"Configuration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... absurdities, and greater to my mind than those it would fain avoid. We conceive clearly that matter is divisible, and capable of motion; but we do not conceive that it is capable of thought, nor that thought can consist of a certain configuration or a certain motion of matter. And even could thought depend on an arrangement, or on a certain subtility, or on a certain motion of matter, as soon as that arrangement should be disturbed, or the motion interrupted, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... apply, whatever were the product's character. The recent Mont-Pelee eruption, for example, required all previous history to produce that exact combination of ruined houses, human and animal corpses, sunken ships, volcanic ashes, etc., in just that one hideous configuration of positions. France had to be a nation and colonize Martinique. Our country had to exist and send our ships there. IF God aimed at just that result, the means by which the centuries bent their influences towards it, showed exquisite ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... of the country where they are most mastering; and the nation has grown great in their charge. What, in brief, are the results, so clear, so grand, so vast, that they stand out like mountain ranges, the configuration of a national life? The diffusion of material comfort among masses of men, on a scale and to an amount abolishing peasantry forever; the dissemination of education, which is the means of life to the mind as comfort is to the body, in no more narrow bounds, but through the State universal, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... for a time it seemed as if this were to be their fate. As they drew near enough to the land to distinguish its configuration, they saw a white line like a snow-wreath running between it and them, for miles to right and left, far as the eye could reach. They knew it to be a barrier of coral breakers, such as usually encircle the islands of the Indian seas—strong ramparts raised ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... was accorded. Smoke and Labiskwee knew their danger. They were lost in the high mountains, and they had seen no game nor signs of game. Day after day they struggled on through an iron configuration of landscape that compelled them to labyrinthine canyons and valleys that led rarely to the west. Once in such a canyon, they could only follow it, no matter where it led, for the cold peaks and higher ranges on either side were unscalable and unendurable. The terrible toil and the cold ate ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... outer walls, with the exception of a small group near the east end of the arroyo. In the south half, on the other hand, the inner rows are nearly at right angles to the outer room clusters. An examination of the contours of the site will reveal the cause of this difference in the different configuration of the slopes in the two cases. In the south half the rows of rooms have been built on two long projecting ridges, and the diverging small cluster in the north half owes its direction to a similar cause. The line of outer wall being once fixed as a defensive bulwark, there seems ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... use the expression, natural capitals and capitals that are artificial. The sites of the first are determined by the configuration of the earth. When they perish it is but a temporary death, to be followed by a life often more full and brilliant than the first. The second owe their prosperity to the caprice of a sovereign, or to political combinations that pass away and leave no trace. Thebes and Nineveh were artificial cities; ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... hard at the low ridge of an outlying island where a cow had been put to pasture. The hillocky back of that lone ruminant grew black as ink in the glow of sunset. The creature exhibited a strange fixity of outline, as if it had been a chance configuration of rocks. Rackby in due time felt a flaming impatience shoot upward from his heels. Water soughed and chuckled at the foot of the crab-apple tree, but these eager little voices could no longer soothe or even detain him with their ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... control room, he threw on the drive, and shot through the twenty-seven thousand light years of cosmic ray fields, and then more leisurely returned to the galaxy. The star maps were strangely off. They could follow them, but only with difficulty as the general configuration of the constellations that were their guides were visibly altered to the ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... star of Herschel, seem also scarcely acquainted with the character which the influence of that wayward and melancholy orb creates. Thus, the aspect of Herschel neutralises, in great measure, the boldness and ambition, and pride of heart, thou wouldst otherwise have drawn from the felicitous configuration of the stars around the Moon and Mercury at thy birth. That yearning for something beyond the narrow bounds of the world, that love for reverie, that passionate romance, yea, thy very leaning, despite thy worldly sense, to these occult and ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he now hasten to carry into execution the plans which he had originally formed only with the view to aggrandizement. He had delayed too long, either because the favourable configuration of the stars had not yet presented itself, or, as he used to say, to check the impatience of his friends, because THE TIME WAS NOT YET COME. The time, even now, was not come: but the pressure of circumstances ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... North Borneo possesses no rivers navigable for European vessels of any size, except perhaps the Sibuku River, the possession of which is at the present moment a subject of dispute with the the Dutch. This is due to the natural configuration of the country. Borneo, towards the North, becoming comparatively narrow and of roughly triangular shape, with the apex to the North. The only other river of any size and navigable for vessels drawing ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... He and his men, he tells us with an engaging candour, were at the mercy of the Greeks: had he not accepted the King's offer—outnumbered, surrounded, and without food or water for more than twenty-four hours—they would have been ignominiously arrested. Besides, the configuration of the ground sheltered the Greek troops from the naval fire, while the Legations both of the Entente and of neutral Powers lay exposed to it. Lastly, a continued bombardment might have driven the Greeks to exasperation and perhaps to a massacre of Entente ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... I shall indicate after a further consultation of the map. I must see the configuration of the country by daylight to decide. And now let's get some rest. We ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... carried on legs sturdy enough but noticeably short. The wits used to describe him as the statesman "with coat-tails very near the ground." It is worth while to remark on this physical peculiarity because it was the direct opposite of Lincoln's configuration. He, while comparatively short-bodied, had, as all the world knows, an abnormal length of limb, a fact which I suppose will account for much of his ungainly manner. In an ordinary chair he was undoubtedly uncomfortable, and hence his familiar ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... the characters of the animal portion of the fabric being especially (but not exclusively) derived from the male parent, and those of the organic apparatus being in like manner derived from the female parent. The former will be chiefly manifested in the external appearance, in the general configuration of the head and limbs, in the organs of the senses (including the skin) and in the locomotive apparatus; whilst the latter show themselves in the size of the body (which is primarily determined by the development of ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... cloud that had for some time been lying faintly along the horizon now came nearer and more near, until they could pick out something like the configuration of the island, its bays and promontories and mountains. The day seemed to become warmer as they got out of the driving wind of the Channel, and the heavy roll of the sea had so far subsided. Through comparatively ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... Turkey seems to have a distinct and individual class of rugs; and this is not surprising, for there are a number of different tribes, each of which impresses its individuality upon the work. The surface configuration and the climate of a place have much to do with the quality of the rugs manufactured within it. Naturally, in the rocky, mountainous regions the flocks consist of goats instead of sheep. The sheep would be injured among the steep, sharp crags, and ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... from the ocean a current of wind laden with moisture which blows steadily for two months toward the northwest and causes what is called the rainy season. That wind is called the southwest monsoon. The quantity of rain that falls depends upon the configuration of the land. Any cause which cools the winds from the sea and leads to the condensation of the vapor they carry—any obstacle which blocks their course—causes precipitation. Through all the northern part of India there is a heavy rainfall during April, May and ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... soul is immortal, because it has an independent power of self-motion—that is, it has self-activity and self-determination. No arrangement of matter, no configuration of body, can be conceived as the originator of ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Pacific waves are crested with radiance, you have the one blending picture, nay, the reality, of the American domain! No such soil, so varied by climate, by products, by mineral riches, by forest and lake, by wild heights and buttresses, and by opulent plains,—yet all bound into unity of configuration and bordered by both warm and icy seas,—no such domain was ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... ring-fence that shuts it in. From the Pyrenees right along to Ararat runs the great Alpine fold, like a ridge in a crumpled table-cloth; the Spanish Sierras and the Atlas continue the circle to the south-west; and the rest is desert. Next, the configuration of the coasts makes for intercourse by sea, especially on the northern side with its peninsulas and islands, the remains of a foundered and drowned mountain-country. This same configuration, considered in connection with ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... the skin in the frame where it had been enclosed but lately, drew a line in red ink about the actual configuration of the talisman, and seated ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... contain four star-maps. They not only serve to indicate the configuration of certain important star-groups, but they illustrate the construction of maps, such as the observer should make for himself when he wishes to obtain an accurate knowledge of particular regions of the sky. They are all made to one scale, and on ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... of tidal evolution in a fresh light. If the moon now departed to any considerable extent from showing the constant face to the earth, it would seem that its retreat could not have been caused by tides. Some other agent for producing the present configuration would be necessary, just as we found that some other agent than the tides has been necessary in ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... way, point out this valley," said the Emir as to a dog, when they were near enough to observe the configuration of those heights. ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... moderate, the motion gentle, the sea was liquid lapis lazuli, and the hundred-tinted islets around us, wrought their accustomed spell. Surely there is something in climate which creates permanent abodes of art! The Mediterranean, with its hydrographical configuration, excluding from its great peninsulas the extremes of heat and cold, seems destined to nourish the most exquisite sentiment of the Beautiful. Those brilliant or softly graduated tints invite the palette, and the cultivation of the ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... surface and configuration of the country. Now let us come to the climate, which is a not less important element in making South Africa ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... are less than those of language. No one has denied that the Malay configuration is a modification of the Mongolian—at least in some of ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... and her dry deserts, her cold ocean-currents pouring down from the high North on some of her shores, while warm ones from tropical seas carry their softer influence to others,—in short, all the contrasts in the external configuration of the globe, with the physical conditions attendant upon them, are naturally accompanied by a corresponding variety in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... commonplace, such as a standard geometric figure, a familiar symbol, an emblem, or a motif, or another shape, pattern, or configuration which has become standard, ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... pilot marked every striking feature of the coast, the bearing of the headlands and the configuration of the many islands which stud these rock-bound and inhospitable shores. He spent a night on one of these islands, and the men found great quantities of ducks' eggs. The next day, still sailing to the west, he reached so fine an anchorage that he was induced to land ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... about, studying the configuration of the meadow, crossed it to the redwood trees beyond, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... granite and other igneous rocks, which are exposed in many places in the shape of massive blocks; otherwise the hill-range is covered in the upper part with sandstone, and in the bottoms with alluvial clay. This is the superficial configuration of the land as it strikes the eye; but, knowing the elevation of the interior plateau to be only 2500 feet above the sea immediately on the western flank of these hills, whilst the breath of the chain is 100 miles, the mean slope of incline of the basal surface must be on a gradual rise of twenty ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... said that there exists a tendency on the part of the father to transmit the external appearance, the configuration of the head and limbs, the peculiarities of the senses and of the skin and the muscular condition; while the size of the body, and the general temperament or constitution of the child, are derived from the mother. Among animals, the ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... which are mellow with the golden calm of his discovered peace, he tells how, having reached the climacteric which he had set at forty years, he went apart into the solitude of the Ermitage to inquire into the configuration of his own soul, and to fix once for all his opinions and his principles. In the exquisite third Reverie two phrases occur continually. His purpose was 'to find firm ground'—'prendre une assiette,'—and his means to this discovery was ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... were relieved over one fact: they had come upon no broad stream or river. Indeed, they had seen but the one stream which proved such a means of enjoyment to them, and the configuration of the country rendered it unlikely that they would meet any thing of the kind, until after passing the ridge where they expected ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... upon verse as men work upon the harder metals; all that he did was chiselled very finely, then sawn to an exact configuration and at last inlaid, for when he published his completed volume it is true to say that every piece fitted in with the sound of one before and of one after. He was ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... in FORM; and we surmise that vastly more depends on the configuration and movement of matter as one mass, than has been suspected. As perfect a whole as any of its parts, must not the universe have a definable outline or shape,—one to which nothing amorphous can possibly belong? What is its figure? It can hardly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... the general configuration of the earth's surface as permanent a continuous and progressive dispersal of species from the centre to the circumference, i.e. southwards, seems inevitable. If an observer were placed above a point in St George's Channel from which one ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... fact was the secret! This empty place was, in its aspect, despite the difference in configuration between down and undulating plain, more like the home of my early years than any other place known to me in the country. I can note many differences, but they do not deprive me of this home feeling; it is the likenesses that hold me, the spirit of the place, one which is not a desert ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... The configuration of the heights and gorges in the direction of the Saltillo road, as visible from the point attained by our advance on the morning of the 19th, led me to suspect that it was practicable to turn all the works in that direction, and thus cut the enemy's line ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... towers, giant guardian of Paris, with its four and twenty heads, always erect, with its monstrous haunches, loaded or scaled with slates, and all streaming with metallic reflections, terminated with wonderful effect the configuration of the Town towards ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... styled, Pepe, was a young fellow of some twenty-five years—tall, thin, and muscular. His black eyes, deeply set under bushy eyebrows, had all the appearance of eyes that could sparkle; besides, his whole countenance possessed the configuration of one who had been born for a life of activity. On the contrary, however—whether from a malady or some other cause—the man appeared as somnolent and immobile as if both his visage and body were carved out of marble. In a word, with all the exterior marks that denote the possession of an active ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... is as the entry of a presiding exhibitor who unrolls the maps, uncurtains the pictures, unlocks the cabinets, and effects a transformation by merely exposing the materials of his science, unintelligibly cloaked till then. The abrupt configuration of the bluffs and mounds is now for the first time clearly revealed—mounds whereon, doubtless, spears and shields have frequently lain while their owners loosened their sandals and yawned and stretched their arms in the sun. For the first time, too, a glimpse ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... affects the structural properties of the derived compounds, both sulphocarbonates and esters. This is at least an indication that the properties of the visible aggregates are directly related to the actual configuration of the chemical units. But it appears that we are barred from the present discussion of such a problem in absence of any theory of the solid state generally, but more particularly of those forms of matter which are ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... — N. form, figure, shape; conformation, configuration; make, formation, frame, construction, cut, set, build, trim, cut of one's jib; stamp, type, cast, mold; fashion; contour &c (outline) 230; structure &c 329; plasmature^. feature, lineament, turn; phase &c (aspect) 448; posture, attitude, pose. [Science of form] morphism. [Similarity of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... flints found in the bed of the Somme were undoubtedly the work of the hand of plan, that they had been found in strata that lead not been disturbed, and that the men who cut these flints bad lived at a period prior to the time when our earth assumed its present configuration. Sir Charles Lyell, in his opening address at a session of the British Association, did not hesitate to support the conclusions of Prestwich. It was now the turn of Frenchmen of science to arrive at Abbeville. MM. Gaudry and Pouchet themselves ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... depression commanded by the neighbouring mounds, not a good configuration for defence. This village in the Roman Campagna sprang into history on a November day one thousand and sixty-seven years before, as the meeting-place of Charlemagne and Leo III. Here they shook hands over their bargain: that the Pope should crown ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... in the Infantry front trenches, on the sky line, no troops of any kind being in advance of them. It would have been quite useless to take up positions behind the Infantry line in the normal way, owing to the configuration of the ground, for in such cases the lowest range at which the crest could be cleared was 3,000 yards, while our targets were from 500 to 1,000 yards distant. Indeed at night, shrapnel shell with fuse set at zero ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... abstract. What is true of the particular idiom that we started with is true of everything else in language. Nothing is perfectly static. Every word, every grammatical element, every locution, every sound and accent is a slowly changing configuration, molded by the invisible and impersonal drift that is the life of language. The evidence is overwhelming that this drift has a certain consistent direction. Its speed varies enormously according to circumstances that it is not always easy to define. We have already seen that Lithuanian ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... our instincts and consciousness dwell in the "sensory ganglia," that "an idea is a contradiction, a motion, a configuration of the intermediate organ of sense," that "memory is the organic registration of their effects of impressions," and that the "cerebrum" is the seat of ideas, the home of thought and reason. But when "grey-matter" that composes this thinking mechanism becomes diseased, and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... The geographical configuration of the country, as I have described it, isolated almost every family of note on various branches of the river, so that nearly all were enabled to fortify themselves within their islands or marshy flats. The principal parties in this family feud were the Amarars and Shiakars. Amarar was a native ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... If the configuration of the theatre of operations be favorable to a movement against the extremity of the enemy's line of defence, this direction maybe best calculated to lead to important ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... off again I had slackened my pace down to a stealthy cat-like tread that took me along with an incredible absence of noise. As I moved forward I began to turn the configuration of the place over in my mind and wonder to what practical use I could put the fine natural cover of the bushes. As I could see none I put the matter out of my head and devoted all my energies to coming ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... efficient and the matter. Physic hath three parts, whereof two respect nature united or collected, the third contemplateth nature diffused or distributed. Nature is collected either into one entire total, or else into the same principles or seeds. So as the first doctrine is touching the contexture or configuration of things, as de mundo, de universitate rerum. The second is the doctrine concerning the principles or originals of things. The third is the doctrine concerning all variety and particularity of things; whether it be of the differing substances, or ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... to be without exception, must needs have been copied from some preceding sensible impression, but neither from within nor from without can we have received an impression from which this particular idea can have been copied. No keenest scrutiny of any portion of matter, no study of its external configuration or internal structure could, previously to experience, enable us to conjecture that it could produce any effect whatever, still less any particular effect: could enable us to guess, for instance, that flame would burn, or ice would chill, if touched. Nor even though ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... earth by the unspeakable mixture of squalidness and magnificence, simplicity of life yet fury of passion, savage ignorance of its religious notions yet fearful worship of evil powers, its homage to magic, and desperate belief in spells, incantations and the fetish. The configuration of the country, so far as it can be conjectured, assists this primeval barbarism. Divided by natural barriers of hill, chasm, or river, into isolated states, they act under a general impulse of hostility ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... the spot (see note p. 512 [footnote to Chapter 24 Paragraph 7]); and that, from the attentive study of the geological map of Mr. Bain and other materials, some of which were furnished by the discoveries of Mr. Oswell and myself, he had not only clearly enunciated the peculiar configuration as an hypothesis in his discourse before the Geographical Society in 1852, but had even the assurance to send me out a copy for my information! There was not much use in nursing my chagrin at being thus fairly "cut out" by the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... of their southern cousins. They had never come in contact with the higher Aegean civilization, nor had they mixed their blood with that of cultivated predecessors; their land was continental, poor in harbours, remote from the luxurious centres of life, and of comparatively rigorous climate; its configuration had offered them no inducement to form city-states and enter on intense political life. But, in compensation, they entered the fourth century unexhausted, without tribal or political impediments to unity, and with a broad territory of greater natural resources than any southern Greek state. ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... advanced, the configuration of the ground became more and more familiar to the two boys. They passed places which they had ridden over in approaching the half-hidden valley, before they fairly stumbled on it ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... desiring to be instructed, or needing to be interred. The schoolhouse has disappeared, but the cemetery is still there—only distinguishable from the surrounding terrain by some oblong elevations, having the well-known configuration of graves. There are in all about a score of them; some having a plain head-board—a piece of painted plank, with letters rudely limned, recording the name and age of him or ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... of the cabin's fittings were not remarkable. By the configuration of the ship I guessed that two of the staterooms must be rather large. I could make out ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... according to some definite function of the distance, we cannot avoid the question of impacts, and of vibrations and rotations of the molecules resulting from impacts, and we must look distinctly on each molecule as being either a little elastic solid or a configuration of motion in a continuous all-pervading liquid. I do not myself see how we can ever permanently rest anywhere short of this last view; but it would be a very pleasant temporary resting-place on the way to it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... north-central part of it. The division of the group into northern and southern portions, which has been made by some writers, is clearly shown on the map; but this division is more apparent than real. The contour interval on the map is one foot—a sufficiently small interval to show the surface configuration closely and to bring out some of its peculiarities. Depressions are shown by dotted contours. It will be noticed that while most of the mounds which mark the sites of former structures rise but 10 feet or less above the surrounding level, the profiles vary ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... morning finds us on the ramparts at the Gulaek Gate, on the north side of the city. A cold breeze is blowing off the snowy mountains to the northeast, and we decide to commence our novel walk toward the west. Following the zigzag configuration of the ramparts, we find it at first somewhat rough and stony to the feet; on our right we look down into the broad ditch, and beyond, over the sloping plain, our eyes follow the long, even rows of kanaat mounds stretching away to the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the arms embroidered on their money bags. After hearing a few words from one of them, Dante returns to Virgil, and both take their place on the croup of Geryon, who bears them downwards to the eighth circle. This (Canto xviii.), from its configuration, is known as Malebolge, or Evilpits. It is divided into ten concentric rings, or circular trenches, separated by a tract of rocky ground. From various indications we gather that each trench is half a mile across, and the intervening ground a mile and a quarter. The trenches are spanned ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... individual corals in the Red Sea and at Bermuda; namely, that at Upolu, one of the Navigator Islands, "particular clumps of coral are known to the fishermen by name, derived from either some particular configuration or tradition attached to them, and handed down from time immemorial." With respect to the thickness of masses of coral-rock, it clearly appears, from the descriptions given by Mr. Couthouy (pages 34, 58) that Mangaia and Aurora Islands are upraised ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... objected to a common origin for all the American nations, and even for those of Mexico, that their monuments should present so great a variety in the configuration of the head and face; a fact which forcibly impresses every one who examines the numerous effigies in baked clay in the collection of the American Philosophical Society; yet they are all made of the same material and by the same national artists. The varieties ...
— Some Observations on the Ethnography and Archaeology of the American Aborigines • Samuel George Morton
... the Nilgiris. This useful bird usually sails in graceful circles high overhead, looking for food. Its cry is not heard so frequently on those hills as in the Himalayas, the reason being the different configuration of the two ranges. The Nilgiris are undulating and downlike, hence the kites are able, while hovering higher than the summits of the hills, to see what is happening in the valleys. In the Himalayas they cannot ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... shown in the configuration of the nose. The peculiar connexion of this sense with love was evidently well understood by the artist. Not only is smell peculiarly associated with love, in all the higher animals, but it is associated with reproduction ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... that there can be no particular impropriety in our drawing a comparison between him and that peculiar type of per son commonly called a Virginian bean-pole. Nor, when he gets himself (as is not uncommon with him) "all over" native brown homespun, does his configuration materially change, there yet remaining, and boldly refusing to be disguised, that face so full of penetration, and those features so sharp. The waggishly inclined have identified them with the wizardry of dividing storm currents. Nevertheless, of this lean ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... south-westerly atmospheric waves that traverse Europe, and in furnishing data for comparison with the amount of oscillation and other barometric phaenomena in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, a portion of the torrid zone essentially different in its configuration and in the relations of its area to land and water, as contra-distinguished to the northern portion of the African continent; and these hourly observations are the more desirable as the vessels may approach the land. They may be discontinued ...
— The Hurricane Guide - Being An Attempt To Connect The Rotary Gale Or Revolving - Storm With Atmospheric Waves. • William Radcliff Birt
... Numerations, and called the Source of Spring KETHER, Corona, the Crown, in which the idea of circularity is involved, for there is no end to the out-flow of Light; and therefore He called this, like Himself, endless; for this also, like Him, has no similitude or configuration, nor hath it any vessel or receptacle wherein it may be contained, or by means whereof any possible cognizance ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... breadth, do, by their natural lightness, rise; and the body, giving and yielding because it is pliant, grows in height. The same thing seems, also, to conduce to beauty of shape; a dry and lean habit is a better subject for nature's configuration, which the gross and over-fed are too heavy to submit to properly. Just as we find that women who take physic whilst they are with child, bear leaner and smaller but better-shaped and prettier children; the material they come of having ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... side farthest from the door, and be satisfied thy guilt shall never be even suspected." The jeweller's wife went home and did as she was instructed. In an hour Ahmed followed her, and told the jeweller he had made his calculations, and found by the aspect of the sun and moon, and by the configuration of the stars, that the ruby was at that moment lying under the pillow of his couch on the side farthest from the door. The jeweller thought Ahmed must be crazy; but as a ray of hope is like a ray from heaven to the wretched, he ran to his couch, and there, to his joy and wonder, found ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... to Eaux-Vives follows the shore of the lake, and, like all the roads in Switzerland, is very narrow; in some spots, in consequence of the configuration of the hilly ground, there is scarcely space for two carriages to ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... in a new world, the configuration of lands, the aspect of vegetation, the habits of animals, the distribution of heat according to longitude, the pelagic currents, the variations of terrestrial magnetism—nothing escaped his sagacity. Columbus does not ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... contemplate the complete circumference of a Circle in the happy region of the Three Dimensions—how shall I make it clear to you the extreme difficulty which we in Flatland experience in recognizing one another's configuration? ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... ascribed the same peculiarity to the Scandinavian beast somewhat resembling a horse, which he calls a "machlis,"[2] and that CAESAR in describing the wild animals in the Hercynian forests, enumerates the alce, "in colour and configuration approaching the goat, but surpassing it in size, its head destitute of horns and its limbs of joints, whence it can neither lie down to rest, nor rise if by any accident it should fall, but using the trees for a resting-place, the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... miles, with all its inflections, extending from the north of Kansas to Fort Vancouver and to the coasts of the South Sea (almost 720 miles more than the distance from Madrid to Tobolsk). As I believe I was the first who attempted to represent, in geognostic profile, the configuration of Mexico, and the Cordilleras of South America,—for the half-perspective projections of the Siberian traveler, the Abbe Chappe* were based upon mere, and for the most part on very inaccurate, estimates of the falls of rivers,—it ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... declaration that the problem cannot be solved in that way. An early legend relates, that a painter, undertaking to copy his Christ from a statue of Jove, had his hand suddenly withered. The attempt is accused because of the pretence it makes to coordinate body and spirit, Nature and God,—as if one configuration of matter were more godlike than another. The figure of the god claims to complete what Nature has partly done. But now the world is seen to be not merely the product of Mind working upon Matter, but the Creation of God out of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... Mr. Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great creature—which he certainly was, flabbily speaking, though Mr. Quale meant in intellectual beauty— and whether we were not struck by his massive configuration of brow. In short, we heard of a great many missions of various sorts among this set of people, but nothing respecting them was half so clear to us as that it was Mr. Quale's mission to be in ecstasies with everybody else's mission and that ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... black-brown and auburn, and were now streaked with grey. The forehead was large, round, without protuberances, and very gently receding to where thin black curls, that had once been redundant, began to tumble down to the ears. The entire configuration of the head and face seemed to me singularly noble, and from the eyes upwards, full of beauty. He wore a pair of spectacles, and, in reading, a second pair over the first: but these took little from the sense of power conveyed by those steady eyes, and that "bar of ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... statement of their policy; a stricter concentration of the German military forces, reform of the Customs' Unions, and a number of common institutions to protect material interests against the disadvantages which arise from the unnatural configuration of ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... his social development, in moulding his character. To enumerate all the external factors operating upon individual and social life is outside our present purpose, but they may be briefly summed up as climate, moisture, soil, the configuration of the earth's surface, and the nature of its products. These natural phenomena, either singly or in varying degrees of combination, have unquestionably played a most prominent part in making the different races of mankind what they ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... loses its distinctive elevation above the surrounding plains, and passes into rolling prairies. Its length is about two hundred miles, and its general direction N. N. W. and S. S. E. Its northern termination (called Tete du Couteau in consequence of its peculiar configuration) is not more than fifteen to twenty miles across; its elevation above the level of the Big Stone Lake is eight hundred and ninety feet, and above the ocean one thousand nine hundred and sixteen feet. Starting from this extremity (that is, the head of the Coteau), ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... other material, or any new and useful pattern, or print, or picture, to be either worked into or worked on, or printed, or painted, or cast, or otherwise fixed on any article of manufacture, or any new and original shape or configuration of any article of manufacture not known ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... with the coast, I have no doubt are the bottoms of ancient inlets and deep bays, such as at the present day intersect every part of Tierra del Fuego and the western coast. Chile must formerly have resembled the latter country in the configuration of its land and water. The resemblance was occasionally shown strikingly when a level fog-bank covered, as with a mantle, all the lower parts of the country: the white vapour curling into the ravines, beautifully ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... explanation is requisite. But, that unpracticed learners, even in making use of one theorem to demonstrate another, reason rather from particular to particular than from the general proposition, is manifest from the difficulty they find in applying a theorem to a case in which the configuration of the diagram is extremely unlike that of the diagram by which the original theorem was demonstrated. A difficulty which, except in cases of unusual mental power, long practice can alone remove, and removes chiefly ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Essay," explained the boy; "the subject is the effect of the physical configuration of a country upon the ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is shorter than the Manbo. His physical configuration gives one the impression that he is undersized. His cranium is elongated from the front backward along the antero-posterior curve, there being formed accordingly an enlargement on the upper part of the occiput. From this enlargement downward there is a flattening of the curve. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... horizons. Under such circumstances, how could they distinguish the shape of the ground, the extent of the seas, the position of the islands? How could they recognize the hydrographic network of the country or the orographic configuration, and distinguish the hills and mountains from the ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... In parted links, l. 398. As our ideas consist of successive trains of the motions, or changes of figure, of the extremities of the nerves of one or more of our senses, as of the optic or auditory nerves; these successive trains of motion, or configuration, are in common life divided into many links, to each of which a word or name is given, and it is called an idea. This chain of ideas may be broken into more or fewer links, or divided in different parts of it, by the customs of different people. Whence the meanings of the words of one language ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... to those imitations, which are not attended with sensation. Of these are all the irritative ideas already explained, as when the retina of the eye imitates by its action or configuration the tree or the bench, which I shun in walking past without attending to them. Other examples of these irritative imitations are daily observable in common life; thus one yawning person shall set a whole company a yawning; and some have acquired winking of the eyes or impediments ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... hour more, as we rush to meet the course of the Potomac, the broad ledges that heave the bed of the river into mounds, and the ascending configuration of the shore, seem to speak of something grand, and directly we are in the cradle ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... this paper, the author spans three centuries in discussing the specialization, configuration, and change of woodworking tools in the ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... unnecessary to explain minutely the causes that produce variation in the monsoons. Every intelligent reader will readily conceive how the change of seasons and varied configuration as well as unequal arrangement of land and water, will reverse, alter, and modify the direction and ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... breakdown, cause not stated. Now, the outer roadstead of Marseilles harbor is one of the most awkward places in the Mediterranean for a disabled vessel. Though the Gulf of Lions is almost tideless, it has strong and treacherous currents. The configuration of the rocky coast, guarded as it is by small islands and sunken reefs, does not allow much seaway until a lighthouse, some miles distant from the mainland, is passed. Stump, of course, would have made use of the ship's sails before she drifted into peril. But he was purple with wrath, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... organisations, we find that the French and Americans approached this ideal solution more rapidly than ourselves, and we can trace in our own development a number of unsuccessful attempts to reach this centralised control, although the last configuration, under the direction of Major-General H. F. Thuillier, was the nearest approach. French organisation for supply provides another example of their national characteristic of logical thinking and love of symmetry. As early ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... similar, namely, they were invariably presented as points of light incapable of being sensibly magnified, even with the highest powers. True, there was a great variety of apparent brightness in these objects and a singular diversity of configuration, but there was no exception to the invariable feature referred to. The point of light was constant, and no striking exception was anticipated until one night—March 13, 1781—Herschel being intently engaged in the examination of some ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... launched into the trouble of rocks and water, Jenny realized how great their peril was, and how different the track of the waters looked at night-time from daytime. Outlines seemed merged, rocks did not look the same, whirlpools had a different vortex, islands of stone had a new configuration. As they sped on, lurching, jumping, piercing a broken wall of wave and spray like a torpedo, shooting an almost sheer fall, she came to rely on a sense of intuition rather than memory, for night had ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... rose and fell in undulating beauty, and here again the roofs and spires of nearby villages might in fair weather be seen nestling peacefully among the trees. Due south there was a suggestion of water and some peculiar configuration, which by day seemed to have no significance other than that which attached to the vague outlines of a distant landscape. By night, however, the soft glow emanating from myriads of lights identified it as the body and length of the merry, night-reveling New York. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... sense of literature, and he had known many of the famous people of the Victorian era. True to my plan of asking questions, I asked him whether he had ever seen Cardinal Newman. He replied by a story which was revealing as to a certain fierceness in Newman's character and mental configuration. In any case, it had both rhetorically and intellectually a considerable influence ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the summers are temperate and the winters barely sufferable." It is as though there were two distinct regions covering the same area, for there are marked differences throughout, except in topographic configuration, between the lowlands and the uplands or high plateaus. The lowlands present an appearance which is barren and desolate in the extreme, although the soil is fertile and under irrigation yields good crops. ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... all of one character, it seldom is so on any one farm in this country, but it is all good class. Most of it is a rich black humus, resting on clay and mountain limestone. In configuration it is of the roughest, like the country generally, being an abrupt succession of ranges, gullies, and basins, in every ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... inhabitants lived on an equal footing,—as far as accommodations for living were concerned. There are no special quarters, no spacious halls. The few rooms of somewhat larger size are naturally explained by the mode of construction, adapting the house to the configuration of the rock, and not conversely as we do. It was, therefore, a large joint-tenement structure, harboring, perhaps, when fully occupied, several ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... enormous cotton-tree. Several gigantic vines, in whose powerful and enervating embrace the mighty trunk had perished, still clasped the magnificent colossus with their shining red tendrils, whilst the interior of the tree, hollowed by the tooth of time, was of a fantastical configuration, not unlike a Gothic chapel, and sufficiently spacious to contain twenty men. The care with which the hollow had been swept out, and the neighbourhood of a salt spring, showed that it was used by the Indian hunters as a resting-place and ambush. Canondah cautiously approached the tree and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... singly, some in clumps; but the general colouring was uniform and sad. The hills ran up clear above the vegetation in spires of naked rock. All were strangely shaped, and the Spy-glass, which was by three or four hundred feet the tallest on the island, was likewise the strangest in configuration, running up sheer from almost every side and then suddenly cut off at the top like a pedestal to put ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... boys to make a V wrong side upward—I can't make nothin' of that," said Mr. Simlins, with again the approach to a grin;—"'taint over easy to tell whether his Vs are one side up or 'tother. Now I'd like to know from you where the hitch is. The Squire aint likely to set the Mong in a configuration just yet—but if he's swingin' a torch round, I'd jest as lief put it out ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... in their gradation the order of a staircase, observes, as he descends to the inferior stratum upon which the water rests, that where rocks are disclosed the symptoms of crystallization have taken place, and then the prismatic configuration is commonly denoted basaltic. Such an appearance, therefore, in the approach to the Lake of Tiberias is only a parallel to similar phenomena exhibited by rocks near the Lakes of Locarno and Bolsenna in Italy, by those of the Wenner Lake in ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... the point of giving over his quest, when the unexpected happened. Within a few hundred yards of the break in the canyon he caught sight of Motoza and Tozer holding another consultation. They had evidently just met, and the configuration of the ground enabled Hazletine to steal near enough to catch some of the words spoken ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... and geography both dictate it. Just as in the building of our fatherland and its attendant sentiments, the process is not a purely logical one, but comes to its completion by most irregular courses, with all sorts of bypaths due to the odd configuration of our nature and the world we live in, so in widening out from patriotism to humanity we have to follow a line given, for the most part, by external facts. The French as our nearest neighbours have always had a special interest for us. They, like ourselves, ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... equality of the sexes towards which this change of status is leading, is social equality—that is, equality of freedom. It is not an intellectual equality, still less is it likeness. Men and women can only be alike mentally when they are alike in physical configuration and physiological function. Even complete economic equality is not attainable. Among animals which live in herds under the guidance of a leader, this leader is nearly always a male; there are few exceptions.[51] In woman, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... at the map of the East India Islands will convince us that this region of the globe must, from its natural configuration and locality; be peculiarly liable to become the seat of piracy. These islands form an immense cluster, lying as if it were in the high road which connects the commercial nations of Europe and Asia with each other, affording a hundred fastnesses ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... that they come later to Nicolayevsk than to the town of Yakutsk, nine degrees further north. This is due to differences of climate and the configuration of the country. The lower Amoor is remarkable for its large quantities of snow, and at Nicolayevsk it remains on the ground till the end of May. South of the lower Amoor are the Shanalin mountains, which arrest the progress of birds. On the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... far ahead of the traveller, like a white boundary line between cliff and wave. You wonder at first if the road was made merely to gladden the tourist, for it does not seem likely that there could be much traffic other than that of pleasure-seekers thus along the margin of the sea. The configuration of this part of the County Antrim, however, explains the position of the road, and justifies the engineer who was so happily enabled to combine the utilitarian with the romantic. A series of deep cut gorges, ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... much aggrandized, that in order to sketch a plan of warfare, it was no longer necessary to study the configuration of a province, or of a chain of mountains, or the course of a river. When monarchs, such as Alexander and Napoleon, were contending for the dominion of Europe, it was necessary to regard the general and relative position of every state with a universal coup d'oeil; it was no longer ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... imbued with the spirit of this belief, is no more than might have been expected; and hence arose the at one time powerful and generally-accepted doctrine of "Catastrophism." That the succession of phenomena upon the globe, whereby the earth's crust had assumed the configuration and composition which we find it to possess, had been a discontinuous and broken succession, was the almost inevitable conclusion of the older geologists. Everywhere in their study of the rocks they met with apparently impassable ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... certain cases, the bodily structure is influenced by castration at an age when the mental development is no longer affected. This explains the fact that many oriental eunuchs, in whom castration is commonly effected shortly before the seventh or eighth year of life, while they exhibit the bodily configuration characteristic of the eunuch, are nevertheless capable of experiencing heterosexual feelings, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... have produced a lethargy and stagnation, with which the marvellous growth of free and untrammelled trade at Singapore offers a striking contrast. The Dutch have but a slender hold over the Celebes. The physical configuration of the island is singularly straggling. To this circumstance it is probably due that the population is divided, both in race and language, into several ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... produce deviations from the average—or, as Dove later on called it, the normal—temperature of any given latitude. For example, the mean annual temperature of a region (referring mainly to the northern hemisphere) is raised by the proximity of a western coast; by a divided configuration of the continent into peninsulas; by the existence of open seas to the north or of radiating continental surfaces to the south; by mountain ranges to shield from cold winds; by the infrequency of swamps to become congealed; ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Anthropology (ethnology), anatomy, and physiology, anomalies and pathological peculiarities. B. Demography (number, sex, age, births, deaths, diseases). (2) Study of the environment: A. Natural geographical environment (orographic configuration, climate, water, soil, flora, and fauna). B. Artificial environment, forestry (cultivation, ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... the oldest civilizations of the West concentrated themselves along the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile, so the most ancient Chinese civilization is found concentrated along the south bank of the Yellow River. The configuration of the land as shown on a modern map assists us to understand how the industrious cultivators and weavers, finding the flat and so-called loess territory too confined for their ever-increasing numbers, threw out colonies ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... happiness, it is most probable that this planet, attractive as she is at a distance, would be a less desirable habitation than our floating island. In fact, the atmosphere of Venus is perpetually covered with cloud, so that the weather there must be always foggy. No definite geographical configuration can be discovered on her, despite the hopes of the eighteenth-century astronomers. We are not even sure that she rotates upon herself, so contradictory are the observations, and so hard is it to distinguish anything clearly upon her surface. A single night of observation ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... Kuvera, possessed of weird and ghostly appearances. Glowing with its own splendour, that mountain looks resplendent as the morning sun. And no creature with his natural eyes made of flesh, can ever ascertain its shape or configuration, and neither heat nor cold prevails there, nor doth the sun shine nor do the winds blow. And, O king, neither doth senility nor hunger, nor thirst, nor death, nor fear afflict any one at that place. And, O foremost of conquerors, on all sides of that mountain, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... [Greek omitted] the understanding of man. Epicurus says that it is an efflux emitted from things that are vocal, or that give sounds or great noises; this is broken into those fragments which are after the same configuration. Like figures are round figures with round, and irregular and triangular with those of the same kind. These falling upon the ears produce the sense of hearing. This is seen in leaking vessels, and in fullers when they fan or blow ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... voices, from the bell-throated giant of the hallway to the chirping dressing-table toy; tall clocks of mahogany and brass with cathedral chimes; clocks of bronze, glass, porcelain, of every possible size, voice and configuration; and between their serried ranks, along the polished floor of the aisles, moved the languid forms of other gentlemanly floor-walkers, waiting for ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... individual traits as the configuration of the body, the color of the hair and eyes, the shape of hands and feet, the thousand-and-one subtle characteristics that make family resemblances are transmissible, and that the form, texture and capacities of the brain which fix the degree of natural intellect, are not ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... lies a vast waste. Standing in the midst of this frightful eruption from the heart of the mountains, one sees, as far as the eye can reach, a landscape utterly forbidding. North for sixty miles lie the high chains of the Mission range, and a cuplike configuration of the mountains close to the valley affords a resting-place for the deepest snows of winter and a precipitous escape for the torrents of June. Here, when the sun reaches its summer height or a sweet-grass wind blows soft or a cloudburst above ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... that if he followed the Tehua he was risking his own life. But it was not the first time he had attempted such dangerous undertakings, and so far he had never failed. With the configuration of the ground and the landmarks in vegetation and scenery he was far better acquainted than the Tehua. Furthermore, he enjoyed the material advantage that the latter could not have noticed him. Everything depended on ascertaining ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... level, the next step is to change all that—first on paper. Unless the lay of the land is all right at the outset, the configuration of the rock garden must not depend wholly upon the upbuilding; there must be some excavations, but no depressions deep enough to catch and hold water just where you will ...
— Making A Rock Garden • Henry Sherman Adams
... with him." On approaching near where the two were engaged in some weird incantation the voyageur overheard the dusky maiden impart a strange message to the paleface by her side. "From the stars I see in the firmament, the fixed stars that predominate in the configuration, I deduce the future destiny of man. 'Tis with thee. O Robert, to live always. This elixer which I now do administer to thee has been known to our people for countless generations. The possession of it will enable thee to conquer ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... crude ornamentation—ungraceful arabesques of vine leaves which wreathe about broken columns, a rising sun caught in a spider's web of rays—all that configuration begins to spread and distend until it fills the room. The vine leaves tremble in a morning wind; a soft blowing shakes the columns, and higher and higher mounts the sun. Like a dance of flickering ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... during his passage up, at a season when the waters were low, that in many places no bottom was to be found at a depth of 45 fathoms. The necessity of this enormous depth is at once evident, and is pointed out by the configuration of the banks, which are in many places sheer precipices. Two other defiles exist between Bamo and Ava, of these the middle or second is the shortest, in both the stream flows sluggishly, and there is no impediment whatever to navigation. In these the depth ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... thought working in different places under similar conditions. In fact, the conditions of existence have not varied very greatly over the globe. There are differences of climate and soil and surface-configuration, but everywhere there have been the sky with the heavenly bodies, the sequence of day and night, sunshine and rain, hunting and fishing, trees, rivers, beasts and birds, and the cultivable soil; and as man's problem ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... inclined to admire it, that we seek in its territorial configuration for the essential explanation of its success. Is it so difficult to maintain good order and liberty at home when one has immense deserts to people, when land offers itself without stint to the labor of man?—I do not see, ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... and arise from human imagination, in separated lands, working in the same or in a similar way on the doings of Nature, and impersonating them. The form, however, in which these original ideas are cast is, in each people, modified and varied by the animal life, the climate, the configuration of the country, the nearness of mountain ranges and of the sea, the existence of wide forests or vast plains, of swift rivers ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... loneliness about this spot," he remarked, "that in itself suggests crime. If this were an ordinary murder, one could well imagine the assassin was aided in his diabolical work by the configuration of the land which, shelving as it does, slips down into the narrow valley, so as to preclude any possibility of escape on the part of the victim. The place seems especially designed by Providence as a death-trap. Let us have a look at ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... strange, of a kind that none of us had ever before seen; the trees in particular being very curious and grotesque in shape, both as to their trunks and branches, and their foliage being of almost any other colour than green. In some cases the trees, notwithstanding their strange and abnormal configuration, were very beautiful, the large, heart-shaped leaves being of almost every conceivable tint of red, ranging from palest pink to a very deep, rich crimson, with great bunches of snow-white blossom; while at the opposite end of the scale, as it were, there occurred examples ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... give evidence that, long before the dawn of authentic history, man lived there. Indeed, as the islands which gem that ocean, from their configuration and position, seem to be but the elevated plateaus and mountain peaks of a continent that has gone down beneath the blue wave of the Pacific, so, throughout Polynesia can be traced the fragmentary ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... been put under an obligation, it appeared touchy and jealous of its right to an independent judgement. It is often assumed by Russophobe writers that Russia wished and intended to make a Russian province of Bulgaria, but this is very unlikely; the geographical configuration of the Balkan peninsula would not lend itself to its incorporation in the Russian Empire, the existence between the two of the compact and vigorous national block of Rumania, a Latin race and then already an ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... without effort bring to mind examples of independent societies in tropical regions, where, these things being neglected, the resultant government is a mockery. Have we any reason to believe that the Filipino, untrained, inexperienced, occupying an undeveloped area of special configuration in a region where continuous effort is disagreeable and initiative distressing, will achieve success where others of greater original fitness have ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... set up the bones of the breast and latticed them with the ribs." Q "How many ventricles are there in a man's head?" "Three, which contain five faculties, styled the intrinsic senses, to wit, common sense, imagination, the thinking faculty, perception and memory." Q "Describe to me the configuration of the bones."—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... a campaign for the morrow. I was to place the black on the side of Sandag, whence he should head my uncle towards the house; Rorie in the west, I on the east, were to complete the cordon, as best we might. It seemed to me, the more I recalled the configuration of the island, that it should be possible, though hard, to force him down upon the low ground along Aros Bay; and once there, even with the strength of his madness, ultimate escape was hardly to be feared. It was on his terror of the black ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sin, death and the world appeared to them a tragic defeat. So true is it, as I said, that, when something grand is to be seen, there is required not only the object but the seeing eye. The image in a mirror depends not only on the object reflected but on the quality and the configuration of the glass. ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... herself, only barely rapidly enough to save Paris. The plan of General Joffre, which entailed a gradual retreat to let the Germans expand far from their base, while the French concentrated between the border and Paris, was a move determined, not by any special theory of war, nor yet by special configuration of the country, but by the slowness of mobilization. The initial success of Germany was a victory of thorough preparedness, the initial defeats of the French army were the results of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... and is connected by navigable canals with all the other chief manufacturing and commercial centres of the country. Its railway facilities, too, are so complete that there is not a manufacturing town in the whole island that is not within fifteen hours of freightage from it. Then, too, the peculiar configuration of the coast-line of Great Britain makes every point on the island within an hour or two of carriage from a seaport. Finally, all British seaports are in trade connection with London by a coasting service ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various |
