"Swampy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cold, Her lehua bloom, fog-soaked, droops pensive; The thorn-fringe set ahout swampy Ai-po is A feather that flaunts in spite of the pinching frost. 5 Her herbage is pelted, stung by ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... south bank of the Neisse,—at this day, on both banks. Pleasant broad streets, high strong houses, mostly of stone. Pleasantly encircled by green Hills, northward buttresses of the Giant Mountains; itself standing low and level, on rich ground much inclined to be swampy. A lesser river, Biele, or Bielau, coming from the South, flows leisurely enough into the Neisse,—filling all the Fortress ditches, by the road. Orchard-growth and meadow-growth are lordly (HERRLICH); a land rich in fruit, and flowing with milk and honey. Much given to weaving, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... should expect from the lay of the land and the nature of the soil to find the marshes. Out in the open plain beyond this quarter of the city to-day, after every heavy rain, the water collects and renders the ground swampy. With the Dipylum as a starting-point, there is no difficulty in supposing that, in very ancient times, the Limnae extended to Colonus Agoraeus, to the east into the hollow which became a portion of the agora in the Ceramicus, and to the ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... poor and cold clay; but there are many rich levels which, could they be drained and defended from the inundations of the river, would amply repay the cultivation. These flats are certainly not adapted for cattle; the grass is too swampy, and the bushes, swamps, and lagoons are too thickly intermingled with the better portions, to render it a safe or desirable grazing country. The timber is universally bad and small; a few misshapen gum trees on the immediate banks of the river may ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... 597. This was a swampy spot on the Argive territory, where the poets say that the dragon with seven heads, called Hydra, which was slain by Hercules, had made his haunt. It is not improbable that the pestilential vapors of this spot were got rid of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... kind of swampy pond down the lower end of the bush—a likely place for Coons on a Frog-hunt," suggested ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... inequalities both of temperature and rainfall are greater than in the central provinces. In the province of Chih-li, for example, the heat of summer is as intense as is the cold of winter. In summer the rains often render the plain swampy, while the dry persistent westerly winds of spring create dust storms (experienced in Peking from March to June). The rainfall is, however, uncertain, and thus the harvests are precarious. The provinces ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... four miles an hour. They were going uphill, and, unless they went in single file, one of them, owing to the narrowness of the track, was obliged to keep stepping into the heather. At the top of the crest they dipped down again into a high, narrow valley between two fells. It was swampy here, and in places there were quite wide pieces of water to jump across. The path, which had been growing worse and worse, finally separated into a fork. The girls came to a halt, and stood looking first at one track, then at the other. They were in ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... marshy lowlands, since plants first began to grow luxuriantly upon the earth, it has been possible for beds of coal to be formed. We all know how rankly plants grow where there is plenty of heat and moisture. Many of us have been in swampy forests and have seen the masses of rotting tree trunks, limbs, and leaves. Now, if we should form a picture in our minds of such a swamp slowly sinking until the water of some lake or ocean had flowed over it and killed the plants, and then washed ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... the possession of individual farmers, were thrown open or distributed again into scattered holdings. Much new land came into cultivation or into use for pasture through the draining of marshes and fens, and the clearing of forests. This work had been begun for the extensive swampy tracts in the east of England in the latter years of Elizabeth's reign by private purchasers, assisted by an act of Parliament passed in 1601, intended to remove legal difficulties. It proceeded slowly, partly because of the expense ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... observed that those living upon the swampy ground near the river mourn a greater number of departed than those dwelling further inland. That locality must, therefore, exercise a prejudicial influence upon the health of the people. It is here that the ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... region of the Javary River (the boundary between Brazil and Peru), is one of the most formidable and least known portions of the South American continent. It abounds with obstacles to exploration of the most overwhelming kind. Low, swampy, with a heavy rainfall, it is inundated annually, like most of the Amazon basin, and at time of high water the rivers know no limits. Lying, as it does, so near the equator, the heat is intense and constant, oppressive even to the native. The forest-growth—and ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... but hurried on so fast that, one after another, the camels sank exhausted; and, when they had all succumbed, Burke and Wills took their only horse to carry a small quantity of provisions, and, leaving Gray and King behind, set out by themselves on foot. They had to cross several patches of swampy ground; and the horse, becoming inextricably bogged, was unable to go farther. But still Burke and Wills hurried on by themselves till they reached a narrow inlet on the Gulf of Carpentaria, and found that the river they had been ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... and Calhoun 60. The pods fall from October 15th to December 30th. Lespedeza sericea planted between the trees yields 2-1/2 tons per acre annually. This gives us courage to continue emphasizing their great value for pasture and rough land planting. The trees we planted in our swampy, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... hungry; but she related all that had happened and said: "I'm sorry I couldn't go farther; for I believe the cows were just a short distance beyond the point where I turned back. But I did not dare to cross the swampy place and go into the woods on the ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... and make the final preparations for the journey. Ernst met me at the station at 6:30 in the evening and we stayed the night in the hot, mosquito-tortured, plague-stricken city. Leaving at eight o'clock in the morning we were at Medellin in an hour. Our journey was through low, swampy ground on which the chief growth was of palm. The padre, whom we had not seen since we parted at Oaxaca, met us at the station and took us at once to his house. The town is small, the population a miserable ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... that I have mentioned in a former letter, still continues in this garden; and retired under ground about the twentieth of November, and came out again for one day on the thirtieth: it lies now buried in a wet swampy border under a wall facing to the south, and is enveloped at present ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... sinking to despair! No friend's consoling voice can penetrate His dreary dungeon walls. Should he fall sick! Ah! In the vapours of the murky vault He must fall sick. Even as the Alpine rose Grows pale and withers in the swampy air, There is no life for him, but in the sun, And in the breath of Heaven's fresh-blowing airs. Imprison'd! Liberty to him is breath; He cannot live in the ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... desolate just here, cotton fields and swampy grounds with here and there a stretch of water reflecting the blue of ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Hill Rivers. Cross Swampy Lake. Jack River. Knee Lake and Magnetic Islet. Trout River. Holy Lake. Weepinapannis River. Windy Lake. White Fall Lake and River. Echemamis and Sea Rivers. Play Green Lakes. Lake Winnipeg. River Saskatchewan. Cross, Cedar and Pine ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... a landlord, who stood with a rolling eye upon door step, anxious to officiate as the "Good Samaritan," but afraid to exercise his benevolence. After this there would surely, we thought, be something like the church we were seeking. But not so; a swampy wide road and more of the irrepressible mill element constituted the ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... recording. In the spring of 1835 a field, which had long existed as poor pasture, and was so swampy that it trembled slightly when stamped on, was thickly covered with red sand so that the whole surface appeared at first bright red. When holes were dug in this field after an interval of about 21/2 years, the sand formed a layer at a depth of 3/4 ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... meat which he had taken the precaution to hide in his hunting shirt. He rested part of the second night and next morning pushed on toward the east. He had expected to reach the Ohio that day, but he did not and he noticed that the ground seemed to be gradually rising. He did not come across any swampy lands or saw grass or vegetation characteristic of the lowlands. He stopped and tried to get his bearings. The country was unknown to him, but he believed he knew the general lay of the ridges and ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... with countless deep, precipitous gashes seaming the rock in every direction. Numerous springs oozed and trickled from the stratified conglomerate along the edges, sides, and bottoms of the ravines. The tops of some of these truncated knolls were quite swampy in the depressions, and covered with a thin-stemmed feathery grass. Here and there was a clump of scrub oaks; sparsely scattered about were small pines. We found great numbers of Opuntia Missouriensis, called by the Mexicans nopal; small mesquite shrubs, too, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... and Fourteenth legions, besides auxiliary troops, both horse and foot,[521] who had long received their summons and came hurrying on the news of victory. Neither general was dilatory, but a vast plain lay between them. It was by nature swampy, and Civilis had built a dam projecting into the Rhine, which stemmed the current and flooded the adjacent fields. The treacherous nature of the ground, where the shallows were hard to find, told against our men, who were heavily armed and afraid of swimming. ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... lava, our journey lay through a very swampy country, intersected with streams. I got completely wearied with stripping to wade through them, so that at length I plunged in clothes and all. At the close of a most fatiguing day's march, we arrived in sight of the bay, having travelled over an ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... delays having become things of the past, we were for the next hour almost merry. This transient joy was soon dispelled by our driver, who, without any warning, turned off the road through some swampy ground. Pulling up suddenly before an apparently unbroken line of trees, he craned his neck first one way and then the other in search of an opening, unheeding the expostulations in French and English with which he was assailed, until, finding what he sought, and nicking his whip over ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... farm-buildings; a swampy yard; a low dwelling-house with a shingle roof, from the walls of which the chalk had crumbled down and showed the bare wall underneath; a wilderness of a garden, in which the last sad remains of the summer ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... Salado the country is low and swampy, with tosca-rock appearing at long intervals at the surface. On the banks, however, of the Tapalguen (sixty miles south of the Salado) there is a large extent of tosca-rock, some highly compact and even semi-crystalline, overlying pale Pampean mud with the usual concretions. Thirty miles further ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... des Morts to the Portage, the distance by land is about seventy miles; by water, it is not less than a hundred and thirty, so serpentine is the course of the river through the low swampy prairies which stretch over a great portion of this part ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... while I relate the reason for my presence, why for months I have searched country after country for one who ever seemed to be just beyond my reach, like a will-o'-the-wisp dancing over the swampy ground. ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... poorer to-day than it was when your dear father and I came here to live and labor. To be sure, the lower field still grows as good or better crops than ever; but I can remember when that field was so wet and swampy that it could not be cultivated, and it was in the work of ditching and tiling that field," she sobbed, "that your father took the sickness that caused ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... and no man may drink the water of his neighbour's well; if he should do so or if any water from his well gets into his neighbour's, the latter is abandoned and a fresh one made. If the ground is too swampy for wells they collect the water in their wooden washing-tray and fill their vessels from it. In the cold weather they make little leaf-huts on the sand or simply camp out in the open, but they must never sleep under a tree. When living ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... and the difficulty of subduing the wilderness, the settled portions of the Commonwealth had begun to feel overpopulated. Twenty-five years before, the Secretary of the Colony had reported to the Home Government, that "in this mountainous, rocky and swampy province" most of the arable land was taken up, and the remainder ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... and in a notable instance across the entire place. One portion was so stony that it could not be plowed; another so wet and sour that even grass would not grow upon it; a third portion was not only swampy, but liable to be overwhelmed with stones and gravel twice a year by the sudden rising of a mountain stream. There was no fruit on the place except apples and a very few pears and grapes. Nearly all of the land, ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... a strange sight, indeed. Originally there had been many tall trees standing in the swampy enclosure, but now nearly all of them lay flat in the water. The little busy beavers had gnawed around and into the trunks, near the ground, until the ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... need hardly remind our readers, has only been rescued from subsidence and collapse at an immense cost by a lavish use of the resources of modern engineering. The building itself is not without merits, but its site is inconspicuous and the swampy nature of the soil is a constant menace to its durability. The scheme which we venture with all humility to suggest is that it should be removed and re-erected, in the same spirit though in the architectural language of our own day, on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... at Anarajapoora, thus describes an occasion on which a Moor, who attended him, was somewhat, rudely disabused of his belief in the efficacy of charms upon bears:—"Desiring to change the position of a herd of deer, the Moorman (with his charm) was sent across some swampy land to disturb them. As he was proceeding, we saw him suddenly turn from an old tree and run back with all speed, his hair becoming unfastened and like his clothes streaming in the wind. It soon became evident that he was flying from some terrific object, for he had thrown down his gun, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... interment so closely allied to surface burial that it may be considered under that head is the one employed by some of the Ojibways and Swampy Crees of Canada. A small cavity is scooped out, the body deposited therein, covered with a little dirt, the mound thus formed being covered either with split planks, poles, or ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... a funny tree!" cried Sue, as the train was passing through a swampy bit of forest. "It looks as ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... the site for the royal palace when it was a swampy, uninteresting little farm. Louis XIII had built a chateau there in 1627, but had done little to beautify the flat acres surrounding it. Louis the Magnificent lavished fortunes on the laying out of his new park. The Grand Trianon was built for Madame de Main tenon in 1685, and from ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... go higher yet. Once last year, in company with Wisdom, he had been as far as the upper bog, and had wanted to go to the top. But Wisdom had dissuaded him. Now, even in the darkness the ground seemed familiar, and he tramped on up the swampy steep till presently he found himself near the sound of rushing water at the foot ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... a wild tract, ten miles by thirty, that lay a dozen miles north of Sanger. It was swampy only in parts, but the dry places were mere rocky ridges, like islands in the bogs. The land on these was worthless and the timber had been ruined by fire, so Long ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Della's father trapped beavers which were plentiful in the swampy part of the plantation bordering the Oconee, selling their pelts to traders in the nearby towns of Augusta and Savannah, where Mr. Ross also marketed his cotton and large quantities of corn. Oxen, instead of mules, were used to make the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... could, and gained that little wood; the Tartars, or thieves, for we knew not what to call them, keeping their stand, and not attempting to hinder us. When we came thither, we found, to our great satisfaction, that it was a swampy piece of ground, and on the one side a very great spring of water, which, running out in a little brook, was a little farther joined by another of the like size; and was, in short, the source of a considerable river, called afterwards the Wirtska; the trees which grew about ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... appoint proper officers, who should take care that the soldiers had sufficient and wholesome provision—that their tents were good—that the situations of the different battalions were in healthy places, near springs and rivers, but on dry soils, and as far as possible removed from swampy fens or the stagnated ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... but that his right brigade had not yet had time to march on to the field. There was no possible way of finding out anything else at once. The chance seemed favourable. Montcalm knew he had to fight or starve, as he was completely cut off by land and water, except for one bad, swampy road in the valley of the St Charles; and he ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... generally nine fathoms depth of water; on both sides it receives many navigable rivers, those on the Virginia side being known by the names of James River, York River, the Rappahannock, and Potowmack. This country, especially towards the sea, lies very low and swampy, and the soil is extremely fertile. The air and weather are variable, the heats of summer excessive, the frosts of winter sudden, and intensely cold; so that, upon the whole, the climate is neither very agreeable nor healthy, the people being particularly subject to agues and pleuritic ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Warruk had not ventured into the lower regions of the pantenal country—that vast world of marshlands, swampy forest islands and pampas bordering the great river compared to which the streams he had been accustomed to frequent in the upper reaches ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... the advantage of terminating in the city and harbour of Panama. The country intersected by these lines is by no means so abundant in woods as in other parts, but has fine savannahs, and throughout the whole distance, as well as on each bank of the Trinidad, presents flat, and sometimes swampy country, with occasional detached sugar-loaf mountains, interspersed with streams that mostly empty themselves into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... a few days where we were encamped to repose our horses and enable them to support the fatigues of our journey through the rugged and swampy wilderness of North-east Texas. Three days after the execution of the three prisoners, some of our Indians, on their return from a buffalo chase, informed us that several Texan companies, numbering two hundred men, were advancing in our direction, and that probably they were out upon an expedition ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... by lying hid behind some bushes till it came near enough to receive the fatal shot, and a third by following it up on horseback. The last chase was the most exciting, and had we not got on to some swampy ground, I believe that after all the elk would have escaped us; but heading it we got a fair shot at its chest, which brought ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... these volumes must have been a labour of love. He began them in conjunction with his friend Steinhaeuser, soon after his return from the Mecca pilgrimage, more than thirty years ago, and he has been doing something to them ever since. In the swampy jungles of West Africa a tale or two has been turned into English, or a poem has been versified during the tedium of official life in the dank climate of Brazil. From Sind to Trieste the manuscript has formed part and parcel ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... was the only one of his band provided with a tent, or anything resembling one, and the boys shared the common bed of the rest of the party—which was the ground. A more unwholesome resting-place in Africa, particularly on the steamy, swampy banks of a river, could hardly be imagined. So indeed Muley-Hassan seemed to think, for after a short time, during which the boys vainly tried to secure some sleep, he ordered Diego to provide them with blankets to place between themselves and the ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... "In a swampy place, coming along. Sanch saw something down there; and I went with him, 'cause I thought may be it was a musk-rat, and you'd like one if we could ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... really does do good—I mean to the owner of the shoulder. And you can stop rubbing the moment you are relieved. Perhaps these external remedies are indispensable to the comfort of those who dwell by choice, like Fay, in low-lying swampy districts, and have no thought of moving to ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... the lake-side city for a run over locks and dam which the working days had not allowed, and there being no other train for hours I set off along the railroad to walk the seven miles to Colon. On either side lay hot, rampant jungle, low and almost swampy. It was noon when I reached the broad railroad yards and Zone storehouses of Mt. Hope and turned aside to ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... was some time ere a suitable place could be found, as the point happened to be low and swampy, and poor Eda's first experience of a life in the woods was stepping into a hole which took her up to the knees in mud and water. She was not alone, however, in misfortune, for just at the same moment Bryan passed through the ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... raising of his rent by fifty per cent, was a broad hint which most men would have taken; and it did keep Andy ruefully quiet for a season or two. Then, however, having again saved up a trifle, he could not resist the temptation to drain the swampy corner of the farthest river-field, which was as kind a bit of land as you could wish, only for the water lying on it, and in which he afterward raised himself a remarkably fine crop of white oats. The sight of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... equable than on the north-east of America, might have been warm enough in late Pliocene times to have allowed the migration of these animals. In Asia they were driven southwards by the competition of numerous higher and more powerful forms, but have found a last resting-place in the swampy ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... however, must vary with the situation and fertility of the soil, which is generally less productive in the immediate vicinity of the lakes and rivers than a little further back from them, the land being either swampy or ridgy, covered with pines and beset with blocks of limestone and granite, ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... itself. These rivulets had bridges over them at the points where they flowed through villages; but they were difficult of passage in the other places for cavalry and artillery, and, with the ditches cut in the swampy meadows through which they flowed, proved no small impediment to the advance of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... bed, asks that the humours accumulated in his body should in an instant lose those properties which renders them injurious to his existence; that by an act of their puissance, his gods should renew or recreate the springs of a machine worn out by infirmities. The cultivator of a low swampy country, makes complaint of the abundance of rain with which his fields are inundated; whilst the inhabitant of the hill, raises his thanks for the favors he receives, solicits a continuance of that which causes the despair of his neighbour. In this, each is willing to have a god for himself, and ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... of the capital from its swampy location to the islet which it now occupies was another source of dissension. It appears that the plan was started immediately after Ceron's accession, for the king wrote to him November 9, 1511: ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... armed, attacked the Camucones very courageously. They made a great slaughter of the pirates, and captured many of them and burned their craft. Some of the Camucones escaped through the mangrove plantations and swampy ground. They were captured next day, with the exception of those who had the luck to rejoin the boats of their companions—who repenting of their carelessness, returned to their lands, and did not return to try their fortune in those ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... cursed, in no measured terms, the man who had so deceived them. In two words, the Antelope Valley is a howling desert. Not a blade of grass, not a green tree, no trees at all. In this it is a perfect contrast to the swampy "Eden," so well described by Dickens in "Martin Chuzzlewit," but as regards the impossibility of making it a home, the two are alike. More on this head when we ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... glittering trees, toward Slough Farm. This property lay perhaps ten minutes' walk from Uefligen, was over a hundred acres in size and very fruitful, but not all in one piece; some fields and one grass-meadow lay at some distance. In wet years it might be swampy in spots, but that could be managed. As they drove up, Joggeli came stumping on a stick around the house, which stood on rather low ground, and said that he had been looking for them for a long time, and had ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... stones mark common graves of masses of Russians who perished before the German barbed-wire entanglements. The Germans point to these as dumb witnesses of the disaster that overtook forty-eight Russian companies that assaulted ten German ones. The cold weather at this time had made possible the swampy regions in which the Orczy rises, and had enabled the Russians to approach close to the German line ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... which the hay wagons could pass to and from the distant meadows, were in proper order to sustain their ponderous annual load. Daniel Thorpe was the only accredited unfeathered biped who figured in the parish books as occupant of The Moors; nevertheless that swampy district could boast of one other irregular and forbidden but most pertinacious inhabitant—and that inhabitant was our hero, ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... there are some jungles so dense, so tangled with lianas and so thorny with Livistonias and rattan that nothing larger than a cat can make way through them. There are thousands of square miles so boggy, so swampy, so dark, gloomy and mosquito-ridden that all men fear them and avoid them, and in them rubber culture must be impossible. In those silent places the gaur, the rhino, the Malay sambar, the clouded leopard and the orang-utan ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... fluff from the cattail's crest, 'Mid the juniper boughs is hung; And further on, by the elder hedge, Where the turtles come out to sleep, The marsh-hen builds, by the brooklet's edge, Her warm, wet home in the swampy sedge, 'Mid the shadows so ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... another time. You would have laughed to have seen me on that day; it was the first on which I had the slightest occasion for any horsemanship. You know how bad a horseman I am, and can imagine that I let my companion go first in all the little swampy places and small creeks which we came across. These were numerous, and as Doctor always jumped them, with what appeared to me a jump about three times greater than was necessary, I assure you I heartily wished them somewhere else. However, I did my best to conceal ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... his progress was no longer easy. But he found trees covered with a small fruit resembling quinces in every particular of look, taste and smell, and that made him persevere, since it was most important to learn the useful products of the island. Presently he burst through some brushwood into a swampy bottom surrounded by low trees, and instantly a dozen large birds of the osprey kind rose flapping into the air like windmills rising. He was quite startled by the whirring and flapping, and not a little amazed at the appearance of the place. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... elephants and buffaloes, by the former of whom the few jungle-paths were terribly cut up, partly by the creatures' weight, but more particularly from the fact that, no matter how many passed along a track, or how wet and swampy it might be, the sagacious creatures believed in the way being safe where any of their kind had been before, and invariably placed their great round feet in the same holes; the effect being that these elephant-holes were often three or four ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... we found ourselves on some low swampy ground, where there were said to be abundance of 'possums. But I had no sooner entered the swamp than I was covered with musquitoes of the most ravenous character. They rose from the ground in thousands, and fastened on my "new chum" skin, from ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... ago, or thereabouts, the City of London was first begun. At that time the Thames valley, where now stands Greater London, was a vast morass, sometimes flooded at high tide, everywhere low and swampy, studded with islands or bits of ground rising a few feet above the level—such was Thorney Island, on which Westminster Abbey was built; such was the original site ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... Ethan Allen. He was speedily routed and, with 38 of his men, taken prisoner. The siege of St. John's made but little progress. The, place was well provisioned, and the Americans encamped in the low, swampy ground around it suffered much from ill health. The men were mutinous and insolent, the officers incapable and disobedient. So far the invasion of Canada, of which such great things had been hoped by the Americans, appeared likely to ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... used the expressions that the gentleman has quoted, that while there remained one acre of swamp land uncleared of South Carolina, I would raise my voice against restricting the importation of negroes. I am as thoroughly convinced as that gentleman is, that the nature of our climate, and the flat swampy situation of our country, obliges us to cultivate our land with negroes, and that without them South Carolina would ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... started after breakfast, carrying blankets and provisions, as we intended to sleep upon the mountain. After passing a little tangled jungle and swampy thickets through which our men had cleared a path, we emerged into a fine lofty forest pretty clear of undergrowth, and in which we could walk freely. We ascended steadily up a moderate slope for several miles, having a deep ravine on our left. We ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... again. From behind the hazel bushes on the other side of the enclosure came an answer, a second neighing, deeper and fuller. The swampy ground of the enclosure shook, powerful hoofs scattered the stones, to right and left and a black stallion appeared at full gallop. The tense neck carried a magnificent head, the muscles lay like ropes under the glossy skin. As he caught sight of the mare, his ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... straight on to the hill-side and all round about were moorlands and huge stones, and swampy hollows; never a house nor a sign of life wherever you might look, for their nearest neighbours were the "ferlies" in the glen below, and the "will-o'-the-wisps" in the long grass along ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... not a loveable kind of person. I am not sympathetic. I know that Charlotte is very fascinating, very charming; but sometimes her very fascination repels me. I think the atmosphere of that horrible swampy district between Lambeth and Battersea, where my childhood was spent, must have ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... lit in patches by yellow gorse and broom; there was no red weed to be seen, and as I prowled, hesitating, on the verge of the open, the sun rose, flooding it all with light and vitality. I came upon a busy swarm of little frogs in a swampy place among the trees. I stopped to look at them, drawing a lesson from their stout resolve to live. And presently, turning suddenly, with an odd feeling of being watched, I beheld something crouching amid a clump of bushes. I stood regarding this. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... close to the equator. Besides, the Peninsula is very nearly an insular region; it is densely covered with evergreen forests, and few parts of it are more than fifty miles from the sea. There are no diseases of climate except marsh fevers, which assail Europeans if they camp out at night on low, swampy grounds. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... hands. He rebounded, clutching at the bushes; but he could not check himself. Rolling over and over, his eyes and mouth choked with dust and leaves, he bumped on down the slope, and brought up at last, dazed but conscious, in a swampy hole under the roots of a ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... quite sufficient reasons to make it eminently desirable to have the house and the cellar dry. With this in mind, the selection of the house site should be carefully made. Instinctively, and with reason, the immediate neighborhood of low, swampy, marshy ground, of stagnant ponds, or of sluggish streams should be avoided. It should not be necessary to warn prospective builders that low land, subject to inundation, even though this may happen only occasionally, is not ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... drained by this system, though very swampy, before being drained, is now dry enough to walk upon, almost immediately after a storm, except when underlaid by a stratum of ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... height I had a better idea of the plateau upon the top of the crags. It appeared to be very large; neither to east nor to west could I see any end to the vista of green-capped cliffs. Below, it is a swampy, jungly region, full of snakes, insects, and fever. It is a natural ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the other, sparsely covered by some stunted growth. Far away, across the level, my eyes caught a glimmer of water, locating the river, but in no direction was there any sign of a house, or curl of smoke. The unproductive land—barren and swampy—sufficiently accounted for lack of inhabitants, and told why it had been avoided by the foragers of both armies. Seeking safety the girl had chosen her course wisely—here was desolation so complete as to mock even at the ravages of war. The gray in the east changed to ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... I meant to do. But once in the silent woods, I began to think of the wrong I had done. I would have given worlds to be back. But it was too late. I had to keep going. Fording rivers, creeping through underbrush, climbing ridges, crossing swampy beaver-meadows, fighting the awful swarms of mosquitoes, I got through the summer, living on fish, game and berries. You see, I had become terribly afraid of the Red Riders—the mounted police. I had heard ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... over with the strain of last year's snow; and all along, near by the water, beech and basswood, blue-gum and pin-oak, ash, and even chestnut flourishing still, in defiance of blight. Nor have I ever seen such sheets of water-lilies as starred the swampy thickets, in which elder and hazels and every conceivable bush and shrub and giant grass and cane make wildernesses pathless indeed save to the mink and the water-snake, and the imagination that would fain ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... seventh century were probably very like the forests at the mouth of the Mississippi, or the swampy shores of the Carolinas. Their vast plain is now, in summer, one sea of golden corn; in winter, a black dreary fallow, cut into squares by stagnant dykes, and broken only by unsightly pumping mills and doleful lines of poplar-trees. Of old it was a labyrinth of black wandering streams; broad lagoons; ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... moderate and regular inclination of surface—the whole earth, unless rescued by human art from the physical degradation to which it tends, becomes an assemblage of bald mountains, of barren, turfless hills, and of swampy and malarious plains. There are parts of Asia Minor, of Northern Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine Europe, where the operation of causes set in action by man has brought the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon; and though, within that brief space of time ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... and on the side of the Parthiscus they are secured from any irruptions of the barbarians. Since along its course the greater part of the ground is frequently under water from the floods, and always swampy and full of osiers, so as to be quite impassable to strangers; and besides the mainland there is an island close to the mouth of the river, which the stream itself seems to have separated into its ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... hopeless rebel. Sir Hugh Low tells me that he clothed all the trees round Government House at Pahang with Vanda teres, planting its near relative, V. Hookeri, more exquisite still, if that were possible, in a swampy hollow. His servants might gather a basket of these flowers daily in the season. So the memory of the first President for Pahang will be kept green. A plant rarely seen is V. limbata from the island of Timor—dusky yellow, ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... cheerful mood until his knowledge of the ground became distressingly familiar, and he illustrated portions of the scenery with tales of robbery and murder. The scenery of the road became at every turn more picturesque. Instead of passing between swampy fields, it ran along a hollow, and the ground was on each side broken into deep holes with rugged edges; black leafless bushes stood out from the grey and yellow sand, while farther away in the background, against the leaden sky, there was a sombre fringe of thickly planted fir-trees. ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... or mias, hides in the swampy jungles, and very rarely comes to the ground. The natives regard them as a sort of sacred object, and have a great horror of killing them. Indeed, a person who kills a man-ape, they regard as a murderer; and so when Wallace announced to his attendants that he wanted to secure several ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... was not far away. He could catch the dancing blue of it from time to time in ragged vista, and for this beacon he steered directly. His coat was heavy on his arm, his thin patent-leather ties pinched and burned and demanded detours around swampy ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... its mother's blanket." Speaking of the wild orchids known as "lady's-slippers," see the inimitable way in which he puts you on the spot where they grow: "Most of the floral ladies leave their slippers in swampy places in the woods, only the stemless one (Cypripedium acaule) leaves hers on dry ground before she reaches the swamp, commonly under evergreen trees where the carpet of pine needles will not hurt her feet." Almost always he invests his descriptions with some human touch that gives them rare ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... tedious tramp over exceedingly tangled ground followed their landing, and they trudged along among stones, over snow, and through swampy patches, where there were wild fowl; but these were left in peace in the hope of a more substantial addition to the ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... was likely to regain much strength. He and the other Indians have been living in one of the shanties close to the mill. It is extremely swampy and unhealthy there, and besides that, he seems to have been almost without food, living ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... were carried by four men; but this the poor little Lassla, as Helen shortens his lengthy name, resented so much, that he began to scream so loud that she was forced to dismount and carry him in her arms, along a road rendered swampy by ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... as the tide, and they had to anchor against the ebb, or be swept out to sea quicker than they had come in. The next morning they went on again, and were fifty miles up the channel by nightfall. Away to right and left were masses of flat, swampy land, the intersecting waterways reddening and glistening in ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... recollection I have of our dear Doctor is the expression in her face in the middle of a heavy bombardment by German guns of our hospital at Krushevatz during the autumn of 1915. I was coming across some swampy ground which separated our building from the large barracks called after the good and gentle Czar Lazar of Kosovofanee, when a shell flew over our heads, and burst close by with a deafening roar. The Doctor was coming from the opposite ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... measure, as Ben had found by experience, on account of two classes of enemies—men and bears. From the first, it is true, the bee-hunter had hitherto apprehended but little. There were few human beings in that region. The northern portions of the noble peninsula of Michigan are some-what low and swampy, or are too broken and savage to tempt the native hunters from the openings and prairies that then lay, in such rich profusion, further south and west. With the exception of the shores, or coasts, it was seldom that ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... were well into the thick bush the horses had to be abandoned. Papehara was left in charge of them, while Joan and Sheldon and the remaining Tahitians pushed ahead on foot. The way led down through a swampy hollow, which was overflowed by the Berande River on occasion, and where the red trail of the murderers was crossed by a crocodile's trail. They had apparently caught the creature asleep in the sun and ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... war and the occasional visit of a gunboat had driven off the few settlers. The river gradually became narrower and more tortuous as we approached its head waters. The banks are generally low, with a few sandy elevations, thickly wooded or swampy. Occasionally we passed a small opening, or savanna, on which were sometimes feeding a herd of wild cattle and deer; at the latter we had several potshots, all wide. Alligators, as immovable as the logs on which they rested, could be counted by hundreds, ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... not unlike a cheroot, made from the rind of the fruit of a species of palm. This curious pipe is called a "Winna," and the hollow is filled with tobacco, the smoking of which affords much enjoyment to the denizens of the swampy regions of Guiana. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... battles. The first part of the road to Blanche's Castle is level, and bordered with thick growths of prickly pear; there is a view of the sea, and of the Guadalate, spanned by a metal bridge—a Menai on a small scale. Farther on, as we get to a district called La Piedad, the country is diversified by swampy flats at one side and sandy hills at the other. Blanche's Castle was a commonplace ruin, a complete "sell," and we turned our horse's head rather savagely. As we were coming back, the little American shortening the way ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... the party travelled was now so narrow, as not to admit, with any sort of convenience, above two riders abreast, and began to descend into a dingle, traversed by a brook whose banks were broken, swampy, and overgrown with dwarf willows. Cedric and Athelstane, who were at the head of their retinue, saw the risk of being attacked at this pass; but neither of them having had much practice in war, no better mode ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... position had become more and more untenable. We were on swampy ground and the water was constantly oozing in from the bottom of the trench, so that we sometimes had to stand nearly knee-deep and were forced to bail the water out with our caps. It is difficult to imagine a more deplorable situation than to have to ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... overnight (for Traun too has been awake); they lie now opposite our RIGHT flank; 'on a scarped height, at the foot of which, through swamps and quagmires, runs a muddy stream.' Unattackable on this side: their right flank and foot are safe enough. Creep round and see their left:—Nothing but copses, swampy intricacies! We may shoulder arms again, and go back to Konopischt: no fight here! [OEuvres de Frederic, iii. 63, 64; Orlich, ii. 69.] Speaking of defensive Campaigns, says Friedrich didactically, years afterwards, 'If such situations ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... or Guajava, for it had acted upon them during a period of thirty hours. There can be no doubt as to the identity of these keys with those about Cayo Romano; for they are the only ones in the neighborhood of Cuba that are not of a low and swampy nature, but large and lofty. They inclose a free, open navigation, and abundance of fine harbors, in late years the resort of pirates, who found security and concealment for themselves and their prizes ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... said, that the great additions which have been made by realism to the territory of literature consist largely in swampy, malarious, ill-smelling patches of soil which had previously been left to reptiles and vermin. It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste. The general consent of civilized people was supposed to have banished certain subjects from ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of islands large and small, of which the most important is Hongkong on account of its fine harbor. More than half a century ago the English seized upon this island and forced the Chinese to cede it to them. Then it was little more than a barren rock with a low swampy shore on which were a few villages inhabited by poor fisher folk. The swamps have been drained, gardens planted, and villas built, until now the once barren heights vie in beauty with the grass-grown slopes ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... soil on either side the road. Trailing sprays of bramble glowed as flame. Rowan berries hung in heavy coral bunches, and the dogwood spread itself in sparse china-pink clusters. Only the undergrowth of crooked alders, in swampy, low-lying places, kept its dark, purplish green; and the light foliage of the ash waved in shadowy pallor against its knobbed and knotted branches; and the ranks of the encircling firs retained their solemn habit, as though in ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet |
