"Swarthy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Europe, and at which the Syrian vessels touched in their way to Italy. The harbour was crowded with masts and strange prows and uncouth sails, and the quays always busy with loading and unloading; while in the streets might be seen men of all languages and all dresses, copper-coloured Egyptians, swarthy Jews, lively, bustling Greeks, and haughty Italians, with Asiatics from the neighbouring coasts of Syria and Cilicia, and even dark Ethiopians, painted Arabs, Bactrians, Scythians, Persians, and Indians, all gay with their national costumes. Alexandria was a spot in which Europe met Asia, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... a temporary platform in the center of the group. He looks around upon the swarthy faces, glowing with all the eagerness which the stolid Indian nature will permit them to display. It is not always the tallest nor the most comely men who are selected. The unerring judgment of the scout, ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... the barren knoll, where an hour before swarthy stolid hundreds had crowded awaiting baptism, was lonely as the grave. The peons were dispersing to their village down by the river junction, or to their huts near the hacienda store, and on the air floated the falsetto nasal of their holiday songs, breaking ludicrously above the mumbling ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... race composition of America and suggestive of the recent acquisition of the land in which they were fighting. There were free negroes, San Domingans, Louisiana Creoles, regular troops, old French soldiers, and swarthy pirates, backed by the hunters of Tennessee in their homespun hunting-shirts, and the Kentuckians with their long knives. The latter boasted of their endurance of hardships and that they were not of woman born, but were half horse and half alligator. ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... sea-sound I wot of; a sailor sang while he hung in the ratlines and tossed down the salt-stained shrouds. The afternoon waned: the man at the wheel struck two bells—it was the delectable dog-watch. Down went the swarthy sun into his tent of clouds; the waves were of amber; the fervid sky was flushed; it looked as though something splendid were about to happen up there, and that it could hardly keep the secret much longer. Then came the purplest twilight; and then the sky blossomed all over with the biggest, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... inches high, lean, muscular, ungainly, the evidence of his great physical strength, was a fit symbol of those hard workers, the children of the soil, from whom he sprang. His face was rugged like his figure, the complexion swarthy, cheek bones high, and bushy black hair crowning a great forehead beneath which the eyes were deep-set, gray, and dreaming. A sort of shambling powerfulness formed the main suggestion of face and figure, softened ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... that of the elements, when the thunder rolls among the towering forests or the wind howls along the plains. He gazes far, far into the distance, where the blue mountains melt into an indefinite haze; he looks above him to the rocky pinnacles which spring from the level plain, their swarthy cliffs glistening from the recent shower, and patches of rich verdure clinging to precipices a thousand feet above him. His eye stretches along the grassy plains, taking at one full glance a survey of woods, and rocks, and streams; and imperceptibly his mind wanders to ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... a similar Shop to this, though on a smaller scale, to be seen in a great leading thoroughfare at the West end of the Town; the owner of which, from his swarthy complexion and extravagant mode of dress, has been denominated The Black Prince, a name by which he is well known in his own neighbourhood, and among the gentlemen of the cloth. This dandy gentleman, who affects the dress and air of a military officer, has ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... seize the Princess!" said a voice. It was that of Georgios, no longer humble with a merchant's obsequious whine, but speaking in tones of cold command and in Arabic. For a moment the swarthy mob hung back, as well they might in face of that glittering sword. Then with a cry of "Salah-ed-din! Salah-ed-din!" on they surged, with flashing spears and scimitars. The overthrown table was in front of them, and one leapt upon its ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... of the mine had gone. The foreman in charge of the windlass and fan stood leaning against a post, with the light of a torch flaring across his swarthy face. ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... of this island is in a valley, fourteen miles from the bay in which the Revenge came to anchor, and contains about 100 families, the inhabitants being of a swarthy complexion. The country on the sea is rocky and barren, but in the interior there are several vallies, having plenty of grass, and in which vines are cultivated. The wine is of a pale colour, and tastes somewhat like Madeira, but is ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... see how gay Its pennon dances, as we bound Along the watery way; The wave I walk on's mine—the god I worship is the breeze; My rudder is my magic rod Of rule, on isles and seas: Blow, blow, ye winds, for lordly France, Or shores of swarthy Spain: Blow where ye list, of earth I'm lord, When monarch of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... remonstrated the man, whose swarthy visage betrayed a mixture of cunning, fun, and annoyance. He was obviously a half-caste of the lowest type, but with more pretensions to wealth than many of his fellows, inasmuch as he wore, besides his loin-cloth, a white cotton ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... head of the table, first in place as in rank, sat Francois Bigot, Intendant of New France. His low, well-set figure, dark hair, small, keen black eyes, and swarthy features full of fire and animation, bespoke his Gascon blood. His countenance was far from comely,—nay, when in repose, even ugly and repulsive,—but his eyes were magnets that drew men's looks towards him, for in them lay the force ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... ceremonial and display as they culminated in that long and brilliant reign. From the dormer windows above, high-bred French ladies looked at the sun rising over the forest-clothed shores of the river, on which now stands the architectural grandeur of the modern city. How strange to the swarthy-faced dwellers in the wigwam must the old-time gaieties have appeared, as the lights from the silver candelabres shone far out in the night, when the old Chateau was en fete and aglow with music, ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... Pot of Basil, both of which are fair samples of his powers. Four pictures of his are shown here: a little Italian child, painted with great love and sweetness, two street scenes in Cairo full of rich Oriental colouring, and a wonderful work called the Afterglow in Egypt. It represents a tall swarthy Egyptian woman, in a robe of dark and light blue, carrying a green jar on her shoulder, and a sheaf of grain on her head; around her comes fluttering a flock of beautiful doves of all colours, eager to be fed. Behind is a wide flat river, and across the river a stretch of ripe corn, through ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... his head quickly in the direction of the sound. A swarthy face appeared, framed in a close leathern cap on which small rings of rusty iron were sewn strongly, but not very regularly. Then a long left arm, clad in the same sort of mail, pushed the lower boughs aside and made ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... being built in the middle of the branding-pen. Several men, who seemed to be the owners, rode through the corralled cows while the cruel irons were being heated. Then the man who directed the work ordered into their saddles a number of swarthy fellows who spoke Spanish, and the work ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... fell from his fingers, he put her from his knee, and rose instantly. His swarthy cheek glowed, and she wondered at the expression of his eyes, so different from anything she had ever seen ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... locksmith, who was not to be diverted by any artifice from his firm manner, and his steady gaze, 'that she never looked towards him once, Sir John; and so she died, and he forgot her. But, some years afterwards, a man was sentenced to die the same death, who was a gipsy too; a sunburnt, swarthy fellow, almost a wild man; and while he lay in prison, under sentence, he, who had seen the hangman more than once while he was free, cut an image of him on his stick, by way of braving death, and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... a thin, projecting nose, a high, bald forehead, and a huge grizzled moustache. An opera-hat was pushed to the back of his head, and an evening dress shirt-front gleamed out through his open overcoat. His face was gaunt and swarthy, scored