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Debris   Listen
noun
Debris  n.  
1.
(Geol.) Broken and detached fragments, taken collectively; especially, fragments detached from a rock or mountain, and piled up at the base.
2.
Rubbish, especially such as results from the destruction of anything; remains; ruins.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Debris" Quotes from Famous Books



... shall see about that," said Denham in a low tone, intended for my ears only; and we climbed on over a heap of debris, at the top of which we had a good view outward to where one of the Boer parties had dismounted and were resting their horses before retiring or ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... monologue was cut short by Boreland, who, having attacked the dirt and debris in the cabin appeared now and began to pile some ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... preeminent, and accented "e"s in debris and denouement, and in some French words. These have been replaced with plain ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... this spirit was either a "lying spirit," or else a most impish one, for there is no trace of an altar, and it is impossible to say, from the style of the room, where it stood; while the tessellated pavement (if it exists) is so covered with the debris of the former roof that it would be almost impossible to have ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour

... and a bed of boughs, and a rock in front that afforded a permanent back-log to all fires. A faint voice of running water was heard near by, and, following the sound, a delicious spring rivulet was disclosed, hidden by the moss and debris as by a new fall of snow, but here and there rising in little well-like openings, as ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... ledge of rock to another "heading." Along this we made our way another hundred yards or more to where a dozen naked peons were operating compressed-air drills, then wormed our way like snakes over the resultant debris to the present end of the passage, where more peons were drilling by hand, one man holding a bar of iron a few feet long which another was striking with a five-pound sledge that luckily never missed its mark. This was indeed working in Mexico. ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... the event. As I passed a small ruined cottage, which I had not observed before, for it was hidden amongst the trees, there was a short whizz on a high note, and then a loud crash. Smoke issued from the windows and the riddled roof, and bits of wood and debris hurtled through the air. Then there was a loud wailing noise followed by a terrific detonation. The chateau was blotted from view by a dense mass of black smoke that rose out of the ground in front of me. The spell was broken. I hesitated whether to go on or not, when I ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... To remove the debris out of our way, I was gathering up the straw tick and slit blankets, and piled them all together back on the bed. Clinging to one of the blankets, caught and held by its pin, was a peculiar emblem, and I stood for a moment with it in my hand, curiously ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... bows. "Let's go," Ben ordered. The two patrol vehicles moved slowly down the roadway, pushing all of the scattered scraps and parts onto a single great heap. They backed off, shifted direction towards the center police lane and began shoving the debris, foam and snow out of the green lane. At the edge of the police lane, both cars unshipped cranes and magnalifted the junk over the divider barrier onto the one-hundred-foot-wide service strip bordering the police lane. A slow cargo wrecker was already on the way from Pittsburgh barracks to pick ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael

... the better part of a week's work—a displayed dissection of a snail, beautifully done—and hurled it across the room, to smash resoundingly upon the cemented floor under the bookcase; then, without either haste or pause, he swept his arm along a shelf of re-agents and sent them to mingle with the debris on the floor. They fell in a diapason of smashes. "H'm!" he said, regarding the wreckage with a calmer visage. "Silly!" he remarked after a pause. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... the creek on the Yellowstone is a hot sulphur spring, the odor from which is perceptible in our camp to-day. At the base of the fall we found a large petrifaction of wood imbedded in the debris of the falling cement and slate rock. There are several sulphur springs at the mouth of the creek, three of them boiling, others nearly as hot as boiling water. There is also a milky white sulphur ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford

... further encounter now takes place with the enemy is a new battle not a continuation of the old, and although it may be far from promising absolute success, still it is a fresh combat, and not merely a gathering up of the debris by ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... great swimmers, supplied with formidable mandibles and immense and elastic stomachs, prefer the fortunes of war, the pursuit of living prey, and devour,—as the carnivorous devour the herbivorous on land,—all the little feeders on debris and plancton. This word of recent scientific invention presented to Captain Ferragut's mind the most humble and interesting of the oceanic inhabitants. The plancton is the life that floats in loose clusters or forming cloud-like groups across the neritic surface, ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... parish clergyman as the imagination of any friend or enemy could devise. We all know the abominable adjuncts of a new building,—the squalid half-used heaps of bad mortar, the eradicated grass, the truculent mud, the scattered brickbats, the remnants of timber, the debris of the workmen's dinners, the morsels of paper scattered through the dirt! There had from time to time been actual encroachments on the Vicarage grounds, and Mrs. Fenwick, having discovered that the paint had been injured on the Vicarage gate, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... The Battalion, for the most part, relieved itself as at Plugstreet, but had no fixed dwelling-place, sometimes extending as far to the right as Trench Bugeaud, half way up the north slope of the hill of Serre, where the ground was littered with the debris and decomposing bodies of the June fighting, sometimes as far to the left as Trench Morand, about 300 yards north of where the Bucquoy road crossed the trenches. From Morand to Hoche the lie of ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell

... hunted the key in the debris at the bottom of the shaft, I quieted his prisoners with the assurance that the lock had slipped, and that they would be free as lords as soon as we could find the janitor with a pass-key. Stuart went down finally and discovered Blobs, with ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... road to a section where a landslide of an earlier season had choked it. Travis worked a careful way across the debris, Kaydessa obeying his guidance in turn. Then they were on a sloping downward way which led to a staircase—the treads weather-worn and crumbling, the angle so steep Travis wondered if it had ever been intended for beings with ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... fast as the sea rose. But the growth would take place almost exclusively around the circumference of the reef, this being the only region in which the coral polypes would find the conditions favourable for their existence. The bottom of the lagoon would be raised, in the main, only by the coral debris and coral mud, formed in the manner already described; consequently, the margins of the reef would rise faster than the bottom, or, in other words, the lagoon would constantly become deeper. And, at the same time, it would gradually ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... the Eagle Swoops and the Corkscrew Dips, which so often serve as a Prelude to a good First Page Story with a picture of the Remains being sorted out from the Debris, most of the Spectators gasped and felt their Toes curling inside of their Shoes, but Wifey never batted an Eye. With only one little Strand of Wire or perchance a Steering Knuckle standing between her and a lot of Insurance ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... working in the darkness of their own selfish desires, were laying footing stones—quite substantial yet necessary—for the structure of a growing civilization which in its time, stripped of its scaffolding and extraneous debris, was to stand among the nations of the earth as a tower of righteousness in a ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... later, and the bodies had not yet been recovered. Men toiled night and day, working as only miners fighting for life can work, risking life among the continually falling debris to recover all that remained of ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... piece of furniture had just been carried in; but, as Mr. Drummond was picking his way through the straw and debris that littered the side-path, two girlish figures came out of the doorway full ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... this wall, and at its end Tarzan and his warriors found themselves in a broad avenue, on the opposite side of which crumbling edifices of hewn granite loomed dark and forbidding. Upon the crumbling debris along the face of the buildings trees had grown, and vines wound in and out of the hollow, staring windows; but the building directly opposite them seemed less overgrown than the others, and in a much better state of preservation. It ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... cleared, levelled, made smoother for wagons and artillery; log bridges built across the rapid streams that darkled westward, swamps and swales paved with logs, and windfalls hewn in twain and the huge abattis dragged wide apart or burnt to ashes where it lay. Yet, still the high debris bristling from some fallen forest giant sprawling athwart the highway often delayed us. Our details had not yet cleared ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... a great protection, though the house was dark and airless. Trees went crashing all around us. There was a curious exhilaration in the air, and the natives shouted with glee whenever anything came down. The road was filled with debris from the storm, which had to be cleared away before any one could pass. In the evening I was told that both the Fiji man and Simi had been spitting blood. The Fiji man seems to have a touch of pneumonia. Much to Simi's alarm we put ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... even if what lurked in the ruins didn't. By and by, I noticed that we were veering back toward the canal, the buildings ended and there were only a few dozen ragged stone huts which looked as though they might have been built of debris from the city. I was just beginning to feel a bit disappointed at finding no trace of Tweel's people here when we rounded a ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

... pasteboard enclosing the mine, bomb or whatever kind of fireworks it was," Dick suggested. "But let's look for other debris around here." ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock

... pinned a man more than near a creeping flame. The two Scots beat out that fire. Glenfernie heaved away the beam, Ian drew out the man, badly hurt, moaning of wife and child. Glenfernie lifted him, mounted with him, over heaped debris, by uncertain ledge and step, until other arms, outstretched, could take him. Turning back, he took from Ian a woman's form, lifted it forth. Down again, the two worked on. Others were with them, there was made ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... men were scrambling over the debris; gaunt men with dishevelled hair, practically naked, covered with dirt and the greasy brown dust of the disintegrator ray. In the lead, hardly recognizable, his menore awry upon his tangled locks, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... so, both A and B go further out from the shore, which will be at yl; x1, y1, being the new sea-level. The consequence will be that the layer of mud (A), being now, for the most part, further than the force of the current is strong enough to convey even the finest 'debris', will, of course, receive no more deposits, and having attained a certain thickness will ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... was pompous and effete with pseudo-classicism; foreign influences were strong; in the speech of the upper circles there was an over-fondness for German, French, and English words. Between them the two friends, by force of their great genius, cleared away the debris which made for sterility and erected in their stead a new structure out of living Russian words. The spoken word, born of the people, gave soul and wing to literature; only by coming to earth, the native earth, was it enabled to soar. ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... The debris of the nest smoked into nothing. But no needle ray could hope to stop all the poisonous army issuing forth from it, fighting mad, to seek any warm-blooded creature within scenting distance. The men threw themselves ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North

... summer weather, the water would sometimes run thick and yellow for days, the result of some landslip where the snow and ice were melting. Sometimes the Wolf would hurl down a mass of debris—a forest torn from the mountainside by avalanche, the dead bodies of a few stray sheep, or a fox or a wolf or the dun corpse of a mountain bear. Many in the valley had seen tables and chairs and the roof, perhaps, of a ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... streams flow are a granite formation, very brightly colored, principally gray and red. The swiftly-flowing stream removes the debris, so that the clear water flows limpidly over this gorgeous coloring. In such a stream, where the natural enemies of the trout are the fish-hawk and the eagle, it is essential as a matter of protection that the fish should resemble the hue of the bottom, and accordingly, the most ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... national military annals show, yet it may count mightily when the Great Records are opened for final estimates. Those men who marched two thousand miles, back and forth, upon the trackless plains in that four months' campaign, have been forgotten in the debris of uneventful years. Our long-faded trails lie buried under wide alfalfa-fields and the paved streets of western Kansas towns. From the far springs that quenched our burning thirst comes water, trickling ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... between the abodes of civilized man, like the wastes of the ocean or the deserts of Arabia, and, like them, be subject to the depredations of the marauders. There may spring up new and mongrel races, like new formations in zoology, the amalgamation of the 'debris' and 'abrasions' of former races, civilized and savage; the remains of broken and extinguished tribes; the descendants of wandering hunters and trappers; of fugitives from the Spanish-American frontiers; of adventurers and desperadoes of every ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... dark; the chauffeur was preparing to light the lamps of the car. Shells were fewer. With the approach of night the activity behind the lines increased; more ammunition trains made their way over the debris; regiments prepared for the trenches marched through the square on ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the spot, 'that's where it came from,' and as he spoke he turned over with his spade some debris that had fallen into the hole. His companion took up a fragment of stone, examined it, shook his head, then proceeded to 'howk' out with his stick a stone of some size lying half-bedded in the earth at the bottom of the hole. He levered it away, and it rolled over on its side; something glittered ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease

... study, and he laid the debris before me. I could understand his regarding it as of small importance when I looked at it, for the metal was almost black, and the stones lustreless and dull. I rubbed one of them on my sleeve, however, and it glowed afterwards like a ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... kitchen he found signs of this period of habitation. On a shelf in a cupboard, hidden by a debris of paper and empty boxes, he came upon two cans evidently overlooked. He took them to the window, threw back the shutter, and saw they contained tomatoes and cherries. This heartened him to new efforts and he began a search through the ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... Alleghenies, upon this vale of woe; Ten thousand corpses at your base their soulless faces show; Some hid beneath the debris, some covered o'er with slime, Their spirits fled to meet their God, beyond the shores of time. The aged sire and lassie; the careworn mother, too, With her strong son, whom she had hoped would guard life's journey thro', Are lying there together, the ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... spectroscope for a short time, and on returning half an hour later to his observations, he was astonished to find the gigantic Sun flame shattered to pieces. The solar atmosphere was filled with flying debris, and some of these portions reached a height of 100,000 miles above the solar surface. Moving with a velocity which, even at the distance of 93,000,000 miles, was almost perceptible to the eye, these fragments doubled their height in ten minutes. On January 30, ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... discover on the one side of us the world-renowned Fortress Monroe and on the other the equally famous Monitor. At our bow lay the village of Hampton—or rather the chimneys and trees of what had been Hampton. Orders came for us to disembark here, and we were soon among the debris of the town. A sadder commentary on war could hardly be found than the ruins of this beautiful village. A forest of shade trees and chimneys marked the place where a few months before had stood one of the most ancient ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... night, when the fires of the bivouacs were everywhere lighted, M. Bonaparte allowed the troops to amuse themselves. It was like a fete-de-nuit on the boulevards. The soldiers laughed and sang, as they threw into the fire the debris of the barricades. After this, as at Strasbourg and Boulogne, money was distributed among them. Let us hear what a witness says: 'I saw, at Porte Saint-Denis, a staff-officer give two hundred francs to the chief of a detachment of twenty men, with these words: "The prince ordered me to give ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... the common domestic fowl is greatly assisted in its toilet by certain little animals belonging to the family Liothe. These little creatures carefully scrape away and eat the scarf-skin, and other epidermal debris that would otherwise impair the health of their hosts.[70] Some of the fish family are entirely dependent on the ministrations of mutualists, as these little hygienic servitors are called, in matters of the toilet. Notably, the gilt catfish, which ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... moved, slowly at first, then faster as it worked into the current. The Texan gazed dumbfounded at the rapidly widening strip of water that separated them from the shore. But he found scant time to stare idly at the water. All about them it's surface was clogged with floating debris. The river had risen to within a foot of the slender cable that held the boat on its course, and the unwieldy craft was trembling and jerking as uprooted trees and masses of flotsam caught on the line, strained it almost to the point of snapping ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx

... that on such occasions the rivers are subject to great and sudden rises, whereas they have scarcely water enough to support a current in ordinary seasons. At one time the traveller will find it impracticable to cross them: at another he may do so with ease; and only from the remains of debris in the branches of the trees high above, can he judge of the furious ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... firelight and beyond it and sank into black shadows in the great cavern at Rocky Creek—a famous camping-place in the old time. Then a flash of white light and a roar that shook the hills! A blast of gravel and dust and debris shot upward and pelted down upon the earth. Bits of rock and wood and an Indian's arm and foot fell in the firelight. A number of dusky figures scurried out of the mouth of the cavern and ran for their lives shouting ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... the bench where lay the debris of the coast and mountains he had been lately building, and picked up a small, deep shell. "My story is short," he began. "It could be packed into this. I was born in the island of Mull, of my father a chieftain, and my mother a lady. ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... Mark's Square. This was in June, 1910; the Campanile was being built to replace the old one that had fallen in 1902, and to little Maria and Andrea, there was a fascination in watching the workmen lift the great stones into place from the confused debris at ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard

... afternoon that I had no chance to thank you, but the echoes of that discharge penetrated as far as my library. Also, I have viewed the debris. What on earth did you do to poor Sterry? Watching the purposeful set of your shoulders as you strode toward the carriage house, I was filled with sudden compunction. I did not want the man murdered, merely reasoned with. I am afraid you ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... or dining-room. The sun had not yet cleared the tree-tops to the east; the decks of the Doraine were still wet with dew. A few sailors were abroad; a dull-eyed junior officer moodily picked his way through the debris on the forward deck. Birds were singing and chattering in the trees that lined the shore; down at the water's edge, like sentinels on duty, with an eye always upon the strange, gigantic intruder, strutted a number of stately, bright-plumaged birds of the flamingo variety—(doubtless ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... very wide, yet at this point it carried from three to six or eight feet of water, according to the bottom. A few logs were stranded along shore. Two or three more floated by, the forerunners of the drive. Bob could see where the highest water had flung debris among the bushes, and by that he knew that the stream must be already dropping ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... des vents battait a ma fenetre; J'etais seul, courbe sur mon lit. J'y regardais une place cherie, Tiede encor d'un baiser brulant; Et je songeais comme la femme oublie, Et je sentais un lambeau de ma vie, Qui se dechirait lentement. Je rassemblais des lettres de la veille, Des cheveux, des debris d'amour. Tout ce passe me criait a l'oreille Ses eternels serments d'un jour. Je contemplais ces reliques sacrees, Qui me faisaient trembler la main: Larmes du coeur par le coeur devorees, Et que les yeux qui les avaient pleurees Ne ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... compounded words. Besides this difficulty, no language can be taught successfully by means of a dictionary, until the human memory acquires more power. Three years of hopeless struggle with the mighty debris of his symbols left him, although in the main reticent, a mighty man of words. But his labors were not lost. Through that heroic, unaided struggle he gained the first true glimpses into the elements of language. It is a startling fact, that an uneducated man, of a race we are pleased to call ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown

... even at the present time bury their dead, and erect crosses at the head of the tombs, in the same manner as we Christians do. The kiln was an artless hole in the ground, in which there was a large collection of cinders, and other debris not worth mentioning. Lastly, the fort, or rather remains of what the Somali said had been one, was situated on an eminence overlooking the village, and about 70 yards to the S.W. of the church. Now, having completed my investigations of the ruins, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... Harry rode into town at noon the following day they beheld a scene of great activity at the site of the destroyed Cactus House. All the blackened debris had been carted away during the morning by a large force of men. Now, derricks lay in place, to be erected in the afternoon. A steam shovel had been all but installed and a large stationary engine rested on ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock

... argument in favor of the modern view that petroleum and paraffin owe their origin to animal sources; that they are formed from animal remains in a manner strictly analogous to that of the formation of ordinary coal from wood and other vegetable debris. For geological as well as chemical reasons, the author holds that Mendeleeff's theory of their igneous origin is untenable, pointing out that the hydrocarbons could not have been formed by the action of water percolating through clefts in the gradually ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various

... folding the end of her ancient Persian rug above an overturned Chelsea saucer and a widening pool of oatmeal and cream. Then he retired under the table and smiled suavely up at her, while she removed the debris. ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... highlands of Scotland and some of the adjacent isles. It is divided into two sections—the Upper and Lower Laurentian. It is not certain that it is really the oldest rock; for as every sedimentary rock is formed of the debris of preceding rocks, it is very possible that all the exposed portions of some older rocks may have been decomposed and worn away; but it is the oldest yet known. The thickness of the lower portion is estimated at 20,000 feet, or nearly four miles, while the Upper Laurentian beds are ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... dense stand he prevents the windfall danger which threatens the survivors of too vigorous cutting, and also prevents them from assuming the branchy form of trees which receive too much side light. The fire danger is much reduced by resultant shading of the ground and slightly by the lesser cover of debris. In short, he makes the most economical use of the ground, and the capital represented by the trees he spares ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... was a dull rumbling, as of heavy machinery falling from a height, a muffled report, a cloud of steam and smoke, a sucking noise and then a pool in the water, in the middle of which odd bits of wood and other buoyant debris kept on ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... eastern side, the waves of the Atlantic, beating continuously, brought down into the shallow sea the debris from the newly-formed rocks, gradually filling up the spaces between the already created islands; and the streams, running down from the mountain heights, formed the plan of the three great river-systems of the continent—the Orinoco in the north, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... baggage where it was jammed among the debris, he had struck across the country with Rake for the few leagues that still lay between them and the city, and had entered Marseilles as weary foot travelers, before half the ruin on the rails had been seen by the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... shop was dark and damp, and foul with all manner of choking odors. On the walls, on the floor, and hanging from the rafters was a world of debris, dust-blackened, rust-corroded. Everything was there, every trade was represented, every class of society; things of iron and cloth and wood; all the detritus that a great city sloughs off in its daily life. Zerkow's junk shop was the last ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... Europe by pursuing his inquiries back for two to three thousand years. Under ordinary circumstances this fact would make American history much easier to study than those of Europe where the remnants left by the savage tribes are dimmed by an extraordinary progress or covered by the debris of centuries of movement. But the truth is it is about as easy to learn the habits of the ancient Britons as those of the American tribes, even the most civilized, five centuries ago. This is partly due to the wanton destruction of valuable records by the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... gloomy room, the contorted face of the dying man, the red flicker of the firelight on the wall—all these things were burnt deep into the tablets of his memory. More and more did he recognize the fact that, even should he live long enough to bury the events of that hour beneath the debris of many years, the lapse of time would be insufficient to bring forgetfulness, and the recognition brought with it moral helplessness. He had, too, sufficient religious feeling to make him uneasy as ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... devil visitors are those who animate the boolees, or whirlwinds. If these whirl near the house they smother everything with debris ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... preserve and improve them in ways that are most interesting to study. His use of photography in this matter is extraordinarily successful. Prof. Geddes has photographed a scene as it now is, with its background and distance and its squalid foreground, already ruined by the debris of the city—old tin pots and every [Page: 129] kind of rubbish—thrown down by the side of the stream, which is naturally beautiful. By manipulating the photographic plates he wipes out that which he does not want and introduces other features, including ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... Teddy tried as gallantly as any shipwrecked mariner to reach land again; but, what with Puck hampering his efforts, and his brisk movements on the frail structure, this all at once separated into its original elements through the clothes-line becoming untied, leaving Teddy struggling amidst the debris of broken rails and branches—Puck ungratefully abandoning his master in his extremity and making instinctively for ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson

... Lower California, extending from Cape San Lucas to the Bay of Todos Santos, in lat. 32 deg. N., on the Pacific, and to the mouth of the Colorado on the Gulf side, is a pile of volcanic debris and scoriae. Much of the surface is still heated by subterranean fires. No craters are in action; but hot springs of water and bitumen, and frequent earthquakes, and the scorched face of the whole region, demonstrate ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... Club, where there was tennis and the new game of golf. But Sommers turned his horse into the disfigured Midway, where the Wreck of the Fair began. He came out, finally, on a broad stretch of sandy field, south of the desolate ruins of the Fair itself. The horse picked his way daintily among the debris of staff and wood that lay scattered about for acres. A wagon road led across this waste land toward the crumbling Spanish convent. In this place there was a fine sense of repose, of vast quiet. Everything was dead; the soft spring air gave no life. Even in the geniality of the April ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... blown in the hard rock which had acted as a bar to the further progress of the tunnel. A great heap of rock, broken into small fragments, was on the floor of the shaft, and there was a big hole filled with debris which would have to be removed before the extent of the ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton

... and logs. He had hardly begun before the whole mass gave way, and slid down on him. Fortunately, there was not much of it, and, though he was nearly smothered by dust and ashes, he quickly scrambled from the debris, and listened with loudly beating heart. He realized that he had found an opening to the surface, and was wildly exultant over the discovery, but could hardly believe that the noise of the sliding material, which had sounded to him like an avalanche, should not have ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... (there should be NAMES for trees, as there are for rocks or ancient strongholds). Mr. Edgeworth showed us the oak from Jerusalem, the grove of cypress and sycamore where the beautiful depths of ground ivy are floating upon the DEBRIS, and soften the gnarled roots, while they flood the rising ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth

... reassuringly. Great care is necessary in this department, and the sanitary conditions, though as good as possible, are never very secure. The whole low sandspit is often submerged during the spring floods, and the retreating waters leave a deposit of slime and debris behind them, which must be cleared away, besides doing ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... ruins. Their Royal Battery wrecked the whole inner water-front of Louisbourg. Breaches were yawning elsewhere. British fascines were visible in large quantities, ready to fill up the ditch, which was already half full of debris. The French scouts reported hundreds of scaling-ladders on the reverse slopes of the nearest hillocks. Warren's squadron had just been again reinforced, and now numbered eleven sail, carrying 554 guns and 3,000 men. There was no ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... was almost upon them. I say almost, for, thanks to an all-ruling Providence, it did not strike them fairly, but rushed to one side, where the Filipinos had been gathering. The light of day seemed to die out utterly, and the air was filled with flying debris and screaming birds and wild animals made homeless on the instant. The very earth seemed to quake with the violence of the trees uprooted, and branches and dirt flew all over the Americans, until ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer

... camps of the laborers, the boats, pile-drivers, implements and materials of their warfare and the debris of their wrecked structures, not a sign of their work remained, while through the breach—widened now to nearly a quarter of a mile—the great river poured its hundred and fifty thousand second feet of muddy water with terrific velocity ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... For not only do the qualities of land vary from one formation to another, but upon the same formation there is frequently considerable difference in the quality of land depending upon chemical difference in the substratum, or upon an intermixture of foreign debris derived ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... soon began to lift themselves above the steely waves ahead. A few scraggy trees and bushes, which twisted and writhed like vines around the square tower and crumbling walls of an irregular but angular building, looked in their brown shadows like part of the debris. ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... rooms were for the most part empty. Others showed only fragments of broken pottery. Some had been broken in through their side walls or were open above and littered with the debris of their roofs. Lennon surmised the existence of several sealed ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... by a network of roots. Over these we hacked and sweated and strained, and tore our hands and wrenched our sinews. And by degrees the heap of big stones and smaller stones and rubble and earth and other debris grew larger amongst the bushes, and our jagged ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... tubercles never exhibited a discernible exudation; but always organised elements unpreceded by amorphous matter. I also found that the discharge from scrofulous glands and from inflamed lymphatic glands is not an exudation capable of organisation but merely debris, developed from the ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... For they were alive, moving deposits of ice and snow, the survivors of the ice age. Eons ago, they and their like had gouged out the huge bowls which later became lakes, had gashed the earth and scoured its canyon walls, leaving in their wakes those square-topped dumps or moraines; debris, once solid granite, now ground into rocks and sand and gravel by their slow-moving, ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... must walk up the bank to the place where the canoe was to be launched again above the falls. She listened mutely, and started to go. But the way was steep and rocky; the bank was strewn with the debris of the ruined bridge; and she was unused to such exertion. Snoqualmie saw her stumble and almost fall. It moved him to a sudden and unwonted pity, and he sprang forward to help her. She pushed his hand ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... Egyptian civilization was the Nile Valley and its estuary built out into the Mediterranean Sea from the debris of disintegrating African mountains. Annual floods left their silt deposits to deepen the soil along the lower reaches of the river. River water, impounded for the purpose, provided the means of irrigating an all but rainless desert countryside. Skillful ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... laden with the incense of tobacco and a more subtile odour, which numbered among its factors whisky and absinthe. The slippered, close-cropped waiter, who, by popular report, could speak five languages, and usually employed a mixture of two or three, was still clearing away the debris of protracted dinners; and a few men sat about, in informal groups, playing dominoes, chatting, or engrossed in their Extra Specials. The fire shone cheerfully beneath the high mantel, and the pleasant lamplight lent ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... connected to it by two sensitive tubes. There ripens in one of these bodies each month a human baby-seed, which finds its way to the uterus through the little fallopian tube and is apparently lost in the debris of cells and mucus which, with the accompanying hemorrhage go to make up the menstrual flow. This continues from puberty to menopause, each gland alternatingly ripening its ovum, only to lose it in the periodical phenomenon ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... was just preceding the last uplift of this epoch that the era of deposition of rock debris was so prolonged that twelve thousand feet of strata were washed into the bed of the sea, in the region now known as the Grand Canyon Country. It was at the time when life was beginning to dawn, for in the remnants of the strata are found fossils of the earliest known life. These ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... the midst of a confusion of baggage and lying cheek by jowl with the mangled remains of the dogs. He cleared the debris, and dragged the dogs aside. Then he stood and gazed down at the ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... regard to these important excavations it must be remembered that in 480 and again in 479 the Acropolis was occupied by Persians belonging to Xerxes' invading army, who reduced the buildings and sculptures on that site to a heap of fire-blackened ruins This debris was used by the Athenians in the generation immediately following toward raising the general level of the summit of the Acropolis. All this material, after having been buried for some twenty three and a half centuries, has now been recovered. In the light of the newly found remains, which include ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... Desmond stood at the detective's side in the Mackwaytes' little dining-room. The room was in considerable disorder. There was a litter of paper, empty bottles, overturned cruets and other debris on the floor, evidence of the thoroughness with which the burglar had overhauled the cheap fumed oak sideboard which stood against the wall with doors and drawers open. In the corner, the little ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... ministrants in the mob of the streets. On the one hand brute force is at the service of the radical dogma. On the other hand radical dogma is at the service of brute force. And here, in disintegrated France, these are the only two valid powers remaining erect on the debris of the others. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... mouth of the ditch there was more trouble. Mud and debris had collected along the sides, but these were quickly worked through and they passed into the main river. Little short of a miracle had been performed. The ditch was growing wider and deeper every moment ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... which several bombs were dropped with disastrous results. One marquee full of sick and wounded men was completely destroyed. Several others were badly damaged, and the occupants, many of whom were desperately ill with dysentery, while helping their weaker comrades out of the debris were bespattered with bullets from the low-flying machines above. Little imagination is needed to picture what would have happened to the hospital in toto had a bomb hit the fringe of ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... come over to the park, we are going to have a big bonfire." So I went over and we had another jollification, hurrahing, singing, shouting for McKinley, until we made ourselves hoarse. We burned up all the old debris that we could gather and plenty of bamboo, which makes a cracking noise, quite like a roll of musketry. From every window and crevice in every house about that park native heads were gazing at us, and never one cheer came from ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... the rescue squad made it clear that the man was to be carried out, and Tom helped with this while Ned, using an axe, cleared away some debris to enable the door to be opened fully so the men could pass out carrying ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton

... the land-clearing line is called the firing line, a term which can be taken literally, for the land-clearing front is continually under fire and clouds of smoke from burning debris. ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek

... take us to that biggest house burning on the Moss plantation. No sooner was the suggestion made than Curlie got his ambulance ready for us, and we were soon in front of the smoldering mansion. The proprietor was raking over the debris for gold and silver or other imperishable treasure. Among the ashes; were hand- cuffs, chains, shackles, and other slave-irons. He was occupying one of his slave cabins, as the long row was vacated by seventy of his former slaves. ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... Abbe Mariti, who saw little himself, is not willing to allow to others the advantage of having been more fortunate. "Quelques voyageurs ont avance qu'on distinguoit encore les debris de ces villes infortunees, lorsque les eaux de la mer etoient basses et lympides. Il en est meme que disent avoir appercu des restes de colonnes avec leurs chapitaux. Mais, il faut que l'imagination les ait trompes, ou que depuis leur retour, cette mer ait eprouve de nouvelles secousses, car ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Tourgenieff, and completed by Dostoieffski. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as surely as the People's Palace rose out of the debris of a novel. Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac. Our Luciens de Rubempre, our Rastignacs, and De Marsays made their ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... was a no-holds-barred fight and each man was trying as hard as possible to kill his opponent. The leather armor made this difficult and the struggle continued, littering the sand with broken off animal teeth, discarded weapons and other debris. It looked like it would be called a draw when both men separated for a breather, but they dived right back ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... of sand and debris, the Maori girl and Jack passed from the hold to what was left of the main deck, and entered the saloon. All the gilding and glory had departed. Here a cabin door lay on the floor, there the remains of the mahogany table lay broken ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... business appearance, its inhabitants have found it a profitable place to stay in. Port Deposit last winter, when the river was filled with ice from shore to shore and for miles in both directions, fissured and cracked and covered with mud, logs and debris, seemed on the verge of destruction; and it was easy to believe that if the river did rise suddenly the moving mass of ice, like some huge glacier, would sweep away all evidences of humanity, leaving behind only the glacial scratches and the roches moutonnees. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various



Words linked to "Debris" :   debris storm, rubbish, rubble, debris surge, dust, trash, junk, scrap, detritus, slack



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