"Swamp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tall Arkansan, with high-combed hair, self-conscious gloves, and very broad, clean-shaven lower jaw, how the peculiar formation of delta lands, by which they drain away from the larger watercourses, instead of into them, had made the swamp there in the rear of the town, for more than a century, "the common dumping-ground and cesspool ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... time before sunset we came to a part of the jungle that opened on to a large swamp, with long rank grass about six feet high, across which was a sort of Dyak bridge. The guide having made signs for me to advance, I cautiously crept to the edge of the jungle; and after some little trouble, and watching the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... hundred-weight, pork a dollar a pound, beans fifty cents a pound, and other things in proportion. Every party that starts from the Sound should have their own supplies to last them three or four months, and they should bring the largest size chinook canoes, as small ones are very liable to swamp in the rapids. Each canoe should be provided with thirty fathoms of strong line for towing over swift water, and every man well armed. The Indians here can beat anything alive stealing. They will soon be able to steal a man's food after he has ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... anthropophagous habits laid them open to a certain amount of criticism. Not many years ago Mr. Bamberger, the famous violinist, in the course of a triumphal tour in the Southern Pacific, was captured by the inhabitants of Kulambranga, detained for several weeks in captivity in a mangrove swamp, where he suffered great inconvenience from the gigantic frogs (Rana Guppyi) which infest this region, and was only rescued with great difficulty by a punitive expedition—conducted by Sir Pompey Boldero—when on the eve of being sacrificed to the gastronomic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... swung and sank away backward, groves of orange and magnolia grew plainer to the eye than suburban streets, and the course changed again, from west to north. Soon on the right, behind a high levee and backed by a sombre swamp forest, appeared the live-oaks and gardens of Carrollton, and presently on the left came Nine-mile Point and another bend of the river westward. As the boat's prow turned, the waters, from shore to shore, reflected the low sun so dazzlingly that nearly all the passengers ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... obstruction of the White Nile by the accumulation of matted vegetation, which impeded navigation, and actually closed the river. Upon arrival at Gondokoro, after the tedious process of cutting through 50 miles of swamp and vegetable matter, via the Bahr Giraffe, I had requested the Khedive to issue an order that the Governor of Khartoum should immediately commence the great work of re-opening the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... December 28, he surprised General Wiley Thompson at Fort King. Thompson had wantonly laid Osceola in chains some time before. Now Osceola scalped his enemy with his own hands. On the same day, Major Dade, leading a relief expedition from Tampa Bay, was ambushed and overwhelmed near Wahoo Swamp. Only four of his men escaped death. Within forty-eight hours, on the last day of the year, General Clinch, commanding the troops in Florida, won a bloody fight on the banks of the ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... between the leafy shores. Then, again, the channel would sweep to one side of the marsh, and give view to wide vistas of high and rolling lands, dotted with groves of hardwood, with here and there a swamp of cedar or of tamarack. Little herds of elk and droves of deer fed on the grass-covered slopes, as fat, as sleek and fearless of mankind as though they dwelt domesticated in ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... people of Interamna before the consul and ten commissioners, because the Veline Lake, which had been drained by Manius Curius by cutting away the mountain, flowed into the Nar, by which means the famous Rosia has been reclaimed from the swamp, though still fairly moist.[611] I lived with Axius, who took me also to visit Seven Waters. I returned to Rome on the 9th of July for the sake of Fonteius. I entered the theatre. At first I was greeted with loud and general applause—but don't take any notice ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... was naturally strong. The river protected one of its sides and a deep swamp, partially flooded by it, covered another. The other two were open to the country, which in front of them was for several miles level and clear of wood. The works which had been thrown up on these sides ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... finds that what from a distance appear neat and comfortable cottages lose much by close inspection. The township consists of about thirty small wooden houses, mixed up with many native hovels. It extends along the shore of a small bay, with a shingly beach in front and a swamp behind. The number of houses was formerly much greater, most of those now existing having been built since May 1845, when the greater part of the town was burnt down by the natives. Even now it supports two public houses, ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... speakers seemed to have paused and perhaps to have sat down, for not only did they cease to draw any nearer, but the birds themselves began to grow more quiet and to settle again to their places in the swamp. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... drawn near to hearken, O Little Whirlwind, O ada[']wehi, in the leafy shelter of the lower mountain, there you repose. O ada[']wehi, you can never fail in anything. Ha! Now rise up. A very small portion [of the disease] remains. You have come to sweep it away into the small swamp on the upland. You have laid down your paths near the swamp. It is ordained that you shall scatter it as in play, so that it shall utterly disappear. By you it must be scattered. So ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... might be wallowing helplessly around in those heaving billows, or a gale might be tiring itself all out in the effort to swamp us. But, as it is, we are merely careering gaily over the sunlit waves at an unearthly speed. In a day or two, Hawkins, we shall sight the French coast, barring accidents, go ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... were short of horses the mail-coach selected another route—but what an awful road! At the last stage but one I was warned against traveling by night; they frightened me with a wood, but that only spurred me on—and I was wrong, the coach must needs break down, the road being dreadful, a swamp, a mere country road; without the postillions I had with me I should have stuck on the way. Esterhazi, by the ordinary road, met with the same fate with eight horses as I with four—yet it gave me some ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... on I gave the day to winning my special jailer. He was an intelligent Indian and inclined to be good-humored. I amused him, and when I took a net and motioned that we go to the swamp to fish he grunted ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... after the evening work was done, And the frogs were loud in the meadow-swamp, Over his shoulder he slung his gun, And stealthily followed ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... that soul which might so soon become her own, that Medwin, while walking up the Shell-Road, and looking wistfully at the muddy canal, which swam away sluggishly on one hand, while the green and stagnant swamp stretched interminably upon the other, that he was startled by the rapid approach of a carriage, and the sound of gay and noisy mirth. He looked up. The brilliant equipage of Mrs. Harland was hurrying ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... the swamp, O singer bashful and tender! I hear your notes, I hear your call, I hear, I come presently, I understand you; But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detained me, The star my departing comrade holds ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... hired a hand cart he saw in a blacksmith's yard labeled "For Sale." He drove it as near to the swamp island as he could, without getting stuck in the mud. Then, he called to Hiram, who put himself in wading trim. The empty gasoline cans were over to the cart by Hiram. Dave trundled them to the town, got them filled and to the island, and, returning ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... or glen through which my brook emerges from the wood wherein it has brawled down the hill, to dance across a gentle slope to the swamp below, is the spring,—pure as crystal, never-failing, cold as you could wish it for drink in the hottest day, and so thoroughly shaded and sheltered that, I am confident, it was never warm, and never frozen over. Many springs upon my farm are ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... taken away. That is as it may be; it may be better that it shall be left. But he asks that in it he shall not be allowed to sink, and that, however the waves may run high, they shall not be allowed to swamp his poor little cockle-shell of a boat. This is the true inmost essence of prayer—not that we should prescribe to Him how to answer our desires, but that we should leave all that in His hands. The Apostle Paul said, in his last letter, with triumphant confidence, that he ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... I've read what you wrote me. I can't see it. We'll never colonize any lands in Dixie, my boy, till we've changed the whole system of laws under which we rent land and raise crops. You might as well try to farm swamp lands without ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... to Jervis for three alligators in a swamp. He shows rare artistic taste in the selection of his post cards. Your seven-page illustrated letter from Miami arrives at the same time. I should have known Jervis from the palm tree perfectly, even without the label, ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... geographical points, where they meet, struggle, fix. We see them picking up lumps of gold from the surface, or digging them out of the earth, or collecting the glittering dust by sifting and washing; and then we hear of vast torrents of the precious metal finding their way into Europe, threatening to swamp us all with absolute wealth, and confound and travesty the whole monetary transactions of the world. What we don't see, is the gold itself. We should like, if it were only out of curiosity, to feel a handful of it in our pocket: but we grope in vain. A sovereign costs twenty shillings, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... boy?" asked Wade, with low voice, as he peered ahead. The wind was in the wrong direction for him to approach close to game without being detected. Fox wagged his stumpy tail and looked up with knowing eyes. Wade proceeded cautiously. The swamp was a rank growth of long, weedy grasses and ferns, with here and there a green-mossed bog half hidden and a number of dwarf oak-trees. Wade's horse sank up to his knees in the mire. On the other side showed fresh tracks along the wet margin ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... picking up a rabbit here and there; hares must have almost disappeared, even the flock and the shepherd. France is not as picturesque a country as England; only Normandy seems to have pasturage, there alone the shepherd survives along the banks of the Seine. Picardy, though a swamp, never conveys an idea of the wild; and the middle of France, which I looked at then for the first time, shocked me, for primitive man, as I have said, was uppermost in me, and I turned away from the long plain, "Dreary," I said, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... You know I mentioned in my last thet I should buy a nigger, Ef I could make a purchase at a pooty mod'rate figger; So, ez there's nothin' in the world I'm fonder of 'an gunnin', I closed a bargain finally to take a feller runnin'. 150 I shou'dered queen's-arm an' stumped out, an' wen I come t' th' swamp, 'Tworn't very long afore I gut upon the nest o' Pomp; I come acrost a kin' o' hut, an', playin' round the door, Some little woolly-headed cubs, ez many 'z six or more. At fust I thought o' firin', but think twice is safest ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... appear in the parade set out as soon as the turnouts of the other houses joined it. They were all to meet at the Middlemount, which was thickly draped and festooned in flags, with knots of evergreen and the first red boughs of the young swamp maples holding them in place over its irregular facade. The coach itself was amass of foliage and flowers, from which it defined itself as a wheeled vehicle in vague and partial outline; the other wagons and coaches, as they drove tremulously up, with an effect of having been mired in blossoms ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... hard wood, from eleven to twelve dollars per acre; for evergreen, such as pine, hemlock, cedar, or where that kind of timber predominates, from twelve to fourteen dollars per acre. There is no fixed price for swamp.] ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... land should be so used that erosion and soil wash shall cease; and that there should be reclamation of arid and semi-arid regions by means of irrigation, and of swamp and overflowed regions by means of drainage; that the waters should be so conserved and used as to promote navigation, to enable the arid regions to be reclaimed by irrigation, and to develop power in the interests of the people; that the forests which regulate ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... an Indian lodge about half-way to the Bear's Camp, where I learned that our opponent at the lower outpost had given our people the slip, but had been induced to return from the supposition that the extensive swamp in his way was impassable, being so inundated as to present the appearance of a lake. Urged on, however, by youthful ardour and ambition, I determined to make at least one attempt ere I relinquished the enterprise; although I acknowledge ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... day of weakfishing on Barnegat Bay and an exceptionable supper of the good, old fashioned, country tavern kind, a social party of anglers sat about on Uncle Jo Parker's broad porch at Forked River, smoking and enjoying the cool, fragrant breath of the cedar swamp, when somehow the chat drifted to the subject of assaying and refining the precious metals. That was just where one of the party, Mr. D.W. Baker, of Newark, was at home, and in the course of an impromptu lecture he told the party more about the topic under discussion, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... Henry, shaking his bushy head, "that old Toby Vanderwiller knows the rights of that line business; but he won't tell. Gedney Raffer's got a strangle hold on Toby and his little swamp farm, and Toby doesn't dare ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... in this swamp that it has always been necessary to clear it out every little while, and so the people have been in the habit of setting it on fire every year a few days before the equinoctial storms were due. They had found from experience that by the time the storms came the fires had burnt ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 51, October 28, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... had been moored was in the midst of a gloomy and extensive swamp. Though Dan had never been here before, he had heard of the region, and from the first had determined to conceal his party within its deep and almost impenetrable morasses. The swamp was about fifteen miles in extent from north to south, and ten from ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... "Her escape was simply marvelous," "Worse than the Titanic Disaster," in the Democrat's local page. And then we exclaim: "Hurray! Real news at last," and prowl eagerly down the items only to find that the horrible wreck was a citizen of Swamp Hollow upon whom a wonderful cure was effected; that "Her escape" was from inflammatory rheumatism by the aid of Gettem's Dead Shot Specific, and that the Titanic Disaster is eclipsed annually by the sad ends of thousands of people who neglect to take Palaver's Punk Pills. It always ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... century 'swamped' the House of Commons; the Whigs of the nineteenth would 'swamp' the House of Lords. The Whigs of the eighteenth century would have rendered the House of Lords unchangeable; the Whigs of the nineteenth remodel ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and filled him full of quail shot—filled him pretty near up to the chin—and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and gave him to this ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... the bog-girt island where he had hid his savage ally. A huge driving-wheel and a shaft half-filled with rubbish showed the position of an abandoned mine. Beside it were the crumbling remains of the cottages of the miners, driven away no doubt by the foul reek of the surrounding swamp. In one of these a staple and chain with a quantity of gnawed bones showed where the animal had been confined. A skeleton with a tangle of brown hair adhering to it lay ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... not to," Harkaman told him. "You have two ships, here. You can only use one for raiding; the other will have to stay here to hold the planet. If you take them both away, the locals, whom you have been studiously antagonizing, will swamp whoever you leave behind. And if you don't leave anybody behind, what's the use of having ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... in a vain effort to clear the stupor that was sweeping over him. It was strange how the vivid rays of that malevolent green moon seemed to sear insidiously into one's brain, stifling thought as a swamp fog stifles ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... only Lake Drummond—really a part of the Dismal Swamp; West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, none; Indiana, eleven lakes, and Illinois, eight,—all on northern water-shed. The Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama have no reservoirs. Lagoons exist in the States bordering the Mississippi River and the Gulf, which are filled by the overflow ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... Americans camped at Stoney Creek, five miles from the site of Hamilton. The steep zigzagging bank of the creek, which formed their front, was about twenty feet high. Their right rested on a mile-wide swamp, which ran down to Lake Ontario. Their left touched the Heights, which ran from Burlington to Queenston. They were also in superior numbers, and ought to have been quite secure. But they thought so much more of pursuit than of defence that they were completely ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... 200 acres, which could probably be drained and converted into good grass land. Here I also found cranberry vines in a flourishing condition and their fruit. Three or four miles back from the coast at this point, lies a tract of several hundred acres of swamp grass land, which by drainage, would afford considerable pasturage. A narrow strip of grazing land, from five to fifteen rods in width, extends for about three miles along the seashore, eastward from near the mouth of the Hi-ellen River. Five or six miles south-west of Rose Spit peninsula, I found ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... settled, Lower Canada had been one long-drawn-out village with houses close set on each side of the river streets. Deep forest covered all the land save where the lumberman or settler had cut a narrow clearing or fire had left a {14} blackened waste. To cut roads through swamp and forest and over river and ravine demanded capital, surplus time, and strong and efficient governments, all beyond the possibilities of early days. On the other hand, the waterways offered easy paths. The St Lawrence and the St John and all their tributaries and lesser rivals provided inevitably ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... middle of the forest there was a dense thicket of lower growths on a piece of dry land lifted above the waters of a swamp. The place was the lair of such small wild things as still survived in the wilderness once the haunt of the wolf and the wild cat, and the resort of the bear allured by the profusion of the huckleberries ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... his millions on Parisian ballet- dancers, dreamt strange dreams of glory and empire. Those dim tracts of swamp and forest in Central Africa were— so he declared— to be 'opened up'; they were to receive the blessings of civilisation, they were to become a source of eternal honour to himself and Egypt. The slave-trade, which flourished there, was to be put down; the savage inhabitants ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... best of all, as giving weight to any suggestions that I may make, across the dismal mud swamp that I often trod with such an aching heart and faltering steps came to meet me God's best and highest, with outstretched hands of help and encouragement. It was the highly-cultivated and thoughtful women who, amidst the storm of ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... attractive. The thickness of the swamp made a dark, massive background below, while above towered gigantic trees. The men were calling jovially back and forth as they unharnessed tired horses that fell into attitudes of rest and crunched, ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... shirt-front, suggested that they first catch their hare. So the Chairman appointed a committee to watch for the victim at midnight, and take him as he should attempt to sneak into town across-lots from the tamarack swamp. At this point in the proceedings they were interrupted by the sound of a brass band. Their dishonoured representative was driving up from the railway station in a coach-and-four, with music and a banner. A few moments later he entered the hall, went upon the platform, ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... say it was n't; I ain't much concerned either way 'bout the facts o' witch hazel. Truth is, I 've been off visitin'; there's an old Indian footpath leadin' over towards the Back Shore through the great heron swamp that anybody can't travel over all summer. You have to seize your time some day just now, while the low ground 's summer-dried as it is to-day, and before the fall rains set in. I never thought of it ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... name for that place," she said. "I call it the Valley of Silent Things. It is a great swamp, and they say that the moss grows in it so deep that caribou and deer walk over it ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... enough; but they rapidly gave place to others of a far different character. When I gazed after my boat, now beyond recovery—when I looked around, and saw that the lake lay in the middle of an interminable swamp, the shores of which, even could I have reached them, did not seem to promise me footing—when I reflected that, being unable to swim, I could not reach them—that upon the islet there was neither tree, nor log, nor bush; not a stick out ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... after rabbits. We're 'most to the swamp now, and Nap knows what we've come for as well as ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... however, who were consumed by thirst, had rushed to the cisterns. They broke open the doors. A miry swamp stretched ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... desert flats, here dash, there drift; With faith, that of privations and spilt blood, Comes Reason armed to clear or bank the flood! And thrice must one be you, to wait release From duress in the swamp of their increase. At which oppressive scene, beyond arrest, A darkness not with stars of heaven dressed, Philosophers behold; desponding view. Your Many nourished, starved my brilliant few; Then flinging heels, as charioteers the reins, Dive down the fumy AEtna of their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of sorcery, with the languid waters of its lagoons lying sick at its feet, I recognized at least the topographical truth of Virgil's description. But old and mighty walls now surround the spot which Manto found sterile and lonely in the heart of the swamp formed by the Mincio, no longer Benaco; and the dust of the witch is multitudinously hidden under the edifices of a city whose mighty domes, towers, and spires make its approach one of the stateliest in the world. It is a prospect on which ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... should have been enforced! If he is fool enough to alter his name, and throw up all his certificates what is to become of him? He will get no practice in any civilized place, and will have to betake himself to some pestilential swamp, will slave his sisters to death, spend their money, and destroy them with ague. How can you sit still and look ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all marched forth against the enemy, but they had not gone far from the royal palace before the youth stuck fast with his old jade in a swamp. Here he sat beating and calling to the jade, "Hie! wilt thou go? hie! wilt thou go?" This amused all the others, who laughed and jeered as they passed. But no sooner were they all gone than, running to the linden, he put on his own armor and shook the bridle, and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... H. Jones was born at Pine Plains, South Carolina, June 15, 1856. He professed religion at ten years of age and joined the Shady Grove A. M. E. Church of the Bull Swamp Circuit, South Carolina. At the age of fourteen he was made Sunday School teacher, and at the age of sixteen Sunday School superintendent. By the time he was eighteen he had served in all the local spiritual offices ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... shade, resting my burning feet and achiag bones, and I watched Nielsen as he whistled over the camp chores. Then I heard the sweet song of a meadow lark, and after that the melodious deep note of a swamp blackbird. These birds evidently were traveling north and had tarried ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... the river bank but it was very swampy, and as he went farther the swamp became deeper. When it was almost as deep as his boot tops he got stuck in the oozy, mucky mud. My father tugged and tugged, and nearly pulled his boots right off, but at last he managed to wade to a drier place. Here ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... be made to "devulcanize" the scrap and cuttings of rubber which accumulated in the factories. So extensive were these accumulations that one company are reported to have built a road with rubber scrap through a swamp adjacent to their factory, while most other manufacturers were unable to find even so profitable a use for their wastes. As time advanced there came to be large stocks, also, of worn-out rubber goods, such as car springs and the like, all of which appealed to a practical mind here and there ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... a man out of a pestle to this day?' asked Dinomachus. 'Yes, I can do that, but that is only half the process: I cannot turn it back again into its original form; if once it became a water-carrier, its activity would swamp the house.' ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... of hostility on the part of the Massachusetts red man, grew and spread incessantly under the painful early experience of colonial life, and has been only intensified by time. In turn, every man had to be scout by day and night, in the swamp and in the forest, and every woman had to be on the watch in her husband's absence to save her babes from murderers and kidnappers. Whatever else their desires might be, even to supply their commonest needs, the citizens had first to station themselves ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... was wide awake, And was not scared at trifles, For well he knew Kentucky's boys, With their death-dealing rifles. He led them down to cypress swamp, The ground was low and mucky; There stood John Bull in martial pomp, And here stood ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... traits developed through variation, through intrinsic stimuli, or those originating through so-called inborn traits. These traits enable some races to achieve and adapt themselves to their environment, and cause others to fail. Thus, some groups or races have perished because of living near a swamp infested with malaria-carrying mosquitoes or in countries where the food supply was insufficient. They lacked initiative to move to a more healthful region or one more bountiful in food products, or else they {25} lacked knowledge and skill to protect ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... what we do." It was Giova speaking in the masterful voice of one who has perfect confidence in his own powers. "I know fine way out. This wood circle back south through swamp mile, mile an' a half. The road past Squeebs an' Case's go right through it. I know path there I fin' myself. We on'y have to cross road, that only danger. Then we reach leetle stream south of woods, stream wind down through Payson. We all go Gypsies. I got lot clothing in house. ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... route from Adelaide to Melbourne is about four hundred miles in length. In summer the road is pretty good, but in winter, a lake or swamp of twenty miles extent ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... frock, of a dark grey colour, with a hood attached to it, which in winter time or wet weather he puts over his head. His coat is tied round the waist by a worsted sash of various colours, ornamented with beads. His waistcoat and trousers are of the same cloth. A pair of moccasins, or swamp boots, complete the lower part of his dress. His hair is tied in a thick long queue behind, with an eelskin; and on each side of his face a few straight locks hang down like what are vulgarly called 'rat's tails.' Upon his head is a bonnet rouge, or in other words, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... trip into the past ages. He went on at a great rate like that, an' I thought he was jest wanderin' in his mind with the fever, so I humored him. But he saw through me, an' he wouldn't take no but I should go down into Burnham's swamp with him to see ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... of a certain bazaar in Hyderabad. Whiff! He would have you on skis in Lapland. Zip! Now you rode the breakers with the Kanakas at Kealaikahiki. Presto! He dragged you through an Arkansas post-oak swamp, let you dry for a moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho ranch, then whirled you into the society of Viennese archdukes. Anon he would be telling you of a cold he acquired in a Chicago lake breeze and how old Escamila ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... what steps have trod thy border! Here On thy green bank, the woodman of the swamp Has laid his axe, the reaper of the hill His sickle, as they stooped to taste thy stream. The sportsman, tired with wandering in the still September noon, has bathed his heated brow In thy cool current. Shouting boys, let loose ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... pink waistcoat, from the bosom of which, amidst a large bunch of the splendid flowers of the magnolia, protruded part of a young alligator, which seemed more anxious to glide through the muddy waters of a swamp than to spend its life swinging to and fro amongst folds of the finest lawn. The gentleman held in one hand a cage full of richly-plumed nonpareils, whilst in the other he sported a silk umbrella, on which I could ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... dwarfish shrubs of birch and oak With shingles bare, and cliffs between And patches bright of bracken green, And heather black, that waved so high, It held the copse in rivalry. But where the lake slept deep and still Dank osiers fringed the swamp and hill; And oft both path and hill were torn Where wintry torrent down had borne And heaped upon the cumbered land Its wreck of gravel, rocks, and sand. So toilsome was the road to trace The guide, abating of his ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... always simple in its sublimity, and, striving to banish God from His own creation, would also banish nature and joy from the heart! A pedantic age loves all that is pretentious, glaring, and assuming; and Rhythm stoops to rock the cradle of the newborn infant; to soothe the negro in the rice swamp or cotton field; to shape into beauty the national and patriotic songs of a laborious but contented peasantry, as among the Sclaves—but what cares the age for the happiness of the race? 'Put money in thy purse,' is its consolation and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... tang of the sea gladdened his nostrils, and he snorted with the pleasure of the stench of the mangrove swamp. But, another Crusoe chancing upon the footprint of another man Friday, his nose, not his eyes, shocked him electrically alert as he smelled the fresh contact of a living man's foot with the ground. It was a nigger's ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... what Italy was before Rome's iron hand had bound the Italian peoples together by force, of what she became again as soon as that force was relaxed, of what she has grown to be once more, now that the delight of revolution has disappeared in the dismal swamp of financial disappointment, of what she will be to all time, because, from all time, she has been populated by races of different descent, who hated each other ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... part of Woodstock Chase, a favorite hunting-seat of British sovereigns from an early date up to the time of Queen Anne. It was then granted by the Crown to the hero of Blenheim, far more fortunate in respect of the nation's gift than the hero of Waterloo, whose grant of lands lay in a swamp which it cost him a little fortune to drain. Next to Blenheim, in point of size, stands Tatton in Cheshire, the seat of Lord Egerton. It contains 2500 acres, and the portion appropriated to deer is far larger than at Blenheim. Tatton is from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... patch of wilderness, a great marshy plain. In the middle of this swamp was a crater, like those caused by meteors, a deep, ugly scar in the mud. I shuddered at the thought that my darling Mjly might have landed there. Her weaker scientific sense might not have given her the cue to use her skin as a parachute ...
— Lonesome Hearts • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... into the bed here and there, and from time to time they draw these out and judge by their appearance whether or not the bed needs a heavy watering. To be dry at the root is deadly to the Cucumber plant, and to be in a swamp is not less deadly. It must have abundance of moisture above and below, but stagnation of either air or water will bring disease, ending ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... Chinese man-power as an auxiliary war-aid and who were very anxious to place the whole matter on a sounder footing. Little real progress was, however, made in the face of the renewed German efforts to swamp the country with their propaganda. By means of war-maps, printed in English and Chinese, and also by means of an exhaustive daily telegraphic service which hammered home every possible fact illustrative of German invincibility, the German ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... feast,'" said Logan. I followed him in silence, till we reached the southern bank of the Ohio, not far from his own residence. The tribe was seated in a beautiful and secluded prairie, that just afforded a vista of the river through the cypress swamp between. A number of men and women seemed busily engaged in the decoration of others with belts, beads, and brilliant-coloured garments; and these latter seemed passive or asleep. Logan laid down the load he carried ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... the wish of little souls, The great but gather to bestow; Yon current down the mountain rolls, And stagnates in the swamp below. ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... hollow piece of table-land, tending to a swamp, we saw, standing at equal distances from each other, three sheds, constructed of long fir poles driven into the earth and tapering, like a cone, into the air, covered scantily with the branches of the pine or fir, and having an only inlet by which a man, crouching, might reach the interior. ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... apiece, to be paid on their return, or to their families if they died on the road, which cattle we purchased and left in charge of a chief, who was their kinsman. As it happened two of the poor fellows did die, one of them of cold in a swamp through which they took a short cut, and the other at the teeth of a hungry lion. The third, however, won through and delivered ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... truly spoken of, as a swamp, a rut, a steep hill; in a word, an obstacle, whose effect is to augment the difference between the price of consumption and that of production. It is equally incontestable that a swamp, a bog, etc., are ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... nailed to the ground. By clinging to the earth and plunging my hands into the depth of the swamp as far as the stones, I get my neck round a little to see the enormous burden that my back supports. No—it is only the immensity ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... the name of a young cottontail rabbit. It was given him from his torn and ragged ear, a life-mark that he got in his first adventure. He lived with his mother in Olifant's swamp, where I made their acquaintance and gathered, in a hundred different ways, the little bits of proof and scraps of truth that at length enabled ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... The Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers empty into the Bay of San Francisco at the same point, about sixty miles from the Pacific, and by numerous mouths or sloughs as they are here called. These sloughs wind through an immense timbered swamp, and constitute a terraqueous labyrinth of such intricacy, that unskilful and inexperienced navigators have been lost for many days in it, and some, I have been told, have perished, never finding their way out. A range of low ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... arrival, before daybreak Lamachus led his troops down the cliff, and advanced against the stockade. His men carried hurdles and planks, to secure their footing in the most treacherous parts of the swamp, and, proceeding thus, in the first light of dawn they came up to the stockade. They found the Syracusans assembled in force to resist them, and an engagement ensued, which speedily ended in favour of the Athenians. ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... a white man, too. A guy that Willy met out in the swamp some place when he beat it that day after Garman had handled him. It was this white man that Garman was after. Willy was with him. Garman's bunch had 'em trapped on an island down in the swamp, but Willy happened to know an Injun way out and they slipped the noose. Willy ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... evening it rains, and the room assigned us becomes a living illustration of the new word we have just learned,—"muskeg," a swamp. Putting the precious cameras on top of the bureau, we let the rest of the things swim at their pleasure. Starting with the rest of the unattached community of Athabasca Landing to go down to the pool-room, we catch ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... our hero was in the highest of spirits. For the first fifteen versts or so the road led through forest land and tillage belonging to Platon and his brother-in-law; but directly the limit of these domains was reached, forest land began to be replaced with swamp, and tillage with waste. Also, the village in Khlobuev's estate had about it a deserted air, and as for the proprietor himself, he was discovered in a state of drowsy dishevelment, having not long left his ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... spent riding through the swamp, the "pantanal," were pleasant and interesting. Several times we saw the tamandua bandeira, the giant ant-bear. Kermit shot one, because the naturalists eagerly wished for a second specimen; afterward we were relieved of all necessity to molest the strange, out-of-date creatures. It was ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... man, strong of hand, Steady of purpose, lithe of limb, Calm in the toils of the foe, Knowing nor tears nor ruth Wo to them and him, If, cast by hard fate at the midnight damp, Or an hour of storm in the dismal swamp, That skirts the Lake of the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... freedom through the level spears, Still take thou courage! God has spoken through thee, Irrevocable, the mighty words, Be free! The land shakes with them, and the slave's dull ear Turns from the rice-swamp stealthily to hear. Who would recall them now must first arrest The winds that blow down from the free North-west, Ruffling the Gulf; or like a scroll roll back The Mississippi to its upper springs. Such words fulfil their ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... often used to think so, as I gazed out of my window at the wild forest, and the openings leading down to the stream and away to the swamp, where I could hear the alligators barking and bellowing at night, with a feeling half dread, half curiosity, and think that some day I should live to see one that I had caught or killed ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... houses are usually made of heaps of dead grass and weeds which are cemented together with mud and clay; at other times they contain no mud or clay, and seem to be only piles of tender roots and swamp grasses to be used for food during the long, ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... plenty all along the bank of the stream; panthers and bears abounded in that section, and the wilderness beyond me was never explored, and hardly penetrable, so dense was the undergrowth of dwarf firs and swamp cedars. I had one terrible moment of clear consciousness that if I went astray at that juncture no human being would ever know where I was, and the absolute necessity of recovering my sense of the points of compass was clear to me. By a strong effort of ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... great piece twice as big as that yesterday. Know where there's lots more in the cedar swamp. Here, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... set the first day over great wastes of swamp, swamp-land, and pools of inky black, which stretched as far as the eye could reach; gloomy, silent, and barren of any form of life. It was a picture which held neither the freedom of the open sea nor the human ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... father say that he helped get out juniper timber in North Carolina. The white man me and my sister worked with after my father died was the man my father worked with in the juniper swamp. His name was Alfred Perry White. As long as he lived, we could do work for him. We didn't live on his place but we worked for him by the day. He is dead now—died way back yonder in the seventies. There was the Brooks ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... the chapel), and the style is sixteenth-century French, florid and costly. The plan is perhaps unique in England, and comfort has been attained, though one would hardly believe it, such size seeming to swamp everything except show. The description of the house, as given by a visitor there, reads like that of a palace: "The hall is an octagonal room in the centre of the house about seventy-five feet in length and from thirty to forty broad: on each side, at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... the third time on Arkansaw river for five hundred dollars; and then stole him and delivered him into the hand of his friend, who conducted him to a swamp, and veiled the tragic scene and got the last gleanings and sacred pledge of secrecy, as a game of that kind will not do unless it ends in a mystery to all but the fraternity. He sold that negro for two thousand dollars, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... place occupied by the Mabry family is an old cottage on the swamp side of Rousseau Street. It is furnished with slat shutters to both doors and windows. These shutters had been pulled off by the mob and the volleys fired through the glass doors. The younger Mabrys, father, mother and child, were asleep in the first room at the ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... reckoning of miles covered on those days. Sunday came to our rescue, and we lay encamped in the granite-country, very grateful for our rest. On the Monday, its results showed. We trekked gallantly for hours and hours, we pulled out of a swamp at the first attempt; we even essayed a dreaded ford before we outspanned. But we did not win our stake. Not till we had knocked under, and outspanned once more did we struggle through. The lady of the wagon waded barefoot to lighten it, she even helped to coax a wheel up the further ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps |
