"Scarp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grievances, that even the otters were nearly all gone 'puir beasties.' 'Well, but what good could the otters do you?' I asked her. 'Good, your honor? why scarcely a morn came but they left a bonny grilse (young salmon) on the scarp down yonder, and the vennison was none the worse of the bit the puir beasts ate themselves,' The people here (Morayshire) call every eatable animal, fish, flesh, or fowl, venison, or as they pronounce it, vennison. For instance, they tell you that the snipes are good vennison, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... into hills and sometimes breaking away and littering the plain with rubble. The desert is never completely desert for long, and on turning westward as he was directed, Joseph caught sight of the hill which he had been told to look out for—he could not miss it, for the evening sun lit up a high scarp, and on coming to the end of a third mile the desert began to look a little less desert, brambles began again. Banu could not be far away. But Joseph did not dare to go farther. He had been walking for many hours, and even ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... an opening above and pattered upon the dusty carpet at Paul's feet. He glanced upward at the darkening pall which seemed to rest upon the hill top. Its oppressive blackness suggested weight, so that one trembled for the stability of the chalky scarp which must uphold that ebon canopy. Paul moved further along the aisle to a spot where the foliage was unbroken, as rain began a rapid tattoo upon the leafy roof. In the following instant the hillside was illuminated wildly as lightning wrote its message ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... the vibrations travelled. In the Riviera earthquake are combined the principal features of the last two shocks with several phenomena of miscellaneous interest, especially those connected with its submarine foci. The Japanese earthquake is distinguished from others by its extraordinary fault-scarp and the very numerous shocks that followed it. The Hereford earthquake is a typical example of a twin earthquake, and provided many observations on the sound phenomena; while the Inverness earthquakes are important on account of ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... Josecito in the province of Aramberri, near the town on Aramberri, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, is at an elevation of approximately 7400 feet above sea level on the east-facing slope of the Sierra Madre Occidental in a limestone scarp. The dominant vegetation about the cave is the decidedly boreal forest association of pine and live oak. Additional information concerning the cave is ...
— Pleistocene Pocket Gophers From San Josecito Cave, Nuevo Leon, Mexico • Robert J. Russell
... palisade horizontal, or nearly so, projecting from the scarp or counterscarp. A modern and better form consists of supports at 3 or 4 feet interval, connected by barbed wire, forming a horizontal wire fence. ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... face of a scarp which rose like a cliff above him—a smooth, bare wall of rock that had halted his climb. Halfway up the scarp was a dark horizontal line of bushes, something like a hedge. Apparently there was a ledge or shelf there, and he decided to climb ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... "all the world over." On passing through a ravine an eagle rose from a jutting scarp; and looking up the rocks, two or three hundred feet in height, Owen wondered if it was among these cliffs the bird built its eerie, and how the young birds were taken by the Arabs. Crows followed the ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... early, so he strolled for a few minutes in the park that lies underneath that rocky scarp. On the summit, clear-surging against the blue, the great church rode like a ship on a long ridge of sea. The angel with a trumpet on the jut of the roof was like a valiant seaman in the crow's ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... siege operations had been Sergeant Wilkes's foible. His youngsters played upon it, drawing him into discussions over the camp-fire, and winking one to another as he expounded and illustrated, using bits of stick to represent parallels, traverses, rampart and glacis, scarp and counterscarp. But he had mastered something of the theory, after his lights, and our batteries' neglect of the hornwork struck him ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... plain above him springing barefoot. He saw her legs gleam under her swirling skirts. He strained his eyes to her, but could not see her face for the mist over them. He waited for her, watching, feeling her approach. She began the descent of the scarp timidly, as if she was playing with the thought of his bliss, which she held daintily in her hands. "Dangerously beautiful, my Beautiful One, art thou. Heedless always of thyself. Now a wind blows from thee to me. Thy herald, O Thou that shrillest ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... attack the lines upon which the French had been at work all the winter, hoping by these to cover Douay and other frontier towns, which were threatened by the confederates. The troops left for the defence of the lines retired without opposition. The allies having laid bridges over the scarp, the duke of Marlborough with his division passed the river and encamped at Vitri. Prince Eugene remained on the other side and invested Douay, the enemy retiring towards Cambray. Mareschal Villars still commanded the French army, which was extremely numerous ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... was a monstrous scarp of mountains, colored in glaring and unnatural tints. Immediately about there was raw rock. But it was peculiarly smooth, as if sand grains had rubbed over it for uncountable aeons and carefully worn away every trace of unevenness. Half a mile to ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... habits, took his bearings, put the key in his pocket, and scrambled up the wall of hay, which was about fifteen feet high and formed a sort of platform. When he reached the top he slid down on the other side, as though he were descending the scarp of a fortification, and reached the flooring of the church, which was almost ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... cotton garments in winter and hempen in summer—a custom habitually practised by the lower orders only. The very detailed nature of his economical measures is illustrated by an incident which has independent interest. Observing that the fences erected on the scarp of Yedo Castle were virtually useless for purposes of defence and very costly to keep in repair, he caused them all to be pulled down and replaced by pine trees. This happened in 1721, and the result was that the battlements of this great castle were soon overhung by noble trees, which ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... out loud as they climbed the purgatorial scarp above Lost Souls Creek, "ruega por nosotros pecadores ahora—" the very gulches stood angry and stark in the early morning—"y en la hora de ...
— Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas • Raphael Aloysius Lafferty
... were marched down from the town, and, under the direction of the knights, laboured all night at the mound, removing great quantities of the fallen stones and rubbish in a line halfway up it, and piling them above so as to form a scarp across the mound that would need ladders to ascend. Another party worked at the top of the mound, and there built up a wall eight feet high. The work was completed by daylight, and the knights felt that they were now in a position ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... range of hills, 500 m. in length, forming the N. scarp of the plateau of the Deccan in India, the highest peak of which ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... that Coldscaur, which is in North Marvilion beyond the Middle Shires, stands on a fretted scarp. It is strongly defended by art as well as nature, for there are three ravines about it with a stepped path through each up to the Castle. These were defended about midway of each by a wicket-gate and a couple of towers. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... life-blood and tear the haunch; he will watch it steal away and hide under the karaunda bush; he will sit there till day breaks, when he will creep under the thorn jungle, across the stream, up the scarp of the ravine, through the long grass to the sahib's camp, and give the word that makes the hunter's heart dance. From the camp he will stride from hamlet to hamlet till he has raised an army of beaters; and he will be back at the camp with his forces before the sahib has ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... furiously angry down below there. But those who were not wounded had tumbled ashore, and they replied to our second volley with a more concerted fire. And in the flash Of their guns I, craning over the scarp of the hill, saw clearly but ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... themselves behind trees and projections of the bank. The party nearest us kept loading and firing their escopettes. Their bullets flattened upon the face of the cliff or whistled over our heads. Clayley, Chane, Raoul, and myself, being unarmed, had thrown ourselves behind the scarp to avoid catching a stray shot. Not so Lincoln, who stood boldly out on the highest point of the bluff, as if disdaining to ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... mid-May, but the winter had been mild, the spring early, and now the heights on either side were clothed in raiment of the freshest, coolest green; the vines were climbing in luxuriant leaf all over the face of the rocky scarp that hemmed the swirling tide of the Hudson; the radiance of the evening sunshine bathed all the eastern shores in mellow light and left the dark slopes and deep gorges of the opposite range all the deeper and darker by contrast. A lively breeze had driven most of the passengers within doors ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... was the House, a hundred yards or so back from the edge, the roof showing above the precipitous scarp. Half-way down the slope became easier, a jumble of boulders and boiler-plates, till it reached the waters of the small haven, which lay calm as a mill-pond in the windless forenoon. The haven broadened out at its foot and revealed a segment of ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... were planted, and at first drove all before him; but the Janissaries rallied and forced back the Christians out of the trenches. Unfortunately there was a high wind, which drove the smoke of the artillery down on the counter-scarp (the slope of masonry facing the rampart), and while it was thus hidden from the Christians, the Turks succeeded in effecting a lodgment there, fortifying themselves with trees and sacks of earth and wool. When the smoke cleared off, the knights were dismayed to see the horse-tail ensigns ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of hearty laughter from the manly-looking lad addressed, as he stood, with his hands clinging and his head twisted round, to look back: for he had spread-eagled himself against a nearly perpendicular scarp of rock which he had begun to climb, so as to reach ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... General Michael, and no explanation was offered by that dreaded officer. To him the cold seemed to be a matter of indifference; for he stood about watching every movement of the men with a supreme disregard for the driving snow or the knife-like wind that whistled over the northern scarp. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... in advance of the time when cannons with smooth bore were obliged to approach to within a very short range of a scarp in order to open a breach, and we are far beyond that first rifled artillery which effected so ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... Sea lay, a stretch of silk. At its edge was the flutter of ospreys feasting on the barbels and breams of the Jordan, which as they enter, die. Beyond was a glitter of white and gold, the scarp of Moriah and its breast of stone, the Tyrian bevel of Solomon, the porphyry of Nehemiah, the marble that Herod gave; ascending terraces, engulfing porticoes, the splendor of Jerusalem at dawn. Between the houses nearest was the dimness that ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... confusion. The earthen sides of the fosse seem to quiver under the drenching onset, though it is practically no more to them than the blows of Thor upon the giant of Jotun-land. It is impossible to proceed further till the storm somewhat abates, and I draw up behind a spur of the inner scarp, where possibly a barricade stood two thousand years ago; ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... of the cabin were discs of scarlet, that pure translucent colour which comes from the reflection of sunset in leagues of still water. The ship lay at anchor under the high green scarp of an island, but on the side of the ports no land was visible—only a circle in which sea and sky melted into the quintessence of light. The air was very hot and very quiet. Inside a lamp had been lit, for in those latitudes night descends like a thunderclap. Its ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... of things when the Latest Arrival appeared on the scene, fresh from head-quarters, some ninety miles northwest and two thousand feet higher. He had come late the previous afternoon. He had skated down the flinty scarp of Misery Hill, with the wheels of his buckboard locked, and hauled up at the adjutant's in a cloud of dust and misapprehension, with barely time for a bath and a shave before dinner. He was a new aide-de-camp of the department commander. He had ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King |