with deep, savage lines. In his hand he carried what appeared to be a stick, but as he laid it down upon the floor it gave a metallic clang. Then from the pocket of his overcoat he drew a bulky object, and he busied himself in some task which ended with a loud, sharp ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hurrying along, carrying sacks or buckets, worn and bewildered-looking women, the sight of whom gave her a pang. She saw lounging Indians and groups of lazy, bearded men, just like Kells's band, and gamblers in long, black coats, and frontiersmen in fringed buckskin, and Mexicans with swarthy faces under wide, peaked sombreros; and then in great majority, dominating that stream of life, the lean and stalwart miners, of all ages, in their check shirts and high boots, all packing guns, jostling along, dark-browed, somber, and intent. These last were the workers of this vast beehive; ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... appreciatively. He admired the clear look and its fire of noble purity, not often seen, he feared, on the face of a young man brought up to believe the world at his feet. He admired the dark eyes, profound as the African nights they had loved. He noted the rich brown of the swarthy young face, clear as the profile on old Roman coins, and thought, as he had thought before, that Murillo would have liked to paint that colouring. He approved his Prince's way of speaking, when he lost self-consciousness and his gestures became free and winged. "How his mother would ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... swarthy brow Spring no wild flowers nor verdure fair; Thou feel'st not summer's genial glow, More than the freezing wintry air. For once thou drank'st the hero's blood, And war's unhallow'd footsteps bore; Thy deeds unholy, nature ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Pasqual Morales had little more Mexican blood in his veins than had Feeny himself. He was an Americano, a cursed Gringo for whom long years ago the sheriffs of California and Nevada had chased in vain, who had sought refuge and a mate in Sonora, and whose swarthy features found no difficulty in masquerading under a Mexican name when the language of love had made him ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... indeed, seek me at all? Why not confide in those swarthy attendants, who doubtless are slaves to ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... And the little silent swarthy man slipped away almost before Counsellor realised that Russia, the mighty, had given him a pledge which might prove of immense value in ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... poised on narrow boards notched into the tree a man's height from the ground, and one was huge and swarthy, so that the heavy axe he held seemed a toy in his great gnarled hand. The other, whose figure seemed in some respects familiar, stooped a little with the bright axe blade laid flat in one palm as though he were examining it, and Deringham, who could ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... kirtled to his knee, With shawl-girt head and ornamented gun, And gold-embroider'd garments, fair to see; The crimson-scarfed men of Macedon; The Delhi with his cap of terror on, And crooked glaive; the lively, supple Greek, And swarthy Nubia's mutilated son; The bearded Turk, that rarely deigns to speak, Master of all around, too ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... both in character and in their distinctively French costume, a marked contrast to the representative of insolent Albion. These favorites of the Prince, each wearing full-brimmed, three-cornered hats, very flat and very wide-spreading, beneath which grinned their swarthy, tanned, and wrinkled faces, lighted by three pairs of twinkling eyes, were noticeably lean, sinewy, and vigorous, like men in whom sport had become a passion. All three were supplied with immense horns of Dampierre, wound with green worsted cords, leaving only the brass tubes visible; but ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... Americans, are nearly all built of unburnt bricks. The appearance of the native Californian is quite Spanish. The men wear high steeple-like hats, jackets of gaudy colours, and breeches of velvet, generally cotton. They are a handsome swarthy race. The best part in the faces of the women are their eyes, which are black and very lustrous. The Californian belles, I am sorry to say, spoil ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... lodging-house, and found the happy Snatcher snoring away in his cot with a smile on his face that seemed to indicate that he was dreaming he was back in a nice comfortable jail once more; and as if to make assurance doubly sure, the missing necklace hung about his swarthy neck! Short work was made of the arrest; Nervy Him, almost embarrassingly grateful, was railroaded to Sing Sing in ten days' time, for fifteen years, and Raffles Holmes had the present pleasure and personal satisfaction of restoring ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... other Breton worthies are in one of the rooms (Salle de l'Odeon). That of the Constable answers to the description given of his appearance. He was low in stature, with large Breton head, broad shoulders, long arms, and large hands. His eyes were green, and his complexion swarthy: "la peau noire comme ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... before we arrived at the lodges, and were met by the whole population—men, women, children, dogs, and all. Our reception was tumultuous and cordial. It was a picturesque group. The swarthy-faced men, lean, sinewy and well built, with their long, straight black hair reaching to their shoulders, most of them hatless and all wearing a red bandanna handkerchief banded across the forehead, moccasined feet and vari-colored leggings; the women quaint and odd; the eager-faced children; ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... attending them to the tents, with his young brother, a pretty, libertine boy of sixteen, the brother's tutor, an Arab black as a negro but without the negro's look of having been freshly oiled, and two attendants. To them joined himself the Caid of the Nomads, a swarthy potentate who not only looked, but actually was, immense, his four servants, and his uncle, a venerable person like a shepherd king. These worthies surrounded Domini and Androvsky, and behind streamed the curious, the envious, the greedy and the desultory Arabs, who follow in the trail of ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... sportsman, financier, mining expert, lover of wine and women, of books and prints; one of the founders, I believe, of the Rhodesia Company; faultlessly dressed, infernally rich and, when he chose—which was fairly often—preposterously brutal. Neither manner nor face were winning. He was swarthy almost to blackness, quite un-English in looks, with rather long hair, a most menacing moustache and the fiercest eyes imaginable; a king of the gipsies, so far as features went. Something sinister hung about his personality. A predatory type, unquestionably; never so happy as when pitting ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... of dark beyond, the door Breathes out the deep adytum's gloom: I cross the court's deserted floor, And stand within the awful room. The priests repose from finished rite; No echo rings from pavements trod; And sits alone, in swarthy light, The naked ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... matter for comment in the most trifling occurrence. Their surprise mounted the highest, when we began to remove our uncomfortable garments, which were saturated with rain. They scanned the whiteness of our limbs, and seemed utterly unable to account for the contrast they presented to the swarthy hue of our faces embrowned from a six months' exposure to the scorching sun of the Line. They felt our skin, much in the same way that a silk mercer would handle a remarkably fine piece of satin; and some of them went ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... black-eyed man, with a cast of the swarthy Spaniard in his face, who rose repeatedly to make room for the belles of the village as they entered, was a son of Erin, who had lately left off his pack, and become a stationary trader in Templeton. In short, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... told by a surviving contemporary (who enclosed a portrait of him along with the description), was a man of slightly less than middle height, but with broadish shoulders, limbs well put together, and long fingers. He had a rather swarthy face, with black hair, and a beard a span and a half long, also black, but latterly turning grey. The face was somewhat long, the nose decidedly so, the mouth large, and the lips full, so that the upper lip in particular seemed to be swollen. The chief ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... Alexander should marry Margaret, the emperor's illegitimate daughter, and that Florence should become a dukedom to dower the young couple withal. Who and what this Alexander was has always been one of the puzzles of history. He was, tradition says, very swarthy, and was generally believed to be the son of a Moorish slave-mother. He was certainly illegitimate; and the question, Who was his father? was always a doubtful one, though he has generally been called the son of Lorenzo. I have elsewhere given ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... miles, till they were where the cliff went sheer up like a vast wall of rugged granite, at a part of which, where a mass of broken stone had either fallen or been thrown down, Will stopped and looked round to see if they were observed. As they were alone with no other watchers than a swarthy-looking cormorant sitting on a sunny lodge drying his wings, and a shag or two perched with outstretched neck, narrowly observing them, Will climbed up, followed by Josh, till they were upon a broad shelf a hundred and fifty feet above the sea—a wild solitary place, where ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... dropped down the river a few miles the first day; with this crew, the hardest looking set that ever put foot on a ship of mine, and with a swarthy Greek pilot that would be taken for a pirate in any part of the world. The second mate, who shipped also at Rosario, was not less ill-visaged, and had, in addition to his natural ugly features, a deep scar across his face, suggestive of a heavy sabre stroke; a mark which, I thought upon ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... rather drowsy, I composed myself to sleep. The last thing I remembered before closing my eyes was the long, swarthy, quixotic-looking face of my singular nurse, veiled in a blue cloud of cigarette-smoke, which, as it rolled from the nostrils of his big, aquiline nose, made those orifices look like the twin craters of an ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... yer, ye spalpeens, when we get to the lull," cried Adair, at which the swarthy natives grinned, and would have grinned more had they comprehended his remark. Quickly passing through the town, up the steep sides of the mountain, they clattered between high stone walls, crowned by vines, geraniums, and numberless flowering plants, while ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... had done the grouping—sat on a rustic seat, in the late afternoon. The man was middle-aged, slender, swarthy, with the expression of a poet and the complexion of a pirate—a man at whom one would look again. The woman was young, blonde, graceful, with something in her figure and movements suggesting the word "lithe." She was habited in a gray gown with odd brown markings in the texture. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... adjoining towns and villages, belonged to the corps of General Von York. Most of the infantry regiments were composed in part of young recruits, but the old soldiers, and all the cavalry, had a truly military appearance; and their swarthy weather-beaten countenances, their coarse and patched, but strong and serviceable dresses and accoutrements, the faded embroidery of their uniforms, and the insignia of orders of merit with which almost all the officers, and many of the men, were decorated, bore ample testimony to ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... white velvet, and their curious three-cornered hats were fringed with silver and surmounted with huge plumes of ostrich feathers, the dazzling whiteness of their costumes, as they moved about in the sunlight, being still more accentuated by their swarthy faces and long black hair. Everybody was fascinated by the grave dignity with which they moved through the intricate figures of the dance, and by the elaborate grace of their slow gestures, and stately bows, and when they ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... when we went to our hotel-door at the appointed hour. There was the lady's camel, with a howdah on its back hung with curtains of damask and gold. There were the camels for the gentlemen, each led by its swarthy driver, while alongside a young Arab gentleman careered upon a white charger with crimson and gold saddle and trappings, followed by a mounted attendant almost equally magnificent. To crown the whole, or at least give it state, there were some ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... carrying two large packs. He was a small man with a swarthy olive-colored skin, and dark beady eyes, ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... O, folded to her breast, Love in each moment years and years of rest, Be calm, as being not. Ye oceans of intolerable delight, The blazing photosphere of central Night, Be ye forgot. Terror, thou swarthy Groom of Bride-bliss coy, Let me not see thee toy. O, Death, too tardy with thy hope intense Of kisses close beyond conceit of sense; O, Life, too liberal, while to take her hand Is more of hope than ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... his nether-lip, his florid face a thought less florid than its wont, his prominent blue eyes a thought more prominent. Under its golden periwig old Nick Trenchard's wizened countenance was darkened by a scowl, and his fingers, long, swarthy, and gnarled, drummed fretfully upon the table. Portly Lord Gervase Scoresby—their host, a benign and placid man of peace, detesting turbulence—turned crimson now in wordless rage. The others gaped and stared—some at young Westmacott, some at the man he had ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... into the swamp, making both ends impassable. Jackson had 3,500 expert marksmen at his command. They were a strange mixture of men, including long-limbed, hard-faced backwoodsmen, Portuguese and Norwegian seamen, dark-skinned Spaniards and swarthy Frenchmen, besides about 1,000 militiamen selected from the Creoles of Louisiana. They were a rough and violent lot. Theodore Roosevelt characterizes them as: "Soldiers who, under an ordinary commander, would have been fully as dangerous to themselves ...
— The Mentor: The War of 1812 - Volume 4, Number 3, Serial Number 103; 15 March, 1916. • Albert Bushnell Hart
... himself came over the edge of the Ridge, bloused and white-vested and out of breath, a bunch of mountain flowers in one hand, his felt hat in the other; and three men bobbed up behind, Indian file, over the crest of the trail, the Missionary, Williams, stepping lightly, MacDonald swarthy and close-lipped, taking the climb with the ease of a mountaineer, Bat Brydges, the Senator's newspaper man, hat on the back of his head, coat and vest and collar in hand, blowing with the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... each hardy tenant down. Nor slacked the messenger his pace; He showed the sign, he named the place, And, pressing forward like the wind, Left clamor and surprise behind. The fisherman forsook the strand, The swarthy smith took dirk and brand; With changed cheer, the mower blithe Left in the half-cut swath his scythe; The herds without a keeper strayed, The plough was in mid-furrow staved, The falconer tossed his hawk away, The ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... of intelligence lit up for a moment the swarthy features of the pirate. It passed quickly. Then he spoke in an undertone to one of his men, who, with the assistance of another, led the captain of the schooner to the forward part of the ship. A stifled groan, followed by a plunge, was heard by the horrified survivors. That was all they ever ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... swarthy complexion, Alwin of England suddenly flushed. When a wish is rooted in one's very heart, it is difficult to get far enough away to see it in its ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... kept watch. The next morning we were once more attacked, but successfully defended ourselves with boulders and our cutlasses. Yet one swarthy pirate succeeded in catching the leg of the remaining native soldier and bearing him away with them. With cessation of hostilities, we searched the top of the island for food and water. At one side of the tableland there was a break in its surface and a bench of some dozen ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... Captain Ducie's swarthy cheek deepened its hue. He paused to blow a speck of cigar ash off his sleeve before he spoke. "I did not know your Captain Charles Chillington," he said, in slow, deliberate accents. "Till the present moment I never ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... crowd, and came to a stand in the middle of the green. It was a diminutive creature, mounted on a pony that carried its owner on a saddle immediately below its neck, and a pair of paniers just above its tail. The rider was an elderly man with shaggy eyebrows and beard of mingled black and gray. His swarthy, keen wizened face was twisted into grotesque lines beneath a pair of little blinking eyes, which seemed to say that anybody who refused to see that they belonged to a perfectly, wideawake son of old Adam made a portentous mistake. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Burned Marmion's swarthy cheek like fire, 30 And shook his very frame for ire; And—"This to me," he said, "An't were not for thy hoary beard, Such hand as Marmion's had not spared To cleave the Douglas' head! 35 And, first, I tell thee, haughty peer, He who does ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... was a veritable giant, swarthy of skin, hairy-chested. His great hands were extended to grasp or to parry—his head lowered with a ferocious scowl—and across his forehead swayed a tuft of black, shaggy hair. He might have stood ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... of this region to enliven, if not adorn, the landscape. This lean, swarthy young fellow, under his sombrero with ample brim, exhibits a fair specimen of the peasants of Alemtejo. His sheep-skin jacket hangs loosely from his shoulders, and between his nether garment and his clumsy shoes, he displays the greater ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... assembled throng There sat a swarthy giant, with a face So nobly grand that though (unlike the rest) He wore no festal garb nor laughing mien, Yet was he study for the painter's art: He joined not in their sports, but rather seemed To please his eye with ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... followed us shouting objurgations, and accepting small coins as ransom. We had glimpses of a mosque, the outside of a prison, and the inside of what once was a harem. On returning to the steamer one gentleman fell overboard and, swimming to the shore, was rescued by a swarthy ruffian who robbed him of his watch and disappeared in the darkness. When the victim of Algerian piracy stood on the deck, dripping and indignant, and told his tale of woe, we were delighted. Algiers would always be something to ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... St. Jago in their favour, he being the saint to whom they had last appealed during the continuance of the tempest. Aloof from the crew, and leaning against a mast, stood one apparently very different to those by whom he was surrounded. It was an English countenance, but embrowned almost to a swarthy hue, from continued exposure to a tropical sun. Tall and remarkably well formed, he might well have been supposed of noble birth; there were, however, traces of long-continued suffering imprinted on his manly face and in his ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... That swarthy, curl-pated youngster, in full gala dress for the theatre, drawing on his gloves, and hurrying Mr. Stewart, is, dear reader, your most humble, devoted, and obedient servant, Frank Byrne, alias, myself, alias, the ship's cousin, alias, the son ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... our West India possessions, must have often been amused with the humour and cunning which occasionally appear in a negro more endowed than the generality of his race, particularly when the master also happens to be a humourist. The swarthy servitor seems to reflect his patron's absurdities; and having thoroughly studied his character, ascertains how far he can venture to take liberties ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... General Muhlenberg, the clergyman who had doffed his gown for the uniform of a brigadier, stalwart, swarthy, laughter in his ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... swarthy brows and, extending his huge hands with an expression of pitying surprise, demanded of Derrick where he had come from that he did not know ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... anxious to have a son to inherit his estates, but his hopes in this respect were blasted by the curse of a wandering gipsy. It appears that the gipsy was one day near Lochmore Castle, with a pretty little dark-haired swarthy-complexioned boy, her son, when she encountered Morrar-na-Shean in a towering passion—a state of mind in which he was often to be found. He ordered her and her "beggar bastard brat" to be off, or he would shoot them. The ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the left was exactly like the fourth and the sixth from the little Pocket saw of any of them. He was hurried up a tiled path, none too clean between swarthy and lack-lustre laurels; the steps had not been "done"; the door wore the nondescript complexion of prehistoric paint debased by the caprices of the London climate. One touch of colour the lad saw before this unpromising portal opened ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... debonair man of the world took a seat on his right with easy grace. On Mr. Jefferson's left sat Chief Justice John Marshall, a "tall, lax, lounging Virginian," with black eyes peering out from his swarthy countenance. There is a dramatic quality in this scene of the President-to-be seated between two men who are to cause him more vexation of spirit than any others in public life. Burr, brilliant, gifted, ambitious, and profligate; Marshall, temperamentally and by conviction ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... fears of the Southron will raise the spectre of a Douglas at any time, when he is within sight of their sepulchre. Methinks, in such a night as this, the fairest cavalier would wear the complexion of this swarthy race, nor can I hold it wonderful that the war-cry which was once in the throats of so many thousands in this country, should issue upon occasion from the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... men and saw that they were utterly strange to him: they were short of stature, crooked-legged, long-armed, very strong for their size: with small blue eyes, snubbed-nosed, wide-mouthed, thin- lipped, very swarthy of skin, exceeding foul of favour. He and all others wondered who they were, and whence they came, for never had they seen their like; and the Woodlanders, who often guested outlanders strayed from the way of divers kindreds ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... up, and her bow striking ours, she hooked on to our fore-chains. The next instant a countless number of swarthy figures with turbaned heads, bright scymitars flashing in their hands, swarmed in the rigging of the corsair and came leaping down on our deck. Led by Lancelot, Dick and I fighting by his side, we met them with hanger, pike, and pistol, driving them back over the bulwarks, or cleaving them from head ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... The swarthy ox will drag his chain, At man’s commandment that is done; His furrow break through earth with pain, Up hill and hillock toiling on; Yet with more skill draw hearts at will The maids ...
— Ermeline - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... stolen by gypsies, and of their dark, mysterious ways, have taken root in our infant minds along with those of ghosts and goblins, robbers and Indians. There are, it is true, romantic associations connected with them, and we try to fancy a Meg Merrilies in the swarthy old woman who examines the lines of our hand and tells us the past, present and future—sometimes with a startling consistency and probability. But few of us would have supposed that this race of vagabonds and outcasts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... round and somewhat prominent, the slight moustache (no other hair on the face), formed the very ideal of what many women look for in a man. But it was his bright, lively conversation, the way in which his slightly swarthy complexion flushed with animation, the impudent assurance and yet generous warmth of his manner, and, indeed, of his feelings, which had given him the merited reputation of being the ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... whose name thy waters bear, The silent hills between, Led by his swarthy guides to conflict there, Entranced beheld ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... sated death, or, with increase of appetite, grows by what it feeds on—wide, but unseen, over all the regions of the land, are cheated hopes, vain desires, gnawing jealousy, dispirited fear, and swarthy-souled revenge—beseechings, seductions, suicides, and insanities—and all, all spring from the root of Love; yet all the nations of the earth call the Tree blest, and long as time endures, will continue to flock thither panting ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Heaven. The soil was manured by treason, and the sowers made haste to use their opportunity. Thus especially was there danger in those wandering encampments of "outlandish people," whose habits rendered them the ready-made missionaries of sedition; whose swarthy features might hide a Spanish heart, and who in telling fortunes might readily dictate policy.[306] Under the disguise of gipsies, the emissaries of the emperor or the pope might pass unsuspected from the Land's End to Berwick-upon-Tweed, penetrating the secrets of families, tying ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... an irascible, dictatorial temperament—accustomed to flattery and adulation. On this return trip to the Continent, the ship's list comprised Americans for the most part. They were in little humor to cajole the swarthy, sarcastic, and unsociable Spaniard. Their minds were too full of the pleasures of the months to come, of plans and frolics in contemplation, to sacrifice their time to this ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... skulls; southern Italians are of the Mediterranean race and have long, narrow skulls. Between the two lies a broad strip of country, peopled by those of mixed blood. In appearance the Italians may be anything from a tow-headed Teuton to a swarthy Arab. Varying with the district from which he comes, in manner he may be rough and boisterous; suave, fluent, and gesticulative; or grave and silent. These differences extend to the very essentials of life. The provinces of Italy are radically ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... truth, the neighbourhood was picturesque! The two ponds inclined their faces towards each other like a pair of lovers. The right pond had waters smooth and pure as a maiden's cheeks; the left was somewhat darker, like the swarthy face of a youth, already shaded with manly down. The right was encircled with glittering golden sand as if with bright hair; but the brow of the left bristled with osiers, and was tufted with willows: both ponds were clothed in a garment ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... a wise and instinctive temperateness that savoured of the Greek. Yet he was far from Greek. "I am Aztec, I am Inca, I am Spaniard," I have heard him say. And in truth he looked it, a compound of strange and ancient races, what with his swarthy skin and the asymmetry and primitiveness of his features. His eyes, under massively arched brows, were wide apart and black with the blackness that is barbaric, while before them was perpetually falling down a great black mop of hair through which he gazed like a ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... said the Doctor, rather gruffly, as he frowned at the swarthy little patient. "But I wish Dula could talk English or I could talk her tongue a ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... Each was busy with his own thoughts, and it was not until after the coffee had been served that Griswold leaned across the table to call Raymer's attention to a man who was finishing his meal in a distant corner of the dining-room, a swarthy-faced man who drank his coffee with the meat course to the unpleasant detriment of a pair of ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... broad-shouldered man in khaki at the head of a swarthy crew of ebon warriors. The man's face was set in hard, stern lines and the marks of sorrow were writ deep about his mouth and eyes—so deep that the set expression of rage upon his features could not ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... pile and let his imagination people the harbor with the wandering children of the earth who had been drawn from all its seafaring corners to this Mecca of trade. He knew that here were swarthy little Japanese with teas and silks, dusky Kanakas with copra, and Alaskan liners carrying gold and returning miners. There would be brigs from Buenos Ayres and schooners that had nosed into Robert Louis Stevenson's magic South Sea islands. Puffy ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... exactly know how to name; they could tell you at the Magasin du Louvre, where men understand the hues of garments as well as women. I presume it was one of the many tints that are called at large "creamy." It suited her perfectly. Her complexion was in the faintest degree swarthy, and yet not in the least like what a lady would associate with that word. The difficulty in describing a colour is that different people take different views of the terms employed; ladies have one ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... Landit, as went from Paris, St. Denis, and elsewhere, to see these strangers. Almost all of them had their ears pierced, and in each one or two silver rings, which in their country, they said, was a mark of nobility. The men were very swarthy, with curly hair; the women were very ugly, and extremely dark, with long black hair, like a horse's tail; their only garment being an old rug tied round the shoulder by a strip of cloth or a bit of rope (Fig. 371). ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... children ran to her. And yet, without being enormously fat, 'Fina must have weighed close on fifteen stone. She had forearms and biceps like a coal-heaver's. She was black-haired, heavy-browed, squish-nosed, moled, and swarthy, and she had a beard and moustache far beyond the stage of incipiency. Yet those two British seamen, fairly decent men, neither drunk nor brutish, could not have been more attracted had 'Fina had the beauty of the Mona Lisa herself. I may add that there were other women ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... Scarcely less swarthy than the Indians themselves was the dark face of the Spanish friar. As he came forward into the open space, he raised his eyes to the great cross at the foot of which we were standing, and straightway bent the knee and crossed himself. Some few of the Indians likewise made ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... under the roof of Madame Deluc, or of a murder perpetrated, in the thicket at the Barrire du Roule, by a lover, or at least by an intimate and secret associate of the deceased. This associate is of swarthy complexion. This complexion, the 'hitch' in the bandage, and the 'sailor's knot,' with which the bonnet-ribbon is tied, point to a seaman. His companionship with the deceased, a gay, but not an abject young girl, designates him as above the grade of the common sailor. Here the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... verge of a great war to rescue them, that therefore they are precious in our eyes. We should have done just as much to rescue two of their own Negroes, and, had that been the object of the rescue, the swarthy Pompey and Caesar would have had just the same right to triumphal arches and municipal addresses as Messrs. Mason and Slidell. So, please, British public, let's have none of these things. Let the Commissioners come up quietly to town, and have their say ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... bewildered by Miss Henrietta's keen shafts and graceful manoeuvres, yield that a woman is, once in a century, gifted with a man's depth of thought and her sex's loveliness.' The comparison was odious. What did I do? Oh, I (the swarthy Ethiop) only rose from my faded arm chair, saluted Mr. Channing (the lordly European) as if I were his partner in a quadrille, and brought out my cameos and mosaics to show him. In about half an hour the beauty of his reasoning and comparison reached ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... prettier, but of a more stubborn type; more passionate, less organised, and infinitely more assertive. Black-haired, black-eyed, swarthy, large-mouthed, snub-nosed; the very type and essence of unrestrained, impulsive, emotional, sensual nature. A seeing eye would have noted inevitable danger for the early years of her womanhood. She seemed amazed by the self-abnegation implied by her companion's ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... for years. Don Pedro, the president of the council, takes advantage of his absence to press his own suit for the hand of Inez, and obtains the king's sanction to his marriage on the ground that Vasco must have been lost at sea. At this moment the long-lost hero returns, accompanied by two swarthy slaves, Selika and Nelusko, whom he has brought home from a distant isle in the Indian Ocean. He recounts the wonders of the place, and entreats the government to send out a pioneer expedition to win an empire across the sea. His suggestions are rejected, ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... Burned Marmion's swarthy cheek like fire, And shook his very frame for ire; And—"This to me!" he said,— "An 't were not for thy hoary beard, Such hand as Marmion's had not spared To cleave the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... they thought, an attractive person; his countenance was swarthy, his eyes were black his hair was black, his heavy jaw was shadowed by an enormous black mustachio. A kerchief of brilliant red tied about his throat gave him the appearance of the matador in a Spanish bullfight rather than the officer of an English merchantman. ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... of snow in palms of russet lie; The form of Hercules affects the sylph's And breasts that case the lion's fear-proof heart, Find their lov'd lodge in arms where tremors dwell! Haply for this, on Afric's swarthy neck, Hath Europe's priceless pearl been seen to hang, That makes the orient poor! So with degrees, Rank passes by the circlet-graced brow Upon the forehead bare of notelessness, To ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... hour for the interesting festival, which came off duly on the 10th of January. "I suppose it to be impossible to imagine anybody more unlike my preconceptions than the illustrious Sand. Just the kind of woman in appearance whom you might suppose to be the Queen's monthly nurse. Chubby, matronly, swarthy, black-eyed. Nothing of the blue-stocking about her, except a little final way of settling all your opinions with hers, which I take to have been acquired in the country where she lives, and in the domination of a small circle. A ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... considering the matter, while Juan spoke of the big Portuguese. The swarthy man with the colorless blind eyes was Espinosa, former owner of the mine. He had sold part of his claim to the Gurlones, but had remained with them as an assistant. Though blind, he knew the depths of the mine and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... heaviness. Even without this fleshy cheek, which is not noticeable, and is sometimes noticeably wanting, in the men, there is the same look of heavy, well-tempered lameness. The girls have a rich blood color in their swarthy cheeks, and some of them are really pretty, though always in a lumpish, domestic-animal style. The hands and feet are singularly small; the fingers short, but nicely tapered. Take hold of the hand, and you are struck with its cetacean feel. It is not flabby, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... they found a swarthy Belgian there who said he had been engaged by the mayor to serve them. Merritt quickly made terms, for the guide, besides being able to converse in French and Flemish, could speak some English, and readily comprehended all that was said in that ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... your purse or your handkerchief. It was interesting to inspect the articles exposed for sale: here a cracked mirror in a dingy frame, a set of hair-seated chairs, the horse-hair protruding; a table, stiff, upright easy chairs, without a bottom, etc. These miscellaneous treasures were guarded by swarthy men and women of Israel, who paraded in front of their narrow dominions all the working day, and if you did but pause for an instant, you must expect to be dragged into some hideous Babel of frowsy chattels, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... them, thus find I by their loss, For Valentine, myself; for Julia, Silvia. I to myself am dearer than a friend, For love is still most precious in itself; And Silvia—witness heaven, that made her fair!— Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope. I will forget that Julia is alive, Remembering that my love to her is dead; And Valentine I'll hold an enemy, Aiming at Silvia as a sweeter friend. I cannot now prove constant to myself Without some treachery us'd to Valentine. This night he meaneth with a corded ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... to you, reverend and war-worn knight, And you, fair youth, upon whose swarthy lip Blooms the rich promise of a noble manhood. Methinks, if simple monks may read your thoughts, That with no envious or distasteful eyes Ye watch the labours ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... bird seemed to be but a few yards from its enemy she saw it strike downwards, and after a level flight of a quarter of a minute, vanish. The hawk swooped after, and Ethelberta now perceived a whitely shining oval of still water, looking amid the swarthy level of the heath like a hole through to a ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... the shores of Manhattan or in the backwoods of Canada. Amongst the Irish colony in England the agitation was still greater. Dwelling in the hearts of the monster towns of England, the glow of the furnace lighting up their swarthy faces; toiling on the canals, on the railways, in the steamboats; filling the factories, plying their brawny hands where the hardest work was to be done; hewers of wood, and drawers of water; living in the midst of the English, yet ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... compared to the polyglot chattering which burst upon Bobby's ears when he entered the small lobby of the Hotel Larken. The male members of the Neapolitan Grand Opera Company, almost to a man, were smoking cigarettes. There were swarthy little men and swarthy big men, there seeming to be no medium sizes among them, while the women were the most wooden-featured lot that Bobby had ever encountered, and the entire crowd was swathed in gay but dingy clothing of the most nondescript nature. Really, had Bobby not been assured ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... colony, known as the Firbolgs, who overran the country, and appear to have been of a somewhat higher ethnological grade, although, like the Formorians, short, dark, and swarthy. Doubtless the latter were not entirely exterminated to make way for the Firbolgs, any more than the Firbolgs to make way for the Danaans, Milesians, and other successive races; such wholesale exterminations being, in fact, very rare, especially ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... Dutch, as was the appearance of the majority of the white men in the streets. Dutch farmers in broad hats and homespun garments, mounted on rough ponies, clattered along through the streets. The manual work was for the most part done by swarthy natives, while among the crowd were numbers of Malays, with dark olive skins, small eyes, and jet-black hair, their women being arrayed in every shade of ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... walnut. One represented one of Raphael's Madonnas. Another was a fine photograph, representing a palace in Venice. Several others portrayed foreign scenes. Among them was a street scene in Rome. An entire family were sitting in different postures on the portico of a fine building, the man with his swarthy features half-concealed under a slouch hat, the woman holding a child in her lap, while another, a boy with large black eyes, leaned ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... father?" said she, in a piercing tone. "O God, let me die!" and she clasped her hands over her eyes as if to shut out the vision of the swarthy, reckless-looking men who pressed forward to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... formerly contended with the monarchs of China. His features, according to the observation of a Gothic historian, bore the stamp of his national origin; and the portrait of Attila exhibits the genuine deformity of a modern Calmuk; a large head, a swarthy complexion, small, deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few hairs in the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short square body, of nervous strength, though of a disproportioned form. The haughty ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... was rudely interrupted. Hoofs were heard, and the next moment a man rode up and addressed words to the gipsies which produced a startling effect. In a few minutes, from different directions, came swarthy men and women. Hastily they harnessed the ponies and took down the tent, and packed the carts, and in a remarkably brief space of time the party rode ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... enough to know that the Baron Ronault de Palliac when he discovers himself at table between Miss Bines and the adorable Miss Higbee, becomes less saturnine than has for some time been his wont. He does not forget previous disappointments, but desperately snaps his swarthy jaws in commendable superiority to ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... to that dark and mysterious race whose presence anywhere on this continent is a nest-egg of romance or of terror. They were Spaniards! You need not say buccaneers, you need not say gold-hunters, you need not say swarthy adventurers even: it is enough to say Spaniards! There is no tale of mystery and fanaticism and daring I would not believe if a Spaniard is the hero of it, and it is not necessary either that he should have the high-sounding ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... men from the Isles of Faiche. They pass over our rear fort, the whiles we are in our 'Pains.' The women scream in the fort. The youths are in the play-field. They come at the cry. When the boys catch sight of the swarthy men, they all take to flight save Cuchulain alone. He hurls the hand-stones and his playing-staff at them. He slays nine of them and they leave fifty wounds on him and proceed ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... half French, half Scotch, swarthy and admirably made. He was proud of his strength, and showily fearless in danger. For there were dangerous hours to the river life: when, for instance, a mass of logs became jammed at a rapids, and must be loosened; or a crib struck into the wrong channel, or, failing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the day that witnessed my arrival at Fort Francis saw also my departure from it; and before the sun had set I was already far down the Rainy River. But I was no longer the solitary white man; and no longer the camp-fire had around it the swarthy faces of the Swampies. The woods were noisy with many tongues; the night was bright with the glare of many fires. The Indians, frightened by such a concourse of braves, had fled into the woods, and the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... broke away from the byre and is far awa on the ither side o' the burn!" Here, in a nutshell, you have the difference between the Mackenzie River of to-day and the Peace River. On the Mackenzie, swarthy forms are in evidence, Cree and French is spoken on all sides, there are no great fields of waving grain, and the dog is the only domestic animal. On the Peace is an essentially white race, cows, chickens, trustworthy old nags, porridge ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... her respiration broken. Save a slight convulsive movement, which from time to time agitated her under jaw, her features appeared calm, but of livid paleness. At the further end of the dungeon, near the door, under the open wicket, a veteran with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, with a rough and swarthy face, a bald head, and long gray mustachios, is seated on a chair. He ought never to lose ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... vineyards, shoulder-high in the plants, brown and sweating in the glare. Swarthy children, with intelligent eyes, often with delicate noses, and those pouting lips which are characteristic of many Greek statues, ran to stare at them, and sometimes followed them a little way, but without asking for alms. Then the ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... they were! Swedes and Germans, cockneys and niggers, they passed on till the two watches had answered to their names, and the last man was a Russian Finn, black-haired and swarthy, with a flat face and eyes like ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... Bible, but unable to write her own name. She had a great love for old ballads, and Robert as a boy must often have listened to her chanting the quaint old songs with which her retentive memory was stored. The poet resembled his mother in feature, although he had the swarthy complexion of his father. Attempts have been made now and again to trace his ancestry on the father's side, and to give to the world a kind of genealogy of genius. Writers have demonstrated to their own satisfaction that it was perfectly natural that Burns should ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... observing, as well as the gathering gloom would permit, that the stranger was neither negro nor Indian. It is true he was dressed in a rude Indian garb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round his body; but his face was neither black nor copper-color, but swarthy and dingy, and begrimed with soot, as if he had been accustomed to toil among fires and forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair, that stood out from his head in all directions, and bore an ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... began to pray. I looked at the calm, indifferent face of the golden Buddha, over which the flickering lamps threw changing shadows, and then turned my eyes to the side of the throne. It was wonderful and difficult to believe but I really saw there the strong, muscular figure of a man with a swarthy face of stern and fixed expression about the mouth and jaws, thrown into high relief by the brightness of the eyes. Through his transparent body draped in white raiment I saw the Tibetan inscriptions on ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... from the congregation and came forward. One was tall and gaunt, with a Slavonic type of face, wild eyes, and a long, fair beard; another was young—scarcely more than seven and twenty—with the free carriage, fiery glance, and swarthy complexion of the nomadic races of southeastern Europe; the third was a small, frail man of fifty, with a nervous system painfully in advance of his physical strength; while the fourth was a true mystic—impassioned, enthusiastic, detached. One by one these men advanced, examined the scars, ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... of smaller build and darker colour than the other Malays, with small sparkling black eyes, but on the East Coast, where their condition is more primitive, Mr. PRYER thinks they are much larger in stature and stronger and more swarthy ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... opens, and out comes the fowler. He is lowbrowed, swarthy, ill kept, and wears rings in his ears. A soiled hand seizes the struggling linnet, and drags it violently from the threads that entangled it. A sharp-pointed twig is thrust straight through the head of the helpless victim at the eyes, and after ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... swarms of thievish and bloody minded tories, filling up all between; and the spirits of the poor whigs so completely cowed, that they were fairly knocked under to the civil and military yoke of the British, who, I ask again, will believe, that in this desperate state of things, one little, swarthy, French-phizzed Carolinian, with only thirty of his ragged countrymen, issuing out of the swamps, should have dared to turn his horse's head towards this all ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... flower-merchants, and even the common malees, should also be instructed, I think, how to make up a decent bouquet, for if it be possible to render the most elegant things in the creation offensive to the eye of taste, that object is assuredly very completely effected by these swarthy artists when they arrange, with such worse than Dutch precision and formality, the ill-selected, ill-arranged, and tightly bound treasures of the parterre for the classical vases of their British masters. I am often vexed to observe the idleness or apathy which suffers such atrocities ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... Johnny, and I embarked aboard a small bluff-bowed sailboat, waved our farewells to Talbot standing on the shore, and laid our course to cross the blue bay behind an island called Alcatraz. Our boatman was a short, swarthy man, with curly hair and gold rings in his ears. He handled his boat well, but spoke not at all. After a dozen attempts to get something more than monosyllables out of him, we gave it up, and settled ourselves to the solid enjoyment of ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... country side, the "Vicare du's" only son, had begun his tramp homewards with a light heart and a brisk step. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with health and youthful energy expressed in every limb and feature, with jet black hair and sparkling eyes to match. His dark, almost swarthy face, was lighted up by a pleasant smile, which seemed ever hovering about the corners of his mouth, and which would make itself evident in spite of the moustache ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... the hood hung dank on her neck. Slowly, oh so slowly, she drew back the hand, and with it the packet; so slowly, and yet so resolutely, being put to it, that when the dreaded flash surprised her, and she saw his harsh swarthy face, steeped in the mysterious aloofness of sleep, within a hand's breadth of hers, not a muscle of her arm moved, nor did ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... said, "thou art a mighty man, Eric, and the glory of the south. This I prophesy of thee: that thou shalt do deeds such as have not been done in Iceland. Thou hast ill been served, for a knave unknown greased thy shoes. Yon swarthy Ospakar, the most mighty of all men in Iceland, could not overthrow thee, though, like a wolf, he fastened his fangs in thee, and, like a coward, stamped upon thy naked foot. Take thou the great sword that thou hast won and wear ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... in stature, but plump and well shaped, with short necks, swarthy faces, black eyes and long black hair. They are a branch of the Esquimauan family, but differ greatly from the Eskimo of the mainland in language, habits, disposition and mental ability. They were good fighters until they were cowed by the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... humours, and did not heed him. We sailed on, and dropped our anchor opposite to the city of Funchal. A health-boat came off, but as no one was sick on board, the people in her did not trouble us much. When she went away, we were surrounded with other boats pulled by swarthy, muscular, little men with gay caps and sashes, and white shirt sleeves, who bawled, and hallooed, and jabbered, in the vain hope of making us comprehend what they said. We shouted and hallooed in return, as if each party were deaf; and ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... tha he's playin' for his own hand!" said Wilkins, doggedly, the red spot deepening on his swarthy cheek—"he's runnin' that paper for his own hand—Haven't I had experience of him? I know it—And I'll prove it some day! He's one for featherin' his own nest is Mr. Wharton—and when he's doon it by makkin' fools of us, he'll leave us to whistle for any good we're iver likely to get out ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and traditions show that some time before the dawn of history they had been driven out of the pleasant parts of Southern France, but had made a successful stand in the mountain regions of Northern Italy. They, like the Basques, were strong, active, and warlike. They were small in stature, swarthy in features, and long-headed. To the south of these were the Etruscans. But little is known of them, though the evidence is that long before the Christian Era they were a powerful people. In physical features they resembled those already described. Their sculpture exhibits ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... approximate so closely to those of the northern inhabitants of Europe, as to indicate, with some degree of certainty, their identity of origin. In the accounts I have read of the maritime Laplanders, I find many characteristics common to both tribes: the Laplander is of a swarthy complexion,—so is the Esquimaux; the Laplander is distinguished by high cheek-bones, hollow cheeks, pointed chin, and large mouth,—so is the Esquimaux; the Laplander wears a thick beard,—so does the Esquimaux; the Laplander's hair is long and black,—so is that of the ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... standing on the very verge of the wharf, and the crowd around had made a little space for them, as the owners of the ship; Mr. James Bowdoin was standing farther back with the captain of a file of soldiers. But the second of the pirates was a swarthy Spaniard, with as evil-flashing eyes as you would care to see. And it was he who held in his arms a little girl, almost a baby, whose long yellow hair had made that note of ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... with his clenched hands slightly raised and advanced from his side, the lithe figure drawn back, the swarthy cheek, the eager eyes, aglow, and made more vivid by his spotless attire, Eve bethought herself that a scene in public had fewer charms than one in private, and, casting about for escape, quietly stepped across the street. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... appeared in the doorway, hesitated, then, with an indifferent and forbidding manner, strolled across the room to the book-shelves, where she selected a book, strolling out again with the barest nod of sullen recognition. She was a swarthy girl, robust and ample of form, with black eyes and dusky cheeks. Her torn red blouse and untidy hair marked her out from the sleek and social group. Sir Basil thought her very interesting looking. He asked Imogen, as they walked away under the elms, who she was. ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... growths of the cactus clutched at your stirrup, mock lakes sparkled and dissolved in the middle distance, the sun beat hot and merciless, the powdered dry alkali beat hotly and mercilessly back—and strange, grim men, swarthy, bearded, heavily armed, with red-rimmed unshifting eyes, rode silently out of the mists of illusion to look on you steadily, and then to ride silently back into the desert haze. They might be only the herders ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... methinks I hear the bitter plaint Of the passing of a haughty race, The wronged, friendly, childlike, peaceable tribes, The swarthy archers of the wilderness, The red men to whom Nature opened all her secrets, Who knew the haunts of bird and fish, The hidden virtue of herb and root; All the travail of man and beast they knew— Birth and death, heat and cold, Hunger and thirst, love and hate; For ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... ends. There were not lacking those who declared that Indian blood ran in her veins—that her mother was an Ogalalla squaw and her father a French Canadian fur trapper, a story to which her raven black hair and brows, her deep, dark eyes and somewhat swarthy complexion gave no little color. But, long years before, Bill Hay had taken her East, where he had relatives, and where she studied under excellent masters, returning to him summer after summer with more and more of refinement in manner, and so much of style and fashion in ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... The luncheons were divested of their newspaper wrappings and spread over the ends of tables, on discarded box-lids held across the knees—in fact, any place convenience or sociability dictated. Then followed a friendly exchange of pickles and cake. A dark, swarthy girl, whom they called "Goldy" Courtleigh, was generous in the distribution of the lukewarm contents of a broken-nosed tea-pot, which was constantly replenished by application to ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... doings of the Saracinesca household. In the first place, he was the heir, and the old prince had been found sitting by his cradle with an expression never seen in his face since Giovanni had been a baby. Secondly, Orsino was a very fine child, swarthy of skin, and hard as a tiger cub, yet having already his mother's eyes, large, coal- black and bright, but deep and soft withal. Thirdly, Orsino had a will of his own, admirably seconded by an enormous lung power. Hot that he cried, when he wanted anything. His baby eyes had not ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... in his rusty dress, His loosened collar, and swarthy throat, His face unshaven, and none the less, His hearty laugh and his wholesomeness, And the wealth ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... Indians had time to stop and draw their bows, we were some distance from the shore; but that another minute's delay would have been fatal, was proved by the flight of arrows which followed us. Our black, brown, and swarthy rowers, however, did not cease their exertions till we had got far enough off to be invisible ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... cried, looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, 60 With light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, No tuft on cheek, nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin: And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as my great grandsire, Starting up at the Trump of ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... watered the horses midway up the canon. As they rode on again, Waring noticed that Vaca did not thrust his foot clear home in the stirrup, but he attributed this to the other's condition. The Mexican was a sick man. His swarthy face had gone yellow, and he leaned forward, clutching the horn. The heat was stagnant, unwavering. ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... rich robe stained with the fishers' juice Which of some swarthy trader he had bought Upon the sunny quay at Syracuse, And was with Tyrian broideries inwrought, And by the questioning merchants made his way Up through the soft and silver woods, ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... was handsome after a swarthy and grimy fashion, for the tint of the leather seemed to have become absorbed into his skin. His black mustache bristled roughly, but his face was freer than usual from his black beard-stubble, because the day before had been Sunday and he had shaved. His black right hand ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... attractive-looking child is the Italian, a swarthy-skinned little creature, with softly curved cheeks, liquid brown eyes and seraphic expression—that seraphic expression which is so convincing and withal so misleading. Child of the sun that he is, his greatest ambition in life is to lie undisturbed in the heat of the day and so ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... turned and waved his swarthy hand, Which stirred with its electric qualities Clouds farther off than we can understand, Although we find him sometimes in our skies; Infernal thunder shook both sea and land In all the planets—and Hell's batteries Let off the artillery, which Milton mentions As one of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the statesmen of South-Eastern Europe are a collection of rather swarthy, frock-coated personages who, when not engaged in decrying each other, are very busily occupied in feathering their own nests. If any one of them, at the outset of his career, had a sense of humour we suppose that in this heated atmosphere it must have long ago evaporated. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... new type to the city girls, and they studied him with interest. He was a swarthy-looking Indian; perhaps, as Mr. Brewster said, because he smoked himself brown. He always rode his famous Indian pony and carried an evil-looking gun, besides the revolvers in his belt. Another weapon he had, as evil but not quite so fatal ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... The Arab was a swarthy, sinewy man of forty, with all his fibres indurated and worked down to the whip-cord meagreness and rigidity of a racer, his frame presenting a perfect picture of the sort of being one would fancy suited to the exhausting motion of a dromedary, and to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... described to me by some who knew him as stiff in mind and arrogant in temper, incapable of making allowances for the homely manners of the Boers and of adapting himself to the social equality which prevailed among them. A trifling cause aggravated their dislike. His complexion was swarthy, and they suspected that this might be due to some tinge of negro blood. He refused to listen to their complaints, levied taxes strictly, causing even the beloved ox-waggon to be seized when money was not forthcoming, and soon turned their ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Bolkonski. Beside him was his comrade Nesvitski, a tall staff officer, extremely stout, with a kindly, smiling, handsome face and moist eyes. Nesvitski could hardly keep from laughter provoked by a swarthy hussar officer who walked beside him. This hussar, with a grave face and without a smile or a change in the expression of his fixed eyes, watched the regimental commander's back and mimicked his every movement. Each time the commander ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy |
