"Torrentine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a terrific gale raged in Manchester and surrounding districts, hail and sleet being accompanied by a torrential rainfall varied by Pendleton, Eccles, Seedley ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... further to be observed, that the surface of this vast interior is entirely exempt from the coarse superficial drift that encumbers so many countries, as derived from lofty mountain-chains from which either glaciers or great torrential streams have descended. In this respect, it is also equally unlike those plains of Germany, Poland, and Northern Russia, which were sea-bottoms when floating icebergs melted and dropped the loads of stone which they were transporting from ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... like other rains Baree had known. It was an inundation sweeping down out of the blackness of the skies. Within five minutes the interior of the balsam shelter was a shower bath. After half an hour of that torrential downpour, Nepeese was soaked to the skin. The water ran in little rivulets down her body. It trickled in tiny streams from her drenched braids and dropped from her long lashes, and the blanket under her became wet ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... penniless, and the moment he set eyes on her begin to knock her about; but for sergeants suffering under a blight and characterless females masquerading as hospital nurses to come and ride rough-shod over an honest working woman was past endurance. Thus I paraphrase my memory of the lady's torrential speech. "Lay your hand on me," she cried, "and I'll ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... largest in West Africa - have been cleared by the timber industry); water pollution from sewage and industrial and agricultural effluents natural hazards: coast has heavy surf and no natural harbors; during the rainy season torrential flooding is possible international agreements: party to - Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83; signed, ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the conditions under which the work of this unit was carried out—often under a burning sun and again in bitter cold, mud and torrential rain—conditions which might well appal the stoutest heart, but here I note that the gallant author, as I expected, makes light of the many hardships and vicissitudes that he and his comrades were ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... flank. And that, so stated, is a very old story. On the other hand, at Belmont and Graspan, at Talana Hill and Elandslaagte, it was shown that the same arms of rapid fire {p.161} do not necessarily control where precision and skill, not mere torrential volume, are needed. Not only is it not demonstrated that modern weapons can stop the uphill advance of a resolute infantry on broken ground; it has been shown to probability that they are incapable of so doing. Whether such charges are wise is one thing, but whether they ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... to exaggerate the charm of this climate. And yet this, one thought, was equatorial Africa, which, in the popular imagination, is supposed to be synonymous with torrential rains, malignant fevers, and dense jungles of matted vegetation. It was more like the friendly stretches of Colorado scenery at the time of year when the grasses of the valley are dotted with flowers ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... fluctuating clamor—he could distinguish low pitched drums—brought him the vision, pale and remote and mysteriously smiling, of Cytherea. He thought of that torrential discord rising around her belled purple skirt, the cool yellow of her waist crossed with fragile lace, beating past her lifted slender hand, the nails stained with vermilion, to the pointed oval of her face against the black hair and streaming gold of the headdress. Nothing, it appeared, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... was beautiful; they were happy; he could do his work in deliberation and comfort. She knew the value of money better than he, cared more for it in her own way; but she had not his desire to heap up vast and sudden sums, to revel in torrential golden showers. She was willing to let well enough alone. Clemens could not do this, and suffered accordingly. In the midst of fair home surroundings and honors we find him writing ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... loose, a great, torrential downpour. It came in sheets, with an impetuous, though genial, clatter. It seemed as though the valley was swiftly filling with water and in less than an hour's time it would reach the tops of the trees. I thought of Noah's flood. I could almost see his dove winging ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... we suffered dire Hardships! What torrential rains Fell upon us at the peak Where was neither tree ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... the march occasional short halts were necessary; but at 2 a.m. there was a more serious check. The torrential rain had clogged Major Benson's compass, and he became uncertain whether the column had not trended away towards the left. Major-General Wauchope sent back for Lieutenant-Colonel Ewart. After a brief consultation, a slight change of direction to the right was made. In daylight and on ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... scenes were witnessed along the route, as the torrential rain and the vast zone of mud increased the misery of the moving multitude. Food was scarce and many went without it for days, while sleep was impossible as the throng trudged westward. The military hospitals ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... was a good deal of shelling and some torrential showers. We set fire to some woods on the lower slopes of San Daniele, with a ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... supposing they had got some tremendous sacred sanction—some holy thing, some book or gospel or some new prophet from the desert, something which would cast over the whole ugly mechanism of German war the glamour of the old torrential raids which crumpled the Byzantine Empire and shook the walls of Vienna? Islam is a fighting creed, and the mullah still stands in the pulpit with the Koran in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. Supposing there is some Ark of the Covenant which will madden the ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... Reforestation. Maintenance of forests on what are called essential areas, such as high altitudes and slopes, as tending to prevent floods and erosion. (France here gives most impressive example in planning to bring under conrol about three thousand torrential streams in the Alps, Pyrenees, Ardennes, and Cevennes by means, partly at least, of afforestation, $14,000,000 out of $40,000,000 being provided for this purpose. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 247.] Italy, because of the greatly increased destruction ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... Cronje surrendered news came through that a rescue party was coming to Cronje's assistance, and already held a hill on the south-east of the Modder. Although the river was in flood, as the result of torrential rains, French forthwith led out two brigades with their batteries to make a reconnaissance. In forcing the stream both French and his A.A.G. very nearly lost their lives. Losing its foothold the General's horse took fright and fell, flinging him into the raging ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... none of us knew. We "tossed up" and went to the eastward—the wrong side, of course. We soon struck a river, and at once surmised that if we followed it, it must bring us to the head of the bay, which meant only three miles of salt water ice to cover. Alas, the stream proved very torrential. It leaped here and there over so many rapid falls that great canyons were left in the ice, and instead of being able to dash along as when first we struck it, we had painfully to pick our way between heavy ice-blocks, which sorely tangled up our traces, and our dogs ran great danger ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... resentment against the latter was exceeded only by Mignon's dislike for the gentle girl. Thus the common bond of hatred held them together. She had only to mention Constance's name and Mignon would rise to the bait with torrential anger. This in itself was an unfailing ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... rain came beating furiously down against the wind-shield so that the road ahead was barely visible. Never had she seen such blinding sheets of water. It tore at the roof, it whipped about the curtains, it threatened to engulf them all in a torrential flood. The car was moving slowly forward—she could see Joe's outline bent slightly over the wheel—and in spite of his care the rear wheels would slew gently from side to side. As she peered ahead she could see a yellow flood ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... torrential rush, but the sergeant withstood it, and they merely locked themselves together. Nay, they were now so exhausted that they could only hang on to each other for support, a spectacle which brought me to their side. Their bulging eyes stared at me with the pleading look which ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... successfully grown (and manufactured for the pipe and into cigarettes). The heat in summer is intense, with hot winds and dust storms; but owing to the altitude (4,420 feet at Tabriz) the nights are generally cool. In the spring there are torrential rains, and also towards the end of the autumn, but the months of May, June, October and November are ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... cried a woman, hurrying forward, her hands twisting nervously in her apron. And a torrential outpouring in Spanish greeted ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... region had proven itself to be one of violent extremes, of extreme dryness during which flowers failed to bloom, the grass shriveled and died, and even the trees refused to put forth leaves; or, more rarely, of extreme wetness, when the country was drowned beneath torrential rains. Sometimes, during unusual winters, the heavens opened and spilled themselves, choking the narrow watercourses, washing out roads and destroying fields, changing the arid arroyos into raging river beds. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... known in England and America, is therefore important from this historical point of view. In it, Marx for the first time shows his complete confidence in the theory. It needed confidence little short of sublime to challenge Proudhon in the audacious manner of this scintillating critique. The torrential eloquence, the scornful satire, and fierce invective of the attack, have rather tended to obscure for readers of a later generation the real merit of the book, the importance of the fundamental idea that history ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... from the shore. Long-drawn, sweetly-penetrating, yet with some strident accent of power and command, this voice of Earth rushed upon them over the quiet water—then died away again among the mountains and the night. Its passage through the sky was torrential. The whole pouring flood of it dipped back with abrupt swiftness into silence. The Irishman understood that but an echo of its main volume had ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... dam made by this dike the valley was bedded up with sand and large gravel washed down by the torrential rush of spring freshets. Below it the same wild floods, leaping down in a twenty-foot fall, had gouged out a pothole so wide and deep that it was never empty of water even ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... July the weather, hitherto so fine, broke hopelessly. Torrential rains followed, which inundated the flat country far and wide. After several postponements the Third Battle of Ypres commenced on July 31. Some two weeks later the Battalion moved forward by train from Arnecke to Poperinghe. We awaited our share in the fighting; which was to make this battle ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... energetic and violent Tertullian, beloved by Bossuet; Saint Cyprian, full of unction, gentleness, and charity; Lactantius, skilful Christian philosopher, ingenious and possessing insinuating subtlety; Saint Hilarius, an ardent polemist, impetuous and torrential; Saint Ambrose, exalted, wise, serene, very well read, very "Roman," who may be styled the Cicero of Christianity; Saint Jerome, ardent, impassioned, possessing lively sensibility, an animated and seductive imagination, who—excluding ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... spoken of surrender, the by-standers mobbed and were near killing him. While the army, its endurance exhausted, feeling the end was near, called for peace, the populace clamored still for the sortie en masse, the torrential sortie, in which the entire population of the capital, men, women, and children, even, should take part, rushing upon the Prussians like water from a broken dyke and overwhelming them by ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... not tell Mrs. Gould that it was because he found there, in her absence, the relief of an atmosphere of congenial sentiment in old Giorgio's austere admiration for the "English signora—the benefactress"; in black-eyed Linda's voluble, torrential, passionate affection for "our Dona Emilia—that angel"; in the white-throated, fair Giselle's adoring upward turn of the eyes, which then glided towards him with a sidelong, half-arch, half-candid glance, which made the doctor exclaim to himself mentally, "If I weren't what ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... hands rather timidly, for Miss Jessie Stone was torrential in her speech. There wasn't a chance to "get a word in edgewise" when once she was started upon a subject that ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... wide eyes was blazing upon him torrential fury and contempt. Yet she did not give him her truest reasons in her answer. She had no longer any fear of him for herself, but she trembled inwardly at the menace of his ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... above the valley I crossed a little canal. It was made on a very good 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 ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... in what you say," the Easy Chair confessed. "Our popular failure as a critic is notorious; it cannot be denied. The stamp of our disapproval at one time gave a whole order of fiction a currency that was not less than torrential. The flood of romantic novels which passed over the land, and which is still to be traced in the tatters of the rag-doll heroes and heroines caught in the memories of readers along its course, was undoubtedly the effect of our adverse criticism. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... water, with a close-fitting lid to prevent their jumping out. I saw him take a seventh. The largest must have weighed nearly two pounds. It seems almost incredible that fish should inhabit water so cold, so opaque, and so torrential, and should find there any kind of nourishment. They make their way up by keeping close to the bank, and are able, even in that milky current, to perceive and snatch the unfortunate worm or grub which has been washed into the flood and is being ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... I told him; the one chance of his life; he was letting a piece of idiotic pride wreck the probable happiness of years. He agreed with me with moans and weeps. He had the candor of a child and the torrential sentiment of a German musician. Three hundred and four dollars and seventy-five cents stood between him and eternal bliss, and yet he waved my pocketbook from him! And all the while I saw ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... Geddes sent us Schmetz, the gardener, a gnarled little man with a peppery temper, a torrential flow of Alsatian French, and a tireless energy. I don't know why nor how Schmetz had come to Hyndsville, except that somehow he had acquired a small farm near by and couldn't get away from it. He explained to us, gently but firmly, that if we wouldn't meddle after the manner of women, but would ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... southern part of the continent, was able to lend its military power and its generalship to the task of reducing the Germans in East Africa. It was formidable enough, not so much from the opposition of man as because of the obstacles nature placed in the way. A tropical climate, torrential rains which played havoc with transport, the tzetze-fly which slew beasts of burden in hundreds of thousands, impenetrable forests, impassable swamps, immense mountain masses, and an area almost as large as Central Europe, provided ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... aid, Travis would never have been able to track the clan. The drizzle alternated with slashing bursts of rain, torrential enough to drive the trackers to the nearest cover. Overhead the sky was either dull bronze or night black. Even the coyotes paced nose to ground, often making wide casts for the trail ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... last autumn while my wife was away. I need not explain how I got it, for that has no importance; but it was the genuine fluid extract, and I could not resist the temptation to make an experiment. One of its effects, as you know, is to induce torrential laughter—" ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... plains, The Llano Estacado (beyond lie wastes Of alkali and hunger gaunt and death),— And here is lost in shifting rifts of sand. Anon it lingers by a hidden spring That bubbles joy into the wilderness; Its pathway trenched that distant mountain side, Now grown to gulches through torrential rain. De Vaca gathered pinons by the way, Long ere the furrows grew on yonder hill, Cut by the creaking prairie-schooner wheels; La Salle, the gentle Frenchman, crossed this course, And went to death and to a nameless grave. For ages and for ages through the past Comanches ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... this broad entrance constantly invited, undertook to fill it up. This they accomplished after years of heroic effort and an enormous expenditure of money, leaving the harbor only the slender, tortuous entrance of Boca Chica—"little mouth"—dangerous to incoming vessels because of the almost torrential flow of the tide through it, but much more readily defended. The two castles of San Fernando and San Jose, frowning structures of stone dominating this entrance, have long since fallen into disuse, but are still admirably preserved. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... power of expansion. From that time the one was to conquer—for its fundamental theory—the unanimous endorsement of naturalists; the other was to continue to develop—in its general aspirations as in its political discipline—flooding all the conduits of the social consciousness, like a torrential inundation from internal wounds caused by the daily growth of physical and moral disease, or like a gradual, capillary, inevitable infiltration into minds freed from all prejudices, and which are not satisfied by the merely ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... is a true boiler, a torrential pool never at rest. It charges down amongst huge masses of rock, and just where the descent is comparatively easy the inevitable salmon trap is fixed. Sometimes the salmon takes in the very boil, if you cast fly ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the countries of Europe, presents the most grave and numerous obstacles to intercommunication. The number and size of the mountains and glaciers, the depth of the valleys, the torrential character of the rivers,—everything unites to make the highways cost enormously in money, while the feats of skill they necessitate are "the triumph of civil engineers, the wonder of tourists, the despair of shareholders and the burden of budgets." Among these ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... the island, which was strewn with loose slabs of coral stone, pure white in colour and giving forth a clear, resonant sound to the slightest disturbing movement On our right hand was a scrub of puka trees, which afforded no shelter from the torrential rain; on our left the ocean, whose huge, leaping billows crashed and thundered upon the black, shelving reef, and sent swirling waves of whitened foam ...
— Susani - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Mrs. Croix might be driven to rest her hopes on a trick of chance or a coup de theatre. But she was a very clever woman; and she was not unlike Hamilton in a quite phenomenal precocity, and in the torrential nature of her passions. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... slopes in order to raise the precious maize and many of the other temperate and tropical plants which they domesticated for food and medicinal purposes. They were constantly confronted by an extraordinary scarcity of soil. In the valley bottoms torrential rivers, meandering from side to side, were engaged in an endless endeavor to tear away the arable land and bear it off to the sea. The slopes of the valleys were frequently so very steep as to discourage the most ardent modern agriculturalist. ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... scene, two generations of opera-goers had passed away without experiencing anything like the sensation caused by this opera. They had witnessed the production, indeed, of great masterpieces, which it would be almost sacrilegious to mention in the same breath with Mascagni's turbulent and torrential tragedy, but these works were the productions of mature masters, from whom things monumental and lasting were expected as a matter of course; men like Wagner and Verdi. The generations had also seen the coming of "Carmen" and gradually opened their minds to an appreciation of its meaning ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... a state of excitement which bordered on delirium. She performed her duties in a trance of joy, gratitude, and amazement, and, when it was all over, her feelings poured themselves out into her journal in a torrential flood. The day had been nothing but an endless succession of glories—or rather one vast glory—one vast radiation of Albert. Everything she had seen, everything she had felt or heard, had been so beautiful, so wonderful that even the royal underlinings broke down under ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... Williams loves this game. His "Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience" calls forth Mr. Cotton's "Bloody Tenet washed and made white in the Blood of the Lamb;" and this in turn provokes the torrential flood of Williams's masterpiece, "The Bloody Tenet yet more Bloody, by Mr. Cotton's endeavor to wash it white in the Blood of the Lamb." There is glorious writing here, and its effect cannot be suggested by quoting sentences. But there is one sentence in a letter written ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... not always easy to find a competent authority to perform the ceremony. A justice in McLean County lived by the bank of a river, and his services were sometimes required by impatient lovers on the other bank when the waters were too torrential to cross. In such cases, being a conscientious man, he always insisted that they should ride into the stream far enough for him to discern their features, holding torches to their faces by night ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... tree seem to melt in its fiery embrace, while about where it had been, rose a column of dust from the ground beneath. The horses were so frightened that luckily they stood quite quiet, as I have often known animals to do in such circumstances. Then came the rain, a torrential rain as I, who was out in it holding the horses, became painfully aware. It thinned after a while, however, as the storm ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... fertilising deposits. Without the White Nile, which runs steadily from the perennial reservoirs of the great Central African lakes, the Lower Nile would assume the character of an intermittent wady, such as the neighbouring Khor Baraka, periodically flushed by the discharge of the torrential downpours from Abyssinia. Though there is a periodical increase in the flow of the upper waters of the White Nile, yet the effect of this, lower down, is minimised by the dense quantities of vegetable drift, which, combining with the forest of aquatic growth, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... watched till the kopje was blotted from his sight, and the demons of the storm came shrieking back. Then suddenly there came a crash that shook the world and made the senses reel. He heard the rush and swish of water, water torrential that fell in a streaming mass, and as his understanding came staggering back he knew that the first, most menacing danger was past. The cloud had ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... emerges as springs. Nature forms basins on the heads of the rivers where a part of the water, instead of immediately flowing away, collects in the form of lakes. From these lakes the water runs away slowly instead of in torrential floods. ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... consequence might be foreseen. The load of vapor is in great part precipitated, dense clouds are formed, their particles coalesce to rain-drops, which descend daily in gushes so profuse that the word "torrential" is used to express the copiousness of the rainfall. I could show you this chilling by expansion, and also ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... passing over much that befell us on these treacherous seas, as scorching calms, torrential rains and rageful winds, and how in despite all these we held true on our course by reason of Sir Richard's sailorly skill, I will (I say) come to a certain grey dawn and myself at the tiller whiles Sir Richard slept and beside him the great hound that we had named Pluto, ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... by a Frenchman, with a most potently intelligent and understanding expression, by ejaculating "Nong, nong!" and a profoundly understanding "Ah, wee!" at intervals in the one-sided conversation. He tried this method when called upon by a puzzled private to interpret the torrential speech of a Frenchman, who wished to know whether the Towers had any jam to spare, or whether they would exchange a rum ration for some French wine. 'Enery interjected a few "Ah, wee's!" and then at the finish explained to ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... magnitudes, who did all in their power to refute the romantic principles by reductiones ad absurdum. Endowed for the most part with considerable facility of composition, the poetasters poured forth their feelings with torrential recklessness, demanding freedom for their inspiration, and cursing the age that fettered them with its prosaic cares, its cold reason, and its dry science. At the same time the dramatists and novelists created heroes ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... from the window. But Smith held my wrist as in a vise. He was listening raptly to the torrential speech of the Chinaman who sat in the chair; and I perceived in his eyes the ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... "Polar Star," but he expressed his usual fidelity to her. Miserable or fortunate, he was always the same to her; it was because of his unchangeableness of heart that he was so painfully wounded by her neglect. Carried away, as he often was, by his torrential existence, he might miss writing to her, but he could not understand how she could deprive him of the sacred bread which restored his courage and ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... of torrential downpour the struggle had almost seemed to hang for a while in doubt. But the Shining One lost no prestige, thereby, for always, down there across the valley-mouth, kept leaping and dancing those unquenchable flames of scarlet, amber and violet, fed ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... from drought. This sort of thing has occurred wherever man has been sufficiently civilised and enterprising to commit the folly of destroying forests. Forests have an immense effect on climate, causing humidity of both the air and the soil, and give rise to moderate and persistent instead of torrential streams. Spain has been irretrievably injured by the cutting down of her forests in the course of a few hundred years. The same thing is going on, to a disastrous extent, in parts of the United States. Whole ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... of the Temple appeared at once, for the torrential rains which annually since the deluge had fallen for forty days beginning with the month of Marheshwan, for the first time failed to come, and thenceforward appeared ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... been in Gex just a fortnight when the weather, which hitherto had been splendid, turned to squalls and storms. We were then in the second week of September. A torrential rain had fallen the whole of one day, during which I had only been out in order to meet Leroux, as usual, at the Cafe du Crane Chauve. I had just come home from our evening meeting—it was then ten o'clock—and I was preparing to go comfortably ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... tall man—staggering to his feet as the table slid from him into the chasm, leapt and clutched a crazy chandelier that depended above him. His weight tore it bodily from the ceiling, with a torrential downrush of dust and plaster, sweeping him over the edge of the gulf and overwhelming the Trudgians, husband and wife, ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... town of Taka, till June 15, when the caravan struck N.E. by N., and marched alternately through sandy and fertile country, across mountains of no great height, and plains with herds of ostriches and fine cattle. The low grounds were frequently intersected by the beds of torrential streams. One day, we crossed a rocky plain with the soil strongly impregnated with salt, and pastured by large herds of camels which the Arabs here keep for their milk and flesh alone, seldom using them ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... the train a few miles from Paris, was in the city torrential. Few wayfarers braved the swimming sidewalks, and the little clusters of chairs and tables beneath permanent cafe awnings were one and all neglected. But in the roadways an amazing concourse of vehicles, mostly motor-driven, skimmed, ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... longer than he calculated, swollen rivers blocking his path, luck going against him. Three of his cartridges were expended on a deer before he brought it down and the rains came back, blinding and torrential. Forced to make detours because of the unfordable streams he lost his way and spent precious hours groping about in pine forests, dark as twilight, their boughs bent to the onslaught of the storm. Crossing a watercourse he fell and his matches ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... the crash and bellowing of a great thunderstorm. The lightning flashed fearfully all about us, killing two oxen quite near to my wagon, and the thunder rolled and echoed till the very earth seemed to shake. Then came a wail of cold wind, and after that the swish of torrential rain. Although I was well accustomed to such natural manifestations, especially at this season of the year, I confess that these sights and sounds did not tend to raise my spirits, which were already lower than they should have been on that eventful day. Hans, however, who arrived ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... no more than knee-deep, though rushing with torrential force, when Mr. Pike and the six men lifted the section of bridge and started for'ard with it. They swayed and staggered, but managed to ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the fact that for six months in the year, when the vast sea of Western commerce would seek an outlet through its banks to the East, it is locked by ice, it would be widened into a ship-canal. It lies in the very track of the great north-westerly winds, which descend with torrential rush and polar cold over the Lakes, and thence through Northern New York. Last year, as late as the third of March, when the vegetation of the Middle States was beginning to spring forth in vernal beauty, the whole of the lower Lake region and Western and Northern New York were swept ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... all the stories of Balzac as one immense novel—of some forty volumes—dealing with the torrential life of the human race itself as it roars and eddies in its huge turbulency with France and Paris for a background. I am largely justified in this view of Balzac's work by his own catholic and comprehensive title—The Human Comedy—suggestive certainly of a sort of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... impracticable to provide sewers to deal with the maximum quantity of rain which may possibly fall either in the form of waterspouts or abnormally heavy torrential rains, and the amount of risk which it is desirable to run must be settled after consideration of the details of each particular case. The following table, based principally upon observations taken at the Birmingham Observatory, shows the approximate ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... war, as the invincible aliens savagely advanced and the Earth team hurled bolt after bolt of pure ravening energy—until it appeared that the universe itself might end in one final flare of furious torrential power.... ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... sky, snakes of fire that seemed to be darting into the water to quench their flaming entrails; and the bangs of thunder came, some of them short, crackling like the roll of musketry; others deep, prolonged, booming. The rain was coming down in a torrential cascade, as though the sky were trying to fill up the valleys in the sea and make its ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... dogs, gophers, chipmunks, or even ants; the character of the assumed flood or the species of the supposed burrower depending to some extent upon locality, but principally upon the theorizer's insufficient knowledge of animal industry or of the action of torrential waters. Others are convinced they are formed by the piling up of earth around a bush, clump of grass, stone, or other object acting as a nucleus about which wind-borne material may accumulate—overlooking the fact that clay, gravel, or gumbo soil can not be carried by wind, ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... of 200 years Italy was unequally divided between the king of the Lombards and the exarchate of Ravenna. Rome relapsed into a state of misery. The Campania was reduced to the state of a dreary wilderness. The stagnation of a deluge caused by the torrential swelling of the Tiber produced a pestilential disease, and a stranger visiting Rome might contemplate with horror the solitude of the city. Gregory the Great, whose pontificate lasted from 590 to 604, reconciled the Arians of Italy and Spain to the Catholic Church, conquered Britain in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... hated water except as a medium for quenching his thirst. He hated it because he connected it with the chill and discomfort of the torrential rains, and he feared it for the thunder and lightning ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... serial significance—or mechanical, unintelligent, repulsive reflex—is that the fishes of India did not fall from the sky; that they were found upon the ground after torrential rains, because streams had ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... months, from river into river, and then in and out of what was a great watery puzzle; but the canon with its golden city might have sunk right out of sight, for in spite of every effort the party were driven back at last when the torrential rains ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... interest, he decrees that it is good or bad. Matthew Arnold considers literature a "criticism of life," and he values a work with reference to the moral significance of its ideas. Ruskin's criticism is didactic; he wishes to educate his public, and by force of his torrential eloquence he succeeds in persuading his disciples into acceptance of his teaching, though he may not always convince. Impressionistic criticism, as with M. Anatole France or M. Jules Lemaitre, does not even ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... my dear Marmaduke, was ever mine, until I was swept, I thought for ever, out of your path by a torrential ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... skin, blinded by the deluge of torrential rain, thoroughly confused beyond all recognition of his whereabouts in the tangle of bush through which he was thrusting his way, all his senses dazed by the fierce overhead detonations, and the streams of blazing fire splitting the black vault above, Big Brother Bill beat his way along ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... the midst of the cyclone scene, as the dust storm was ending and the torrential rain succeeded. For the storm, a miniature village had been constructed in break-away fashion, partially sawed through and tricked for the proper moment. Many objects were controlled by invisible wires, including an actual horse ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... milliners and apothecaries would receive the carefully classified smaller gifts of rare value, and a committee of goldsmiths, art critics, and auctioneers, would set their prices. If one of those torrential hurricanes—however, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... retired to the cavity in the cottonwood while the torrential rains fell with a monotonous roar, and the craneflies with their lacy, whirring wings formed a curtain in the entrance to lend ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... "A gentleman with a tongue would have a chance", Mrs. Mountstuart had said. How much greater the chance of a lover! For he had not yet supplicated her: he had shown pride and temper. He could woo, he was a torrential wooer. And it would be glorious to swing round on Lady Busshe and the world, with Clara nestling under an arm, and protest astonishment at the erroneous and utterly unfounded anticipations of any other development. And ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... now fallen. A torrential rain had set in. The car slid from one side of the road to the other like a Scotchman coming home from celebrating Bobbie Burns's birthday and repeatedly threatened to capsize in the ditch. The mud ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... the imperial staff assured Thiers that Napoleon was suffering from a disease of the bladder; but this was contradicted by the valet, Marchand; and if he really was suffering from all, or any one, of the maladies named above, it is very strange that the surgeon allowed him to expose himself to the torrential rain of the night of the 17th-18th for a purpose which a few trusty officers could equally well have discharged (see next chapter). Furthermore, Baron Larrey, Chief Surgeon of the army, who saw Napoleon before the campaign began and during its course, says not a word about the Emperor's ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the claim the men who had hauled out the load of equipment were gone. Suddenly there came on one of those torrential downpours that often deluge the dry plains in spring. It was pitch black as night came on, and no sight of Huey and Ida Mary. The rain stopped at length. Throwing on a sweater, I paced back and forth through the dripping grass listening for the sound of the horses. At last ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... mental and physical suffering. My cabin port stood wide open close to my head, but not even the faintest breath of air came through it. Presently I became aware of a sound which I quickly identified as that of a torrential downpour of tropical rain lashing the surface of the sea outside and the deck above. I stirred uneasily in my bunk, wondering vaguely how long I had lain there, and strove to rise upon my elbow, that I might look through the port. But I might as well have striven to lift ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... distich and pretty poesies pleasingly passionate. She, I say—my mother (God rest her!), e'en she with tongue most harsh, most bitter and most unwearying, hath enforced me, her son (whom Venus bless!)—e'en I that am soul most transcendental—I that am a very wing-ed Mercury—me, I say she hath, by torrential tongueful tumult (gentle lady!), constrained to don the habit of a base, brawling, beefy and most material Mars! Wherefore at my mother's behest (gracious dame!) I ride nothing joyful to be bruised and battered ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... ceiling, which is fairly flat. The floor, thick with a fine brown dust mingled with shining specks of decomposed granite, and dimpled with hundreds of pitfalls of the ant-lion, slopes upward. It is cool, and a dry, secure spot. Not even the torrential rains of many decades of wet seasons have damped the floor. One feels as though he were disturbing the dust of ages; when sitting back to admire the decorated ceiling, he necessarily imprints patterns which are the replicas of those made by flesh and bone long since numbered ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... a new style. Torrential and overwhelming as Flood and Grattan had never been, he proved more successful if less polished. The exaggerations of Gaelic speech found outburst in his English. Peel's smile was "the silver plate on a coffin", Wellington "a stunted ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... the rain rattled like kettledrums on that glass, and the centre of the courtyard was a pond in which a few hansoms were splashing about. Everything—the horses' coats, the cabmen's hats and capes, and the cabmen's red faces, shone and streamed in the torrential summer rain. It is said that geography makes history. In England, and especially in London, weather makes a good deal of history. Impossible to brave that rain, except under the severest pressure of necessity! They were in shelter, and in ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... officers had neither socks nor underwear. The lithe college athletes had lost their spring; the tall, gaunt hunters and cow-punchers lounged listlessly in their dog-tents, which were steaming morasses during the torrential rains, and then ovens when the sun blazed down; ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... a heavy rain set in, and there was nothing for the baffled ape-man to do but wait in the partial shelter of a huge tree until morning; but the coming of dawn brought no cessation of the torrential downpour. ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... spring is not the shift from winter to summer, from cold to heat, but from a long, arid, and barren season to a season short and often irregular in recurrence of torrential rain and sudden fertility. The dry steppes of Central Australia are the scene of a marvellous transformation. In the dry season all is hot and desolate, the ground has only patches of wiry scrub, with an occasional parched ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... days I write of, the climate of the Eastern Province was totally different from what it is today. From October to March thunderstorms, accompanied by torrential rain, were of frequent occurrence. Early in the afternoon clouds would appear over the mountains to the north-west; between three and four o'clock these clouds, now forming immense, towering masses of cumulus, would ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... fighting and retreating. The staff-train moved off, but the officers went on foot. A wide array of men, wagons, horses, cannon, ordinance. All in a vast confusion. None could hear the rattling fire of the machine-guns and rifles. All was lost in a torrential downpour of rain. Towards evening there was a halt. All were eager to rest. No one noticed the approaching dawn. Then a Russian battery commenced to thunder. They were ordered to counter-attack. They trudged back through the rain, no one knew ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... and he could hand on what he had learnt of Carissimi's technique. Humphries, highly gifted, swift, returned to England knowing all Lulli could teach him. He had not Purcell's rich imagination, nor his passion, nor that torrential flow of ever-fresh melody; but it cannot be doubted that he was of immense service in indicating new paths and new ways of doing things. He had—at second hand we must admit—Carissimi's methods and ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... champagne, the last of the case, and promised each other a hearty toast at dinner. Nothing would content Iris but that they should draw a farewell bucketful of water from the well and drench the pitcher-plant with a torrential shower. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... made from the northern side. The view of this mountain from the village of La Grave can hardly be praised too highly; it is one of the very finest road views in the Alps, and one cannot speak in exaggerated terms of its jagged ridges, torrential glaciers, and tremendous precipices. The perpendicular cliff, extending from the Glacier des Etanons to the summit of the Meije, is about 3200 ft. From La Grave the road leads through a bleak region ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... family appeared—and at last I knew I had missed them somehow—a very easy thing in that path-bisected wood. So I told him he could drive like hell to my appartement in the Place des Etats Unis—and off we rushed in the now torrential rain—It was one of the worst thunder storms I have ever seen ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... especially the case with meadows circumstanced like the one we have described—embosomed in deep woods, with the ground rising gently away from it all around, the network of tree-roots in which all the ground is clasped preventing any rapid torrential washing. But, in exceptional cases, beautiful lawns formed with great deliberation are overwhelmed and obliterated at once by the action of land-slips, earthquake avalanches, or extraordinary floods, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... of creepers and climbing plants. Thus, by the time the deluge was fairly upon us, we were quite snugly ensconced. We did not, however, remain in-doors throughout the whole of the day, but went in and out, hunting for food and catching game just as usual; the torrential rain which beat down upon our naked bodies being rather a pleasant experience than otherwise. At this time we had a welcome addition to our food in the form of cabbage-palms and wild honey. We also started building a catamaran, ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... just indicated by the dark- blue shadows in the distance, and descend the lofty walls of the Causses to find silvery cascades, impetuous rivers, and fountains gushing from mossy clefts. The showers of spring, the torrential rains of autumn, the snows of winter, have filtered to a depth of ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... November the rains came. First in hesitant showers, then in steadier downpourings, finally, as December advanced, in torrential fury. Veils of water descended upon them, swept round their knoll till it stood marooned amid yellow eddies. The river rose boisterous, swirled into the pits, ate its way across the honey-combed reach of mud and fingered along ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... metropolitan life offered. These were the premises upon which he set out to build. But he would not have been a child of his time had he not seen life through the temperament of his generation. With all his sturdy mental and moral fibre he could not withstand the torrential current of skepticism and revaluation that swept through the intellectual world and uprooted its spiritual mainstays. Though the action of his plays was based upon eternal conflicts of the human tragi-comedy—the irreconcilable ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... the roar of driving hail. It swept the woods, rending leaves and smashing twigs, while a constant blaze of lightning flickered about the grass. Then the thunder died away and the hail gave place to torrential rain, while the slender trees rocked in the blast and small branches drove past the tent, where the men crouched inside. After the rain ceased, suddenly, a fierce red light streamed along the saturated grass from the ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... On these carriers are placed the dishes as they come from the hands of the scrapers. When the carrier thus laden commences its circular journey, the dishes—placed well apart—are subjected to dashing jets of warm, soapy water, and then to more torrential jets of hot, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... pink, so that whole villages blush as you look them in the face. Sometimes, too, there's a blue or a green, or a golden-ochre house; here and there a high, broken wall of rose or faded yellow, with torrential geraniums boiling over the top. And the effect of this riot of colour, in contrast with the silver gray of the velvety thatch, or lichen-jewelled slate roofs, under great, cool trees, is even more beautiful than Italy. If all England is a park, Devonshire ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... heard Hans von Buelow in recital during his American tour, in 1876, listened to piano playing that was at once learned and convincing. A few years before, in 1872, Rubinstein had come and conquered. The torrential splendor of his pianism, his mighty crescendos and whispering diminuendos, his marvelous variety of tone—all were in the nature of a revelation; his personal magnetism carried everything before it. American ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower |
