But Assyria was too far distant from the sea for its inhabitants to become sailors, and the rapid current of the Tigris made even river navigation difficult. In fact, the rafts on which the heavy monuments were transported, and which could float only down stream, or the small, round boats, resembling the kufas that are still in use, were almost the only means employed for crossing the water. When the Assyrian army had to pass a river, either pontoons ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... County, Pa., as early as 1805. In 1826 James M. Porter and Samuel Taylor engaged in the business, obtaining their supplies from the Kittanninny Mountains. From this time the business developed rapidly, the village of Slateford being an outgrowth of it, and large rafts being employed to float the product down the Schuylkill to Philadelphia. By 1860 the industry had reached the capacity of 20,000 cases of slate, valued at $10 a case, annually. In 1839 quarries were opened in the Piscataquis ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... The keeper of the great seal had brought with him a hammer and a handful of nails, and seeing on his way several strips of board, he had picked them up and now nailed the six logs together in pairs, making three rafts. ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... his uncle, "and, as I went up the Canoe myself from here, I've never seen that part of this river, but they say that at the time of the big gold excitements a generation ago, when the miners tried to get out of this country, they took to rafts. The story is that a hundred and sixty-five men of that stampede were drowned in one year ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... five miles, when he found a spot where the river was smooth and favourable for the passage. The troops set to at once to cut trees; rafts were formed of these, and the troops passed over. The Spanish corps, accustomed to the passage of rivers, simply stripped, and putting their broad shields of hides beneath them, passed the river by swimming. Once ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... of splendid weather you may be sure that we in Totland Bay have not been idle. We swim, men, women and children, and we perform great feats of diving from the moored rafts which the authorities have kindly provided for that purpose. And we toil off on the usual picnic parties and inhale great draughts of health as we lie on our backs on the heather-clad slopes of the hill. But even while we pursue these simple ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... mineral-springs in Nassau, a legacy of the Romans to the genius and enterprise of the first of German traders. He could have bought up every hawking crag, owner and all, from Hatto's Tower to Rheineck. Lore-ley, combing her yellow locks against the night-cloud, beheld old Gottlieb's rafts endlessly stealing on the moonlight through the iron pass she peoples above St. Goar. A wailful host were the wives of his raftsmen widowed there ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is heard the slight grating sound of small cakes of ice, floating with various speed, full of content and promise, and where the water gurgles under a natural bridge, you may hear these hasty rafts hold conversation in an undertone. Every rill is a channel for the juices of the meadow. In the ponds the ice cracks with a merry and inspiriting din, and down the larger streams is whirled grating ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... again. To effect this, we had to lighten her as much as possible, by taking out of her her guns and stores of every description; then to get purchases on her from the shore, and assist the purchases with rafts under her bilge, so as to raise her again upon an even keel. On the second day after she filled, when the tide had run out, we removed all our chests from the lower deck; most of them were broken, ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... we made them red-hot; we then thrust them at once into the monster's eye. He uttered a frightful scream, and having tried in vain to find us, opened the ebony gate and left the palace. We did not stay long behind him, but ran to the seashore, got our rafts ready, and waited for daylight to embark. But at dawn we beheld our monstrous enemy, led by two giants of equal size, and followed by many others. We jumped upon our rafts, and pushed them from the shore, the tide helping us. The giants ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... me in the daily lives of the laboring classes. Not in clanging fights and desperate marches only is heroism to be looked for, but on every railway bridge and fire-proof building that is going up to-day. On freight-trains, on the decks of vessels, in cattle-yards and mines, on lumber-rafts, among the firemen and the policemen, the demand for courage is incessant; and the supply never fails. There, every day of the year somewhere, is human nature in extremis for you. And wherever a scythe, an axe, a pick, or a shovel is ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... Were the rafts now lodged in the St. Francois, removed by the agency of government, as they have been in Red river, the lower section of the mineral country could be reached by steamboat navigation. The citizens of St. Louis, very recently, have entered ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... the ribs. "I am going to have the Harrigans over for tea this afternoon. Come over! You'll like the family. The girl is charming; and the father is a sportsman to the backbone. Some silly fools laugh behind his back, but never before his face. And my word, I know rafts of gentlemen who are not fit to stand in ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... recession in 1990, following the withdrawal of former Soviet subsidies, worth $4 billion to $6 billion annually. Havana portrays its difficulties as the result of the US embargo in place since 1961. Illicit migration to the US - using homemade rafts, alien smugglers, or falsified visas - is a continuing problem. Some 3,000 Cubans took to the Straits of Florida in 2000; the US Coast Guard interdicted ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... were across, they held the ropes, which were fastened at the other bank, taut, so that those who could not swim could cross by holding on to them. Some attempted to cross on hastily built rafts and in collapsible canvas boats. More of these were lost than of the swimmers who, partially submerged, were not so good ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... He holds in his hands, Like a leaf he is shaking. The pope has arisen From sleep, full of prayers. He is combing his hair; Like a girl he is holding His long shining plait. Down the Volga comes floating 330 Some wood-laden rafts, And three ponderous barges Are anchored beneath The right bank of the river. The barge-tower yesterday Evening had dragged them With songs to their places, And there he is standing, The poor harassed man! He is looking quite gay though, 340 As if on a holiday, Has a clean ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... circumstances were variously reported, and the different chiefs, ignorant of the real cause of the alarm, contended themselves with waiting in their several quarters; under arms. About four thousand of the sultan's troops, in this interim, crossed the river in boats and rafts which had been prepared for the purpose. The enemy's foot, stationed to oppose the passage, terrified by the alarm in camp and the approach of the sultan's forces, fled in confusion without waiting to be attacked. Before the morning Feroze Shaw had crossed ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... answered. "I've sure already done it. I've got a dozen gangs strung out up the Yukon getting out logs. You-all'll see their rafts coming down after the river breaks. Cabins! They sure will be worth what a man can pay for them next fall. Lumber! It will sure go to top-notch. I've got two sawmills freighting in over the passes. They'll come down as soon as the lakes open up. And if you-all are thinking ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... forget which, at Quebec, who never had seen Joe Monfaron, as the latter seldom came farther down the river than Montreal. This fighting character, however, made a custom of laughing to scorn all the rumors that came down on rafts, every now and then, about terrible chastisements inflicted by Joe upon several hostile persons at once. He, the fighting timber-tower, hadn't found his match yet about the lumber-coves at Quebec, and he only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... Loch Tay itself or brought by land carriage from Loch Earn and otherwise, followed in the rear, some of them of very frail materials. There were even curraghs, composed of ox hides stretched over hoops of willow, in the manner of the ancient British, and some committed themselves to rafts formed for the occasion, from the readiest materials that occurred, and united in such a precarious manner as to render it probable that, before the accomplishment of the voyage, some of the clansmen of the deceased might be sent to attend their chieftain ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... with raised poop and prow and richly painted and gilded cabin to the light papyrus skiff,—everything had been called into use. Even the boats used to ferry cattle and to carry freight, and the reed rafts kept up by skins, which generally carried loads of clay vessels, had not been disdained. The waters of the Nile, beaten, lashed, and cut by oars, sweeps, and rudders, foamed like the sea, and formed many an eddy that broke ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... tell of the Golden Hind having been seen out in the channel, of rafts of "buoyed" casks sunk to within three foot of the bottom, to be fished up when on a dark night the herring craft slipped out of Balcary or the Scaur, ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... Tasman, and his account of the Natives. Hazeygaeys and Assagais. His Authenticity as an Historian. Description of the Natives. Marks and mutilations. Phrenological Development. Moral condition. Proas, Canoes, and Rafts. Another squall. Anchor in Beagle Bay. Face of the Country. Palm Trees. Dew. Hauling the Seine. A meeting with Natives. Eastern Salutation. Miago's conduct towards, and opinion of, his countrymen. Mutilation of the Hand. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... good-sized trees, stripped and bare, which had been brought down stream by the spring floods, and left stranded upon the bank. With considerable difficulty he managed to fashion these into a rude raft, binding all together with strong, pliable willow withes. As a boy he had often made rafts, and the knowledge acquired then served ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... going up this river to Fairy-land much better," said Jack. So suddenly the river became full of thousands of little people coming down the stream in rafts. They had come to take the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... the Thames, even above bridge, the Seine is far from exhibiting a busy scene; a few rafts of wood for fuel, and some barges occasionally in motion, now and then relieve the monotony of its rarely-ruffled surface. At this moment, its navigation is impeded from its stream being swollen by the late heavy rains. Hence much mischief is apprehended to the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... converts, started overland to explore the Waikato. The Kaipara and Tamaki districts were waste and uninhabited, nor were any human beings seen, till they struck the great river itself. In the absence of canoes they essayed to cross it on mokis or bundles of flax-stalks. These rafts were so satisfactory that they paddled down the stream for some distance, when they were met by a boat containing an Englishman and a younger brother of Te Wherowhero—afterwards well known as the Maori King, Potatau. The strangers were friendly, but their ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... a continuing problem; Cubans attempt to depart the island and enter the US using homemade rafts, alien smugglers, direct flights, or falsified visas; some 2,500 Cubans took to the Straits of Florida in 2002; the US Coast Guard interdicted about 60% of these migrants; Cubans also use non-maritime routes ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... in battle, causes a river of blood to flow, terrible and difficult to cross, having kettle-drums for its frogs and tortoises, the bones of heroes for its sands, blood and flesh for its mire, swords and shields for its rafts, the hair of slain warriors for its floating weeds and moss, the crowds of steeds and elephants and cars for its bridges, standards and banners for its bushes of cane, the bodies of slain elephants for its boats and