"Undergrowth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Son, and with a vengeance sent 170 From Media post to Aegypt, there fast bound. Now to th' ascent of that steep savage Hill Satan had journied on, pensive and slow; But further way found none, so thick entwin'd, As one continu'd brake, the undergrowth Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplext All path of Man or Beast that past that way: One Gate there onely was, and that look'd East On th' other side: which when th' arch-fellon saw Due entrance he disdaind, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... our guide, and from the trenches we went down the slope, through the woods, on foot. A spur of the hill went forward, and as we neared the edge of the forest Tracy signalled to go quietly. Stooping carefully in the undergrowth, we noiselessly advanced to a fence corner where a sentinel stood behind a tree. Halting a few paces away, Tracy motioned to us to avoid moving the bushes, but to approach the fence and look between the rails. Doing so, we found the fence at the border ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... which we call the Race-Plain in those parts, and had nourished, when he first took up his rest below it, little but nettles, mulleins, and scrub of elder. A few fair trees—ash, thorn, spindle, service—struggled with the undergrowth which should live. He was for the trees, needing their shade; cleared the ground, terraced it with infinite pains, and utilised the water of a mist pool which he had made on the high land by a system of canals of remarkable neatness and ingenuity. Tree-trunks, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... of all that. She was sure that it did not take her more than twelve or fifteen minutes (for she had gone that way a hundred times) to get back to the gate, to walk up the little wood, to cut through it by a track in the undergrowth, and turn round the further and western end of it. Thence she could either take the long path that slanted across the field to the Farm bridge or keep to the upper ground along a trail in the grass skirting the wood, and so reach home ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... a whimper from the pack. There was not a sound save the eager rustling of the dogs through the sedge and undergrowth. The ground was familiar to Flora, and I watched her with pride as with powerful strides she circled around. Suddenly she paused and flung her head in the air, making a beautiful picture where she stood poised, as if listening. My heart ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... through, but it would be a work of considerable time, for with their masts they would have to clear away the branches to a considerable height. Down near the water the branches by which we pushed ourselves along were those of the undergrowth, with many rattans and other creepers varying from the thickness of one's thumb to that of one's wrist, and these would take a great deal of chopping before one of their war boats could be pushed through, but higher ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... was examining the piece, he remembered the shots which he had taken for spent balls, and bethought him to look around the woods in the direction from which they had come. Raising his eyes above the undergrowth, ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... plenty of undergrowth down in that hollow. Take my knife and cut away some of it. There's a piece of an old stump, too, that ought to burn well if ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... may appear to burst through from an undergrowth of statistics into the clear field of truism. False beliefs are more practical than theoretical, more a matter of practical conduct than of passive experience, more a change of reagent than a reaction to change. The man on the street or even many a leading neurologist would perhaps accept this ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... a sportsman seated much at his ease on the outskirts of the Foret de l'Isle-Adam; he had just finished a Havana cigar, which he had smoked while he waited for his companion, who had evidently been straying about for some time among the forest undergrowth. Four panting dogs by the speaker's side likewise watched the progress of the personage for whose benefit the remarks were made. To make their sarcastic import fully clear, it should be added that the second ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... growing rank in the damp ravine at the bottom of the little valley, ran to within a hundred feet of the out-building. Dense undergrowth choked the ground to a height of eight or ten feet around the boles of the close set trees. If they could gain the seclusion of that tangled jungle there was little likelihood of their being discovered, provided they were not seen as they passed across the ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... way ahead. "Hoh! what you stoppin' down there for? Of course you won't find any until you get up nearer the top. Come on!" and he disappeared in a thick clump of undergrowth. ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... he moved on, he could hear sounds of quiet and stealthy movement, and at last, standing before him, as he peeped through a small opening in the thick undergrowth, he could see a Boy Scout, standing stiff and straight, and working his signal flags. He had to stand on a high spot and in a clearing to do this, as otherwise, of course, his flags could not have been seen at any distance. ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... 1915 it was a beautiful place, where one might fancy that the many British dead rested more easily beneath oaks and among familiar flowers than in most of the cemeteries of this dreary land. The wood was about 1-1/2 miles long, with a maximum depth of 1,400 yards, and its undergrowth, where not cut away, was densely intertwined with alder, hazel, ash, and blackthorn, with water standing in large pools on parts of its boggy surface. In one corner was the picturesque Fosse Labarre, a wide horseshoe moat enclosing a little garden, now a machine-gun ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... into the grisly. Through the matted undergrowth of years, over the high-spiked barriers of the deer-park, the Highflyer had seen not only the familiar Grey Lady in robes of rustling silk (through which you could discern the gravel and weeds on the path), but little green demons with chalk-white heads and long ears. ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... honeysuckle twined round the low undergrowth of bushes, and tall foxgloves reared their purple spikes in every small, open glade. The girls gathered these as their ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... by where' he must pass, a clump of undergrowth and a few stunted trees grew round the base of a hillock and broken rocks. The cattle were reposing close up by this shelter. Nat's horse, as he drew near to the brush, was ambling along at that peculiar gait, half walk, half trot, essentially the pace of a "cow-horse." ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the rotten floor. The boys were all glad when the prow touched the little dock at the lone pueblo where Uncle Sam's flag snapped in a breeze which was coming over the trees, bringing with it a musty smell of decaying undergrowth. ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... upon the dry leaves, depending upon hearing chiefly, to warn them of the possible coming of an enemy. The undergrowth was so dense about the cup that no one fifteen yards away could see them, and they were able to hear even a creeping warrior, before he could come that near. Hence they reposed without alarm, and, bold forest runners that they were, eternally on guard, they took ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Council of the Gods—upheld the Evening Star. The monkeys sang sorrowfully to each other as they hunted for dry roosts in the fern-wreathed trees, and the last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages the scent of damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones. That is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if once it creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting all else, return to the hills to die. The clouds ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... heard a 'sh-'sh of the leaves, and there was the Stalo pushing his way through the undergrowth to see what chance he had of a dinner. At the first glimpse of Patto's head in the well he laughed ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... tangle of vegetation overhead, were low in the sky. Insects—and sometimes larger beings—leaped and slithered unseen before my advance. But I did not heed them. Eyes may have peered at me as I stumbled through the blackness of the undergrowth; but if they did, ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... The undergrowth was thick in this part; I couldn’t see before my nose, and must burst my way through by main force and ply the knife as I went, slicing the cords of the lianas and slashing down whole trees at a blow. I call them trees for the ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and if a hot, damp air, motionless, and heavy with the sleeping breath of countless growths could make it so, a conservatory it was. Every slightest turn had to be alertly chosen, and the tangle of branches and vines made going by the stars nearly impossible. The undergrowth crowded us into single file. We scarcely exchanged another word until our horses came abreast in the creek and stopped to drink. Conditions beyond were much the same until near the end of our detour, when my horse swerved abruptly and the buzz of a rattlesnake ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... undergrowth between the crowding trunks of the cocoa-palms. Far overhead their fronds mingled in a green thatch, through which a soft light filtered down. Here and there the close ranks of the palms were broken by an outcropping of rock, glaring up hot and sunbeaten at a distant ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... disheveled aspect might escape the servants Marcia took her down a side staircase of the vast house, and piloted her through some garden paths. Then the girl herself, returning, opened a gate into a wood, where an undergrowth of wild roses was just breaking into flower, and was soon pacing a mossy path out of sight and sound ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... miles distant, masked by its frowning front, lay a gayly colored, red-roofed city, besieged by encircling regiments, a broad bay holding a squadron of great war-ships, and gliding cat-like through its choked undergrowth and crouched among the fronds of its motionless palms were the ragged patriots of the Cuban army, silent, watchful, waiting. But the great range gave no sign. It frowned in ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... canopy of magnificent ash and plane trees, into a brake between the hills. It was an almost impenetrable thicket, spangled with tall autumnal flowers. The eupatoriums, with their purple crowns, stood like young trees, with an undergrowth of aster and blue spikes of lobelia, tangled in a golden mesh of dodder. A strong, mature odor, mixed alike of leaves and flowers, and very different from the faint, elusive sweetness of spring, filled the air. The creek, with a few faded leaves dropped upon its bosom, ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... swung to find the third. That man moved through thick undergrowth, and Calhoun set it on fire in a neat pattern of spreading flames. Evidently, these men had had no training in battle tactics with blast-rifles. The third man also had to get away. He did. But something from him arched through ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... Jenkins, made a flank movement, and by a desperate assault, took the redoubt on the left, with six pieces of artillery. When Rhodes' North Carolina Brigade got sufficiently through the tangle and undergrowth and near the opening as to see their way clear, they raised a yell, and with a mad rush, they took the fort with a bound. They were now within the strong fortress on the left and masters of the situation. Colonel Jenkins was ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... delightful morning the pleasure of breathing that mountain air which makes a constant theme of the hunter's praise, and which now made us feel as if we had all been drinking some exhilarating gas. The depths of this unexplored forest were a place to delight the heart of a botanist. There was a rich undergrowth of plants, and numerous gay-colored flowers in brilliant bloom. We reached the outlet at length, where some freshly-barked willows that lay in the water showed that beaver had ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... up the back lane at dusk and began to explore the woods. It grew dark and we thought of turning back. Then it began to grow light again. A full moon was climbing up through the maples, inviting further explorations. We pushed through a dense undergrowth and presently were in a grove of great white pines. There was a faint sound of running water, and suddenly we came upon an astonishing brook—wide, swift, and musical. We had not suspected the existence of such a brook within a dozen leagues. It was ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... trees with furry trunks moved presently into range of the glasses, thick undergrowth beneath. Dasinger picked his way through the thickets with some caution. The indications so far had been that local animals had as much good reason to avoid the vicinity of Hovig's machine as human ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... for a touch of such sweet madness now, when all young nature was strung to a delicious contest, and the blood spun through the veins full of life! Our boat lay motionless on the sea, and the setting sun caught the undergrowth of red-brown hair that shot through Barbara's dark locks. My own state was, I must confess, less fair to ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... anyhow, so long as it took him far enough from the spot where masked men had loosed the handcuffs from his wrists and stray shots had come ringing after him. In his path there were lakelets, which he swam, and streams, which he forded. Over the low hills he scrambled through an undergrowth so dense that even the snake or the squirrel might have avoided it, to find some easier way. Now and then, as he dragged himself up the more barren ascents, the loose soil gave way beneath his steps in ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... vegetation closed around Badshah and submerged him, as he turned off a footpath and plunged into the dense undergrowth. The trees were mostly straight-stemmed giants of teak, branchless for some distance from the ground. Each strove to thrust its head above the others through the leafy canopy overhead, fighting for its share of the life-giving sunlight. In the green gloom ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... village is another extraordinarily beautiful thing. The road, while still almost in the street, passes across a little embankment; and on the left hand you look down into a pit, like a quarry, full of ash-trees, and with a thick undergrowth of bushes and tall plants. From a dozen little excavations leap and bicker crystal rivulets of water, hurrying down stony channels, uniting in a pool, and then moving off, a full-fed stream, among quiet water-meadows. It is one of the sources of the Cam. The water is deliciously ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of the church was packed with a vast throng of people, all standing, closely crowded together, like the undergrowth in a forest. The rood-screen was open, or broken down, I could not tell which. The choir was bare, like a clearing in the woods, and filled ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... sad havoc in the garden should be thinned down, he took it home with him and tried it that evening. Just about sunset he repaired to his favourite spot, a clump of three trees growing close together, behind which he could easily conceal himself. A wood, full of thick undergrowth, well nigh impenetrable, ran in front and made an angle to the right, so that there were two sides from which the rabbits might come out. The air was perfectly still, not a leaf was stirring, and ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... could send it flying disabled for far enough. But the little, keen, perky-looking creature knows that this will not be its fate, and comes loping along upon its leisurely hunt, pausing now and then to look sharply around for danger, and then gliding in and out among the undergrowth, leaping over prostrate pieces of branch, and passing on in front just as the rabbit did a few minutes before, and then disappearing among the ferns; its keen-scented nostrils telling it plainly enough the direction in which the rabbit has gone, though the screams ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... deep into the cushions, with a shiver, "a graceful, cruel, merciless beast." She remembered a tiger she had shot the previous winter in India. After hours of weary, cramped waiting in the machan the beautiful creature had slipped noiselessly through the undergrowth and emerged into the clearing. He had advanced midway towards the tree where she was perched and had stopped to listen, and the long, free stride, the haughty poise of the thrown-back head, the cruel curl of the lips and the glint in the ferocious eyes flashing in the moonlight, were identical ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... undergrowth of a given section, drain the swamps and mow down all the weeds and tall grass, and the next particularly hard winter ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... almost impenetrable, with the town captured by the Spaniards. The ruins here were discovered accidentally; and to approach them it was necessary, as at Palenque, to cut paths through the dense tropical undergrowth of the forest. ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... before massed and jumbled ruins of cliff wall. There were tangled thickets of wild plum-trees and other thorny growths that made passage extremely laborsome. He found innumerable tracks of wildcats and foxes. Rustlings in the thick undergrowth told him of stealthy movements of these animals. At length his further advance appeared futile, for the reason that the stream disappeared in a split at the base of immense rocks over which he could not climb. To his relief he concluded that though ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... are usually timbered, destitute of undergrowth, and are beautiful. The soil is rather gravelly. The "openings" contain scattering timber in groves and patches, and resemble those tracts called barrens farther south. There is generally timber enough for farming purposes, if used with economy, while it costs but little labor to ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... little "word" between these two was not yet made flesh. But the dawn-wind caught up that "hush" and carried it to the trees and undergrowth about them, and then ran thousand-footed before them to whisper it to the ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... or thirty minutes I was directed to form line of battle in a partially open field facing toward the blockhouses and strong intrenchments to the north occupied by the enemy. Much difficulty was found on account of the dense undergrowth, crossed in several directions by wire fences. As a part of the cavalry division under General Sumner, the regiment was formed in two lines, the First Squadron under Major S.T. Norvell, consisting of Troops A, B, E and I, leading; the second line, ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... last, summoning all my resolution, I scrambled weakly to my feet and endeavoured to follow, but after some while, wondered to see it so dark and found I was among trees that closed about me ever denser. Yet I struggled on, pushing my way haphazard through the undergrowth, being yet much shaken by my fall, until I came out into a narrow way lit by the moon; but scarcely was I here than I paused to lean against a tree, overcome by a sick faintness. And thus leaned I some while to recover my strength, and in my ears ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... passing through it, rides as fast as the thick standing trunks, and tangle of undergrowth will allow. The darkness also obstructs him; for it is night. Withal he advances rapidly, though cautiously; at intervals glancing back, at longer ones, delaying to listen, with chin upon ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... catchment systems with storage facilities (the Japanese Government has built one desalination plant and plans to build one other); beachhead erosion because of the use of sand for building materials; excessive clearance of forest undergrowth for use as fuel; damage to coral reefs from the spread of the Crown of Thorns starfish; Tuvalu is very concerned about global increases in greenhouse gas emissions and their effect on rising sea levels, which threaten the country's underground water ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... undergrowth which had been his shelter, waking fully to the fact that he had lain down to sleep not above a dozen yards from where the man had made his couch, while, in all probability, had he continued his journey for those few ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... summits this consists of comparatively stunted trees, of which every part is thickly coated with moss. In all other parts the forest consists of great trees rising to a height of 150 feet, and even 200 feet, and of a dense undergrowth of younger and smaller trees, and of a great variety of creepers, palms, and ferns. Trees of many species (nearly 500) yield excellent timber, ranging from the hardest ironwood or BILIAN, and other hard woods (many of them so ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the ghostly, moonlit woods, Jabe followed obediently at the Boy's heels. Silently as shadows they moved, silently as the lynx or the moose or the weasel goes through the softly parting undergrowth. The Boy led far away from the brook, and over the crest of the ridge, to avoid alarming the vigilant sentries. As they approached the head of the canal, their caution redoubled, and they went very slowly, bending low and avoiding every patch of moonlight. The light ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... which Nature arrays herself in the autumn never showed to better advantage; but in all directions we see the prairies on fire. Farmers burn them over as the easiest mode of getting rid of the rank weeds and undergrowth; but it seems a dangerous practice. They plough a strip twenty to thirty feet in width around their houses, barns, hay-stacks, etc., and depend upon the flames not overleaping ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... tight-closed lips as she scrambled along over boulders and through the thick scrub. Brambles, wait-a-bit vines, and berry bushes scratched and stung her, and switched across her face, leaving bleeding and livid marks on her tender skin. But she pushed on and on in the fitful moonlight through the dense undergrowth, making a straight line for ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... trees were larger in this locality than elsewhere, as a great portion of the country was flooded by the river dnring the rainy season, and much rich soil had been deposited; this, with excessive moisture, had produced a forest of fine timber, with an undergrowth of thick nabbuk. We fixed upon a charming spot for a camp, beneath a large tree that bore a peculiar fruit, suspended from the branches by a strong but single fibre, like a cord; each fruit was about eighteen ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... ancient magicians, to gather magic berry and bud before sunrise, but at least to see these treasures of the lake in their morning hour, we camped last night on a little island, which one tall tree almost covers with its branches, while a dense undergrowth of young chestnuts and birches fills all the intervening space, touching the water all around the circular, shelving shore. Yesterday was hot, but the night was cool, and we kindled a gypsy fire of twigs, less for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... arrived with a boiled ham and a few trifles, and stopped in a dense undergrowth on a small bluff overlooking the meeting-place. It was starlight, and very still. The mighty river lay like an ocean at rest. Tom listened a moment, but no sound disturbed the quiet. Then he gave a low, distinct whistle. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... feeling that this time something really was coming through the bushes. I lifted my head as far as I could, and listened. For a little while nothing happened, and then, straight in front of me, I saw lights. And there was a sound of trampling in the undergrowth. ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... interspersed with fields of luxuriant corn, were left behind, the red clay of the road was exchanged for a gritty sand, and the road itself dwindled to a mere pathway through a clearing. The locality looked like a plagiarism from the Ohio backwoods. On both sides of our path spread the graceful undergrowth, waving in an ocean of green, and hiding the stumps with which the plain was covered, while far away, to right and left, the prospect was bounded by forest walls, and gloomy bulwarks and parapets of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... came near his old home, Cecilio saw his master Emilio shooting at a very handsome bird on the top of a bamboo-tree. The bird fell down, and the man ran to pick it up. As Emilio was making his way up to the bird through the thorny bamboo undergrowth, Cecilio sat down to wait for him, and, having nothing else to do, began to play his guitar. The master at once began to dance among the bamboo-trees, and he received many wounds because of the sharp spines. Now, in reality, ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... (Lychnis diurna).—Robins, as children call it, with the bright pink in every hedge and the undergrowth in every copse. ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... more and more infrequent until for some time now no sign of human habitation had been visible. The jungle undergrowth was scantier and the spaces between the boles of the forest trees more open. Virginia Maxon was almost frantic with despair as the utter helplessness of her position grew upon her. Each stroke of those slender paddles was driving her farther and farther from friends, or the possibility ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... trees and old barbed wire in a solution of mud was the chief effect produced by the parts nearest the trenches, but further back "Plugstreet Wood" was quite a pretty place to walk about in. Birds singing all around, and rabbits darting about the tangled undergrowth. Long paths had been cut through the wood leading to the various parts of the trenches in front. A very quaint place, take it all in all, and one which has left a curious and not unpleasing impression ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... said Anthea; 'they're lurking amid the undergrowth, for anything you know. I do think you're most ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... first undergrowth, small trees, as in England; afterwards applied to larger timber growth and forest trees. Its earlier sense survives in ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... just as Adrian rose to his feet, standing beneath the shadow of the big oak upon which the birds had fallen, that coming from the road, which was separated from him by a little belt of undergrowth, he heard the sound of men's voices growling and threatening, and with them a woman's cry for help. At any other time he would have hesitated and reconnoitred, or, perhaps, have retreated at once, for he knew well the dangers of mixing himself up ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... memories, we took the carriage road to Pisa, over which Shelley's friends had hurried to and fro through those last days. It passes an immense forest of stone-pines—aisles and avenues; undergrowth of ilex, laurustinus, gorse, and myrtle; the crowded cyclamens, the solemn silence of the trees; the winds hushed in their velvet roof and stationary ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... artificial heat), abounded in graceful palms. Mr. Bowerbank found in the London clay of the island of Sheppey alone the fruits of no fewer than thirteen different species of this picturesque family, which lends so peculiar a feature to the landscapes in which it occurs; and ascertained that the undergrowth beneath was composed, in large proportion, of creeping plants of the gourd and melon order. From the middle or Miocene flora of the Tertiary division,—of which we seem to possess in Britain only the small but interesting fragment detected by his Grace the Duke of Argyll ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... and sand runs a long way in shore under cocoa-nut groves, but there is no very dense undergrowth. The wind when easterly blows freely along and is drawn rather upon the shore there. Two miles to windward of Mboli is the good harbour of Sara, where the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a moment the round, gray back darted above the bushes, and then plunging into deeper undergrowth, bounded on and on. But the slim, knotty brown legs plunged on and on too, till at last a swift, cruel stone felled the unlucky little woodlander, for Steve ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... progressed not more than twenty paces into the dense undergrowth when the gleaming wall of the Tritu Anu was entirely hidden from view. The artificial sunlight seeped through the mass of vegetation overhead, a ghostly green twilight that made death masks of their faces. But of the lights ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... finish the sentence, for Clon, as if he well understood his impatience, turned back from the bridge, and, entering the wood to the left, began to ascend the bank of the stream. We had not gone a hundred yards before the ground grew rough, and the undergrowth thick; and yet through all ran a kind of path which enabled us to advance, dark as it was now growing. Very soon the bank on which we moved began to rise above the water, and grew steep and rugged. ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... treacherous with loosened stones and mud. The horses, mounting a hill, picked their way carefully; and Lee Randon gazed over his shoulder into the valley below. He saw it through a screen of bare wet maple branches—a dripping brown meadow lightly wreathed in blue mist, sedgy undergrowth along water and the further ranges of hills merged in shifting clouds. A shaft of sunlight, pale and without warmth, illuminated with its emphasis an undistinguished and barren spot. On the meadows sloping to the south there were indefinite spaces of green. Claire was heedless ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... its stead were rocks, bare and glittering, on which the lizards basked, or ran in safety, because they were at home, but which I could only pass by a flank movement. To struggle up a steep hill, over slipping shale-like stones, or through an undergrowth of holly and brambles, then to scramble down and to climb again, repeating the exercise every few hundred yards, may have a hygienic charm for those who are tormented by the dread of obesity, but to other mortals it is too suggestive of a ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... or waistcoat and, as he poised a horseshoe for his first cast at the stake, Mr. Trimm saw, pinned flat against the broad strap of his suspenders, a shiny, silvery-looking disk. Having pitched the shoe, the smith moved over into the shade, so that he almost touched the clump of undergrowth that half buried Mr. Trimm's protecting boulder. The near-sighted eyes of the fugitive banker could make out then what the flat, silvery disk was, and Mr. Trimm cowered low in his covert behind the rock, holding his hands down between ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... was growing dark indeed. He was obliged to guide her through the closeness of the undergrowth. They threaded their way along the narrow path and the shadows seemed to close in behind them. Before they reached the end which would have led them out into the open he put his hand on her ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Tangled, we are entangled. Whose fault was it, dear? tangled up as the grass patterns are tangled up in this coarse cloth, or as the little Mushi that lives on and chirrups in dried sea-weed. We do not know where are to-day our tears in the undergrowth of this eternal wilderness. We neither wake nor sleep, and passing our nights in a sorrow which is in the end a vision, what are these scenes of spring to us? This thinking in sleep of someone who has no thought of you, is it more than a dream? and yet surely it is the natural way of love. In our ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound
... the foot of the wood; and they did not go on to the highway, for Miss Francie suggested that the sylvan path was the more interesting. And so they passed in among the trees, making their way through the straggling undergrowth, while the soft March wind blew moist and sweet all around them, and the blackbirds and thrushes filled the world with their silver melody, and in the more distant woods the ringdoves crooned. Maurice Mangan followed her—in silence. Perhaps he was thinking of Lionel; perhaps he ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... which are nesting can easily be caught by placing one noose in the nest and others round the edge or mouth, making fast the end wires to any contiguous branch or twigs. Moorhens or water-rails, which swim or run through the constantly frequented tracks which they have made in dense undergrowth or rushes in bogs, may be captured by attaching these nooses to a string stretched across—indeed, a writer in the Field, of July 8, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... The light and shimmer of that patch contrasted sharply with the heavy pink cloud which lay massed above a young birch-tree visible on the horizon before us, while, a little further to the right, the parti-coloured roofs of the Kuntsevo mansion could be seen projecting above a belt of trees and undergrowth—one side of them reflecting the glittering rays of the sun, and the other side harmonising with the more louring portion of the heavens. Below us, and to the left, showed the still blue of a pond where it lay surrounded with pale-green ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... delightfully cool and shady by contrast with the bare open country we had to walk over to reach them. The vegetation was most luxuriant, comprising enormous forest trees, as well as a variety of ferns, caladiums, and other undergrowth, and abundance of climbing rattan palms. Insects were exceedingly abundant and very interesting, and every day furnished scores ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... sun will lure in scores from their lurking-places; or hoary woods, upon whose straggling upper boughs, all hung with gray mosses like disheveled hair, the bald-headed eagle stoops from the sky, and among whose undergrowth of varnished evergreens the mocking-birds, even at this season, keep a resounding jubilee. All this looks wild enough; and as the peculiar orange light of the southern sunset falls upon the scene, I almost expect to see the canoes of the red man shoot from the banks, which were ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... voice of misery. The youth followed him closely, his eyes wide open with fear, as they neared the dreaded jungle. In its dark shadows who could say what dangers lurked? They pressed on, however, through trails of prickly foliage, clinging undergrowth, and fallen timber, which lay like so many traps for unwary feet. The cry had sunk to a moan, but the dog's whine was shriller and more urgent as they neared the end ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... screening fronds of a young areca palm, and came to an abrupt halt, his eyes fixed on an object in the midst of the tropical undergrowth. ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... Adele's arms on to my shoulders and thence into the flood, and, beating its raving owner by a matter of inches in a rush for the errant footgear, splashed his triumphant way to the bank and, amid a hurricane of execration, bore his waterlogged trophy into the undergrowth; then I bowed my head upon the steering-wheel and, throwing decency to the winds, ran before the tempest of ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... and twisting here and there as German voices warned them of the proximity of enemy parties, and sometimes stealing past a group of men from whom they were separated by only a few feet of thick undergrowth. ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... became more contracted and rapid, with occasional islands and frequent sand-banks. These islands are furnished with a number of ponds, and at certain seasons abound with swans, geese, brandts, cranes, gulls, plover, and other wild-fowl. The shores, too, are low and closely wooded, with such an undergrowth of vines and rushes as ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... way through the undergrowth, and when he was certain that the creepers had completely veiled him from the eyes of watchers on the yacht he picked up a small flat stone from the ground, drew a yachting knife from his belt and crouching on his ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... writer is to chase the will-o'-the-wisp of theory over the morass of uncertainty; the task of investigating his comedies is altogether simpler and more straightforward. After groping our way through the undergrowth of minor literature, we come out upon the great highway of Elizabethan art—the drama. Let us first see how Lyly himself came ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... place the name of the Friendly village. We breakfasted here; and after purchasing twelve dogs, four sacks of fish, and a few dried berries, proceeded on our journey. The hills as we passed were high, with steep, rocky sides, with pine and white oak, and an undergrowth ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... was the sound of breaking twigs, as if some monstrous creature was forcing its way through the undergrowth to the right, and I heard another rush behind me as I stood there behind Gunson, too much paralysed to run, as I saw him drop on one knee and raise ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... traverse, and Magua had undertaken to lead them a short way through the forest. The girls hesitated as they reached the point where they left the military road and had to take to a narrow and blind path amidst the dense trees and undergrowth. The terrifying aspect of the guide and the loneliness of the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... dropped lower in the western sky. A velvet twilight seemed to rise out of the heart of the valley. Slowly the glowing light vanished behind a bluff of woodland. In a few minutes the trees and undergrowth were lit up as though a mighty conflagration were devouring them. Then the fire died down, ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... blue and neutral gray, flecked with dusky lines of bluffs, interspersed with gleaming strips of water, but nowhere in the wide landscape was there a sign of human habitation. Small birches and poplars, with an undergrowth of nut bushes, clothed the sides of the ravine, but some distance ahead it broadened out and the stream that flowed through it turned the hollow into a muskeg. There harsh grass and reeds grew three or four feet high, ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... keeping one eye out ahead as he moved along. Of course he anticipated coming upon the concealed shack at any moment now. When he saw an unusually large cluster of high bushes and undergrowth he felt positive that he must be almost in touch with ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... no path to follow, it was slow work, and the trees seemed to become thicker and thicker as we advanced. Under other circumstances, we might have stopped to admire the wonderful variety of shrubs and creepers which formed the undergrowth; as it was, we had to keep our eyes constantly about us, for at any moment we might have to encounter a huge boa or anaconda, or we might tread upon some venomous serpent, or a tree-snake might dart down upon us from the boughs above. Monkeys, as before, chattered and grinned ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... pair of men's boots with which to walk in the water, and was garbed in a most dilapidated old dress, which I had borrowed from one of the servants for the purpose. A pair of gloves made of basil, and a big hat, much torn in struggling through the undergrowth, completed my make-up. My hair was most unbecomingly screwed up, the short ends sticking out like ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... ivies, and swung their majestic arms, tufted with mistletoe, far over head, supporting a canopy,—a series of domes and arches without end,—that had for ages overshadowed the soil. Their roots, often concealed by a billowy undergrowth of shrubs and bushes, oftener by brakes of the gigantic and evergreen cane, forming fences as singular as they were, for the most part, impenetrable, were yet at times visible, where open glades stretched through ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... middle of those sunny and windy flats, he came upon a sort of cleft almost narrow enough to be called a crack in the land. It was just large enough to be the water-course for a small stream which vanished at intervals under green tunnels of undergrowth, as if in a dwarfish forest. Indeed, he had an odd feeling as if he were a giant looking over the valley of the pygmies. When he dropped into the hollow, however, the impression was lost; the rocky banks, though hardly above the ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... dark-red, with streaks of green, over a narrow but terrific chasm on the left: we are almost on a level with the crater, but must make a long circuit to reach it, through a wilderness of stunted timber and bush. The creoles call this undergrowth razi: it is really only a prolongation of the low jungle which carpets the high forests below, with this difference, that there are fewer creepers and much more fern.... Suddenly we reach a black gap in ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... plenty—crocketts, king parrots, leatherheads, "butcher" and "bell" birds, and the beautiful bronze-wing pigeon—while deep within the silent gullies you constantly hear the little black scrub wallabies leaping through the undergrowth and fallen leaves, to hide in still darker ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... companions, two of them being the faithful Susi and Chuma. In the dark thickets of the tropical forests he wounded his feet, dragged himself over fallen trunks and decaying rubbish, and waded across swollen rivers; and among the crowns of the lofty trees and in the dense undergrowth lurked malaria, an invisible miasma. He fell ill again and had to rest a long time in his miserable hut, where he lay on his bed of grass reading his tattered Bible, or listening to the native's tales of combats with men and apes, for ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... from Birnier's camp, through forest so dense that even the progress of a native clambering from trunk to trunk and over undergrowth ten feet deep was slow and tortuous, was the temporary village of Zalu Zako; some six or seven hundred huts of branches and creepers straggling over a wide area of ground which had been roughly cleared from undergrowth by a ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... on the flank and rear of pursuers who had now severed themselves from the protecting structure of their ranks. Even the difficulties of the ground favoured the mobile tactics of the assailants; for the horses of the Numidians, accustomed to the hill forests, could thread their way through the undergrowth at points which offered an effective check to the ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... last August (1882) I noticed that a large percentage of the undergrowth of the sugar maple (Acer saccharinum) in Lewis County, Northeastern New York, seemed to be dying The leaves drooped and withered, and finally shriveled and dried, but ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... contemplating was forbidden, and could bring them no luck; and he, like her, felt a delightful awe, which thrilled him at each repeated sigh of the forest trees. The perfume of the foliage, the soft green light which filtered through the leaves, the soughing silence of the undergrowth, filled them with tremulous excitement, as though the next turn of the path might lead them to ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... no way of telling where they were, Cecil took a definite course through the jungle. They scrambled over and through the twisted tangle of undergrowth, creepers and lianas, and, in less than an hour, reached a ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... sought their prey. As we proceeded up the river, the banks gradually became higher and drier, and we passed some small plantations of bananas and plantains made in clearings in the forest, which now consisted of a great variety of dicotyledonous trees with many tall, graceful palms; the undergrowth being ferns, small palms, Melastomae, Heliconiae, etc. The houses at the plantations were mostly miserable thatched huts with scarcely any furniture, the owners passing their time swinging in dirty hammocks, and occasionally taking down a canoe-load of plantains to Greytown for sale. It is ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... and dogs. Moose don't go together in herds. In the summer they wander about over the forest, and in the autumn they come together in small groups, and select a hundred or two of acres where there is plenty of heavy undergrowth, and to which they usually confine themselves. They do this so that their tracks won't tell their enemies where ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... attention began to present themselves. By means of a stick he drew down the overhanging branch of a tree and tied to it his handkerchief. He also managed to insert a stick in the ground near him, and on its top placed his hat, but he saw that they could not be seen through the thick undergrowth at any great distance. Then more deliberately, and with an effort to economize his strength, he again attempted to undermine the rocks on which his leg rested, but found that they ran under him and hopelessly deep. At intervals he would shout ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... Henry, with all the canny provincial's conviction of his own superior shrewdness; and he repeated, so as to intensify this conviction and impress it on others, "Oh!" In the undergrowth of his mind was the thought: "How dare this man whose brains belong to me be the organizing secretary of something that I don't know anything about and don't ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... also to find excellent highways running throughout this semi-wilderness, between almost impenetrable walls of green, which though beautiful, produced a feeling of loneliness under their weird shadows. Some distance ahead the country appeared more rolling, the trees higher and the undergrowth less dense. Vistas opened up, revealing an occasional farmstead. Suddenly the scene changed for, instead of the emerald hues of thrifty vegetation, there were seen the brown, seared forms as of the desert; the charred ruins of buildings, the ashy outlines of fences and blackened ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... the highway, then up a trail where the Gomez brushed the undergrowth on each side as it desperately dug into moss, rain-gutted ruts, loose rocks, all on a vicious slant which seemed to push the car down again. Beside them, the mountain woods were sacredly quiet, with fern and lily and green-lit spaces. They came out in a clearing, before ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... washed down to deep indentations; above the whole a stretch of burnt, broken timber that goes by the name of "fire-scald," and is a relic of the fury of the fire which was "set out" in the woods with the mission to burn only the leaves and undergrowth, and which, in its undisciplined strength, transcended its instructions, as it were, and destroyed great trees. And this is all. But once more, at a coigne of vantage on the opposite side of the gorge, and the experience can be utilized in differentiating ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... but as later I found the front of my shirt soaked I assume the water was for me. Coherent memory resumes with the noise the warriors made in returning to the camp. I shall never forget their appearance as they emerged from the undergrowth. Black Hoof walked ahead. Close behind him came two ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... and after a consultation Mr. Waterman concluded that the young Indian was right, and they turned off. The trail soon became very hard to distinguish, but each time that Mr. Waterman hesitated, the Indian went by him, leading the way without a halt. As they were passing through some thick undergrowth Mr. Waterman halted and pointed to a partridge seated on a limb on a nearby tree, only twelve or fifteen feet from the trail. The bird, evidently trusting to its protective coloring, sat on the limb without moving a muscle. Mr. Waterman had just begun to explain to the boys that the bird ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... plan, on which he made no comment, but, taking her by the hand as if she were a little child, he led her through the undergrowth to a spot where the trees were older, and standing at wider distances. Among them was the tree he had spoken of—an elm; huge, hollow, distorted, and headless, with a ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... lonely; he hoped to press on and be at his father's door before two in the morning or perhaps at one. The night was so still that he heard no noise in the high wood, not even the rustling of a leaf or a twig crackling, and no animal ran in the undergrowth. The moss of the ride was silent under his heavy tread, but now and then the steel of his side-arm clicked against a metal button of the great cloak he wore. This sharp sound made him so conscious of himself that he seemed to fill that forest with his own presence and to be all that was, ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... is the time to cut alders, spruce, or other undergrowth, because the roots then die quickly without sprouting. ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... then proceeded along an obscure path, which led across stubble-fields, to a wood. The path continued through the wood, but he quickly struck out of it, and made his way, seemingly at random, through a most perplexing undergrowth of bushes ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... been two o'clock when he crossed the King's Highway, a mile or more above the northern gates, and struck down into the same thick undergrowth that had protected him and Hobbs on a ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... wooded with ironbark. After leaving the creek we crossed the ridges and came on land with a good deal of rich soil and wooded with belts of myall, Port Curtis sandalwood, and western-wood acacia. About these scrubs the grass is very good and there is a luxuriant undergrowth of saltbush and salt herbs. When we had come four miles from camp we sighted to the south-west a small isolated hill and went towards it. When we had crossed about three and a half miles over country like what I have just described we reached ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... this mound was completely surrounded by trees, intermingled with an undergrowth so dense that it was only with difficulty I was enabled to force a way through it. I wished to reach the top of the mound, if possible, because it appeared to be a very suitable spot upon which to ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... the undergrowth, she managed to move her head and look down. Far below in the ravine somebody was ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... arrival it would be well-nigh impossible to send further aid into the town. Vere took with him 900 English and 900 Dutch infantry, and 800 Dutch cavalry. The enemy had possession of a fortified country house called Loo, close to which lay a thick wood traversed only by a narrow path, with close undergrowth and swampy ground on either side. The enemy were in great force around Loo, and came out to attack the expedition as it passed through the wood. Sending the Dutch troops on first, Vere attacked the enemy ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... the left boundary of the field, and one wall, cut down, was now a part of the fence. Circling about to avoid the undergrowth and at the same time to keep out of Mayo's range, the men with the ram came up behind the old wall; and here they were halted to wait until the Major properly placed his marksmen. He made the circuit of the field, and coming back, announced that all was ready. A score of shot-guns were trained ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... the river at one of its great bends, and for an hour we had been slowly climbing a long hill. When we reached the top, we unsaddled for dinner in the shade of a tree by the wayside. A hundred yards from the road was a dense copse of undergrowth and bushes on the edge of the forest. Off to the east flowed the majestic Rhine, a league distant, and to the north ran the road like a white ribbon, stretching downhill to the valley and up again to the top of another ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... waiting for news in England. All afternoon I've been wandering about the front line, exploring, and learning to find my way about that desolate waste of devastation representing recently captured ground. One waded knee high amid tangled undergrowth dotted with three-foot stakes, and learned from the map that this was a wood. One looked for a railway, where only a buried bar of twisted metal could be found. One road we could not find at all, so battered was ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... forest, they ought to have very nearly reached its southern skirts; but as far as the eye could penetrate, in the uncertain moonlight, through the sylvan vistas, there was no sign of break or opening of any kind; nothing but an apparently endless succession of trees and dense undergrowth. Seeing this, Leicester began to feel uneasy. He knew that they had been travelling through the timber in anything but a straight line—indeed, to do so would have been simply a physical impossibility— and he began to fear that, in spite of all his efforts to avoid such a misfortune, ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... the hillside sloped more gently on the one hand, and the teamster flung, himself backwards, dragging at the reins. The wagon, tilting, swung partly round, then there was a horrible lurching, and the lathered beasts were floundering up a slope, smashing down the undergrowth and fern, until the vehicle stopped suddenly with a crash. The man sprang down and Miss Deringham and her father lost no time in following him, while when at last the team stood still trembling, he crawled out from under the wagon ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... found Helianthus ten to twelve feet high in bloom everywhere in the canons. A Salvia with a blue corolla, dotted with red glands, was very striking, a new variety, as it proved. We also observed elders with flowers and leaves at the same time, and the Bambusa formed a thick light-green undergrowth in beautiful contrast to the darker shades of the oaks, elders, and fan palms. The latter were the last of their kind we saw on this side ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... what, it is hoped, he interpreted as polite entreaties not to put himself out for his visitors and return to the house. Then ensued a tour of the estate, which had once been of great promise and now, alas, was overrun with undergrowth and weed. After their walk the Englishmen found that the most hospitable preparations had been made for their entertainment, and, more, that these had evidently been seen to by a daughter whose presence had not before been observed. Would I could describe this young girl as she appeared to X., ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... muffled report, a blinding smother of dust just in front of us, a crack, the noise of rent boughs, and about ten yards of the cliff-side—pines, undergrowth, and all—slid down into the road below, completely blocking it up. The uprooted trees swayed and tottered for a moment like drunken giants in the gloom, and then fell prone among their fellows with a thunderous crash. Our two horses stood motionless and sweating with fear. As soon as the rattle ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... chimneys to mar the effect of Nature and Nature's colouring. If you follow with your eyes this calm, reposeful river, now hiding itself beneath its protecting banks with their wealth of branching trees, tall cocoanut palms, and luxuriant undergrowth, now emerging like a huge blue serpent encrusted with diamonds, so brightly does the clear water sparkle in the sun, you note that it finally loses itself in a heavy, impenetrable mass of green forest. And ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... were so treated, five on either side of the road. Standing, as they did, among the undergrowth, the operation which had been performed on them was invisible to any one passing by. Ropes were now fastened to the upper part of the trees and carried across the road, almost hidden from sight by the foliage ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... the thorns and the thick undergrowth that had surrounded it. It was a wild, lonely country; but you know what it was like by her description, though of course you will understand that the colours have been heightened. A child's imagination always makes ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... shot was more terrible than a continuous cannonade. Our sentinels fired twice close by; we did not know why. The shots resounded in the forest. We lay down in our boat and hid our heads. It was difficult for us to advance through the undergrowth as the spaces between the bushes were generally very narrow. We could not row, and we had ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... body in the night, at the foot of the tree. As soon as it was light in the morning, he worked at turning up all the ground near the tree, and hacking and hewing at the neighbouring bushes and undergrowth. When the labourers came, there was nothing suspicious, and ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... to land before nightfall at Sabbath Day Point, twenty-five miles down the lake; stretched themselves to doze for a while in the dry undergrowth; re-embarked under the stars and, rowing on through the dawn, reached the lake-end at ten in the morning. Here they found the first trace of the enemy—a bridge broken in two over the river which drains into Lake Champlain. A small French rear-guard ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of some trees. Right beyond was a deep basin, chuck full of undergrowth. The machine just took a slide off the tops of the trees, and slipped down to the bottom of the basin. Then she turned, I ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... had wandered some distance from the balance of the tribe. He was making his way slowly along an elephant path when he discovered that it was blocked with undergrowth. Now Taug, come into maturity, was an evil-natured brute of an exceeding short temper. When something thwarted him, his sole idea was to overcome it by brute strength and ferocity, and so now when he found his way blocked, he tore angrily into the leafy screen and an instant later found himself ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... years, after the great "Seven years' fire" had burnt down the forests and enriched the soil of Madeira. It was soon after Zarco's return to Funchal that he first set fire to the woods behind the fennel fields of the coast, to clear himself a way through the undergrowth into the heart of the island; the fire blazed and smouldered till it had taken well hold of the entire mass of timber that covered the upper country, nothing in the feeble resources of the first settlers could stop it, and Madeira lighted ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... night at a little beach which came down to the river and offered an ideal place for their bivouac. Tall pines stood all about, and there was little undergrowth to harbor mosquitoes, although by this time, indeed, that pest of the Northland was pretty much gone. The feeling of depression they sometimes had known in the big mountains had now left the minds of our young travelers, and they were disposed, since they found themselves well ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... exultant song. The hill on which we stood was covered with young birch saplings bursting into leaf, and the sky itself was not more blue than the wild hyacinths at our feet. Here and there in the undergrowth gleamed the pallid anemone. A copper wire ran from pole to pole down the slope of the hill and glittered in the sun like a thread of gold. A little to our right two circular mirrors, glancing obliquely at each other, stood on a tripod, and a graduated sequence ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... you, friends," he went on. "This is what it is. Ever since the early spring your cattle have been in my copse and garden every day. Everything is trampled down; the pigs have rooted up the meadow, are ruining everything in the kitchen garden, and all the undergrowth in the copse is destroyed. There is no getting on with your herdsmen; one asks them civilly, and they are rude. Damage is done on my estate every day and I do nothing—I don't fine you or make a complaint; meanwhile you impounded my horses and my bull calf and exacted five ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... their voyage they came upon many islands, whose thick growth of forest trees was so interlaced with vines and undergrowth as to render them almost impenetrable. Vigorously they plied their paddles, day after day, breasting the strong current of the river, encountering no incident of importance. Every night they landed, drew their canoe upon the grass, turned ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... further effort to approach. The men sat down again, watching the trail and evidently figuring out their plan of escape. There was no means of scaling the mountain wall behind them. Horses could not possibly climb that steep slope, covered with such a tangle of trees and undergrowth, but it was possible to proceed farther along the upper edge of the valley until finally timber-line was reached, after which the party could drop over the divide into the happy little kingdom just off the reservation where a capable ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... the scrub—that wild thick undergrowth among trees, harbouring so many strange creatures—there were hoarse cries, and now and then the howl of a dingo, so horribly suggestive of a human being in an ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... the footpath and went through the undergrowth. He stamped on every fungus that grew on his way. He was in a destructive mood. He looked for a snake so as to trample on it or kill it with ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... autumn afternoon presently became almost oppressive to her. There was the far-off, sweet low murmur of a placid sea rolling in upon the base of the cliffs, the constant chirping of ground insects, and the occasional scurrying of a rabbit through the undergrowth. Once a great lean rat stole up from the ditch, and—horrible—ran across his body; but at the sound of her startled movement it paused, sat for a moment quite still, with its wide-open black eyes blinking ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... accustomed to catch butterflies for me. My two Amboyna hunters I left behind to shoot and skin what birds they could while I was away. Quitting the village, we first walked briskly for an hour through a dense tangled undergrowth, dripping wet from a storm of the previous night, and full of mud holes. After crossing several small streams we reached one of the largest rivers in Ceram, called Ruatan, which it was necessary to cross. It was both deep and rapid. The baggage was ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the chalk and melted into the fields or the undergrowth, or came up to the skyline only to be swallowed into the earth probably by the German trench which they were entering. I wondered if one group had been killed, or knocked over, or had merely taken cover in a shell-crater ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... a large bear at the edge of a forest two miles from the huts. Alexis and Godfrey at once took their guns, borrowed a couple of long spears and two hunting knives, and started for the wood, the native going with them to show them the exact spot where he had seen the bear. There was a good deal of undergrowth about, and they thought it probable that the animal was not far off. The Buriat had brought a dog with him, and the animal at once began sniffing the ground. His master encouraged it, and presently it ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... which the river was then hid, came glimpses of two mountains, about 11,000 feet in height, whose bald grey summits were crowned with pure snow. It was one of those glorious surprises in scenery which make one feel as if one must bow down and worship. The forest was thick, and had an undergrowth of dwarf spruce and brambles, but as the horse had become fidgety and "scary" on the track, I turned off in the idea of taking a short cut, and was sitting carelessly, shortening my stirrup, when a great, dark, hairy beast rose, crashing and snorting, out ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... oriole; but for brightness, volubility, execution, and power of imitation, he is unsurpassed by any of our northern birds. His ordinary note is forcible and emphatic, but, as stated, not especially musical; Chick-a-re'r-chick, he seems to say, hiding himself in the low, dense undergrowth, and eluding your most vigilant search, as if playing some part in a game. But in July of August, if you are on good terms with the sylvan deities, you may listen to a far more rare and artistic performance. Your first impression will be that that ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of the western point, and a line of hard, white beach on the sea-coast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturalists of England. The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... to the shining line of the river, and rose again on the further side! They were oak woods, and spoke strangely to Lucy of the American and English north. Yet, as she came nearer, the moon shone upon delicate undergrowth of heath and arbutus, that chid her fancy back to ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... towards it, heedless of long grass and briers: of worms, snails, and slugs, and all the creeping things that be. With her dark eyes and her hook nose warily in advance of her, Mrs. Sparsit softly crushed her way through the thick undergrowth, so intent upon her object that she probably would have done no less, if the wood had been a ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... in command; but Grant, as commander in chief of all the Union armies, directed the campaign in person. Crossing the Rapidan, the army entered the Wilderness, a stretch of country covered with dense woods of oak and pine and thick undergrowth. Lee attacked, and for several days the fighting was almost incessant. But Grant pushed on to Spottsylvania Court House and to Cold Harbor, where bloody battles were fought; and then went south of ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... orchids. Smoking-room, house, England, all were gone, and he sat on a settee in the heart of a virgin forest of the Amazon. It was no mere optical delusion or trick. He could see the hot steam rising from the tropical undergrowth, the heavy drops falling from the huge green leaves, the very grain and fibre of the rough bark which clothed the trunks. Even as he gazed a green mottled snake curled noiselessly over a branch above his head, and a bright-coloured paroquet ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... vivid scarlet flowers instead of leaves. These open park-like expanses of country, however, were of comparatively limited extent, the trees for the most part growing closely together, while the space between their trunks was choked with thick undergrowth, consisting of shrubs, bushes, and long, tough, flowering creepers, so densely and inextricably intermingled that it was sometimes impossible to force a way through it, and long detours became necessary in order to make any progress. But there were ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... however, I could satisfy myself positively that the old snake really held supervision over her brood, the gentleman with whom I happened to be came upon the scene, whereupon the interesting family disappeared beneath the undergrowth of the forest. ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... chosen, without stones or roots, and matted with the fallen needles of the pines. If there should come any wind, or storm of rain, the branches were thick overhead, and around them on three sides tall rocks and undergrowth made a barrier. He cut the pegs for the tent, and the front pole, stretching and tightening the rope, one end of it pegged down and one round a pine tree. When the tightening rope had lifted the canvas to the proper height from ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... as to be visible as a dark line, from the distance of many miles. It is, however, very poor, all the large trees having been removed. We rode for several miles into it, and found the soil dry and hard, but supporting a prodigious undergrowth of gigantic harsh grasses that reached to our heads, though we were mounted on elephants. Besides Sal there was abundance of Butea, Diospyros, Terminalia, and Symplocos, with the dwarf Phoenix palm, and occasionally ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker |
