"Watercourse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... land frontier, the works of the first line being made to secure the great bridges or ferries by which the enemy might effect a passage; those of the second line, to cover the passes of the highlands that generally approach more or less near the great watercourse; and those of the third line, far enough in rear to protect the great internal communications of the country. Let us take, for example, the side of France bordering on the Rhine. Wissembourg and Lauterbourg, Fort Louis, Haguenau, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... about an hour and a half before sundown, when we arrived beneath the shadow of the towering volcanic mass that I have already described. It is quite impossible for me to describe its grim grandeur as it appeared to me while my patient bearers toiled along the bed of the ancient watercourse towards the spot where the rich brown-hued cliff shot up from precipice to precipice till its crown lost itself in a cloud. All I can say is that it almost awed me by the intensity of its lonesome and most solemn greatness. On we went up ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... that in the garden has drunk no water, Whose crown in the field has brought forth no blossom. A willow that rejoiced not by the watercourse, A willow whose roots were torn up. A herb that in the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... glasses inch by inch upward, scanning minutely the treacherous ground over which they were soon to venture. Had there been running water within sight the searching sun must have revealed it. He saw none, nor did he catch any signs that indicated a watercourse. ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... indications of a change of surface, which gave picturesque lights and shades on their soft green. Or a lonely valley, with smooth fields and labourers at work, tufty clumps of vegetation, and a line of soft willows by a watercourse, varied the picture. Then the ascent began in good earnest, and trees shut it in, and there was everywhere the wild leafy smell of the woods. Night began to shut it in too, for the sun was early hidden from the travellers; the gloom, or the ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... the Ashburnham forge, situated a few miles to the north-east of Battle, still serve to indicate the extent of the manufacture. At the upper part of the valley in which the works were situated, an artificial lake was formed by constructing an embankment across the watercourse descending from the higher ground,[9] and thus a sufficient fall of water was procured for the purpose of blowing the furnaces, the site of which is still marked by surrounding mounds of iron cinders and charcoal waste. ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... creek with stunted box-tree for a blind! There you grappled with the leader, man to man and horse to horse, And you roll'd together when the chestnut rear'd; He blazed away and missed you in that shallow watercourse— A narrow shave—his powder ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... it was not long, although to me it seemed an age, before I stood in the niche of rock at the head of the slippery watercourse, and gazed into the quiet glen, where my foolish heart was dwelling. Notwithstanding doubts of right, notwithstanding sense of duty, and despite all manly striving, and the great love of my home, there my heart was ever dwelling, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... There was the path between the shanty and the landing-place to be put in proper condition; various muddy places in it to be covered with fascines; a certain watercourse we were in the habit of jumping to be newly-bridged, and so forth. Then there was the catering. Two of us were out with guns, shooting turkeys, pheasants, pigeons, fowls, and anything else that was eatable. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... in its physical aspect does the Missouri appeal to the imagination. From Three Forks to its mouth—a distance of three thousand miles—this zigzag watercourse is haunted with great memories. Perhaps never before in the history of the world has a river been the thoroughfare of a movement so tremendously epic in its human appeal, so vastly significant in its relation to the ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... maybe a hundred yards, though planted in corn, was now given up to grass, and live-stock, getting into it at some unseen point, had eaten and trampled everywhere. The farther half was thinly covered with a poor stand of cotton, and between the corn and the cotton a small, trench-like watercourse crossed our line of view at right angles and vanished in the woods at the field's eastern edge. The farther border of this run was densely masked by a growth of brake-cane entirely lacking on the side next us. Between the cotton and ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... generally found either on the top of a natural or an artificial mound, in the middle of a plain, or on the banks of a watercourse. We must mention, amongst others, those in Persia, which are some 7,000 feet high and from twenty-one to twenty-six feet long by six wide; that near Mykenae, that of Aumede-Bas, excavated by Dr. Prunieres; that of New Grange, in Ireland, surmounted by a cromlech ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... side of the river, in the direction of the strong and populous village of Deh Affghan, is a fort of some size, then used as a godown, or storehouse, by the Shah's commissariat, part of it being occupied by Brigadier Anquetil, commanding the Shah's force. Close to this fort, divided by a narrow watercourse, was the house of Captain Troup, brigade-major of the Shah's force, perfectly defensible against musketry. Both Brigadier Anquetil and Captain Troup had gone out on horseback early in the morning towards cantonments, and were unable to return; but the above fort and house contained the usual guard ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... either because he distrusted the news, or hoped even at the last to "pluck the flower, safety, out of the nettle, danger," he pushed on and sought to cut through the line of the enemy's advance as it made for Maiwand. About 10 A.M. his column passed the village of Khig and, crossing a dried watercourse, entered a parched plain whereon the fringe of the enemy's force could dimly be seen through the thick and sultry air. Believing that he had to deal with no large body of men, Burrows pushed on, and two of Lieutenant Maclaine's guns ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... petroleum floated in such quantities on the surface of a branch of the Allegheny River that this small watercourse had for generations been known as Oil Creek. The neighboring farmers used to collect the oil and use it to grease their wagon axles; others, more enterprising, made a business of gathering the floating substance, packing it in bottles, and selling it broadcast as a medicine. The most famous ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... swelling hills and grassy fields can one get out of either sight or sound of running water. Every little dip in the hills has its watercourse, every vale its broader stream, and the pleasant sound of their murmurings and sweet babbling fills in the background of every remembrance of days spent upon the green slopes of the Cheviots. You may ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... I say, some Ethiop, past pursuit Of all enslavers, dips a shackled foot Burnt to the blood, into the drowsy black Enormous watercourse which guides him back To his own tribe again, where he is king: And laughs because he guesses, numbering The yellower poison-wattles on the pouch Of the first lizard wrested from its couch Under the slime (whose skin, the while, he strips To cure his nostril with, and festered lips, And eyeballs ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... determination, Mr. Hamlin urged his horse along the faint trail by the brink of the watercourse which the boy had just indicated. He had no definite end in view beyond the one that had brought him the day before to that locality—his quest of the unknown poetess. His clue would have seemed to ordinary humanity the faintest. He had merely ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... was by far too rough for cycles. I was sorry afterwards that I had not taken Ursula, and sent Elsie to Lungern to rouse the men; for she found the climbing hard, and I had difficulty at times in dragging her up the steep and stony pathway, almost a watercourse. However, we persisted in the direction of the Kulm, tracking Harold by his footprints; for he wore mountain boots with sharp-headed nails, which made dints in the moist soil, and scratched the smooth surface of the rock ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... crossed with our baggage and people to the opposite side of the river, and pitched our tents at the village of Goorashee. A small watercourse had brought down a large quantity of black sand. Thinking it probable that gold might exist in the same locality, I washed some earth in a copper basin, and quickly discovered a few specks of the precious metal. Gold is found in small quantities in the sand of the Atbara; at Fazogle, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... great reclamation works, the Sea of Harlem, for instance, prepare the entire foundation first and then gradually raise the dam on it. The watercourse is not narrowed during the progress of the work, as the dam is raised uniformly throughout the whole length; the current therefore passes slowly over it, and the dam is not subject to damage from flood waters. These deposit enormous quantities of sand and mud within the intercepted area, and after ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... bordered on the Swift River, a stream which has already figured in these stories of the Rover boys. It was a rocky, swift-flowing watercourse, and the bank at the end of the burying ground was fully ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... taken to keep the Thames clean, and at the mouth of every sewer or watercourse there was a strong iron grating two feet deep.—Guildhall MSS. ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... lowest row consists of six arches, with a span of 60 ft. each, except the largest, which has 75 ft. The second row consists of eleven arches of the same dimensions as the first, and the third of 35 arches of 15 ft. span. Astair from the right bank of the river leads up to the watercourse above the topmost tier of arches. In the striking boldness of its design this bridge exhibits a decided improvement and superiority over all the other Roman aqueducts. The arches are wider, and the piers in proportion lighter, and had the same principle been extended so as to ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... well as the geologist. Billy Barker, after whom Barkerville was named, struck it rich by going fifty feet below the surface down the canyon. Cariboo Cameron, the luckiest of all the miners and not originally a prospector, {48} found his wealth by going still lower on the watercourse to a vertical ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... went full swing over a roaring watercourse as he spoke, and alighted safe on the opposite bank, but the gravelly soil was treacherous; it gave way, and the animal's hind legs slipped back. With a bound Dick sprang ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... of nasty mysterious dribbles that help to degrade Rock Creek and can undoubtedly be found in even more profusion along every other metropolitan watercourse. Such of them as issue from storm sewers will be eliminated when a solution turns up for the problem of runoff water. The others, and they are numerous, will not. Even if the bureaucratic and political ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... tributaries of a large watercourse—the largest in the state, in fact; but it was not a very busy waterway. Now and then a battered old barge was drawn through by a pair of equally battered horses or mules. Milton people held the canal folk in some contempt. But then, they knew very little about the ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... headquarters was supposed to be reliable, had grossly misled her; the road bore east instead of north, dwindling, as she advanced, to a rocky path among the foothills. She had taken the wrong turn at the forks; there was nothing to direct her any farther—no landmarks except the general trend of the watercourse, and the dull cinders of sunset fading to ashes in ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... whilst he stood listening at Jacques' feet. He had judged that there was no time for delay; and the next moment he was bounding down the slope, straight as an arrow in its course. There Jacques saw him bounding and leaping over all impediments, reaching the bottom of a ravine, or dry watercourse, at the foot of a small hill, and again running with unabated speed up the opposite bank. Jacques thought he was going directly towards the cottage, for the young shepherd could see him all the way; but as if on second thoughts, the faithful creature left the cottage, when near ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... time the top was near. When he returned she was sitting where he had left her among the leaves. 'It is quite near now,' he told her tenderly, and she took his arm again without a word. Soon the path changed its nature from a steep and rugged watercourse ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the grey dawn, passed up a dry watercourse, and proceeded where the vine was queen and there fell a scented filigree of dead blossom from flowering olives. They had seen a million clusters of tiny grapes already rounding and had passed through wedges and squares of cultivated earth, where sprang alternate ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... was as confined and unvarying as the banks of a canal, except that canals commonly are straight, while this watercourse twisted like Archimedes's screw. The only breaks in the endless panorama of cut-banks, mud-flats, willows, and grass were the occasional little inlets, gay with ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... forth went every man for to seek him; they being minded by all means to cut off his flight. And their zeal was not spent in vain; for, when they had occupied all the high-ways, and encompassed all the mountains, and surrounded the pathless ravines, they discovered him in a watercourse, his hands uplifted to heaven, saying the prayer proper of the ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... the way. The walls grew somewhat lower, though still two thousand feet high, and the canyon was usually seventy-five to one hundred feet wide at the bottom. There were patches of alluvial deposit now along the sides of the watercourse, covered by fields of cactus loaded with "apples," the prickly leaves compelling us to keep the trail the prospectors had made by their passage to and from the ephemeral Eldorado. After a time we emerged from the lower canyon into a wider one in the way previously described; ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... question of vital importance, a matter of commercial life and death, for England to maintain and consolidate herself in the Yangtse basin, which cannot possibly be done except by an effective occupation of the upper Yangtse, and by developing in every possible way her communications along that watercourse, and by the West River from Hongkong, also by railway connection with Upper Burmah and through that province with India. Mr. Colquhoun, for his part, also believes it to be high time that countries like the United States, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... openings on the glacier known as moulins, or wells, which may of course become perfectly dry, if any accident turns the rivulet aside or dries up its source. The most common cause of the intermittence of such a waterfall is the formation of a crevasse higher up, across the watercourse which supplied it, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... in a perfect deluge, and, notwithstanding the shelter of the thick overhanging foliage, the ground was already so completely flooded that George at first thought he was lying in the bed of some shallow watercourse. He staggered to his feet, chill and dripping wet, and, taking advantage of the intermittent light afforded by the lightning, looked around him to ascertain, if possible, what had actually happened; and he then saw ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... he rides along "The Mangy" watercourse till he comes to the lowland of "The Blind Cow." The barking of half a dozen mongrel curs leads him into the edge of the forest, and he comes upon the residence of Fulano de Tal. The man has perhaps recently moved to this spot, and has not had time or energy to build himself a "rancho," ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... disaster," cried he, getting up on his feet, and stretching himself. "Still, a man doesn't starve in four days. I've cast my bread on the waters. It has evidently gone down the stream. Now, what's to hinder a man escaping by means of that watercourse? Still, if he did, what would be the use? He'd float out into the Baltic Sea, and if able to swim round the rock, would merely be compelled to knock at the front door and beg admission again. No, by ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... daybreak the trail led him down out of the hills by a little watercourse to the edge of the desert. Along the sides of this the chaparral grew thickly, and the spring by which he halted made a little spot of green at the edge of the gray. But out in front of him was the infinite stretch of death, far sweeps of wind-furrowed ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... been at this spot within the last day or two, and we followed their traces, which were quite recent, across a dry watercourse till they led to a hut built of a framework of logs of wood, and in shape like a beehive, about four feet high and nine in diameter. This hut was of a very superior description to those I found afterwards to be generally in use in South-Western Australia, and differed ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... approaching, ran a deep ditch with a high bank forming a regular battery. A body of French infantry were placed in support of the guns, with some Sepoys in reserve behind the grove. Parallel with the road on the left ran a deep watercourse, now empty, and in this the rest of the infantry were stationed, at a point near the town of Kavaripak, and about a quarter of a mile further back than the grove. On either side of this watercourse the enemy had placed ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... the men with them succeeded in beating them off. The fellows seemed utterly unafraid of the great beasts leaping and snarling about them, handling them much the same as one might handle a pack of obstreperous dogs. Along the bed of the old watercourse that once ran through the gorge they made their way, and as the first faint lightening of the eastern horizon presaged the coming dawn, they paused for a moment upon the edge of a declivity, which appeared to the girl in the strange light ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... an ordinary man living in Waimea, Kauai, who wanted to construct a mano, or dam, across the Waimea River and a watercourse therefrom to a point near Kikiaola. Having settled upon the best locations for his proposed work, he went up to the mountains and ordered all the Menehunes that were living near Puukapele to prepare stones ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... The worms here eject their castings only during the rainy season; and at the time of Dr. King's visit no rain had fallen for 110 days. He carefully examined the ground between the place where these huge castings lay, and a little watercourse at the base of the knoll, and nowhere was there any accumulation of fine earth, such as would necessarily have been left by the disintegration of the castings if they had not been wholly removed. He therefore has no hesitation in asserting that the whole of these huge castings ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... Ross decided, was to circle north, come back down along the bed of a stream. And he was at the edge of that watercourse when a faint sound brought him to a frozen ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... steady, swift walking the general trend of the country began to slope downwards. This argued a watercourse between us and the hills around Kilimanjaro. There could be no doubt that we would cut it; the only question was whether it, like so many desert watercourses, might not prove empty. We pushed on the more rapidly. Then we caught a glimpse through ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... together, upon a day, in the shade of a ravine far from the barracks, where a watercourse used to run in rainy weather. Behind us was the scrub jungle, in which jackals, peacocks, the gray wolves of the North-Western Provinces, and occasionally a tiger estrayed from Central India, were supposed to dwell. In front lay the cantonment, glaring white under a glaring sun; and on either ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... is called a river, to show that it yields a continual supply, as I may call it, of new and fresh grace. Rivers yield continually fresh and new water. For though the channel or watercourse in which the water runs is the same, yet the waters themselves are always new. That water that but one minute since stood in this place or that of the river, is now gone, and new and fresh is come in its place. And thus it is with the river of God, which is full of water; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... down the garden and a sloping meadow to a brook swollen by heavy rains; over the brook on a narrow plank, and up a steep and stony pathway, almost a watercourse, between rocks, to another meadow, level with the house, that led ascending through a firwood; and there the change to thicker darkness told them light was abroad, though whether of the clouded moon or of the first grey of the quiet revolution was uncertain. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to me. It reminded me of days out hunting, when I have come suddenly upon him at the edge of the watercourse, and have shared his melons and his conversation. I anticipate for him some not unagreeable experiences. The lower order of divinities will probably adapt themselves with ease to our new conditions. ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... Illinois, every attempt to propagate Mormonism in the American States has been a failure. Every avenue of communication with Utah is necessarily obstructed. No railroad penetrates to within eleven hundred miles of Salt Lake Valley. There is no watercourse within four hundred miles, on which navigation is practicable. Neither the Columbia nor the Colorado empties into seas bordered by nations from which the Mormons derive accessions; and the length of a voyage up ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... still!' cried Synesius, tears of excitement glittering in his eyes;.... while Raphael gave himself up to the joy, and forgot even Victoria, in the breathless rush over rock and bush, sandhill and watercourse. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... Having gained the watercourse, it was an easy matter for them to continue onward until they reached the vicinity of the two bungalows. As soon as they came in sight of the camp, several set up a shout, which quickly brought Laura and ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... greatly to be feared. Even had the salt not held, fear of the explosive would restrain any hostile move. One stick of the new compound, exploded at a safe distance by wireless spark, had utterly demolished the stone which had been brought from the watercourse. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... facility with which irrigation can be carried on; the conformation of the land is undulating, and even the so-called 'flats' are intersected in all directions by valleys, each of which possesses its watercourse, so that by the simple expedient of throwing a dam across these valleys, water may be stored and led on to the adjacent fields as required. The soil is in all parts naturally fertile, but the farmer sometimes has great difficulty in reducing it to a proper state for cultivation, owing ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... guardians of the Wild sent the mule-deer to Harry the man who had been a pot-hunter. A buck of three years came down the draw by the watercourse and nibbled the young shoots of the vines where he could reach them across the rabbit proof fencing that the settler had drawn about his planted acres. Not that the wire netting would have stopped him; this was merely the opening of the game. Three days later he spent the night ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... defences of the town, brought a canal from the Shurappu and fortified its banks. The Shurappu, according to Delitzsch, would be the Shatt Umm-el-Jemal; according to Delattrc, the Kerkha; the account of the campaign under consideration would lead me to recognise in it a watercourse like the Tib, which runs into the Tigris near Amara, in which case the ruins of Kherib would perhaps correspond with the site ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... mythology and romance, Undine is a water-spirit who is endowed with a soul by her marriage with a mortal. The race is the watercourse conducted, from the dam in an open trough or "penstock" ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... woods in the direction the man had taken, but, coming to a brook, rode their steeds down the watercourse for half a mile, thus completely destroying their trail. Then they came out and urged their now tired horses up a small hill, from which to get some ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... I understood, are separate names of two continuous villages; Kobe, the more eastern, being the destined port of entry. They are separated by a watercourse, broad but not deep, often dry, the which is to memory dear; for following along it one day, and so up the hills, I struck at length, well within the outer range, an exquisite Japanese valley, profound, semicircular, and terraced, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... the low moon out of the sky, their hoofs 15 drum up the dawn, The dun he went like a wounded bull, but the mare like a new-roused fawn. The dun he fell at a watercourse—in a woeful heap fell he, And Kamal has turned the red mare back, and ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... general way by borings made before construction was begun, but they proved to be rather worse than anticipated. On the topographical map of Manhattan Island, made by General Egbert L. Viele in 1865, is shown a watercourse which had its source near what is now Broadway and 44th Street, flowing thence along the west side and south end of Murray Hill, passing under the present site of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, crossing 33d Street at the point where the rock surface ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Alfred Noble
... away from the hills. The logical thing is to set out looking for another one. My friend the Pocket Hunter had been looking twenty years. His working outfit was a shovel, a pick, a gold pan which he kept cleaner than his plate, and a pocket magnifier. When he came to a watercourse he would pan out the gravel of its bed for "colors," and under the glass determine if they had come from far or near, and so spying he would work up the stream until he found where the drift of the gold-bearing outcrop fanned out into the creek; then up the side of the canon till ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... had been "corralled." Just as at first reported, the Indians in overwhelming numbers had suddenly charged down upon the detachment from behind a ridge that lay full half a mile to the east of the road; while others, crouching in a dry watercourse, had picked off the leading soldiers,—the two men thrown out to the front to scout the trail and secure the main body against surprise. Hatton, all told, had only twenty men, and the fall of the two far in the advance had for ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... all embosomed among the soft rounded lines of the chalk-hills; and then you begin to feel very thirsty, and cry, "Oh, if there were but springs and brooks in the Downs, as there are at home!" But all the hollows are as dry as the hill tops. There is not a brook, or the mark of a watercourse, in one of them. You are like the Ancient Mariner in ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... discomforts of that early start; but as the hour proceeds, and these enchantments vanish, you will find yourself upon the farther side in yet another Alpine valley, snow white and coal black, with such another long-drawn congeries of hamlets and such another senseless watercourse bickering along the foot. You have had your moment; but you have not changed the scene. The mountains are about you like a trap; you cannot foot it up a hillside and behold the sea as a great plain, but live in holes and corners, and can ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into the Tanganyika, or else the most westerly tributary to the Ruaha river, draining eastward into the sea. The plateau, however, is apparently so flat here, that nothing b a minute survey, or rather following the watercourse, could determine the matter. Then emerging from the wilderness, we came into the open cultivated district of Tura, or "put down"—called so by the natives because it was, only a few years ago, the first cleared space in the wilderness, and served ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... was pulsing with life. Above him bats darted in short circling flights. In the corn-field and pasture-lot the fireflies lifted from their day-long sleep, showing pale points of light in the half darkness, while from some distant pond or stagnant watercourse came the booming of frogs, presently to swell into a resonant chorus. These were the summer night sounds he had known as far back as his ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... above the other along the base of the hills like miniature mountain-ranges. Even when near Kythrea I could not understand the formation, until we found ourselves riding through the steep ravine which holds the watercourse and ascending by a narrow path among the countless hills that I have described. Both sides of the gorge, and also the deep bottom, are occupied by houses with fruitful gardens, rich in mulberry, orange, lemon, apricots, olives, forming groves of trees that in summer must be delightful. ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... in the gutter," said Frank. "Literally, as I came home, I heard a squeak, and found a child flat in a little watercourse. I picked it out, and the elder one told me it was Ducky Duncombe, or some such word. Its little boots had holes in them, mother; its legs were purple, and there was a fine smart foreign woman flirting round ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wife opened her Book, and wrote again on the flyleaf: "Who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of thunder, to cause it to rain on the earth where no man is, on the wilderness wherein there is no man, to satisfy the desolate and waste ground, and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth? ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Drigpal, and Faringia, three of the leaders, with forty of their fleetest and stoutest followers, were immediately selected for the pursuit. They followed seven miles unperceived; and, coming up with the treasure-bearers in a watercourse half a mile from the village of Sujaina, they rushed in upon them and put them all to death with their swords.[4] While they were doing so a tanner from Sujaina approached with his buffalo, and to prevent him giving the alarm they put him to death also, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... some Ethiop, past pursuit Of all enslavers, dips a shackled foot, Burnt to the blood, into the drowsy, black, Enormous watercourse which guides him back To his own tribe again, where he is king; And laughs, because he guesses, numbering The yellower poison-wattles on the pouch Of the first lizard wrested from its couch Under the slime, (whose skin, the while, he strips ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... many rivers knows that every watercourse has an individuality, which is no more to be analyzed than the personality of one's dearest friend. Two rivers may flow almost side by side for a hundred miles, separated only by a range of hills, and resemble each other no more than two women. You may admire the one, and grant it beauty and ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... and we take the northern fork, turning soon into the open mouth of the Wadi Shaib, a broad, grassy valley between high and treeless hills. The watercourse that winds down the middle of it is dry: nothing but a tumbled bed of gray rocks,—the bare bones of a little river. But as we ascend slowly the flowers increase; wild hollyhocks, and morning-glories, and clumps of ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... another short flight of steps, and over a bridge spanning the race, which deep, dark watercourse immediately caught ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... in his tandem, drawn by two sprightly blood bays, with his servant, a light boy, mounted Creole fashion on the leader, was coming up in my wake at a spot where the road sank into a hollow, and was traversed by a watercourse already running knee deep, although dry as a ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... ducks and smaller fowl. Pelicans[3] in great numbers resort to the mouths of the rivers, taking up their position at sunrise on some projecting rock, from which to dart on the passing fish, and returning far inland at night to their retreats among the trees which overshadow some ruined watercourse or deserted tank. ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... convicts, disembarking on the island, had followed the southern shore, and after having traversed the double shore of the Serpentine Peninsula, not being inclined to venture into the Far West woods, they had reached the mouth of Falls River. From this point, by following the right bank of the watercourse, they would arrive at the spurs of Mount Franklin, among which they would naturally seek a retreat, and they could not have been long in discovering the corral, then uninhabited. There they had regularly installed themselves, awaiting the moment to put their abominable schemes into execution. Ayrton's ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... southwestward course, sometimes threading the grassy valleys of little streams, sometimes crossing the dry upland prairie, covered with the short, tufted dull-green herbage since known as "buffalo grass." Wild turkeys clamored along every watercourse; deer were seen on all sides, buffalo were without number, sometimes in grazing droves, and sometimes dotting the endless plain as far as the eye could reach. Ruffian wolves, white and gray, eyed the travellers askance, keeping ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... safe retreats, unharmed by the rifle of the hunter, where the osprey and white-headed eagle built their nests, unheeded and unharmed. Twice that day, misled by following the track of the deer, had they returned to the samespot,—a deep and lovely glen, which had once been a watercourse, but was now a green and shady valley. This they named the Valley of the Rock, from a remarkable block of red granite that occupied a central position in the narrow defile; and here they prepared to pass their second night on the Plains. A few boughs cut ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... in deed, or a hypocrite, or an accepter of persons, or a blasphemer, or crafty, or avaricious, or fraudulent, or deaf to pious words, or a party to evil actions, or proud, or puffed up; he has terrified no man, he has not cheated in the market-place, and he has neither fouled the public watercourse nor laid waste the tilled land of the community. This is, in brief, the confession which the deceased makes; and the next act in the Judgment Scene is weighing the heart of the deceased in the scales. ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... discernible on the level plains. Before it lay the endless prairie across which ran the now half-dry, grass-choked stream. A few stunted cottonwood trees followed its windings, and one little clump of wild plum bushes bristled in a draw leading down to the shallow place of the dry watercourse. All else was distance and vastness void of life ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... reminded him of his duty, and I was presently riding within ten yards of the stem of the largest, and sent a bullet through her back. The Old Grey shied considerably and became very unmanageable, and on one occasion, in consequence, the rhinoceros, finding herself hemmed in by a bend in a watercourse, turned round to charge, I had ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... it was long past three before I left St. Germain de Calberte. I went down beside the Gardon of Mialet, a great glaring watercourse devoid of water, and through St. Etienne de Vallee Francaise, or Val Francesque, as they used to call it; and towards evening began to ascend the hill of St. Pierre. It was a long and steep ascent. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... watercourse were shaded by occasional clumps of trees encircled by shrubs, for a distance of about two miles. Beyond that for some five or six hundred yards down to the sea the river ran between naked banks. This state of affairs enabled him to approach close to the landing-place ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... climb, he said, was steady, and took him between four and five hours, as near as he could guess, now that he had no watch; but it offered nothing that could be called a difficulty, and the watercourse that came down from the saddle was a sufficient guide; once or twice there were waterfalls, but they did not ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... very unfrequented one, twisting like a mountain river—indeed, it was the bed of an old watercourse—between brown hills of wild oats, and debouching at last into a broad blue lake-like expanse of alfalfa[162-2] meadows. In vain I strained my eyes over the monotonous level; nothing appeared to rise above or move across it. In the faint hope that she might have lingered at the ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... Victoria, which point they reached on the 10th of September, 1844. Here Eyre left them, and on the 11th of October the explorers arrived at Williorara, the place where they intended leaving the Darling for the interior. The appearance of this watercourse very much disappointed Sturt, he had hoped from the account of the natives to find in it a fair-sized creek, heading from a low range, distantly visible to the north-west; instead, he found it a mere ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... the imports and exports shows an immense increase in the prosperity of this, if not salubrious sea-port, at least healthy watercourse. It seems that the importation of Margate slippers this year, as compared with that of the last, has been as two-and-three-quarters to one-and-a-half, or rather more than double, while the consumption of donkeys has been most gratifying, and proves beyond doubt that the pedestrians and equestrians ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... at the head of Clearwater Lake, a beautiful sheet of water about two miles long and half a mile wide and containing a number of picturesque islands. At the head of the lake was the Rick Rack River, running down from the hills and woods beyond. Up in the hills it was a wild and rocky watercourse containing a number of dangerous rapids, but where it passed Colby Hall it was a broad and fairly deep stream, joining the lake at a point where there were two rocky islands. The distance from the railroad station to the Military Academy was a little over half a mile, along a road ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... winter of 1851 will long be remembered in the foot hills. The snow lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a river, and every river a lake. Each gorge and gulch was transformed into a tumultuous watercourse that descended the hillsides, tearing down giant trees and scattering its drift and debris along the plain. Red Dog had been twice under water, and Roaring Camp had been forewarned. "Water put the gold into them gulches," said ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... be alone. Set out now for Kot Ghazi. I may return." A stone fell and clattered. Dam shrank, cringed, and shut his eyes—as one expecting a heavy blow. Ah-h-h-h-h—had the beast bolted? With the slowness of an hour-hand he raised his head above the bank of the watercourse until his eye cleared the edge. No—still there. After a painful crawl that seemed to last for hours, he reached the point where the low ridge ran off at right-angles, crept behind it, and lay flat on his face, to rest and recover breath. He was soaked in perspiration from head ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... retreat through White Oak Swamp, it was necessary to destroy a small foot-bridge over a little watercourse. The enemy were pressing on behind, and the task of demolishing the bridge was one of great danger. General Sumner, seeing the condition of affairs, called for one volunteer to cut away the log that still supported the structure. John Williams sprang forward, and, seizing the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... rose over the city just as we reached the narrowest part of the gut, Grim leading, and its first rays showed that we were using the bed of a watercourse for a road. Exactly in front of us, glimpsed through a twelve-foot gap between cliffs six hundred feet high, was a sight worth going twice that distance, running twice that risk, to see—a rose-red temple front, carved out ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... low as I could, and watching my time to cross the more open places when the sentry was looking away from me, I passed up the winding of the little watercourse, and sheltered in the swampy thicket which concealed its origin. Hence I could see for miles over the plain—broad reaches of corn land already turning pale, mazy river fringed with reed, hamlets scattered among clustering trees, and that which I chiefly ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... massive bulk of the tower that the vast shadow lay broadly across it, Stern had suddenly come upon as beautiful a little watercourse as ever bubbled forth under the yews of Arden or lapped the willows ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... few yards long, made of fine black silk, with a small mesh, are used in some parts of the country for taking kingfishers. These nets are stretched across a small watercourse or the arch of a bridge in such a manner that, a little "slack" being allowed, the bird is taken to a certainty in attempting to pass. So fatal is this net when skilfully set, that I know one man who adds several pounds to ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... the swales, and across the hollows ran broad sheets of racing water. I had crossed two or three of these, wondering whether I should be able to ford the next real watercourse, when we came to a broad bottom down the middle of which ran a swift shallow stream which rose over the young grass. For a few rods the road ran directly down this casual river of flood water, and as I looked back it all ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... affairs of Lodi and Arcoli. But these examples had not served to correct the Austrians, for on leaving Vienna, which is not suited to defence, they retired to the other side of the Danube without destroying a single one of the bridges spanning this vast watercourse, and limited themselves to placing inflammable material on the platform of the main bridge, in order to set it alight when the French appeared. They had also established on the left bank, at the ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... know that it's any consarn o' yours what I think," replied Flip, hopping from boulder to boulder, as they crossed the bed of a dry watercourse. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... inferior qualities. They passed by an unglazed window at the back of the mill, and Mr. Quinn pointed out his own house. It stood among trees and shrubs, now for the most part bare, but giving promise of shady privacy in summertime. Long windows opened out on to a lawn stretching down to the watercourse which fed the millwheel. A gravel path skirted one side of the house leading to a bridge, and thence to a doorway in a high wall, beyond which lay the road. As they looked the door opened, and a woman with two little girls came through. They crossed the bridge, and ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... in the world.' Beautiful, indeed, were the natural features of the country as described by the early travellers; auspicious of the future of the people as it expanded to the eye of hope, when the colony became part of a great and free nation. Connected at the north and east, by thoroughfare and watercourse, with the industrial and educated States of New England, the fertile and commercial resources of New York, and the rich coal lands and agricultural wealth of Pennsylvania; Maryland and the Atlantic providing every facility to foreign trade, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... a brook, you will find it difficult to prevent the escape of the fry when hatched, and you are left in doubt as to the success of your experiment. With spring water all these inconveniences are avoided. But if your watercourse should contain water-lice or aquatic larvae, it is a very easy matter to destroy them before putting in your boxes, with a little salt or quicklime. It is also desirable to cover your spawning-boxes with a wire grating, to exclude ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... not deliver the cut in the right place, as the elephant, with increased speed, completely distanced the aggageers, then charged across the deep sand and reached the jungle. We were shortly upon his tracks, and after running about a quarter of a mile he fell dead in a dry watercourse. His tusks were, like those of most Abyssinian elephants, exceedingly short, but ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... mile away to the east the low, concave sweep of the prairie was cut by the jagged banks and curves of a watercourse which drained the melting snows in earlier spring. Along the further bank a dozen buffalo were placidly grazing, unconscious of the fact that in the shallow, dry ravine itself half a dozen young Indians—Sioux, ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... edge of a depression of an old watercourse that wound around past the cotton-woods to the ridge itself and included the basin where Leddy and his followers had tethered their horses. But this part of it was dry sand. The standing figures around the water-hole had sunk down. Jack ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... she thought of this she rubbed her face against the Kangaroo's soft coat, and patted her with her little hands; and the affectionate animal was so pleased at these caresses, that she jumped clean over a watercourse, twenty feet at ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... the explorers discovered a considerable stream which appeared to rise in the southeast and empty into the Columbia on the left. To this stream they gave the name of Lepage for Bastien Lepage, one of the voyageurs accompanying the party. The watercourse, however, is now known as John Day's River. John Day was a mighty hunter and backwoodsman from Kentucky who went across the continent, six years later, with a party bound for Astoria, on the Columbia. From the rapids below the John Day River the Lewis and Clark party caught ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... bank, following a tortuous foot-path until they reached the water's edge. Then they proceeded to the mouth of an immense cave, some fifty feet above the river, under the cliff. A little stream of limpid water trickled down from a spring within the cave. The little watercourse served as a sort of natural staircase for the visitors. A cool, pleasant atmosphere exhaled from the mouth of the cavern. Really it was a shrine of nature and it is not strange that it was so regarded ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... the strip of wood northwest of the Miller house. It was among ledges of rock looking into the ravine beyond which were Stuart and Early. The ravine was the continuation northward to the Potomac of a little watercourse which headed near the Dunker Church and along one side of which the West Wood lay, the outcrop of rock making broken ledges along its whole length. Indeed, all the pieces of wood in the neighborhood seemed to be full of such rocks, and for that reason had been allowed to remain ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... and take earth from places where the soil is deep, or where, from being in a hollow, it will speedily again accumulate and sward over; and, in cutting peats, tenants shall on all occasions open the banks in a straight line, and in the line of the watercourse, and make proper drains from the lower end of the banks, in order to prevent the accumulation of stagnant water, and shall carefully preserve the surface feal, and as soon as the peats are cut, smooth the surface of the bottom of the banks, ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... to the road's edge, shut off the vast prospect on his left; till, at an abrupt turn of the road, they gave place to a watercourse, descending in a cataract of boulders to the valley below. Then the glorious company of the mountains sprang suddenly into view, lifting scarred heads to heaven, and greeting the new day with a Te Deum audible to the spirit, if not to the ear itself. To the spirit of Eldred Lenox these outward ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... mouth of the watercourse, so Richborough protected the south, and here traces of a chapel in the form of a cross are plainly discernible amongst ruins known to be of Roman workmanship. The old church at Lyminge in the same county is thus ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... peak and ridge, rising beyond the summits in the clouds, filling the valleys, spread over watercourse and forest, they passed their life of lonely majesty—apart, their splendor too remote for him as yet to share. Long since had Earth withdrawn them from the hearts of men. Her lesser children knew them ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... the passage of water.] Conduit. — N. conduit, channel, duct, watercourse, race; head race, tail race; abito[obs3], aboideau[obs3], aboiteau[Fr], bito[obs3]; acequia[obs3], acequiador[obs3], acequiamadre[obs3]; arroyo; adit[obs3], aqueduct, canal, trough, gutter, pantile; flume, ingate[obs3], runner; lock-weir, tedge[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... therefore, almost all the way. Exercise, the fresh air, the thought of seeing Robert, at least of being on his premises, in his vicinage, revived her somewhat depressed spirits quickly. Arriving in sight of the white house, and within hearing of the thundering mill and its rushing watercourse, the first thing she saw was Moore at his garden gate. There he stood, in his belted Holland blouse, a light cap covering his head, which undress costume suited him. He was looking down the lane, not in the direction of his cousin's approach. She stopped, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Doctor Thomas Eckarly and his two brothers came from Pennsylvania and camped at the mouth of a creek, emptying into the Monongahela, 8 or 10 miles below Morgantown; they were Dunkards, and from that circumstance, the watercourse on which they fixed themselves for a while, has been called Dunkard's creek. While their camp continued at this place, these men were engaged in exploring the country; and ultimately settled on Cheat river, at the Dunkard ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers |
