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adjective
Desert  adj.  Of or pertaining to a desert; forsaken; without life or cultivation; unproductive; waste; barren; wild; desolate; solitary; as, they landed on a desert island. "He... went aside privately into a desert place." "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
Desert flora (Bot.), the assemblage of plants growing naturally in a desert, or in a dry and apparently unproductive place.
Desert hare (Zool.), a small hare (Lepus sylvaticus, var. Arizonae) inhabiting the deserts of the Western United States.
Desert mouse (Zool.), an American mouse (Hesperomys eremicus), living in the Western deserts.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Desert" Quotes from Famous Books



... North Damaraland forces working along the railway from Swakopmund. At the former place General Vanderventer joined up with General Botha's forces. The force from Swakopmund met with considerable opposition, first at Tretskopje, a small township in the great Namib Desert fifty miles to the northeast of Swakopmund, and secondly at Otjimbingwe, on the Swakop River, sixty miles northwest of Windhoek. Apart from these two determined stands, however, little other opposition was encountered, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... There have been times when I have doubted you, when I could not wholly escape the evidence that you were also concerned personally in this fraud. I have endeavoured to withdraw from the case, to forget, and blot everything from memory. But something stronger than will prevented; I could not desert you; could not believe you were wilfully wrong. You understand ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish

... their hostile prejudice[40] against Vitellius. To the tribunes and centurions they held out the hope of retaining all the favours they had won from Vitellius, and they urged Caecina himself in plain terms to desert. These letters were both read before a meeting of the Flavian army, and served to increase their confidence, for while Caecina wrote mildly and seemed afraid of offending Vespasian, their own generals had answered contemptuously ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... merely as a fact, and without any note of self-pity. But the bishops face grew very tender, and he looked away from Lin. Knowing his man—for had he not seen many of this kind in his desert diocese?—he forbore to make any text from that last sentence the cow-puncher had spoken. Lin talked cheerfully on about what he should now do. The round-up must be somewhere near Du Noir Creek. He would join it this season, but next he should work over to the Powder ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... compactly self-contained, without appanages of that kind. Here, however, was the frame of his real existence, which contained it as a frame contains a picture and threw it into relief. The great room, under the strong lights, showed the conventional desert of polished parquet floor, with sparse furniture grouped about it. There was an ivory-inlaid stand with a Benares brass tray; a Circassian bridal linen-chest stood against a wall; the tiles of the stove in the corner illustrated the life and martyrdom of Saint ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... commandment teaches man that there is one, and only one, great First Cause, one, and only one, proper object of human worship. This is the great, the ever fresh, the overflowing fountain of all revealed truth. Without it, human life is a desert, of no known termination on any side, but shut in on all sides by a dark and impenetrable horizon. Without the light of this truth, man knows nothing of his origin, and nothing of his end. And when the Decalogue was delivered to the Jews, with this great announcement and command at its head, what ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... discouraged the massing of large areas. Exclusive of Alaska, about three-fifths of the national domain has been sold or subjected to contract or grant. Of the remaining two-fifths a considerable portion is either mountain or desert. A rapidly increasing population creates a growing demand for homes, and the accumulation of wealth inspires an eager competition to obtain the public land for speculative purposes. In the future this collision of interests will be more marked ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... that, but there's the pauper part.' And he pointed to a spot at some little distance, where there were no gravestones and no shrubs. I walked across to this Desert of Poverty, which seemed too cheerless for a place of rest. I stood and gazed at the mounds till the black coffins underneath grew upon my mental vision, and seemed to press upon my brain. Thoughts I had none, only a sense of ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... month ago you might have stood where you are now, and seen nothing. You would have shivered with the cold. The field scents, the birds, the very insects were unborn. It is all a matter of seasons. What to-day is beautiful was yesterday a desert." ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... your love for me. Well, I can't complain of that. But bear my name you shall, and be supported by me. I tell you that it was never possible for me actually to desert you and the little one—never possible. I shirked a duty as long as I could; that's all it comes to. I loafed and paltered until the want of a dinner drove me into honesty. Try to forget it, dear Nancy. Try ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... waiting restlessly. He had not liked to desert his post and leave the disabled Moses alone in the house. Neither had he liked to lose his Sunday afternoon nap, well-earned refreshment of a diligent man. One other thing he had not liked: Moses' flat refusal to discuss their ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond

... hard-working Thomas Garfield! though only known to the world through his more gifted brother, he belongs to that grand army of self-sacrificing spirits who leave a bright and shining track behind them, and who everywhere make the wilderness and the desert place to blossom ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford

... I want? All I can want is that you should not desert me, as you think of doing," she said, understanding all he had not uttered. "But that I don't want; that's secondary. I want love, and there is none. So then ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... from the reign of Asoka, cir. 250 B.C., to the 7th century A.D. Its monuments occupy mainly a broad band running northeast and southwest, between the Indian Desert and the Dekkan. Offshoots of the style are found as far north as Gandhara, and as ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... belongs to some two or three thousand electors, who assuredly are neither the best nor the most intelligent, who turn the scale at each of our scrutin de liste elections. I see to the right and to the left two large armies—Catholics and Liberals—of force almost equal, whom nothing would tempt to desert their standard, who serve it with devotion and from conviction. Well, these great armies do not count, or scarcely count. On the day of battle it is as if they do not exist. What counts, what decides, what triumphs, is ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... mass of foliage was extremely grateful; but the air of the forest was close and stifling, and at the end of five miles we were glad to emerge once more into the open. The rest of the way lay over the hard lava, through a sort of desert of scrubby vegetation, occasionally relieved by clumps of trees in hollows. More than once we had a fine view of the sea, stretching away into the far distance, though it was sometimes mistaken for the bright blue sky, until the surf could be seen breaking upon the black rocks, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... this night in the kitchen. The landlord, from civility, insisted on having the honour of sleeping in the opposite corner. I very willingly acceded to his request, and having made up a cheerful fire, we composed ourselves in two chairs. The landlady seemed very indignant that her husband should desert her bed: she was sure that Monsieur was not afraid of remaining by himself. Her husband, she added, had a rheumatism, and the night air might injure him. I was resolved, however, for once to do mischief, ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... desert; mild to cool winters with dry, hot, cloudless summers; northern mountainous regions along Iranian and Turkish borders experience cold winters with occasionally heavy snows that melt in early spring, sometimes causing extensive flooding ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... expecting her, Mrs. Blake,' returned Audrey, drawing the girl to her side as she stood apart rather awkwardly. 'I thought it was unkind of Mollie to desert me the first morning. Every time the door opened I said to myself, "That is Mollie." I half made up my mind ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... even while I was speaking, indicated that her thoughts wandered restlessly, in the gloomy desert of her past. I thought of that gay bird—like youth of hers of which the old man with the scythe had told me and wondered. As I was thinking of this there came a cry from the aged squire so loud and doleful that ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... fixed. Unconsciously it is cultivated. Then friends and members of the family turn with loathing from the atmosphere of chronic pessimism; the habitue has become a cuttlefish among his fellows, only emanating floods of inky misery. He wonders why things do not come his way; why business associates desert him and troubles assail him more and more. The truth is that imaginary troubles tend to become real, and fortune never smiles on a man who turns a sour ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope

... circling stars Burnt like his youth with but a sickly flame. Up to his attic came the city cries — The throes with which her iron sinews heave — And yet forever behind prison doors Welled in his heart and trembled in his eyes The light that hangs on desert hills at eve And tints the sea on ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... instead of gardens, In a desert heathen land, No tree its shade dispenses, No fountains cool the sand. The king's name, it has vanish'd; His deeds no songs rehearse; Departed and forgotten— This is the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... kine and every kind of wealth and produce. And the encounter the son of Pandu had with the Mattamyurakas of that country was fierce. And the illustrious Nakula after this, subjugated the whole of the desert country and the region known as Sairishaka full of plenty, as also that other one called Mahetta. And the hero had a fierce encounter with the royal sage Akrosa. And the son of Pandu left that part of the country having subjugated the Dasarnas, the Sivis, the Trigartas, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... much mysterious report about the new material. Dionysius Periegetes tells of a barbarous people called the Seres, who "renounce the care of sheep and oxen, but who comb the coloured flowers of the desert, and with them produce woven precious stuffs, of which they make figured garments, resembling the flowers of the field in beauty, and in texture ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... quiescent water by the well-waxed, mirror-like floor. On the four walls, of a faded red, hung the plans and designs in large and small chases, edged with pale blue borders. Alone—absolutely alone—amidst this desert stood a very hirsute gentleman, who was lost in the contemplation of the plan of a charity home. Three ladies who appeared became frightened and fled across the gallery ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... when he was gone a-hunting, he espied two monks crossing the desert. These he ordered to be apprehended and brought to his chariot. Looking angrily upon them, and breathing fire, as they say, "Ye vagabonds and deceivers," he cried, "have ye not heard the plain proclamation of the heralds, that if ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... drives with my parents, it came to pass that my visits to the Cove were far less frequent than they had been at any previous time. But though old George growled and grumbled at seeing so little of me, he always encouraged me not to desert ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous

... and as it were the elements of the law." For if, as Justinian[r] has observed, the tender understanding of the student be loaded at the first with a multitude and variety of matter, it will either occasion him to desert his studies, or will carry him heavily through them, with much labour, delay, and despondence. These originals should be traced to their fountains, as well as our distance will permit; to the customs of the Britons and Germans, as recorded by Caesar and Tacitus; to the codes of the northern ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... desired. He that lives in torpid insensibility, wants nothing of a carcass but putrefaction. It is the part of every inhabitant of the earth to partake the pains and pleasures of his fellow-beings; and, as in a road through a country desert and uniform, the traveller languishes for want of amusement, so the passage of life will be tedious and irksome to him who does not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... the profoundest gratitude. It is absolutely necessary that I return to my parents in Belgium. They are old and failing in health and need me greatly. I have been sad and anxious for months because I felt that it would be wickedness to desert this poor child. I have been torn in two. Now I can be at peace—thank ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the Revolution, when the contention of the British Empire was, most unfortunately for us, and altogether against the usual course of such mighty changes in government, decided in the least important nation; but with such ravages and ruin executed on both sides, as to leave the kingdom a desert, which in some sort it still continues. Neither did the long rebellions in 1641, make half such a destruction of houses, plantations, and personal wealth, in both kingdoms, as two years campaigns did in ours, by fighting ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... treatise commenced, probably, in the last year of Vespasian's reign, and completed only in that of Domitian—Cicero as a poet is spoken of with a severity of censure which the writer presumes to have been his recognized desert. "For Caesar," he says, "and Brutus made verses, and sent them to the public libraries; not better, indeed, than Cicero, but with less of general misfortune, because only a few people knew that they had done so." This ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... the frontispiece is a reproduction of a photograph taken by Professor F.E. Lloyd and Dr. W.A. Cannon during the visit of Professor de Vries at the Desert Botanical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution, at Tucson, Arizona, in ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... be strange to take up the old life again and to look back from it at the months of life with Gregory—that mirage of happiness receding as if to a blur of light seen over a stretch of desert. Still with her quiet and unrevealing young face turned towards the evening landscape, Karen felt as if she had grown very old and were looking back, after a life-time without Gregory, at the mirage. ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... a cloud of dust, often so thick as to prevent seeing a stone's-throw off. It is common in South America, being raised by the wind from adjoining shores. Also off the coast of Africa at the termination of the desert of Zahara. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... whatever Coleridge's personal ego may have been, his creative ego was assuredly not single in kind or aim. He did some noble things late in life (instance the passage on "Youth and Age," and that on "Work without Hope"), but his poetic genius seemed to desert him when Kant took possession of him as a gigantic windmill to do battle with, and it is now hard to say which was the deeper thing in him: the poetry to which he devoted the sunniest years of his young life, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... the moment, resting there, with heavy light upon him, and the dark jaws of the mountain desert yawning wide behind him, and all the beautiful expanse of liberal earth before him—even so he seemed to me, of all the things in sight, the one that first would draw attention. His face was full of quiet grandeur and impressive calm, and ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... I gaze, these narrow walls expand; Before my dreamy eye Stretches the desert with its shifting sand, Its ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... several active Persons thought they were placed rather according to their Fortune than their Merit, and took it in their Heads to prefer themselves from the open Area, or Pitt, to the Galleries. This Dispute between Desert and Property brought many to the Ground, and raised others in proportion to the highest Seats by Turns for the Space of ten Minutes, till Timothy Buck came on, and the whole Assembly giving up their Disputes, turned their Eyes upon the Champions. Then it ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... certain hermit who dwelt in the desert about two days' journey from Alexandria, and the Virgin Mary appeared to him and bade him go and tell Catherine to fear not, for she should have a heavenly bridegroom, even her Son, who was greater than any monarch ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... sky, the approach of darkness, and the utter desert in which I found myself at length conjured up the full distress of the scene, which seized upon my imagination, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... great diversity of costume, everybody adopting that which he likes best, whether Arab, Syrian, or Turk; but the lower order of people generally wear a shirt fastened round the waist with a girdle, after the example of their neighbours in the desert. Ali Bey remarks, that he saw very few handsome females in the metropolis; on the contrary, they had in general that bilious appearance so common in the East,—a pale citron colour, or a dead yellow, like paper or plaster, and, wearing a white fillet ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... a grave tenderness, "if we went by desert, who among us would deserve anything? Should I, who was so hard and cold towards my poor little wife, when, if I had said one word out of my real heart, and not kept it down so proudly—Ah! I was very wicked. I, too, did not ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... spiritual advantages, and, despising a false and treacherous world, aspired with his whole heart to a heavenly kingdom. Having engaged himself in a monastic state, he retired with St. Cado, abbot of Llan-carvan, into certain desert islands, whence they were driven by pirates from the Orcades. Two islands, called Ronech and Ecni, afforded him for some time a happy retreat, which he forsook to preach to sinners the obligation of doing penance, and to invite all men ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... mountain-hunter fareth where his foot ne'er failed before: She is where the high bank crumbles at last on the river's shore: The mower's scythe she whetteth; and lulleth the shepherd to sleep Where the deadly ling-worm wakeneth in the desert of the sheep. Now we that come of the God-kin of her redes for ourselves we wot, But her will with the lives of men-folk and their ending know we not. So therefore I bid thee not fear for thyself of Doom and her deed, But for me: and I bid thee hearken to the helping of my need. Or else—Art ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris

... had brothers," said she, "but I find I am now brotherless—yet perhaps not altogether so. I had once a young, generous, innocent, and very affectionate playfellow. It was known that I loved him—that we all loved him best. Will he desert his loving sister, now that the world has done so? or will he allow her to kiss, him, and to pray that the darkness of guilt may never overshadow his young and generous spirit. Bryan," she added, "I am Mary, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... an arid pallor extended up the eastern sky; a pale, milky illumination, dull-white over the desert, that told of the furnace into which Nissr was drifting—if indeed she could survive till she reached land. The glasses showed tawny reaches of sand, back a little from the coast; and beyond these, low hills, or rather rolling dunes, lay empurpled ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... deuce of a time. The town rose up in a body, and we—you see, I happened to be there—we followed the man for weeks. We trailed him and the kid clear over into the Nevada desert where ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... suppose I'd desert a friend in a time of need like this?" returned Scott. "I'm going to take this officer's number now while ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.

... lived, and the daze cleared from his brain. It was all of a piece. They were the hated Gringos and they were all unfair. And in the worst of it visions continued to flash and sparkle in his brain—long lines of railroad track that simmered across the desert; rurales and American constables, prisons and calabooses; tramps at water tanks—all the squalid and painful panorama of his odyssey after Rio Blanca and the strike. And, resplendent and glorious, he ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London

... tiger slain that very day and skinned by Dave and Jarvis; there was the oriental chain and tag about the beast's neck. Johnny seemed surrounded by many mysteries and great dangers. Was it his duty to call the deal off and desert the mines? Sometimes he thought it was. Ice conditions were such that it might yet be possible to get their gasoline schooner into open water and go pop-popping south to Vladivostok. But there would be those there who waited and ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell

... Beclere! it is terrible to think one knows nothing, and life, like the desert, is full ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... who played it could know nothing. It had spoken of long perilous journeys and the faces of strange countries; of the silver way across moonlit seas; of the beckoning voices from the under edges of the desert. It had taken a deeper, a more mysterious tone. It had told of great joys, quite unattainable, and of great griefs too, eternal, and with a sort of nobility by reason of their greatness; and of many unformulated ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... she has undertaken, and she needs for it a strength that can only come from conscious fellowship with God. If she ever needed inspiration, she needs it now. If there ever was a time when she could dispense with the divine guidance and grace, that time is not now. The churches which desert the places of prayer, and think to substitute the wisdom of men for the power of God, are not going to give much aid ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... trade, the invariable answer given by the natives to all questions put by the white men was "No-me," meaning that they did not understand, and the name of the place was thus derived. On Cape Nome, four years ago an Arctic desert, there now stands a fine and well-built city. In winter the place can only be reached by dog-sled, after a fatiguing, if not perilous, journey across Alaska, but in the open season you may now travel there almost any week in large liners from San Francisco. It seemed ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... Empire bordered upon Egypt, a rich and populous country, which at all times covets Syria, and is often strong enough to seize and hold it in possession. The natural frontier is moreover weak, no other barrier separating between Africa and Asia than a narrow desert, which has never yet proved a serious obstacle to an army. From the side of Egypt, if from no other quarter, Babylonia might expect to have trouble. Here she inherited from her predecessor, Assyria, an old hereditary ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson

... we talked, and the soldiers filled their canteens and drank deep and long, like camels who, after days of travel through the land of 'thirst and emptiness,' have reached the green oasis and the desert spring, a black corporal of the 24th Infantry walked wearily up to the 'water hole.' He was muddy and bedraggled. He carried no cup or canteen, and stretched himself out over the stepping-stones in the stream, sipping up the water and the mud together out of the shallow pool. A white cavalryman ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... Greek name for a vengeful daemon, driving its victim into desert places; and Shelley, prompted by Peacock, chose it for the title of a poem which describes the Nemesis of solitary souls. Apart from its intrinsic merit as a work of art, "Alastor" has great autobiographical value. Mrs. Shelley affirms that it was written ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... lightning seen? When you have any interest of your own to serve, then auspices are all nothing; but when it is only your friends who are concerned, then you become scrupulous. What more? Did you not also desert him in the matter of the septemvirate?[22] "Yes, for he interfered with me." What were you afraid of? I suppose you were afraid that you would be able to refuse him nothing if he were restored to the full possession of his rights. ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... scenery—this Lincolnshire quality—that accounts for Tennyson's freshness of vision. But it is not so. Tennyson is fresh also in scenic scenery; he is fresh with the things that others have outworn; mountains, desert islands, castles, elves, what you will that is conventional. Where are there more divinely poetic lines than those, which will never be wearied with quotation, beginning, "A splendour falls"? What castle walls have stood in such a light of old romance, where in all poetry is there a sound ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell

... that I know not how to extricate myself. In love, indeed! no, my friend, but I am under obligations to her, and very great ones. Since you know so much, I will be very explicit with you. It is owing, perhaps, solely to her, that I have not, before this, wanted a bit of bread. How can I possibly desert such a woman? and yet I must desert her, or be guilty of the blackest treachery to one who deserves infinitely better of me than she can; a woman, my Nightingale, for whom I have a passion which few can have an idea of. I am half distracted with doubts ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... universal reprobation, if he persisted in resigning after every cause for it had been removed, and he had agreed to the course Lord Palmerston had insisted upon. Lord Palmerston had written a very clever letter to Lord John, begging him not to desert the Queen and the Country, which, if he read it to the House of Commons, would floor ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... detected in the last words of your speech, in proposing this toast, Mr. President, an accent of gentle reproach that any one should desert the high and pleasant ways of literature for the turmoil and the everlasting contention of public life. I do not suppose that there has ever been a time in which there was less of divorce between literature and public life than the present ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser

... peril of falling with his horse over a precipice, and now found himself before a labyrinth of scaffolds and free-stone, in the midst of a wild, grey, treeless mountain valley. What kind of a man was this, who had chosen this desert for his home, in life as well as in death! The Escurial suited King Philip, as King Philip suited the Escurial. Here he felt most at ease, from here the royal spider ceaselessly entangled the world in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... leech by the couch of a fair and hopeless frame, pledged to revive it by the inspired assurance, shared by none, that life had not forsaken it. A body given over to death and vultures-he stood by it in the desert. Is it a marvel to you that when the carrion-wings swooped low, and the claws fixed, and the beak plucked and savoured its morsel, he raised his arm, and urged the half-resuscitated frame to some vindicating show of existence? Arise! he said, even in what appeared ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... her so natural, so reasonable, that he should desert her when this siren with the melting eyes, the caressing laugh, should beckon him; for who could have resisted her? Not any man who had once ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... command the acceptance that once belonged to it, and that part of it which has been most influential may be put to-day to a use of which he did not dream, and of which he would not have approved, but Hamilton himself—"the black eagle of the desert," as the "Chaldee Manuscript" calls him—was a mighty force. The influence of that vehement and commanding personality on a generation of susceptible young men was deep and far-reaching. He seized and held the minds of his students until they were able to grasp ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns

... in the Arkansas is rocky and mountainous as far as to the western border of the state, when you enter upon the great American desert, which continues to the other side of the Cimarron, nearly to the foot of the Cordilleras. The eastern portion of Arkansas, which is watered by the Mississippi, is an unknown swamp, for there the ground is too ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... of a trip which the author took with Buffalo Jones, known as the preserver of the American bison, across the Arizona desert and of a hunt in "that wonderful country of ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... the land's pressed you to utter Jeremiah's lamentation, a sadder than which is not almost imaginable, ye would think, I say, that you had received double for all your sins. And yet, alas! how are your iniquities of infinite more desert? All that were mercy, which is behind infinite and eternal punishment. That there is room left for complaint, is mercy, that there is a remnant ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... him, however, to discover that even so minor a member of the gang as Phillopolis was preparing to desert what he evidently regarded as a sinking ship. More than this, it confirmed him in the wisdom of his own precautions, and he was rather glad that he had taken it into his head to visit Phillopolis ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... Curlie, greatly pleased to see that someone at least was more disturbed than himself. "Nothing's really dangerous since the invention of the radiophone. Ocean, desert, Arctic wilderness; it's all the same. Sick, lost, shipwrecked? All you've got to do is keep your head clear and your radiophone dry and tuned up. It'll find you a ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell

... round each jaw, who had come at the call of the British tyrant to slay women and children. In truth many of the Hessians became good Americans. In spite of the loyalty of their officers they were readily induced to desert. The wit of Benjamin Franklin was enlisted to compose telling appeals, translated into simple German, which promised grants of land to those who should abandon an unrighteous cause. The Hessian trooper who opened a packet of tobacco might ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong

... the pope's hand, with all the royalty that could be made, and sojourned there a time, and established all his lands from Rome into France, and gave lands and realms unto his servants and knights, to everych after his desert, in such wise that none complained, rich nor poor. And he gave to Sir Priamus the duchy of Lorraine; and he thanked him, and said he would serve him the days of his life; and after made dukes and earls, and ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... Colorado Desert Lake.—A description of the new overflow into the Colorado Desert, with the prognosis ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various

... till they obliterated themselves out of all human remembrance, and buried themselves in retreats of silence and of prayer. Yes, you are quite right. A garment of sackcloth may cover an unsanctified heart; and the fathers of the desert did not all escape the depths of Satan and the plague of their own heart. Quite true. A contrite heart may be carried about an applauding city in a coach and six; and a crucified heart may be clothed in purple and fine ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... in the long course of his butlership did the placid and unmoved calm of his manner entirely desert Jessop. The ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore

... her side until the end," cried Charmian eagerly. But Archibius, without noticing the enthusiastic ardor, so unusual to his sister's quiet nature, calmly continued: "She won your heart also, and it seems impossible for you to desert her. Many have shared our feelings; and it is no disgrace to any one. Misfortune is a weapon which cleaves base natures like a sword, yet like a hammer welds noble ones more closely. To you, therefore, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... strengthen his power, he applied to the Dalai Lama for ordination, but was refused. He then feigned conversion to Mahometanism, though without attracting Mahometan sympathies. In 1689 the Emperor in person led an army against him, crossing the deadly desert of Gobi for this purpose. Finally, after a further expedition and a decisive defeat in 1693, Galdan became a fugitive, and died three years afterwards. He was succeeded as khan by his nephew, Arabtan, who soon took up the offensive against China. He invaded Tibet, and pillaged ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... that that sort of thing didn't often happen to women, but he was going on. He had risen and was walking slowly up and down before the smoldering fire, and in his incisive, deliberate, well-bred voice he was excoriating the woman who had been so cowardly as to desert a dying man. "Even if she hadn't seriously cared, or if, for that matter, she hadn't cared at all, it would seem that mere common decency.... It puts, frankly, a very unpleasant light on the whole affair.... Ayling was a gentleman, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Lion of Petra has a desert all about him and a choice of caves, a camel within reach, and enough health to keep him feeling normal—never mind whose camel it is, nor what power claims to control the desert—there will be trouble for ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy

... stood a grove of cedars, old, gray, and drear, as weirdly impressive as the cacti in a Mexican desert. Torn by winds, scarred by lightnings, deeply rooted, tenacious as tradition, unlovely as Egyptian mummies, fantastic, dwarfed and blackened, these unaccountable creatures clung to the ledges. The dead mingled ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland

... evolution. Mr Waller ordered lunch with the care of one to whom lunch is no slight matter. Few workers in the City do regard lunch as a trivial affair. It is the keynote of their day. It is an oasis in a desert of ink and ledgers. Conversation in city office deals, in the morning, with what one is going to have for lunch, and in the afternoon with what one ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse

... moss, had heard, while toiling along as rough a road on as lonely a hillside as any in Scotland, the cry of a child; and, searching about, had found the infant, hardly wrapt in rags, and untended, as if the earth herself had just given birth—that desert moor, wide and dismal, broken and watery, the only bosom for him to lie upon, and the cold, clear night-heaven his only covering. The man had brought him home, and the parish had taken parish-care of him. ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... That would I have you do: and not to spend Your coin on every bauble that you fancy, Or every foolish brain that humours you. I would not have you to invade each place, Nor thrust yourself on all societies, Till men's affections, or your own desert, Should worthily invite you to your rank. He that is so respectless in his courses, Oft sells his reputation at cheap market. Nor would I, you should melt away yourself In flashing bravery, lest, while you affect To make a blaze of gentry to the ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson

... marched two days after the runaways. On the third night a great storm of wind and snow overtook the Ghaznian army in the desert. The King's tents were pitched with much difficulty, while the army was obliged to lie in the snow. Mahmud, having ordered great fires to be kindled around his tents, they became so warm that many of the courtiers began to take off their upper garments; when ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... day they traveled toward the south-west. Alter a time, they entered a desert land, where water was scarce and there was no game. Soon they began to be hungry ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix

... thowt as th' newspaper wur enow fur a mon to tackle," he would say, reflectively; "but theer's summat outside o' th' newspapers. I nivver seed a paper as had owt in it about desert ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... even be that it was memory (mother of the muses) rather than invention (daughter of necessity) which inspired the 'Primer of Imaginary Geography.' I have an uneasy wonder whether I should ever have gone on this voyage of discovery with Mynheer Vanderdecken, past the Bohemia which is a desert country by the sea, if I had not in my youth been allowed to visit 'A Virtuoso's Collection'; and yet, to the best of my recollection, it was no recalling of Hawthorne's tale, but a casual glance at the Carte du Pays de Tendre in a volume of Moliere, which first set me upon collecting the material ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews

... convincing her? She dare do all that truth and justice can demand—And she could love me if I would let her—Is not my despondency absurd?—Even did I know her present thoughts, and know them to be inimical to my passion, what ought I to do? Not to desert my own cause, if it be a just one: and, if it be the contrary, there is no question: I will make none. Let me but be convinced of my error, and it shall be renounced. Yes, Oliver, I dare boldly ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... way for itself out of the room at the upper part of the doorway, while the heavier cold air from without rushed in below to fill the vacated space. What if he took the equatorial regions or great tracts of arid desert for the heated room? The air over them, subjected by the heat to constant rarefaction, must rise, must overflow above, and must force the colder air from the surrounding regions in below. Two sheets of air will thus set in vertically on both sides, rise, and again separate above. Here ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... formed a crisis in the history of Mormonism in America. For a long time after their settlement in the "Great American Desert," as it was then called, Mormons repudiated United States authority. Gentile pioneers and recreant saints they dealt with summarily, witness the Mountain Meadow massacre of 1857, where 120 victims were murdered in cold ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... what it is humane and honorable for them to accept, has been stated with a frankness, a largeness of view, a generosity of spirit, and a universal human sympathy which must challenge the admiration of every friend of mankind; and they have refused to compound their ideals or desert others that they themselves may be safe. They call to us to say what it is that we desire, in what, if in anything, our purpose and our spirit differ from theirs; and I believe that the people of the United States ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... is always well to remember that the teeth themselves may be in a condition to produce blood-poisoning, which might cause death without the assistance of any particular toxic venom. The rattlesnake, however, which is rather too common in the desert, is a different sort of a chap. If he strikes you, you may just as well make your will, and chirp your death song, as to monkey with physicians, and squander some of the good wealth which may ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory

... statement be correct, that labourers on their arrival, tempted by the superabundance of good land, did with impunity desert their masters, leaving their property to perish, and did themselves become landowners, it will be apparent, either that there were then no laws in the colony, or that they were not in force. The ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... the latter, realizing that even the Empire of the Incas was not sufficiently large to hold the pair of Spanish leaders, determined to make for the South. The expedition was a tragic one. Almagro, though his spirit was undaunted, was now aged in years, and the barren country of the Atacama Desert and the attacks of the hostile Indians rendered the enterprise a failure from a monetary point of view. Almagro had invested all his fortune in this, and his affairs now ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... we trust that this plain memorial also will endure; and, while it guides the dutiful votary to the spot where his ashes are deposited, will teach to those who survey it the supremacy of intellectual and 'moral desert, and encourage them, too, by a like munificence, to aspire to a name as bright as that which ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... deception of her confiding sister, the pandering Pirithbus, and King Oenarus, who instantly offers himself in the place of the faithless lover, are all pitiful in the extreme, and frequently even laughable. Moreover, the desert rocks of Naxos are here smoothed down to modern drawing-rooms; and the princes who people them, with all the observances of politeness seek to out-wit each other, or to beguile the unfortunate princess, who alone has anything ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... both instantly change. The new arrival, though in silence, has caused a change of mood. May not the moods of Nature touch and stir us in virtue of a similar prerogative? The sea, the hills, the desert, wake passion, joy, terror, as the case may be; for a few, perhaps," he glanced significantly at his host so that Mrs. Bittacy again caught the turning of his eyes, "emotions of a curious, flaming splendor that are quite nameless. Well ... whence come these powers? Surely from nothing that is ... ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood

... had begun to grow dark, and Alec had to take great care of Kate amongst the tramways, coils of rope, and cables that crossed their way. At length they got clear of these, and found themselves upon the pier, built of great rough stones—lonely and desert, tapering away into the dark, its end invisible, but indicated by the ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... mile after mile on both sides of the railway line! There are no neat little fences to cut it up into fields, and it does not grow unevenly, but all at one height, so the effect is a flat and boundless plain, yellow as the desert sand. Everyone has heard of the grain fields of Canada, the great stretch of land, about a thousand miles in width, from whence corn is shipped to the remotest ends of ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... with the most scrupulous discretion. She is neither ugly nor pretty, and at most is only twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. It must be admitted that had the two vessels suffered shipwreck upon a desert island, it would have been ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne



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