"Spoor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "form" of the runner, as well as his speed and steadiness. The distinguishing marks of good "form" are an easy balance without dependence on the sticks (see below), an erect position, except on steep slopes, and a narrow single spoor in soft snow. ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... we heard no news and found no spoor or sign. The hill-country gave us stiff climbing and rocky paths to ride. Kraals and clusters of gardens places where we might hope to hear tidings how few they were in that hill-country! We camped disconsolately at last in a forlorn garden among grey boulders where stumps of trees were burning. ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... and the spot where the ship had sunk, and at first thought whoever had been in it had drowned. Then one of the dogs found your trail, but lost it again in the swamps during the night. They had a fine time with the mud and the snow and didn't have any luck at all in finding the spoor again. By the next afternoon they were ready to send for more help when they heard your firing. Just made it, from what I hear. Lucky one of them was a talker and could tell the wild dogs to clear out. Would ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... well-grown. We should have called him a monster, had we not, before that time, seen in various museums the stuffed skins of those a quarter or a third larger. He would have weighed, as shot, probably between five and six hundred pounds. He had made this solitary island his home, as we ascertained by his spoor and other signs that we found upon subsequent explorations. We saw his bed but a few rods from where we landed, and from which our dogs had aroused him, though they, in their excitement, had overrun his scent, and dashed ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... his pal probably was right about the length of time. The dust was fine, and thick. No human tracks disturbed it, but the boys saw the delicate tracery where a small animal, probably a field mouse or a chipmunk, had left his spoor. ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Commission's inquiries into the possibilities of reorganising the mines should be limited to the single question of "nationalization"—the "blessed word" of Labour just now. This was supported in a capital maiden speech by Mr. SPOOR, an ex-pitman, whose father and son are both in the mines, and by Mr. CLYNES, who rather unreasonably complained that the HOME SECRETARY made SHORTT speeches; but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... daybreak, Felix, who was scouting just ahead of the column, came running back with news he had struck elephant spoor. Every tooth in his head told the tale. Not only spoor, but the spoor of a vast herd cutting right ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... paddling over a ten-foot-deep drift and taking short cuts by buried fences is worth the ankle-ache. The man from the West interpreted to me the signs on the snow, showed how a fox (this section of the country is full of foxes, and men shoot them because riding is impossible) leaves one kind of spoor, walking with circumspection as becomes a thief, and a dog, who has nothing to be ashamed of, but widens his four legs and plunges, another; how coons go to sleep for the winter and squirrels too, and how the deer on the Canada border ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... a landscape blind with snow. Such search as could be made told them nothing. The oxen had gone, and their spoor was obliterated by the fresh-fallen flakes. The White Man called a council of his Kaffir servants. "What was to be done?" ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... his attention from the unessentials. Not a glance did he vouchsafe to the prospect far or near; not a thought did he permit himself of speculation or of wandering interest. His sole job now was to plod on at an even gait, to keep track of time, to follow the spoor of the Leopard Woman's safari, to save himself for later. If he had spared any thought at all, it would have been self-congratulation that Simba and Cazi Moto were old and tried. For Simba relieved him of the necessity of watching for dangerous beasts, and Cazi Moto of the responsibility ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... told the sheriff about the giant spoor, Watson gave a derisive snort. "Those old coots got bats in ...
— The Invaders • Benjamin Ferris
... Jack had cantered up, and seen the spoor, as such footprints were generally termed in South Africa, they knew that there would be real danger now hovering about ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... have time to get over the offense he had given her, made for the present no fresh attempt to come, by her own aid, at a bird's-eye view of her character and scheme of life. His curiosity, however, being in no degree assuaged concerning the odd human animal whose spoor he had for the moment failed to track, he meditated how best to renew the attempt in London. Not small, therefore, was his annoyance to find, a few days after his arrival, that she was no longer in the house. He questioned his wife as ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... magnified and sharply black. Here and there across the smooth surface stretching on either side of the road lay the curiously differing tracks of animals. From the back seat of the car where he sat alone Craven marked them mechanically. He knew every separate spoor and could have named the owner of each; ordinarily they would have claimed from him a certain interest but today he passed them without a second thought. He did not resent the slow progress of the car, he was in no hurry to reach the Towers. ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... men in three days, the chief and his whole party turned out to hunt and destroy lions only. They followed the spoor or track of the one which had taken the slave, and they soon found two lions, one of which, the smallest, they shot; and then, having taken their breakfast, they went after the other, and largest, which was recognized as the one which had ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... where, he said, upon the verge of the plain we would find a wooded country in which game should be plentiful. Acting upon his advice, we came at last to a forest-jungle, through which wound innumerable game-paths. In the depths of this forbidding wood we came upon the fresh spoor ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... right, but what I mean is, Edwin would do it so much better than I would. These Boy Scouts are up to all sorts of dodges. They spoor, don't you know, and take cover and creep about, and ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... dark, and by the light saw a lion close to the body of the poor animal, which was quite dead. Those who had caught up their guns on the first alarm fired a volley, and the lion made off. It was evident that the donkey had been seized by the nose, and instantly killed. At daylight the spoor showed that the guns had taken effect. The lion's blood lay in a broad track (for he was apparently injured in the back, and could only drag himself along); but the footprints of a second lion were too plain to make it advisable to track him ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... antique and dilapidated baboon; his face was wrinkled like a dried nut and his quick little eyes were bloodshot. I never knew what his age was, any more than he did himself, but the years had left him tough as whipcord and absolutely untiring. Lastly he was perhaps the best hand at following a spoor that ever I knew and up to a hundred and fifty yards or so, a very deadly shot with a rifle especially when he used a little single-barrelled, muzzle-loading gun of mine made by Purdey which he named Intombi or Maiden. Of ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... shelter of spruce boughs. And—and—par les mille cornes du diable if he had even brushed the snow out! His great moccasin tracks were all about among the tracks of the wolves, and they were big as the spoor of a monster bear. I searched everywhere for something that he might have left, and I found—at last—a ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... had found his mighty spoor. Never more canst thou escape From our hands! thine earthly days All ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... our attention upon the Globigerina. It is the spoor of the game we are tracking. If we can learn what it is and what are the conditions of its existence, we shall see our way to the origin and past ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to shoot in all these x years!" he commented, stooping to examine the spoor. "That may come ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... said, to lay on the floor of the banqueting-hall, sweet, fresh rushes from the meadows, and to clear away all trace of the feasting overnight. But the two-and-thirty knights who, in full armour, had lain down to sleep were all gone, and on the floor was the spoor of something foul and noisome, and on the walls and on the trampled rushes were great and terrible smears ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... with her a bag made of spring-buck hide in which to carry them. Well, the black girl sat down under the shadow of a rock, leaving Suzanne to wander to and fro looking for the shells, and not for an hour or more did she get up to find her. Then she searched in vain, for the spoor of the child's feet led from the sand between the rocks to the pebbly shore above, which was covered with tough sea grasses, and there was lost. Now at the girl's story I was frightened, and Jan was both frightened and so angry that he would have tied her up and ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... he is soldier, hunter, mining expert, and explorer. Within the last ten years the educated instinct that as a younger man taught him to follow the trail of an Indian, or the "spoor" of the Kaffir and the trek wagon, now leads him as a mining expert to the hiding-places of copper, silver, and gold, and, as he advises, great and wealthy syndicates buy or refuse tracts of land in Africa ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... with high-held nose, sniffing searchingly. At other times a quick, brief incursion into the branches above delayed it momentarily in its steady journey toward the east. To its sensitive nostrils came the subtle unseen spoor of many a tender four-footed creature, bringing the slaver of hunger to ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a drinking-place is trodden down with tracks, "describe a circle a little distance From it, to ascertain if it be much frequented. This is the manner in which spoor should at all times be sought for." (Cumming's 'Life in South Africa.') To know if a burrow be tenanted, go to work on the same principle; but, if the ground be hard, sprinkle sand over it, in order to show the tracks more clearly. It is ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... they had landed, studying the soil of each garden spot, hunting for the unmistakable spoor of the giant reptile. And within a matter of minutes they found it, the mud still moist as Dalgard proved with an exploring fingertip. At the same time Sssuri twirled his spear significantly. Before ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... the cabin the jungle commenced, and into it Tarzan of the Apes plunged, wary and noiseless—once more a savage beast hunting its food. For a time he kept to the ground, but finally, discovering no spoor indicative of nearby meat, he took to the trees. With the first dizzy swing from tree to tree all the old joy of living swept over him. Vain regrets and dull heartache were forgotten. Now was he living. Now, indeed, was the true happiness of perfect freedom ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Baas Leonard do now that his brother is dead and the Basutos have run away? Go on digging for the yellow iron which is so hard to find, and of which, when it is found, no man can even make a spear? Nay, what is that to you, Otter? What the Baas does you do—and here be the spoor of an ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... couldn't be. The government surveys were thorough. The last record of a specimen dated back over a half-dozen years ago. It was impossible that any survivors remained. And all during the safari these past days, not a sign or a print or a spoor. ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... There is one I hope it is not," was the Chief Ranger's somewhat evasive reply. "I will hunt a labbla—there was fresh spoor at the stream." He set off along their back trail to return a half hour later, the body of his kill slung across one shoulder. He was skinning it when ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... Jacobo Schallero, S.S, Theol. Doct, et Philos. Pract. Prof., ad. h.t. Facult. Phil. Decano, solenniter defendet die[17] mens. Septemb. Christophorus Guentzer, Argentorat. Argentorati, Typis Friderici Spoor, 1657" ("Second Part of a Dissertation, on certain Passages of Milton; which, with God's favour, and tinder the presidency of James Schaller, Doctor of Divinity and Professor of Practical Philosophy, acting as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy for the occasion, Christopher Guentzer of Strasburg ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... the name means "Sons of the Heel" ('Akab) because, in the early wars and conquests of El-Islam, they fought during the day by the Moslems' side; and at night, when going over to the Nazarenes, they lost the "spoor" by wearing their sandals heel foremost, and by shoeing their horses the wrong way. All this they indignantly deny; and they are borne out by the written genealogies, who derive them from "Ukbah, the son of Maghrabah, son of Heram," of the Kahtaniyyah (Joctanite) Arabs, some of the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... was the hunted thing moving even as silently as the lion a hundred paces ahead of the tawny carnivore, for instead of skirting the moon-splashed natural clearings it passed directly across them, and by the tortuous record of its spoor it might indeed be guessed that it sought these avenues of least resistance, as well it might, since, unlike its grim stalker, it walked erect upon two feet—it walked upon two feet and was hairless except ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... all Africans, the picked hunters from the tribe of the Bamangwato. They were out on the spoor of a great lion that had made himself the terror of the tribe. Night after night the lion had leapt among their oxen and had slain the choicest in the chief's herds. Again and again the hunters had ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... that way alone after a sable antelope." The boy pointed an arm to the southwest. "The beast was wounded, and we followed its blood-spoor. We found Mr. Barrington's horse gored by the antelope's horns. He himself had gone forward on foot. We tracked him to a little stream, but the opposite bank was trampled, and we lost all sign of him." This is what the boy said though his ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... well-mounted party, went off to follow the spoor, being advised to return before dark. This he did not do. He remained for the night beyond the Shangani River, and by daylight reached the waggons ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... planes leveled off within a couple of miles of the space ship. They knew about where the stratosphere had swallowed up Jeter and Eyer. Now they were casting about for a sign, like bloodhounds seeking the spoor of an enemy. ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... before it, but continues only for a short time, and is succeeded by a dead calm. Game becomes more abundant; near our wooding-places we see herds of zebras, both Burchell's and the mountain variety, pallahs (Antelope melampus), waterbuck, and wild hogs, with the spoor of buffaloes ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... openings there left, I could form some comparative estimate of its bulk. These tracks were first seen by a man of the name of Mustard, who had joined me at the Cape, and who had there been on the frontier during the Kaffir war; he told me that he had seen the spoor of a buffalo, imagining that they were here as plentiful as in Africa. I conceived at the time that he had made some mistake, and paid no attention to him until I afterwards twice saw the same ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... foe will crave her! In Woden's spoor the sward is bloody— Many a head the swords dissever; Be our host victorious ever! Silent lastly Likabong— Women weep for ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... relate about Finnbog. Afterward in the evening, when men slept, he rose, took his weapons, and went forth, following the tracks which led to the dairy farm. As was his wont, he stepped out briskly along the spoor till he came to the dairy. There he found the bear lying down, and he had slain the sheep, and he was lying on them lapping their blood. Then said Finnbog: 'Stand up, Brain! make ready against me; that becomes you more than crouching over ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... longed to come upon Some giant spoor and dog the track till I ran to earth a mastodon, A dinosaur, a pterodactyl; But I supposed my natal date— However distantly I view it— Was several thousand years too late To give me any ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... thing," Cal said with a shrug. "Animals are aware of spoor long before they are aware of tools. It hit deep down into fundamental being, ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... of a page of each. It will be observed that upon the margins of the earlier Manuscript Borrow wrote his revisions, so that this Manuscript practically carries in itself both versions of the ballad. The Manuscript of 1829 is in the possession of Mr. J. H. Spoor, of Chicago. The Manuscript of 1854 is in my own library. As a specimen of Marsk Stig ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... was in its heart a mighty, ardent fire which had authority over souls of men. It was made, the captain told me, with great subtlety by the secret craft of a family of six who lived in a hut on the mountains of Hian Min. Once in these mountains, he said, he followed the spoor of a bear, and he came suddenly on a man of that family who had hunted the same bear, and he was at the end of a narrow way with precipice all about him, and his spear was sticking in the bear, and the wound not fatal, and ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... (the best general guidebook we have seen) and look up his favourite authors in the index. That will refer him to the places associated with them, and he can have rare sport in hunting them out. There is no way of pilgrimage so pleasant as to follow the spoor of a well-loved writer. Referring to our black note-book, in which we keep memoranda of a modest pilgrimage we once made to places mentioned by two of our heroes, viz., Boswell and R.L.S., we think that if we were in C.F.B.'s shoes, one ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... that we might get up the great tree over the house and search the country round with a spyglass; and this, after Mr Mackenzie had given some orders to his people to try and follow Flossie's spoor, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... The spoor left by his horse the night before was clear in the starlight. He told Daddy John to follow it and drew up beside the track to let the wagon pass him. Motionless he watched the girl's approaching figure, and saw her rein her horse to ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... of the sea-bottom there had been no spoor to follow, for the soft pads of the thoat but pressed down in his swift passage the resilient vegetation which sprang up again behind his ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
