"Swamp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... both alike directed Fitzjocelyn's course across the Isthmus of Panama, which in 1853 had newly become practicable for adventurous travellers. A canal conducted him as far as Cruces, after which he had to push on through wild forest and swamp, under the escort of the muleteers who took charge of the various travellers who had ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Chesapeake bay, or gulf, or river. It forms the eastern boundary of Virginia. Flowing into it from the west the river Potomac bounds the State on the north, while a vast marsh, known by the unattractive name of the Dismal Swamp, separates it on the south from North Carolina. Between the Potomac and the Dismal Swamp several other rivers and creeks are to be found. The largest is James river, with Portsmouth and Gosport near the mouth. Running into it on the north is Hampton creek, on ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... we row'd up the River, we found the Land towards the Mouth, and for about sixteen Miles up it, scarce any Thing but Swamp and Percoarson, {Percoarson, a Sort of low Land.} affording vast Ciprus-Trees, of which the French make Canoes, that will carry fifty or sixty Barrels. After the Tree is moulded and dug, they saw them in two Pieces, and so put a Plank between, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... horse nibbled at a tall weed in the roadway. They had got fairly into the prairie, and now at some distance on left and right gawky Queen Anne houses appeared. But along their path the waste was unbroken. The swamp on either side of the road was filled with birds, who flew in and out and perched on the dry planks in the walks. An abandoned electric-car track, raised aloft on a high embankment, crossed the avenue. Here and there a useless hydrant thrust its head far above the muddy ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... bushes and brambles of the swamp, the forester burst into the area with an exclamation ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... of ten thousand roubles. Naturally, our hero was in the highest of spirits. For the first fifteen versts or so the road led through forest land and tillage belonging to Platon and his brother-in-law; but directly the limit of these domains was reached, forest land began to be replaced with swamp, and tillage with waste. Also, the village in Khlobuev's estate had about it a deserted air, and as for the proprietor himself, he was discovered in a state of drowsy dishevelment, having not long left his bed. A man of about forty, he had ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... swear by Hayne because he's a good fellow and sings a jolly song and plays the piano—and poker. One of these days he'll swamp you all, sure as shooting. He's in debt now, and it'll fetch him before you know it. What he needs is to be under a captain who could discipline him a little. By Jove, I'd do it!" And Rayner's teeth ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... and by woodland, by swamp and by meadow, The gloom gathers round in its dim, mystic pall, Then my fancies come forth, spirit-children of shadow, Slow gliding from haunts where the ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... but he only stops long enough to catch his breath. Cy's tellin' himself fairy yarns and he hopes he believes 'em. Man alive! can't you SEE? Ain't he gettin' more foolish over the young one every day? Don't she boss him round like the overseer on a cranberry swamp? Don't he look more contented than he has sence he got off the cars? I tell you, Bailey, that child fills a place in Whit's life that's been runnin' to seed and needed weedin'. Nothin' could fill it better—unless ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the forest was now changing as she advanced. The first tamaracks appeared, slim, silvery trunks, crowned with the gold of autumn foliage, outer sentinels of that vast maze of swamp and stream called Owl Marsh, the stronghold and refuge of forest wild things—sometimes the sanctuary ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... was too innocent, too ignorant to guess the real truth from what she had overheard. But she had learned enough to be no longer the pure-minded young girl of a few hours before. It seemed to her as if a fetid swamp now lay before her, barring her entrance into life. Vague as her perceptions were, this swamp before her seemed more deep, more dark, more dreadful from uncertainty, and Jacqueline felt that thenceforward she could make no step in life without risk of falling ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... for a sleigh-ride, for every bush and tree was covered with a white fleece of snow, and the morning sun added a tiny sparkle to every crystal. A thicket of spruce was changed to a grove of towering white cones and an alder swamp to a fantastic fairyland. It was all new to Frank, and as he drove away with that bright and vivacious girl for a companion it is needless to say he enjoyed ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... divided the great desert of Persia into two regions, that to the north being termed Dasht-i-Kavir, and that further south the Dasht-i-Lut—and that Lut is the one name for the whole desert, Dash-i-Lut being almost a redundancy, and that Kavir (the arabic Kafr) is applied to every saline swamp. "This great desert stretches from a few miles out of Tehran practically to the British frontier, a distance ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... common to log houses,) and remained there unnoticed during the massacre of the eleven that were killed at this place. She remained on her hiding place till just before the arrival of a party, who were in pursuit of the murderers, when she came down and fled to a swamp, where, a mere child as she was, with the horrors of the late scene before her, she lay concealed until the next day, when seeing a party go up to the house, she came up, and on being asked how she ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner
... of the earth. The sun may draw up the moisture from the river, the morass, and the ocean, to be given back in genial showers to the garden, to the pasture, and the corn field; but it may, likewise, force away the moisture from the fields of tillage, to drop it on the stagnant pool, the saturated swamp, or the unprofitable sand-waste. The gardens in the south of Europe supply, perhaps, a not less apt illustration of a system of finance judiciously conducted, where the tanks or reservoirs would represent the ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... an hour's rest under the shelter (save the mark!) of the dripping tent, I ran the 'Dudley Docker' off before the gale, following the coast around to the north. This course for the first hour was fairly risky, the heavy sea before which we were running threatening to swamp the boat, but by 8 a.m. we had obtained a slight lee from the land. Then I was able to keep her very close in, along a glacier front, with the object of picking up lumps of fresh- water ice as we sailed through them. Our thirst ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... starlings. This year (1916) both birds were noticed just after the scene-shifter had swept the hills of mists, and now other birds seem to have awakened to the conditions which the starlings and the nutmegs brought with them from hotter lands. The swamp pheasants are whooping and gurgling, and that semi-migratory fellow, the spangled drongo—a flattering name, for he jangles but does not spangle—sits on the slim branch of the Moreton Bay ash which held last year's nest and chatters ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... and more miserable than anything she had ever beheld in her life in the tenements. It was big and mouldy, and dark with cobwebs swinging like dusty curtains over the windows that had not been washed for years. The windows looked out over a swamp that ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... such punishing riding in Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky. The signs could be read, and as Drew spurred along that faltering line of march late that night, carrying a message, he felt a creeping chill which was not born of the night wind nor a warning of swamp fever. ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... the Epics is not so important a topic as the methods of criticism. They ought to be sober, logical, and self- consistent. When these qualities are absent, Homeric criticism may be described, in the recent words of Blass, as "a swamp haunted by wandering ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... The thick "swamp-fog" still hovered above the Crescent City, when a carriage, drawn by two horses, rolled out through one of its suburbs, and on along the Shell Road, and in the ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... most of my time." From modern poetry he went back to the earlier sources, first with the idea of systematic reading and at last through Chaucer and Gower and early ballads, until he lost himself "in a dismal swamp of barbarous romances and lying Latin chronicles. I got hold of the Bibliotheca Monastica, containing a copious account of Anglo-Norman authors, with notices of their works, and set seriously to reading every one of them." One profit of his antiquarianism, however, was, as he says, his attention ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... will have to handle. Knobos is calling from out near Mars. He has caught the Endymion, and has killed about half her crew doing it. Milton has finally reported from Venus, after being out of touch for five days. He trailed the Wintons into Thalleron swamp. They crashed him there, but he won out and has what he went after. And just now I got a flash from Fletcher, in the asteroid belt. I think that he has finally traced that dope line. But Knobos is on now—what do you want him ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... serve no end. We parted at the station very much as if we had been married half a century, and I returned home to brood over the strange things that had happened. But before long I found myself in a weltering swamp of futile speculation, and turned my thoughts perforce into other channels, lest I should lose the power of thinking, and be drowned in reverie: my uncle had taught me that reverie is Phaeton in ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... the settlement. The afterwards flourishing Sambir was born in a swamp and passed its youth in malodorous mud. The houses crowded the bank, and, as if to get away from the unhealthy shore, stepped boldly into the river, shooting over it in a close row of bamboo platforms elevated on high piles, amongst which the ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... I was shivering in an ague caught in that pestilential fever-swamp, and then the fever fiend himself came and took up his abode with me, and I am now only just convalescent, and can sun myself on the deck, and read and write a little; but the illness and the unconsciousness have done as such things often do—interposed a ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... on their side. We may well believe that it was the spirit of God that put it into the hearts of Deborah and Barak to delay the battle until there should be a rainy day. When the clash finally came there was a heavy downpour. The flat plain became a swamp. The war chariots sank into the mud and were helpless. The Canaanites became panic-stricken and fled in terror. Many of them were drowned in the attempt to cross the Kishon, which is usually a shallow creek, but on that day was a deep and swiftly flowing ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... with the moist dimness of a swamp. The source of the light that filtered through the faint mist and seemed to permeate the air was not discernible, and the roof of this underground world was lost in the darkness above them. The placid surface of the water gleamed vaguely in the vats ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... turned broadside and the ripple of surf threatened to swamp it, only a naked boy ran into the water and pulled the bow high up on the sand. The man stood up and sent a questing glance along the line of villagers. A rainbow sweater, dirty and the worse for wear, clung loosely to his broad shoulders, and a red cotton handkerchief ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... climate were affirmed to have arisen through the shifting of the earth's axis at the Flood, and to this ill effect were added the noxious influences of that universal catastrophe, which, "converting the surface of the earth into a vast swamp, gave rise to fermentations of the blood and ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... trousers, and a pink waistcoat, from the bosom of which, amidst a large bunch of the splendid flowers of the magnolia, protruded part of a young alligator, which seemed more anxious to glide through the muddy waters of a swamp than to spend its life swinging to and fro amongst folds of the finest lawn. The gentleman held in one hand a cage full of richly-plumed nonpareils, whilst in the other he sported a silk umbrella, on which I could plainly read 'Stolen from I,' these words being painted ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... a hand cart he saw in a blacksmith's yard labeled "For Sale." He drove it as near to the swamp island as he could, without getting stuck in the mud. Then, he called to Hiram, who put himself in wading trim. The empty gasoline cans were over to the cart by Hiram. Dave trundled them to the town, got them filled and to the island, and, returning the cart, was ready to prepare ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... hesitating—evidently they mistrusted it. My men yelled aloud, as only Kaffirs can, and that settled them. Headed by the wounded bull, whose martial ardour, like my own, was somewhat cooled, they spread out and dashed into the treacherous swamp—for such it was, though just then there was no water to be seen. For a few yards all went well with them, though they clearly found it heavy going; then suddenly the great bull sank up to his belly in ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... a dark brown or black swamp soil consisting of large amounts of humus or decaying organic matter mixed with some fine sand and clay. It is found in low ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... legislator who is reputed to have re-elected himself for a number of years by 'putting through' successive appropriations for the 'improvement' of a stream which rose in an inaccessible mountain and emptied itself into an unfathomable swamp. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the same species in respect to the size, shape, and number of these marks, and in the general aspect of the plumage resulting from such variations. "In the common song sparrow (Melospiza melodia), the fox-coloured sparrow (Passerella iliaca), the swamp sparrow (Melospiza palustris), the black and white creeper (Mniotilta varia), the water-wagtail (Seiurus novaeboracencis), in Turdus fuscescens and its allies, the difference in the size of the streaks ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... in the late fall of an unusual year on the Bentley farms. Everywhere the crops had been heavy. That spring, Jesse had bought part of a long strip of black swamp land that lay in the valley of Wine Creek. He got the land at a low price but had spent a large sum of money to improve it. Great ditches had to be dug and thousands of tile laid. Neighboring farmers shook ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... offence. At least our guards came up shortly afterwards, marshalled us, and led us through a small wood into a low-lying field. It was apparently another fiendish inspiration of Major Bach to confine us here, because the field was nothing but a swamp. It was not so soddened as to allow the feet to sink ankle deep into the mire, but was like a wet sponge. It was impossible to sit down or one ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... did not think of marrying, and only hoped to obtain leave to lie among the reeds and drink some of the swamp water. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with "The Angel" are full of ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... farmyard, and no doubt used to have a drawbridge. Forty or fifty years ago, it was clear and had fish in it, but the bridge fell in and choked the stream, and since that it has become full of reeds and a mere swamp. It must have been a really useful protection in the evil times of ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of materials requiring a greater present expenditure, but being far more durable. From the same cause, much land, that in other countries would be cultivated, lies waste. All travelers take notice of large tracts of lands, chiefly swamps, which continue in a state of nature. To bring a swamp into tillage is generally a process to complete which requires several years. It must be previously drained, the surface long exposed to the sun, and many operations performed, before it can be made capable of bearing a crop. Though yielding, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... accompany him to a swamp, at some miles' distance from Philadelphia, to hear one of these concerts. The performance lasted some time, and it was late before we returned to town: I went to bed tired, and waked in the morning with a cold, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... centers generally. I have tried to avoid the two extremes which Guizot says are always to be shunned, viz.: that of the "visionary theorist" and that of the "libertine practician." The former is analogous to a blank cartridge, and the latter to the mire of a swamp or the entangled underbrush of a thicket. The legs of one's theories (as Lincoln said of those of a man) should be long enough to reach the earth; and yet they must be free to move upon the solid ground of fact and experience. Details must always be left to the person who is to do the work, ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... triodia; but to the south, the latter and mallee scrub approached somewhat near. We saw several small ponds of water as we passed along, but none of any size. In seven or eight miles it split into several channels, and eventually exhausted itself upon an open grassy swamp or plain. The little plain looked bright and green. I found some rain water, in clay pans, upon it. A clay pan is a small area of ground, whose top soil has been washed or blown away, leaving the hard clay exposed; and upon this surface, one, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... thousand francs. As they lived quietly, this income would have been amply sufficient for them, if their lavish generosity had not constantly exhausted their supplies. It drained their money from them as the sun draws water from a swamp. The gold melted, vanished, disappeared. How? No one knew. One of them was always saying: "I don't know how it is, but I have spent a hundred francs to-day, and I haven't ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... apiece, to be paid on their return, or to their families if they died on the road, which cattle we purchased and left in charge of a chief, who was their kinsman. As it happened two of the poor fellows did die, one of them of cold in a swamp through which they took a short cut, and the other at the teeth of a hungry lion. The third, however, won ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... perfume of the crab, and the richness and raciness of the pippin. But Thoreau loved other apples than the wild sorts, and was obliged to confess that his favorites could not be eaten indoors. Late in November he found a blue-pearmain tree growing within the edge of a swamp, almost as good as wild. "You would not suppose," he says, "that there was any fruit left there on the first survey, but you must look according to system. Those which lie exposed are quite brown and rotten now, or perchance a few ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... cottonwood leaves were rustling; bees were humming in the tamarack blossoms. I lay in the shade, resting my burning feet and achiag bones, and I watched Nielsen as he whistled over the camp chores. Then I heard the sweet song of a meadow lark, and after that the melodious deep note of a swamp blackbird. These birds evidently were traveling north and had ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... shy and ladylike of trees, 50 Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, And hints at her foregone gentilities With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves; The swamp-oak, with his royal purple on, Glares red as blood across the sinking sun, 55 As one who proudlier to a ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... fortune to leave them. O man and woman! have you not learned that, like vultures, like hawks, like eagles, riches have wings and fly away? Though you should be successful in leaving a competency behind you, the trickery of executors may swamp it in a night; or some elders or deacons of our churches may get up an oil company, or some sort of religious enterprise sanctioned by the church, and induce your orphans to put their money into a hole in Venango County; and if, by the most skilful derricks, the sunken money cannot be ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... the open, the skipper let his quartermaster take the wheel. "'Old her to the wind, lad," he cautioned. "A beam sea 'ud swamp us." Next he whistled down to the engine room. They were to stoke with turpentine and cotton. At once Murguia began to fidget. "It, it will make ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... gone, To the rice swamp dank and lone, Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, Where the noisome insect stings, Where the fever-demon strews Poison with the falling dews, Where the sickly sunbeams glare Through the hot and ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... weakness that made me think so.) Where was Tyre? Let him go and bombard Tyre. Nobody cares for Tyre now. Where was Sidon? If he wanted to throw away his ammunition, let him "go" for Sidon. Where was Tuckahoo, New Jersey? Would New York care if Tuckahoo was reduced to the level of its original swamp? Moreover, there were lots of cities away off in China, yearning to have the rays of modern civilization let into them. Would it be anything out of his way to travel in that direction with a few big KRUPP guns, and give civilization a fair opening to get in at? ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... bottle—and all would end happily. As it is, all ends miserably, or would so end, but for the Captain, whose last words before the fall of the Curtain, uttered in his best French, are "Ong Avong! Marsh!" From which it may be inferred that they are going into a dismal swamp, but it is magnificent, if not la guerre, and this cry of the Captain has a true military ring about it that gladdens the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... went on at a great rate like that, an' I thought he was jest wanderin' in his mind with the fever, so I humored him. But he saw through me, an' he wouldn't take no but I should go down into Burnham's swamp with him to see how he'd ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... top dressing of the sweepings of the farm-yard and cow-houses; a rather heavy loam, highly manured with burnt and decayed vegetables, and old cow dung; the third was a patch of ground, which was originally an unwholesome swamp, from being eighteen inches to two feet, lower than the surrounding land; the soil appeared to be a hard sterile clay, and covered with long coarse grass and rushes. As there was a tank near it, I cut away one ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... and scalping knife in hand-to-hand combat. For two hours the battle raged in the darkness, and only when daylight came were the troops able to charge the redskins, dislodge them from behind the trees, and drive them to a safe distance in the neighboring swamp. Sixty-one of Harrison's officers and men were killed or mortally wounded; one hundred and twenty-seven others suffered serious injury. The Governor himself probably owed his life to the circumstance that in the confusion he mounted a bay horse instead of ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... mile, however, above the head of the narrow pond, the ardent explorer came upon a level of sparse alder swamp. Here he found the stream just beginning to spread over its low banks. The cause of this spreading was a partial obstruction in mid-channel—what looked, at first glance, like an accidental accumulation of brush and stones and mud. A second ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... family drama, dealing with modern conditions and in particular with the problems which complicate marriage." This play he finished, lingering at Amalfi, in September, 1879. It was an engineer's experiment at turning up and draining a corner of the moral swamp which Norwegian society seemed to be to his ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... pride too preposterous for the contemplation of serious and intelligent men. Quite as well might Great Britain now invite the swarming millions of India to send rajas and members of the lower House, in proportion to population, to swamp the Lords and Commons and rule the English people. If it had been supposed that even Hawaii, with its overwhelming preponderance of Kanakas and Asiatics, would become a State, she could not have been annexed. If the territories we are conquering must become States, we might better renounce them ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... toxicodendron, one being the shrub commonly called poison oak, and the other a climbing vine generally known by the name of poison ivy. The Rhus venenata grows in swampy localities all over the United States, and is known as poison-sumac, swamp dog-wood, poison-elder, and poison dog-wood. About twenty-four to forty-eight hours after the exposure, the skin begins to itch, and this is shortly followed by an inflammation accompanied by the formation of numerous small blisters, and still later by scaling. It ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... children, perhaps, would come. Even if they did not, Robin would pervade their lives, in long clothes, short skirts, knickerbockers, trousers. He might, of course, some day choose a profession which would carry him to some distant land: to an Indian jungle or a West African swamp. But by that time his parents would be middle-aged people. And how would their love be then? Dion knew that now, when Rosamund and he were still young, both less than thirty, he would give a hundred Robins, even if they were all his own Robins, to keep his one Rosamund. That ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... be placed at the present point of exit of the brook which runs from the springs, collects the water of the open ditches, and spreads over the flat in the southwest corner of the tract, converting it into a swamp. Suppose that, by going some distance into the next field, we can secure an outlet of 3 feet and 9 inches (3.75) below the level of the swamp, and that we decide to allow 3 inches drop between the bottom of the tile at that point, and the reduced level of the brook to secure the ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... Dane was beginning to get rather scared of his grim-visaged little companion; and so, to prevent further recurrence to unpleasant topics, he plunged once more into the detail of professional matters. Here was a grassy swamp that was a deep water channel the year before last; there was a fair-way in the process of silting up; there was a mud-bar with twenty-four feet, but steamers drawing twenty-seven feet could scrape over, as the mud was soft. The current round that bend raced at a good eleven ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... peeping into that soul which might so soon become her own, that Medwin, while walking up the Shell-Road, and looking wistfully at the muddy canal, which swam away sluggishly on one hand, while the green and stagnant swamp stretched interminably upon the other, that he was startled by the rapid approach of a carriage, and the sound of gay and noisy mirth. He looked up. The brilliant equipage of Mrs. Harland was hurrying by, and he had ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... was standing on the ramparts of the Castle on the south-western side which overhangs the green brae, where it slopes down into what was in those days the green swamp or morass, called by the natives of Auld Reekie the Nor Loch; it was a dark gloomy day, and a thin veil of mist was beginning to settle down upon the brae and the morass. I could perceive, however, that there was a skirmish taking place in ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... but a small and uninteresting place, situate in a most unwholesome locality, lying opposite to a murky swamp, whose poisonous vapours spread disease and death around. It is the highway to Sandusky city, an inland border town, rendered famous for the obstinacy with which the inhabitants and a body of U.S. Infantry defended a fort there against the attacks of the British troops in 1812. Having ascertained ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... wide, beaten track took them through, as though they walked in a lofty tunnel with green walls through which one could look, but beyond which one might not pass. Then out into the sunlight again, skirting a swamp of plumed papyrus with many waterfowl, and swarms of insects, and birds wheeling swiftly catching the insects, and other larger birds soaring grandly above on the watch-out for what might chance. This swamp was like a green river flowing ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... But he kept by the side of Henry. Tom Ross was on the other side, and the three flitted through the bushes with a long swinging stride that still covered ground at a remarkable rate. Once they came to low, marshy soil, a swamp almost, where back water from the Ohio or the creek evidently stood in flood time, and they were forced to curve about, thus giving their pursuers a chance to come diagonally and to make a ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... river quaileth, Like a swamp by giant trod, And the broad commotion waileth, Stricken with the ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... bridge which stretched over a deep river flowing through a flat and marshy land. Before crossing the bridge he sat down on the banks of the stream and sighed dismally over his sad fate. Suddenly a misshapen toad crawled out of the swamp, and, sitting down opposite him, asked: 'What's the matter with ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... ten thousand over a hundred thousand, is partially explained by the nature of the ground; the Persians had not room enough to maneuver, and must have been thrown into confusion on the skirts of the northern swamp, and if over six thousand of them were slain, they must have been killed on the shore in the panic of their embarkation. But still the shore is broad, level, and firm, and the Greeks must have been convinced that the gods themselves terrified the hearts of the barbarians, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... record appeared a carriage-road, nearly grown over with grass, which Anne followed. It descended by a gentle slope, dived under dark-rinded elm and chestnut trees, and conducted her on till the hiss of a waterfall and the sound of the sea became audible, when it took a bend round a swamp of fresh watercress and brooklime that had once been a fish pond. Here the grey, weather-worn front of a building edged from behind the trees. It was Oxwell Hall, once the seat of a family now extinct, and of late years ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... them and their ignorance, and want of scholarship, in print. They know I spoke the truth. Their hatred is witness to my veracity. They have been nursing their venom for years. Now with one consent they pour it forth. It is a vile plot and conspiracy. They were sworn to swamp me, so they formed a ring. They did not care what they spent so long as they succeeded in crushing me. Every one has been bought, miserably, scandalously bought. This is the only conceivable explanation of the reception my play has met with. They got at the members ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... afternoon he had taken a dozen of the village children to find a swamp whose borders were fringed with gentians, which seemed to have caught the color of the wind-swept October skies. He would not let Helen go. "The walk would tire you," he said; but he himself seemed ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... shores, decipherable only to a pilot's trained sight, the unbroken procession of sugar estates was broken at last and the shining Votaress, having rounded a point from north to west, was crossing close above it with Seven Lakes and the Devil's Swamp on her starboard bow. The Antelope ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... auxiliaries began to be driven back. Then the legions took up the fight and equalized matters by staying the enemy's wild charge. Meanwhile a Batavian deserter approached Cerialis, avowing that he could take the enemy in the rear if the cavalry were sent round the edge of the swamp: the ground was solid there, and the Cugerni, whose task it was to keep watch, were off their guard. Two squadrons of horse were sent with the deserter, and succeeded in outflanking the unsuspecting enemy. The legions in front, when the din told them what had happened, ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... took his seat as Chief Justice at the opening of the first term of Court in Washington, the new capital, on Wednesday, February 4, 1801. The most beautiful of capital cities was then little more than a swamp, athwart which ran a streak of mire named by solemn congressional enactment "Pennsylvania Avenue." At one end of this difficult thoroughfare stood the President's mansion—still in the hands of the builders but already sagging and leaking through the shrinkage of the green ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... in Ayrshire, Scotland, neighbors to the family of Robert Burns. And, like the poet's people, they were very poor. No wonder! The poor man has no chance in the old country. Years ago an ancestor of mine leased a tract of worthless swamp land for forty-nine years at a penny an acre per year. By hard labor and perseverance he drained the land and made it productive. So when the forty-nine years were up and the family sought an extension of the lease, the rent went up to one pound an acre. This was pretty hard; but by frugality ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... plentifully on the adjacent Pine Islets, where it appears to constitute the only arboreal vegetation. A few cabbage palms, Corypha australis, are the only other trees worth mentioning. Among the birds observed, black and white cockatoos, swamp pheasants, and crows were the most numerous. A fine banded snail, Helix incei, was the only landshell met with. A Littorina and a Nerita occur abundantly on the trunks and stems of the mangroves, and the creek swarmed with stingrays (Trygon) and numbers ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... way, he came to a cart path, which led towards the house. This he followed, descending a hill into a swamp, which was covered over with alders and birches. At the foot of the declivity he heard the rippling of waters; but the bushes concealed the stream ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... standing alone, and when she reached the point in the path where she could see the crossing, Darby was already on the other side of the swamp, striding knee-deep through the water as if he were on dry land. She could not have made him hear if she had wished it; for on a sudden a great rushing wind swept through the pines, bending them down ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... Bungo, how shall we manage? You don't mean to swamp us in a shove through that surf, ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... Day, 1863, and an anxious day it was to all of us. We might have landed our cargo where we were lying, but it would have been landed in a dismal swamp, and we should have been obliged to go into Wilmington for our ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... with the wild rabble, for they could not be termed an army, to meet the English. The leaders yielded so far to his advice as to take up a position where they would fight with the best chance of success. The spot lay between a swamp extending a vast distance, and a river, and they were thus open only to an attack in front, and could, if defeated, take refuge in the bog, where horsemen could not ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... is seen trending north and south about twelve or fourteen miles at the back of Perth, a man once in the woods has no object but the sun by which to direct his course. Every now and then he comes upon an impassable swamp, which throws him out of his track, and causes him infinite difficulty before he can get round it, and then he begins to doubt of his true direction. This is certainly, an awkward predicament; and nothing is so easy as for inexperienced bushmen to lose ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... quarrel with Charlotte was a very severe one—full of snow-storms and fierce winds, and bitterly cold. All winter long the swamps were frozen up, and men could get into them to cut wood. Barney went day after day and cut the wood in a great swamp a mile behind his house. He stood from morning until night hewing down the trees, which had gotten their lusty growth from the graves of their own kind. Their roots were sunken deep among and twined about the very bones of their fathers ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to take off her shoes and stockings and she advised the other girl to do the same. "Else you'll get 'em all dirt going through the swamp to the pool. We don't have none too much water hereabouts but what we have ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... accompanied the Colonel over his plantation. It was a large one, somewhat over seven hundred acres, inclusive of forest land, about two thirds being reclaimed upland swamp soil growing seaisland cotton. An old family estate, most of the negroes belonging to it had been born there or in the immediate vicinity; there were about two hundred of them, some living near their master's house, as has been mentioned, the rest in a sort of colony at the other ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... includes so many different kinds of country that it is impossible to devise a scheme of equipment which shall suit all. A hunting-trip in the pantanals, in the swamp country of the upper Paraguay, offers a simple problem. An exploring trip through an unknown tropical forest region, even if the work is chiefly done by river, offers a very difficult problem. All that I can pretend to do is ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... chosen ground it would be well. This was a difficult matter, for though (as he knew) the Saracen army followed him in the woods, it kept well out of sight. None but the light horsemen showed near at hand, and their tactics were to sting like wasps, and fly—never to join battle. At last, in the swamp of Arsuf, where the Dead River splays over broad marshes, and goes in a swamp to the sea-edge, he saw his chance, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... not a swamp grape and is not found growing under swampy conditions, it is fond of water. In the semi-arid regions always, and in humid regions usually, it is found growing along the banks of streams, in ravines, on the islands of rivers and in wet places. It is not nearly so capable of withstanding ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... shaking his bushy head, "that old Toby Vanderwiller knows the rights of that line business; but he won't tell. Gedney Raffer's got a strangle hold on Toby and his little swamp farm, and Toby doesn't dare ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... called the Yarra-Yarra, words which signify in the native language, "flowing constantly." It is distinguished by its title from the large majority of rivers, which are nearly still, and which, after extending only for a mile or two, form at length a species of swamp. Such rivers are generally styled lagoons. The Yarra-Yarra is navigable up to the town of Melbourne for ships of a large size—say 400 tons; but the seven miles of distance being circuitous, and the banks of sand at the mouth of the river occasionally shifting, the larger class of ships generally ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... to hiding, receiving night that talks not, Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, To the solemn shadowy cedars and ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... who were consumed by thirst, had rushed to the cisterns. They broke open the doors. A miry swamp stretched ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... whispered Dick; and leading the way he doubled back, following the long low bed of swamp-loving wood, and keeping in its shelter till they were once more opposite to the spot ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... the evening work was done, And the frogs were loud in the meadow-swamp, Over his shoulder he slung his gun, And ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... hurried down to his tanning pits in the swamp; and Van Heemskirk went thoughtfully to Broad Street; walking slowly, with his left arm laid across his back, and his broad, calm countenance beaming with that triumph which he foresaw for the city he loved. When he reached Federal Hall, he stood a minute in the doorway; and with inspired eyes ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... began at five o'clock and at eight everything was over; the Germans had been driven into the slough of Chickahominy swamp to the northeast of Richmond (where McClellan lost an army) and slaughtered here to the last man; whereupon the mountaineers, having done what they came to do, started ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... the fierce Black Cat, as an Indian, coming after him with a club. And, looking at him, he said, "No club can kill me; nothing but a bulrush or cat-tail can take my life." Then the Black Cat, who knew where to get one, galloped off to a swamp, and, having got a large cat-tail, came to the Coon and hit him hard with it. It burst and spread all over the Raccoon's head, and, being wet, the fuzz stuck to him. And the Black Cat, thinking it was the Coon's brains and ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the enemy and fired continuously. Anyone who saw our soldiers under these conditions and heard their jokes will never forget the sight. All the folk at home who grumbled at the slow progress ought to have been sent for a single day and night into that mud-swamp! ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... churls last out till we Have duly hardened bones and thews For scouring leagues of swamp and sea Of braggart mobs and ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... the trees along the roadside; hard by a little herd of lazy cows stood in a swamp under a spreading willow like statues of content; now and again an agile chipmunk ran along the stone wall and disappeared into one of its little rocky caverns; in the fields beyond farm hands with great straw hats could be seen at their labors, reminding poor Tom of his ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... returns from the very rich scrub lands are by far the highest. It is easy to judge of the quality of land by the indigenous timber upon it. Rich land, suitable for laying down in grass, is covered with a dense growth of sassafras, tree-fern, musk, and pear tree, with large blue or swamp gums, and an underbush of what are known as cathead ferns. Stringy-bark trees mean a poorer soil, and any land bearing them should ...
— Australia The Dairy Country • Australia Department of External Affairs
... persecutor, who is certain to be gored to death. This, indeed, not unfrequently happens. But a Llanero cares little for death. He faces it daily in his lonely converse with thousands of intractable beasts, in his bath in the river swarming with alligators,—in the swamp teeming with serpents, against whose poison there is no antidote, and whose bite will destroy the life of a man in a single hour. Content with the wild excitement of his daily round of duty and recreation, with his meal ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... strong, that it catched his ruffle and spoiled it, as I saw. New-Jersey having many pine-trees in different parts of it, I then imagined that something like a volatile oil of turpentine might be mixed with the waters from a pine-swamp, but this supposition did not quite satisfy me. I mentioned the fact to some philosophical friends on my return to England, but it was not much attended to. I suppose I was thought a ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... these scraps of earth and render into them the idea which fills a clod with beauty. In one such dismal pit—not here—I remember there grew a great quantity of bulrushes. Another was surrounded with such masses of swamp-foliage that it reminded those who saw it of the creeks in semi-tropical countries. But somehow they do not seem to see these things, but go on the old mill-round of scenery, exhausted many a year since. They do not see them, perhaps, because most of ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... wisdom, reason, right, formed of the pure snow of the ideal, after a long fall from rock to rock, after having reflected the sky in its transparency and increased by a hundred affluents in the majestic mien of triumph, insurrection is suddenly lost in some quagmire, as the Rhine is in a swamp. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... one er de niggers on de nex' plantation, one er ole Mars Henry Brayboy's niggers, had runned away de day befo', en tuk ter de swamp, en ole Mars Dugal' en some er de yuther nabor w'ite folks had gone out wid dere guns en dere dogs fer ter he'p 'em hunt fer de nigger; en de han's on our own plantation wuz all so flusterated dat we fuhgot ter tell de noo han' 'bout de goopher on de scuppernon' vimes. Co'se he smell ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the spot where the Indians lay. I threw a few dry sticks on the fire, so as to obtain some light from the blaze. I found that the thieves lay on a knoll between the brook and the swamp. There was not space enough on either side for two horses to pass abreast without stepping over or on their sleeping forms; but there was no other way for us to get out of the trap. The horses might pass singly, and I decided at once what ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... buildings in Petrograd are of stucco, and indeed, except for her churches and a few other buildings, the Russian capital resembles a poor imitation of Paris. Peter the Great, who constructed the city upon the swamp lands surrounding the river Neva, was determined to force Russia into the western world instead of the east. For this reason he brought all his artists from France and Italy, so that he might model his new city ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... factor in war. The heavy rains of a French winter quickly transform the ground, already churned up by months of shell-fire, into a slimy, glutinous swamp, incredibly tenacious and unbelievably deep. Through this vast stretch of mud, pitted everywhere with shell-holes filled with stagnant water, the infantry has to make its way and the guns have to be moved forward to support the infantry. On one ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... very slow, for it was through the thick woods, where fallen trees and bushes obstructed them as well as deep snow, but towards noon they came out on a more open country—in summer a swamp; at that time a frozen plain—and the travelling improved, for a slight breeze had already begun to make an impression on the ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... delicate hands and feet, and the same splendid dull-gold hair—features apparently characteristic of the line, all the women of which had been toasts of a hundred years ago, before Harry Lee hunted men and the Shadow of the Swamp Fox flitted through the cypress to a great ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... follow where the Swamp Fox guides, His friends and merry men are we; And when the troop of Tarleton [6] rides, We burrow in the cypress tree. The turfy hammock is our bed, Our home is in the red deer's den, Our roof, the tree-top overhead, For we are ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... was a Spring festival even before it was associated with the Redemption from Egypt, but there is not much Nature to worship in the Ghetto and the historical elements of the Festival swamp all the others. Passover still remains the most picturesque of the "Three Festivals" with its entire transmogrification of things culinary, its thorough taboo of leaven. The audacious archaeologist of the thirtieth century may trace back the origin of the festival to the Spring Cleaning, the annual ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... you what we do." It was Giova speaking in the masterful voice of one who has perfect confidence in his own powers. "I know fine way out. This wood circle back south through swamp mile, mile an' a half. The road past Squeebs an' Case's go right through it. I know path there I fin' myself. We on'y have to cross road, that only danger. Then we reach leetle stream south of woods, stream wind down through ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Confederate infantry forced him to withdraw to St. Mary's Church; for early in the morning General Lee had discovered the movement of our army, and promptly threw this column of infantry south of the Chickahominy to White Oak Swamp, with the design of covering Richmond. From St. Mary's Church Wilson guarded all the roads toward White Oak Swamp and Riddle's Shop, McIntosh's brigade joining him on the 14th, by way of Long Bridge, as the rear ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... visit to her late aunt. She recognized a great toppling Druid's altar that had formerly reminded her of Mount Sinai threatening to fall on the head of Christian in "The Pilgrim's Progress." Farther on she saw and avoided a swamp in which she had once earned a scolding from her nurse by filling her stockings with mud. Then she found herself in a long avenue of green turf, running east and west, and apparently endless. This seemed the most delightful of all her possessions, and she had begun ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... Mr. Hazen. "Yet here again we realize how man moves inch by inch, never knowing what is just around the turn of the road. He can only go it blindly and do the best he knows at the time. Naturally neither Mr. Hubbard nor Mr. Saunders wanted to swamp any more money until they had received results for what they had spent already; and those results, alas, were not forthcoming. Over and over again poor Watson blamed himself lest some imperceptible defect in his part ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... night was passed; every precaution being taken to guard against ambush or surprise, until morning became well advanced, and the invaders, after having emerged from a swamp through which they had marched, found themselves within three or four ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... the half-caste had taken no notice of Jack's action save to laugh derisively, and now the procession moved forward once more. They went about a couple of miles, and halted on the edge of a steep descent which ran down to a broad swamp. It wanted now about half an hour to sunset. At the foot of the descent, on the edge of the swamp, a cross had been raised. Jack's blood ran cold within him. What awful sight were they now to see? Were these monsters about ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... the divide. Part of it was a morass, fissured with little creeks running down from the hills whose tops rose at no great elevation above the opening. This was bad to traverse, but it was worse when they came to a muskeg where dwarf forest had once covered what was now a swamp. Most of the trees had fallen as the soil, from some change in the lake's level, had grown too wet. They had partly rotted in the slough, and willows had ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... with many enterprising persons of Mr. Danin's order, both Brazilians and Portuguese; their great ambition is to make a voyage to Europe or North America, and to send their sons to be educated there. The land on which his establishment is built, he told us, was an artificial embankment on the swamp; the end of the house was built on a projecting point overlooking the river, so that a good view was obtained, from the sitting-rooms, of the city and the shipping. We learned there was formerly a large and flourishing cattle estate on this spot, with ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... and new Mechi rivers are several miles apart, but flow in the same depression, a low swamp many miles broad, which is grazed at this season, and cultivated during the rains. The grass is very rich, partly owing to the moisture of the climate, and partly to the retiring waters of the rivers; both circumstances ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... used him as a shield to preserve him from the arrows of the enemy, and with his musket he brought two of them dead to the ground. He would perhaps have reached the canoe—the savages fell back appalled by his courage—but while in full retreat he sunk to the middle in a swamp from which his utmost efforts could not extricate him. Excessive cold froze his limbs and deprived him of strength, yet the Indians dared not approach him until he threw away his arms and made signals of submission. Then they drew ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... allus 'member she do dat dis bery day! Wha' make Mars Nelson come fo' Babylam'? O, fo de Lawd, fo de Lawd! (Tat and Bony stare at their mother in terror as she proceeds) I see de black hawk what flies outen de dead swamp! Ooo! I see knives a drippin' an' guns a poppin'! Oooooooo! I see de coffin, de coffin—an' it's all dark night, an' de rain comin' down de chimney—an' de wind—de wind—it say "Ooooooooooo!" (Bends her knees and body, and stares moaning. ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... Nye County, Mr. Irwin has reclaimed a tule swamp several hundred acres in extent, which is now chiefly devoted to alfalfa. On twenty-five acres he claims to have raised this year thirty-seven tons of barley. Indeed, I have not yet noticed a meager crop of any kind in the State. Fruit alone ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... few moments before, was instantly changed. The trees, the swamp, and the air seemed filled with monsters so hideous as to stagger the imagination. Winged lizards of prodigious size hurtled through the air, plunging to death against the armored hull. Indescribable flying monsters, with feathers like birds, ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... from south to west, the shores for a time widened apart, the low-roofed city swung and sank away backward, groves of orange and magnolia grew plainer to the eye than suburban streets, and the course changed again, from west to north. Soon on the right, behind a high levee and backed by a sombre swamp forest, appeared the live-oaks and gardens of Carrollton, and presently on the left came Nine-mile Point and another bend of the river westward. As the boat's prow turned, the waters, from shore to shore, reflected the low sun ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... the foot of the northern slope of Ringwaak lay a dense cedar swamp. Presently, out from the green fringe of the cedars, a bear thrust his head and cast a crafty glance about the open. Seeing the ram on the hilltop and the ewe with her lamb feeding near by, he sank back noiselessly into the cover of the cedars, and stole around toward the darkening eastern ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... huffed, flew up to the very topmost branch of the tree and perched there, swaying in the breeze, and trying to forget his family cares. From this high post of observation he presently caught sight of an eagle, winging his way up from the swamp at the lower end of the valley. With a sharp signal cry for volunteers, he dashed off in pursuit. He was joined by two other crows who happened to be at leisure; and the three, quickly overtaking the majestic voyager, ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... me began a sort of swamp with reeds which hardly moved to the air, and this gradually merged into a sheet of water above and beyond which were hills, barren and not very high, which took the last of the daylight, for they looked both southward and ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... the boasting foe, And to march and countermarch our brave Till they fall like ghosts in the marshes low, And swamp-grass covers each nameless grave; Nor another, whose fatal banners wave Aye in Disaster's shameful van; Nor another, to bluster, and lie, and rave,— Abraham ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... a long steamboat journey, but at last they stopped at Eden. The waters of the Deluge might have left it but a week ago, so choked with slime and matted growth was the hideous swamp which bore that name. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the altars fell, And each god's image, from its pedestal Thrust and flung down, in dim confusion lies! Therefore, for outrage vile, a doom as dark They suffer, and yet more shall undergo— They touch no bottom in the swamp of doom, But round them rises, bubbling up, the ooze! So deep shall lie the gory clotted mass Of corpses by the Dorian spear transfixed Upon Plataea's field! yea, piles of slain To the third generation shall attest ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... summit of a high tree at the branch of one lower, and at some distance. He leaped short, and came clattering down sixty or seventy feet amid the jungle. We were unable to penetrate to the spot, on account of a deep swamp, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... that time of the American colonies, the little scattered settlement at Henlopen, made up of English, with a few Dutch and Swedish people, was still only a spot upon the face of the great American wilderness that spread away, with swamp and forest, no man knew how far to the westward. That wilderness was not only full of wild beasts, but of Indian savages, who every fall would come in wandering tribes to spend the winter along the shores of the fresh-water ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... a tall Arkansan, with high-combed hair, self-conscious gloves, and very broad, clean-shaven lower jaw, how the peculiar formation of delta lands, by which they drain away from the larger watercourses, instead of into them, had made the swamp there in the rear of the town, for more than a century, "the common dumping-ground and cesspool ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... original enterprise was the obstruction of the White Nile by the accumulation of matted vegetation, which impeded navigation, and actually closed the river. Upon arrival at Gondokoro, after the tedious process of cutting through 50 miles of swamp and vegetable matter, via the Bahr Giraffe, I had requested the Khedive to issue an order that the Governor of Khartoum should immediately commence the great work of re-opening ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... Bopsulai went down through the beaver-swamp to the Wagai river to spear carp-fish for dinner, and Taffy went too. Tegumai's spear was made of wood with shark's teeth at the end, and before he had caught any fish at all he accidentally broke it clean across by jabbing it ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... water's edge. The captain himself is in the stern-sheets, tiller-lines in hand. Mrs Gancy and her daughter crouch beside him, while the others are at the oars, in which occupation Ned and Chester occasionally pause to bale out, as showers of spray keep breaking over the boat, threatening to swamp it. ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... slopes of the Ruwenzori mountains. From Ruwenzori a subsidiary range, known as the Kipura mountains, runs due south to the lake shore, where it ends in a low rounded hill. In general, the plain rises above the lake in a series of bold bluffs, a wide margin of swamp separating them from the water. The Semliki, the only outlet of the lake, issues from its N.W. end. Round the north-eastern shore of the lake are numerous crater lakes, many salt, the most remarkable being that of Katwe. This lake lies west of the Dweru channel ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Bilker, alias Sykes, unfolded his plan as follows: Banderah was to entice De Vere and his friend some miles into the interior, where there was a large swamp covered with wild-fowl. Here they were to be clubbed by Banderah and his people, and the bodies thrown into the swamp. Then Bilker, accompanied by Schwartzkoff and Burrowes, were to go on board the schooner and settle the mate ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke
... swamp, and forest, they visited in turn the villages of five petty chiefs, whom they called kings, feasted everywhere on hominy, beans, and game, and loaded with gifts. One of these chiefs, named Audusta, invited them to the grand religious festival of his tribe. Thither, accordingly, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... thorny acacias, &c. Forests also occur on the humid slopes of mountain ranges up to a certain elevation. In the coast regions the typical tree is the mangrove, which flourishes wherever the soil is of a swamp character. The dense forests of West Africa contain, in addition to a great variety of dicotyledonous trees, two palms, the Elaeis guincensis (oil-palm) and Raphia vinifera (bamboo-palm), not found, generally speaking, in the savanna regions. The ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Connolly's Creek, from whence it derived its water supply—when there happened to be any water in that part of the creek. The building which covered the antiquated five-stamper battery, boiler, engine, and tanks, was merely a huge roof of bark supported on untrimmed posts of brigalow and swamp gum, but rude as was the structure, the miners at Chinkie's Flat, and other camps in the vicinity, had once been distinctly proud of their battery, which possessed the high-sounding title of "The Ever ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... to get across it. In one spot it was so very bad that a mule laden with baggage had got stuck in it, and tug as he might, his master was quite unable to pull him out. The muleteer in despair appealed to the two horsemen, who were carefully skirting the swamp at some distance off, but they paid no heed to his cries, and he began to talk cheerfully to his mule, hoping to keep up his spirits, declaring that if the poor beast would only have a little patience ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... woodmen true; Smite the forest till the blue Of heaven's sunny eye looks through Every wild and tangled glade; Jungled swamp and ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... hanging back himself. Old as I am I slew them both and got my death in it," and he touched the great wound in his side with the hilt of the broken sword. "Our horses were the better; we fled across the swamp for Blythburgh, he hunting us and seeking my life and her honour. Thus we found you ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... of water over Abe's head. Finally all of the soap was rinsed out of his hair. Abe took the tail of his shirt and wiped the soap out of his eyes. Both boys were covered with water. The ground around the horse trough was like a muddy little swamp. Johnny was delighted. He liked to feel the mud squish ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... the country through which it passes is generally broken and the highlands possess but little timber. there is some timber in it's bottom lands, which consists of Cottonwood red Elm, with a small proportion of small Ash and box alder. the under brush is willow, red wood, (sometimes called red or swamp willow-) the red burry, and Choke cherry the country is extreamly broken about the mouth of this river, and as far up on both sides, as we could observe it from the tops of some elivated hills, which stand betwen ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... morning of my second arrival at New Orleans. A saffron heat-haze hung over the river and the city, robbed alike from the yellow waters of the one and the pestilent moisture of the other. It would have been strange indeed if this capital of Louisiana, brought hither to a swamp from the sands of Biloxi many years ago by the energetic Bienville, were not visited from time to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... dale, turned aside for no obstacles. At one time it ran down a gully that was almost a ravine, to mount straight up the opposite side among boulders that reached to the belly-bands. At others, it led through a reedy swamp, or a stony watercourse; or it became a bog; or dived through a creek. Where the ground was flat and treeless, it was a rutty, well-worn track between two seas of pale, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... he could not, since the map did not show it—that the place where the path touched the river first was on the upper side of a huge "ox-bow" bend. If he had kept on by land, a third of a mile's walk farther through the swamp would have brought him to the river again, at a point to reach which by water, following the river's windings, he would have to paddle three ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... was alive with alligators. These could be seen basking along the low banks, or crawling away into the dark and shadowy swamp. Some were floating gently on the surface of the stream, their long crests and notched backs protruding above the water. When not in motion these hideous creatures resembled dead logs of wood; and most of them were lying quiet—partly from their natural disinclination to move about, and partly waiting ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... squares from the hotel, occupied a city block and was a mansion resembling a French chateau, built of the yellow stone of the country. In addition to an attractive fence of stone and iron, the extensive yard was surrounded on all sides by a wind-break hedge of tall and uniform swamp cedars. ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... wearing her nightcap. I doubt if any one but ourselves who had seen the progress of that article of dress, could by this time have told what it was meant for. It had got so limp and ragged that she couldn't see out of her eyes for it. It was so dirty, that whether it was vegetable matter out of a swamp, or weeds out of the river, or an old porter's-knot from England, I don't think any new spectator could have said. Yet, this unfortunate old woman had a notion that it was not only vastly genteel, but that it was the correct ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... magnanimous man. He sentenced his brother to be confined for life in one of the Royal Castles. In the beginning of his imprisonment, he was allowed to ride out, guarded; but he one day broke away from his guard and galloped of. He had the evil fortune to ride into a swamp, where his horse stuck fast and he was taken. When the King heard of it he ordered him to be blinded, which was done by putting a red-hot metal basin ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens |
