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Rapids   Listen
noun
Rapids, Rapid  n.  The part of a river where the current moves with great swiftness, but without actual waterfall or cascade; sometimes called whitewater; usually used in the plural; as, the Lachine rapids in the St. Lawrence. For boaters on the river, it is a place that can be hazardous, with danger of capsizing or crashing into large rocks. "Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast, The rapids are near, and the daylight's past."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rapids" Quotes from Famous Books



... could have marched to a point much nearer to Ticonderoga upon a well-trodden road; but the bridge being gone, it was necessary to march the army along the west bank of this river-like waterway which connected Lake George with Lake Champlain, for there were too many dangerous rapids for navigation to be possible; and upon the tongue of land jutting out into Lake Champlain, and washed by the waters of this river on its other side, stood the fortress of ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... came to rapids. I didn't count them, but I think there must have been about one to every mile, where the river-bed was full of rocks, and where the water rushed furiously around and over them. If we had been rowing ourselves we would ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton

... with bears and other dangerous animals; there are times when they are very hungry and very tired. They encounter both friendly and unfriendly Indians. They borrow canoes at one stage, and have wrecks in the mighty rapids. ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston

... had lain along the side of the river, which was swirling down upon their left hand deep and strong from the cataracts above. Here and there the rush of the current was broken by a black shining boulder over which the foam was spouting. Higher up they could see the white gleam of the rapids, and the banks grew into rugged cliffs, which were capped by a peculiar, outstanding, semicircular rock. It did not require the dragoman's aid to tell the party that this was the famous landmark to which they ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... around Bradford's Island, joins the main stream. It was then about 9 o'clock, and everything had thus far proceeded favorably, but examination of the channel showed that it would be impossible to get the boat up the rapids along the mainland, and that success could only be assured by crossing the south channel just below the rapids to the island, along the shore of which there was every probability we could pull the boat through the ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan

... great rapids above Montreal, down which the steamer shoots with its breathless passengers, after which, inhaling and exhaling its mighty tides, it flows calmly ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... where exactly it ended was not easy to determine, for the river was as broad as the lake, and we could only say when it became positively a river by the rushing of the water. It is, indeed, a grand stream, the quantity of water being very large, frequently forming rapids, and always flowing very quickly; but its greatness is short-lived, for, after a course of three miles, it is lost in the great waters of Loch Etive, a ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... which locations had been arranged for was both a boisterous and a picturesque stream. There were swift rapids ("white water" the woodsmen called it) with outthrust boulders and many snags and shallows where a canoe had to be very carefully handled. Several scenes as Ruth had written them were of the Indian girl in a canoe. Wonota handled a paddle with the best of the ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... gorgeous and yet tasteful and the Royal guest is stated to have danced incessantly until half-past four in the morning. On Tuesday he visited Dickenson's Landing in a special car built by the Grand Trunk Railway and from thence went down the Rapids of the St. Lawrence in the steamer Kingston. The evening saw a Grand Musical Festival in his honour and on the following day a Royal review of 1600 troops took place. A visit followed to Sir George Simpson's residence at Isle Dorval, accompanied by ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... should have centered, for here was her main objective and here she was on equal terms. Both sides were tremendously hampered in communications with their main sources of supply. But with an approach from the sea to Montreal, the British faced no more serious obstacle in the rapids of the St. Lawrence above than did the Americans on the long route up the Mohawk, over portages into Oneida Lake, and thence down the Oswego to Ontario, or else from eastern Pennsylvania over the mountains to Lake Erie. The wilderness waterways on both sides soon saw the strange spectacle ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... were in a part of the river where the current was swift, turbulent, and strong. It would carry them down with irresistible force. The rapids were full of rough jagged rocks, against which their bodies might be crushed or lacerated; and the chances were that some of them might never succeed in reaching the ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... am sitting on a big stone, against which the stream divides, and goes brawling by in rapids on both sides; half of my rock is white in the light, half in shadow. As I look from the opening jaws of this shadowy gorge, South Dome is immediately in front—high in the stars, her face turned from the moon, with the rest of her body gloriously muffled in waved folds of granite. On the ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... striking big rocks in the bed of the river, over which they kept pouring, and gave the name Cascades to the rapid. The boat was tied up, as the crew were to have breakfast before their hard work in making a passage past the rapids. I went with the mistress to a house that was not far away for milk. A smiling woman met us at the door and asked us inside; the house was clean and neat. We tried to make her understand what we wanted but failed until I put the pail between my knees and imitated milking ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar

... little higher up along the bank in search of game, Roger cautioning them not to go far. In a short time Oliver came back, saying that he had caught sight of an Indian in a canoe, spearing fish amid some rapids which ran across the stream; but as the fisher had not seen him, they might easily go back ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston

... the hand. A somewhat similar nut, originally from Indiana, was described by Mr. Fuller In the New York Weekly Tribune, July 9, 1892 (Sargent's Silva, l.c.), as cultivated by R. M. Floyd, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And in the autumn of 1895, Dr. J. Schneck sent me ample fruit, twig and leaf specimens of a similar hickory from Posey county, Indiana. The nut of this last is almost identical with a specimen of the Nussbaumer nut in the Englemann herbarium, while its twigs closely resemble those ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume

... lake, at the beginning of the rapids, the Indian Guide spoke again. Racking the canoe between two rocks,—paddling, panting, pushing, sweating, the Indian Guide lifted his voice high,—piercing, above the swirling roar ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... attempt Niagara," exclaimed Charlie. "All the beauties of all the other waters in the world are united there. It will not do to go beyond the rapids; I should be lost if I but ventured to the edge ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... across, and another pole to serve as a rail, by which you could cross, without trouble. I did cross, not thinking much about it, but with some idea of looking at this new little stream, which went at a very quick pace and seemed to promise small rapids and waterfalls a little higher up. Now when I got to the edge of it, there was no mistake: it was saying "Trickle-up," or even "Track-up," much plainer than the old one. I stepped across it and went a few yards up the old stream. Before the new ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James

... therefore, personally efficient. As an employee of the Swift Motor Company, he rose rapidly until he became superintendent. In that position he made a good record. So valuable was he that the White Rapids Motor Company coveted him and its president and general manager began to lay plans to entice him away. Negotiations were begun and continued over a period of weeks. Larger and larger grew the inducements offered by the White Rapids Motor Company until, finally, Nyall's ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... better than studying the costume to the neglect of the person—than the examination of the frame to the neglect of the master-piece of a Raphael inclosed within it—than the criticism of a single window to the neglect of the glorious dome of St. Peter's—than viewing the rapids to the neglect of the mighty fall of Niagara. In education, the observance of this natural order of truth will bring us, at length, to that which fills the outer circle, and thus all the kinds of knowledge will ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... move south late in the season; most of them winter on coastal waters and the Great Lakes. Inland, they like rapids ...
— Ducks at a Distance - A Waterfowl Identification Guide • Robert W. Hines

... River. It would have been nearer to have kept north of the river, but we were prevented by the Sioux and Ponca Indian reservations, through which no one was allowed to go. Our intention was to cross to the north of the river at Grand Rapids and get into the Keya Paha country, about which we heard a great deal, keep Straight west, and, after crossing the river twice more, reach Fort Niobrara and the town of Valentine, beyond which were the Sand Hills. This route would keep us all the time from ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth

... down to Staines is dotted with small craft and boats and tiny coracles - which last are growing out of favour now, and are used only by the poorer folk. Over the rapids, where in after years trim Bell Weir lock will stand, they have been forced or dragged by their sturdy rowers, and now are crowding up as near as they dare come to the great covered barges, which lie in readiness to bear King John to where the ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... Woman had telephoned to Grand Rapids, explained the situation and asked the Angel if she might use it. The reply had been to give the girl the contents of the chest. When the Bird Woman told Elnora, tears ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... again on the morrow. A fair breeze, and sailing; a foul one or a calm, and rowing; running on banks, and pushing off; getting nearly wrecked half a dozen times in the rapids, and escaping. And so they progressed until at length the mighty river divided into two streams, that to the left the Blue Nile, that to the right the White, and the real Nile, and they found at the junction the city ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... lightning's speed, and on sped the hunters knowing now that their only safety was in flight. On dashed they through the waters which now began to bear them forward with wondrous haste. A thought of horror struck them: they were in the rapids, while before them the white foam of the falls flashed through the darkness. The tide had ebbed in their absence, and the river, smooth and level when full, showed all across it, at the flood, a dark abyss of fearful ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan

... Boats. Next day very happy till noon then come very high winds, and much rough water, after long time men begin loud shoutings, and take down high covers from overhead. "What matter, What matter?" every body cry out, all fear some trouble come, boatmen say - "Now come to rapids, very swift, very ...
— Seven Maids of Far Cathay • Bing Ding, Ed.

... and more have fled from the face of the Summer, Since here on the oak-shaded shore of the dark-winding, swift Mississippi, Where his foaming floods tumble and roar o'er the falls and the white-rolling rapids, In the fair, fabled center of Earth, sat the Indian town of Ka-tha-ga. [86] Far rolling away to the north, and the south, lay the emerald prairies, All dotted with woodlands and lakes, and above them the blue bent of ether. And here where the dark river breaks ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... be missed. A sentence addressed to her must be as a piccolo, each word of it a stop, which she must be prepared to seize upon and play. And she must always be quicker than a Micmac Indian to paddle the light canoe of conversation away from the rocks in the rapids that flow from the Pierian spring. For, plodding reader, the handwriting on the wall in the banquet hall of Bohemia is "Laisser faire." The gray ghost that sometimes peeps through the rings of smoke is that of slain old King ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... about a mile, a long stretch of foaming, tumbling water, rushing headlong down through a rocky gorge, about three hundred yards wide, over what was evidently a rocky bed, for the brown heads of several rocks were seen protruding above the leaping water in the channel. Rapids! with a fall of nearly thirty feet in about half a mile. This was a formidable obstacle indeed, for it did not seem possible that they could get the boat through them; and if they should be obliged to abandon her, what ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... time to get to Alderbank by the river, I should think. None of the boats missing? What then? She may have made a raft, or picked up some stray skiff. Who knows? And then got shipwrecked, very likely. There are rapids and falls farther along the river. It will do no harm to go down there and look about, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... there, embarrassed the course of this mysterious river. The water foamed as it fell in rapids and cataracts, which confirmed the doctor in his preconceived ideas on the subject. From the environing mountains numerous torrents came plunging and seething down, and the eye could take them in by hundreds. ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... but quiescence forms no feature here. The ceaseless roar, the spray mounting like clouds of smoke from the giant limekiln, and the enormous sheet of water which rolls into the abyss, can only be felt and understood by repeated visits to the scene. My attention was for a time distracted by the rapids which are extremely interesting, and with any other neighbour than the Falls would excite the highest admiration and wonder. After some time spent in contemplation, I proceeded to my friends, where a kind and comfortable home awaited me. Mr. C. possesses a residence which is certainly one of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various

... clutches of our too-admiring Tibetan hosts, we wound our way slowly back through the Maharajah's territory towards Sir Ivor's headquarters. On the third day out from the lamasery we camped in a romantic Himalayan valley—a narrow, green glen, with a brawling stream running in white cataracts and rapids down its midst. We were able to breathe freely now; we could enjoy the great tapering deodars that rose in ranks on the hillsides, the snow-clad needles of ramping rock that bounded the view to north and south, the feathery bamboo-jungle that fringed and half-obscured the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... no bad rapids are encountered," replied Guy. "There are certainly none very near, or we could ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon

... sufferers to send despatches to all parts of the country. The railroad company has a track through to the bridge. The first train arrived about half-past nine o'clock this morning. A man in a frail craft got caught in the rapids at the railroad bridge, and it looked as if he would increase the already terrible list of dead, but fortunately he caught on a rock, where he now is and is liable to remain ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... the rushing rapids rage, In awesome grandeur only less than they. Thus have they madly tossed from age to age, And thus have galloped on their heedless way. In ceaseless ferment, and in constant change, Wide o'er their rocky ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats

... giant masses of gray rock replacing the thick verdure of balsam, spruce, and cedar. The moaning grew louder, and the rocks climbed skyward until they hung in great cliffs. There could be but one meaning to this sudden change. They were close to LE SAINT-ESPRIT RAPIDE—the Holy Ghost Rapids. Carrigan was astonished. That day at noon he had believed the Holy Ghost to be twenty or thirty miles below him. Now they were at its mouth, and he saw that Bateese and Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain were quietly and unexcitedly preparing to run that vicious ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... was, instead, the face of a desperate, possibly dangerous man, who had brooded over this monomania in the gorges of the great Chinese river, in the filthy yamens of barbarous mountain towns, in the forts of hill-robbers who practiced extraordinary cruelties. He had fought his way through rapids whose very names were ominous—"The King of Hell's Slide," the "Last Look at Home," the "Place Where the Soul Itself Is Lost." He had sat with the free people of Nosuland, the enemies of the Chinese, eating ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... was entitled "In the Rapids of Revolution," and he had been explaining how inevitable the whole process was, how Russia drove ahead, and Germany and France and America, to the foretold crisis and the foretold millennium. But incidentally he also made a spirited exhortation for effort, for agitation, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... it in your canoe, paddling through the still-waters, dropping down the rapids with your setting-pole, wading and dragging your boat in the shallows, and coming to each lake as a surprise, something distinct and separate and personal. It seems strange that they should be sisters; they are so unlike. ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... the Canadian Falls, I was held down against the hatchway of my cabin. The clear, moonlit evening had permitted me to note the direction taken by the air-ship. It followed the course of the river and passed the Suspension Bridge three miles below the falls. It is here that the irresistible rapids of the Niagara River begin, where the river bends sharply to ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne

... than a thousand feet—a perfect wall of foliage from base to summit. A mile brings one to the lower falls; the upper falls are about a quarter of a mile farther up the gorge. The height of the falls, with the rapids between, is about 300 feet above the little rustic bridge at the foot of the lower falls. The glen between is a place of wild beauty, with rocks and huge boulders ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... Mr. THOMPSON, visiting the Missions in Cape Colony, drives with hard toil across the fiery dust of the Karroo desert; Mr. JANSEN and Mr. MUNRO, in their long canoe, traverse the gorgeous and silent forests of Guiana, to visit the little Mission among the Indians below the rapids of the Berbice. Mr. MURRAY, opportunely arriving in a screw steamer, prevents war among the Christians of Manua; Mr. CHALMERS, voluntary leader of the band of converts who keep the John Williams afloat, sticks by the vessel to the last, and, with his brave wife, refuses to quit ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various

... we were boating on far Mistassinni. We were fetching the portage above the great rapids, Where they whirled, roaring down, freshet full, at their whitest, When we saw from a rock that stretched outward and over The wild hissing water as it swept on in thunder, A canoe coming down, rolling over and over, With a little ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... came in sight of the camp of the Grand Rapids Lumber Company, he could hear the cheery voices of the men, the neighing of the horses, and could scent the tempting odors of cooking food. A feeling of homeless friendlessness swept over him in a sickening wave. Without stopping to think, ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... battle with some Kentuckians on the East Fork of the Little Miami—attack upon Tecumseh in 1793, on the waters of Paint creek—Tecumseh present at the attack on fort Recovery in 1794—participates in the battle of the Rapids of the ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake

... wandered, leaving home Among familiar places and known years; Anticipating in the river, of time Rocks, rapids, shallows, idle glazing pools Mirroring their dark dreams of heaven and earth. —And then they parted, one to Chatham, one To Africa, Constantinople one, One to Cologne; and all to an unknown year, Nineteen-nineteen perhaps, or ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman

... remained to reoccupy the spot that Montcalm had made desolate three years before; and, while preparing to build a fort, he barricaded his camp with pork and flour barrels, lest the enemy should make a dash upon him from their station at the head of the St. Lawrence Rapids. Such an attack was probable; for if the French could seize Oswego, the return of Prideaux from Niagara would be cut off, and when his small stock of provisions had failed, he would be reduced to extremity. Saint-Luc de la Corne left the head of the Rapids early in July with a thousand ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... wild song of the ouzel and not feel an answering thrill? Perched upon a rock in the midst of the rapids, he is the incarnation of all that is untamed, a wild spirit of the mountain stream, as free as a raindrop or a sunbeam. How solitary he is, a lone little bird, flitting from rock to rock through the desolate gorge, like some spirit ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... the gulf must be two or three thousand feet, perhaps more. We can hardly fail to find rapids. I shouldn't be astonished ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... Samson shot a deer which had waded into the rapids. Fortunately, it made the opposite shore before it fell. All hands spent that evening dressing the deer and jerking the best of the meat. This they did by cutting the meat into strips about the size of a man's hand and salting and laying it ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... boys interested in a study of fish may well be organized for an all-day trip to the root of the rapids or the bay of springs; others with geological preferences may spend a night on the top of the distant hill which offers outcroppings of interest; the embryo botanists cannot do better than to take a bog trot for the rare orchid, anomalous pitcher plant, ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... years old you cured me of cataracts in three months after I had been afflicted for years."—Col. J. O. Hudnutt, Station F., Grand Rapids, Mich. ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various

... plateau, buildings and haystacks proclaim a well-settled country, but habitations are rarely seen from the river and for miles we floated through picturesque solitude unbroken save by the roar of the rapids. ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew

... have ever seen occurs near Niagara. For a distance of two miles, or thereabouts, below the Falls, the river Niagara flows unruffled through its excavated gorge. The bed subsequently narrows, and the water quickens its motion. At the place called the 'Whirlpool Rapids,' I estimated the width of the river at 300 feet, an estimate confirmed by the dwellers on the spot. When it is remembered that the drainage of nearly half a continent is compressed into this space, the impetuosity of the river's ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... off, and gayly they continued, save when the rain poured unpleasantly, or the swarms of Labrador flies attacked them or steep banks or swift rapids made portage difficult. ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... Van slipped off and swam by the broncho's side. Together the two breasted the surge of the tide, and now made more rapid progress. It required tremendous effort to forge ahead and not be swept headlong to a choppy stretch of rapids, just below. ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... Rapids, Iowa, he received a dispatch from his friend, Forney, announcing that the Republicans had carried Pennsylvania in the October State election. Similar intelligence came from Indiana. The outcome in ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... Hubbard, planned the journey of which this book tells, and from him I received the inspiration and with him the training and experience that enabled me to succeed. It was his spirit that led me on over the wearisome trails, and through the rushing rapids, and to him and to his memory belong the credit and the honor ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... rapids, Deep, careless and free, A voice that is larger than her life Or than her death ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott

... and did not return until the afternoon. They arrived at low-water at a point where the river formed a series of rapids and was apparently broken into several channels; the one which they reached was not more than fifty or sixty yards wide, the tide at low water being full seven or eight feet below the level of the rocks which formed the rapids, but at high-water it rose, judging from the marks on the rocks, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... having informed us that above certain rapids, there was an establishment of white men, we doubted not that it was a trading post of the Northwest Company; and to make sure of it, we procured a large canoe and a guide, and set out, on the 2d of May, Messrs M'Kay, R. Stuart, Montigny, and I, with a sufficient number of hands. ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... across in a canoe which lay lower down near a slacker portion of the rapid stream. The slope on my own side was steep, but, picking my way cautiously, I was not far above the river, which boiled in a succession of white-ridged rapids, when I saw Grace seat herself in the stern of the canoe, which Ormond thrust off until it was nearly afloat. Then he returned for her aunt, while Colonel Carrington and rancher Lawrence led the horses toward the somewhat risky ford up-stream. The river was swollen ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... the plan will result in more efficient service to the city; for A. A better class of citizens will be drawn into office; for 1. City officials can plan and carry out their policies without petty interference; 2. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the commission, employed a civic-service expert, and carried out his recommendations. J. J. Hamilton, as cited, p. 180. 3. In Galveston, Texas, citizens of a better grade have taken office, and the tone of the city administration ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... Louis, intending to take a pleasant excursion to the falls of St. Anthony. The weather was very delightful, only a little too warm; and the river was unfortunately so low, that on arriving at the Des Moines rapids, we found it difficult to ascend them, and above that point, our progress was continually impeded by the difficulty of the navigation. This circumstance, though vexatious to such of the passengers as had business ahead, or families at home, was not disagreeable to ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... of thought that can be written down in words, and there is another poetry of glorious living, keenly felt in the winds of the wilderness or the rush of a splendid horse or the flight of a canoe through the rapids, for which there is no adequate expression. Miller could feel superbly this poetry of the mountaineer, the plainsman and the voyageur; that he could even suggest or half reveal it to others makes him worthy to be named among ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... the buds were just bursting into flower. The river was full of fish, especially of carp, ascending to the great rapids or cascades. Here the current ran at a prodigious rate of swiftness, and the waters rippled and boiled and roared with frightful noise. Yet, strange to say, many of the fish were swimming up the stream as if their lives depended on it. They leaped and floundered about; but ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... is a very small fish caught in the river Thames, called white bait, which is considered a very great luxury; but, to my taste, the white fish, of which the Chippewas take great abundance in the rapids near the Falls of St. Mary's, are preferable. The Chippewas catch them in the rapids with scoop-nets, in the use of which they are very expert. The white fish resemble salmon, but ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge

... miles to walk, and a little waterproof box of grub turned up out of the wreck, so I wasn't in any danger of starving. It was lonely, though—it's lonely enough country, anyhow, and of course I couldn't help thinking about that Indian and the way big rapids roar. I couldn't sleep when night came—saw black rocks sticking up out of white water like the fangs of a mad dog. I was pretty near the horrors, I guess. So you can imagine I wasn't sorry when, about four o'clock of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the wind had ceased and the thermometer went down to 30 deg. below zero. In places the ice was blown clear of snow; in other places it was heavily drifted. By midday we had reached the lonely telegraph station at "The Rapids," and were very kindly received by the signal-corps men in charge. They gave us to eat and to drink and would take no money. There is little travel on this part of the river nowadays, and the telegraph ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... it. It was unfortunately lost with so much else in the same boat accident which ruined my photographs. I clutched at it as it disappeared in the swirl of the rapids, and part of its wing was left in my hand. I was insensible when washed ashore, but the miserable remnant of my superb specimen was still intact; I ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... solemn roar of waters. In old times, when the French, and afterwards the English, held garrisons near Niagara, it used to be deemed a feat worthy of a soldier, a frontier man, or an Indian, to cross the rapids to Goat Island. As the country became less rude and warlike, a long space intervened, in which it was but half believed, by a faint and doubtful tradition, that mortal foot bad never trod this wild spot ...
— Fragments From The Journal of a Solitary Man - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... spent when we left the portage of the Chats, and we encamped in the evening near the head of the rapids. The mode of travelling in canoes being now well known, I shall not detail the occurrences of each day, but confine myself to the narration of such incidents as may be most worthy of notice throughout ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... upon the sympathies of the citizens, and caused them to be received with the greatest hospitality and kindness. After the arrival of Smith, the greater part of them settled at Commerce, situated upon the Mississippi river, at the lower rapids, just opposite the entrance of the river Des Moines, a site equal in beauty to any on the river. Here they began to build, and in the short time of four years they have raised a city. At first, as was before said, on account of their former sufferings, and ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... pairs of scarlet stockings. Oh? the little white feet! how pretty they looked, shining through the clear water, that looked so brown in the still pools, and sparkled so white over the rocks and the tiny rapids. ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards

... looked like steam rose from the river. The fresh smell of pines hung about the track, and the clash of shovels and ringing of hammers mingled harmoniously with the deep-toned roar of the rapids. The cold braced the muscles and stirred the blood, and the sounds of activity had an invigorating influence while the day was young, but Charnock felt slack. His pain had gone, but he was conscious of a nervous tension and knew what it meant. A small blister on his hand annoyed ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... pleasure of convalescence; but still one hears in it the shuttle of destiny, and death seems to be nearing rapidly, in spite of the halts and truces which are granted one. The most beautiful existence, it seems to me, would be that of a river which should get through all its rapids and waterfalls not far from its rising, and should then in its widening course form a succession of rich valleys, and in each of them a lake equally but diversely beautiful, to end, after the plains of age were past, in the ocean where all that is weary and heavy-laden comes to seek for ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... standing sole on a naked and splintered shoulder of the mountain which he knew as "Old Baldy." There he was almost sure to see the great bird sitting, motionless and majestic, staring at the sun. Floating idly and smoking, resting after his long battle with the rapids, he would watch, till the immensity and the solitude would creep in upon his spirit and oppress him. Then, at last, a shrill yelp, far off and faint, but sinister, would come from the pine-top; and the eagle, launching himself ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... sit there, watching him swim the rapids, and feel free to say all the things I hadn't said to the man who dropped the gun, with a few general observations on the perversity of bears and bear-hunters' luck thrown ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... have received its impetus from his personal energy. The church in which he began his ministrations was replaced by the present Cathedral of St. John's. Mr. Cochran then built the first church in St. Andrew's, at the Rapids, and besides gathered the Indians together and erected their church ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... the lake was the Boundary, and a few miles below that again was the customs station with its hateful red-jacketed police. Beyond were uncharted waters, quite as perilous, because quite as unknown, as those traversed by that first band of Argonauts. Deep lakes, dark canons, roaring rapids lay between Linderman and the land of the Golden Fleece, but the nearer these men approached those dangers the more ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... biggest. Fish know nothing of the respect due to age. They leaped well, those little salmon, flashing clean out of the water again and again with silvery gleams. But on the whole they did not play as strongly nor as long as their brethren (called ouananiche,) in the wild rapids where the Upper Saguenay breaks from Lake St. John. The same fish are always more lively, powerful, and enduring when they live in swift water, battling with the current, than when they vegetate in the quiet depths of a lake. But if a ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... 5 P.M., having had a long, though extremely delightful day. Excursions being in order, we went the next day to "shoot the rapids ending at Arashi-yama." We had various means of transportation during the day, jinrikishas, trains, and a short railway trip which was highly picturesque, the line running along just above the dashing river. At Hozu we took the boat for the descent of the rapids down ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... Elijah is coming, rode lightly down the Liffey, under Loopline bridge, shooting the rapids where water chafed around the bridgepiers, sailing eastward past hulls and anchorchains, between the Customhouse old ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... them on. Soon they are amid the rapids at Pennacook, but the thought of home, of liberty, cools their brains and steadies their nerves. The intrepid women handle the paddles dexterously, steering clear of sunken ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... philosophy in retrospect but hard when the wet canvas falls across you and the rain beats in. A—— laughed at the very moment of disaster as another man will laugh later in an easy chair. I see him now swinging his axe for firewood to dry ourselves when we were spilled in a rapids; and again, while pitching our tent on a sandy beach when another storm had drowned us. And there is a certain cry of his (dully, Wow! on paper) expressive to the initiated of all things gay, which could never issue from the mouth of a ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... two ways of getting back to Kabambaie. One was to go in an automobile through the jungle, and the other by boat down the Kasai. Between Kabambaie and Djoko Punda there is practically no navigation on account of the succession of dangerous rapids. Since my faith in the jitney was still impaired I chose the river route and it gave me the most stirring of all my African experiences. The two motor boats at Tshikapa were out of commission so I started at daybreak in a whale-boat manned by forty ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... home life began to seem too narrow for your child? when he began to crave the association of others more than that of his own brothers and sisters? Did you at that time lift up your home banner and shield? Did you tell him of the rapids in the distance? "No," you falteringly answer; "I thought there could be no harm in allowing him to mingle with his chums at school and to visit them in their homes. I was afraid to be too particular, lest he should think me too strict with him." ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum

... a small steam-engine placed in a tug-boat, to the stern of which a train of barges was attached.* [footnote... Had this simple means of "tugging" vessels through water-ways been employed in our late attempts to ascend the rapids of the Nile, some very important results might have issued from its adoption. ...] The steam-engine could thus warp its way along the chain, taking it up between the rollers of the bow of the tug-boat, and dropping it into the water ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... wedges for his pains—which wedges yet rusted in their holes; on, where, ages past, in step-like ledges of a cascade, skull-hollow pots had been churned out by ceaseless whirling of a flintstone—ever wearing, but itself unworn; on, by wild rapids pouring into a secret pool, but soothed by circling there awhile, issued forth serenely; on, to less broken ground, and by a little ring, where, truly, fairies must have danced, or else some wheel-tire been heated—for all was bare; ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... glimpse of home, stood some four hundred stalwart sons of the Maple Land. Great, strong fellows they were, all with the iron muscles and steady, clear eyes of the expert riverman. For these were the famous voyageurs, trained from childhood on the rapids and cataracts of Canadian streams and summoned now to the help of the mother country on the ancient ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... evening chime, Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time. Soon as the woods on shore look dim, We'll sing at St. Ann's our parting hymn. Row, brothers, row! the stream runs fast, The rapids are ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey

... and urged on by a strong faith, they launched their canoes upon the bosom of the Fox River, and breaking the silence of its shores by the dip of their paddles, they sailed up its current. When they reached the rapids of that river, it was with difficulty they were enabled to proceed. There was not power enough in the paddles of the two canoes to stem the current, and they were obliged to wade up the rapids ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... high altitudes. Hence their tracks are through some of the noblest scenery in the world; rushing through ravines and glens, and falling over precipitous rocks in the depths of wooded valleys, they exhibit a succession of rapids, cataracts, and torrents, unsurpassed in magnificence and beauty. On reaching the plains, the boldness of their march and the graceful outline of their sweep are indicative of the little obstruction opposed ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... natural advantages considerable sums are expended by private individuals. L50,000 currency was voted by Parliament last session for the purpose of removing certain obstacles to the navigation of the Upper Ottawa, by the construction of a canal at a point which is now obstructed by rapids. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... the rapids are troubled with pebbles That fetter and fret what the water would utter, And it rushes and splashes in tremulous trebles; It makes haste through the shallows, its soul ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... valley long before the mist has fallen on the plain outside. We had presently, however, to ascend a slope of some twenty-five feet in the mile, and I was much interested in the peculiar method by which the ascent was made. A mere ascent, not greater than that of some rapids up which American boatmen have managed to carry their barques by manual force, presented no great difficulty; but some skill is required at particular points to avoid being overturned by the rush of the water, and our vessel so careened as to afford much more excuse for ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... man is his envy; the risk of the one-talent man is his hopelessness. Why should this insignificant bubble on the great stream of life inflate itself with self-importance? Why should it not just drift along with the current and be lost in the first rapids of the stream? Now Christ's first appeal to this sense of insignificance is {134} this,—that in the sight of God there is no such thing as an insignificant life. Taken by itself, looked at in its own independent personality, many a life is insignificant enough. ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... open woods along the river bank they wandered, pausing here and there to admire the view, until they came to an overhanging bank at the entrance to a somewhat deep gorge, through which the river foamed to the boiling rapids below. It was indeed a beautiful scene. The banks of the river were covered with every variety of shrub and tree, except where the black rocks broke through; between the banks the dark river raged and fretted itself into a foam against its rocky barriers; ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... entered a new type of country where the Tsavo ran in canons between hills. The high cliffs often towered far above us; we had to pick our way along narrow river ledges; again the river ran like a trout stream over riffles and rapids, while we sauntered along cleared banks beneath the trees. Had we not been making a forced march under terrific heat at just that time, this last phase of the river might have been the ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... Copperhead a pretty penny," as they met in doorways; while the ladies put their flowery and jewelled heads together and whispered, "Did you ever see such extravagance? And what a dowdy she is with it all!" This was the under-current of sentiment which flowed strong in all the passages, and down the rapids of the great staircase; a stream of vigorous human feeling, the existence of which was as deeply gratifying to the entertainer as the sweetest flattery. The lord and the ladies who might have been tempted to ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... the peninsula to the Mississippi, a short distance above Quincy. The fourth principal meridian is continued northward through the military tract, and across Rock river, to a curve in the Mississippi at the upper rapids, in township eighteen north, and about twelve or fifteen miles above Rock Island. It here crosses and passes up the west side of the Mississippi river fifty-three miles, and recrosses into Illinois, and passes through the town of Galena to the northern boundary of the state. It is thence ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... 'At the fall of the rock' or 'at the descending rock' is a more nearly exact translation. The first syllable, pen- (Abn. pa[n]na) represents a root meaning 'to fall from a height,'—as in pa[n]n-tek[oo], 'fall of a river' or 'rapids;' pena[n]-ki, 'fall of land,' the descent or downward slope of ...
— The Composition of Indian Geographical Names - Illustrated from the Algonkin Languages • J. Hammond Trumbull

... La Barre left Quebec with a body of two hundred troops. In ascending the river they were reinforced by recruits from the Canadian militia and several hundred Indian allies. After much hardship in the rapids the little army reached Fort Frontenac. Here the sanitary conditions proved bad and many died from malarial fever. All thought of attack soon vanished, and La Barre altered his plans and decided to invite ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby

... out into the stream, and, heading up river, disappeared around a bend; for even at that time this venturesome pilot had pushed his boat farther up than any other steam-craft had ever gone, and we heard that there were terrific rapids and falls and unknown mysteries above. The superstition of centuries hovered over the "great cut," and but few civilized beings had looked down into its awful depths. Brave, dashing, handsome Jack Mellon! What would I give and what would we all give, to see thee ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes

... mile, yet, as the course of the river throughout this part of its career is tortuous in the extreme, the fall is really not greater than above indicated. Still it is sufficient to produce as many as twenty-seven rapids, or at the rate of one to every seven miles. In this part of its course the Jordan receives two important tributaries, each of which seems ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson

... a mile farther up stream, they came to rapids of some considerable extent, flowing quite swiftly and boiling here and there around sunken rocks. The Ellison brothers had avoided this place, and were to be seen now, on the right bank of the shore, carrying their canoe ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... sorts of peril in human life to which I may briefly advert, as we all have had some experiences of the same. Who does not know of his special financial temptation, some sanguine and unscrupulous speculator urging him from rock to rock across the rapids of ruin, till he is engulfed as by Niagara? Or of the manifestly disinterested and generous capitalist, who gives to some young legatee a junior partner's free arm-chair, only that he may utilise his ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... "but not above half that length in freshes." He reported navigation for bateaux and canoes between the carrying place and Ouiatenon as very difficult during the dry season of the year on account of many rapids and rifts; but during the high-water time the journey could be easily made in three days. He says the distance by water was two hundred forty miles and by land about two hundred ten. Within a mile of Miamitown he was met ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... to chance that, Jess," said Rob. "Quite a drop here, anyhow, all these cascades. If we'd brought the Adventurer all the way up the river from Mandan, and got to the head of the rapids, I guess we'd think it was the place ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough

... follow the wandering talk, and feeling what for him had the charm of romance in the flight of Josiah sat thinking over the scene of the warning at night, the scared fugitive in the cabin, and the lonely voyage down through the darkness of the rapids of the river. Where would the man go? Would they ever see him again? They were to meet in far-away days and in hours far more perilous. Then he was caught once more by gay stories of adventures on the plains and memories of Indian battles, until the wine had been drunk and the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... started now; he seemed ready enough with information to-day, and Yan knew enough to "run the rapids on the freshet." ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... appropriated nearly nineteen million dollars. It provided not merely for the dredging of great rivers like the Mississippi and Ohio, but also for the Lamprey River in New Hampshire, the Waccemaw in North Carolina, together with Goose Rapids and Cheesequake Creek. Some of these, the opposition declared, might better be paved than dredged.[7] It might seem that a bill against which such obvious objections could be raised would be doomed to failure. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... OVER NIAGARA FALLS.—During the past ten years, several winter tragedies to birds have occurred on a large scale at Niagara Falls. Whole flocks of whistling swans of from 20 up to 70 individuals alighting in the Niagara River above the rapids have permitted themselves to float down into the rapids, and be swept over the Falls, en masse. On each occasion, the great majority of the birds were drowned, or killed on the rocks. Of the very few that survived, few if any were ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... conflagration. These lighter drinks are not unhealthful and do not, as I believe, create a craving for stronger beverages. You will, I think, find it almost impossible to enforce the present law against wine and beer. I was told yesterday that there are some sixty places in Cedar Rapids where whiskey is sold. It takes about as much ceremony to get a drink as it does to join the Masons, but they seem to like the ceremony. People seem to take delight in outwitting the State when it does not involve ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... ascend the Missouri they found themselves confronted by many considerable rapids which sometimes delayed their progress. They also set forth this observation: "The only animals we have observed are the elk, the bighorn, and the hare common to this country." Wayfarers across the plains now call this hare the jack-rabbit. The river soon became very rapid with a marked descent, ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... where an enterprising New Englander has built his log houses in the forest, amid the Indians, and drives an active commerce in raspberry jam. His trade has prospered, and he had just completed a new and handsome dwelling. Fourteen miles farther brought us to Saut Sainte Marie, or the rapids of the eastern ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... picture of the beauty of the streams and glens which run down from either slope of the Northern Mountain. The reader must fancy for himself the loveliest brook which he ever saw in Devonshire or Yorkshire, Ireland or Scotland; crystal-clear, bedded with gray pebbles, broken into rapids by rock-ledges or great white quartz boulders, swirling under steep cliffs, winding through flats of natural meadow and copse. Then let him transport his stream into the great Palm-house at Kew, stretch out the house up hill and down dale, five miles in length and two thousand ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... cathedral with bits of the real heaven shining through the roof. The river ran west for a while from Cornice House, and then tacked north-east with a sudden bend round the base of the foot-hills; and since my track formed a sort of rough hypotenuse to this angle, I heard the voice of the rapids die away and almost cease, and then begin again to whisper and murmur, until, as I came within a mile or so of Eucalyptus, they were loud at my feet, though still unseen. I am not a devout man, but I can take off my hat ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... water. A large number of Khasis stand on the banks armed with bamboo scoops shaped like small landing nets, to catch the fish, and fish traps (ki khowar) Assamese khoka (khookaa) are laid between the stones in the rapids to secure any fish that may escape the fishing party. Another fish poison is the berry u soh lew, the juice of which is beaten out in the same manner ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... from a large factory in Grand Rapids," said Uncle Robert, reading the white card that was tacked on the side. "It is going to a town ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm

... junction with the Lachlan. The stream then became narrow, a thick growth of overhanging trees shut out the light from above, while, beneath, the rushing waters bore them swiftly over dangerous snags and through whirling rapids, until they were suddenly shot out into the broad surface of a noble stream which flowed gently over its smooth bed of sand and pebbles. This river they called the Murray; but it was afterwards found to be only the lower portion ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... been in the water 21 hours 45 minutes. After performing this feat, Webb for some years gave exhibitions of diving and swimming at an aquarium in London and elsewhere. In July, 1883, he came to America for the purpose of swimming the rapids and whirlpool at Niagara, and in ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton

... lay with such weight upon Joanna's mind, but her own age as one section in a vast mysterious drama, unweaving through a century back, and drawing nearer continually to some dreadful crisis. Cataracts and rapids were heard roaring ahead; and signs were seen far back, by help of old men's memories, which answered secretly to signs now coming forward on the eye, even as locks answer to keys. It was not wonderful that ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... like rapids. See that the spears are fastened securely, and stand ready with your oar. Sit ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout

... repelled by what might look like Colonial brusquerie. You see, you have been over snow-barred divides and through great shadowy forests with me. We've camped among the boulders by lonely lakes, and gone down frothing rapids. I felt—I can't tell you why—that I was bound to ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... six miles above Saekkingen, and situated on the beautiful rapids of the Rhine. A tower of the old strong castle on the Swiss side ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... was off again, soon after three P.M., on my way to Svenica. I had a splendid view of the river, and stopped my horse more than once to watch the boatmen at their perilous work of shooting the rapids. Getting to Svenica soon after six o'clock, I made inquiries about the distance to Uibanya. No two people agreed, but the chief spokesman declared it was a couple of hours' walk, and he volunteered to show me the way. The inn was horribly dirty, as one might expect from the appearance of ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... 600 feet high and is usually ranked next to the Yosemite in general interest among the five main falls of the Valley. Coming through the Little Yosemite in tranquil reaches, the river is first broken into rapids on a moraine boulder-bar that crosses the lower end of the Valley. Thence it pursues its way to the head of the fall in a rough, solid rock channel, dashing on side angles, heaving in heavy surging masses against elbow knobs, ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... logs had jammed at the foot of Red Rapids in the very throat of the main "pitch," where the Aux Lievres falls over the ledges into the "glut-hole" fifty feet below. Named "glut-hole" by the river-men; for lumber falling in here will sometimes ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... conscience every time I open that useful receptacle (desk, not conscience), where it has, I am sorry to say, many companions in its own predicament. My time is like running water, and the quickest, but the rapids of Niagara, that ever ran, I think; and every hour, as it flies away, is filled with so much that must be done, letting alone so much that I would wish to do, that I am fairly out of breath, and feel as if I were ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... copy in the vault at the bank. I'll bring 'em up when I come, so if somethin' comes up so you couldn't be at the post on the first of August, it won't hold up the deal. Run along now, I must catch the 11:45 train for Grand Rapids—see you ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx

... brooded everywhere. It beat in my ears like the far-off cadences of the Sault Ste. Marie rapids, that rise and leap and throb—like a storm hurling through the fir forest—like the distant rising of an Indian war-song; it swept up those mighty archways until the gray dome above me faded, and in its place the stars came out to look down, not on these paleface kneeling worshippers, but on a ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... heavy corner-clamps, and huge portions of cylinder had to be raised with an object-glass, weighing nearly 30,000 lbs., above the line of perpetual snow for more than 10,000 feet in height, after crossing desert prairies, impenetrable forests, fearful rapids far from all centres of population, and in the midst of savage regions in which every detail of life becomes an insoluble problem, and, nevertheless, American genius triumphed over all these obstacles. ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... coffee. Where the two streams come together, the dark waters of the Williamson stay on the left hand side of the stream, going down, and the clear waters of Spring Creek on the right hand side, for half a mile or more. Here some rapids, formed by a swift declivity of the stream, over sunken boulders, cause a mixup of the light and dark waters, and from there on they ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves

... she was seized by a tragic recollection. It was from this spot, so she believed, that Leopold Verrier had thrown himself over. The body had been carried down through the rapids, and recovered, terribly injured, in the deep eddying pool which the river makes below them. He had left no letter or message of any sort behind him. But the reasons for his suicide were clearly understood by a large public, whose main verdict upon it ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... much excitement and many gestures that the river was filled with crocodiles, and that he did not expect to see us land alive on his side. We camped on the top of the hill overlooking N'Kissy and the wild rushing Congo Rapids. It was in one of these whirlpools that young ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... felt, together with many other people, that a sea-voyage was the essential beginning of every journey; he had started round the world soon after leaving Cambridge; he had fished through Norway and hunted in India, and shot everything from grouse on the Scottish moors to the rapids above Assouan. He had run in and out of countless towns and countries on the coast of South America; he had done Russia and the Rhone valley and Brittany and Damascus; he had seen them all —but not until then did it occur to him that there might be something of interest ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... some shallow channels. This labour continued for several days after they left the mouth of the river, till they arrived in deeper water; then, they made a quicker progress. However, they met with many obstacles, by currents, and occasional rapids or falls; which would have been insurmountable, but for the skill of the Indians in managing ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... sunset, on that monotonous voyage. After many hours a decided change was perceived in the current, which ran at a considerable increase of swiftness, so that it required the united energy of both men and women to keep the light vessels from drifting down the river again. They were in the Rapids, [FN: Formerly known as Whitla's Rapids, now the site of the Locks.] and it was hard work to stem the tide, and keep the upward course of the waters. At length the rapids were passed, and the weary Indian voyagers rested for a space on the bosom of a small but tranquil lake. [FN: ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... about the place of that mighty meeting, a deep verdure came, for the winds carried the spray from the vortex. Nature loved the sounds of that pouring together. From the whirlpool, where two met, one great river emerged, white-maned with rapids for a way—then broad and pure and still, so that only birds and poets could hear the harmony deep as life. From time to time it gave forth its tributaries, yet seemingly was undiminished. Always on, always one, ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... system, and I recommend it to the riparian owners of the Upper Wye, which needs it. They take the water from the Moselle (which is here broad and torrential and falls in steps, running over a stony bed with little swirls and rapids), and they lead it along at an even gradient, averaging, as it were, the uneven descent of the river. In this way they have a continuous stream running through fields that would otherwise be bare and dry, but that are ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... brimming brooks, push with renewed energies up a steep ascent to the heart of the wild solitude, where three mighty waterfalls dash in savage grandeur from a range of over hanging cliffs into a churning river, descending by continuous rapids over a stairway of brown-striped trap-rock and swirling between lichen-clad banks, to lose itself in the green gloom of the impenetrable woods. One of these huge cascades would make the fortune of a Swiss valley, and we need no further efforts of our willing ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... Achelous, rival for the hand Of Oeneus' daughter, rolls his earthy flood (19) To silt the shore beside the neighbouring isles. Evenus (20) purpled by the Centaur's blood Wanders through Calydon: in the Malian Gulf Thy rapids fall, Spercheius: pure the wave With which Amphrysos (21) irrigates the meads Where once Apollo served: Anaurus (22) flows Breathing no vapour forth; no humid air Ripples his face: and whatever stream, Nameless itself, to Ocean gives its waves ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... a low chair, gazing wistfully across the wild country. She can see the course of the Irrawaddy river, with its numerous rapids and picturesque cascades. It seems only the other day that she and Carol steamed up it, past Mandalay, Bhanio, and Myitkyina. She wishes they could travel on overland through the jade, amber, and ruby mines, but Carol fears ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... I removed to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and commenced anew the practice of medicine. I then had neither the knowledge nor the faith in homoeopathy which I thought would justify me in treating any serious case of disease with homoeopathic remedies; but I did ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis

... very near the head of navigation; that sound comes from falls or rapids, above which we cannot go with ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... Commission. In obedience to this order Tucker spent some months in the United States, and had a steamer built by Messrs. Pusey, Jones & Co., of Wilmington, Delaware, expressly adapted to the navigation of the shoals and rapids of the Upper Amazon. This vessel, named the Tambo, was delivered to Tucker at Para, the Brazilian city at the mouth of the Lower Amazon. Embarking on board the Tambo, Tucker took the steamer up the river ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle

... and the gaff, while Frenchy took charge of the salmon and the landing-net, and we walked down stream, past the first little rapids, to the place where ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... beautiful woman, indeed you have me again! My soul you have charmed so deeply, so deeply. Lead me whither and as far as you will, into the mountain, under the hill, to the grassy meadow, where song and refrain echo sweetly in the evening, on the bottom of the river, down under the rapids, where there are harps for powerful plaintive lays; wherever your home is, there I am ready ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... occasionally. The women do their best to spoil 'em, as they do the poets; you find it very pleasant to be spoiled, no doubt; so do they. Now and then one of 'em goes over the dam; no wonder, they're always in the rapids. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... round we were thankful to see Tom and Kendo's henchman safely seated in Caspar's canoe. The wrecked canoe was in the meantime dashed to pieces, so as to be rendered perfectly useless. We were somewhat crowded, but that could not be helped, and we hoped that we should not meet with more rapids in our course; although we might manage to swim on shore, should any accident occur, we should probably lose our rifles and knapsacks, and at all events damage our ammunition. We waited until Tom's canoe came up with us. I now recognised ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... him, because he had been too mentally paralyzed to think clearly. Now a suspicion which once had flickered in his mind came back with renewed vigor: that a kind of Fate was watching his career. It had steered him safely past the home company, and later had steered through rapids that might easily have dashed him against the first training camp. At present it was pointing to a secret passage of escape from conscription. To-day, he figured rapidly, was the thirty-first of May; the second camp would not open until August the twenty-seventh. ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... he fell headlong over a ledge, struck water, felt himself whirled around in the icy, rushing current, rolled over, tumbled through rapids, blinded, deafened, choked, swept helplessly in a vast green wall of water toward something that thundered in his brain an instant, then dashed ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers

... perfect E.P.D.mic of criticism, but it was brilliantly countered by Mr. Baldwin, who declared that the Chancellor, far from leading the country down the rapids, "was the one man who had seized a rock in mid-stream and was hanging on to it with hands and feet." The Amendment was rejected by 289 to 117, and the clause as a whole was passed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various



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