"Carrion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sunk once more upon the ground, panting like a fish; and I saw rising in his face the same dusky flush that had mantled on my father's. 'I feel ill,' he gasped, 'horribly ill; the swamp turns around me; the drone of these carrion flies confounds ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... any impropriety, to be identical with that of his wife. But why is it so? Because human nature is NOT what Mr Mill conceives it to be; because civilised men, pursuing their own happiness in a social state, are not Yahoos fighting for carrion; because there is a pleasure in being loved and esteemed, as well as in being feared and servilely obeyed. Why does not a gentleman restrict his wife to the bare maintenance which the law would compel him to allow her, that he may have more to spend on his personal pleasures? Because, if he loves ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... often dropping for fatigue, night and day—day and night: he had made his last meal; he laid him down to die—and already the premonitory falcon flapped him with its heavy wing. Ha! what are all those carrion fowls congregated there for? Are they battening on some dead carcase? O, hope—hope! there is the smell of food upon the wind: up, man, up—battle with those birds, drive them away, hew down that fierce white eagle with ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... seemingly superhuman strength, a sudden hideous grip at his throat, blows rained upon his head, sharp sobbing breaths torn from his panting breast ... a red stain upon the dusty road ... a huddled figure ... silence. And he who had been a man indeed a few brief, bright years, was no more now than carrion; and he who through all his boasted aeons had not yet reached the stature of a man stood above the dead body, his face no longer menacing, but beautiful with a smiling delight in his deed. And then suddenly the spell that held the child ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... close it. A carcass of a sheep or dog, or a fish or fowl, being previously without at the distance of from twelve to twenty yards, the lyer-in-wait watches patiently for the descent of the eagle, and, the moment it has fairly settled upon the carrion, fires. In this manner, multitudes of eagles are yearly destroyed in Scotland. The head, claws, and quills, are kept by the shepherds, to be presented to the factor at Martinmas or Whitsunday, for the premium of from half-a-crown to five shillings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... carrion, and sure that this must be a fresh corpse, the bird swooped down upon the boy. But he was awake now, and perceiving the eagle, he determined by its ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... and hollow. They have all the important points of structure of the bladders of the floating English species, and I felt confident I should find captured prey. And so I have to my delight in two bladders, with clear proof that they had absorbed food from the decaying mass. For Utricularia is a carrion-feeder, and not ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... by a tiger that cracked a twig with every step. It simplified the problem of living immensely; and just as any other feline would have done, she took the line of least resistance. If there had been plenty of carrion in the jungle, Nahara might never have hunted men. But the kites and the jackals looked after the carrion; and they were much swifter and keener-eyed than a ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... glossary, Shakspeare! whence almost, And whence alone, some name shall be reveal'd For this deaf drudge, to whom no length of ears Sufficed to catch the music of the spheres; Whose soul is carrion now,—too mean to yield Some tailor's ninth ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... three squirrels, one of which is the small one of Upper Assam, Trocheloideus, the lesser Edolius or Drongo minor. Mainas, two kinds, carrion crows, Bucco, Muscipeta flammea, and one or two other species, Parus, two or three species, kites, large tailor-birds, sparrows. The black-bird of the torrents, and the usual water-birds, black pheasants; bulbuls very common, Bucco barbatus, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... generally feed on berries, nuts, insects, carrion, and the like; but at times they take to killing very large animals. In fact, they are curiously irregular in their food. They will kill deer if they can get at them; but generally the deer are too quick. Sheep ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... "Take that carrion and stuff it in a mass-energy converter," he said. "And I don't want anybody to mention the name of Andray Dunnan to ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... I'll tell you once and for all, I despise you. I wouldn't trust you as far as I would a rattlesnake. You are the most loathesome creature in the world. You're nothing but a low-down horse-thief, and you never will be anything but a horse-thief, till somebody shoots you—then you'll be a carrion." Her eyes were blazing again, and Purdy actually winced at her words. "If you were dying of thirst I'd pour alkali dust down your throat. Do I make myself plain? Do you understand now thoroughly just what I think of you? Because if you don't I'll ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... venture to interfere directly, but sought to soften her, and said beseechingly, "Don't beat the boy quite to pieces, or he won't be able to look for the lost cow. We shall get more profit out of him if you don't quite kill him." "True enough," said the woman, "his carrion won't be worth as much as the good beef." Then she gave him a few more good whacks, and packed him off to look for the cow, saying, "If you come back without the cow, I'll beat you to death." The boy ran from the door sobbing and crying, and went back ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... sky overhead, do you see a black speck? Not got it yet? Wait a moment and try again. There! That is right, and there is another and another; you can't help seeing them now. Their flight is the slow heavy flight of clumsy birds. What do you suppose they are? Vultures. They live, as you know, on carrion, which is dead flesh, and the vultures of Bombay are peculiarly favoured, for they banquet on ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... on to the battle and an untimely and inglorious death—now swollen, putrid, and in the first stage of decomposition, from the action of the scorching rays of an August sun—surrounded by vultures and crows, and all species of carrion fowl; many of which, having gorged themselves on the horrid repast, were either sweeping overhead in large flocks, and screeching their funeral dirges, or wiping their bloody bills on the neighboring ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... e cole, corbyal vn-trwe. 456 & he fonge[gh] to e fly[gh]t, & fa{n}ne[gh] on e wynde[gh], Houe[gh] hy[gh]e upon hy[gh]t to herken tyy{n}ges. [Sidenote: The raven "croaks for comfort" on finding carrion.] He crouke[gh] for comfort when carayne he fynde[gh]; Kast vp on a clyffe er costese lay drye, 460 He hade e smelle of e smach & smolt{es} eder sone, [Sidenote: He fills his belly with the foul flesh.] Falle[gh] on e foule flesch & fylle[gh] his wombe, ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... be able to utter more than pec, pec, pec; and while with your mouths open you are stammering and stuttering to get out cavi, Satan and his blackguards shall come and peck you, even as crows peck carrion. Yes, Jehu and Jezebel! Remember! ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... read the dazzling account of the streets of Ferrara thick with corpses; of Padua, of Bassano streaming blood; of the wells chokeful of carrion, of him who catches in his spur, as he is kicking his feet when he sits on the well and singing, his own mother's face by the grey hair; of the sack of Vicenza in the fourth book; of the procession of the envoys of the League through the streets ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... for having introduced the evidence of a woman known by every one to be lacking in balanced mentality. There were others who, by their remarks, showed that they were concealing the real truth of their thoughts and only using a cloak of interest to guide them to other food for the carrion proclivities of their minds. To all of them Fairchild and Harry made the same reply: that they had nothing to say, that they had given all the information possible on the witness stand during the inquest, and that there was nothing ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... us with another parallel case. Mariana, the classical historian of Spain, tells the story of the ill-starred marriage which the King Don Alonso brought about between the heirs of Carrion and the two daughters of the Cid. The Cid bestowed a princely dower on the sons-in-law. But the young men were base and proud, cowardly and cruel. They were tried in danger, and found wanting. They fled before the Moors, and once, when a lion broke out of his den, they ran and crouched ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... JOE? Nay, it needs no apology To say you are out in your new ornithology. The Vultures are carrion-birds, be it said; And the Man and the Cause you detest are not dead! Much as his decease was desired, he's alive, And the Cause is no carcase. So, JOE, you must strive To get nearer the truth. Shall we help you? All ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... western sky Andy Lanning saw a black dot that moved in wide circles and came up across the heavens slowly, and he knew it was a buzzard that scented carrion and was coming up the wind toward that scent. He had seen them many a time before on their gruesome trails, and the picture which he carried ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even granting the charge in question to be true; what disordered slippery decks of a whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies' plaudits? And if the .. idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the soldier's profession; let me assure ye that many a ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... steals, for one that has fallen away from a vow, there is expiation, O king. But there is no expiation for an ungrateful person. That cruel and vile man who injures a friend and becomes ungrateful, is not eaten by the very cannibals nor by the worms that feed on carrion."'" ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... among the most attractive and appetising in existence—to very many they are, on the other hand, repulsive. High game, a certain kind of putrid fish ("Bombay ducks"), and again rotten cheese are attractive to many men and offensive to as many more. Many animals revel in the smell and flavour of carrion, and even of manure, which they devour. There are well-known flowers which attract insects, not by the possession of the sweet perfumes appreciated and extracted by mankind, but by a smell like that of putrid meat, which so far misleads blue-bottle flies ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... there; and then he'd put himself out no end to be useful to the pals. He'd get up at three o'clock in the morning to make the juice, go and fetch the water while the others were getting their grub. At last, he'd wormed himself in everywhere, he came to be one of the family, the rotter, the carrion. He did it so he wouldn't have to do it. He seemed to me like an individual that would have earned five quid honestly with the same work and bother that he puts into forging a one-pound note. But there, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... he; mute we waited, Kneeling round-a faithful few, Staunch and true,— Whilst above, with thunder freighted, Wild the boisterous north wind blew, And the carrion-bird, unsated, On slant wing around ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... of little animals with teeth and claws extremely sharp, and which cling together in the contexture we behold, like the picture of Hobbes's Leviathan; or like bees in perpendicular swarm on a tree; or like a carrion corrupted into vermin, still preserving the shape and figure of the mother animal: that all invention is formed by the morsure of two or more of these animals upon certain capillary nerves which proceed from ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... On the slow weedy waterway he had floated on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of reeds, over slime, mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I could make a walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or cycle down. Hire some old crock, safety. Wren had one the other day at the auction but a lady's. Developing waterways. James M'Cann's hobby to row me o'er the ferry. Cheaper transit. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... honest men his tenants, that brought him in part; and his son keeps a bad house with knaves that help to consume all. 'Tis but the change of time; why should any man repine at it? Crickets, good, loving, and lucky worms, were wont to feed, sing, and rejoice in the father's chimney, and now carrion crows build in the son's kitchen. I could be sorry for it, but I am too old to weep. Well then, I will go tell him ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... dated September 12, the members of the Audiencia inform the king of the instructions they have given to Legazpi, and their orders that he should direct his course straight to the Philippines, which they regard as belonging to Spain rather than Portugal. In this same year, Juan de la Carrion, recently appointed admiral of the fleet, writes to the king, dissenting (as does the Audiencia) from Urdaneta's project for first exploring New Guinea, and urging that the expedition ought to sail directly to the Philippines. He says that he has been, however, overruled by Urdaneta. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... up the money sucked by the sun out of us. He was foreclosing mortgages, buying half-starved horses and steers for a song, selling hay and straw at fabulous prices. And we were reeling upon the ragged edge of bankruptcy! He, the beast of prey, the vulture, was gorging on our carrion. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... into a hawthorn bush on Bosworth Field, and his defaced, mangled, and ill-shaped body thrown, like carrion, across a pack-horse and driven off to Leicester, and Henry VII., the astute, the wily, the thrifty, reigned in his stead. After Henry's victory over Simnel he came two successive days to St. Paul's to offer his thanksgiving, and Simnel (afterwards a scullion in the royal kitchen) ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... burial clothes, and mutilated human bodies. The coffin plunderer, on replacing the corpse in the grave, merely throws some loose sand over it, and the consequence is that the remains of the dead frequently become the prey of dogs, foxes, and other carrion feeders. When the family of a deceased person can contribute nothing to defray the funeral expenses, the body is conveyed privately during the night to the churchyard. In the morning it is found ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... shuddered; for she knew too well that such an atrocity was easy and common enough. She knew it well. Why should she not? The story of the Cid's Daughters and the Knights of Carrion; the far more authentic one of Robert of Belesme; and many another ugly tale of the early middle age, will prove but too certainly that, before the days of chivalry began, neither youth, beauty, nor the sacred ties of matrimony, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... from the need of security, authenticity, and regularity in business, as well as from the interests of commerce and the public health. The object, you say, is not attained. My God! I know it: leave the butcher's trade to competition, and you will eat carrion; establish a monopoly in the butcher's trade, and you will eat carrion. That is the only fruit you can hope for from your monopoly and ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... spear-surge shocking us, Hoham of Hebron cried out mocking us, 'Nay, what need of the war-sword's plying, Out of the desert the dust comes flying. A little red dust, if the wind be blowing— Who shall reck of its coming or going?' Back the Deliverer spake as a clarion, 'Mock at thy slaves, thou eater of carrion! Laughest thou at us, in thy kingly clowning, We, that laughed upon Ramases frowning. We that stood up proud, unpardoned, When his face was dark and his heart was hardened? Pharaoh we knew and his steeds, not faster Than the word of ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... to Starving Men.—In reading the accounts of travellers who have suffered severely from want of food, a striking fact is common to all, namely, that, under those circumstances, carrion and garbage of every kind can be eaten without the stomach rejecting it. Life can certainly be maintained on a revolting diet, that would cause a dangerous illness to a man who was not compelled to ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... where there is such a want of glass, and a superabundance of pine-trees and sand." It had almost escaped us, that he here for the first time made the acquaintance of a "great many large vultures, called buzzards, the shooting of which is prohibited, as they feed upon carrion, and contribute in this manner to the salubrity of the country." This "parlous wild-fowl" has the honor to attract the attention of his Highness again in Charleston, where he informs us that its life is, in like manner, protected by law, and where ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... hung as if nailed to the sky, or wheeled and sailed in grandeur. They were searching the landscape below to locate a hare or snake in the waving grass or carrion in the fields. The wonderful exhibitions of wing power were their expression of exultation in life, just as the song sparrow threatened to rupture his throat as he swung on the hedge, and the red bird somewhere in the thicket whistled so forcefully it sounded ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... caught sight of the runaways. They were mounted on Dynamite, Madge holding fast behind. Kid was urging the horse furiously back and forth among a flock of carrion crows, and practising with his lasso upon them as they rose and flapped about in short and heavy flight. They seemed to be having great sport, for Kid was shouting and yelling at the birds, and Madge screaming with laughter at their clumsy efforts to escape. So absorbed were they ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... you say?...Maybe you knew it before? I wonder the Dall Glic not to have seen that for himself with his one eye.... Maybe you don't believe it? Well, I'll tell it out and prove it. I have got sure word by running messenger that came cross-cutting over the ridge of the hill.... That carrion that came in a coach, pressing to bring away the Princess before nightfall, giving himself out to be some great one, is no other than Taig the Tailor, that should be called Taig the Twister, down from ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... flute of blasphemy, This ivory neck,—twist it, I say! Give her a swift despatch after her leper! But stay,—if he still lives he'll follow her, And so we may ensnare him. Harm her not! Bind her! Away with her to Rimmon's House! Is all this carrion dead? There's one that moves,— A spear,—fasten him down! All quiet now? Then back to our Damascus! Rimmon's face Shall be made ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... the rain. In short, all the front was in a pretty state of ruin, very nice to look at, very nasty to live in, except for toads, and bats, and owls, and rats, and efts, and brindled slugs with yellow stripes; or on a summer eve the cockroach and the carrion-beetle. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... we will leave these carrion," answered Huffman, pointing to the dead Home Guards. "But we must be going; Morgan is impatient to be ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... elements was making a broadening sweep onward directly towards where we were. The air turned black and murky, and was vibrant with electric tension. Flocks of buzzards flew low to the earth about us, as if to be ready for the carrion of the impending catastrophe. The fear instinct of the brute seized the cattle, and they hovered together, bellowing, distraught with apprehension ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... A carrion crow, perceiving a brood of fourteen chickens under the care of the parent-hen, on a lawn, picked up one; but on a young lady opening the window and giving an alarm, the robber dropped his prey. In the course of the day, however, ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... that I'm a man what pays his way," said the boy, "and don't keep a huckster's stall to sell carrion by star-light; but live in a two pair, if you please, and has a wife and family, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... how thou would'st cheat me, thou cursed woman; I know not why I do not eat up thee too; but it is well for thee that thou art a tough old carrion. Here is good game, which comes very luckily to entertain three Ogres of my acquaintance, who are to pay me a visit in a day ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... sporting with the wavelets, and waving with the sportlets for some minutes, when he heard a bellowing on shore, and he looked up to see a cow pawing the ground and running her horns into his clothes. You know how the smell of blood or carrion will cause the mildest mannered cow to get on her ear and paw the ground and bellow. Not that there was any blood or carrion there, but the cow acted that way. She may have got the smell of a Democrat from his clothes. Anyway she made Monterey howl, and the large man in the ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... I'd make a quarry/With thousands] Why a quarry? I suppose, not because he would pile them square, but because he would give them for carrion to the birds ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... to hear, to feel before I die. Nurse me, now, if I died without seeing her Countess of Cullamore, but I'd break my heart. 'Make way, there—way for the Countess of Cullamore!'—ha! does not that sound well? But then, the old Earl! Curse him, what keeps him on the stage so long? Away with the old carrion!—away with him! But what was that that happened to-day, or yesterday? Misery, torture, perdition!—disgraced, undone, ruined! Is it true, though? Is this joy? I expected—I feared something like this. Will no one tell me what has happened? ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... atmosphere of the bays and rivers of New York was a source of health to the excursionists who, in summer time, seek relaxation by inexpensive voyages upon the waters adjacent to the city. By casting the refuse of their carrion into these waters, the New York Rendering Company have rendered foul and noxious the once healthful atmosphere of our aquarian outlets, rendering themselves a nuisance, at the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... well-defined segments and are often spiny. Such a larva is evidently far less unlike its parent beetle than a caterpillar is unlike a butterfly. Perhaps of all beetle larvae, the woodlouse-like grub (fig. 12 b) of a carrion-beetle (Silpha) or of a semi-aquatic dascillid such as Helodes shows the least amount of difference from the typical adult, on account of the conspicuous jointed feelers. The larval glow-worm, however, ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... concerning the matter. Besides, every one along the Arizona border hated a wolf almost as badly as they did a cowardly coyote; for while the former may be bolder than the beast that slinks across the desert looking for carrion, its capacity for mischief is a good many ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... I give you my word of honour as a gentleman and an old man, that when my book of travels shall appear it shall not contain so much as the name of Gruenewald. And yet it was a racy chapter! But had your Highness only read about the other courts! I am a carrion crow; but it is not my fault, after all, that the world is such ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... come, than we, who are pestered with the grossest dregs of all elementary mixtures, and have our purer spirits choked by them. The deer scents out a man and powder (though a late invention) at a great distance; a hungry hunter, bread; and the raven, a carrion; their brains, being long clarified by the high and subtle air, will observe a very small change in a trice. Thus a man of the second sight, perceiving the operations of these forecasting invisible people among us ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... council, and count how many times a day this aim of human life is indicated to you by your councillors. Better would it be for you, like swallows, to fly low down than, like kites, to make lofty circles over carrion. ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... I was dying for want of some fresh air, and as soon as I get on deck, captain, down swoops the doctor as if he were a vulture and I was so much carrion." ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... that foolish carrion, Mistress 170 Quickly, to him, and excuse his throwing into the water; and give him another hope, to betray ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... tails between their legs. Their howl becomes a business-like bark. They smell at the tails of other dogs and void their urine sideways, and lastly, like our domestic favourites, however refined and gentlemanly in other respects, they cannot be broken of the habit of rolling on carrion or on animals they ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... when surprised over its carrion throws itself blindly into the pack that disturbs its meal; he is already chasing them, he is about to tear them, when amid the yelping of the dogs a gun hammer gently clicks; the wolf recognises it by the click, glances in that direction; he notices ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... de Montigny and two Indians, in a small canoe, to examine the course of this river, a certain distance up. On entering the stream, they saw a great number of birds, which they took at first for turkeys, so much they resembled them, but which were only a kind of carrion eagles, vulgarly called turkey-buzzards. We were not a little astonished to see Mr. de Montigny return on foot and alone; he soon informed us of the reason: having ascended the Kowlitzk about a mile ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... campaign. We fixed in our memories the exact location of each and every bush; we determined compass direction from camp, and any other bearings likely to prove useful in finding so small a spot in the dark. Then we left a boy to keep carrion birds off ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... to the viroco commanded by Alonso Pimentel. There the said Pimentel, Juan Ortuno de Onate, and Diego Carrion appeared to be sick, and such was evident from their appearance. Eleven Indian rowers are sick in this vessel. To this were witnesses, Diego Nunez and ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... Adam, the carrion crow, The old crow of Cairo; He sat in the shower, and let it flow Under his tail and over his crest; And through every feather Leaked the wet weather; And the bough swung under his nest; For his beak it was heavy with marrow. Is that the wind dying? Oh no; It's only two devils, that blow ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... tents, and Arabs! The rascals have loaded their beasts already, and most probably have gone to hide their plunder, that they may be back and make sure of a second haul, before any of their precious brother vultures, up in the sands, get a scent of the carrion. D—n the rogues; I thought at one time they had me in a category! Well, joy be with them! Mr. Monday, I return you my hearty thanks for the manly, frank, and diplomatic manner in which you have discharged the duties of your mission. Without you, we might not have succeeded in getting ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... head and pipe your eye, my dear, I dare say it will do ye good. It does me, I know—he! he! he! Hallo! what have we here—is it a horse or is it a jackass? Well, I'm sure here's a come-down with a vengeance—a broken-knee'd, spavined jade of a pony, that's hardly fit for carrion. Oh! it's yours, Master Sweep, I s'pose. Ay, that's the kind of nag the doctor ought to ride; clap on the saddle, my boys—that's your sort; just as it should be. No, you can't look that way, can't ye? Well, then, mount ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... are no longer there. After seeing the waggons one after another becoming stationary, like vultures deprived of a carrion repast, they moved away. But not far. Only about five miles, to a grove of timber standing back upon the plain, where they have ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... to guard my little brood with fine wire-work, for some carrion crows kept hovering near, and a weasel was constantly on the watch to carry them off; but these enemies were successfully baffled, and three of the ducks survived all dangers and grew to beautiful maturity, the fourth having ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... at the bone in amazement. The Justice, after he had examined it, replied: "A cow's bone, Mr. Schmitz! You discovered a carrion-pit, not the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... multitudinous and admiring eyes, brave, ready for battle, his attitude a challenge. He sees his enemy: horsemen sitting motionless, with long spears in rest, upon blindfolded broken-down nags, lean and starved, fit only for sport and sacrifice, then the carrion-heap. ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... pin-point mouths, Hungering, but hard to fill,—all swooping down To gorge upon the meat of wicked ones; Whereof the limbs disparted, trunks and heads, Offal and marrow, littered all the way. By such a path the king passed, sore afeared If he had known of fear, for the air stank With carrion stench, sickly to breathe; and lo! Presently 'thwart the pathway foamed a flood Of boiling waves, rolling down corpses. This They crossed, and then the Asipatra wood Spread black in sight, whereof the undergrowth Was sword-blades, spitting, every blade, some ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... Abyssinia, is beef: it rather resembled, however, in the dry season when I ate it, the lean and stringy sirloins of Old England in Hogarth's days. A hundred and twenty chickens, or sixty-six full-grown fowls, may be purchased for a dollar, and the citizens do not, like the Somal, consider them carrion. Goat's flesh is good, and the black-faced Berberah sheep, after the rains, is, here as elsewhere, delicious. The staff of life is holcus. Fruit grows almost wild, but it is not prized as an article of food; the plantains are coarse and bad, grapes seldom come to maturity; ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... the rich carrion would be less keen; the zeal of opposition, as usual, would be measured by the stomach, whereon hope and overlooking ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... been trampled flat for an irregular patch, with a trail of broken stalks out of the heart of the plain. At one side was a buzzing, seething mass of glitter-winged insects which Travis already knew as carrion eaters. They arose reluctantly from their feast ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... her nest with down from her breast, and in a short time you will find the whole nest, sides and bottom, lined with a thick covering of down; while the eggs are covered by what I can best describe as a thick movable quilt, which protects them from the cold, and the prying eyes of carrion crows and other poachers. ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates
... bluebottle variety. They go to sleep, chiefly upon the ceiling of one's dug-out, during the short hours of darkness, but for twenty hours out of twenty-four they are very busy indeed. They divide their attentions between stray carrion—there is a good deal hereabout—and our rations. If you sit still for five minutes they also settle upon you, like pins in a pin-cushion. Then, when face, hands, and knees can endure no more, and the inevitable ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... thousand families have no habitation on the land, but live constantly in little fishing-boats upon the rivers and canals. The subsistence which they find there is so scanty, that they are eager to fish up the nastiest garbage thrown overboard from any European ship. Any carrion, the carcase of a dead dog or cat, for example, though half putrid and stinking, is as welcome to them as the most wholesome food to the people of other countries. Marriage is encouraged in China, not by the profitableness of children, but by the liberty of destroying them. In all great ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... (whether naturally developed or artificially made) in the thing recognised. Such points then become symbols of the thing as a whole. The evolutionary facts of mimicry in the lower animals show that to some flesh-eating insects a putrid smell is a sufficiently convincing symbol of carrion to induce them to lay their eggs in a flower, and that the black and yellow bands of the wasp if imitated by a fly are a sufficient symbol to keep off birds.[11] In early political society most recognition is guided by such symbols. One cannot make a new king, who may be a boy, ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... animalcules, whirled into that lovely avernus, its mouth, by the currents of the delicate ciliae which clothe every tentacle. The fact is, that the Madrepore, like those glorious sea-anemones whose living flowers stud every pool, is by profession a scavenger and a feeder on carrion; and being as useful as he is beautiful, really comes under the rule which he seems at first to break, that handsome ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... the Carrion Crow! (He's a raven, don't you know?) He's a greedy glutton, also, and a ghoul, And his sanctimonious caw Rubs my temper on the raw. He's a demon, and ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... Were as a carrion's cry To lullaby Such as I'd sing to thee, Were I thy bride! A feather's press Were leaden heaviness To my caress. But then, unhappily, I'm not ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... with one who is of trusty stuff, One who is true of thought and deed and eke of good descent. Wine's like the wind, that, if it breathe on perfume, smells as sweet, But, if o'er carrion it pass, imbibes its ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... They ran over us in the dugouts at night, and filched cheese and crackers right through the heavy waterproofed covering of our haversacks. They squealed and fought among themselves at all hours. I think it possible that they were carrion eaters, but never, to my knowledge, did they attack living men. While they were unpleasant bedfellows, we became so accustomed to them that we were not greatly concerned ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... saw the main way to Madrid open before him—except that some forces were said to be posted at the strong defile of the Somosierra, within ten miles of the capital; while Soult, continuing his march by Carrion and Valladolid, could at once keep in check the English, in case they were still so daring as to advance from Portugal, and outflank the Somosierra, in case the mountains should be so defended as to bar the Emperor's ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... a Hagged Carrion of a Wolf, and a Jolly Sort of a Gentile Dog, with Good Flesh upon's Back, that fell into Company together upon the King's High-Way. The Wolf was wonderfully pleas'd with his Companion, and as Inquisitive to Learn how be ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... shot out two more of that carrion. You know all the men I have been fool enough to know. If they come here again tell the servants ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... try the same Adventure in their flight; and thee, sweet dame, Both she and I for our protection choose; I by my vow, and she by farther right Under your phoenix (wing) presume to fly; That from all carrion beaks in safety might By one same wing be shrouded, she and I. O happy, if I might but flitter there Where you and she and I should ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... the bone, without once relinquishing a point. An engineer by trade, Mackay believed in the unlimited perfectibility of all machines except the human machine. The latter he gave up with ridicule for a compound of carrion and perverse gases. He had an appetite for disconnected facts which I can only compare to the savage taste for beads. What is called information was indeed a passion with the man, and he not only delighted to receive it, but could pay you ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it at the breast of the fallen wretch, who lay groaning at his feet—"We must secure him," said the Colonel; "and, at the same time, be on our guard against his cowardly associate. If he could walk, I would know how to act with him; but I am not going to carry the base carrion. Indeed, my arm bleeds, and is getting stiff; otherwise I would dispatch him where he lies, and save the hangman ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... the grand battery opened on the Spanish defences, it presently took fire, was consumed, and had to be made anew. Fresh water failed, and the troops died by scores from thirst; fevers set in, killed many, and disabled nearly half the army. The sea was strewn with floating corpses, and carrion-birds in clouds hovered over the populous graveyards and infected camps. Yet the siege went on: a formidable sally was repulsed; Moro Castle was carried by storm; till at length, two months and eight ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... a grey old crow Was pecking some carrion down below; A poor little lamb, half alive, half-dead, And the crow at each peck turned up its head With a cunning glance at the linnet above— What a demon is ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... one, then," said her companion coolly, "for it is the blood of a fanatic traitor. Think not of it." He turned at the threshold and cast a careless glance back into the tobacco house. "Woodson, get rid of this carrion, and bring these men quietly to the great house, where your master ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... to gluttony that it will go a thousand miles to eat a carrion [carcase]; therefore is it that it follows ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... values, and innumerable persons have parted with good money in exchange for mere phantoms of imaginary values. At such times the short sales of discernment, directing the X rays of clear-sighted criticism into the swollen and opaque mass of financial carrion that is exposed for sale in the market, are of the utmost benefit to the public. The bear is then a benefactor to the community, and when he pulls down and tears to pieces the rotten carcass of some gigantic humbug, strewing the highway ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... court of justice, or even a temple, though nominally Buddhists. They are compelled to stand aside on the road when any traveller passes them; and they fall on their knees when they address any man of recognised caste. Their habits are dirty in the extreme; and they eat any food, even carrion, which comes in their way. They are, indeed, like the Cagots of France; and as little is known of the cause which reduced their ancestors to their present degraded state as in the instance of the last-named ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... stirred ye up to mutiny!" she cried. "Yellow Rufe, if it be he, is not among ye, nor is he one of these carrion scattered on the ground. If it be some other villain, him I will know before the sun has stretched my shadow to the cliff. Deliver him up to me, and he alone shall repay. Disobey, and every biting dog among ye shall swiftly learn the ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... music; and the capital of the British Empire below me. Here we take our indemnity for subjection to the tyrannical female ear, and talk like copious rivers meandering at their own sweet will. Here we roll like dogs in carrion, and no one to sniff at our coats. Here we sing treason, here we flout reason, night is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... heads more shameful, fall on theirs through whom Dead men may keep inviolate not their tomb, But all its depths these ravenous grave-worms choke And yet what waste of wrath were this, to invoke Shame on the shameless? Even their twin-born doom, Their native air of life, a carrion fume, Their natural breath of love, a noisome smoke, The bread they break, the cup whereof they drink, The record whose remembrance damns their name, Smells, tastes, and sounds of nothing but of shame. If thankfulness nor pity ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... struggle and fight till one sun is thrown into darkness, or one eagle, blind and winged, falls down the rocks and leaves the whole nest to its conqueror. The Arrapahoes would not fight a cowardly Crow except for self-defence, for he smells of carrion; nor would a Shoshone. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Cowarne Red, Dymock Red, Eggleton Styre, Kingston Black or Black Taunton, Skyrme's Kernel, Spreading Redstreak, Carrion apple, Cherry Norman, Cummy Norman, Royal Wilding, Handsome Norman, Strawberry Norman, White Bache or Norman, Broad-leaved Norman, Argile Grise, Bramtot, De Boutville, Frequin Audievre, Medaille d'Or, the last five being French sorts introduced from Normandy ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... denizens of these pretty villages, these dewy lawns, and these charming shores. After lauding in funeral celebrations the good, the great, the immortal Marat, whose body, thank God! they cast into the common sewer like carrion that he was, and always had been; after performing these funeral rites, to which each man brought an urn into which he shed his tears, behold! our good Bressans, our gentle Bressans, these poultry-fatteners, suddenly decided that the Republicans ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... valuable disclosures with respect to the smasher's system. I confess that I would have been hanged before I would have done so, after having reaped the profit of it; that is, I think so now, seated comfortably in my inn, with my bottle of champagne before me. He, however, did not show himself carrion; he would not betray his companions, who had behaved very handsomely to him, having given the son of a lord, a great barrister, not a hundred-pound forged bill, but a hundred hard guineas, to plead his cause, and another ten, to induce him, after pleading, to put his ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... gave to rich folk, millet to the poor, Broken scraps for holy men that beg from door to door; Battle to the tiger, carrion to the kite, And rags and bones to wicked wolves without the wall at night. Naught he found too lofty, none he saw too low— Parbati beside him watched them come and go; Thought to cheat her husband, turning Shiv to jest— Stole the little grasshopper and hid it in her breast. So she tricked ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... who scented gold as buzzards scent carrion, began early to discover the growing wealth of this new city, and soon a party of a dozen Franciscans, in sackcloth with downcast visages, approached the city. They came, not as religious teachers, but as spiritual scavengers, who had consecrated their lives for gold to clean out the ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... generous as each appears, are poor bitter things when prosecuted for themselves as an end."