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Sierra   /siˈɛrə/   Listen
Sierra

noun
1.
A range of mountains (usually with jagged peaks and irregular outline).
2.
A Spanish mackerel of western North America.  Synonym: Scomberomorus sierra.



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"Sierra" Quotes from Famous Books



... an honest man, Dorsenne; you are a great artist; you are my friend, and a friend allied to me by a sacred bond, almost a brother-in-arms; you, the grandnephew of a hero who shed his blood by the side of my grandfather at Somo-Sierra. Give me your word of honor that you are absolutely certain Madame Steno is not Maitland's mistress, that you never thought it, have never heard it said, and I will believe you, I will obey you! Come," ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... two days and a night passed in the cars will take us over the six hundred intervening miles to San Francisco. The route passes through the Sierra Nevada Mountains, presenting scenery which recalls the grand gorges and snow-clad peaks of Switzerland and Norway, characterized by deep canyons, lofty wooded elevations, and precipitous declivities. At the several railway stations ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... into this part of the range in the early part of each week, and passed the latter part, it was supposed, around the base of Sierra Grande. This was Monday, and that same evening, as we were about to retire, I heard the deep bass howl of his majesty. On hearing it one of the boys briefly remarked, "There he is, ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... in all its pride; A pomp so splendid, when the lists, set wide, Gave room to the fierce bulls, which wildly ran In Sierra Ronda, ere the war began; Who, with high nostrils snuffing up the wind, Now stood the champion of the savage kind. Just opposite, within the circled place, Ten of our bold Abencerrages race (Each brandishing his bull-spear in his hand,) Did their proud ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... coming this way, and these, too, have a couple of horses. Can they have overpowered his men, ambushed and murdered them, then secured their mounts? Is the whole Chiricahua tribe, reinforced by a swarm from the Sierra Blanca, concentrating on him now? The silence about him is ominous. Not an Indian has shown along the range for half an hour, and now these fellows to the east are close to the copse. In less than twenty minutes ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... the great cereals, wheat and corn, in the western, northwestern, and Pacific States, and in that vast interior region from the valley of the Mississippi river to the Rocky mountains; and thence to the chain formed by the Sierra Nevada and Cascades, the eastern wall of the Pacific slope, every variety of soil is found revealing ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... always been accustomed to hear that it was by seeing the moral fitness of the doctrine of the Atonement, that converts to Christianity were chiefly made: so said the Moravians among the Greenlanders, so Brainerd among the North American Indians, so English missionaries among the negroes at Sierra Leone:—and I could not at all renounce this idea. Indeed I seemed to myself to see this fitness most emphatically; and as for the forensic difficulties, I passed them over with a certain conscious reverence. I was not as yet ripe for deeper ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... unlike those rich-toned studies of sub-Alpine regions in which Titian as a rule revels. It has an august but more colourless beauty recalling the middle Apennines; one might almost say that it prefigures those prospects of inhospitable Sierra which, with their light, delicate tonality, so admirably relieve and support the portraits of Velazquez. All this is unusual, and still more so is the want of that aristocratic gravity, of that subordination of mere outward splendour to inborn dignity, which mark Titian's greatest portraits ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... of the Mexican Plateau and lower leeward slopes of the Sierra Madre Oriental from Hidalgo and Queretaro northward to ...
— A Taxonomic Study of the Middle American Snake, Pituophis deppei • William E. Duellman

... from the Pyrenees to Madrid. The first encounters were all favourable to the practised French troops; yet the objects which Napoleon set before his generals were not achieved. Moncey failed to reduce Valencia; Dupont found himself outnumbered on passing the Sierra Morena, and had to retrace his steps and halt at Andujar, where the road to Madrid leaves the valley of the Guadalquivir. Without sustaining any severe loss, the French divisions were disheartened by exhausting and resultless marches; the Spaniards gained new confidence on each successive day which ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... else in Norway, the cars on the Eidsvold railway have rather more of a rustic than a metropolitan appearance. They are extremely simple in construction and rural in decoration; and as for the road, it may be very good compared with a trail over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, but it is absolutely frightful to travel over it by steam. Three hours is the allowance of time for forty miles. If I remember correctly, we stretched it out to four, on account ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... the first Interrogatory this Deponent saith that his Name is Francis Rafe, and is twenty Six Years of Age, that he is a Native of Sierra[2] in Greece and Subject to the Grand ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... north of Carthagena, and the army had to cross the range of mountains now known as the Sierra Morena, which run across the peninsula from Cape St. Vincent on the west to Cape St. Martin on the east. The march of so large an army, impeded as it was by a huge train of wagons with stores and the machines necessary for a siege, was toilsome and arduous ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... found no one with whom to exchange a word. I could make out a startling list of the martyrs of orchidology. Among Mr. Sander's collectors alone, Falkenberg perished at Panama, Klaboch in Mexico, Endres at Rio Hacha, Wallis in Ecuador, Schroeder in Sierra Leone, Arnold on the Orinoco, Digance in Brazil, Brown in Madagascar. Sir Trevor Lawrence mentions a case where the zealous explorer "waded for a fortnight up to his middle in mud," searching for a plant he had heard of. I have not identified this instance of devotion, but we know of ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... too great for even the solid English line to sustain; it, too, yielded to the impetuous French, part of whom seized the rocks at the highest point of the hill, while another part wheeled to the right, intending to sweep the summit of the sierra. It was an astonishing feat. Only French soldiers, magnificently led and in a mood of victory, could have done it; and only British soldiers, it may be added, whom defeat hardens, could ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... plain and far sierra spread The fulgent rays of fading afternoon, Showing each utmost peak and watershed All clarified, each tassel and festoon Of floating cloud embroidered overhead, Like lotus-leaves on bluest waters strewn, Flushing with rose, while all breathes ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... Rio Grande was all that was necessary to hold, unless it was intended to invade Mexico from the North. In that case the most natural route to take was the one which General Taylor selected. It entered a pass in the Sierra Madre Mountains, at Monterey, through which the main road runs to the City of Mexico. Monterey itself was a good point to hold, even if the line of the Rio Grande covered all the territory we desired to occupy at that time. It is built on a plain two thousand feet above tide water, where the air ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... together what money we could lay our hands on, and landed in the gold-mining regions of California. We were young and inexperienced, and our money went rapidly. One April morning we drifted into a little shack camp, away up in the Sierra Nevadas, called Hell's Elbow. Here we struggled and starved for perhaps a year. Finally, in utter desperation, Walcott married the daughter of a Mexican gambler, who ran an eating house and a poker joint. With them we lived ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... curious, crawled through the willows. We immediately shot at them. In the morning the oxen were rounded up and one was missing. He was driven away by the Indians and killed. We found him several miles further along, with seven arrows piercing his body. Our next camping place was at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The snow was eighteen inches deep and there was no food for the cattle. After going a mile further the cow gave out. That left us without any means to haul the wagons. Father left his wagon and we packed our goods on a horse, this being the only animal ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... tinman's shop near by. Horses stamping on pavement to get off flies. When you hear these four sounds, you may set it down as a warm day. Then it is that one would like to imitate the mode of life of the native at Sierra Leone, as somebody has described it: stroll into the market in natural costume,—buy a water-melon for a halfpenny,—split it, and scoop out the middle,—sit down in one half of the empty rind, clap the other on one's head, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... at one time, was an arm of the Pacific Ocean, and was drained by some disturbance which brought the Sierra Mountains to the surface. These logs grew probably a thousand miles north of here and were brought here in a great flood. They floated around for centuries perhaps, and were thoroughly impregnated with the mineral water, doubtless hot water. When ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... eye could scarcely distinguish the rapid streams which found their way below. On one side rose into the clear blue sky the majestic summit of Chimborazo, while other peaked and round-topped mountains reared their heads proudly around. At length the summit of the sierra was reached, and our mules commenced a descent into the valley, drawing their legs together and sliding down with fearful velocity. I had bean anxious before, I was doubly so now; but the animals with wonderful sagacity kept the centre ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... curves, gradients which require the most powerful locomotives, here and there stationary engines to haul up the train with cables, in a word, a herculean labor, superior to the works of the American engineers in the defiles of the Sierra Nevada ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... vegetation, on our right. This was known to be one of the hard drives of our long journey; but hearsay knowledge was also to the effect that, at its farther border, we would reach the Truckee River, and soon thereafter ascend the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The prospect of seeing again a river of pure water, and fresh, green trees, had a buoyant effect on our lagging hopes; and these were further stimulated by the information that not ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell

... conferences with representative citizens, interested foreigners and the representatives of foreign governments in Monrovia. Visits were made to various parts of the Republic and to the neighboring British colony of Sierra Leone, where the Commission was received by and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... The After-Echo Dulciora Matins The Parting and the Coming Guest When Tulips Bloom Spring in the North Spring in the South How Spring Comes to Shasta Jim The First Bird o' Spring A Bunch of Trout-Flies A Noon-Song Turn o' the Tide Sierra Madre School Indian Summer Light between the Trees The Fall of the Leaves Three Alpine Sonnets A Snow-Song Roslin and Hawthornden The Heavenly Hills of Holland Flood-Tide of Flowers Salute ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke

... commoners, princes and maharajahs, Equerries to the King and Yeomen of the Guard. And here the colonials, lithe and hardy men; and here all the breeds of all the world-soldiers from Canada, Australia, New Zealand; from Bermuda, Borneo, Fiji, and the Gold Coast; from Rhodesia, Cape Colony, Natal, Sierra Leone and Gambia, Nigeria, and Uganda; from Ceylon, Cyprus, Hong-Kong, Jamaica, and Wei-Hai-Wei; from Lagos, Malta, St. Lucia, Singapore, Trinidad. And here the conquered men of Ind, swarthy horsemen and sword wielders, ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... waters of the Sacramento and Alaskan rivers. In Alaska it swarms in millions. But the most beautiful trout in the country, indeed the most beautiful fish in the world, perhaps, are found in three little streams on the very top of the Sierra Nevada. Did they tell you the story, in Washington, about the three ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... and in the evening of the 9th of April we sighted the most westerly point of South America that forms Cape San Roque. But then the Nautilus swerved again, and sought the lowest depth of a submarine valley which is between this Cape and Sierra Leone on the African coast. This valley bifurcates to the parallel of the Antilles, and terminates at the mouth by the enormous depression of 9,000 yards. In this place, the geological basin of the ocean forms, as far ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... before they sighted land, Tom was sent for into the captain's cabin, and there a wonderful proposal was made to him—that he should give up sea life, and go to Bella Sierra as little Carlo's attendant. Carlo's parents were rich people; little Carlo had taken a great fancy to him, and ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... she lay comatose in her bonds. From thence they journeyed south slowly, keeping to the high mountains, and only once did he speak, when he told her that a certain mountain pass was the home of the Chiricahuas. From the girl's account she must have gone far south into the Sierra Madre of Old Mexico, though of course she was ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington

... better than any other man. Some of our United States officers have tried to improve on the experience of the Greaser, and have made what they called an improvement on the Mexican pack-saddle. But all the attempts at improvement have been utter failures. The ranchero, on the Pacific side of the Sierra Nevadas, is also a good packer; and he can beat the Mexican lassoing cattle. But he is the only man in the United States who can. The reason for this is, that they went into that country when very young, and improved on the Mexican, by having cattle, mules, and horses round them ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley

... told me, that after leaving the State of Illinois, I should cross the Mississippi, and then the Missouri; get into Nebraska; then over the Rocky Mountains to the Mormon settlement at Salt Lake City, and by the way of the Sierra Nevada into San Francisco. I found the guide book all right as I went along; and I should have been a miserable sceptic if, having proved it to be correct three-fourths of the way, I had said that I would not believe it for ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody

... in a Californian mining town, away up amid the snow-clad, rock-bound peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, sat a woman, in widow's weeds, holding upon her knee a bright-eyed, sunny-faced little girl, about five years old, while a little cherub of a boy lay upon a bear-skin before the open fireplace. It was ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... part of his remaining cash in purchasing provisions, etcetera, for the journey to the Sacramento River. By steamer they accomplished the first part of it, and on horseback progressed north-eastward until they drew near to the mighty mountain range named the Sierra Nevada. ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne

... Sierra of the Andes from Chili to the Isthmus of Panama. As Cornish men we should adopt the specialty of our province, and become miners. The Andes mountains will give us that opportunity, where, instead of gray tin, we may delve for yellow gold. ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... he had already dropped out of the chill wind that struck them at ten thousand. Behind them and off to the right was the gray rampart of the Sierra. Ahead a rough circle of darker hills enclosed the great bowl he had learned to know ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... Bret Harte surrounded both, that bids fair to be immortal, held me enthralled. Angel's, Rough and Ready, Sandy Bar, Poker Flat, Placerville, Tuolumne and old Sonora represented to me enchanted ground. Fate and life's vicissitudes prevented, except in imagination, a knowledge of the Sierra foot-hill counties; but in the back of my head all these years had persisted a determination to, at some time, visit a region close to the heart of every old Californian, and what better way ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley

... party of men with many horses. After months of travel he found himself near the great Californian mountains. These mountains are called the Sierra Nevada, ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston

... climate was drawing to a close, it being within about two hours of sunset, when I turned out of my way to ascend a hill with a very long, ridge-like summit, falling away at one end, appearing like the last sierra of a range just where it dies down into the level plain; only in this instance the range itself did not exist. The solitary hill was covered with short tussocks of yellow, wiry grass, with occasional bushes, while near the summit large slabs of sandstone appeared just ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... feet above the level of the sea, with its wide expanse of plain on every hand but that on which the Guadarramas break the horizon with their rugged, often snow-capped, peaks, naturally exposes it to rapid changes of temperature; that is to say, that if the snow is still lying on the Sierra, and the wind should chance to blow from that direction on Madrid, which is steeped in sunshine winter and summer for far the greater part of the year, there is nothing to break its course, and naturally, a Madrileno, crossing ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... very highest region of Sierra, where the snow falls to such an enormous depth that the fire would be blotted out and the whole open side snowed up, the dwelling retains substantially the same form and materials, but the fire is taken into the middle of it, and one side of ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... no way of reaching the promised land except by a voyage around Cape Horn or an overland trip from western Missouri across the great American desert, the Rocky and Sierra Nevada ranges of mountains, either of which routes necessitated a weary and dangerous trip of nine months' duration. The usual plan adopted in the East was to form a company of about one hundred or more men, calculate the probable expense to each, and ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... coming, without long delay, notwithstanding the veto of a New England northeast snow-storm, and I behold the plowmen covered with snow and rime, their heads peering, above the mould-board which is turning down other than daisies and the nests of field mice, like bowlders of the Sierra Nevada, that occupy an outside place ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... equatorial zone to fifteen degrees on both sides of the equator. In this division we shall find the Cape Verd Islands, Sierra Leone, Ascension, and St. Helena, the Republic of Liberia, the European and native settlements in the Gulf of Guinea, and on the western Coast of Africa, Abyssinnia, Zanzibar on the East Coast, Mocha and Aden in the Red Sea, the northern portion of Madagascar, the Seychelles, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... this spot in the seventy-fifth parallel is the most northern part of that coast known to us. Colonel—then Captain—Sabine in the Griper was landed there to make magnetic, and other observations; for the same purpose he had previously visited Sierra Leone. That is where we differ from our forefathers. They commissioned hardy seamen to encounter peril for the search of gold ore, or for a near road to Cathay; but our peril is encountered for the gain of knowledge, for the highest kind of service that can ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt

... halberded bands of the city be ordered out to quell, seize, or exterminate them; should the alcalde of the village cause the tocsin to be rung, gathering together the villanos for a similar purpose, the wild sierra was generally at hand, which, with its winding paths, its caves, its frowning precipices, and ragged thickets, would offer to them a secure refuge where they might laugh to scorn the rage of their baffled pursuers, and from which ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... taken its name from Peru, a small river on the west coast of Colombia, where Pizarro landed. The country, geographically, may be divided into three sections longitudinally. The coast region is a sandy desert, with here and there rivers flowing through fertile valleys. The sierra region is the Andes division, about two hundred and fifty ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton

... thick fog, which lifting on December 14th, revealed to the voyagers the lofty coast range usually sighted by the ships coming from the Philippines. Four leagues beyond they saw a river flowing from high hills through a beautiful valley to the sea. To the mountains he gave the name of Sierra de la Santa Lucia, in honor of the Saint whose day (December 13th) they had just celebrated, and the stream he named Rio del Carmelo, in honor of the Carmelite friars. Rounding a high wooded point, which he named Punta de los Pinos, he dropped anchor in Monterey bay, December 16th, 1602. ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera

... of grubs, and flies, and beetles, there's no place for 'em like Sierra Leone. I wish you'd had some of ours; we had rather too much of a good thing; we drank them with our drink, and could scarcely keep from eating them with our food. I never thought any folk could care ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... "mother-moon," and the Hurons regarded Ataensic, the mother or grandmother of Jouskeha, the sun, as the "creatress of earth and man," as well as the goddess of death and of the souls of the departed (509. 363). The Tarahumari Indians of the Sierra of Chihuahua, Mexico, call the sun au-nau-ru-a-mi, "high father," and the moon, je-ru-a-mi, "high mother." The Tupi Indians of Brazil term the moon jacy, "our mother," and the same name occurs in the Omagua and other members of this linguistic stock. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... of a rainbow, and which I believe to be the worst piece of road in the geography, except one in the Sandwich Islands, which I remember painfully, and possibly one or two mountain trails in the Sierra Nevadas. Often, in this narrow path the horse had to poise himself nicely on a rude stone step and then drop his fore-feet over the edge and down something more than half his own height. This brought his nose near the ground, while his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, in 1800. His father, of Scotch descent, was at one time governor of the Sierra Leone colony for liberated negroes, and devoted a large part of his life to the abolition of the slave trade. His mother, of Quaker parentage, was a brilliant, sensitive woman, whose character is reflected in that of her son. The influence of these ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... to San Miguel, going as far as the ridge, from whence we had a most glorious view and panorama, as we could see into the valleys and canyons some miles below; Mount Wilson, which unfortunately was shrouded in dark, stormy clouds; a range of mountains in Utah called Sierra la Sal, about 120 miles distant; and a long way ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall

... expressed hypothesis of the origin of the Igorot appears to me to have much probability, for a similar theory to explain the Malay type of the Ilongot or Ibilao I feel even stronger confidence. This curious people occupies a very broken mountain area formed by the junction of the Sierra Madre with the Caraballo Sur. This is the headwaters of the Kagayan river and to a less degree of the Pampanga. Besides being wholly mountainous it is covered with thick and well nigh impenetrable jungle, in which the scattered homes of these wild people ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows

... planning what coast we should make for. It was a nice question, for the Cape de Verds were about 500 miles to the north of us, and the African coast about 700 miles to the east. On the whole, as the wind was coming round to north, we thought that Sierra Leone might be best, and turned our head in that direction, the barque being at that time nearly hull down on our starboard quarter. Suddenly as we looked at her we saw a dense black cloud of smoke shoot up from her, which hung like a monstrous tree upon the sky-line. A few seconds later a roar ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... call in what they had issued. In 1786 Boulton struck over 100 tons of copper for the East India Co., and, adding to his presses yearly, soon had plenty of orders, including copper for the American Colonies, silver for Sierra Leone, and a beautiful set for the French Republic. To enumerate all the various coins, medals, and tokens issued from Soho would take too much space, but we may say that he brought the art of coining to a perfection very ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... seen by what means the nomination was effected; and so the five cardinals who had taken no part in this simony—namely, the Cardinals of Naples, Sierra, Portugal, Santa Maria-in-Porticu, and St. Peter-in-Vinculis—protested loudly against this election, which they treated as a piece of jobbery; but Roderigo had none the less, however it was done, secured his majority; Roderigo was none the less the two hundred ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... foothills of the Alps and the foothills of the Cevennes come together, and behind this natural dam there must have been anciently a great lake which extended to the northward of where now is Valence. The Defile is a veritable canon that would be quite in place in the Sierra Madre. On each side of the sharply-narrowed river the walls of rock rise sheer to a height of two hundred feet. The rush of the water is tumultuous. In mid-stream, surrounded by eddies and whirling ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... California, is a pass about ten miles long. At its eastern extremity it leads into three narrower passes, each of which extends several miles, winding by the wildest paths into the heart of the Sierra Nevada chain of mountains. For seven miles of the main valley, which varies in width from three quarters of a mile to a mile and a half, the walls on either side are from two thousand to nearly five thousand feet above the road, and are nearly perpendicular. From these ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... he repented his anger, and, in a fit of impatience at what he had done, he threw up quantities of earth that smoked with heat, and thus created the Sierra Nevada, while he broke away the hills at the foot of the lake, and the waters drained into the sea at the Golden Gate. This again made dry land of the valley, and, opening the earth once more, he released the captive tribe. The imprisoned people had not forgotten ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... savages; no lady could venture there, their language was so dreadful: no delicate person could survive the effects of such a noxious atmosphere. To this I replied that, happily, I could not hear their conversation; and as for the unwholesomeness, it could not be worse than Sierra Leone, or other missionary stations, where many ladies went. Insult had never yet been my lot among the Irish; and as to murder, it would be martyrdom in such a cause, of which I had little hope. So I turned my ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... negroes under British care at Sierra Leone made similar progress in improvement? Do the free colored subjects of Britain in the West Indies show the capacity, industry, and intelligence manifested by the Liberians, whose training was in the school of American servitude? Nor have the best specimens of this tutelage been sent ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... "Diverse are the opinions concerning the denomination of the Arabs; but the most certain of all is that which draws it from Arabah, which is part of the region of Tehama (belonging to Al-Medinah Pilgrimage ii. 118), which their father Ismail afterwards inhabited." Tehamah (sierra caliente) is the maritime region of Al Hijaz, the Moslems Holy Land; and its "Arabah," a very small tract which named a very large tract, must not be confounded, as some have done, with the Wady Arabah, the ancient outlet of the Dead ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... best flavoured coffee is grown, where cane is less luxuriant but more saccharine than in the plains, and which is therefore very desirable to cultivate, but where the red man sickens and dies. Indians taken down from the sierra get ague and dysentery. Those of the plains find the temperature chilly, and are stricken down with influenza and pains in the limbs. I have seen the difficulty experienced in getting farms cultivated ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Lights rippled red and orange and yellow and green on the clean paving-stones. A cold wind off the Sierra shrilled through clattering streets. As they walked the other man was telling how this Castilian nobleman, courtier, man-at-arms, had shut himself up when his father, the Master of Santiago, died, and had written this ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... I have said of Sodoma's "Christ Bound," at Sierra, I see that I have omitted to notice what seems to me one of its most striking characteristics,—its loneliness. You feel as if the Saviour were deserted, both in heaven and earth; the despair is in him which made him say, "My God, why hast thou forsaken ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... have to carry the republican independence which our fathers achieved, with all the organized institutions of an enlightened community, institutions of religion, law, education, charity, art, and all the thousand graces of the higher culture, beyond the Missouri, beyond the Sierra Nevada; perhaps, in time around the circuit of the Antilles; perhaps to the archipelagoes of the Central Pacific. The pioneers are on the way. Who can tell how far and fast they will travel? Who, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... from San Francisco. Ar. with father, mother and sister. Mrs. Oregon C. Maiden name Layzell Helgeson, Hans. July 4. Str. Brother Jonathan, Ar. single from S. Francisco. Higgins, David W. July 19. Str. Sierra Nevada, Ar. single; newspaper proprietor, from San Francisco. retired Humphreys, Dec. 28. Overland, from California. Ar. single; gold miner, William. now in Customs Lombard, Charles. August. Str. Oregon, from San Francisco. Ar. with ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... cross from it, which they fixt in a heap of stones found on the spot from whence they first descried the sea. The names of the monarchs of Castile were engraven on the trunks of the trees, and with shouts and acclamations they descended the sierra and ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various

... Divided Upon the Theories Concerning the Shock That Wrought Havoc in the Golden Gate City—May Have Originated Miles Under the Ocean—Growth of the Sierra Madre Mountains May Have Been ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... espanoles a Robar en corco en sus nauios y son contratantes, solia auer en esta ysla Vna gran poblacon poco tiempo antes qe viniesen a estas yslas los espanoles—los malucos la saquearon, y toda la mayor pte de la gente se repartio por las demas yslas donde agora auitan las poblacones de la sierra adentro son pequenas y pobres y aun no del todo sujetos, ay en esta ysla mucha abundancia de caca de Venados y puercos, y en muchas ysletas qe tiene alderredor de si despobladas a donde ay tambien grandes pesquerias tendra de circuyto como quarento ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various

... metalliferous veins is now going on, according to Mr. Phillips, in various parts of the Pacific coast. Thus, for example, there are fissures at the foot of the eastern declivity of the Sierra Nevada in the state of that name, from which boiling water and steam escape, forming siliceous incrustations on the sides of the fissures. In one case, where the fissure is partially filled up with silica inclosing iron and copper pyrites, ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... reckoning, where from, where bound; perhaps one supplies the other with a little food or a few dainties; then they part, to see each other no more. But one or both may remember the hour passed together all their days, just as I recollect our brief parley with the brig Economist, of Leith, from Sierra Leone, in mid ocean, in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... noising the matter abroad, and they could easily account to the Porkenhams for his disappearance, by saying that he had been appointed, through the Court influence of his family, to the governor-generalship of Sierra Leone, of Saugur Point, or any other of those salubrious climates which enchant Europeans so much, that when they once get there, they can hardly ever prevail upon themselves to come ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... attention to a native variety of gooseberry, of which you make no mention in your 'Scribner Papers,' growing in great abundance in the Sierra Nevada, at an elevation of from 2,000 to 3,000 feet, often in the most exposed places, generally on northern slopes. Thinking it may not have come to your knowledge, I will describe it. The bush is of stiff, erect habit, two to three feet high, a stocky grower ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... were numerous idols in the figures of men and animals, and before them fresh offerings of copal and food. Elsewhere he refers to many such caverns still in use as places resorted to by the natives in la gran Sierra de Tlascala.[40-[]] ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton

... fifty pounds of the delicious fruit, which is soon to be reduced to an unseemly mass, and yield up its purple life-blood for the benefit of man. Some of the best wine made in the State is from the "Asuza" and "Sunny Slope" vineyards, both of which lie directly at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. From a small beginning Messrs. Koehler and Froehling have steadily progressed, till at this time their position is a very enviable one. Their cellars, occupying the basement of Montgomery Block, excite the admiration of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... a shadow, and the "Albatross" sped on her way to the southwest with a speed that was not felt, because it surpassed that of the chasing wind. Soon she was in Nevada over the silver regions, which the Sierra separates from ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... White Death, so named by the Indians, occurs in the higher altitudes of the Rocky and Sierra Nevada Mountains. It is almost indescribable. It might properly be termed a frozen fog. It has the effect of bringing on acute congestion of the lungs, from which few rarely recover. Viewed at a distance it is a magnificent sight, each and every particle ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart

... drawn south of Isleta and the Mesa del Canjelon, the Tiguas occupied a number of villages, mostly on the western bank of the river, and a few Tigua settlements existed also on the margin of the eastern plains beyond the Sierra del Manzano. These outlying Tigua settlements also were abandoned in the seventeenth century, their inhabitants fleeing from the Apaches and retiring to form the Pueblo of Isleta del Sur on the left bank of the ...
— Documentary History of the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico; I. Bibliographic Introduction • Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier

... yet owing to the clear atmosphere, apparently, rising almost at the terminus of the city's streets, stand the Sierra Madre Mountains, whose copious reservoirs furnish this entire region with water. An excursion toward this noble range brought me one day to Pasadena, the pride of all the towns which, relatively to Los Angeles, resemble the satellites of a central sun. Pasadena seems a garden without a weed; ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... Miller was at Moquega, I took the San Martin to Ilo, from which anchorage the patriot force was supplied with everything requisite. The sick were taken on board the brigs captured at Arica, as were also the Spanish colonels, Sierra and Suares, who had been taken prisoners, but whom I liberated on their parole, not to serve again ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... enters with thunder and lightning, over whose shoulders "waved two enormous sable wings," and whose hair "was supplied by living snakes," then snatches up his victim and soars with him to a peak of the Sierra Morena, where in a Salvator Rosa landscape of torrents, cliffs, caverns, and pine forests, by the light of an opera moon, and to the sound of the night wind sighing hoarsely and "the shrill cry of mountain eagles," he drops him over a precipice ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... northern Luzon, of which practically no details are known, is the Sierra Madre, extending nearly the full length of the country close to the eastern coast. It seems to be an unbroken, continuous range, and, as such, is the longest mountain range in ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... ventured on an exploring voyage westward into the open Mediterranean, a day's sail would bring them within sight of the eastern Balearic Islands, Minorca and Majorca. The sierra of Majorca rises to the height of between 3,000 and 4,000 feet,[5141] and can be seen from a great distance. The occupation of the islands by "the Phoenicians" is asserted by Strabo,[5142] but we cannot be sure that ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... extend northwesterly into Arizona and Utah. In many places their plateaus rise eight thousand feet above the sea. Their thousands of peaks and canyons are fit rivals of the wonders of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Nowadays they are known by many names—the Sierra Chusca, the Lokaeboka, the Carrisco. 'Thirty days' travel west of north' is not very definite, but it certainly locates the palace in the far northwestern part ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler

... America's greatest Indian fighter, General Crook, was sent to campaign in Arizona in 1885. The celebrated chiefs, Geronimo and Natchez, broke out again and killed some twenty-nine white people in New Mexico and thirty-six in Arizona before Crook pushed them into the Sierra Madre Mountains in Sonora, where at last Geronimo surrendered. Victorio was an equally celebrated Apache war-chief and was out about the same time. Fortunately these last raids were always made on the south side of the Reservation. We were happily on the north side, ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... not come to very much," in answer to an involuntary movement on Rendel's part; and he swept his hand across the coast of the Gulf of Guinea as though wiping out of existence the Gold Coast, Ashanti, Sierra Leone, and all that had mattered before. "Germany abandons to us everything that she lays claim to on the east of it, including therefore the whole course of the ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell

... Professor had a lamp burning on the table beside him, and I sat down in its light. In a few seconds I was following the adventures of the hero,—a hero whose foot, it seemed "had pressed the summits of the Andes, and climbed the Cordilleras of the Sierra Madre." He had "steamed it down the Mississippi, and sculled ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson

... people while here, among them two or three gentlemen whom we had known as boys in Mansfield. We drove to Wolfskill's orange grove, and to many handsome places in, and around, Los Angeles, to Sierra Madre Villa, to Baldwin's place, to Rose's wine establishment, and to Passadena, where we found Senator Cameron and his wife pleasantly situated, and ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... born in Sierra Leone, Africa. Of his parents and his brothers and sisters I know nothing. I only remember that it was said that his father's name was Moncoso, and his mother's Mongomo, which names are known only among the ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer

... India; and the wonder is no less when he writes of our own wide country. Indeed, the vividness of his poems about the slaves at St. Helena's Island and elsewhere make them among the finest of all his local poems. One called "The Pass of the Sierra" may easily bear the ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... which geology has any present knowledge. Mountains of this formation, as the Adirondacks and the Storm King range, overlooking the Hudson near West Point, are the patriarchs of their kind, beside which Alleghanies and Sierra Nevadas are recent upstarts, and Rockies, Alps, and Andes are mere ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... founded at Sierra Leone by English philanthropists drew in part its inspiration from Hopkins' idea, and in turn suggested later American plans. After the celebrated decision of Lord Mansfield in the Somerset case (1772), ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson

... first traded to West Africa for cardamoms and ivory. This was during the reign of Charles V., and between 1364 and 1430, or half a century before the Portuguese. Their chief stations were Goree of Cape Verde, Sierra Leone, Cape Mount, the Kru or Liberian coast, then called 'of Grain,' from the 'Guinea grains' or Malaguetta pepper (Amomum granum Paradisi), and, lastly, the Gold Coast. Here they founded 'Petit Paris' ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... it they instantly saddled their horses, galloped off, and I believe they prospected all night." A like excitement was created when the news of this and one or two similar finds reached Lake Valley. Next morning every waiter was gone from the little hotel, and a dozen men had left the Sierra mines, to try their fortunes ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... of the Royal Navy were among the subscribers. Three small vessels, with only two hundred and sixty tons between them, formed the flotilla. The crews numbered just a hundred men. 'At Teneriffe he received friendly treatment. From thence he passed to Sierra Leona, where he stayed a good time, and got into his possession, partly by the sword and partly by other means, to the number of 300 Negroes at the least, besides other merchandises.... With this prey he sailed over the ocean sea unto the island of Hispaniola [Hayti] ... and here ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... character. There was before them a promised land in the extreme distance, but there intervened a tract of land which seemed as impassable a barrier as the much talked-of, but seldom inspected, Chinese Wall of old. There was a region of desolation and death, extending from the Sierra Nevadas to the border lines of Nebraska, and from the Yellowstone to the Colorado Rivers. A profane writer once suggested that the same Creator could hardly have brought into existence this arid, barren and inhospitable region and the fertile ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... connected the east and the west. At an incredibly early period we find them in Cyprus and Egypt, in Greece and Sicily, in Africa and Spain, and even on the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. The field of their commerce reached from Sierra Leone and Cornwall in the west, eastward to the coast of Malabar. Through their hands passed the gold and pearls of the East, the purple of Tyre, slaves, ivory, lions' and panthers' skins from the interior of Africa, frankincense from ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... was hee that first discouered for their vse Cape Verd, with the Islands adioyning, of which he then peopled and planted those of Bonauista and Sant Iago discouering also the riuer Senega, otherwise called Niger, and Cape Roxo and Sierra Leone, and in few yeeres after they did discouer the coast of Guinea, and there peopled and built the castle of Mina: then discouered they further to the countreys of Melegettes, Benin, and Congo, with the Islands of Principe, da Nabon, S. Matthewe, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt

... men were daily passing in and out of the city, drawn by the lure of the Sierra gold-fields; some of these came back with the joy of dreams come true and full pokes hung around their necks, some came with the misery of utter failure in their hearts, and some—alas, they were many, returned not ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady

... courier to the Mission del Carmelo, at Monterey, for tidings from New Spain. He never came back, and the great earthquake which shook the country hereabout opened a huge chasm across the country just back of the Sierra yonder, and none dared to cross over to the main land. The saints have defended us in peace, and it is the will of Heaven that we shall stay here by ourselves until the Holy Virgin, in answer to our prayers, shall send ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... what with the uniforms of the officers, and the richly embroidered saddles and bright-red burnouses of our attendant spahis. After riding some miles across a monotonous tract of stony desert, we came to a majestic sierra of crag, down which fell a dozen water-falls, narrow and bright as sword-blades. A thin little stream threaded the ravine, and on its banks grew clumps of the tamarisk, the oleander, and the thuya, making an oasis grateful to ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... and with a very ugly face, whose life had been a series of extraordinary adventures and bustling incidents. He had served his country in the most opposite capacities. In 1808, he fought the French in the streets of Madrid; two years later, he headed a guerilla band in the wild passes of the Sierra Morena; another two years, and he took the oath to the constitution of Cadiz, and was seen at Wellington's head-quarters as colonel of the Spanish line, and delegate from the Cortes. In 1814, he changed his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various



Words linked to "Sierra" :   Sierra Leone monetary unit, chain of mountains, Sierra redwood, Spanish mackerel, chain, mountain range, mountain chain, range, range of mountains



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