huge alligators, swords and scimitars for its larger vessels, vultures ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... work was king there. Trains ran through the streets laden with barrels of petroleum or piled as high as possible with charcoal and coal. That fine river, the Ohio, carried along with it steamers, barges, loads of timber fastened together and forming enormous rafts, which floated down the river alone, to be stopped on the way by the owner for whom they were destined. The timber is marked, and no one else thinks of taking it. I am told that the wood is not conveyed in this way now, which is ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... steam tugs were owned by Mr. Bobbsey for use in hauling lumber boats, and lumber rafts about Lake Metoka. Some of these tugs were always at the dock, and one always had steam up, ready for ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... the Tambo and Urubamba. Its width varies from 1300 to 4000 ft., due to the great number of islands. The current runs from 3 to 4 m. an hour, and a channel from 60 to 150 ft. wide can always be found with a minimum depth of 5 ft. There are five bad passes, due to the accumulation of trees and rafts of timber. Sometimes enormous rocks have fallen from the mountains and spread over the river-bed causing huge whirlpools. "No greater difficulties present themselves to navigation by 10-knot steamers drawing 4 ft. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... picturesquely grouped with areca palms, and tall, feather-headed bamboos, upon its banks. Sometimes the enclosures run down into the stream itself, some of them being duck-grounds, and others bathing-places. The shore is fringed with canoes, nets, rafts, and fishing apparatus. Heavily-laden boats float down the stream, and small canoes ply from bank to bank between the groups of bathers. The most lively traffic is to be seen in the tiendas, large sheds, corresponding to the Javanese harongs, which open upon the river, the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... Mleccha-riders overthrown on the field by Partha with his sharp shafts. Indeed, Arjuna caused a fierce river to flow there whose current consisted of blood. (Slain) foot-soldiers and steeds and cars and elephants constituted its embankments. The showers of shafts poured constituted its rafts and the hairs of the combatants formed its moss and weeds. And the fingers cut off from the arms of warriors, formed its little fishes. And that river was as awful as Death itself at the end of the Yuga. And that river of blood flowed towards the region of Yama, and the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... paraphernalia of all sorts, then towed ashore as the tide served. Another took its place, and another and another. All that night the torches flared and the decks drummed to a ceaseless activity. In the morning Boyd sent a squad of fishermen ashore to clear the ground for his buildings, and all day new rafts of lumber and material helped to increase the ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the kufa, a circular boat of basket-work covered with bitumen, often of a size sufficient to carry five or six horses and a dozen men. These boats have been employed from the remotest antiquity through all this region, and are often depicted on the old Assyrian monuments. Equally ancient are the rafts called kellek, constructed of inflated goat-skins, covered with a framework of wood, often supporting a small house for passengers, which descend the Tigris from above Diarbekr. The wood of these rafts is sold in Bagdad, and constitutes, in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... between the conquering mosque of Aurangzeb and the shining mirror of the Ganges a thousand silent seated figures fall into meditation. And other memories recur and struggle with one another; the crowded river-streets of Canton, the rafts and houseboats and junks innumerable, riding over inky water, begin now to twinkle with a thousand lights. They are ablaze in Osaka and Yokohama and Tokio, and the swarming staircase streets of Hong Kong glitter with a wicked activity ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... raft was from living near the seashore. Many times she and her brother had made them, and they had often heard stories of sailors coming ashore from wrecks on rafts. Rafts are flat boards, or planks, nailed or tied together, and they will float on top of the water and carry a number of people, though they are so low that the water washes over them ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... thrilled by the feat of General McGruder in Galveston harbor. The daring Confederate Commander had seized two little steamers and fitted them up as gun boats by piling cotton on their sides for bulwarks. With these two rafts of cotton cooeperating on the water, his infantry waded out into the waters of Galveston Bay and attacked the Federal fleet with their ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... in Germany over four years, so I know something about it. I should like to tell you about rafts on ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... to cross over. The stream was about forty feet wide, but very shallow, not over three feet deep at any point, and in many places not more than two. But in order to get over, it was necessary to make a raft. Edward was at no loss how to begin; he had too often seen his father make temporary rafts to hesitate. Indeed, he looked upon it as a thing too small to be of much importance. Collecting two as large pieces of drift-wood as he could manage, he drew them to the bank, collected fallen limbs and brush wood, laying them across the drift wood, until ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... and those of her crew who remained hung on to the rafts that destroyers carry till they were picked up about the dawn by Shaitan, third in the line, who, at that hour, was in no shape to give much help. Here is Shaitan's tale. She saw the unknown cruisers overtake the flotilla, saw their leader switch on searchlights ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... craggy, and the forest trees and underwood so matted together, that in four days they only advanced about thirty miles, and they now began to suffer from hunger. They also met with many rapid foaming streams, to cross some of which they had to stop and build rafts. ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park |