—"I say to you plainly there is no end to which your practical faculty can aim so sacred or so large, that if pursued for itself, will not at last become carrion and an offence to the nostril. The imaginative faculty of the soul must be fed with objects immense and eternal. Your end should be one inapprehensible to the senses; then it will be a god, always approached,—never touched; always ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after somewhat to eat; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe." In effect, happiness is a relative term, which we can alter as we please by altering the amount which we demand from life. "Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... passage of the Jew's house and ran off as hard as he could. And the good wife came bustling out in alarm and saw a carcass hanging over an iron bucket that stood in the passage. And she knew that it was the act of a Christian and she took up the carrion to bury it when Lo! a rain of gold-pieces came from the stomach ripped up by the sharp rim of the vessel. And she called to her husband. "Hasten! See what Elijah the prophet hath sent us." And she ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... finished financial business, arising out of Unfinished Business, were there also, like ancient bards, to record with paean or threnody the completion of Unfinished Business. Various unclean birds, scenting carrion in Unfinished Business, hovered in the halls ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... under the impending rocks; negroes, men, women, and children, were hurrying with their hoes on their shoulders past the windows to their huts. Several large bloodhounds had ventured into the hall, and were crouching with a low whine at our feet. The large carrion crows were the only living things which seemed to brave the approaching chu-basco, and were soaring high up in the heavens, appearing to touch the black, agitated fringe of the lowering thunder clouds. All other ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... "Carrion crows were about in the dawn that followed. One of my own comrades lay very badly wounded, and when he wakened out of his unconsciousness one of these beastly birds was sitting on his chest waiting for him ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... in thick-strewn graves; here the jackal roams at night—it thrusts its pointed snout through the ephemeral masonry of townsmen's tombs or scratches downward within the ring of stones that mark some poor bedouin's corpse, to take toll of the carrion horrors beneath; so you may find many graves rifled. And if you come by day you will probably see, crouching among the ruins, certain old men, pariahs, animated lumps of dirt and rags. They are so uncouth ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... of a morning's walk no fewer than eighty species of birds were collected, most of them exceedingly beautiful. Darwin's observations on the molothri (representatives of our cuckoos), the tyrant fly-catchers, and the carrion-feeding hawks are most attractive reading. Rio Negro, much further south, was next visited, and the fauna of a salt lake examined. The adaptation of creatures to live in and near brine struck him as wonderful. "Well may we affirm," says he, "that every part of the world is habitable! ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... sea, off the mainland of Dapitan, on the thirtieth day of the month of May in the year one thousand six hundred and two. The purveyor-general, Juan Juarez Gallinato. Whereas Ensign Pedro de Carrion, while scouting among the little islands opposite the kingdom of Xolo in the last few days, captured a Lutao in a [MS. defective] and was fleeing; it is proper, in order to know the design of the inhabitants of the aforesaid kingdom, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... take no chances, Rrisa. The land, here and to the eastward, might all arise against us. The tribes might come against us like the rakham, the carrion-vultures. No, we must kill and kill, so that no man remaineth here—none save old Abd el Rahman, if Allah deliver him into ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... of this town, and because I would not pay my tithes to my curate he accursed me, and so I died and went to hell. And then St. Austin bade bring him to the place where his curate was buried, and then the carrion brought him thither to the grave, and because that all men should know that life and death be in the power of God, St. Austin said: I command thee in the name of God to arise, for we have need of thee, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... trumpets.... Wheeling round in gyres, yelled the fowls of war, Of the battle greedy; hoarsely barked the raven, Dew upon his feathers, o'er the fallen corpses— Swart that chooser of the slain! Sang aloud the wolves At eve their horrid song, hoping for the carrion.[31] ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... has also been made that these giant carnivores were carrion-eaters rather than truly predaceous. The hypothesis can hardly be effectively supported nor attacked. It is presented as ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... all-fours with the wolves. The village boys amused themselves by throwing frogs to him, which he caught and devoured; and when a bullock died and was skinned, he resorted to the carcass like the dogs of the place, and fed upon the carrion. His body smelled offensively. He remained in the village during the day, for the sake of what he could get to eat, but always went off to the jungle at night. In other particulars, his habits resembled those already described. We have only to add respecting him, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... Nicholas of Reist, but the old war music seems to leap and burn in my blood when I think of the Turks creeping nearer and nearer to the frontier, and our ancient city full of foreign spies, gathered together like carrion birds before the ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... back for; and even if there had been, one short day's time in the hot, steaming jungle atmosphere sufficed to cause the flesh to decay. Suma had ideas of her own about spending the days away from her proper rendezvous; and as for carrion, she never failed to give ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller |
